‘Danny, if you give up Ilonka because you’re trying to prove something to me—there’s no point. There’s nothing you need to prove. You proved it all, just telling me. And that means more to me than starring in nine zillion premieres.’
‘I don’t want to lose you, Steph.’
‘You’re not going to lose anything.’
He smiled and they huddled, his arm around her shoulder, and there was a strangely truthful moment when neither of them said a word.
The cat hopped nimbly across cantilevered stacks of books and magazines. A candle sputtered out and the light in the room was halved.
They became lovers that night.
Chris couldn’t sleep all night.
A dozen times she almost phoned the police and another dozen times she almost phoned Steph’s mother, and when finally at eight-thirty in the morning she heard a key in the lock she felt sick with relief.
Steph bounced into the apartment, full of sun and bustle, cheeks flushed and eyes emerald-bright.
‘I spent the night with Danny,’ she said.
Chris was too surprised to answer.
‘I’m sorry, I should have phoned. I will next time.’
So there’ll be a next time, Chris thought, and something turned to ice deep in her stomach. She set out a second coffee cup and watched Steph butter a piece of toast. There was a long silence and finally Chris said, ‘What was it like?’
‘Gentle—beautiful—exactly the way he is.’
Chris had had sex education in school and she’d heard the fables girls tell one another. She knew the facts of love between a man and a woman but she did not know the touch of skin on skin or the taste of a man’s tongue and these things filled her with vague and paralyzing premonitions.
‘Were you scared?’
Steph looked at her with a kindly sort of astonishment. ‘How could I be scared of Danny?’
‘Did it—hurt?’
‘Hurt?’ Steph was thoughtful and then she laughed. ‘I don’t remember.’ In her own excitement, in the newness of her feelings, she forgot to take the pulse of Chris’s mood. She described the evening and she described Danny.
But for Chris the description was useless: she needed a map and Steph gave her an out-of focus photograph.
‘Oh, Chris.’ Steph sighed. ‘I’m in love.’
Chris knew Steph. She heard the question mark beneath her friend’s euphoria. There was more here than excitement and discovery. There was nervousness and uncertainty. Faintly but unmistakably, there was a shadow of moral doubt. For all the spillover of happiness, Steph was looking to Chris for support.
And Chris tried.
She made approving faces, approving squeals. She asked questions, gasped with delight at each answer. She made coffee and clattered dishes in the sink. She listened to Steph rave about Danny’s humour and intelligence and sensitivity and—though this was only a hint—his skill as a lover.
She tried to be happy for Steph, as she knew Steph would be happy for her if she came running home one morning and announced she’d found the perfect love. But she could muster only a thin topsoil of deception. She held her lips in a smile so tense they ached.
‘And on top of all that,’ Steph cried, ‘you’ll never guess—he cooks!’
‘What did he cook?’ Chris said softly. And every word that Steph uttered was a wrecking ball hammering the walls of her safety.
It’s over, Chris thought. We’re not little girls huddling together in our high-rise make-believe home any more. Steph has found a man.
Chris knew that sex had to be faced, like swimming or riding a bicycle or saying hello to strangers. She had hoped for more time and more moral support, but now she was without an ally. Steph had jumped safely to the other side of the ravine, leaving Chris alone and scared and staring down at the drop.
‘Oh, Chris, I wish you—‘
Steph stopped and Chris knew exactly what she’d been on the verge of saying: you should do it too.
‘I know,’ Chris said. ‘I will....’
After that Chris grew to hate the apartment at night. Even with the television turned up, the silence deafened her and loneliness pressed in on her. She lay awake till dawn waiting for the scrape of Steph’s key in the lock and the jar of the door slamming.
Every morning she saw something new and rich and alive in Steph’s eyes and she wondered, Why won’t she help me?
In the days that followed Chris felt more and more of Steph draining out of the apartment. A toothbrush and bathrobe disappeared from the bathroom. Fewer dresses were hanging on Steph’s side of the closet. A raincoat and umbrella vanished.
Chris felt deserted.
