by Sandy Nathan
“Come on, Olga. You’ve seen a staircase before,” the woman pulled on her arm. “The theatre is below. They’re waiting.”
Students in the hallway moved past the open doors. She searched them, hoping to get a glimpse of the one was she supposed to find.
“Come on, Olga!” The woman yanked at her arm.
She rose on her pointes and flew down the stairs.
4
Madeleine jumped as the girl dashed past her. Little ruffian! She walked down the stairs, her spine perfectly aligned, yet not stiff. She had not been a great ballerina, but some of her students had attained celebrity standing.
She had shaped them from country boobs to danseurs and danseuses who could take the stage with the best of them. She smiled. Sometimes they were urban boobs, feeling entitled to top billing before they deserved it. Those needed to be trimmed a bit, shaped, before they could shine. Her eyes glittered. She trimmed them.
She wanted a partner for Richard. That’s why she went shopping for the girl. Olga Bazhenova, if that’s who she really was. Where was her luggage? Her mother? The man from the embassy in Moscow? The chaperone who was supposed to stay with her all year? Did that idiot at the gate just fling it wide to one and all?
It looked like it, given her current crop of dancers. The school was slipping. She could see it so easily. It wasn’t what it had been when she was young. It wasn’t even what it had been ten years before. Anyone could see that. Once, they had ten times the number of applicants as spaces. Now, they barely filled the classes.
She scowled, then unlocked the door to the school theatre.
The school was so diminished that, to get someone to make a little demonstration recording of the girl, she had had to pick through a collection of slack-jawed idiots from the film department. They thought they should point the camera at a ballerina’s face! Fools.
“Shoot the whole stage,” she instructed. “A dance is like a painting, a composition. The dancers and stage settings form the shape and moving lines—the elements of the painting. You would never point a camera at the bull’s nose in Guernica. You do know that painting, Picasso’s masterpiece?” She was relieved that the four camera people, one of whom was a girl, had heard of Guernica.
The four of them had cameras set up all around. They clustered around a screen, engrossed in something. “What are you looking at? Is that the Internet? You know it’s forbidden.”
They jumped and changed whatever they’d been watching.
“No, ma’am. We weren’t watching anything,” the boldest one said, obviously lying.
“You’ll get us arrested if anyone tracks your Internet use here. Now get to your places and film her.” She clapped her hands as she did in the ballet studio and walked out onto the stage with Olga. “Do you have your cameras ready?” She raised her hand with the aplomb for which she was known, and then stepped back to the curtain’s edge.
The idiots did nothing, staring at Olga as though she were a ghost.
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, ma’am. We were just watching a video. A weather balloon caught it. A plane disappeared flying over here. You could see it—it was there, flying, then—poof! Gone.”
“I’m sure it was a mistake. A trick. Let’s begin. You need to get this edited for the trustees.”
“But ma’am, you gave us her flight number”—he nodded at the girl—“and told us to keep calling the airlines. It was her plane. It disappeared over the Atlantic coming from Moscow.”
Madeleine was not going to tell him to get the Internet back up. Computers and technological things were outlawed. Every organization had one—they had to—but they and the people who ran them were kept isolated.
But she wanted to see that plane. She stood more erect. “That’s impossible. If Olga’s plane disappeared, why is she here? Now film her!” She waved her arm and retreated to the wings to watch.
The little idiot stood there like a rag doll, that ridiculous coat hanging off her shoulders. A smile twitched on one corner of Madeleine’s mouth. They would find out whether or not she was an imposter right now. “Dance!” she commanded. “Dance, girl!”
The waif looked at her with sad gray eyes. Madeleine wanted to slap her. If she wasn’t the real Olga, or if she couldn’t dance well enough to impress the trustees, Madeleine was in trouble.
