Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

by David Dickinson

  ‘Indeed, Mr Neeskens. Now tell me your plan of action. I came here to place myself in your hands, after all.’

  ‘Thank you. You were wise to do so. Tomorrow Jacob sets off to Vienna on a train so early he will hardly go to bed at all. I shall transact my business from here. For yourself I propose that you set off for Munich. I shall furnish you with the name of a firm we trust in that great city. They have wide contacts across Germany. We shall be in touch three evenings from now.’

  Powerscourt might have been unwilling to visit Diaghilev’s creations, but the same morning the Ballets Russes came to him just as he was about to go out.

  ‘Monsieur Fokine of the Ballets Russes, to see you, my lord.’ Rhys the Powerscourt butler coughed his usual cough when announcing visitors, ‘Monsieur Michel Fokine.’

  Fokine was a tall slim young man with dark hair and a dazzling smile.

  ‘My dear Lord Powerscourt, please don’t get up, and pardon me for calling on you out of the blue,’ he began, settling down on the edge of the Powerscourt sofa and disturbing the twins’ cat.

  ‘How very nice to see you, Mr Fokine. The Ballets Russes are the talk of London,’ said Powerscourt, waiting for the young man to declare his business.

  ‘I have come to apologize for the lack of cooperation between our company and yourself and your associates, Lord Powerscourt. All I can say is that Diaghilev is a hard and occasionally erratic taskmaster. His thoughts are always on the ballets. I know he regards the murder as an irritant, a flea to divert him from his real purposes.’

  ‘And what would you say they were, those purposes, Mr Fokine?’

  ‘Well, Sergei Pavlovich wants to create the finest ballet company the world has ever seen. And it will be a Russian ballet company, for he is very conscious of the country he comes from, even if his creations are always seen in the lands of others. He does not work alone, Diaghilev, in spite of his love of publicity – which he says is always about the ballet and never about him. There are a group of people – writers, artists, musicians, set designers and costume designers, composers and so on – who form his inner circle. He leads but he always brings them with him. He has a craving for the new. He is, if you like, a dictator of whim, a dictator of passing fancies, of awful temper and a gift for making enemies where he need not and then being reconciled to them. I think he is the greatest impresario the world has ever seen. I know, for example, that I too will be out of fashion one day for Diaghilev and his ballets. Then I will also be cast on the scrapheap of Diaghilev’s ambitions, like so many before me.’

  ‘And what would you say is the reason for the Ballets Russes’ success?’

  Fokine suddenly began to pace up and down the Powerscourt drawing room, as if he were Powerscourt himself.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the young man, ‘I often think better walking up and down. Let me put it this way. Suppose your house here, Lord Powerscourt, is the world of ballet before Diaghilev came along. The composer lives in the basement. The librettist is in the attic along with the corps de ballet. The producer is in the other half of the basement. I, the choreographer, am in your study with the telephone I saw on my way upstairs. The set designer lives on the first floor along with the scene shifters. The other choreographer is on the second floor. So is Diaghilev. Nobody speaks to each other. Each prepares his part in the performance without any contact at all with the other elements. That is what Diaghilev changed. They may all still live in this house, but they talk to each other all the time now; there are non-stop meetings to build an integrated whole, here in your drawing room. It’s this cooperation, this cross-fertilization of ideas, that has made the ballet what it is.’

  ‘Were you surprised by the murder, Monsieur Fokine?’

  ‘Of course I was, Lord Powerscourt. We all were. Jealousy, feuds, factions, temporary ganging up on somebody for no apparent reason; all these are commonplace in a group of people forced to live very closely together for long periods of time. I expect you could find similar displays of emotion in any other similar organization. But murder is something new. After an interval of six months or so, I expect Diaghilev to order somebody to compose the music for an opera about a murder, only it will take place in the seraglio of some Eastern potentate, with dramatic colours to be provided by Bakst and dance choreographed by me. The murder, if you like,’ here Fokine stopped walking and resumed his seat, ‘was the culmination of things that had gone before, but things that had always run their course without the terrible outcome of death on the stage.’

