watching the first group of four women take the floor. 'Get in tune with your bodies,' the teacher called, without noticeable effect. 'Don't watch anyone else. Just let your body follow the music, let it come naturally.' Only one of the four was any good, Carol thought, a haughty-looking dark-haired girl who tossed her shoulders and shook her head as if she were actually on some Caribbean beach surrounded by a dozen obliging black men. Carol wondered what she was going to do when her turn came.
'Next four,' the teacher called, and two women and two of the young men stepped forward, the previous group having retreated back to the mirrored wall. 'Don't watch anyone else, I said,' the teacher cried a little testily at the two men, who seemed to be blithely dancing with one another. 'Close your eyes if you have to.' The four did so, with predictably awkward results.
A gesture from the teacher indicated that Carol and her group would be next. At the woman's command they moved out onto the floor, Carol, two older women, and the remaining man. 'Close your eyes,' the teacher said, 'and feel the music. Let it move your body.'
Carol tapped her foot self-consciously, trying to do what the woman had advised; but though she liked the music, it was nonsense to think that it could really move her. It wasn't fair, she told herself; she'd never wanted to be a choreographer.
It occurred to her, suddenly, that she might do the Mutamentos, the Dance of the Changes she'd practiced two nights ago. It was a slower, more sinuous dance, and didn't really go with the lively black music she was hearing, but it consisted of only nine simple movements, and if she did them in the right rhythm she might be able to fill up the time till the next group was called out.
Shutting her eyes, she tried to remember. There were two different spins, and a side step and a back step…
Yes, that was it, she'd got it now; the trick was remembering the odd movement of the hands, and where it came. It felt strange to be doing a folk dance here in class; she wondered if she looked foolish. No doubt the other women would be performing some wildly expressive modern dance routines or some reggae steps they'd picked up. Hoping the teacher didn't think the less of her, she opened her eyes.
She found herself facing the mirror, the teacher's image reflected in the glass. For some reason the woman looked amazed; she was staring back and forth between Carol and the two other women, her eyes growing progressively wider. Carol sneaked a glance at the others and gasped: they too appeared to be performing the Changes. Their eyes were shut tightly; they looked rapturously happy. The man, eyes also shut, was a little way off, doing disco numbers by himself.
Carol felt somewhat chagrined; obviously the two women had cheated. They'd opened their eyes while hers had been closed and had copied Carol's steps. Perhaps they meant to mock her; perhaps they hadn't known what else to do.
Looking back toward the teacher, Carol saw that, if anything, the woman's astonishment had increased – for she was now staring at the man. Carol whirled to look at him. He too was performing the folk dance, keeping time with her and the others, though his eyes, at the moment, remained closed. It isn't fair! Carol thought, suddenly indignant. This was her dance, and the others were imitating it.
The four of them, in fact, were moving in unison now, pounding the wood floor with their feet at the same time, spinning at the same time, the others with their eyes shut tight, the huge room echoing to the sound of their feet. It was almost uncanny. She noticed with embarrassment that the bulge in the young man's tights had grown larger, and wondered who in the class had aroused him.
Just then the teacher stepped forward. 'Did you people rehearse this?' she cried. 'You've got it down pat.' Without giving anyone time to answer, she signaled for the final group to take the floor.
The other three moved back toward the mirrored wall, but Carol, lagging behind them, found it hard to stop dancing; she was still caught up in the rhythm. Dimly she heard the others talking. 'I just did what the music told me to do,' the young man was explaining to his friends. She noticed in the mirror that the four new women seemed to have picked up the dance merely by watching their predecessors: they too were performing the Changes now, and in the same perfect unison.
She wanted to speak to them, to ask them how they'd learned the dance so fast, but she was too busy watching her reflection, watching her hips jerk, her head toss, the motions of her hands – when suddenly, with a crack like a gunshot, her image in the mirror splintered into thousands of pieces. There was a crash at her back. She turned to see one of the tall windows shatter and fall. Someone shouted; behind her the crowd was backing away from the shards of broken mirror. Abruptly the four dancers stopped and opened their eyes, staring at one another in confusion. The teacher hurried over to the tape and shut it off.
'Maybe some kid with a slingshot,' she heard one of the men say.
'Is it a sniper?' someone cried. Women screamed and retreated toward the doorway. Carol followed, though even as she ran she wondered how a sniper could have done it. It had all happened so quickly… yet it seemed to her that she'd heard the window shatter an instant after the mirror had cracked.
'I think we'd better call it a night,' the teacher said. The students followed her off the floor and into the locker areas.
People were still talking excitedly about the incident as Carol dressed and moved toward the doorway. As she left the studio she saw the dance teacher in- conversation with a large black man in janitor's overalls. The two of them were standing at one side of the dance floor, pointing up toward the corner of the room near the ceiling where a complicated spiderweb of tiny cracks covered the heavy masonry. Carol hadn't noticed them before. As she walked past, she heard the man saying, 'We lost a window downstairs too.'
She paused, nervous again. 'Is there really someone shooting out the windows?'
The man shook his head. 'Naw, nothin' to worry about, lady. Ain't no sniper out there. The old place is just settlin' a little, that's all.'
'Oh, what a relief.'
Nonetheless, she was glad to get away; as she walked down the hall and the echoing stairway, she was sure she heard tiny cracking sounds.
The night was clear and cool, with a panoply of stars. The others were already on the porch, their faces ruddy in the lamplight, when the Verdocks pulled up in their truck.
'How is she, Brother Adam?' called Jacob van Meer, seated in his rocker as if it were a throne.
Verdock shook his head. 'Not so good, I think.' He and Lise came up onto the porch and pulled up chairs. 'We must try to remember her in our prayers tonight. She'll need 'em.'
'We left Minna with her, to tend her till the morning,' said Lise. She was talking to everyone on the porch but, as was customary, directed her words to Elsi van Meer and the other women. 'Minna's made her comfortable, and she'll see to it the garden's looked after till Hannah's got her strength back.'
' If she gets it back.' It was Rupert Lindt, who had joined them that night and was taking up a good portion of the couch.
'Now, now, Brother Rupert,' said Verdock, 'the Lord looks after those that keep the spirit.'
The other shrugged. 'Maybe so, but the spirit and the body's got to part some day. I can't say much about Hannah's spirit, but her body's gettin' old.'
Hannah Kraft was a widow of limited means and solitary habits whose health had been poor for decades, although never so poor as she'd painted it – at least not until now. Now, in her eighties, she seemed to be dying in earnest. The Verdocks had visited her earlier in the evening with their widowed daughter, Minna, and had left Minna there to spend the night with the old woman in the little three-room house off the back road.
'She takes on something fierce about the weather,' Adam was saying. 'A good thing it's so mild tonight. She told Minna she can't get a wink of sleep anymore, what with the thunder and the rain.'
'Well, Hannah will go on,' said Bethuel Reid, perhaps the closest to her in age. 'I remember – years ago, it was – when she wouldn't let you get a word in edgewise and you couldn't make sense of a single thing she said.'
They nodded, all of them, but Lise Verdock raised her voice to add, 'She says there's noises pretty nearly every night now. A rumbling, she calls it, like something's moving out there.'
'Well, sure,' said Bert Steegler, 'it just stands to reason, you stay down by the Neck and you're goin' to hear noises at night.'
Van Meer looked skeptical. 'Oh, a few frogs, maybe, a whippoorwill or two. And maybe the Fenchel boys up to their usual mischief. But I trust you're not holdin' with all those stories about spirits.'
