Flight of the Swan

by Rosario Ferré

  On the wharf a magnificent, four-door Pierce-Arrow was waiting with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. Madame was astonished; she wasn’t expecting anyone to pick her up. She asked who had sent the vehicle and the uniformed chauffeur bowed, whispered something in her ear, and then conferred with Dandré. Dandré signaled that it was fine, and they all got into the car and set off, riding rapidly up the cobblestones of Calle Tanca.

  The rest of the troupe—Lyubovna Fedorovna, Madame’s mother and lady-in-waiting; the electrician; the seamstress; the beautician with her hatbox full of wigs; and myself helping to carry the luggage—all trundled heavily up the hill on foot toward the Malatrassi Hotel, a narrow, four-story building which stood on Plaza de Armas, the town square. It was a second-class establishment next to the Alcaldia, the mayor’s house. Because of La Habana’s fiasco we couldn’t stay at a first-class hotel in San Juan. Everybody seethed, of course, and they all blamed Dandré. But although there were groans and complaints all around, nobody considered even for a minute going back to New York.

  Madame was always followed around on her ballet tours by a group of admirers who called themselves the Swooning Swans. In Australia, two young girls followed her train for thousands of kilometers, admiring her from a distance until they reached Sydney and then, too shy to introduce themselves, turned right around and went back to where they came from. There was a time when her followers, myself included, could have killed for a strip of Madame’s tulle skirt, for a ribbon from one of her silk slippers. We fought like cats over each little memento. When she danced the mad scene in Giselle, for example, and actually wrenched a handful of hair from her head, the girls searched around the stage for hours after the ballet was over, looking for the silky strands to preserve in their lockets as talismans. Fans waited at the theater entrance and pounced on her the minute she was out of the door. Eventually she realized that she needed protection from the Swooning Swans. That was when Mr. Dandré came in handy. The white lie of their marriage served as a very effective armor: thanks to Mr. Dandré, no one ever dared approach Madame beyond a certain point.

  6

  I NEVER DARED SPEAK to Madame in public or get too close. It was as if she radiated perfection, not only through the movements of her body but through her onyx-dark eyes, and I didn’t want people to see how ugly I was by comparison. I never missed one of her performances; I traveled in the same trains and stayed at the same hotels as Madame. Later, when I was lucky enough to be admitted into the troupe, I discovered that many of the other girls felt the same way I did toward her. But it took me three years of sharing the vicissitudes of a ballerina’s life—of fasting in order to keep my figure, of taking care of my deformed feet and cramped legs and thighs; and most important, of observing her every movement at ballet class—to realize that I was part of a sacred order.

  Madame was very pious—her dressing room was full of icons of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Anne with candles flickering in front of them; before every performance she’d kiss them and ask for inspiration. But she was our saint, and we were her devout followers. We weren’t at all interested in making a name for ourselves, we never wanted to be famous individually. Our duty was to spread Madame’s doctrine around the world.

  Madame loved children. Often I’d see mothers bring their daughters to the stage exit when they were no more than twelve years old. “Take her with you, she’s yours,” they’d plead, bowing respectfully. “We want her to be like you. Please do whatever you have to do to teach her your secrets.” When someone brought her a prospective student, she’d stand before the child for a few minutes studying her, observing her poor or good turnout or the frailty of her ankles; she’d put her hands on the child’s head and, on most occasions, advise the mother to take her daughter, back home. “Girls have a difficult time making their way in ballet,” she’d murmur softly. “They get paid very little—less than the boys. And since they have to dance on their toes”—boys dance in soft kid slippers, and on their half toes—“soon bunions sprout on their feet and their toes eventually overlap, so they often have to be operated on in order not to become crippled. Yes, classical ballet is a spiritual experience, but it’s also very painful,” Madame insisted, pulling her shawl about her a little bit tighter and tilting her head delicately to one side, as swans are wont to do. But the mother wouldn’t listen, and the child, watching Madame with enamored, incandescent eyes, would listen even less.