She’d borrowed a little from school funds. Just a little, to finance her search for an appropriate partner for Richard. She had to get him someone worthy, someone who would show him off. He was the finest student she’d ever had. When he was discovered, they would remember her through him. Richard would be her legacy to dance. The big companies had overlooked him because of terrible partners and his own laziness.
The girls at the school had spoiled him, her perfect danseur, by behaving like streetwalkers. He needed discipline—and a partner who could dance.
You’d think he’d be interested in his new partner, Madeleine thought. I went all the way to Russia to get her. You’d think he’d want to greet her when she arrived, that he’d be as upset as I am about her being late.
What happened today had been typical. She had told Richard when Olga was supposed to arrive. He had waited an hour. When one of his little hussies came by, he had left. She hadn’t seen him since. Her lips contracted.
Madeleine went to Russia during the summer to recruit a prima ballerina in Moscow, the center of the ballet world. She hadn’t informed the Hermitage authorities of her purpose; getting their approval would have been a nightmare. Originally, she wanted Katarina Petrovaskya, a brilliant dancer. Unfortunately, her demands were exorbitant. Madeleine spent almost all of her money trying to woo her. She took the girl and her family to the best clubs and restaurants, only to have them turn the Hermitage down.
Terrified of what would happen when the trustees found she had returned with no dancer and no way to pay back what she’d taken, Madeleine had beat the bushes, searching the ballet schools anywhere near Moscow. She had heard about Olga, who was stuck in a third-rate school far from the capital. She had interviewed the girl and her mother on the phone, and watched recordings of her dancing. She’d never met her, or seen her dance in person.
She was exactly what Madeleine wanted for Richard. She had fine Russian technique and the elegant appearance that would complement his good looks without overwhelming him.
If the girl on the stage was one-tenth the dancer she’d seen on the disk, Madeleine would be all right. She hadn’t told the trustees how much it would cost to have Olga and her mother in residence for a year. And she hadn’t told Olga and her mother that her contacts with major names in the US ballet world weren’t too current. In fact, most of the big ones were dead.
If this girl, who looked mentally deficient, turned out to be a good dancer but not Olga, things could work out very well. She would have no stipend to pay, no contacts to supply, and no defection to deal with the following year. But she had to be able to dance.
“Dance! Dance!” Madeleine waved her arms. “Do anything.”
The girl looked at her like a robot.
“Maybe she needs music,” shouted one of the cameramen.
“Yes, of course. Olga, what kind of music do you want?”
The girl stared at her, then gazed vacantly around the room.
“Just play anything,” the cameraman said. “Don’t you have some canned tunes?”
“We do not use canned tunes.” She held her hand over her eyes to protect them from the glare. “You over there, the one by the sound system. We have recordings of some of the greatest music ever written. Classic ballets, symphonies. Play those.”
“We did a demo tape, ma’am,” one of the boys said. “Something that the trustees might like. It’s from the Golden Age. The trustees always like the classics.”
When she heard Rhapsody in Blue, the girl raised her head and looked around the theatre. She cocked her head to one side, then the other. A smile lit her lips. The old coat fell to the ground and she
went en pointe. She stepped out, swaying to the music.
She moved with the music, filling it up. She raised her hands and it was like... a planet was being formed. She moved from Rhapsody in Blue all the way through jazz to Coltrane, then into pop.
The girl stood there, flat on her feet, listening to “Proud Mary” like she’d never heard of Tina Turner. And then she started to dance, exploding all over the stage in a succession of flips and cartwheels mixed with ballet leaps. It was dance, and it was circus, and it was wonderful.
Elvis crooned after Sinatra, and Olga danced. When they finally got to contemporary bands, Madeleine was so awed that she didn’t object. Terrible bands: Funk Junk, Caligula, Ted E. Bears, and, of course, FUK. The girl loved it all, dancing even harder.
Blue lights flashed off her; they were not stage effects. The cameraman looked at his screen and gave a thumbs-up: “The flashes record just fine.”
