The set was a handsome one. A blue sky, which was dark when the curtain rose, gradually filled with light as the music swelled and the corps de ballet (eight boys and eight girls) appeared. In the center of the stage was a large rock of gray canvas while at the top of the blue sky, about forty feet up, was a yellow Van Gogh sun.
The plot, if Eclipse could be said to have a plot, seemed to be about a girl (Sutton) who was in love with a boy (Louis) who liked all the girls in the company except her. So, frustrated and miserable, she took her revenge when, not having been laid as she so dearly wanted, she rushed furiously away from the happy boys and girls who at this point were indulging in some pretty sophisticated fornication on stage (so stylized, however, that one’s grandmother would never suspect what was happening); for a few dozen bars Ella hid behind the rock while Louis did his solo. Then, when he was finished, she reappeared and with a look of sheer malevolence slowly ascended into the air, spinning like an avenging spirit until she had at last eclipsed the sun. It was quite a tour de force, I thought … in spite of the dress rehearsal which was sufficiently godawful to make everyone think that tonight’s performance would be a technical triumph: Louis dropped Ella in the midst of a complicated lift shortly after her entrance and they never got back with the music again, while the corps de ballet plunged wildly about in the best St. Petersburg tradition, knocking into scenery and one another, justifying all the cruel remarks I’d heard made about them by the more refined balletomanes.
“What do you think?” asked Washburn when the rehearsal ended.
“Wonderful!” I said, like a press agent.
“I think …” began Mr. Washburn, but he was not allowed to finish because they were having a row on stage. The curtain had remained up and the lights were on again. Louis, stretched out with his back to the proscenium, was carefully wiping the sweat from his face with a piece of Kleenex. The boys and girls stood puffing at the rear of the stage while Ella and Wilbur quarreled.
“You’ve got to change it, Jed. I insist. I will not go sailing up on that damn thing again.”
“It’s the whole point to the ballet.”
“So what? I won’t do it. I get dizzy and I can’t make those turns off the ground.”
“We can have one of the workmen turn you backstage … he’ll jerk the cable …”
“Oh, no he won’t!”
“The idea never seemed to bother you before.”
“The idea still doesn’t bother me. I never realized how high it was until now.”
“Why don’t you get her a net?” suggested Louis.
“And that lift!” she said furiously, turning on him. “I could have broken a leg. You did it deliberately. I swear he dropped me deliberately.”
Mr. Washburn let them fight it out a few minutes more; then he went up on the stage, accompanied by me, and quickly made peace. It was agreed that Ella would ascend by cable tonight, but more slowly than before, and, further, she would not have to turn in the air.
“Very statesmanlike,” I said to Mr. Washburn, as we moved toward the dressing rooms on the north side of the stage.
“We always have these little disagreements before a première … divertissements I like to call them.” Despite his attempt at lightness, however, he seemed not at all diverted. “Have you had any ideas yet about those pickets?”
I nodded. “I’ve already called Elmer Bush at the Globe … that’s where I used to work … and he’s doing a column called ‘Witch-Hunt in the Theater,’ all about Wilbur and the ballet.”
“First-rate,” said Mr. Washburn, obviously impressed. I made a mental note to call Elmer Bush and suggest such a column to him. For all I knew he might even do it.
“I would rather wait until after we see the pickets before I do anything more. I mean we may get a lead from them … you know, something about bad behavior, bullying is un-American, that kind of thing. By the way,” I added, “speaking of bad behavior, does Miss Sutton often make scenes like this?”
“Not often,” said Mr. Washburn, as we approached a dressing room with a dusty star on the door. “She usually saves them for her husband.”
“Her husband?”
“Miles Sutton. He’s the conductor … big fellow with the beard.”
My head was beginning to spin. Everyone was related to everyone else, either officially or unofficially. I couldn’t keep them straight. The ballerina Ella Sutton was the wife of the conductor Miles Sutton and the choreographer Jed Wilbur was in love with the lead dancer Louis Giraud and Jane Garden the understudy to Ella Sutton was my idea of a fine specimen while Anna Eglanova the prima ballerina stood before me naked from the waist up. It was disconcerting. I was standing beside Mr. Washburn in the doorway of her dressing room; her maid had suddenly opened the door and darted by, leaving her mistress exposed to our gaze.
“Come in, Ivan,” said the great ballerina. “Who is the young man?”
“Peter Sargeant, Anna, our new public relations man.”
“So young! Ah!” She sat down before her dressing table and began to arrange her hair. She looked young for fifty. Her body was firm … the skin like antique ivory and the breasts more like worn china door knobs than glands intended for the suckling of the young. Her neck was slightly corded and her face was ugly but exotic, with deep lines about the mouth, a beaked nose and narrow slanting Mongol eyes. Her hair was dyed dark red.
“I get ready now for pas de deux, Ivan.” Her English was so heavily accented that it sounded to me like a different language altogether. In fact everything about her was different, including her casual disregard for the conventions.
“I think I better go,” I said, a little hastily. “I’ve got some calls to make. I’m going to try and head the newspaper photographers off.”
“Good plan,” said Mr. Washburn.
“Nice boy,” said Anna, as I left.
Halfway down the hall, a loud voice said, “Hey, Baby, come in here.”
Now I am twenty-eight years old and shave every day of my life and, though I wear a crewcut in deference to my collegiate past, I flatter myself that I look every inch a man of the world. But Louis Giraud obviously had about as much respect for other men as Don Juan had for little girls so I controlled myself. I walked into his dressing room.
He was lying on a steel cot. He had an electric fan going just above his head and a pair of sweaty tights were hanging over the radiator to dry. He wore nothing except a towel around his middle.
I said, “Hi.”
“You like the ballet tonight?” He spoke good English with only a faint French accent; he had started life as a longshoreman in Marseille. No one knew how he had got started in ballet but I suspect that the rumor a certain rich gentleman discovered him in a bordello and took him to Paris was probably true.
“I liked it pretty good,” I said.
“Real lousy,” said Louis, stretching his long knotty legs until the joints cracked. “I hate this ugly modern stuff. Giselle was good enough for Nijinski and it’s good enough for me. All these people running around stage with funny faces. Merde!” He had a deep voice and he wasn’t at all like the other boys in the company who were inclined to be rather tender: Louis had shoulders like a boxer. I decided I wouldn’t like to tangle with him and so I sat near the open door, ready to make a quick exit if he should decide to tear off a quick piece.
“Well, it’s a new medium,” I said absently, noting the comic books and movie magazines on the floor by the bed. Each to his taste, I said to myself in flawless French.