A clang for the King,
clang for the Queen,
three clangs for the
sisters never to be seen.
A clang for the orchard,
a clang for the sea,
three clangs for the
suitors who lie in a dream.
A clang for the curse,
clang for the quest,
And one last for the crow
who sings in its nest.
A bell tolls thirteen times at midnight aboard a train that changes its appearance at will. It bears a travelling ballet troupe (and the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-controlling Crow); each morning, the train brings them to a new location somewhere in Britain, where their different-but-same theatre (a character likens it to the ship of Theseus) has turned up dutifully and on time. The troupe only ever present one ballet: “The Apple and the Pearl.” Their audience? The fae.
It is thought that the enigmatic Crow’s singing is what lures performers and support crew alike “out” of the world to take part in this particular production. Yet it somehow—rather sensibly—attracts only those who are already acquainted with the workings of other worlds (or, as with a few of the crew, people with much stronger, closer ties). Even then, it is only the cast and crew’s pledge to the Crow (each one for a year and a day), and their adhering to the rules of curfew, that protects them from being snatched.
On the chilly, foggy morning of All Souls’ Day, the Grub (which is what they call their train, the “maggot in the fruit”) has brought them just outside of a graveyard—beyond which, at the end of a cobbled avenue in between the graves, is the Grit (that is, the theatre, “the speck of dirt that gets trapped in the oyster shell”). Today, it is a looming shadow, “spiky and threatening like a haunted house from a horror film.”
Rym Kechacha’s ambitious new novel is far from spiky and threatening, but it is darkly haunting, both in the atmosphere that envelops the reader from its opening line and in the themes its character-centric ensemble story tackles. Over the course of twenty-four hours narrated in fluid and vivid present-tense prose, we follow different characters among the performers and support crew as they prepare for that night’s show. The third-person point of view glides between each chosen member, guided sometimes by an omniscient narration, returning once or twice to the same characters later in the day. In this way we’re privy to different perspectives of the same person, creating links between these intimate, rich, but all-too-brief portraits.
This is a troupe of “misfits and mavericks,” of “vagabonds and wanderers,” of the ones with something missing. From the tour manager to the cook to the wardrobe mistress to the ballet director; to the set manager to the musicians in the orchestra and the dancers; newbies and old-timers alike yearn for one thing or another while loss, regrets, and ghosts trail them just as much as love, passion, and creation.
Some among them love the solace of a well-creased routine (“there is a comfort in life here, a certainty to the flow of each day”); for others, it is their only chance to perform at the top edge of their talents and to a captivated audience, never mind the risks involved; for many, it’s the sense of community—“if he is mad then here, at last, are people as mad as him.” But there are also those who question their purpose, who wonder, “What do we make here; what do we create, what do we leave behind us?” Upon either not finding any answer or only unsatisfactory ones, these latter kind return to the real world at the end of their pledge.
One of the most compelling perspectives is that of Mara, one of the senior dancers performing the Queen’s role on the night of the novel, who, as we follow her through rehearsal, wonders what she’ll do with the rest of her life if she decides not to renew her pledge. She already misses the “life-raft” ritual of daily ballet class even as she’s being led through the motions by their director, and contemplates her identity as a ballet dancer—and the glittering, toxic nature of the industry (Kechacha herself is a classically trained dancer, so the perspective and the critiques ring true).
Why would anyone pour blood, sweat, tears, even their selfhood, into something that is over in the blink of an eye—“A daylily blooming for just one day before withering [...] that’s all of them. That’s ballet”—just as they’ve become the best they’ve ever been?
Mara navigates her thoughts about the push-pull of this “strange, diamantine thing made of equal parts cruelty and beauty,” at whose altar they all have to sacrifice and kneel, punish themselves, and grovel. All this is of course in pursuit of an unattainable ideal that “doesn’t live in this realm.” Indeed, this is why, another character explains, the fae are called to the ballet like dangerous moths to an intoxicating flame. They are drawn to “the beauty of human bodies striving and yearning for that ideal” and want to, according to Mara, “sip at the space between pain and beauty.”
There are many such gaps throughout the narrative: the space between the dancer and the dance, between who you want to be and are, the perfection you wish to attain and the unforgivably imperfect nature of being human; the “border space” between being hidden in the blackness and being bared, exposed for all the audience to see; the veil between the human and fae worlds, and the one that’s almost always there—and not to its detriment, as it really works for the novel—between the reader and the narrative.
There are those among the troupe who understand, even embrace, that some things are not for us to know. As the lighting director, shadowed by a potential new lighting assistant on her first day, at the end of which she’ll decide whether to make her first pledge, tells her very early on in the story: If she thinks too hard about it, it’ll “trip” her over. “There’s a point where you have to accept it or go home,” he says. “All shows have quirks, this one just has a few more than most.” The advice also feels applicable to a reader on this journey with them, even as another character ponders how on earth to describe the reality—the unreality—of “The Apple and the Pearl” to anyone.
Mara’s section continues throughout to feel the closest to a fully drawn portrait while also binding together larger narrative concerns about the cost and the reward of art, its beauty and brutality—and its many different whys, especially in the context of this ballet, for not just those on stage, but also the ones behind the scenes making it all possible. In particular, we search for reasons why they all choose to stay in this liminal but communal existence, pledge after pledge, despite the otherworldly danger.
Speaking of danger: Don’t go into this novel expecting it to feature the fae as prominent characters, because they’re more mentioned and alluded to than seen. They are an invisible but constantly lurking presence which manifests in the form of an all-suffusing unease, far more potent perhaps because we read through so much of the rather mundane, terribly human problems and thoughts occupying those on board the Grub. This serves as a reminder of the sharp, serrated lines of the bubble within which the troupe have cocooned themselves, and mingles with the heightened sense of anticipation that is impossible to ignore as showtime nears.
Where is this all headed, you wonder. What’s the game here, the intention behind the telling. After all, even a story as thin on plot as this one needs some form of culmination. And in this endeavour, the climax of the ballet combines with what I’d argue is the climax of the entire narrative. It is probably the story’s most mystical and magical scene, and possibly its most overtly macabre, a spectacle that makes all eerily clear: the purpose of the ballet, why only that particular ballet and never another, just how much the Crow is not only the conduit between realms but also the one holding the troupe and the different threads of this story together.
When it is all over and there remains nothing and nobody in that space where there’s only illusion, we return with the characters to their routines, the many steps that follow the end of show, the curfew before the warning tolls. Because tomorrow arrives as tomorrow always does, heralded by thirteen bells starting at the stroke of midnight in a fast-moving train bearing you to your next destination.