Death in the Fifth Position

by Gore Vidal

  “Well, dear, it’s been a real sensation … let me tell you. And such publicity! If it doesn’t sell tickets my name isn’t Molly Malloy.” I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not his name really was Molly Malloy. “Come here, Miss Priss,” said Molly sternly to our waiter who obeyed with the air of a royal princess dispensing favors, or maybe Saint Theresa scrubbing floors. “Another gin for Louis Giraud the dancer, another coke and a Tom Collins … understand?”

  “You don’t have to act like I was deaf,” said the aggrieved, petulantly; another round was brought us and when Louis finished his third shot of gin he was definitely in a joyous mood … just next door to drunkenness and indiscretion. I bided my time.

  Then Molly Malloy went into his act, to the delight of the initiates though it was pretty bewildering to me, full of references to people I never heard of, and imitations of celebrated actresses which weren’t remotely like the originals, or anything else for that matter. He finished the act with a torch song and, when that was over, disappeared through a door behind the stage to much applause. Beneath clouds of blue smoke the pianist continued to play; voices sounded louder and the mating at the bar grew more intense and indecorous.

  During Molly’s last number, Louis had taken my hand in his and held it like a vise. After a while I stopped trying to pull away; it wouldn’t last forever I knew. That’s what I always tell myself in difficult situations, like the war … fortunately he soon got tired of kneading my palm and let it drop. I sat on my hands for the next half hour.

  “Swell place,” said Louis, after Molly left the stage. “Swell,” I said.

  “I came here on my first night in New York … maybe ten years ago. I was just a kid from Europe … didn’t know a word of English. But I got by.” He laughed. “Right away a nice old gentleman took me home and since any French boy can make better love than any American, I got me a home real quick; then, later, I go into ballet here … to keep busy. I like work … work, sleep and …” He named his three passions.

  “When did you meet Mr. Washburn?” I asked casually.

  “When he came backstage at the old ballet company where I was working. I had done one beautiful Bluebird; I guess maybe the best damned Bluebird since Nijinski. Every company in America was after me. Washburn had the most money so I joined him and he made me premier danseur. I like him fine. He treats me like a king.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of those old ballets?”

  “I hate all new dancing,” said Louis, diverted momentarily from his usual preoccupation with pussycats and such like.

  “Even Jed Wilbur’s?”

  Louis shrugged. “He’s the best of that kind, I guess. I don’t get much kick out of dancing in them, though … in Eclipse and now the new one.”

  “Where the father kills the girl, isn’t it?”

  “I think that’s the story. To tell you the truth I don’t pay much attention. I just do what they tell me. At least he let’s me do things I like to do … tours en l’air, that kind of thing. He keeps me happy.”

  “I wonder what the story means?”

  “Why don’t you ask Jed? He’ll talk your ear off about it. I just go to sleep when he starts getting arty with me.”

  “You sound like Eglanova,”

  He snorted. “We got that in common then. I love her. She’s like a mother to me, ever since I’ve known her: Louis, you do this, Louis, you do that … Louis, don’t go out with sailors, Louis, don’t snap your head when you finish pirouette, Louis, don’t take such deep bows after ballet … I never had any mother,” said Louis, and for a minute I thought he was going to have a good cry.

  “It’s terrible,” I said, “the way Mr. Washburn tried to get rid of her before Sutton was killed.”

  “He’s a bastard,” said Louis, gloomily licking the edge of his gin glass. “He can’t help it. He was just made that way … all the time doing somebody dirty … not that he isn’t good to me, as long as I’m hot with the audience. The second I have a little trouble, get bad reviews or something awful, good-by Louis, I know him.”

  “He’s a businessman.”

  “Ballet is art not business,” said Louis making, as far as I knew, his first and last pronouncement on ballet. “But you should’ve seen his face when he came to find out if me and Ella were going to quit the company for sure and go into night clubs. He looked like somebody had just belted him one. ‘Now, Louis, you know we’re old friends …’ that was his line to me; so I strung him along awhile then I told him that Ella was just bluffing him.”

  “Do you think she was?”

  “At least as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have any intention of leaving the company, even though I’ve thought about it a lot. We had talked a little about it then and just lately Jed has been trying to talk me into doing that big musical of his this fall, but I said no; I mean the money’s very nice except that the government gets it all … then you’re out of a job maybe six months of a year with no money coming in and it isn’t so swell. No, I like to know I got a regular amount coming in every week, ten months a year.” I hadn’t realized before that Louis was quite so money-conscious, so shrewd.

  “I wonder why Ella told Washburn that, about your quitting the company together?”

  “Just to worry him a little, to raise her price. She knew he couldn’t find another dancer to take her place. As a matter of fact, just between you and me, I think she was planning to leave ballet in a year or so, but alone. I think she wanted to go in musicals and I got a feeling that was why she was so keen on getting Jed to join the company. Oh, she wanted to do a real modern ballet and all that but she wanted to work on him to get her a Broadway job. She had an eye for all the angles.”

  “I thought Jed joined the company because of you.”

