Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘A couple of Sunday afternoons till he works out the choreography. Mom, he’s good. You wanted me to make contacts in the company. Danny’s a contact.’

  For some time Anna had been aware of a certain loneliness in her daughter. ‘He could be—someday. Where does he want you to rehearse?’

  ‘He’s borrowed a loft down in SoHo.’

  ‘Where they have all the muggings?’

  ‘I’ll share a taxi with Linda.’

  ‘Linda’s in on this too? Your Danny sure gets around.’ Anna spread corn-oil margarine on a muffin, thinking. Danny Gillette was a good-looking boy. It was no secret he had caught Lester Croyden’s eye. He was bound to climb in the company, and if he wanted to take Steph along for the climb, why not? Anna saw only one objection.

  ‘I’ve heard rumours about that Danny.’

  Steph’s glance tipped up at her, green and fragile. The girl was braced as though Anna might purposely say something to wound her.

  ‘He’s not gay,’ Anna said.

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘What does that matter!’ Anna could not help feeling shock. What surprised her was not the girl’s innocence but her own lack of a ready answer. She realized that her daughter did not think the way she did. There were assumptions they did not share. A terrible sadness hovered near. She raised her voice, as though a shout could bat it away.

  ‘I can’t run your life for you. Go. Work.’ She was talking through a mouthful of muffin. ‘I’ll find something else to do Sundays.’

  Steph didn’t share a taxi, and she arrived early for rehearsal, and there was no one in the loft but Danny. He was sitting crosslegged on the floor, turning through the pages of an orchestra score.

  ‘Do you read music?’ Steph asked, surprised. Most dancers that she knew couldn’t manage anything more than a one-finger lead sheet.

  ‘A little.’ He showed her the cover. ‘Benjamin Britten—Sinfonia da Requiem. Do you know it?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, wishing she did, wishing she could say something to impress him.

  ‘I first heard it when I was a child. And I knew one day I’d choreograph it. Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘Very much,’ she said. She felt the music would tell her something about him. She wanted to know about Danny Gillette aka Goldberg.

  He went to the tape recorder that had been rigged to the stereo. At the touch of a button, music—wrenching, lamenting—leapt out of the speakers. The loft was an artist’s floor-through on Grand Street. The windows had been flung open and sounds and fumes of traffic drifted up from the street, mixing strangely with the orchestra.

  Steph watched Danny, absorbed in his score. She wished she could read music, wished she had an excuse to sit near him and lean close. She tried to fathom what this tragic outpouring of notes meant to him.

  She had never seen a monk at prayer, but she had an idea he would have Danny’s face, all life and movement concentrated in the eyes. He was ignoring her and yet she felt comfortable, like a cat in front of a warm stove.

  It was almost an annoyance when Linda and Al came thumping in with their tote bags and wisecracks. Danny switched off the tape recorder, went to the stove, and poured coffee for everyone. There was three minutes’ small talk and then he explained the ballet.

  ‘We’re dealing with two Greek myths. Cupid and Psyche; Diana and Endymion. Does everyone know the stories?’

  Silence.

  ‘Does anyone know them?’

  Silence. Al lit a cigarette.

  ‘All right. All you need are the basics. Cupid was a god; Psyche was a mortal. He made love to her while she was asleep.’

  ‘Mixed marriage.’ Al draw a long puff and exhaled.

  Danny gave him a glance and went on. ‘Diana was a goddess; Endymion was a mortal. She made love to him while he was asleep.’

  ‘Who plays who?’ Linda asked.

  ‘You and Al are Diana and Endymion. Steph and I are Psyche and Cupid.’

  He’s made us partners, Steph thought. He’s made us lovers.

  sixteen

  Sundays were full of Danny’s ballet; and sweat. He laid the broad frame, then added the small strokes. He showed how Endymion turned in his sleep, how Psyche awoke, he even demonstrated the look he wanted in Diana’s face when she discovered her shepherd love.

  The dancers made mistakes. Sometimes Danny would stop the tape recorder and cry, ‘No! No!’ Other times he would take his notebook and write in it. ‘I like that—it’s better your way—let’s keep it.’

