Chapter 9 Just relax Birdy
\- Hola Julles Querido! - Pilar greets with a charming voice- Would you assist us with a song? - Julles nods, walks to the grand piano and sits down in front of the piano.
\- The whole group around, Birdy is going to perform an improvisation.
\- Dear Birdy, dance a contemporary piece, contemporary will make you feel freer, looser.
She rolls her eyes and tries to hide her face full of discomfort then sighs and takes a deep breath. "You can do it Birdy, it's okay" she says to herself.
The melody begins to play, Birdy smiles as she listens to the notes on the piano. The song Let It All Go, by a British artist who also bears her name, is playing. Her grandmother's favorite pianist and one of her favorite songs. Although dancers are used to being seen, and not feeling embarrassed, Birdy has always found it hard to get used to the idea that her peers have to see her and appreciate her dancing. She prefers to think of them all as a team, dancing first for themselves and then for the audience. She doesn't like to feel the competitiveness of dance. But now that she dances in front of everyone she just frees herself and gives herself to the movement, it's just the dance and her.
Birdy, who wears a ballet leotard that covers her chest and leaves her toned abs and strong, muscular back in the air, begins to move her arms and back first. She closes her eyes, and the piano notes permeate her mind. Despite having done her hair, she did it in a hurry when she left Leuvoicienes so her perfect ballet bun today looks a little loose and some hair falls loose and delicate over her cheekbones. Birdy dances. She is no longer in that place, now she can fly, be part of the clouds, the wind, the water and nature. She drops to the floor and glides, makes certain movements that flow one after the other and are not typical of ballet. She converses with her body, with her muscles and tendons and expresses herself through a new language, that of a freer, less perfect dance, like the feeling that overwhelms her.
Birdy dances like a wild and sublime beast in the main hall, she slides across the wooden floor and observes herself in the mirror as her eyes dilate, she continues to flow with the music until the piano stops.
\- Very good," says Pilar, staring at her with her owl-like eyes, "but now I want you to express your pain. Remember your tears, what you felt and let flow this morning, now release it, dance with that feeling.
\- Julles... please. - Pilar says softly.
Master Julles begins to play the piano again, now Birdy drops to the floor but as she does so she remembers that call, and that feeling that intoxicated her the first time she picked up the phone and heard the voice of her father's mistress. Victor walks over to her and watches her, focused, admiring his girl, his eyes rapt, spellbound, charged with lust and love.
"She was that kind of girl who comes up to you and asks you how you are. And if you are not well she invites you to walk around the world one night in the streets of any city. She returns Milan as light as Paris at midnight just by looking at you in silence and smoking a cigarette. She takes you for a walk in Scotland and wraps her legs around you and slides her plaid skirt under her body, her gaze marked in passion, the same passion of discovering a new place we go to in the streets, as we take her by the waist to cross the avenue. In the end it doesn't matter if it's raining or very cold. I take her home and kiss her on the lips, she leans towards me in relief, as if she were on the balcony of the Capulets and our kiss was the reason to see her jump over the wall, not to return again to that home where she lives without being loved by me".
Birdy performs various windmills in the air, then begins to perform movements in the form of a tornado, her blond and straight hair, falls loose in front of her face and with light movements that accompany the dance, in a sensual way, she moves her hair, and shows off the beauty of her face, now dismayed by the pain and the intoxication of dancing. Victor watches her and gets excited until he has an erection, there, in the middle of the class, watching the dancer who captivates everyone when she dances and makes silence reign.
"At the end he leaves and looks at you as if that walk was the most ordinary and at the same time the most extraordinary thing that could happen to you in your life." Victor thinks. "I enjoy those car rides, where our talk consists of her dreams holding my breath as I watch her sleep. Wondering if perhaps I will inhabit her dreams, if our love has enough heartbeats to walk Rome beside her. In the end she'll be gone and you'll know you'll never meet anyone like her again. But you will have learned to turn the world upside down for a whole night, to tickle your way around Pisa, to pass through Paris without closing your heart, opening yourself to life with every breath. You'll find it always in the promise of a pax de deux. But I cannot make her stay, even if I wish her to remain by my side this morning, and forever. I must ask her to be my wife."
\- It's exquisite," said Leonard, a native African dancer, part of the corps de ballet.