Olga—or whoever she was—kept dancing. She didn’t seem the slightest bit tired. Madeleine looked at her watch. Three hours!
She nodded to the others to wrap it up. She stood by the curtains, spine erect, unaware that her lips were parted and she was gazing adoringly at the girl.
“Oh,” she said. “She’s wonderful.” Her hand went to her chest. “If only I could see her dance to something classical...”
Something classical began to play, and the girl went up on her pointes again. Madeleine was speechless. She couldn’t hear the music for the power of the feeling the girl conveyed. By the time she was finished, Madeleine knew how that swan felt, dying out there on the stage. She wanted to weep for every animal killed, every heart broken.
She waved to them to cut the sound, turning her back to the others and pulling out a handkerchief. When she looked back at the stage, Olga was standing there, the ridiculous coat on, looking down, her shoes pointing in a bit.
The camera crew came back to the real world slowly. Madame M, quiet for once, led the girl out. They got their equipment together and started to go back to their floor to see what they had.
They didn’t talk much. Couldn’t.
“I didn’t know anyone could dance like that,” Nancy whispered. “I can’t believe she did that.”
“I think I’m in love,” Joel said.
“I wonder if she’s dating anyone,” Brad mused.
“I wouldn’t go out with her,” Joel said. “She’s so perfect. Making a move on her would be like making a move on an angel.”
They all nodded.
“I noticed one thing,” said Nancy. “I’ve shot a lot of dance footage, and you wouldn’t believe how they sweat. By the time they’re warmed up, sweat flies off them. If they pirouette, it’s like, intense. But she didn’t sweat.”
“She didn’t warm up either. And she danced for three-and-a-half hours without stopping, with no choreography,” Joel said.
They looked at each other. What really happened to that plane? Who was she?
5
Madeleine Mercier crept up the stairs with her arm around the girl. Those leaps... as though gravity didn’t exist. The pirouettes. Her long, slow adagios were lyrical and poignant. And when she moved en pointe, it was as though she didn’t have toes, as though her feet were made to balance her entire weight on two square inches.
She needed training, of course, and discipline. Molding. She would never dance to that modern music again or do acrobatics. Madeleine’s eyes glowed as she considered their future. Olga would be her gift to the world of dance. Together, they would scale the heights. No one would think of her as a has-been again.
She thought briefly of Richard and dismissed him. The girl was too good for Richard. Oh, he’d dance with her. But Olga was the star now.
They emerged into the main hallway. Where to put the girl for the night? She hadn’t been able to find a suitable apartment for Olga and her mother and chaperone. Rents were too high. She’d take Olga home, but faculty members were not allowed to have students in their homes unless it was a party to which everyone was invited. Incidents happen; they had happened at the Hermitage. Suspicion had even been cast on her.
They were almost at the front door when it opened and the parking lot guard walked in.
“You’re here late, Henry.” She stood even more erect. Her voice became a little harsher, as it did when she addressed an inferior. She noticed he was carrying two suitcases. Maybe the girl’s luggage had arrived.
“Well, actually, ma’am, I went home and I’m back again. I saw that she didn’t have much in the way of clothes. My wife went through our girls’ closets and found all sorts of things.” He chuckled and held out the suitcases. “She hasn’t given away a thing since Natie and Leona were kids. This should keep her warm.”
He set the cases on the floor. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good evening.” He turned to the door.
“Wait! Don’t go.” Madeleine wrinkled her brow. “Could the school rent your empty bedroom? I need a place for her; she can’t stay with me. You know the rules. I don’t have much money...”
“You don’t need to pay me. My wife missed our girls so much that I bought her a little dog. We’d love to have her. But I need written permission, ma’am. The rules apply to me, too.”
“Fine. I’ll give you permission. I’m her guardian.” Madeleine dashed into the office and scribbled a few lines on the school’s stationery. Who would know that she wasn’t Olga’s guardian? Besides, if that girl was Olga Bazhenova, she was Margot Fonteyn.