  The company was made up of twelve girls and six boys who danced in the chorus. The girls were taught personally by Madame and the boys were Novikov’s students. Novikov was our ballet master and Madame’s partner on stage. Madame had had a long string of partners who lasted only a few months until they were unceremoniously bounced out of the company by Dandré once they fell in love with her. Novikov, fortunately, would never fall in love with her; he liked buns much better than breasts. Madame didn’t have a generous amount of either, but it was the approach that mattered, as Madame once told me laughing.

  Although our female dancers all had exotic Russian names—Katia Borodina, Maya Ulanova, Egorova Sedova, Nadja Bulova—two of them were actually shy English girls and had been trained by Madame in recent years. She had changed their names to Russian for appearances’ sake. Nadja Bulova, Madame’s understudy, was of pure Russian origin, but she only danced whenever Madame fell ill, which was seldom.

  We Russians are a sentimental people—showing affection is natural to us; it’s one of the things I have missed the most since I left my country. During our tours, the girls hugged and kissed and pinched each other’s cheeks as if they wanted to reassure themselves that friends really existed, that they were not making them up because they felt so alone.

  At that time it was still very difficult for girls from middle-class families to become dancers, and many of the students of the Imperial Ballet School came from the poorer families of St. Petersburg. The poor, like Madame’s mother, didn’t worry as much about their daughters’ reputations. From the girls’ point of view it was a magnificent opportunity to make their way in the world. To be free from all constraints of family! To fly around Europe like a flock of swans, in search of beauty, adventure, and romance, as Madame was able to do! She was always urging us to live full emotional lives which would enrich our art, but never to commit ourselves to a relationship that would clip our wings. This was the dream of every girl who wanted to become a ballerina. Our veneration of Madame was related to our struggle, as young women, to be at the helm of our own lives.

  Madame was much stricter than the American dancer Isadora Duncan, who at that time was prancing around the world’s stages clad in a semi-transparent tunic. It was very difficult to accuse Madame of being a “loose woman,” as the press often did with the American. Isadora’s horrible death, her fringed silk scarf caught in the spokes of the wheel of a red Bugatti, was considered by some to be suicide after her lover, the Russian poet Essenin, took his own life. But Madame was much stronger than Isadora. She was a survivor, and she outlived her lover, Diamantino Márquez, by many years.

  Madame was the product of the Imperial Ballet School, where dancers lived under a merciless discipline; their training could only be compared to the drilling of army troops. The old czar, Nicholas I, who had founded the Maryinsky Ballet School, was very proud of this fact. The czar divided his passions almost equally between soldiering and dancing and liked to compare the Imperial Ballet to a cavalry corps. It was rumored that he loved to sit backstage and listen to the rumble of the ballerinas’ toe shoes when they poured across the wooden floor of the stage, because they reminded him of a dragoon charge galloping across a field of battle.

  The ballet school’s pupils had to learn the choreography of Marius Petipa, the old commander-in-chief of the Maryinsky Theater, by heart. Petipa’s ballets were very conservative; his scores were hieroglyphs pregnant with esoteric meaning only classical dancers could decipher. Isadora Duncan’s art, on the contrary, was the result of improvisation; her dancin
g was far from the grueling discipline of the Imperial Ballet, and Madame always saw her as an amateur. Isadora danced, not only nearly naked, but also barefoot. “I would never submit my feet to those instruments of torture, the silk toe slippers,” Duncan declared once to the press. And yet we, Madame’s followers, knew it was the silk toe shoe, with its tiny base and the resulting near-frictionless contact with the floor, which made spiritual transcendence possible.

  7

  BY THE TIME THE last dancer checked in at the reception desk, the Malatrassi Hotel was completely full. Thanks to Mr. Dandré, who had cabled reservations in advance from La Habana, we would all be able to sleep comfortably in beds that evening. The girls were all whispering and asking if anyone knew the name of the owner of the magnificent yellow-and-black Pierce-Arrow with honey-colored leather seats and whitewall tires that had whisked Madame away at the pier. But nobody did.

