Thirty-three Swoons

by Martha Cooley

  This was my cue. Hamlet, I prompted. Handsprings.

  Seva grinned, spun around once, and instantly assumed the aspect of the melancholy prince. “To be,” he began sonorously, then quickly inverted himself—hands flat on the ground and feet pointing skyward—as he performed the play’s famous soliloquy upside down. It amazed me to see how long and easily he could stand on his hands.

  Fetal position, I offered next. Seva brought his feet to the floor, went immediately into a crouch, tucked his head, wrapped his arms around his knees, and fell to his side, his entire body clenched into a ball. “A ghost!” he squeaked, the pitch of his Hamlet-voice unnaturally high. “Doesn’t anybody else see him?” Breaking into childish laughter, he rolled his body in a tight circle on the floor.

  Fencer’s pose, I suggested. Seva leapt to his feet, pulled an imaginary mask over his face, and stiffened one outstretched arm as if he were brandishing a foil. He then proceeded to mime Hamlet’s death-fight in slow motion, making it look beautifully balletic. “Follow my mother,” he commanded his invisible opponent, the stabbed Claudius, at the end. As soon as the words left his mouth, his entire affect changed again; this time he was waddling and quacking like a duckling in pursuit of its mama. A few seconds later the duck became a long-necked swan as Seva’s shoulders pulsed and he hissed at an invisible enemy.

  A musical instrument, I inserted into his improvisation. Abruptly the swan fell silent, replaced by a sleepy-eyed owl. “For O, for O,” Seva murmured, mimicking Hamlet in conversation with Ophelia. Then he began playing an imaginary flute, whistling its music. After a few lively bars, the tune ceased as Seva extended his make-believe flute before him. “Yet you cannot make it speak,” he ended quietly in the prince’s voice: half accusatory, half elegiac, wholly credible. A wonderful deep silence ensued while Seva bowed. Then he shouted, Bravo!, clapping as if at someone else’s performance, and the happy noise of his applause filled the studio.

  To me such afternoons represented the best of what Seva and I did together—carefree collaboration, playfulness for its own sake. If I could erase those sessions from memory, I would, but I cannot. They persist, inescapable reminders of my derelictions. I ought to have encouraged Seva to take a harder look at his love for his country, which impelled his art; I could have pushed him to question whether there was something profoundly self-annulling in that love. I might have read the early writing on the dark wall . . . But I simply looked the other way, as doubles do.

  WITH THE advent of World War I, many of Seva’s acting students went off to fight against the Austro-Hungarian forces. The studio was forced to share its quarters with a temporary military hospital that set up beds for convalescing soldiers on the ground floor. Occasionally these men served as an audience for the students’ efforts. Seva liked their frank, unpretentious reactions; he considered them ideal spectators.

  Civil war was brewing, too. It broke out in St. Petersburg on February 25, 1917, the same day Seva staged the premiere of Lermontov’s Masquerade at the Alexandrinsky. Not far from the theater, the czar’s men were peppering the proletariat with machine-gun spray. One critic, disgusted by the lavish staging and costumes of Seva’s production, failed to perceive its underlying grimness. In his review the next day, he wrote scornfully, “What is this, Rome after the Caesars?”—as if Seva were impervious to the calamities unfolding outside the theater.

  He wasn’t, of course. A few months later, Seva accepted an invitation to a Bolshevik-sponsored conference on reorganizing the arts in Soviet Russia. That was a risky thing to do, as the Bolsheviks weren’t yet assuredly in power. Then, after breaking his contract with the State Opera, he staged Mystery-Bouffe, a play by Volodya Mayakovsky—Seva’s poet-playwright friend, and a real piece of work.

  I’ve never encountered anyone as hugely smart and difficult as that man! Mystery-Bouffe gave me my first look at Volodya in high gear. His play had been underwritten by the Commissariat for Enlightenment (nicknamed Narkompros), which clearly wasn’t expecting what Mayakovsky offered—an amusing, heady parody of the Noah’s Ark story. At one point during the final dress rehearsal, several Narkompros representatives in the audience shifted uneasily in their seats while Volodya (playing three parts himself) actually climbed an iron fire escape behind the proscenium arch, hooked himself onto a rope, and jumped into space while declaiming his lines. Given how big he was, this was like watching Goliath play Tinkerbell. Seva nearly fell over laughing.

