Free The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton Page A

is only half-listening, looking out over the rooftops and the chimneys and the wires.
    “We don’t really learn much about girls,” she says. “Everything we learn about boys is all hands-on 3-D models and cartoons.
     When we learn about girls it’s always in cross-section, and they use diagrams rather than pictures. The stuff about boys is
     all ejaculations, mostly. The stuff about girls is just reproduction. Just eggs.”
    In truth the classes are patched and holey, hours of vague unhelpful glosses and line drawings and careful omissionswhich
     serve to cripple rather than assist. Most of the girls now lack a key definition in this new and halting lexicon of forbidden
     words, some slender dearth of understanding that will later humiliate them, confound them, expose them, because it is expected
     now that their knowledge is complete. They envisage rigid perpendicular erections and a perfect hairless trinity for the male
     genitals, groomed and gathered in a careful bouquet. They have not heard of the glossy sap that portends the rush of female
     drive. They know
ovulate
but not
orgasm
. They know
bisexual
but not
blow
. Their knowledge is like a newspaper article ripped down the middle so only half of it remains.
    “Is it useful?” asks the saxophone teacher. “Do you learn things you didn’t know before?”
    “We learned that you can only feel one thing at one time,” says Isolde. “You can feel excitement or you can feel fear but
     you can never feel both. We learned why beauty is so important: beauty is important because you can’t really defile something
     that is already ugly, and to defile is the ultimate goal of the sexual impulse. We learned that you can always say no.”
    The two of them sit in that self-conscious half-profile demanded by music-lesson etiquette. Facing each other squarely feels
     too familiar and standing side by side feels too formal, as if they are amateur actors onstage for the first time, fearful
     of turning their faces away from the auditorium lest their performance be lost. So they position themselves always at forty-five
     degrees, the angle of the professional actor who includes both the stage and the audience and holds in delicate balance that
     which is expressed and that which is concealed.
    The Sonny Rollins track has the thin gritty sound of an old recording.
    “You can take the record home if you think you’d find it inspiring,” the saxophone teacher says kindly. “I really think you’d
     suit playing tenor.”
    “We don’t have a record player,” Isolde says.

FOUR
October
    The gymnasium was not a gymnasium but a fluid space, a space that seemed to inhale and exhale and settle around the shapes
     and figures on the floor. There was a giant accordion made of steel that compressed the plastic bleachers against the wall,
     and dusty heavy drapes that could divide the space into thirds and quarters and fifths. The stage was formed of many chalky
     footprinted podiums that could be rearranged or stacked or upended or tiered, depending. Today the drapes were all pushed
     to the sides and the podiums stacked against the wall in a hasty barricade. The space was clean and full of light.
    “Mime is literal embodiment,” said the Head of Movement once the doors had closed. “To mime an object is to discover its weight
     and volume and thus its meaning.” He was weighing something in his hand as he spoke, something invisible and heavy. “If we
     occupy each other, we begin to truly understandeach other,” he said. “The same is true for all things. Mime is a path to
     understanding.”
    He turned over whatever he was holding in his hand.
    Everyone was taut and straining and watchful, waiting for an opportunity to say something clever or profound or interesting
     that would set them apart from the other hopefuls and secure the approval of the tutor. Some of them were nodding slowly with
     their eyes narrowed to communicate insight and deep reflection. Some were