Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘He says he’d like to sit.’

  ‘Oh, let him sit, by all means. Excuse me if I stand. I’m much too excited to sit still.’

  Sasha dropped into a rich upholstered armchair near the fireplace. He stretched cozily as though drawing extrasensory comfort from the unlit birch logs. Volmar could not help smiling. Even amidst luxury like this, the Soviet chameleon could make himself at ease.

  ‘I’ve prayed so many years for this opportunity,’ Dorcas said.

  ‘I didn’t know you prayed,’ Volmar said.

  ‘For a Kirov dancer? Of course I pray! Marius, ask him what roles he knows.’

  ‘My dear, he was only a soloist.’

  ‘He must have covered something. Ask him.’

  Volmar asked.

  ‘Lac des Cygnes,’ Sasha answered, by-passing his interpreter.

  ‘Swan Lake.’ Dorcas said thoughtfully. ‘And you dance Siegfried?’

  He nodded again. ‘Et aussi Giselle.’

  ‘You do Albrecht? Or Hilarion?’

  ‘Albrecht, naturellement.’

  Naturally, Volmar thought, this hammer-and-sickle peacock would claim to have danced the lead.

  ‘Et aussi La Belle au Bois Dormant. Florimund.’

  ‘Marius—what would you think of a Sleeping Beauty?’

  ‘I’d like to do one very soon.’

  Dorcas glowed. Volmar did not bother telling her he had no intention of perverting his company or his Sleeping Beauty into a showcase for Soviet upstarts.

  ‘We’ll have to change the entire schedule.’ She was a flurry of hands and pearls. ‘It’s going to be an awful rush. I just hope I can keep my head.’

  She gazed at Sasha, and Volmar could see the self-deception at work in her eyes, magnifying the boyishness, the smile, blanking out any hint of calculation in the gaze that met hers.

  ‘He can change everything for us, Marius. Have you seen the papers? We’re on the front page.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘He. But it’s all the same thing.’

  Volmar sighed. ‘When will your war be over, Dorcas?’

  ‘War? What war?’

  ‘This war with tickets and box office and government grants.’

  ‘Never. It will never be over. Ballet will always be in the red and we who love it will always have to battle for it.’

  ‘But this war mentality of yours is ridiculous.’

  Dorcas lifted a silver box from the coffee table, offered Volmar and Sasha cigarettes, took one for herself. Sasha sprang between her and the silver table lighter, a lit match in his hand.

  She gazed at the boy a moment, exhaled a Berlitz ‘Spasibo,’ and angled her cigarette to the flame.

  ‘You’re ready to seize on him’—Volmar gestured toward Sasha, who sat listening and staring, eyes narrowed in undisguised fascination, head turning to follow each of their moves—‘as though he were your last available weapon.’

  ‘He’ll be our H-bomb. All we need is the delivery system. And you can leave that to me. I’ve got a few ideas. We’ll call in professionals.’

  ‘Professional what—fighter pilots?’

  ‘Publicists.’

  ‘And who is this enemy that you intend to crush with your publicists?’

  ‘The enemy is ignorance and apathy and prejudice.’

  ‘In other words, the public?’

  Her eyes were dreaming and fierce. ‘The real public. We’ll get tourists and gawkers and idiots. People who’ve never seen a girl on pointe or a jump or a lift or a fish dive or a double turn in the air. And when they leave that theatre, they’ll be stark raving converts. Balletomanes.’

  ‘That kind of balletomane we don’t need.’

  ‘You handle your dancers, I’ll handle my audience. That’s our arrangement, Marius. It’s worked in the past, it’ll keep working.’

  There was a slight stiffening of her spine. Volmar recognized the emergence of Dorcas the box-office expert. He had met this creature once or twice in the years of their working together and he preferred to ignore her.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he said, ‘of people who know nothing about art and everything about ballet.’

  ‘And I’m tired of people who know nothing about business and everything about box office.’ Dorcas gazed pityingly at Volmar as though she understood mysteries he never would. ‘Oh, Marius, we’re both tired. You especially. You’ve just come back from a gruelling tour and the State Department was no help and those reporters were revolting. Now isn’t the time to talk. We’ll only say things we don’t mean.’

