This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Nicole Krause read her story,

Seeing Irshadie from the March 5th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Krause is the author of four novels, including the History of Love and Forest Dark, which was

published last year. Her story The Young Painters was included in the New Yorker's 20-under-40

fiction issue in 2010. Now here's Nicole Krause. Seeing Ershadi. I'd been in the company for more

than a year by then. It had been my dream to dance for the choreographer since I first saw his work,

and for a decade all my desire had been focused on getting there.

I'd sacrificed whatever was necessary during the years of rigorous training.

When at last I auditioned and he invited me to join his company,

I dropped everything and flew to Tel Aviv.

We rehearsed from noon to five,

and I devoted myself to the choreographer's process and vision without reserve, applied myself without reserve. Sometimes tears came spontaneously from something that had

rushed upward and burst. When I met people in bars and cafes, I spoke excitedly about the

experience of working with the choreographer

and told them that I felt that I was constantly on the verge of discovery.

Until one day I realized that I had become fanatical, that what I had taken for devotion had crossed the line into something else.

And though my awareness of this was a dark blot on what had been up to then,

a pure joy, I didn't know what to do with it. Exhausted after rehearsal, I'd either walk to the

sea or go home to watch a film until it got late enough to go out and meet people. I couldn't go to the beach as often as I'd have

liked, because the choreographer said he wanted the skin all over our bodies to be as white as the

...