  “You’re pretty fresh, petit gosse,” said Louis with a grin, pinching my thigh until I just about yelled with pain. “I wasn’t talking about why Jed joined us; I was talking about why Ella wanted him to, why she sold Washburn on the idea.” I rubbed my leg until the pain went away. One day I am going to beat the hell out of Louis, if I can; if I can’t I’ll do a lot of damage first.

  “Jed’s sure got it bad for you,” I said in an earnest, slightly breathless tone of voice.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” said Louis, with a sigh, stretching his arms and controlling a yawn … it was stifling in the bar, a single fan made a racket but did not cool the warm smoke-filled air. “He’s been after me for years. Used to write me crazy letters even before we started working together.”

  I waved to the waiter who, without asking, brought us another round; before he left he gave Louis a lightning grope and Louis didn’t like it but, as I pointed out, he was just getting some of his own medicine. He didn’t think that was very funny but after he’d swallowed some more gin he was in a better mood. I tried to get him to talk about Mr. Washburn but he wanted to talk about Jed. “I’m a lone wolf,” he said, wiping his sweaty face with the back of his hand. “Lots of guys get themselves a nice pussycat and settle down but not me … I used to be a pussycat for some older guys, when I was real young, but I didn’t like it much and besides it isn’t dignified for a man like me to be kept by somebody else, and that’s what Jed’s got in mind. He wants me to settle down with him and be his boy while he makes dozens of ballets for me until I’m too old to get around a stage. Even if I liked the idea of going to bed with him, which I don’t and never have, I couldn’t go for that kind of life and, as for his making ballets for me, well, that’s what he’s doing right now with Mr. Washburn paying for them in cash, not me paying for them in tail … I tell him all this a thousand times but he doesn’t listen. He’s made up his mind I’m his big love and there’s nothing I can do about it. You’d think somebody who’d been around dancers as long as he has wouldn’t feel that way, like a little girl, but he’s got a one-track mind. He came to us just because I was in the company … not because Ella wanted him or because Washburn offered him a lot of money. Believe me it’s been
hell dodging him, too. I can’t take my clothes off but what he isn’t in the dressing room wrestling around. I finally convinced him that Ella, who was making eyes at me this season, and me were having a hot affair and I suppose he fell for it since I’ve been known to play the other side, too. I let Ella in on the secret and so we pretended we were having an affair which was fine until I found out she expected to have a real one … you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when she suggested the idea one afternoon, right after the season opened. I said no and from that time on till she died we were having trouble and I mean trouble. She used to do everything she could to break me up on stage and off. I hate to admit it but I was kind of relieved when that cable broke.”

  So were a lot of people, I thought, sipping my third coke … I was getting more and more wide awake and, perhaps as a result of the caffein I was drinking, more and more keyed up.

  Molly, in black satin and a dark wig, joined us. “Going to make a real night of it, dear?” he asked.

  “First real bender this season,” said Louis, looking happy.

  “Well, I must say you couldn’t pick a better place, and in better company,” said Molly giving me the eye. “You a dancer, honey?”

  I said that I was, in the corps de ballet.

  “My, they’re much more butch than they used to be,” said Molly, turning to Louis. “What’s happened to the mad girls who used to be in your company?”

  “Flew away,” giggled Louis. “Spread their wings and flew away.… psst! like that, all gone.”

  “Well, it’s a new look,” said Molly, giving me a tender smile. We had a great deal more to drink and then we left Hermione’s. I was wide awake and a little jittery while Louis was roaring drunk, throwing passes almost as fast as I could catch them and throw them back.

  At four in the morning we ended up in a Turkish Bath in Harlem. I was very innocent; I figured that if Louis tried to give me a rough time I’d be safe in the baths since they were, after all, a public place with a management which would come to my help if he got too horny. I was mistaken.

  We undressed in separate lockers, like a beach house, then we went upstairs to the baths: a big swimming pool, then steam rooms and hot rooms and, beyond these, a dark dormitory with maybe a hundred beds in it where you’re supposed to lie down and take a nap after your pores have been opened by the heat. Only nobody takes a nap.

  Standing by the pool in a strong light, I was very embarrassed not only by what was going on but by Louis who was staring at me, taking inventory. “Where’d you get those muscles, Baby?” he asked, in a low husky voice.

  “Beating up dancers,” I said evenly. But I wasn’t too sure of myself. Louis looked like one of those Greek gods with his clothes off, all muscle and perfect proportions, including the bone head. Our presence caused even more of a stir than it had in the different bars. Fat old gentlemen came strolling by; one old fellow could hardly walk he was so old … he wheezed and puffed and he looked like a banker, very respectable, very ancient yet here he was, operating like mad, or wanting to.

  “Let’s go in the steam room,” said Louis and, ignoring the pinches and the pawing, we got through the old gentlemen to the steam room where a number of youths, black and white and tan, were carrying on, dim shapes in the steam which hid everything over a foot away. All around the steam room was a concrete ledge or shelf on which the various combinations disported themselves, doing a lot of things I never thought possible. It was like being in hell: the one electric bulb in the steam room was pink and gave a fiery glow to the proceedings. For the first time that night I was tempted to give up, to run away, to let the whole damned murder case take care of itself. Only the thought of Jane kept me in that steam room.

