Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘Stop.’ Volmar clapped. ‘What do you call that—that thing you just did?’

  ‘I do not call it. I do it.’

  ‘Well, is it a cabriole or is it an assemble?’

  ‘It is Sasha. There is no name for it.’

  ‘Dance is a language, like music or mathematics, and every movement in it has a name. If it’s a cabriole, it’s not completed. And you’re very far off the vertical.’

  ‘It does not matter. I can do it vertical, horizontal, anywhere in between.’

  ‘It matters. I want to see a correct cabriole and a correct assemblé.’

  ‘Very well. Correct cabriole, correct assemblé. Would help if I could have correct music, please. And!’

  Sasha began again. The cabriole was correct. The assemblé was correct. I don’t want to watch this, Volmar thought. But I must.

  Dimly, paying keenest attention, Volmar at last began to sense the flaw. It was an artistic, not a technical flaw, far too subtle for the untrained eye to detect. The variations in speed and placement were icily symmetrical. Everything was icily symmetrical. Sasha Bunin’s dancing had the precision not of living matter but of crystal.

  He was too perfect.

  It went on two minutes longer, till finally Sasha rose on half pointe, in attitude. He shifted his weight back. With one leg hooked up he whipped into a triple pirouette and landed on one knee, the other leg extended, arm in perfect arc, head cocked back and grinning.

  The boy came down knife-clean on the final beat. Then, after a moment, got to his feet.

  ‘There. You have seen Sasha. Is genius, yes?’

  Marius Volmar’s mouth was dry. Truth stuck to the roof of it. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not genius? Who else can do it?’

  ‘Genius isn’t a question of who else can or can’t.’

  ‘Who? Who else? Tell me! Who else have you seen rise in turn from extended fifth?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone else do it. I’ve never seen anyone who’d want to do it.’

  ‘In all Kirov, only Sasha Bunin can do it. You cannot deny: it is good, very, very good.’

  ‘It’s not good. It’s not good at all.’

  Tiny pink ridges rose like hen’s scratches on Sasha Bunin’s cheeks. ‘What is wrong with it?’

  ‘Everything. From the desire to the execution. The same as with the rest of your dancing. It’s all acrobatic, all childish, all bad.’

  ‘You don’t like me?’

  ‘I like artists, not children.’

  ‘But children can grow and I am talented, very talented, yes?’

  Marius Volmar took his time. He lit a small cigar. He savoured the first inhalation. He let the proud young Russian stand before him, out of breath and waiting and hurting.

  ‘You’re strong,’ Volmar conceded.

  ‘Is bad to be strong?’

  ‘You’re too strong for your talent. You’re too ambitious for your strength.’

  Sasha Bunin stiffened. ‘I want to learn. I want to learn from Marius Volmar. You will teach me right ambition and right strength and right dancing.’

  ‘I can see I’ll have to.’

  Sasha Bunin dropped to his knees and his voice became tight in his bowed head. ‘I shall work, cher maître: and you will be proud of me.’

  Never, Marius Volmar vowed, I will never be proud of this cock-a-doodling barrel-turning Soviet rooster.

  ‘Well?’ Dorcas nagged. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ Volmar snapped.

  ‘Well, what are you going to give him to dance?’

  ‘Oh, a little something....’ Marius Volmar’s voice trailed off. He wanted for Sasha a role that was small but difficult, a role that demanded gifts Sasha did not possess and displayed none that he did.

  Volmar scavenged the past repertory. He searched scores and squinted through sheets of Labanotation and spent hours viewing film and videotape. He hit upon something altogether inspired, a corpse that had lain twenty years in the company vault: ugly libretto by Jean Genêt, ugly music by Darius Milhaud, ugly steps by a choreographer who had died, leaving Volmar free to make them even uglier.

  There were roles for three men, condemned murderers in a prison cell. The first raped the second, the second killed the third. No grand pas de deux, no leaps, no turns, no lifts, no lyricism, no line, no solo—no woman.

  ‘It will do,’ Marius Volmar decided. ‘It will do perfectly.’

  He told the librarian to Scotch-tape the orchestral parts back together.

  ‘There’s a bassoon part missing, Mr Volmar—should I have it recopied? It’ll be $280.’

  ‘Forget the bassoon.’

