Silent Dancing

Everyone is watching everyone. That’s what she was taught. Her first cogniscent moment was the face of an elder, leaning into her face and whispering the words.

“Watch everyone. Trust no one.”

The first time, she was far too young to know what the words meant. But even her innocent, child eyes could see the menace and fear mingled in the elder’s face. She understood that she was being told about something that would flow through every element of her life.

The elder’s words were, she came to realise, a mantra for their times. Since the revolution, the calendars had been wound back to zero. Nothing was to exist before the day when the revolution conquered all, and ushered in a time of peace and joy for everyone. Peace and joy that was brutally reinforced by a police state. For Leoni, this was society, and the only one she’d ever known.

As she grew, she realised that her parents had been alive before the revolution. But she could not imagine what they would have done. Nothing, it seemed, had existed before the leader arrived, and without his beneficence, nothing would. They seemed to have had no life prior to this moment, and their eyes opened wide with horror when, as a small child, she’d asked what they did when they were young. She’d been ushered into a corner, away from any other eyes and ears, and told never to speak of that time. Not under any circumstances, in front of anyone, at any time. They looked her straight in the eye and told her that if she ever asked again, she would die.

Her parents both worked in the factory on the edge of the town. From a distance, they looked identical, in their plain brown smocks and moccasins. They had an identical walk, a subjugated, head-down pose of small steps, intended to leave as light an impression on the earth as possible. They did everything they could to remain meek, mild, and totally invisible. Their brown smocks depicted their station as level three, between the leather-skinned agricultural workers at level two, and the level four of the coal miners. Level five and above – teachers, doctors, leaders – got to wear grey. Those at level one wore black, and seldom lived past twenty five.

While they were at work, Leoni was schooled in the large hall in the centre of town. The siren heralded mass movement for all, a seething, pitching, wringing mass of people sliding and writhing across each other, like a pit of snakes, as they untangled themselves into a series of destinations – school, barracks, factory. None of them making a single sound, save the occasional retching cough from a miner.

Soldiers lined the route in studied indifference, staring vacantly at the middle distance, yet intimidating with their brutal coldness. No life or light danced within their eyes – it had been trained out long before they were allowed duty. If it could not be trained out, it was beaten out. If it could not be beaten out, they were thrown from the cliff on moonless nights. Occasionally Leoni would hear a scuttling and shuffling of feet outside the house, and she believed this was an untrainable soldier being taken to the cliff. But she never knew for sure. No-one ever talked about it.

School was a series of repetition drills, for nothing in this world was written down, save the leader’s name. They repeated these mantras for an hour every morning, even though they had long since learned them by heart. It seemed pointless to Leoni, and she worried about this, because it meant that she did not take the mantras to heart. She was such a long way from real enlightenment, she feared she would never get there. And one day, someone might find out, and she’d be taken to the cliff in a shuffle of darkened footsteps. She never told anyone of this fear. Not even her parents. Because she was sure they would turn her over to the soldiers, and turn their backs on her.

After repetition drills, an elder would come to the school and tell them of life before the revolution. Of the chaos, the disease, of burning birds falling onto cities, of screams and filth and hate. And of how the leaders fought a brilliant campaign to win, and how they should be thankful to live in such a peaceful and happy time. And after each elder had spoken, they would be made to stand, one by one in a vast hall of two thousand children, and say how happy and grateful they were.

Leoni could not understand why, if the elders could remember the horrors of the pre-revolution, her parents could not. But, one day, something happened to change Leoni’s world forever.

Leoni was fourteen, and approaching the age when she would be sent to the city to learn how to fight. Because although the revolution was successful, it seemed other nations wanted to take over their country, and it was necessary that everyone – men and women – knew how to fight. If the time came during war, they must be ready to help the brave soldiers who protected their land.

It was summer and the air, broiled in the soot and pollution from the factory that burned coal all day and night, simmered beneath a blanket of choking smoke. Water seemed to drip from every surface, and even the soldiers seemed to glisten slightly as they stood next to every doorway. Each house had a soldier, who would walk around the house, listening for sounds of…..of……what? Leoni didn’t know. And didn’t want to know.