  ‘So the death will not have come as a complete surprise?’

  ‘That depends on how old you are, Lord Powerscourt. For the young girls who make my life difficult, it will have come as a complete shock. Many, I’m sure, will be wondering if their mamas or papas are going to arrive in London suddenly to take them home. I do not think they would want to go – the murder adds a certain spice to life. It gives people something else to talk about after Diaghilev’s affair with Nijinsky or whether the company is bankrupt or not.’

  ‘I was going to come to the bankruptcy in a moment, actually. But first, let me ask you this. Remember that we have only talked to the girls of the corps de ballet. The young men, it would seem, do not have the same appetite for tea from the samovar and the finest English cakes as the girls.’

  ‘I wish I could help you there,’ said the young choreographer, ‘but the night of the murder I was waiting in the wings to make sure nothing went wrong. They were my ballets, if you like. So I wouldn’t have noticed anything happening offstage. But there is one thing you should know.’ Fokine paused for a moment to brush a speck of dust off his immaculate trousers. ‘The girls would never know it because they never see it.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘That whole area backstage – there’s nobody looking after it during the performance, no porter, nobody from the Royal Opera House staff. I’ve often wandered round there when one of my ballets is on next – I’m a great prowler, as you saw just now. There are all kinds of people scurrying about: dressers, make-up artists, people bringing messages for one of the stars, new props being delivered, new costumes. It could be anything or anybody.’

  ‘I do have one question for you, Monsieur Fokine, and let me tell you how grateful I am for your visit here and the help you have already provided. I hope I may ask you more questions as the investigation develops. And I presume that you would not want Diaghilev to know of our association?’

  ‘Diaghilev would have a major tantrum if he knew I was in touch with you, Lord Powerscourt. He is a possessive man and I, for the moment, am one of his possessions. Shouting, expulsion from the ballet, wish that I’d never been born, what a hopeless choreographer I am – that would just be for starters.’

  ‘My question is this,’ Powerscourt said, ‘and it may not at first sight have much to do with the case in hand. But it may do. Is the Ballets Russes going bankrupt? Is Diaghilev – for the moment, anyway – completely broke? Bankruptcy has a startling effect – it ricochets around the place, crashing into all sorts of unexpected people and places. That information could be most helpful.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, my very best for you, Lord Powerscourt. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind knowing about a bankruptcy myself.’

  8

  Partnering

  In general, partnering is an effort by both the male and female dancers to achieve a harmony of movement so that the audience is unaware of the mechanics to enjoy the emotional effects. Also known as pas de deux, or dance for two.

  For a male dancer, partnering includes lifting, catching, and carrying a partner, also assisting with jumps, promenades and supported pirouettes.

  Scarcely were M. Fokine’s elegant trousers from Paris out of the door when Rhys and his cough were in action one more.

  ‘Sergeant Jenkins to see you, my lord.’

  The Sergeant was in a state of high excitement. Powerscourt wondered if his red hair hadn’t turned an even deeper shade.

&nbs
p; ‘They’ve spotted him, my lord! They saw him coming through on the boat from Calais!’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant, who is this “he” you speak of? You make it sound like the Second Coming.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that, my lord. Not yet, anyway. My granny always says the Second Coming will never happen under a Liberal government. Don’t ask me why. Sorry, my lord, my mate Charlie Watchett works in the “make sure they don’t kill the King or the PM or members of the Cabinet watch out for foreign spies” bit of the police. He says the boys at Dover picked up a tip from the Frenchies that this messenger from Lenin was coming. They all think this Lenin person is pretty important. Charlie’s boys watched the messenger walk onto English soil this morning.’

  ‘Did they let him through, or did they arrest him?’

  ‘Very cunning this, my lord, they let him through. Charlie and the lads are going to have to watch out for him in London.’

  ‘Did he have a name? No doubt he has many names and many disguises, but which one was he using for the present?’