One thing Chris feared more than any other: that Steph would leave and move in with Danny. Steph never brought the subject up and her silence was like a shriek ripping at the last shred of Chris’s security.
‘Chris, would you mind very much if....’
They were sitting at the little ritual of breakfast that their friendship had shrunk to, and from the way Steph hesitated Chris knew: This is it, she’s leaving.
‘If what?’ Chris said, braced and smiling.
‘I’ve invited Danny for dinner next Monday.’
Chris too a deep breath. She felt reprieved. ‘Am I included?’
‘I’m counting on you. And I invited Ray too. That’s all right, isn’t it?’ Steph knew she was meddling but it was for Chris’s sake and she felt no shame at using strategy. ‘He phoned, and he sounded so damned lonely.’
Chris sat staring at her coffee. Her mind winced at the idea of another dinner with all its tensions and silences and the ugliness that could spring like a tiger out of nowhere. ‘Fine,’ she said softly.
‘I’ll do the cooking,’ Steph said. ‘You did it last time.’
It rained the night of the dinner and Chris and Danny didn’t warm to one another as easily as Steph had hoped. Chris answered attempts at conversation with monosyllables and nods, and when the doorbell rang Steph felt a surge of relief.
‘What weather!’ Steph closed the door behind Ray.
He shifted nervously on the balls of his feet, like a boxer about to enter the ring.
‘Did you get rained on?’ she said, taking his coat.
‘Nope. I splurged on a cab.’
She drew him forward into the room. ‘Ray, this is Danny Gillette. Ray Lockwood.’ Then men exchanged how-do-you-do’s, and Steph said, ‘Let me get you a drink. We have real liquor tonight.’
‘Vodka and anything,’ Ray said. ‘If you have it.’
‘Coming up.’
He tried not to let his gaze fasten too obviously on Chris. She was sitting at the far end of the sofa. She seemed soft and tiny in blue lounging pyjamas that brought out the pale blue of her eyes. He realized she was watching him. After his drunken behaviour the night of Lacrymosa he wanted his movements to be graceful and careful. He stood perfectly still and looked around the apartment.
‘You two have made this a real home since I saw it last.’
‘We’re trying,’ Chris said, and she smiled in a way that made him hope she’d forgiven him for that phone call.
Steph put a drink in his hand and said, ‘Come on in and sit down.’
The others were sitting in a triangle in the living room. He took the rocker. He sipped and rocked and the vodka began to reach soothing fingers into him.
They were talking about dance. He listened and caught a familiar phrase here and there. He was happy they took him for granted. It made him almost an insider. Steph mentioned that she was covering for one of the soloists and Ray said, ‘You know, audiences always groan when the understudy goes on. But Lupe Serrano got her big break substituting for Melissa Hayden in Washington—and the audience gave her an ovation.’
He’d spent the afternoon at the library at Lincoln Center, preparing for tonight.
‘When Sadler’s Wells came to New York after World War II,’ he said, ‘everyone had seen Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes. They
expected her to dance opening night. Instead they got a nobody called Margot Fonteyn. They went in angry and came out cheering.’
Steph smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s only Prelude in Les Sylphides. Even if I did go on, no one’s going to make a fuss. Besides, I doubt I’ll get a chance.’
‘The law of averages is on your side,’ Ray said. ‘If you go outside of ballet, there are a hundred instances. Leonard Bernstein went on instead of Bruno Walter and it made his career as a conductor. Or look at Alexandra Hunt—she went on as Lulu at the last moment, one of the toughest roles in the soprano repertory, and she had to warm up on the stage of the Met, in Act One! The performing arts are full of substitutes pulling off last-minute miracles. Look at Roberta Peters or Martina Arroyo—from substitute to superstar in one performance.’
‘But that’s opera,’ Steph said.
‘It happens in ballet too. There are rumours of stars purposely calling in sick to give their covers a break.’
Steph shook her head. ‘Not in ballet. Maybe in books about ballet, or movies. But after all the work it takes to learn a role and become a ballerina, I can’t imagine a dancer giving up a performance. I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Thumb through one of the dance encyclopedias,’ Ray said. ‘There’s a lot of jealousy between ballerinas but there’s a lot of friendship too.’