  ‘I’ve never said a word I didn’t mean.’

  ‘You are in a bad temper.’ Her eyes flicked toward Sasha. ‘It’s embarrassing—with him here.’

  ‘He doesn’t understand English.’

  ‘He certainly understands a shout—and the look on your face doesn’t need translation.’

  ‘Neither do the dollar signs in your eyes.’

  Sasha had been studying them both. He looked up at Volmar and said, in Russian, ‘Forgive me, Mr Volmar.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is Madame angry?’

  ‘That’s not your concern.’

  Sasha looked in curiosity from Volmar to Dorcas. She stood by the french windows staring out at her landscaped terrace, out toward the great space over Central Park where no one had yet built skyscrapers.

  ‘I hope she is not angry because of me,’ Sasha said.

  ‘What if she is?’

  ‘Then I must apologize.’

  ‘You’ll only make it worse. Just keep quiet.’

  ‘She keeps looking at me. I should say something to her.’

  ‘What can you say? Your English is terrible.’

  ‘I would like to tell her she is beautiful.’

  ‘I’m sure you would like to tell her that.’

  ‘And her house is beautiful. She is rich?’

  ‘It’s lucky you don’t speak English.’

  ‘I would not ask her if she is rich. I am asking you.’

  ‘She is very rich and if you behave kulturni she can help you.’

  ‘I would like to live here. It is a museum.’

  Dorcas turned on her heel, leaving a tiny welt in the carpet. Her eyes met Volmar’s with the authority of a finger pressing the hold button on a telephone. For a moment she did not speak and then, coming slowly out of her calculations, she said, ‘Has he got a place to stay?’

  ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. The maid will make up the guestroom.’

  ‘My dear Dorcas, he can’t stay here.’

  ‘Of course he can. There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Be sensible. If he stays here, it looks—’

  ‘I’d be flattered if people think I have a young lover. Besides, we can’t talk to one another so we should get along perfectly.’

  ‘I’m thinking of the dancers. If he stays here, he’s your protégé. I would prefer no protégés in the company.’

  ‘Nonsense. He’s a refugee. Why shouldn’t I help him? It’s my duty as an American.’

  Volmar looked at her with concern, with a little compassion too.

  ‘Marius, either you translate for me or I’ll say it myself. My Russian may be World War II, but I do know how to invite a man for the night. I just don’t know the word for “week.”’

  Volmar’s eyes sank with fatigue. He thought carefully a moment and then he said to Sasha, ‘Madame has invited you to stay here.’

  ‘I cannot refuse such an honour.’

  ‘He says yes.’ And now Volmar was tired of talking to imbeciles. ‘I’ll be going. Phone me if you run into any insurmountable language barriers.’

  ‘You go straight to bed and take that phone off the hook. You’re looking very peaked.’

  Dorcas came with him to the front door.

  ‘By the way, Marius darling—can he dance?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him perform.’

  ‘Ah. Then we’ll just have to take o
ur chances.’

  thirty-two

  The first company class of the season pulsed with curiosity.

  ‘I hear he dances like Nijinsky.’

  ‘I hear he dances like Nikita Krushchev.’

  ‘I’ll bet he’s gay.’

  ‘I’ll bet he’s straight.’

  ‘They say he’s a KGB plant.’

  ‘Gotta be CIA.’

  A crackle of silence swept the room. He was standing in the doorway, a tall, pale, uneasy bundle of muscle and nerve. He had shaved his beard, and when he smiled there was something sad and soft about his mouth.

  Conversation rose again to a listening whisper.

  He stood looking for a space. Eyes tracked him in the mirror. He crossed the studio to where Lucinda Dalloway had set her bag down at the barre.

  ‘Please,’ he said, pointing, ‘is room?’

  Dalloway’s leg was hooked in développé over the barre, and she shot him a frown up from under it. A narrow-hipped bad-tempered redhead, she was the top ballerina, the top bitch, and the top barre-hogger in the company, and one thing you did not do in NBT was ask Dalloway to move her bag.