  Steph listened and observed and tried to bend her body to Danny’s choreography. Her nerves and muscles protested some of the movements, sending out waves of discomfort that she had to fight back. I will do it, she told herself, and I won’t let him see it’s hard for me!

  The dancers grew tired quickly and every half hour or so Linda and Al would have to sit down. But Steph never sat. She was afraid that if she once relaxed her determination she might lose it.

  Danny watched her during breaks. She wasn’t certain whether he was scowling or just appraising, but she sensed he wasn’t pleased.

  "Can you stay a minute afterward?’ he asked. ‘There’s something I’d like to work out with you. Alone.’

  She stayed, heart pounding. Linda and Al showered and left with a pointed-sounding ‘Good night, you two—see you in class tomorrow.’

  The loft was hot. The street suddenly was quiet. Danny’s hair lay flattened to his head like a skullcap. His face glistened with sweat. Silence widened in ripples around them.

  He stared at her, not talking, eyes calculating, and he reminded her of an animal trainer.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to do something very funny,’ he said softly.

  ‘I promise not to laugh.’

  ‘You don’t have to dance. Mark the part, walk through it, whatever you feel comfortable doing. But sing the music.’

  ‘Sing—I can’t sing!’

  ‘Then hum. Or growl. Just mark the music while you mark the movements.’

  ‘I’m not a musician.’

  ‘Every dancer’s a musician.’

  ‘Danny, I don’t know the music. I have to hear it. It’s not in me.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But you’re not letting it out. And that’s the trouble.’ He waited. ‘Any time you’re ready. Your own tempo. Take as long as you need. We have all the time in the world.’

  He didn’t move. Only his eyes touched her. She got down onto the floor, into the sleeping position that opened the ballet. She waited, Obedient and stupid and six years old.

  ‘I’m not cuing you, Steph.’

  ‘But I need the cue—I don’t even know how many counts I have.’

  ‘Yes, you do. The music will tell you. Just sing it.’

  She felt foolish but she swallowed back her humiliation and did what he wanted. She thumped her fist on the floor, marking the two deep chords that opened the score. She began humming, sketching what she could remember of the music’s highs and lows, the louds and softs, the swifts and slows.

  And something amazing began to happen.

  The music spun itself out of her, like a strand of web, and gradually the web lifted her and she was standing, letting it guide her through her embarrassment and fear, beyond them, out into open space.

  ‘That’s it, Steph. You’re getting it. Hold on to it—hold on—’

  Now his voice was humming alongside hers. He guided her, twisting her leg in, her arm out. He smelled of the day’s work. His hands coaxed her body into a dream. She began dancing full out again. She had no breath to hum: the music was inside her head, silent and all the more audible for its silence.

  Her body felt different. It did not complain. There was no pain, no fatigue, no uncertainty. It dawned on her what was happening: her body was beginning to understand.

  To sing.

  She felt her bones shifting like the changing shapes of a melody.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘It was in you all the time.�
��

  Steph smiled. They were standing alone, not touching. She knew he was going to kiss her.

  But he didn’t. ‘Why don’t you shower and change?’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you to the subway.’

  They walked to the subway, not talking. Her pulse raced.

  ‘Which train do you take?’ he asked.

  ‘The A.’

  ‘Here we are then.’

  He left her at the token booth: not a kiss, not a touch. Disappointment turned over inside her.

  The night of Danny’s premiere they warmed up at the theatre. They were all jittery.

  Steph managed to pull a blanket of willed calm over herself. Linda and Al cracked jokes. Danny chain-smoked. Steph tried to catch his eye to reassure him. He flashed a ragged smile, but she could see he preferred to stay locked up within himself.

  They left the theatre a little before eight. Steph missed her mother: not so much the nagging as the comfort of the familiar. Anna had begged and threatened, but it was her late night at work, and Arden’s had refused to let her off.

  They crossed Damrosch Park with jackets and jeans over their leotards, hurrying before the summer air could chill the muscles they had so carefully readied.