Chris stared at Ray. He’s handsome, he’s kind, he’s smart, she thought. And he’s trying to impress Steph. She felt ignored and small.
They drifted into the area that was the dining room and sat down at the table. There were appetizers of avocado stuffed with shrimp. Steph called from the kitchen, ‘Don’t wait for me!’
Ray told Danny how much he’d enjoyed Lacrymosa—though he didn’t remember an instant or a step of it—and Danny thanked him.
‘And what do you do for a living?’ Danny asked. ‘Something saner than dance, I take it?’
Ray glanced at Chris. She was studying her plate gravely. ‘I don’t know how sane,’ he said, ‘but it’s a little safer and a lot duller.’ He described his law courses and he saw just the faintest flicker of a smile on Danny’s lips.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot the Supreme Court?’ Danny said.
Ray felt he’d been flicked aside with a joke but he laughed. Steph brought a huge pot of coq au vin to the table. Everyone was talking dance again. Ray looked down at this hands. He wanted to say something intelligent and relevant but he felt like a doorbell trying to be heard at a noisy celebration.
After dinner Steph made coffee and they all took their cups back to the living room. Ray sat in his rocker listening to dance talk, trying to understand the mysterious centre of these people’s lives.
Steph noticed how his glance kept creeping, secret and shining, toward Chris, and how Chris never returned it.
When the guests had gone, Steph said, ‘I like Ray.’
‘He hardly said a word to me,’ Chris said. She wasn’t hurt, because she knew lawyers and she knew what to expect. Her father was a lawyer.
‘Maybe you should have said a few words to him.’ Steph didn’t want to push, but she had an intuition that Ray would be the best thing in the world that could happen to Chris.
‘I tried,’ Chris said.
If that was trying, Steph thought, I’m a ballet superstar calling in sick to give my understudy a break. ‘Well, keep trying. He’s worth a little effort.’
At the very first rehearsal with Ilonka, Danny realized he had a serious problem: the woman wasn’t simply good, she was the best.
‘How do you want this?’ she asked at one point. ‘Bolshoi or Kirov?’
The choreography called for three leaps in rapid succession: the first moderate, the second higher and longer, the third—highest and longest of all—ending in a fish dive into Victor’s arm’s. Danny had never thought of the sequence as Bolshoi or Kirov, but he saw from her face that the offer was serious.
Ilonka threw a nod to the accompanist. A furious dissonant allegro came crashing from the piano.
She demonstrated Bolshoi: She kept the first jump low and short, ending it a fraction of a beat early. That gave her extra time and strength for the second jump, which seemed explosive compared to the first. On the third jump she overextended her arms, turning the dive into a suicide leap that ended with her head two inches and a tenth of a second from the floor.
It was a stunning acrobatic illusion, it was cheap, and it would bring down the house. And Danny hated it.
Ilonka shook her hair out of her face, backed off on the diagonal, and demonstrated Kirov: The jumps came effortlessly, evenly, equal arcs of time filling ever larger arcs of space. The final dive came not as a leap into destruction but as an effortless fall into safety.
Without hesitation Danny said, ‘Kirov.’
‘Good,’ Ilonka said. ‘Is nicer. Better not to scare people too early.’
The woman’s memory astounded Danny.
Time and time again she picked up the most complex phrases—intricate chainés, sudden reversals, syncopations—after a single demonstration. Once or twice she even anticipated movements before Danny showed them. He found this so baffling that he mentioned it to Victor after rehearsal.
‘Memory, shit.’ Victor pointed to the observation window. ‘Didn’t you see her sitting up there with the choreologist? They’ve been taking notes for three weeks.’
The incredulity must have shown on Danny’s face, because Victor guffawed.
‘Come on, man, you know she’s been hot for this ballet ever since you dropped the second female.’