  Unless you were a young Russian defector with glossy dark hair and brown eyes who came nimbused in rumour and mystery. Dalloway’s frown softened to a shrug of the eyebrows. Sasha thanked her and moved the bag to the wall.

  Marius Volmar arrived on the dot of ten. He was wearing a faded lumberjack shirt and dungarees, impeccably clean, impeccably unpressed. ‘Good morning, girls and boys.’ He was always cheerful at the beginning of a new season, but cheerful or not, he didn’t waste time. He nodded to the accompanist.

  ‘Left hand to the barre. Plié, un—deux—’

  The piano thumped the ½ rhythm and the dancers plié’d and watched Sasha. Even in the very simple knee bend they saw his litheness, his buoyancy, the arch to his back. In the rond de jambe they saw the extension of his leg, the arch of his foot, the soft silken circles he drew on the floor.

  He was good. There were shrugs. So what?

  Volmar fired out pirouette combinations. At each command Sasha shot into an explosion of perfectly centred spin, stopping dead on the beat, facing dead front.

  He was perfect. The dancers exchanged ‘So what?’ glances. They had expected something more than perfect, a Rudy or a Misha.

  And then as class wore on he changed. His eyes glazed with a fierce absorption in his work. It was as if, till now, he had been trying to show he could be one of them. With the grand allegro he seemed to lose the strength to hold himself back.

  His first grand jeté came with such unexpected speed that the other dancers backed off. There was a sudden burst of elevation, a soaring through space with legs and arms perfectly extended; and then a slowing of time, as though the air didn’t want to let go of him, and he drifted to the floor with the floating softness of thistledown. There was hardly a sound as his foot touched wood.

  Marius Volmar’s gaze—serene and almost priestly—circled the dancers. From time to time it brushed the newcomer but it never lingered on him. Marius Volmar could see more with a brush of the eye than most men in an hour’s study. The class gave him time to look Sasha over. He wanted to see flaws, but he saw nothing worse than mannerisms, the typical Soviet striving for dash and splash. The boy was no Fabergé egg, but he was no boiled potato either.

  I will have to be careful with that one, Marius Volmar realized. Very careful.

  Sasha left class with Lucinda Dalloway. They were chatting and smiling and he was carrying her bag. The dancers rushed into huddles.

  ‘He can dance.’

  ‘And he’s not gay.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘Lucinda wouldn’t waste her time.’

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Who invited who?’

  ‘She invited him.’

  ‘Think it’ll be a thing?’

  ‘I give it a month.’

  ‘A week.’

  ‘An afternoon—her husband comes home tomorrow.’

  ‘The government is crazy for him! We could pull down three quarters of a million in supplemental grants next year.’ Dorcas’ eyes were green and shining and triumphant. ‘And have you seen this year’s subscriptions? We’re selling out! That impresses the corporations. They’ll up their contributions to get bigger credits in the programmes. Our federal matching funds will skyrocket!’

  She had caught Volmar in his office, darted in, and shut the door. ‘Just a chat,’ she had said—a chat buttressed with fistfuls of box-office receipts and press clippings. It seemed there wasn’t a paper in the country that hadn’t run the wire service bio of Sasha, or a magazine that hadn’t stretched out tentacles for an interview.

  ‘Of course we’ve got to handle him carefully. Those TV interviewers can be killers.’

  Volmar looked questioningly at her. ‘Live interviews?’

  ‘Maybe not live. Not till his English is better. But we’d be fools not to take advantage of every medium we can.’ She sat forward in her chair, bursting with plans. ‘And he has to dance principal roles this season.’

  Volmar had no reply but a dry smile.

  ‘You can’t tell me he’s not ready,’ Dorcas said. ‘Everyone says he’s a sensation in class.’

  ‘Class is not performance.’

  ‘Then put him onstage. Give him something big. That’s what they’re screaming for. That’s what they’re paying for.’

  An objection swelled within Volmar’s chest. He mimicked her intonation. ‘We don’t have anything big to give him.’

  ‘What does it take to stage a Corsaire or a Don Q pas de deux? A blue cyclorama, one orchestra rehearsal.’

  She waited for his answer and it didn’t come.

