The Dance Master
Published in Issue #30 Translated from Yiddish by Sonia Gollance subscribe to unlock the full storyWhen I was a young girl, my brother came home one day with the news that he was going to study dance with a Romanian dance master – a deserter from the Romanian army. He suggested that I also go to the dance master to learn how to dance.
I declined this pleasure, telling my brother that dancing didn’t interest me.
A few weeks later my brother came in with a tall, broad-shouldered young man, whom he introduced as the Romanian dance master. The stranger pressed my hand so firmly that I scarcely restrained myself from crying out in pain.
“Come to my class, I’ll teach you to dance!” The guest addressed me without ceremony.
“I’m not interested in dancing,” I answered him, but he began trying to persuade me that dancing was a very important art, that a girl must know how to dance, that a person who can’t dance was in his opinion hardly a person at all! And at that moment he took hold of my brother, and they set off in a wengerka.
Truth be told, I had never seen such dancing! Even in the movies I hadn’t seen anyone dance as nicely as the Romanian dance master. I was captivated by what I’d seen. My mother also stood and stared as if she were spellbound.
When he finished dancing, this fellow began to tell stories that even a child could tell were preposterous, completely made up, and with more holes than a sieve. What’s more, it was obvious that he knew it too, since no one believed him in...
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.