  On Tuesday afternoon Marius Volmar announced to the press, with satisfaction, ‘The noted Soviet artist Aleksandr Fedorovich Bunin will make his American debut in one of the most technically and dramatically demanding of all ballets in the contemporary repertory: Deathwatch.’

  On Wednesday he announced it to Sasha, and on Thursday they began rehearsals.

  At first Volmar felt sure of victory. Sasha’s body strained and grimaced. And failed. Exaggerated extensions, wrists flung at right angles to the arm, flexed feet, all exactly opposite to classical technique—the positions and movements were utterly beyond him. He was a tongue trying to twist itself around an unknown language.

  ‘Thighs turned in, Sasha, in—like Wally and Joe. Knees in. Hips forward. This isn’t Giselle. Come on. And!’

  Volmar made the dancers go over and over the deadly movements, knowing Sasha would have to give up in helplessness. The Russian’s forehead was raked with worry and his limbs writhed in the trap. But the persistence of his efforts began to disturb Volmar. He could see determination glint in Sasha’s eyes; he saw the blind, survival-minded animal gather all its strength and cunning.

  ‘Sasha, we’ve got to do better than that. We’ve got six days to pull this together. And!’

  With each attempt, lips pressed tight, brow streaming sweat, Sasha failed a little less. Volmar watched. Where three days ago the dancing had been rotten, today it was only mediocre.

  ‘Four days, Sasha. Knees in. And!’ Volmar hunched in his chair, eyes sour. It wasn’t bad enough. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. Like an ignorant child playing the piano by ear, Sasha had somehow caught the brittleness, the angularity, the jagged thrusts and lunges. He had caught the idiom.

  The day before dress rehearsal he looked as good as the other two dancers. At the dress he looked better. After the rehearsal he turned in breathless sweat, like a horse wanting a lump of sugar. ‘Cher maître?’

  ‘It will do,’ Volmar sighed. ‘It will have to do.’

  thirty-three

  Volmar stood in the wings that evening. The audience gave Sasha an ovation before he had even risen from his prisoner’s cot. Fools, Volmar thought. If they applaud him lying down, they’ll bravo his backward somersault.

  And they did.

  Dancers crowded curiously into the wings. Volmar kept a policeman’s eye on the performance. But Sasha did not simplify the difficult movements, he did not exaggerate the showy ones. There were no Kirov interpolations, no corkscrews in the air, no barrel turns across the cyclorama. He stayed exactly within the music and the choreography, and Volmar could see the intensive adjustments to body and mind that it cost him.

  When Sasha went effortlessly on half pointe, then in one quick jerk forward and down into penché, Volmar felt a grudging respect for the Russian: as an athlete, not an artist. Languidly, Sasha let his arms droop till the fingertips grazed the canvas stage cover. His eyes were huge and fixed and staring into the audience. Good eyes, Volmar had to admit. Perfect eyes for a dancer.

  Then, in a movement that made the audience gasp and wonder if he’d hurt himself, Sasha dropped his head to the floor. There was no face now, only waves of dark hair. A flute trilled, forever and low, stretching the stillness.

  Volmar could feel the house holding its breath.

  The orchestra broke into crashing polytonal discord
s. Still on half pointe, still in penché, Sasha began a mad, quickening series of blind backward hops. At least from the front of the house they looked blind. There was a trickle of white tape on the floor to guide him.

  As Sasha spiralled backward a dancer whispered at Volmar’s shoulder, ‘He’s too good to be true.’ It was one of the girls, the Avery child.

  True, Sasha’s speed was remarkable, and when he reached the circle it was downright astonishing, like Kafka’s cockroach running crazy on LSD. There came a final hop, a sudden thrusting out of all four limbs, a fall flat onto the stomach. The spotlight now caught the knife planted in his back.

  Amazement rippled through the audience: how had the knife gotten into his back? An instant of silence from audience and orchestra alike, a flick of the conductor’s baton, a final screeching dissonance, down with the curtain, and instantaneous thundering applause, throats bravoing themselves sore.

  Utter grand guignol, Volmar reflected, utter trash, utter success. He had miscalculated and the Russian had won. Still, it was only a battle, not the war.