Which, if it was true, explained another oddity about Ilonka Banska. Her bad temper never surfaced once. The woman had argued with Balanchine and Robbins and called Tudor a twerp and thrown spaghetti at John Cranko, yet she cheerfully took direction from an unknown soloist ten years her junior.
She even tried to be charming.
She began kissing Danny hello and good-bye, calling him ‘Darling.’ She gave him a yellow rose after every rehearsal. She spread word that his work was ‘lovely.’ She told her dresser, and her dresser told the world, ‘That boy could teach Grigorovich.’
Danny tried in small persistent ways to insult her, praying he could goad her into walking out.
He never returned her kisses or compliments. He worked her overtime, called Sunday rehearsals, never once thanked her. He insisted on Steph’s covering the role. He shouted ‘Stop!’ in the middle of Ilonka’s most difficult steps.
‘You’re doing that wrong, Ilonka. Steph, would you show her?’
Steph would demonstrate, uneasily, and Ilonka would copy, perfectly, like a human Xerox.
Danny altered steps, devised impossible combinations. But nothing was beyond the woman. She could hop from Bolshoi gymnastics to Kirov schmaltz to Royal Danish elegance. She could handle presto footwork & la Balanchine and jazzy distortions à la Twyla Tharp. Her range was phenomenal. If Steph was one octave of the piano, Ilonka was the entire keyboard.
But Danny didn’t want the keyboard: he wanted Steph’s octave.
He wanted Steph.
It wasn’t till they began rehearsing outstage again that he saw how to get rid of Ilonka.
Like many East-bloc defectors, Ilonka Banska was a dancer of strong theatrical instinct. In a rehearsal studio, the instinct might slumber. On a stage, it took over completely.
Just before the climax of the ballet, there was a passage where Ilonka tore herself from David’s arms and bourrée’d upstage. She stopped short, did a triple unsupported pirouette, and fell into Victor’s arms.
At least that was what was supposed to happen.
The music for the bourrées was a series of rapid rising scales; for the triple pirouette, a tremendous fortissimo dissonance. On stage, Ilonka bourrée’d forward exactly as she had done in the studio. But instead of a triple she did four. Probably she wasn’t even aware of it. Her timing was flawless. It worked. It was far more theatrical. It ought to have stayed.
But it wasn�
��t Danny’s choreography.
‘Ilonka,’ he said, ‘triple, please.’
‘Triple?’ She had the face of an accused innocent. ‘But I did triple.’
‘You did four. I want a triple. Can we take that again, please?’
The piano hammered out its scales. Ilonka came bourrée’ing forward once more. At the dissonance she whipped out another four.
‘Ilonka—can you count? I want a triple.’
Now the accused became the accuser. ‘A triple? How can I do a triple when the music—' Her English began failing. Her hands made rapid circles in the air.
Danny lit the fuse.
‘In Hungary don’t they teach you the difference between three and four?’
‘Is not my fault!’ she shrieked. ‘Is four-pirouette music, don’t tell me triple turn, tell music triple turn!’
‘The music stays.’
‘Music too loud. Too something. Wrong.’
‘You are wrong.’ Danny beckoned into the wings. ‘Steph—come show Ilonka how to do a triple turn.’
Steph came hesitantly onto the stage. Ilonka’s stare wheeled unbelievingly from Danny to Steph and back again. She ripped the kerchief from her head and flung it to the floor.
‘Idiots! Not work with idiots!’ She whipped around, cropped hair flying, and stomped into the wings.
It was the famous Banska exit, Danny’s cue to go begging after her.
But he stayed put. He waited a moment, making sure she wasn’t going to come stomping back. He clapped his hands twice.
‘Okay, fellows, Steph. Why don’t we take it from the very top?’
twenty-two
It was one of the best orchestra seats in the Metropolitan Opera House, Row S three in from the centre aisle, $22.50; but to Anna it felt like an electric chair. Steph’s ballet didn’t come on till after the first intermission. There was all of Petrouchka to get through. Anna shifted weight, opened and closed her purse a hundred times, fingers scavenging in the dark to make sure the aspirin bottle was still there.
Ballerina Page 23