  TIME FLIES, they say, when fun is being had; and when there’s war, and marital discord, and falling in love, and moving from one city to another.

  Much changed in Seva’s life between the start and end of the civil war. He moved to Moscow in 1920, and he and Olga, his first wife, parted in 1921. That was a year of drought and famine across Russia, and the marriage was another victim, one could say, of the general desiccation. Its demise was necessary for both parties.

  Seva married Zina a year later—the same year Stalin took the helm of the Party and Mussolini seized power in Italy; the same year James Joyce published Ulysses and T. S. Eliot brought out The Waste Land; the same year Cocteau did Antigone in Paris and Brecht did Drums in the Night in Munich. The same year, too, in which Seva formed the Actors’ Theater, got himself appointed artistic director of the newly formed Theater of the Revolution, and took charge of the State Institute of Theatrical Art, itself soon housing a separate Meyerhold Workshop, which actually ran the Actors’ Theater. Seva’s professional life had become a multi-ring circus.

  The Twenties were his most fruitful years; his work deepened, as did his collaborations with other artists. In the performing arts, miraculous things were happening, and Seva stood at the center of them, their lead innovator. Most of the time he was too busy to be distraught about anything more than the difficulties of keeping his facilities in good running order. Money and supplies were tight, and like everyone else, Seva had to make do with very little. Now and then he’d grow discouraged, and his discouragement would swell beyond the particulars into a general dismay, an intuitive foreboding about the political situation.

  AT THESE moments I’d step in. The first thing I did, invariably, was to suggest certain behavioral modifications that might relieve his tension. In addition to directing him toward physical outlets, I was also attempting to dislodge certain of Seva’s unproductive mental habits.

  Usually my preliminary tactic was to get him to dance by himself. He was a graceful man who loved movement of all kinds; rhythm was the key to his method as a stage director. He had a keen sense of the power of pauses or rapid shifts in tempo, of movements that anticipate or lag behind speech. Seva developed his own system of exercises, which he called biomechanics, to help his students discipline their bodies and better appreciate the ways in which actions and words could be harmonized and counterpointed.

  I knew right away when he’d begun imagining a new gesture or movement. First his shoulders would soften and his knees would flex lightly. Then, turning his back on anyone who happened to be present, he’d begin performing whatever he was envisioning. Sometimes he’d end up on the floor; at other times he’d work mostly with his upper body, his legs immobile. He had exceedingly expressive hands, and some of his movements were limited entirely to them—manual dances. After he’d played with his ideas for a while, he’d run to find his journal and make notations. In these moments he was more purely content than at any other time. Even the pleasures afforded him by Zina’s companionship couldn’t compete with the quiet joys he derived from his own explorations of movement.

  And so whenever he grew unusually distressed, I’d begin by encouraging him to shut his door and move around a bit. Although this usually worked, there were occasions when it was unavailing, and I’d urge him to listen to music instead. If Mitya Shostakovich was around, a few minutes of his piano playing might be enough to turn the tide. Mitya liked to improvise, and Seva was always fascinated by what came off the tips of his fingers, as it were.

  But if no one, not e
ven Zina, was in the theater (which was often the case, as Seva liked to work at odd hours), I’d go so far as to suggest that he engage in a bit of onanistic activity. Sometimes this was just the ticket. Like so many work-obsessed people, Seva could be curiously insensitive to the promptings of sexual desire in himself. I’d drop the hint, let it take hold, and leave him alone to please himself as he saw fit.

  When neither movement nor music nor masturbation sufficed, I knew Seva was in a rough spot. At these moments I had recourse to my best aid, the oldest human sense—smell—which can sway any mood. To Seva’s nostrils I’d introduce first the slight sharpness of ripe currants, then the dulcet scent of just-picked strawberries. Instantly he’d be transported to the countryside near Penza, to the Sura River and the fields in Oukhtomovka, where as a boy he used to chase swallows. He’d exhale a sigh of relief.

