He slowly shifted his deeply seated body, straightened his upper half, and met her gaze. A heavy silence settled over the room. She swallowed dryly and felt the body that had moved so freely until just moments ago grow taut with tension.
“You can’t be seen.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to see your figure.”
Ah. Only then did she remember the countless dancers who had gathered in the rehearsal hall, all dressed in leotards. Realizing she had overlooked something important, she felt her face grow slightly hot.
Without giving it another thought, she undressed right there, leaving on only the camisole and bloomers. When she straightened her back and stood at attention, she felt the man’s gaze rake over her body from head to toe.
“Point your toes.”
He spoke in an unyielding tone of command, and her body moved before she even realized it, as if someone else were controlling her. She wasn’t a ballerina, but following the instinct her body remembered, she extended her instep rigidly to the side.
The man’s sharp gaze remained fixed on her while the other judges busily wrote something on the papers laid out before them.
“Where are you from?”
“East Lausanne.”
“I don’t know what gave you the confidence to come all the way here from that far away.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re not a troupe of street performers.”
At that moment, she felt the tips of her ears burn with humiliation. Accustomed only to a life in which she had always been the center of attention in her village, she was thrown off balance. Liz’s dancing was the most graceful and radiant thing she had ever seen in her life. That was what she had learned from her.
To put it more dramatically, it felt as if her entire life had been denied. And to hear such a scathing condemnation from a man who looked like her, before she had even had a chance to form any connection with him—she couldn’t bear it. Bristling with defiance, she clenched her teeth and spoke.
“I can memorize any movement after seeing it just once. I can work hard and do well.”
“Such a zealot.”
“Trying to put anything into a talkative, clumsy body is tedious.”
She had never suffered such humiliation in her life. After he finished speaking, every other judge fell silent. The atmosphere made it clear that nothing more needed to be said.
A frigid draft swept through the enormous hall. In her worn camisole and bloomers, she felt utterly pathetic. She bent down, reached out, and snatched up the outer clothes strewn across the floor. Then she turned her back on them and left the audition room without even saying goodbye.
“Don’t cry.”
Muttering under her breath, she stepped outside. Just as when she had first entered, she saw everyone’s eyes turn toward her. Don’t cry. Biting her lip, she grabbed her trunk and hurried away.
“They’ll announce the results after noon….”
“I don’t need them.”
She felt as if something were about to overflow. Before the attendant could finish speaking, she snapped at him and walked out into the street. The building that had looked so grand when she first entered now seemed cold and strangling.
You’re the wonderful daughter of two women. Be proud of yourself. She deliberately lengthened her stride and walked with brisk, forceful steps, but Liz’s words from before she left kept coming back to her, and tears kept welling in her eyes.
After she had cried her heart out, she became terribly hungry, perhaps because she had danced on an empty stomach. From a street vendor, she bought a gigantic sandwich filled with thick slabs of butter and cheap ham. Then she unfolded the piece of paper in her pocket with the address Liz had given her.
36 Fleet Street. She had just passed number 20, so it had to be somewhere nearby.
“Bastard.”
She would shake it off soon enough, but since it wasn’t the kind of experience one could easily forget, she couldn’t get the man’s face out of her mind. Even now, thinking about it made her face burn. If she told Liz, Liz would surely say it wasn’t worth worrying about and curse him thoroughly on her behalf.
And yet, it was undeniably a strange contradiction that she felt her first flicker of comfort at the realization that she wasn’t the only person beneath the sky who looked like her. Because Liz had showered her with love, her adolescent wandering had been brief, and she had kept Gina from sinking into self-pity. But the isolation of being born an eternal outsider in this world often trapped her in a cycle of loneliness.
She continued walking through the unfamiliar streets. Carriages of familiar shapes and gleaming automobiles hurried past before her eyes. The pedestrians along the road were dressed in finery.
Apart from being a person of color, she thought she understood why people were staring at her. Unlike her plain clothes, no different from what the men wore, most of the women here were dressed in ornate dresses or skirts made from fine fabrics.
Compared with the relatively warm southern city of Lausanne, Oxpin was cold and foggy. The air brushing her cheeks felt bitterly cold, as if winter were approaching, but the streets gave off an overall atmosphere of abundance and romance. There were bakeries that smelled of bread, street vendors selling baked potatoes, and coffeehouses and taverns on a scale incomparable to anything in the village where she had lived.
Simply wandering around and distractedly admiring the various vendors and shops lifted her spirits. After walking a little longer, she came upon a park, with a cathedral standing in front of it. She settled beneath its beautifully soaring tower and took out her ham sandwich.
She had never once been told that she couldn’t dance. It felt as if a handful of the confidence she had in her dancing had been scraped away. She had come to the big city after talking so big, but how was she supposed to make a living now? Should she learn a trade?
She left about one bite of the sandwich and sighed. Liz had said the address belonged to a friend she had met during her years of wandering. Gina knew they were close friends who exchanged telegrams all the time, but they had never met, so she had never even seen the woman’s face.
Following the address as best she could make it out, she came upon a modest brick house. When she lifted the knocker and rapped on the door, it opened, and a middle-aged woman greeted her with a bright smile.
“So you’re the one.”
“Do you know me?”
“Liz always talks about you. She worries so much about you.”
“Oh….”
“Come in. I’ve seen you so often in her letters that it feels like I’m meeting someone I already know. My name is Helen.”
“I’m Gina. Gina Grinnell.”
Helen had a kind, appealing face, and she kept up a stream of cheerful chatter, as though trying to put Gina at ease. The moment Gina carried her trunk inside, the smells of starched fabric and bread reached her, and she felt much more relaxed. Perhaps because it felt like peace after a storm, the house smelled exactly like home in Lausanne.
“Gina, have you had lunch?”
“I had a sandwich in the city.”
“You’re adapting quickly. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
“Your room is upstairs, the one on the left. I’ll have it ready by the time you’ve unpacked.”
“Thank you.”
She climbed the wooden stairs and opened the door on the left, as Helen had said. Inside was a cozy room of modest size and simple layout. Through the window, a residential neighborhood spread out before her. As she unpacked her trunk, she admired the furniture, which appeared to be made from twice as fine materials as the furnishings in the country house in Lausanne.
When she returned to the kitchen, Helen was setting biscuits and tea on the table. She pushed the tea toward Gina and smiled kindly.
“You have long arms and legs. You look very healthy.”
“Thank you.”
“You look so much like Liz.”
Helen must have known that Gina was a person of color and Liz’s adopted daughter, yet she said it anyway. Gina took a sip of the hot black tea in front of her.
“I heard you auditioned for the theater as soon as you arrived. How did it go?”
“I’m not sure….”
“Even if it doesn’t work out, don’t be too disappointed. Actually, when I heard about that foundation from Liz’s letters, I was worried. There were so many rumors about it.”
“Why?”
“The man who built that theater has a questionable background, so there are some ugly rumors about him.”
When Helen asked how the audition had gone, Gina evaded the question while sipping her hot tea. Seeing her puzzled expression when she said she had been worried, Helen clicked her tongue and continued.
The man Gina had seen was named Eugene Chase. After his father died, the name he now went by was Eugene Han.