She had noticed that every summer, around the same time, she seemed to have one night when it appeared that she slept forever. One day in ten was a day of rest from school and factory, although they were expected to gather in the square at midday to receive their revolutionary lesson. At sunset, she sat with her parents for food. On the wooden table were three bowls, three cups, and a jug. She shovelled the rice into her mouth, pushing the food in too quickly, until a sharp knock on the table from her father made her slow down.

He was a harsh man of few words. Just a look, and the occasional sound, were all it took to bring instant obeyal. She couldn’t conceive of not following his every command. His face and body seemed chiselled, and incapable of softening even for a second. Her mother was warmer, given even to the occasional encouraging smile, when she thought no-one could see. But, more often, she wore the haunted look of someone in fear of discovery. Leoni didn’t know why.

She was encouraged to drink up, as it was bedtime. She had noticed that they hadn’t drunk their water. Which was strange, given the heat and the humidity. For some reason, she didn’t want to drink. When her parents looked towards the hilltop as the siren sounded, she quickly dashed the water into a barrel to her left. She bowed her head as she left the table, and the three of them went to bed.

The darkness pressed against her face. She lay on her blanket, looking up to where she knew the ceiling to be. The only lights in the whole town were in the hands of the soldiers in the main barracks. Even the soldiers outside each house didn’t have one. With practice, you could persuade your mind to adjust to the light, and you could make out shapes and objects.

Occasionally she could hear the footsteps of the soldier as he walked around the house. She knew the drill. Everyone knew the drill. Stand by the front door, count to one thousand, walk around the house, count to one thousand, and so on. So that all night there was a reminder of the all-encompassing eyes of the leader.

Tonight she heard something else. A whispering. At first she thought it was outside the house, whose walls were thin and allowed every sound into the room where she lay. But then she realised that it was her parents. Her parents were talking, and moving. It was past the siren time, but they had not yet gone to sleep. She heard a slight creak, that she recognised as the opening of the door to her parents’ room. Very slowly, very carefully, she crept past the foot of her bed and opened the door an inch. The darkness in the main room seemed total, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see her parents, crouching in one corner. And what she saw astonished her.

Her father had carefully moved his chair from the corner of the room, and he was now lifting a floorboard. He handed it to her mother, who placed it noiselessly on the chair. Her father reached in to the hole beneath the floor and pulled out a package. As he handed it to her mother, Leoni could see the flash of his teeth in the tiny glimmer of light in the room. For the first time in her life, she saw her father smile.

They unravelled the package and, for a second, Leoni couldn’t make out what they were doing. Then she realised that they were dressing. The package contained clothing of some kind, though she had never seen it before, not even when the leader had visited the town and she’d seen the white and gold robe he wore. These clothes were strange, and seemed to serve no useful purpose. Her father was dressed mainly in black, but not the black of the wretched level ones. The lower half of the cloth seemed to form two pipes, one for each leg, with a shiny black stripe up each side. The upper half seemed to wrap around him, with a white undercloth, and a strange black thing shaped like a bat around his neck. The thought came unbidden to Leoni that her father was a handsome man.

Her mother’s cloth was stranger still. It was a wide piece of cloth that billowed around her legs and seemed to be wrapped inside itself somehow. It narrowed to her waist and then came out again. But there wasn’t enough of it and it left her shoulders bare. Leoni didn’t know what the colour was, except that she had seen something like it on a bird. She thought it was called red. But it was difficult to make out colour in the gloom.

She watched enraptured. Her parents were silent. They hadn’t made a single sound since they had left their room. She couldn’t imagine what was going on. But something about the way they moved, and the way they halted when the soldier passed, told her this was not allowed. When the soldier began to walk around the house, they froze. Literally, they didn’t move an inch. All three of them listened to the steady, measured march of the soldier, stepping slowly around the limits of their lives in even paces. When the strides stopped, her parents very slowly continued with their preparations.