  ‘He’s a natural, an absolute natural.’ Dorcas was at Volmar’s elbow. Her hair had been teased back and tinted in hundred-dollar waves and great clusters of Cartier fresh from the safe deposit box dappled her violet evening gown. Her eyes glowed. ‘It’s a bitch of a ballet and you were a pig to give it to him, but you have to admit he’s a natural.’

  ‘I admit nothing.’

  ‘Listen to that applause.’ Dorcas cocked her ear toward the curtain, rising for the third time.

  ‘Publicity,’ Volmar said. ‘Politics. It has nothing to do with dance.’

  ‘It has everything to do with a sold-out house. And he’s not a bad dancer either.’

  ‘There are flaws.’

  ‘We’ve all got flaws.’

  Volmar felt sorry for Dorcas. From the trembling in her eyes he suspected she might actually be in love with the Russian. He pitied her. She had natural bad taste and the money to indulge it. She would always be a slave.

  ‘Are you going to keep Sasha on a leash,’ she said, ‘or are you going to let him dance something good?’

  ‘By good you mean Sabre Dance?’

  ‘We haven’t had applause like that in fifteen years,’ she said dreamily. ‘It’s like the old Ballet Russe.’

  The applause died a much too lingering death. Stagehands shifted scenery. Lighting men changed gels and the angle of spots. A growing flurry of inactivity onstage caught Volmar’s attention.

  ‘Why are they holding the curtain?’ he said.

  ‘Herb Kiley sprained an ankle warming up,’ the stage manager said.

  ‘Who’s covering?’

  ‘Tony Likiourdopoulos.’

  ‘Well then, is he warmed up?’

  The stage manager’s face darkened. ‘He’s in Rochester.’

  Volmar stared at this tall, stooped underling, eyes scampering evasively beneath the pudgy eyeglasses. It was an old game with stage managers. They played dice with fate, allowed covers to give recitals in Rochester high schools when they were needed in New York as stopgaps against disaster.

  ‘Why Rochester?’ Volmar said. ‘Why not here where he’s scheduled?’

  ‘His grandmother died.’

  ‘And he went to revive her?’

  ‘Marius,’ Dorcas said, shocked and shushing.

  Volmar ignored her. She doubtless believed in Santa Claus too and he knew for a fact she wept at TV reruns of Wuthering Heights.

  ‘Who danced the role last week?’ he asked.

  ‘Phil Branson. I phoned. He’s on his way in a taxi.’

  ‘In a taxi from where?’

  ‘West Nineteenth Street.’

  ‘Too far. He won’t have his costume or make-up. He won’t be warmed up.’

  ‘I will dance the role,’ Sasha Bunin cut in. He stood bulging in leg warmers and towel-stuffed sweat shirt. ‘I am warmed up.’

  ‘You don’t know the role,’ Volmar said. ‘You’ve never danced it, you’ve never even covered it.’

  ‘I saw it last week. My entrée is second retard, grand jeté, piqué, tour, assist Lang—’

  Your entrée, Volmar thought, marvelling at the gall.

  Sasha’s fingers marked, head bobbed. He hummed the Rossini. He was in the right key and, unlike the orchestra, he even caught the modulation. There were such dancers: they learned a role by watching a single performance. They danced a ballet once and they remembered every step of every other dancer in it. Living encyclopedias.

  Lvovna was such a dancer.

  So, if he was telling the truth, was Sasha Bunin.

  ‘Marius.’ Dorcas clutched at Volmar’s sleeve. ‘Let him.’

  Volmar had no choice. ‘Very well. Go get into some green unitards. We’ll hold the curtain five minutes.’

  ‘Merci, maitre.’

  Sasha scurried in one direction and Dorcas was about to scurry in the other. Volmar clamped a hand to her shoulder so sharply that brooches rattled.

  ‘There will be no announcement, Dorcas. No drama.’

  Her eyes seethed at him. ‘You’re being a bastard about that boy.’

  It made no difference.

  Sasha entrée’d on the second retard, unannounced and anonymous in his green unitard, and a storm of applause swept the house. A flock of dancers pressed into the wings to watch. Volmar could see young faces glowing with astonishment and admiration.

  Sasha will ruin it, he told himself, he will dance too full, too strong, he will make the other men look weak.

  But Sasha danced with restraint, deferred to Stephanie Lang in the pas de deux, took no solo bow even though the other dancers tried to push him in front of the curtain.

  I was wrong about him again, Volmar thought. Maybe that’s why I dislike him. He proves me wrong too often.