\- Perfect - said Alix, while covering her lips with her big toe and nibbling her nails. Angie, next to her, remained silent, covering Birdy with a clear look of contempt.
\- So, will you marry me? - Birdy smiles and looks at him as if she has no choice but to accept, Victor places the ring between her fingers. It is a beautiful ring with a diamond-cut amethyst stone, probably as expensive as the jewel her mother married him with. Birdy looks at her hand complacently, she now wears two rings on it, her pearl ring on her ring finger, which belonged to her grandmother Ludwika, and her engagement ring, however she replies.
\- I didn't expect this, mon amor, I must think about it.
\- Okay - he looks at her perplexed, - you have all the time in the world - and smiles.
Birdy is talking to the Neo Classical teachers about the rehearsal for the next class and excuses herself by saying that her mother was very ill and had to wait for the housekeeper, Emilia, to leave her mother because she was indisposed to be alone. Mr. Vladimir, who has always shown a special weakness for Birdy's mother, fully understood the situation.
Victor gets dressed in the men's room and his friend Leonard walks to his Locker. He grabs his thermos of water and towel, ready to shower, and looks at Victor.
\- Dude the class was tough, but don't get discouraged, you just need to rest.
\- I spent all night driving to Leuvonicienes to look for Birdy, I was thinking of asking her at her grandmother's house to be my wife - explains Victor.
\- I see - answers Leonard observing his friend while studying the situation.
\- And they had sex of course, that's why you're exhausted.
\- Why do you bring everything into the sexual realm?
\- Because friend, everything is sexual, under those silk skirts hides a perfect body, without a millimeter of fat, with curves well put.
Victor laughs to hear how Leonard admires Birdy for her physique and is unaware of her other attributes.
\- Birdy is a great girl, you need to get to know her better.
\- Don't get me wrong, but marriage is a common thing, sex is something worth celebrating.
\- Many marriages celebrate it when they have it, because they live years of cohabitation without sex.
\- The synonym of a prison without coitus.
\- I'm not saying it will be your case, you are my hero, and she must really be a beast in bed for you to want to get married.
\- Leonard - Victor pats him on the back -, dude that's the reason you don't have a girlfriend, nice talking to you.
\- Come on man, now you'll be looking for friends who are married.
\- I'm just saying there are issues beyond your comprehension, a little emotional intelligence and less physical training, might help you, maybe? Besides she didn't even accept. She doesn't know if she wants to get married... - Victor adds and lets out a halo of disappointment in her eyes.
\- Come on Victor, I know you've been in that bed more than once, she won't let you get away, she's probably terrified.
\- I would be.
\- Besides if Birdy is having second thoughts about marrying you she seems more sensible than you, she probably doesn't understand why your desire to ruin your life clandestinely - Leonard says, - by sleeping with that skinny delicious girl. He pats Victor on the back.
\- Dude, you're my hero.
\- More respect, that skinny babe is my girl.
\- And the prima ballerina.
\- That's right.
\- Dude I'm happy dancing as a corps de ballet, but dude, there's seven of us in one big bed, you've got the presidential suite all to yourself. - Leonard lets out a laugh, Victor smiles at him insightfully.
\- I see your point, but let's just say that as of this moment Birdy is my fiancée.
\- I'm not interested in discussing what goes on in our presidential suite with anyone.
\- Real gentlemen, we don't do that. Especially, if your girl is a Swan Queen.
\- Well my dear friend, in the room across the hall, near the presidential suite, slept a black man with a long hard cock, the king of sex, with a beautiful brunette with the face of an angel, who possibly had the gifts of a little vampire and tremendous experience in the affairs of sex.
\- Good luck with your vampire.
\- Good luck with your Swan Queen.
Birdy and Victor spend the afternoon together in his apartment in the center of Paris. Victor's home, actually a bachelor studio that he remodeled in the center of Paris to fit it out and live near the Opéra Garnier. Birdy loved visiting it, it had a vintage feel to it with the rustic walls and Van Gogh paintings and his dead flowers, which made her adore being in that place. Birdy was sipping a steaming cup of coffee and Victor was playing with her dog, a Siberian she-wolf named "Lemon", named after Victor's favorite choreographer, Victor kept tossing a ball as the dog ran after her and came back wagging his tail with the ball in his muzzle.