Free The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton Page B

waiting for the tutor to reference something they
     had a particular knowledge of, so they could snare him afterward and force a conversation. Stanley was sitting on the outer
     rim, alert and upright but sneaking careful sideways glances at the other hopefuls whenever he could.
    “The first and most important point,” the Head of Movement said, “is that you must start with a thing itself, not with an
     idea of a thing. I can
see
what I am holding in my hand. I can see its weight, its shape and its texture. It doesn’t matter if you can see it yet or
     not: the important thing is that I can.”
    They all strained to see the invisible thing he was holding in his hand. Every pair of eyes followed the Head of Movement
     as he moved slowly back and forth. He was barefoot, like all the tutors at the Institute, and when he took a step his foot
     rolled from the heel to the ball in a slow feline movement, lazy and deliberate at once. His feet were milky and lean.
    The Head of Movement said, “Many of us fear women. We are afraid of woman as woman, longing for her as virgin or as madonna
     or as whore. It is not by becoming a woman that we will address this fear. It is by becoming the things she touches, the spaces
     she moves through, the fractured gestures that are not signs in themselves but are nonetheless hers and thus a part of her.
     If we discover the weight of these small things, then she will appear not as an idea but as a life and a totality.”
    He paused at this, and ran his tongue over his bottom lip.The hopefuls shifted uncertainly, wondering whether they were supposed
     to argue, and for a moment nobody spoke.
    Stanley had gone to an all-boys high school and he felt the presence of the girls in the group acutely. They studded his peripheral
     vision like scattered diamonds, but when he looked around the room his gaze passed casually over them, in the same way that
     he might self-consciously pass over a cripple or a drunk and pretend not to notice, pretend not to flinch. He waited uncomfortably
     for one of the girls to say something, maybe even to object. He looked at the floor.
    “
I
don’t fear women,” one of the boys called out at last, and there was a ripple of relieved laughter.
    The Head of Movement nodded. “Stand up,” he said. “I am going to tell you a little about yourself.” He folded his arms across
     his chest suddenly, forgetting about the invisible thing that he had been holding in his hand, and the invisible thing disappeared.
    The boy got to his feet. He was thin and freckled, his rib cage peaking a little at his sternum and his hip bones thrusting
     out above the tight gathered waistband of his tracksuit pants. His shoulders and ankles and knees all looked a little too
     large, like he was a paper figure held together at the joints with brass pivot pins.
    “Go for a walk,” the Head of Movement said. “Go on. Walk around for a while.”
    The boy started walking. The Head of Movement watched him in silence for an entire circuit of the gymnasium, following him
     with his eyes, his arms folded and his face still. When the boy had lapped the gymnasium completely, the Head of Movement
     fell into step behind him and began to imitate him. He withdrew like a tortoise into himself, shoving his chest out and his
     shoulder blades together, keeping his upper body rigid while he walked so his arms fell awkwardly from his shoulders, and
     paddling with each step as if he were walking underwater.They walked in tandem in this way for a while, the boy looking unhappily
     over his shoulder and unhappily sideways at the other hopefuls watching from the floor, newly conscious of his big feet and
     his peaked chest and his stiff paddling arms.
    “You may stop now,” the Head of Movement said finally. “Thank you.” He turned to the group. “Can someone please tell me something
     about my performance of this young man’s walk,” he said.
    The hopefuls shifted awkwardly but nobody spoke.
    “My