“But it’s not ballet.” Louis looked at me and grinned. “Hey, why’re you trying to fool me, Baby?”
I measured the distance from my chair to the door: two long steps or one broad jump, I decided coolly. “Who’s trying to fool you?” I asked, getting up slowly with a look of innocence which would have done credit to Tom Sawyer. He was too quick for me, though. I made a leap for the door but he got there first. It was a very silly moment.
“Now, look here, Louis,” I said as he made a grab for me. We played tag a moment and then he grabbed me, holding me the way a boxer holds another boxer in a clinch and both of us trying not to make any noise, for different reasons. I wondered whether to knee him or not; the towel had fallen off. I decided against it for the good of the company. I would be fired if I did. On the other hand I was in danger of being ravished; I couldn’t move without seriously injuring him and, on the other hand, I couldn’t stand like this forever pressed against his front while he fumbled and groped with his one free hand, embarrassing me very much. He smelled like a horse. Controlling myself with great effort I said in a very even and dignified voice, “If you don’t let go of me, I will break every one of your toes.” And with that, fairly gently, I put one hard leather heel on top of his left foot. He jumped at that and, breathing hard, I slid out the door.
I was mad as hell for several minutes but then, since no damage was done, I began to see the funny side and as I walked across the stage to the other set of dressing rooms I wondered if I should tell Jane what had happened. For one reason and another I had decided not to when I came upon Miles and Ella Sutton, quarreling. He was standing in the door of her dressing room; she was sitting at her make-up table in an old gray bathrobe. I caught one quick glimpse of her as I walked by, as though on urgent business. I have found that people who hang around to watch fights usually end by getting involved.
As I walked by, however, I heard Miles Sutton threatening to kill his wife. It gave me quite a turn. I mean temperament is all very well but there are times when it can be carried too far.
3
Now that I look back on that night it is perfectly apparent to me that almost everyone, including myself, sensed that something serious had gone wrong … but what? I knew of course that there was always a great deal of tension before a première and the childish bad temper of ballet dancers was familiar to me, by reputation anyway. Yet when the curtain went up on the blue-lit stage for the first ballet of the evening, Swan Lake, I had a knot in the pit of my stomach.
I remember taking a good look at the audience just before the house lights were dimmed and I remember feeling thankful that I didn’t have to appear on a stage in front of all those people, for the interior of the Met, seen from the stage, is like the mouth of a great monster, wide open, yawning and red, with tiers of golden teeth.
I have always had a personal superstition that when something begins badly it will end well and vice versa. Since that night I have discarded the superstition of a lifetime for this particular evening began badly and ended tragically.
The pickets arrived at seven-thirty, twenty well-fed veterans of the First World War; they were quiet but grim and their placards suggested in red ink that Wilbur go back to Russia if he liked it so much there. I had already telephoned the photographers, tipping them off; all publicity is good is my conviction and I had a scheme by which we might eventually be able to make considerable capital out of the veterans. Mr. Washburn took a dark view of this but I reassured him. I even wrote him a little speech to make to the audience right after Swan Lake, before Eclipse, saying that Jed Wilbur was a hundred per cent patriot and so on.
The trouble began, officially, after Swan Lake when one of the girls collapsed in the wings and had to be carried up to her dressing room.
I was standing beside Alyosha Rudin to stage right when this happened.
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.
The old man sighed. “A foolish girl. Her name is Magda … a little heavy to be good dancer but she has the heart.”
“You mean she has a weak heart?”
Alyosha chuckled. “No, she is passionate. Shall we go out front?”
On our way we passed Mr. Washburn. He was dressed in white tie and tails and his glittering skull looked pale to me in the dim light of backstage. He was very nervous. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go through with it,” he said in a voice which trembled.
“With what?” I asked.
“The curtain speech.”
“Courage, Ivan,” said Alyosha. “You always say that; then, when the time comes, you have the courage of a lion.”
“All those people,” moaned Mr. Washburn, moving toward the lavatory.
Alyosha was a pleasant companion and most knowledgeable of ballet; as he should be since, like Eglanova, he is a genuine Russian dating back to the Fall of Rome … perhaps even to the pyramids for he is very old with the classic Russian greyhound head: hair brushed back, long features and eyes like gray metal. He looked very old-world and distinguished in a smoking jacket of mulberry velvet. We found ourselves two seats in the front row.
“What was wrong with that girl?” I asked when we were seated. Already I was beginning to think of a press release … dancer upset by pickets: lover killed in Korea.
“She will have baby,” said Alyosha.
“But she shouldn’t be dancing if she’s pregnant.”
“The poor child. She must. She has no husband and her family doesn’t know.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
Alyosha smiled sadly; his teeth were like black pearls. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter,” he said gently.
Then the house lights were turned down and Mr. Washburn made his curtain speech; there was polite applause. Miles Sutton, looking nervous and sick, I thought (we were sitting right behind him), rapped his baton sharply on the music stand and the ballet began.
Artistically, everything went off quite well, according to the critics the next day. Both Martin of the Times and Terry of the Tribune thought Eclipse a triumphant modern work, praising Wilbur, Sutton’s interpretation of the Bartok music, the set designer, Louis and, above all, the ballerina Ella Sutton who, they both felt, gave her finest performance: a dedicated artist to the very end for, when the cable broke thirty odd feet in the air, she maintained complete silence as she fell in fifth position onto the stage with a loud crash, still on beat.
Alyosha who was sitting beside me, gasped and said something very loud in Russian; then he crossed himself as the curtain swept down over the stage and the house lights went on. The audience was too stunned to react. Mr. Washburn came on stage but I missed his announcement for I was already backstage.
Ella Sutton lay in a heap in the middle of the stage, her body curiously twisted, like a contortionist’s. A doctor had been summoned and he was kneeling beside her, his hand on her pulse. The dancers stood in shocked attitudes around the still figure.
Then Ella was pronounced dead (her back was broken) and she was carried to her dressing room. Alyosha ordered the dancers to change for the next ballet, Scheherazade. Mr. Washburn led the doctor away. The impassive workmen struck the set and I suddenly found that I was alone on the stage. Not even Alyosha was in sight.
I wandered down the corridor which led to the north side dressing rooms, but I could find no one. I paused at Eglanova’s room and looked in. It was empty. Everything was in a tangle: costumes, telegrams, press clippings, flowers fresh and dying, all the paraphernalia of stardom. On impulse, I entered, feeling like a small boy who has been deserted in a haunted house. I knew, if I waited long enough, that she’d reappear: her dressing room was the clubhouse of the ballet … at least of the top echelon who, I was told, usually came here to drink hot tea and lemon Russian style and discuss, with some severity, those not present. But the club was deserted. Not even Eglanova’s maid was in sight.