  We were about to go up the stairs to our rooms lugging our own suitcases when Molinari, Bracale’s sub-agent, arrived. He was tall and brawny, with a large nose—a Corsican who had come to the island fleeing an undisclosed crime in Italy, as we later found out. He was informing Dandré of the arrangements for the tour when two police agents with boots up to their knees and guns tucked into hip holsters appeared in the lobby and demanded to see our passports. Once they examined them, Dandré and Madame were unceremoniously escorted to the police station. I was asked to go along too, because I knew a little Spanish—which I had learned from the Gypsies in Minsk—and could help translate. Molinari went as well. People on the street stared at us, especially at Madame, whose white lace skirt was very stylish, but a lot shorter than it should have been, judging by those worn by respectable women in the streets of San Juan.

  The commissioner, a fat man with black hair on his fingers and crater-pocked cheeks, fired a barrage of questions at us. When had we arrived? Did we know that Russia had suffered a coup d’état and that the Bolsheviks were in power? We had evidently been at sea at the time and hadn’t heard about it. In any case, since we were Russian citizens, our passports were now invalid, because Russia had ceased to exist.

  “Russia ceased to exist? You must be joking. You have no idea how large and powerful my country is,” Madame declared indignantly, a tilt of icy superiority to her chin.

  “It’s a fact, ma’am,” a young man wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt standing next to the commissioner said. “The czar abdicated at Psok, and subsequently has been arrested. There are only Bolsheviks left in Russia now, and they are wiping out whoever’s left. That’s what I meant.”

  “These islands are full of spies because of the bloody war, and we don’t want any more rabble causing havoc in our midst,” the commissioner said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin after swallowing the dregs from a coffee cup he held in his hand. “We may be a small island, but our secret service is first rate!” he thundered, as if implicating Madame.

  Dandré tried to calm the commissioner down. He explained we had just been in New York before passing through Cuba, that we had appeared at the Metropolitan Opera House and at City Center, where the most exclusive audiences had come to see Madame dance. “Well, this isn’t New York! We may be a part of the United States, but we have our own laws down here, and you’ll have to abide by them,” the little man declared, drumming his stubby fingers on the desk. “You can only remain here three days without a valid passport. On the fourth day you’ll be deported and sent back to Europe on the first available ship.” Dandré was furious. “Madame only cares about her art. She doesn’t get mixed up in politics! And I am a conservative White Russian, a member of the Duma.”

  “The Duma doesn’t exist anymore,” the commissioner reminded him coldly, and he began to jot something down in a notebook, ignoring Dandré completely. Molinari, instead of trying to help out, remained silent, leaning his elbow on the commissioner’s desk. Mr. Dandré was so angry he almost had a seizure. “We’ve had enough bloodshed as it is,” he said. “Why do you think we’re here, instead of in Europe? Because we’re running away from the war, that’s why, each and every member of this troupe. And you’re going to send us back there! “And, he added, his face purple, “This company is my responsibility. The youngsters are innocent and several of the older dancers are British citizens. As to the invalid passports, I’m willing to sail back to New York as soon as possible and visit the English ambassador there, a personal friend of ours. Applying for English visas shouldn’t be a problem.” He dried his bald pate with his white linen handkerchief before replacing his bowler hat. Madame didn’t utter a word; all the color had drained from her face.

  The young man wearing sunglasses whispered something in the commissioner’s ear. I guessed he was a journalist, and just managed to catch what he said: “Madame has been invited to a reception in her honor at the governor’s palace this evening, sir, and maybe you should be more careful. She’s internationally well known, and I’ve been asked to write a piece about her for a local magazine.” The commissioner frowned and swore under his breath. He’d never heard of the famous dancer before, but he bowed stiffly. “Very well. Since our guest is a celebrity, we’ll do away with our restriction for the time being. She can remain on the island for three weeks, until her husband gets new passports.”