At last, it seemed, they were ready. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and tiny slivers of silver-grey light pierced the reed shutters that covered the window. The shards of light seemed to explode into the room, and Leoni could see their faces much better now. She could barely control her breathing. Never in her life could she imagine anyone doing something as bold, as brave, as daring, as foolish.

They padded silently to the centre of the room, their bare feet protruding from beneath these strange new clothes. They stood facing each other, their eyes barely a foot apart. Just staring, until their faces seemed to crumple a little and, she realised, they were smiling at each other. Not a small, nervous, encouraging smile. She’d seen those occasionally from her mother, but this was different. This was a smile that swept across both their faces and seemed to light them from within. It seemed to flush through their skin. The silver light played around their eyes, and their faces seemed changed, possibly irrevocably. She realised she could never see her parents in the same way.

Her father’s hand reached around to her mother’s back, and alighted gently on her skin. Leoni could see that her mother’s breathing was soft but agitated, her back muscles flexing as she fought to gain oxygen without making a sound. Her mother’s arm swept up and lay almost absent-mindedly on the back of her father’s neck. Their other hands met in front of them. Palm to palm, barely touching. And then they began.

Leoni had never seen such movement, from anything. So achingly slow, so tantalisingly measured. A foot sliding across the dusty floorboard, a puff of dust whisping into the flashes of moonlight. Another foot tracing an arc to meet it. Then a slow, delicate move, up, across, around. And so silent. Their heads still, despite moving and swirling and dipping. Their bodies so close, but never touching. Always that inch apart, but longing, longing for each other. As if their desire could eat up that space and melt them into one, perfect whole.

As they twirled silently, Leoni could see flashes of their faces in the intermittent moonlight. On the face of her mother and her father, she could see tears. Without schooling, without being told or taught, just from an instinct in every nerve she had, she knew that this was her parents’ way of showing love.

Abruptly, they stopped, in mid-step. They held their position, wordlessly, as silent as the chairs and the table. The soldier had started again. With the moon out, Leoni could make out elements of his silhouette as he began the methodical, almost mechanical, steps. Leoni’s eyes followed the filigreed darkness of the soldier’s movements, wincing and shuddering if she felt they were slowing. She swivelled to follow the soldier’s moves, but her parents did not. They remained frozen, their eyes locked onto each other. Gazing into each other’s souls for the strength they needed to hold out. At the window, the steps stopped.

The steps never stopped.

Ever.

Leoni felt a rush of confusion. The soldier wasn’t back in position, she was sure of that, yet he had stopped. Still her parents held that high, sweeping position, her mother’s head tilted back, but her eyes on her husband. He held her, his tiring muscles beginning to shake, his eyes on his wife. Silence roared around the house, filling it, squeezing it. The soldier was silent.

Then, a shuffle, and the walk resumed. Step, step, step, step, halt. The soldier was back in position, and her parents could move. The strange shuffling began again, and they twirled silently once more around the grey light of the house. At last, they came to a halt. They stood, again facing each other from inches away, smiling into each others’ faces. The tears had stopped now. Leoni’s father moved closer in, and his lips brushed against her mother’s. It was clear this held some meaning for them both, because when they parted, their smiles were bigger even than before. Leoni heard their whispered words, said in unison, but didn’t understand them.

“Happy anniversary”.

***********************************

The next day, her parents behaved as if nothing had happened. But Leoni could not. She kept her head bowed more than usual, for she feared that if she looked into their faces, she would explode with questions. Questions she knew they could never answer. And questions, she was sure, that would make them send her to the cliff. Or, she thought, if I look at them they will see inside me, and know that I watched them. And then I will be sent to the cliff.

Before the siren went, the three of them were having breakfast, when a soldier suddenly stood in the open doorway. He said nothing, but his imposing uniform and his gun dominated the entrance to the house. She would not learn about which soldier was which, until she went to learn to fight. But she could tell this soldier was more important than the soldier outside their house last night. He looked slowly around the room. A place for a fire, a table and chairs, and bare floorboards. He looked at Leoni’s father.

