Word: lene
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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While ballerinas floated through the intricacies of Black and White, the ballet's choreographer. Russian-born Serge Lifar, 53, sat shaking with rage in a box beside France's No. 1 model. Marie-Hélene Arnaud. Lifar angrily told his friends he had forbidden his ballet to the marquis because it was the exclusive property of the Paris Opéra, where Lifar is the top choreographer and dancing master...
...lene's miracle takes the form of a chance meeting with her father's Russian mistress, Tamara. To Tamara, who has lived precariously for most of her 35 years, Papa Noris is an anchor of security, though he never guesses how often and strangely she drags anchor. For Tamara is a Lesbian, too neurotically selfish for anything but a perverted counterfeit of love. But to the innocent eyes of Hélene, Tamara's brusque, boyish charm, her low voice "rough as a cat's tongue," her disordered flat, a jungle den of cigarette smoke...
...into which Tamara gradually draws Helene turns out blacker than any jungle; it is a total eclipse of the soul. As their strange relationship progresses, both shame and secret jealousy prevents Hélene from telling her father that she even sees Tamara. One day Tamara demands that she tell him, and slaps her viciously when she fails to do so. In a sobbing flare-up of independence, Hélene cries, "You'll never see me again!" and leaves...
...revolt is short and bitter. Humbly and penitently, she returns. From then on, Hélene is made to suffer for every moment of pleasure. Tamara finally takes her to a Lesbian nightclub and abandons her to the pawings of a frumpy rival...
Papa Noris, anxious to still village gossip about both him and his daughter in order to clinch a pending election, offers to marry Tamara. In the glib space of a few pages, Tamara blossoms into a dutiful bride and Hélene into a mature young woman who sees through the illusion by which she has been enslaved...