She returned and handed the paper to Henry. “I’d keep her under wraps,” she said. The look on his face said he knew why.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll take good care of her and have her back at school in the morning.”
Henry opened the school’s massive front door and they walked out into the chill of the evening. He carried the suitcases, one in each hand. They were heavier going back to the apartment. I should get extra credit for exercising today, he thought. Weight lifting and aerobics.
Olga crowded as close to him as she could as they moved along the streets. He had to be careful not to swing one of the cases into her. She stared at the traffic as though she’d never seen urban streets before, pulling away like she expected the cars to jump the curb and get her. She looked under them, amazement on her face.
“They hover, honey. They’re OK. You don’t want to put a hand under there, but they’re safe otherwise,” he tried to reassure her. “Walk over here, Olga, away from the street. That’s right.” He kept up the patter, trying to calm her down. “I called Lena to tell her you were coming home with me. She’s makin’ a real feast for you. We’re as pleased as we can be that you’ll be staying with us.”
She stared into doorways. Homeless people were claiming portions of the sidewalk as they did every night. She made a little shriek at the first one she saw passed out.
“Look! Sick!” she said. “Help person.”
“Honey, that’s just how it is. If you’ve got a roof over your head, you’re lucky. They’ll be coming along soon to pick them up and take them to shelters.” That’s what the city said they did with them. People forced themselves to believe that. “Rich folks drive cars in New York City,” he told her. “Poor folks walk or take the subway.”
They walked silently until they reached the apartment. Henry opened the door to the building, grinning broadly. “We’re here,” he called into the intercom. “Be right up.”
They walked up the stairs to Henry’s third-floor apartment, the girl almost under his feet as she had been all the way home. It was a nice building. Between his wages and Lena’s, and Mrs. Edgarton’s help, they had found a place that wasn’t falling down and had been painted within human memory. The hallways were clean, the lights worked, and nothing smelled too bad.
The odor of Lena’s barbecued ribs bathed them when they walked in the door. Lena had a banquet out on the table, home cooking the way her folks did it back on the farm. Collard greens, grits and gravy. And those ribs that fell off the bone
and tasted like they were made in sauce heaven.
“See now, we got lots for you to eat, an’ it’s warm in here.” He was sweating under his collar. Lena must have turned up the heat to slow cook.
He took off his scarf and put down the suitcases. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Lena. This is Olga, the little girl I told you about.”
Lena’s eyes lit up. “Oh, honey, come here. Let me hug you.”
The girl let Lena embrace her, but stood mute.
“Does she talk, Henry?”
“A word or two. She supposedly can dance better than anyone in this city, maybe anywhere on the planet. But she don’t talk much.”
“Well, honey, come on in here. I’ll show you your room.” When Lena opened the door, a mass of white hair leapt out and dashed around the room, front and back legs scissoring wildly. The dog made a circuit before stopping in front of them, hind end wagging.
“Oh, Shaq, you are the cutest thing in the world.” Lena bent down to pet him. Shaq had streaks of black hair around bright eyes. A pink tongue lolled out of his mouth. Two feet stuck out of the hair in front, planted as though he were a giant. Shaq ducked his head and looked at the stranger as though deciding whether to bite or wiggle.
“Báslikay!” the girl exclaimed. “Báslikay...” She jumped at the dog and hugged him as though he were her best friend. “Báslikay.” Shaq wagged his tail and smiled as if he’d been waiting for her.
“My goodness, Henry! Have you seen anything like that?” Henry shook his head. “Shaq’s been known to chase our guests back into the hall. That’s why we lock him up when people come,” Lena said, bending toward the girl. “We call him a dog. Can you say dog? He’s a Lhasa Apso. Henry bought him for me after my girls left. I named him after Shaquille O’Neal, a gorgeous man from history. Would you like to see your room? Then we can eat.”
