“Miss Flynn, I have been hired.”
“The dancers?” She looked at me, her gray lips tight. Women in tights are dancers to her, not ballerinas.
“For two weeks, starting now.”
“I am very happy for you, Mr. Sargeant,” she said, in the tone of one bidding a friend farewell on the banks of the Styx.
“I’m happy, too,” I said. I then gave her a few instructions about my other accounts (a hat company in the Bronx, a television actress and a night school); then I left my one-room Madison Avenue office and headed for the Metropolitan Opera House, leaving my conscience behind.
Mr. Washburn met me at the stage door and escorted me past several open dressing rooms to a flight of steps which led down to the vast stage itself. Everything was in great confusion. Small fat women ran back and forth carrying costumes, while dancers in tights stood about practicing difficult variations with the intensely vacuous expressions of weight-lifters or of those restaurant cooks who scramble eggs in front of plate-glass windows. Workmen, carrying parts of scenery, shouted to one another and cursed the dancers who seemed always to be in their way. In the pit the orchestra was making an awful noise warming up, while, beyond, the great red and gold opera house was empty and still … a little ominous, I thought, for no reason at all.
“The rehearsal is almost ready to begin,” said my employer as we moved out onto the stage, toward a group of dancers in tights and T-shirts, the standard rehearsal costume of both boys and girls, which was very nice I thought, looking at the girls. “I’ll introduce you to the principals in a minute,” said Mr. Washburn. “If you …” But then someone waved to him from the other side of the stage and he walked away, leaving his sentence unfinished.
“Are you the new boy?” asked a female voice behind me.
I turned and saw a very pretty girl standing behind me; she wore black tights and a white T-shirt through which her breasts showed, small and neat. She was combing her dark gold hair back. For some inscrutable reason she had a rubber band in her mouth; it impaired her diction.
“Well, I guess in a way I am,” I said.
“You better get your clothes off. I’m Jane Garden.”
“My name’s Peter Sargeant.”
“You better hurry. You’ve got to learn the whole thing this afternoon.” She pulled her hair straight back and then slipped the back hair through the rubber band; it looked like a horse’s tail, a very nice horse’s tail.
“Shall I take them off right here?”
“Don’t be silly. The boys’ dressing room is on the second floor.”
I then explained to her who I was and she giggled, but not in a squeaky manner: her voice was low and her eyes, I noticed, were a fine arctic blue.
“Do you know anything about ballet?” she asked, glancing anxiously toward the other dancers. They were not ready, however. The orchestra was still warming up. The principals hadn’t arrived yet. The noise was deafening.
“Not much,” I said. “Are you one of the leads?”
“Nowhere near being a lead. Although they’ve made me understudy in this ballet.”
“To whom?”
“Why, to Ella Sutton. She’s the star of the ballet … I mean of this particular one. Actually she’s the second-ranking ballerina … after Eglanova.”
I knew who Eglanova was. Everyone, I suspect, who has ever heard of ballet knows about Anna Eglanova. I had even read up on her that morning before my interview with Mr. Washburn, just so I wouldn’t appear too ignorant. The program notes and the facts, however, did not coincide as I found out soon enough … even though the program is approximately correct; she was a star at the same time as Nijinski and she is a genuine Russian dancer from the old Imperial School, but she is fifty-one not thirty-eight and she has been married five times, not once, and she was not the greatest ballerina of the Diaghilev era; as a matter of fact she was considered the least promising of the lot: how were her contemporaries to know that she had joints like ball bearings and a pair of lungs like rubber water wings and that with this equipment she would outlive all her generation, existing finally as a legend whose appearance on a stage was enough to break up a whole audience, causing tears of nostalgia to come to the eyes of characters who never saw a ballet before the last war.
“Where is Sutton?” I asked.
“Over there, talking to Wilbur … in the wings.”
Sutton was a good-looking woman, with hair dyed jet-black and worn severely combed back with a part in the middle: the classic ballerina fashion. She had large but good features and a vividly painted face; she was in costume, a full-skirted white dress with red roses in her hair. Her body was good for a female dancer though the muscles tended to bunch a little unpleasantly at the calves. Jane Garden’s did not, I noticed.
“Why aren’t you in costume?” I asked. “Isn’t this the dress rehearsal?”
“My costume isn’t ready. I wish they’d hurry up and start.”
“Why don’t they?”
“I suppose they’re waiting for Louis … Louis Giraud, he’s the first dancer and he’s always late. He sleeps most of the time. It drives everyone crazy … especially Wilbur.”
“Why doesn’t he do something about it?”
“Who? Wilbur? Why, he’s in love.”
“In love?”
“Of course … everybody knows it. He’s just crazy about Louis.”
Well, this is ballet, I decided, making a mental note to keep Miss Flynn in complete darkness as to the character of my new associates.
“I wonder,” I said thoughtfully, sincerely, “if you might perhaps have a minute after the show tonight … we might go somewhere and have something to eat. You see,” (speaking quickly now, gathering momentum), “I have to learn an awful lot about ballet very fast. It would help if you were to explain it all to me.”
“You’re sweet,” said Miss Garden with an unexpected smile, her teeth shone glacier-white in her warm pink face. “Maybe I will. Oh, here comes the conductor. You better get out of the way now … we’re going to start.”
Mr. Washburn collected me at that moment and we went around to the front of the house. Here I was introduced to a number of patrons and hangers-on, as well as the regisseur or director of the company, Alyosha Rudin, a nice old man, and the set designer whose name I didn’t get.
Jed Wilbur, a thin prematurely gray young man, came out on stage and began to lecture the dancers in a high nasal voice. They looked very pretty I thought. The girls in gray with pink roses in their hair and the boys dressed like 1910. But all was not ready.
“Where’s Louis?” asked Wilbur suddenly. “Doesn’t he know this is dress rehearsal?”
“He’s always late,” said Ella, fixing one of her false eyelashes in place. “I suppose he’s sleeping.”
“Just resting my legs,” said Louis, ambling out onto the stage with that funny duck-like walk all dancers have from continually turning their feet out. He was a big-boned man, about thirty and, for a dancer, rather tall and muscular, with black curly hair and blue eyes.
“Why can’t you ever be on time?” complained Wilbur, the eye of love eclipsed by the greater love of art and reputation; this was obviously an important moment for him, a major work … all the critics would be out front tonight and maybe even Margaret Truman.
“I get here, Jed. Now you start.” Ella glared at him. Wilbur muttered something disagreeable. Then the overture began.