  We climbed up on the ledge out of the way. Louis stretched out beside me while I sat straight up, legs crossed, and he made love noises. It was pretty terrible. Fortunately, he was drunk and not as quick as usual and I was able to keep his hands off me. For several hours I had been trying to clear something up but I couldn’t. He was either on to me or else he was too drunk to make sense.

  “Come on, Baby, lie down,” he mumbled through the steam as dark shadows moved by us, shadows which would abruptly become curious faces; then, seeing us together, seeing my furious scowl, would recede into the ruddy mist.

  “I told you one million times, Louis, I don’t like it,” I said in a low voice.

  He sat up, his face so close to mine that I could make out the little red veins which edged the bright blue irises of his eyes. “You don’t think I don’t know all about you,” he said. “You think I don’t know about Jane?”

  “What about Jane?”

  “You know as well as I do. Everybody in the company knows … no use your trying to bluff.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “About Jane and Ella.”

  “What about them?”

  “Stop looking so dumb … Ella had a big thing with Jane, didn’t you know that? Just last year. Everybody knew. Ella was crazy for Jane. As long as I knew Ella, Jane was the only person she ever got excited over, except maybe me and that was just because I wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Then go ask Jane … she’ll tell you. Maybe she’ll tell you about the fight they had … if she doesn’t, the police will.”

  2

  The sun was shining when I got back to the apartment. I was staggering with fatigue and I was aware of nothing as I fell into bed beside Jane who did not wake up.

  Two hours’ sleep is not as good as eight but it’s better than none. At least I didn’t feel that my head was full of feathers when Jane woke me at ten o’clock.

  “What happened to you?” She was already dressed.

  I groaned as I sat up, shaking the sleep from my eyes. “Hunting a killer.”

  “Did you find one?”

  I nodded grimly, wide awake. “In spite of the fact, nobody’s been very co-operative … including you.”

  “Here’s some coffee,” she said, handing me a cup from the table by the bed. Then: “What do you mean?”

  “You and Ella,” I said, looking straight at her. “I didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing.”

  She turned very pale. “Oh my God,” she breathed and sat down with a thump on the bed. “How did you find out about that?”

  “Then it’s true?”

  “No, not really.”

  “It either is or it isn’t.”

  “Well, it’s not. I’ve been so scared somebody would rake all that business up … the police don’t know, do they? Gleason didn’t tell you, did he?”

  “No, I found out from one of the dancers last night. I gather everyone knew about it except me.”

  “It’s not one of the things I most enjoy talking about,” she said with some of her usual spirit.

  “I can see why not.”

  “And not for the reason you think. It all started about two years ago when Ella needed an understudy in one of the lousy new ballets we were doing then … this was before she was such a star: so I was given the job and she offered to teach me the part … something which is pretty rare with any dancer but unheard of with someone like Ella. It took me about five minutes to figure it out. From then on, for the next few months, it was something like you and Louis, only worse since I had to work with her. I turned her down a dozen times; then, finally, after being as nice as I could be under the circumstances, I lost my temper and we had a knockdown fight which did the trick: she never bothered me again … never spoke to me again as a matter of fact, off stage anyway.”

  “Then why does everybody think you were carrying on with her?”

  “Because she told them we were, because she got everybody in the company to believe that I was the one who had gone after her and that she had been the one who finally threw me out.”

  “Jesus!”

  “That’s what I say. Well, even though everybody knew what an awful person Ella was, th
ey tended to believe her since after all, she had so many affairs with men, too, and I wasn’t at all promiscuous,” she added primly.

  “This may make it kind of tough,” I said, putting on my shirt.

  “I don’t see why they have to bring all that old stuff up now. What does it have to do with Ella’s being killed?”

  “Well, they’re pretty thorough in these matters, the police are … they’ll probably trot out every scandal they can find in the company, if only to make the headlines.”

  “I had a premonition about this,” said Jane, gloomily packing her rehearsal bag.

  “I wish you’d told me sooner.”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me … you do believe me, don’t you?” I gave her a big kiss and we both felt better after that.

  “Of course I do. Only a complete hayseed like you could manage to do so many things wrong.”

  She shut the rehearsal bag with a snap. “I almost forgot … somebody searched the apartment yesterday.”

  “Take anything?”

  “Not as far as I could tell.”

  “The police … probably just a routine checkup.”

  “I’ll be glad when they make their damned arrest and stop bothering us.”

  “That’s just because you want to dance Eglanova’s roles.”

  She smiled wanly. “I’ve been wondering, though, who they will get for the rest of the season.”

  We took a taxi acrosstown to the studio; we were followed, I noticed, by two plain-clothes men in another cab. I said nothing to Jane about this.

  Mr. Washburn was at the studio and he greeted me as cordially as ever, as if the unpleasant exchange of the night before had never taken place. “I hear you were out late,” he said, when I joined him in the reception room, near Madame Aloin’s desk. Dancers in tights, detectives, tiny tots, and mothers all milled about. None of the company, though, was in sight.