The Apple and the Pearl, by Rym Kechacha

Reviewed by Helen Parry

Of all the arts, ballet casts perhaps the most magical spell. The classics of the repertoire are set in otherworldly realms, with entrancing music and fabulous costumes; the dancers move with apparently effortless grace and fragility to spin stories of romance and tragedy. Nothing about ballet is ‘realistic’ but still we gladly enter its enchantment and find our emotions stirred not by fine words but by those moments when gesture and music perfectly entwine.

And yet, behind these ethereal performances lie hours and hours of hard labour and even suffering: the dancers’ brutal physical regime, the rehearsals that can tip into bullying, the setting up and testing and dismantling of the sets and lighting. Perfection is demanded but can never be achieved. Those companies which tour require further sacrifices from everyone involved as they will have to leave their family and friends for extended periods of time. But just as the audience gladly succumbs to ballet’s magic, so too the performers and crew consider the sacrifices they make to be worth it.

This combination of glamour and darkness lends itself perfectly to the world of fairies or the Fae, as Rym Kechacha has realised in this clever fantasy which meditates on the wonders and the costs of ballet to those involved in its production. During the space of a single day, and from multiple viewpoints, we watch the preparation, performance and dismantling of a ballet, all carried out under the threat of abduction by the Fae.

The novel opens on the morning of All Soul’s. A train, the Grub – today, a forest-green steam train – has pulled up in a graveyard. Among the gravestones stands the Grit, a theatre – today, in the form of a haunted house. Over the day, the passengers on the Grub, a travelling ballet company, will warm-up, rehearse and build the set for the evening’s performance of their only ballet, The Apple and the Pearl.

The permanence of the choice of ballet is the only certainty in the company’s lives: the train and the theatre change their appearances every day, as do the mysterious places in the Otherworld where they stop to perform. However, the Grit and the Grub are the only places where they are safe from the Fae. The company know never to wander alone, and the Grub and the Grit are protected with salt and iron. Watching over them is the capricious Crow. But as the day draws to evening and the performance, will everyone stay safe?

Despite the ever-present threat of the Fae, and the strangeness of the Grub, the Grit and the Crow, this is a novel that is firmly rooted in the quotidian. We follow the dancers in their exercise class, the musicians rehearsing, the wardrobe assistant working at her sewing machine. Kechacha herself is a trained ballet dancer and excels at the sensual details that bring the backstage world to life. We experience the rub of a pointe shoe on already blistered toes, see the pile of dirt that accumulates on the stage and must be swept away, hear the particular sound the curtain makes when it drops at the end of a performance. The Fae themselves remain insubstantial; perhaps just a little too much so. The changeling violinist who longs to return to them, and the rape survivor who copes stoically, soften the sense of danger; it can’t be that bad, right? And all these people, suspended between the worlds, isolated from their own kind, are halfway there already.

While the action of the novel is constrained to a single place and a single day, Kechacha’s use of multiple viewpoints allows it to move constantly back and forth in time and place. This is difficult to do well, but Kechacha succeeds in making each character entirely distinct and themselves, and captures the uneasy camaraderie, the jealousies and desires that flare between them. The cast of narrators starts with Zach, the lighting director, showing his new assistant the ropes, and encompasses dancers, Cecile the ballet mistress, the company manager, the wardrobe assistant Milly, and Kavi, the fly operator. As they work, their thoughts slip backwards into the past, forwards into an uncertain future. Each of them has lost something in signing up to the company: comfort, love, a family, financial security; yet although they may resent it, they cannot bring themselves to choose otherwise. The enchantment of ballet, despite the risk of losing yourself to the Fae, is just too powerful. It is what Kechacha brilliantly conveys in this absorbing and unusual novel.