  Once we came out of the police station Madame looked at Dandré in dismay. “The czar and his family detained! The government fallen under a coup d’état! Amazing!” she said, eyes wide with wonder. “What does it all mean?” Madame took Dandré’s arm with a trembling hand. “It means,” Dandré answered, “that we, as Russian citizens, are now pariahs without a country. We’ve become flotsam at the mercy of the waves.” Madame bowed her head, as if a huge weight had fallen on her shoulders.

  We walked out of the police station, heads reeling, and headed back toward the hotel. Molinari trailed behind us like a crow at a wake. Our spirits were in tatters, but thankfully our dance troupe was still together. And our faith in Holy Mother Russia and in our art was intact.

  8

  THAT AFTERNOON WE TRIED to keep our courage up as best we could. Talking about our beautiful city made us feel better; it helped us overcome the feeling that we were now unmoored and might drift apart. The company was our only family, and we needed desperately to hold on to one another. I never felt as close to Lyubovna Federovna as I did then, stern and dour as she was. I almost believed I could love her.

  “Niura was a premature baby,” Lyubovna said to me in her hotel room, as she poured a cup of tea from the samovar she had just unpacked. “You should have seen her when she was seven months old; she was no bigger than a baby rabbit. We lived on Kolomenskaya Street then, where I did the laundry for several well-to-do families. One of them was the Poliakoffs, a very wealthy Jewish family. Lazar Poliakoff’s father was a banker on Nevsky Prospekt. They owned one of the largest investment houses in St. Petersburg, with branches all over Europe.

  “One day I saw the son of the family come out of the house and he followed me to the apartment on Kolomenskaya Street. He was wearing a magnificent black astrakhan coat with matching hat of the same curly, jet-black fur. He closed the door after him and asked my mother to go out and get him a pack of cigarettes. As soon as we were alone, he pushed me on top of the bundle of dirty clothes I’d been carrying and raped me. He came back every week after that, and when I had my little Niura, Mother only had to see him from the window and she’d say: ‘There’s the black mutton that dropped little Niura on our doorstep again; he’s come for another pack of cigarettes.’”

  Lyubovna got up from where she was sitting and went over to light a votive candle in front of the Virgin of Vladimir. She crossed herself, as if asking pardon for what she had just said. “Don’t worry, the Virgin knows what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to comfort her. “She doesn’t mind.” I laughed a little, but what she was telling me was embarrassing. I didn’t stop her, though. I wanted to know everything about Madame.

  “Things went on li
ke that for another year, and then young Lazar stopped coming. Much later I learned that the Poliakoffs had found out about their son’s ‘mistake’ and sent him to the university at Le Hague to get him out of harm’s way. They paid me a small stipend, so I could adequately feed and care for the child, and they had a rabbi visit us, who taught her Scripture. Little Niura, as I always called her, had no idea who her father was but she knew she was different. One day, someone sent a photographer to the tiny apartment, and the man told us he was to take our portrait. He brought his camera with him, and the clothes we were supposed to wear for the shot: two black silk dresses with tight sleeves and narrow lace collars. I was instructed to sit in a chair and Niura to stand a little away from me, as if we weren’t related. She faced the camera with that expression of superiority I know so well.

  “Niura was petite and finely boned. Her legs were long and her feet were beautifully arched. She had a great affinity with birds, quick, darting movements and a light step. The rich black silk of her sleeves made the long, tapered fingers of her hands look even more delicate. I myself am a large woman; I come from peasant stock. I was born in the village of Bor, on the banks of the Volga, whose waters are white as milk because it’s the river that nurtures Russia—and my hands are as large as a man’s. But I’m an honest woman. I’ve always worked for my keep. My knuckles are red from scrubbing the clothes of the rich, and I don’t see why I should hide them. So when the photographer told me to slide my hands discreetly under the folds of my dress, I placed them squarely on my knees, to make sure they stood out in the portrait.