  I made sure, however, never to bring to his nose the scent of Solanum dulcamara, a climbing vine with delicate purple flowers and bright red berries that grows across much of Europe and parts of Russia. A member of the nightshade family, it looks enticing but is actually deadly; ingested, its berries can quickly poison a person. It’s called bittersweet. Seva, I knew, would be drawn to it because of its name.

  I could see dimly where things were headed, and I didn’t want to give Seva any ideas. His world was in a bad way. Just how bad I couldn’t have known; I’m no clairvoyant.

  WHEN MEMORY brings me to this juncture—to those magical afternoons with Seva in the theater, just the two of us, the air backstage redolent with the scent of red berries—I become a little desperate and must switch gears. Otherwise I start thinking about my burden of failure, about how I should have made Seva say something at the trial—something that would have redeemed him in their eyes—though for the life of me I don’t know what that would have been, what might have worked, what could possibly have swayed them . . .

  Enough, then. Nothing further needs to be said now about my former partner or our partnership. Back to where we left off! Reenter Camilla, into whose next dream her father was once again inserted. Along with Seva, for a brief cameo at the end.

  TWO

  LITTLE OBJECTS are whirring in a circle around the man’s face, which, like the rest of him, is harshly backlit. The blurred movements around his head distract me; I can’t make out any of his features. I am alone at the rear of the theater, staring at the stage.

  Stuart, I call, is that you?

  No, answers the man as he keeps juggling. How disappointing. You fail to recognize your own father!

  I move closer. Now I see: it’s Jordan in a tux, his pale face slathered in greasepaint, his eyebrows and lips etched in black and red. His hands are white-gloved, and he sports a yellow cummerbund and patent-leather slippers. His hair’s slicked back. He isn’t wearing glasses.

  How can you do that without your glasses, Jordan?

  Practice, my dear. Years of practice. He speeds up his tempo slightly; the shapes make a soft whistling sound as they orbit. They’re not balls, but I can’t yet tell what they might be.

  But you never learned—

  Correction: I never studied. I learned—I taught myself! A true vocation requires dedication. You and I are both obsessive. Takes one to know one, doesn’t it?

  I’m still trying to discern the shapes he’s juggling, but they’re spinning too quickly. Slow it down a minute, I say, getting up from my seat and climbing onto the stage. I want to look.

  He obliges, plucking each object from the air, one by one, until finally they’re all resting in the crook of his left arm. Moving to a spotlit area of the stage, he arrays them gently on the floor. We crouch together and examine the objects glinting at us.

  They’re perfume bottles—seven in all. Some are sharply faceted; others have voluptuously swollen edges. The bottles vary in size, though none is larger than a woman’s fist. Some of their stoppers are elongated, some flat topped. Several have been ornately worked into the forms of serpents, bees, or vines. The necks of the bottles are wrapped with delicate gold, silver, or black cord. None of the flacons has a label; all are empty.

  Why are there seven? I ask Jordan.

  One for each day of the week, he says.

  Whose are they?

  Who owns them, you mean? Or who designed them? I do. I did.

  And their fragrances? Why are they all empty?

  Kneeling, my father picks up two bottles and starts juggling them. He adds a third; slowly, sure-handedly, he swipes each of the remaining bottles from the floor and puts them into play, gradually elevating the entire cluster of seven while raising himself from squat to upright.

  The fragrances . . . The bottles whiz around his head. Ah, I wish I knew what happened to them, my dear! It’s so mysterious. Apparently I can have one or the other—scent or bottle—but not both. Yet without its vessel, the scent vanishes; and without its scent, the vessel is an echo, not actual music, merely an empty echo . . .

  He continues juggling for a moment, then lets the bottles drop, one by one. Seven smashing sounds later, my father is surrounded by shards. The spotlight scatters rays of light everywhere.

  Jordan, I call, squinting. I can barely make out his form. The light is blinding me. Now what’ll you do?

  Nearly invisible now, he sings back at me that old Irving Berlin tune: “What’ll I do when you are far away . . .”

  A quick incandescence (in the midst of which I think I see, off in the wings, a tall man in a dark cape), and my father is gone. I smell his absence, a whiff of bitter chocolate.

  TWO MESSAGES blinked on my answering machine when I arrived home. The first was from Danny, who’d called from the subway. She would stop off at BAM, she informed me, and pick up two more tickets, in case Stuart and Carl could join us. They’d surely enjoy a Robert Wilson outing. If they couldn’t make it, no problem—we’d scalp the extras before the performance.