  The evening light caught the rows of wooden seats, thickened the boxed trees and bushes with broad strokes of shadow. An early sprinkling of spectators had staked out positions among the free seats. There was something amiable and makeshift about tonight—dancers about to dance their own dances, dance lovers waiting to watch, a hovering awareness that legends were born on nights like this.

  Other dancers taking part in the programme stood in the band shell doorway, talking and joking. Several were helping with sound equipment and props. The musicians’ and stagehands’ unions, who had strangle holds on New York’s performing arts, had consented to the dancers’ using taped music and non-shop props. As Al had remarked, ‘Fucking gracious of them.’

  Steph lingered at the band shell door, watching the daylight dim down from amber to blue. For one dying moment, as audiences, poured into the Met and the State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall, a wind of human voices blew over from the plaza.

  An instant later an eerie silence fell, as though an iron door had shut out most of humanity. All that were left were a few dancers, a few spectators, and Danny at Steph’s shoulder, looking out into the park, brow furrowed.

  They went downstairs to wait.

  The dressing rooms—if you could call them that—were a string of open-ended cubicles crowded beneath the band shell, like toilet stalls without doors. Cleaner, but no more private. Two dozen dancers paced, smoked, whispered; executed nervous little bends and penchés, holding onto chairs, tables edges, each other—anything to keep from tightening up.

  The programme began at eight-thirty.

  Applause and taped music filtered down. Danny’s ballet came third. Steph felt her heart thumping. She was afraid. Muscles in Danny’s face stood out where she had never seen muscles before. Al and Linda passed their last cigarette back and forth.

  With each wave of applause there were fewer dancers left pacing. The fear climbed from Steph’s heart to her throat. Al was peeling paper from the butts in an ash tray, trying to roll a cigarette in a piece of Linda’s Kleenex.

  Up in the band shell, the p.a. was blasting Moog-synthesizer Bach. Danny shook his head in rhythm, not smiling.

  Applause.

  Silence.

  Footsteps on stone.

  The volunteer stage manager, a former dancer from Balanchine’s company, poked his head around the corner. ‘Places, please.’

  The girls led the way. They stood in the wing. No turning back now. Danny was sweating badly. A look of panic passed across his face. They whispered and kissed.

  ‘Merde ... Merde ... Merde, honey.’

  Steph waited for the stage manager’s signal. She stiffened her courage into a stubborn line. A thought flashed through her head.

  Icarus.

  Everything before had been preparation and sweat and everything afterward might be disaster and broken bones. But this was take-off.

  The stage manager’s handkerchief flashed white against the dark wing. All right, Icarus, she told herself, fly.

  She stepped out onto the dark stage to take her sleeping position. The music let out its two monster heartbeat thumps. The light came up in a pool around her. There was no fear now, only the voice of the music filling her and driving out every doubt.

  Chris was late.

  At first Ray tried to deny the fact: She couldn’t be late; I must have told her eight-thirty, not eight o’clock. Maybe she took a subway. Maybe the train broke down.

  He told himself he was lucky to have the extra minutes. He filled the wait with tiny last-minute adjustments: the beef bourguignon simmering in the oven needed a splash more wine, another half bay leaf; the gladioluses on the dining table were irksomely symmetrical, and so he rearranged them; his fingers found a patch of stubble on his chin and he shaved for the second time in two hours, leaving the bathroom door open in case the doorbell rang.

  It didn’t.

  At eight forty-five Ray Lockwood was still alone in the little studio apartment that he had tried to make festive with candles and a new tablecloth. He rinsed wineglasses that were already clean and then he dried them to a second shine. He checked tops of picture frames for dust. He restacked lawbooks on his desk so it looked less legal, less cluttered.

  He went into the kitchen five times to check his wristwatch against the electric clock.

  At nine he telephoned. There was no answer at Chris’s apartment.

  She’s on her way, he told himself.

  At nine-fifteen he ran out of chores. He sat on the edge of the neatly made daybed, hands dangling between his knees. His heartbeat felt thick and tight against the side of his chest. He loosened his tie.

