The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock Read Free Book Online

cone-shaped sugar loaf wrapped in blue paper on a pewter plate, glass bottles of red and black ink, a sugar sifter, and a thick roll of wide blue ribbon uncoiling itself over the desk’s edge. Even in the gray light from the tall, many-paned window, Charles could see the cloud of dust rising from his efforts.
    â€œYes, yes, good morning to you, too,” the handsome little priest gabbled without looking up and before Charles had said anything. “I am sorry to trouble you with this nonsense, but I am sure that we are of one mind.”
    The sugar sifter slid off the desk and Charles caught it in midair, wondering what nonsense he was being troubled with.
    â€œHere it is. Sit, sit. You are a sensible young man, I could see that last night, look at what he wants—it is impossible, it is an offense, just look!”
    The rhetoric master thrust a sheaf of sketches at Charles and went back to his frenzied search. Charles put the sugar sifter back on the desk, removed a papier-mâché Roman soldier’s helmet from a straight-backed chair, and sat down.
    â€œAh, here it is!” Jouvancy disappeared below the desk and straightened, holding a blond wig. “Well?” He subsided into his chair, glaring at the sketches in Charles’s hand. “Well?”
    â€œThese are beautiful,” Charles said sincerely, riffling through the big, flopping pages filled with drawings of ballet characters.
    Jouvancy’s fine-boned face darkened ominously.
    â€œThough, of course . . .” Charles fanned the sketches like limp cards and frowned at them, praying that the tirade obviously about to burst forth would tell him what he was frowning at.
    â€œLook—there!” Jouvancy bounced up again and leaned across the desk, flattening the wigs as he stabbed a finger at the drawing of a dancer wearing a clock on his head. “A messenger delivered these sketches to me at dawn. Barely dawn, I wasn’t even dressed. A clock! I ask you, a monstrous black and gold clock! Are my boys tables? How is anyone to dance wearing that? And apparently it chimes—he expects poor Time to tilt his head as he dances and make the cursed thing chime!”
    The harried producer fell back into his chair, shoulders around his ears, hands flung up in a gesture of utter desperation.
    â€œUm—Monsieur Beauchamps sent these?” Charles hazarded.
    Jouvancy’s nostrils pinched. “Who else?”
    Every Jesuit college that staged ballets hired a layman as dancing master and the great Pierre Beauchamps was Louis le Grand’s. Beauchamps was to the world of dance what the pope was to Holy Church and Charles could hardly believe his luck in getting to work with him. The greatest dancing master in France, probably in all of Europe, Beauchamps had danced with the king in court ballets and had gone from strength to strength, first as Louis’s dancing master, then as director of the King’s Twenty-Four Violins, director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, and now dancing master for the Royal Academy of Opera. But Charles did see what the problem was. All dancers, amateur and professional, were used to unwieldy headdresses as part of their costumes. In his student days at Carpentras, Charles had danced the role of Spring with a small cage full of live birds on his head. That had been bad enough, but this clock was three feet tall. Though it would be anchored to a leather cap and tied on, it would be the rare student who could keep the thing from tipping over while making it chime in time to his steps and the music.
    Jouvancy shifted in his chair, tapping a finger on the desk and scowling as though Charles were a promising pupil failing to live up to his promise.
    â€œMon père,” Charles said quickly, “Maître Beauchamps sometimes brings his Opera professionals in to dance for you, does he not? Perhaps—one of them could wear the clock?”
    â€œI am sorry to see that you miss the