  I left her answering machine a grateful response, suggesting we meet at a bar in Fort Greene beforehand; I’d call Stuart, I added, and let him know the plan. Then I listened to my second message.

  It was from Nick: the Paramour, as I called him. He’d been in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by for a visit. I pictured him calling from a phone booth, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as he spoke into the receiver, all that male energy coursing through him. I could beep him, but it was getting late. He’d probably gone home, and that’s one number I didn’t dial. Not that it mattered. I’d see him soon enough.

  NICK WAS the only man other than Stuart or Sam whose presence in my life I’d have described, then, as continuous. A steady. An odd sort of steady.

  He lived on Avenue B in the East Village, in a brownstone he’d bought two decades earlier. The house had high ceilings, long windows, several fireplaces, and four floors of space, one of which Nick rented to a pair of artists who, like him, had lived in the neighborhood forever. He’d been married almost thirty years—to a nurse practitioner—and had two grown sons, both living in Queens. I envisioned a pair of good-looking, humorous guys, very like their father. Though Nick’s extended family was massive, his father was the only one I met, not long before he died of a heart attack. He was a shorter, thinner version of Nick, with a gusty laugh and one of those great accents you hear among Brooklyn old-timers—he said “burler” for boiler and “toidy” for thirty.

  His death came, I knew, as a blow to his son. Nick and I didn’t talk much about it, though. Our conversations rode a different set of rails.

  WHAT NICK most liked talking about was his work.

  He restored the exteriors of old residential buildings—only old ones; he deplored the construction of new ones. Nick could do amazing things with brownstone, limestone, terra-cotta, and brick. He repaired keystones and capitals and designed ornamental reliefs. Carpentry was a snap for him; he’d been mouthing nails and wielding saws and hammers since he was a kid. The only material he didn’t work with was marble—“a whole other ball game,” he once said to me chee
rfully.

  I met Nick while he was repointing some bricks and fixing the façade of a three-story brownstone next to my apartment building. The first time I spotted him, he was up on a scaffolding at the building’s roofline, his baseball cap turned backward as he poked a crowbar around the cornice to determine the extent of its damage. When I asked him what he was doing, he looked down at me, turning his cap around before answering—to shield his eyes from the sunlight, he later told me, so he could see the face that went with the voice.

  He was a chatterbox. We got to talking, and I noticed his body right away. Heat rayed off him, nearly visible. I’ve seldom picked up on that kind of sexual force so directly without feeling an accompanying hint of threat, but it was soon obvious I had nothing to fear from him. And I wanted him. He was lean and altogether virile in the best way, without self-consciousness. I’d been without a lover for quite a while; intimacy seemed beyond my reach—no, beyond my ken, really. I’d come to see myself as unschooled, unfit. But here was someone who prompted no memories of marital love, a man who had nothing to do with the life of the heart or mind but plenty to do, evidently, with that of the body. He combined a dog’s easygoing nature with a panther’s lithe prowl, that coiled force in the hips and thighs. This, I thought, was a nice animal indeed.

  We started sleeping together—always at my place, usually in the late afternoon or early evening, when he was supposed to be getting supplies for his job or working out at the gym. Soon a week didn’t pass without a visit, often two or three, from Nick. He took to calling me every day, just to check in. Who’d have thought adultery could become so reliable, so nearly domestic?

  The Paramour got what I was doing at The Fourth Wall, quickly revealing a keen sense of what was and wasn’t collectible. Nick noticed things that escaped everyone else’s attention, mine included. A few months after we became involved, he found an antique silver dollar at the corner of West Fourth and West Tenth—a good omen, he claimed, because that intersection is so improbable it’s bound to bestow luck. On the windowsill of a building he was restoring in the East Village, he picked up a green plastic disk that looked like a coin and was lettered in Cyrillic. I showed it to Stuart, who determined that it was a token intended for use in Moscow’s metro system. When I informed Nick, he was skeptical at first, then pleased at having found something so exotic. One day he entered my shop, put his arms around me from behind, and slipped the token into the front pocket of my jeans—a gift. Into the other, he tucked a black silk thong.