  ‘Well, why not? What in the world have you got against Sasha?’

  ‘It’s called artistic principles. I happen to place mine above political fads and press campaigns and money-grubbing.’

  Anger blinked through her face, fierce and unguarded and wrinkled. ‘You may call it moneygrubbing, Marius, but the rest of us call it survival. The dancers have to be paid. We need costumes. New sets. The musicians are already grumbling about a spring strike. For three decades this company has operated on the brink of extinction, and Sasha could be our salvation. He’s gold. Pure gold.’

  ‘And what if the other dancers come to resent this highly publicized ingot?’

  ‘Dancers aren’t fools. They know we have to sell tickets. They know we have to balance our books. With Sasha—it’s all possible.’

  ‘Over thirty years we’ve worked to build this company.’

  ‘Of course we’ve worked,’ she cut in sharply, ‘and now we have a chance to keep the company.’

  ‘We don’t have stars,’ Volmar said. ‘That is what makes us good.’

  ‘Well, if we don’t catch this star and tuck him in our pocket, he’ll go to American Ballet Theater or Balanchine. They’ll wipe us out. You just don’t know, Marius. You don’t understand the public. You never have.’

  He put his forehead in his hand for a moment.

  ‘Marius, I know you have your vision of this company. It’s not a vision I’ve always shared, but I respect it. I’ve worked for it every bit as hard as you. Now we have a chance to win a public. To win broad support. I’m sorry, but to me that’s every bit as important as your private vision. After all, it’s not tearing down your life’s work if we schedule one or two solos for Sasha.’

  Darkness crept into Volmar’s thoughts, an apprehension of loss blacker than any he had known since childhood.

  ‘If you’re so dead set against him,’ Dorcas cried, ‘then why the hell did you bring him to America?’

  Volmar was not ready to tell her. A plan could not be put before Dorcas half formed or with blank spaces. The woman had too many free-floating ideas of her own, most of them dreadful. Given the slightest opening, she didn’t hesitate to thrust them into other people’s projects. No: he must w
ork out every detail of his Sleeping Beauty, make it totally, irrevocably his, before he even whispered of it to this meddling dillettante.

  He stood up and nodded his head, momentarily helpless. ‘Very well. Sasha will have a ballet.’

  ‘Something big and splashy with a lot of cymbals and leaps—like Rudy and Misha do.’

  Volmar winced. It seemed all a Russian dancer had to do was defect and the public would rank him with Nureyev and Baryshnikov. Could people really be so stupid?

  ‘Promise now. Lots of leaps and barrel turns.’

  ‘I promise,’ Volmar said. ‘He’ll have a ballet.’

  Marius Volmar summoned the Russian to studio 3. ‘Dance for me.’

  ‘What you want?’

  ‘Anything. Just tell Muriel.’

  Muriel was the company’s worst rehearsal pianist. Volmar kept her on out of loyalty—she had been with the company a quarter century—and because bad pianists sometimes came in handy.

  ‘You give me male variation from Bluebird?’

  Muriel put her liverwurst sandwich down on the piano lid. She wiped her hands.

  ‘I do my own treatment?’ Sasha said.

  ‘Anything you like,’ Volmar said.

  ‘Good. I show you everything.’

  Sasha counted out two measures. Muriel thumped into the allegro.

  Sasha danced.

  He had strength, he had speed, he had balance. There was an undeniable maleness in that body and cunning and even art of a sort. Since company class Volmar had known he’d made a mistake: but not till today, till Sasha Bunin’s first tour en l’air, did he realize how grave a mistake. Now he saw with sickening clarity that his life’s work was in danger of annihilation.

  A ballet company is many warring elements: it is dancers, musicians, choreographers, designers. But above all it is the single vision, the single idea of one man. If it has not that singleness, that unity, it is chaos—nothing.

  This Soviet did not fit in with Marius Volmar’s idea. He kicked it down like a paper house and set up his own idea, a brilliant idea perhaps, but not Marius Volmar’s.

  Volmar hunched forward in his seat, squinting. There is a flaw here, he told himself. There has to be something wrong with this rush of movement, this sculpture speeding through time.