  ‘Karl Lodost, Pole from Warsaw, my lord. Can I ask you a question, my lord? I know I should have found the answer by now, but I’m worried that some inspector will ask me about the man and I won’t know a thing.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt, repressing a smile. ‘Fire ahead.’

  ‘Who is this Lenin person everyone seems to get so worked up about?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m sure Lenin, man of steel, isn’t his real name either. He’s a leader of a band of revolutionaries, one particular band of revolutionaries, as there are many more. They are people who want to throw out kings and emperors and parliaments and replace them with rule by the working class. He wants to overthrow the institutions of democracy and replace them with the rule of himself and his fellows. Quite how that would be better is not clear. Quite how it is to be achieved, this revolutionary heaven, is not clear either. Lenin is banned from Russia, where he comes from, and has become a wandering preacher of revolution, usually by pamphlet, across the face of Europe.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sergeant Jenkins. ‘I believe we have a few of our own here in London, our own home-grown revolutionaries, or so Charlie tells me. He says he has to pinch himself to stay awake when he has to go to their meetings. They all carry on so. They keep on mentioning the name of some other bloke – Karl Marx, is he called? He seems to be the Top Prophet man.’

  ‘You keep thinking of Karl Marx as Top Prophet, Sergeant, and you won’t go far wrong.’

  ‘But what’s this messenger man doing here, my lord?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Russia’s troubles seem to have come a long way from home if they’re ending up in Markham Square. New revolutionary Congress perhaps? They’re always holding mass rallies, like the revivalist preachers they resemble. Only thing is that there are so few of them in any one country that they have to invite everybody they can think of from the entire Continent. They say the arguments about which city should host the meeting – London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna – can go on for months. Perhaps it’s one of those. Maybe there’s another pamphlet due from Lenin. They’re great ones for pamphlets, these revolutionaries, Sergeant. I’d advise you to keep in touch with your friend Charlie. He may bring us further news, though I do find it hard to think of a link between Lenin and his friends and the Ballets Russes.’

  Natasha Shaporova would have been the first to claim that she loved her fellow countrymen and women very dearly. But a little of that sisterly love was, if not abating, receding slightly from the shore. For the route from Covent Garden to her house in Chelsea seemed to her to have an Ariadne’s thread strung out along the way. The girls from the corps de ballet came in ones and twos and threes and fours, all lured by the prospect of tea from the samovar and the icons on the wall and an occasional visit from the local priest and a place where Russian was the normal language. She had discovered one important thing, and she was going to tell Lord Powerscourt as soon as she could. At first, in those early meetings in the Fielding Hotel, the name of Alfred Bolm and the suggestion that he might have pursued some of the young girls had been a trickle. Definitely there, but a trickle nonetheless. Now it had turned into a torrent.

  You couldn’t get into a lift with the man. He wasn’t to be trusted in a train or taxi or any form of wheeled transport. His presents had to be returned immediately, his other advances rejected. Natasha knew that none of these girls could have carried out the murder, but what about the other members of the company – the reserves, as she called them, who weren’t on the stage that fateful night? Could one of them, carefully selected by her fellows for her skill with the dagger in the Cossack dance, have performed in a new adaptation below the stage?

  Natasha also sensed that the girls had been turned homesick by the murder. In St Petersburg by now, the police would have arrested somebody, almost certainly the wrong person, but still an arrest. Now the plaintive calls grew in number. Why was London so big? Why were there so many people in it? Where was the sea? Why did the people always walk so quickly? Why did nobody speak Russian? Why hadn’t the police arrested somebody? It was Diaghilev who had done it. It was Bakst. It was Fokine, his patience finally exhausted by the ballet girls until he could kill the first person he saw.

  For Natasha, that last accusation was too unkind. The girls had gone and she and Mikhail had an important engagement. They were going to meet Lady Lucy and Lord Francis at the ballet.

