“How come you never lose them?”
“Lose what?”
“Eyelashes … Sutton used to lose them every performance according to legend.”
Jane laughed. “I thought you asked me why I never lost babies … I stick them on with a special mess … all the girls use it. Oh!” She turned around suddenly. “Did I tell you that they are going to give me Coppelia?” This called for a number of congratulatory words and deeds and the time passed pleasantly until Jane had to go backstage and do a few pre-performance knee bends and pirouettes. I walked with her as far as the long wooden bar near the tool chest; then I left her.
I paused for a moment and watched Eglanova in Giselle … it’s not my favorite ballet and it’s certainly not my favorite role for her. I am told she was once very fine in it but now she seems coy and unconvincing, too old and wise-looking, too regal, to play the part of a girl gone soft in the head for love.
During the intermission, I headed for Sherry’s, the bar upstairs at the Met, where I found Mr. Washburn taking his ease in the company of my old employer, Milton Haddock, who was his usual noble drunken self, dressed casually in tweeds, horn-rimmed spectacles (old school, prejunior executive: they curved); he looked very distinguished in a sottish way.
“Wonderful to see you, Mr. Haddock!” I exclaimed, pumping his hand.
“Why, hello there, George. Haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“Not since New Haven.”
He clutched at the clue. “Streetcar Named Desire wasn’t it? I remember now. You were at that party afterwards … some party. The Scotch flowed like the Liffey.” And he swallowed some more of it since Mr. Washburn was providing same gratis.
“And to think this is the man I worked for for four years,” I said jovially to Mr. Washburn, regretting those three fours: after all it was my prose style which made Milton Haddock the trenchant critic he is today, the adder of the Rialto … or at least the garter snake of Forty-fifth Street.
“My God … it’s Jim,” said Haddock, recognizing me at last. He patted my arm, spilling my drink in the process. “Here … I’m sorry … let me fix it for you.” And he dried my sleeve and cuff with his handkerchief, after which he carefully folded the handkerchief and put it away … to suck on later, I decided, in case he ran out of the stuff in the flask.
“I don’t suppose you two have seen each other in a long time,” said Mr. Washburn.
“Not in a coon’s age,” said Mr. Haddock, looking at me fondly with those foggy blue eyes of his. “Right in the middle of the news, too, aren’t you, Jim? Wonderful place for a young man to be when a hot story breaks … and such a story! Falling sandbag kills opera star in the first act of Lakmé … one of the dullest operas, by the way, I have ever sat through. I mean if it had to ruin an opera it might just as well have been that one, don’t you agree, Mr. Bing?” At that point I gave Mr. Washburn the high sign and we quietly crept away while the dean of New York drama critics had a chat with himself about the relative merits of the great operas.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” asked Mr. Washburn.
“How could I? I didn’t even know you knew him … after all, he never covers the ballet.”
“He did a story on Ella, thought he’d come by and have a chat. Awful experience.” Mr. Washburn shuddered as we stood and watched the last half of Eclipse run smoothly to its spectacular end. The audience ate it up and, beside me in the dark, I could hear Mr. Washburn applauding.
Jed Wilbur met us backstage; he looked less harried than usual and I supposed that the success of his ballet had bucked him up considerably.
“It is very, very fine,” said Mr. Washburn, slowly, taking Wilbur’s right hand in both of his and looking at him with an expression of melting admiration and wonder … the four star treatment.
“Glad you liked it,” said Jed, in his high thin voice.
“Glad they liked it, too. Did you see the notices the new girl, Garden, received? Gratifying, very gratifying.”
“She danced well … but the part! Ah, Jed, you have never made such a fine ballet before in your whole life.”
“It isn’t bad,” said Wilbur with that freedom from modesty and the commoner forms of polite behavior which makes dance people so refreshing and, at times, so intolerable. “I thought the pas de deux went well tonight.”
“Lyric!” exclaimed Mr. Washburn as though all words but that accurate one had failed him.
“But the corps de ballet was a little ragged, I thought.”
“They are not used to such dynamic work.”
“By the way, I’m ready to talk about the new ballet.”
“Have you really thought it out? … will it be ready by the time we open in Chicago?”
“I think so … I’m ready to begin rehearsals, if you are.”
“What music? Something old and classical, I hope. They are the best, you know, the masters.”
“A little piece by Poulenc … you’ll have no trouble getting the rights.”
Mr. Washburn sighed, thinking of royalties to a living composer. “My favorite modern,” he said bravely.
“I knew you’d be pleased. I’m calling the ballet Martyr … very austere, very direct.”
“Brilliant title … but it’s not, well, political, is it? I mean this isn’t the best time … you know what I mean.”
“Are you trying to censor me?” Jed Wilbur stood very straight and noble, nostrils flared.
“Now, Jed, you know I’m the last person in the world to do such a thing. Why, I put the artist’s integrity ahead of everything … you know that, Peter here knows that.”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured.
“But what is it about, Jed?”
“Exactly what the title says.”
“But who is the Martyr?”
“A girl … It’s all about a family.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Washburn, relieved. “Marvelous theme … seldom done in ballet. Only Tudor, perhaps, has done it well.”
“This is better than Tudor.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“What happens in the ballet—what’s the argument?”
“It’s very simple,” said Jed Wilbur, smiling. “The girl is murdered.”
Mr. Washburn’s eyebrows went up in surprise; mine went down in a scowl. “Murdered? Do you think, under the circumstances, that’s a … well, an auspicious theme for this company?”
“I can always take it to the Ballet Theater.”
“But, my dear boy, I wasn’t suggesting you not do it, or that you change the theme. I was only suggesting that, perhaps, in the light of recent events …”
“It would be fabulous,” said the dedicated Mr. Wilbur, revealing an unexpected sense of the commercial for one so pure.
“Well, you’re the doctor,” said Mr. Washburn jovially. “Who will you need?”
“Most of the company.”
“Eglanova?”
“I don’t think so … unless she would play the part of the girl’s mother.”
“She wouldn’t do it, I’m afraid. You can use Carole for that, the heavy one … she’s good in character. What about the girl?”
“Garden, I think,” said Wilbur, and I found myself liking him: what a break this would be for Jane—to have a new ballet made for her by a choreographer like Jed Wilbur! Things were looking up. “I’ll need all the boys. Louis can be her husband … a very good part for him, by the way … lot of fire. Then there are two brothers and her father. One brother plays games with her … they have, as children, an imaginary world all their own. The boy is a dreamer and he loses her to the other brother who is a man of action who loses her at last to Louis. But, of course, all the time, she belongs to her father (a good part for old Kazanian by the way) and her mother hates her. When she marries Louis there is terrible trouble in the family … a little like Helen of Troy, perhaps, and, to end the trouble, the girl is murdered.”