That was the most uncertain period of my life. I was nothing. Day after day, it felt like I was drifting in the streets and that there was no difference between me and those sidewalks, those lights, to the point of becoming invisible. And yet I had the example of someone who practiced a difficult art—“very, very difficult,” as Kniaseff repeated in his Russian accent, an accent so light that it sounded British or Viennese. And I do believe that the example the ballerina set, without my fully realizing it, incited me to gradually change my behavior and shed the uncertainty and nothingness that filled me.