  Powerscourt had known it was coming. It was fruitless to resist. He had said how nice in what he thought was a friendly fashion to Lady Lucy in the taxi that brought them here to the evening performance of the Ballets Russes in the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. She looked at him with deep but silent suspicion. Now he was in their box. He waved to Natasha and Mikhail in their box on the opposite side of the auditorium. He could hear the orchestra revving up. He remembered an old saying of his father’s about going to the dentist: just remember when it starts that you’re much closer to the end; to the whole visit being over.

  There were garlands on the stage already and things hadn’t even started. Now they had! They were off! The music seemed to be almost a lullaby. The curtains rose to reveal a small pack of ballerinas, as Powerscourt referred to them, apparently frozen on stage. He remembered this one from his last visit all those years before. They’re going to start prancing about now, he told himself. Then that one in the outrageous costume will wake up on her high bed and she too will start prancing about. Round and about, up and down, forward to the front of the stage went the ballerinas. Powerscourt thought that it was like a moving harem, a tableau of female flesh on display. When the music stopped you could pick your girl. You might have to dance your way off the stage with her, but you could retire to some invisible box behind the curtains. But no. The music did not stop. Instead, as Powerscourt had prophesied, the one on the bed woke up. She too began strutting about. The others retired to the back of the stage, wares still on display, minimum clothing, maximum length of leg still available. It was a miracle the Lord Chamberlain, keeper of theatrical virtue in the capital, hadn’t intervened. Any moment now, Powerscourt said to himself, the music’s going to change gear and became more urgent, more dramatic. It did. And – Powerscourt felt on top of his form now – some bloke is going to appear and jump about. He did. The fellow appeared capable of some of the highest leaps Powerscourt had ever seen. The audience were on the edge of their seats. Powerscourt felt this chap could win Olympic gold for the high jump if he ever bothered. Only later was he to learn that his name was Nijinsky. Passion offered, passion rejected, passion offered again – yet more leaping about, higher still and higher, and at last the first ballet of the evening was over. Passion seemed to have been resolved as the high jumper and the sleeping one seemed to move off together. The applause was deafening. One ballet down, only two to go, Powerscourt said to himself. He felt quite cheerful. If he could sit through one of the bloody things, two shouldn’t be a proble
m. The evening at the dentist’s would soon be over.

  That same evening another telegram arrived for M. Diaghilev at the Savoy Hotel in London. It came from Venice. The message was short and to the point: ‘Regret, repeat regret that your outstanding bills with the Grand Hotel have still not been cleared. No repeat accommodation will be offered here until they are settled. Giulio Baggini, General Manager Grand Hotel Venezia.’ The message joined its companions, unopened and unread, in the guests’ letterboxes in the Savoy Hotel reception.

  9

  Danseur noble

  A highly accomplished male ballet dancer. The female equivalent is Prima ballerina (Italian) or danseuse (French). A danseur noble is not just any dancer in the world of ballet, but one who has received international critical accolades from the dance community . . . Most boys and men who dance classical ballet are just called danseurs.

  The excitement in the Servants’ Hall at Blenheim was almost palpable. The footmen and the chambermaids and the gardeners and the coachmen and the chauffeurs hadn’t been so excited since they learned that their lord and master, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, was to play an important role in the coronation service of King George V. But this was something different. The Duke’s man of business had mentioned it to the manager of the Bear Hotel in Woodstock. He had been overheard by one of the barmen. The barman, in his turn, told his brother, who kept a clothing shop in the town, but who was married to a local girl whose sister was one of the chambermaids in the big house. The intelligence took strange shapes on its voyages. The Russian Ballet was coming to the palace. That was definite. There were varying attempts to guess the size of the company. Some said thirty. Some attested that that must be rubbish, there had to be at least a hundred of them. The Tsar was coming, said the monarchists below stairs. No he wasn’t, said the others – the whole thing was run by a big man called Diaghilev who spoke no English but swore at everybody in Russian. On two points there was general agreement. The ballerinas would be very beautiful. And that it would be a triumph for Blenheim Palace, making it for a time the most famous big house in the country – which it was anyway, they acknowledged, but people needed to be reminded of it from time to time.