“You. Here.”

The words were spat. Her father rose from the table and, as he began to move towards the soldier, one hand quickly brushed across his wife’s. Something unspoken, and very deep, and very final, seemed to pass between them.

The soldier was the same height as her father, but he seemed to dominate him through the power of the uniform. Her father stood rigid as the soldier slowly walked around him, using the same, even paces as the soldier the night before. Leoni and her mother looked down, and the world ceased to be more than three feet high. There was a sharp crack, and her father’s legs flinched slightly. Another crack, but no flinch this time. Then, suddenly, her father’s legs lurched outside and into the grim daylight. Leoni risked a glance upwards, and saw that several soldiers were taking her father away.

Panic seized her. The cliff. It must be the cliff. She started to rise from the chair, but her mother grabbed her arm with a steely grip. She looked at her mother, and saw everything in the world within her eyes. Fear, resignation, a deep and fiercely burning love that could never be extinguished. But not hope. No more hope. Leoni’s eyes flooded with tears, and she collapsed into her mother’s chest, sobbing like a baby. The thought ripped through her that she would never see her father again. Ever.

Her mother held her tight, almost brutally tight. As if her grip could keep anything she loved close to her. Her mother’s gaze fell to her neighbours, who scuttled and fled back to their houses like startled birds in the face of her cool, clear look. One of you. One of you did this. One of you who shares the same fears, the same dreams.

Leoni was still expected to go to school. If she didn’t, the soldiers would return, and she couldn’t bear to think what they might do this time. She fought her way through the mass of people after the siren. Tears made her eyes shiny, and she kept wiping them with the sleeve of her smock. At school, she would feel fear, panic and sorrow rise from within her chest and try to punch its’ way out of her. She pummelled it down, her breath rising and falling as she fought to keep everything within. No-one asked her what was wrong. No comfort was offered. She wondered if she’d known anyone who had lost someone this way. She decided that she hadn’t.

After school, she went as fast as she could to get home, without arousing the attention of the soldiers. Hustling, scampering steps that were just short of running. Her face smeared with drying tears, her mouth thin with the strain. She got home before her mother arrived from the factory.

Leoni moved quickly to prepare food. It was on the table when her mother arrived. She had never looked this way before. She looked very pale, and seemed so much smaller than she had yesterday. She was more hunched, more cowered, more beaten. As soon as she looked at Leoni they collapsed into each others’ arms. They staggered into Leoni’s room and fell onto the bed, out of sight of the neighbours, and the soldier. Holding each other seemed the only thing they could do.

“Mother.”

Leoni’s words were choked and wrenched by her own sobbing.

“I saw you and father last night. I didn’t mean to, I just did. Is that why they took father away?”

Her mother stared into her eyes for a moment, and a shudder went through Leoni as she realised she could no longer predict her mother’s reactions. Her mother was so overcome with grief, almost any reaction was possible.

“No, Leoni. That wasn’t the reason. Your father stole some water from the factory. Just a small bottle. To give to his brother, who is sick. Someone told the soldiers about it this morning, so they took him away to the….cliff.”

She’d struggled through the whole explanation, tears falling from her eyes and her struggles for breath punctuating every line. They touched foreheads and cried some more. Eventually, her mother looked back up at Leoni.

“You must never speak of what you saw. Ever. It is forbidden. You and I would both go to the cliff if the soldiers ever found out.”

“But what is it, mother? What were you doing? I could see that it is forbidden. I saw you stop when the soldier walked past. But why?”

“It is an ancient form called dance. Your father and I used to dance all the time. We would dress up in costumes and dance and dance. But the leader has banned dance, because it is a form of expression that is outside the code. It is not mantra, and it is not a revolutionary song of courage. So it is forbidden. But we hid two costumes. Each year we celebrate the time of our wedding, by having one, silent dance.”