  If she’d been going to that festival at the band shell she’d have told me, wouldn’t she?

  The walls of the room pressed in on him, buzzing dully with her absence. He stared at the sudden blank space of the evening and the vaster blankness it implied.

  At nine-thirty he could stand it no longer. He got to his feet and put on his jacket.

  Long after the last bell, Ivor Noble, dance critic, emerged from the grand tier men’s room. He stood a moment, swaying, unable to place himself among marble dunes and red velvet plains.

  He made an eye-catching figure.

  His hair was oily black, his face at the moment bright red. He wore a grey suit, broadly pin-striped; a trendy op-art shirt (he still thought in words like ‘trendy’); and, capping it off like the candy rose on a cake, an explosion of striped bow tie that had somehow, his hand told him, wriggled half loose. Not trendy that.

  He’d correct it in his seat.

  Where was his seat?

  His ear clutched at a ribbon of sound: thin violins, unsteady flute, not quite making their unison. He took one-eyed aim and veered toward the door to aisle 3. It was shut. And blocked.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. You can’t go in.’

  He noted the usher’s glance directed at his hand. The hand still held an eight-ounce translucent plastic cup. From the jiggle and slosh he judged the cup still held a good four swallows of scotch on ice. He wasn’t about to let good Johnnie Walker go to waste, not at the prices the Opera Bar charged this season; not with all of Les Sylphides still to get through.

  He took his four swallows in one, crumpled the cup, and dropped it at a standing ash tray. His aim was good. The cup landed in white sand studded with cigarette butts. Management forbade drinking in the house; management forbade smoking in the house. Damn, he thought, they should forbid Les Sylphides while they’re at it.

  ‘All right—now may I go in?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. The performance has already begun.’

  ‘Look here, my wife’s in there waiting for me. We’ve got aisle seats, I’m not going to be disturbing anyone.’

  ‘If you’d care to go to the
lounge, you may see the performance on closed circuit—’

  ‘I don’t care to go to your damned lounge!’ When he lost his temper his voice reverted to his native Australia. ‘I’m Ivor Noble, ballet critic, and I’m reviewing this disaster. Now will you let me in or do I have to call the manager?’

  ‘No late seating allowed.’ No sorry this time. No sir either.

  The usher was a nobody and Ivor Noble was a somebody. But the usher was tall and Ivor Noble was not. The usher was lean and Ivor Noble was not.

  The usher was sober.

  Ivor Noble glared at the uniformed nobody forbidding him entry: young, vain, cocky—probably some kind of aspiring dancer. Ivor Noble would be damned if he’d argue with an aspiring anything.

  Damned if he’d subject himself to another Sylphides, either.

  He grunted, went back to the bar, and armed himself with another scotch, retreated through glass doors to the balcony. It was twilight. The evening was warm. He was alone. And angry.

  The State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall faced one another across the deserted plaza, gigantic parody Parthenons. Between them somebody-or-other’s memorial fountain disturbed the darkening air with computerized, illuminated towers of water, white and milky as the sheathed finger of a proctologist.

  Ivor Noble pondered American vulgarity, American audacity, the audacity of the management of Lincoln Center to deny entrance to the most influential critic in the city; damn it, the most influential in the nation.... Face it, damn it, the most influential critic in the world....

  Music buzzed at his ear.

  He flicked it away, taking it for Les Sylphides, that awful corn-syrup Chopin. But it wasn’t Chopin. It came from another direction, sinewy and strong and astringent. He turned his head, tracking it to the right, to the grove of trees at Damrosch Park.

  A recollection tugged at him.

  Wasn’t there some sort of festival at the Damrosch Park band shell tonight? Aspiring would-be’s dancing free? Hadn’t he tossed the mailing into this wastebasket only last week?

  A notion zipped over his mind.

  Why not take his scotch—no, finish this one and take a fresh one—over to Damrosch Park? Why not ignore Les Sylphides, ignore Lincoln Center and its preening ushers, why not review the free festival instead?