  After the last curtain call Dorcas steered Sasha into the dressing room of a principal who had been with the company twelve years. ‘Alex, would you be an angel?’ She thrust Alex’s clothes into his arms and hustled him off to change with the corps.

  Through squinting eyes Marius Volmar watched the explosion of rot. A spill of reporters came flushing through the backstage corridors, sweeping dancers and dressers to the wall. Sasha received them bare-chested and quotable.

  ‘Mr Bunin, why did you come to the United States?’

  ‘I came to America to extend myself. In the Soviet Union it is all Swan Lake—flap, flap. Here it is jazz, Balanchine, Martha Graham, nudity—Volmar. I want to show I am good at it all.’

  Flash bulbs flashed. Cassette recorders buzzed. Clever little bastard, Volmar thought, he knew English all the time and never let on.

  ‘If you had stayed in Russia, would you have become a principal, like Nureyev and Baryshnikov?’

  ‘I do not know if’s.’

  Sasha took off his dance shoes. Sondra Kessler, who reviewed for a weekly and had a daughter at the School of American Ballet, lunged for one of them. Volmar could not see who grabbed the other.

  ‘Has your defection to the West helped your career?’

  ‘Not yet. I am still soloist—not principal.’ Sasha smiled with all the resources a face could muster. It was irresistible, the smile of an orphan boy with gonads. ‘Mr Volmar says I am very bad dancer, with Russian habits. But he says I will learn to be better.’

  ‘Do you think you’re a bad dancer?’

  ‘No. I am great, like Stradivarius violin. Volmar is great, like Oistrakh. We are destiny for each other.’

  ‘Why did you defect?’

  ‘Why you think? To get big publicity, big stage, big audience.’

  ‘I do beg your pardon, Mr Bunin!’ Ivor Noble’s shrill lisp topped the uproar. ‘But aren’t those pretty shallow reasons for defecting?’

  Sasha glanced at the drunk little man with the bottom button of his blazer plugged into the top hole. ‘Do I need deep reason to shit?’

  Volmar had to say one thing for the boy: he didn’t ass-kiss the press.

&nb
sp; ‘Are you heterosexual?’ a woman asked.

  Sasha peeled off his unitard. ‘Better you ask the girls.’

  ‘Are you living with Dorcas Amidon?’

  He sat scratching an itch through his shorts. ‘Better you ask Dorcas.’

  The next morning’s papers howled and Marius Volmar frowned.

  More Sasha! More Sasha! Sasha is a national treasure! In the same review, Ivor Noble—one of the greatest dance illiterates ever to cover drama, ballet, and cooking for one newspaper—singled out Stephanie Lang. ‘Miss Lang, alas, is not even a trinket, though, in the words of the late Hilaire Belloc, Marius Volmar appears to be preserving her as the “chiefest of his treasures.” This critic is second to none in his admiration for Herr Volmar’s many past achievements, but one must question the judgment of any company director who would pair an artist of Bunin’s international stature with a novice of Miss Lang’s lack thereof. The results, kindly put, were excruciable.’

  And all because I wouldn’t pay that vulgar little cockney three thousand dollars, Volmar thought. It was a shame. Worse, it was false. Stephanie Lang had danced well. The mistakes had been those of her last-minute partner, not hers. She was good, getting better, and soon Marius Volmar would make her a ballerina.

  She’ll stand up to this review, he thought, crumpling it. She’s strong.

  Later items from the company’s clipping service included colour photographs of Sasha Bunin wearing Yves St Laurent slacks (‘$85 at Bloomingdale’s St Laurent boutique, New York residents please add sales tax’); a page of Sasha Bunin’s favourite recipes (‘low/cal cotelette à la Kiev: Sasha’s secret is to take half a cup cottage or farmer’s cheese and half a cup sweet butter, and blend in his Cuisinart food processor—$225 at Altman’s—“And then I take my poodle, Merde, for a walk around the block!”’); and an inch of newsprint from a gossip column. (‘“What do I care if she is principal or soloist or corps or cigarette girl so long as she is girl? Perhaps,” adds Sasha with a twinkle in his soulful brown eyes, “is because I have no class distinction, am what you call pinko?” If you spell that word m-a-l-e, Sasha, you hit it on zee button, da da da!’)