Flight of the Swan

by Rosario Ferré

  “But that was much later. When we traveled to Paris in 1910, Niura joined Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. For a marvelous season she performed with Nijinsky as her partner, but she didn’t stay long. She was out of there like a bullet and returned to the Maryinsky. She’s always been proud and never danced second to anyone. She was prima ballerina assoluta in every company she ever danced with Vaslav Nijinsky, on the contrary, who came from a humble background, was easy prey for Diaghilev. Serge was the son of a cavalry colonel from the Urals, and he charmed poor Nijinsky into renouncing his contract with the Imperial Ballet and joining the Ballets Russes full time. Nijinsky reigned supreme in it, as Niura found out. But only for a short time. He was the perfect example of what happened to you when you let your heart get under your feet, Niura said.

  “When we moved to London my daughter set out to create her own ballet company with Dandré’s help, but it was a risky venture—the lamb bedding down with the wolf, you might say. It was around that time—June of 1912—when disaster struck. Dandré, who still lived part of the year in St. Petersburg, where he was chairman of the Commission of Inspectors to the St. Petersburg City Council, was accused of illegal use of city funds. He borrowed large sums, invested them, skimmed off the profits, and returned them to the fund a month later. But one day the operation took longer than it should have and Dandré got caught. He was prosecuted and put in jail. Niura had eighteen thousand dollars put away, the greater part of her earnings after her first grueling European tour, and she wired the money directly to Russia to get Dandré out on bail. When I found out about it, I was furious. I would have let the man rot in prison. Not a week passed before Dandré slipped away from St. Petersburg and secretly crossed the border over to Denmark, where Niura was waiting for him. She brought him to London, and he’s been living off our backs ever since.”

  All through Lyubovna’s story I sat listening as if in a trance, balanced on the edge of my chair. My tea had turned cold, and the cup stood on the table untouched. A storm of emotions was raging in my chest. I disliked Lyubovna for her groveling, but despised Dandré for having broken Madame’s spirit.

  10

  I WENT TO SEE MADAME IN HER ROOM at the Malatrassi the next morning. She embraced me and began to cry openly. Dandré sat on the bed, and went on thoughtfully smoking his cigar, a stern expression on his face. He was traveling the next day to New York, he said, to get all the members of our troupe English passports.

  I told Madame she had to pull herself together, because if the dancers saw her fall apart, there would be no hope for our company. “This is only a temporary crisis, one of the many we’ve already had to endure, and the Virgin of Vladimir will protect us,” I said, trying to raise her morale. But a premonition had seized me; I was afraid we’d be trapped on the island.

  That afternoon we went out for a little sightseeing and Molinari went with us. He spoke French, Spanish, and English, and we were told he also worked for the government as a translator. I wondered at his versatility. He was dressed in black from head to toe, and his yellow eyes roamed about like a vulture’s, ready to pounce on whatever caught his attention. If Madame lagged behind, or if I stopped to speak to people in the street, he’d be next to us in an instant, urging us to walk on. There was a lot of activity downtown, large crowds of people singing the American anthem and cheering at every turn, waving small American flags. A military band was playing on the corner of Calle Comercio, which led down to the piers. It was good music, gay and informal, and we let it flood over us so as not to think about what had happened. The American flag was flying in front of the schools, above the post office, at the entrance to the harbor; it even hung from the windows of the Municipal Theater and the balcony of the Casino of Puerto Rico. We wondered what was the reason for so much zeal.

  A line of uniformed recruits marched toward the wharf, knapsacks on their backs, carrying Winchester rifles. The column was headed by still more flags, and a large band played a march by John Philip Sousa, the American composer. I recognized it immediately because the company had danced to it in New York’s Hippodrome, where Sousa’s band forgot all about us and went on playing until we almost collapsed from exhaustion on the stage. Once in a while, though, the Puerto Rican soldiers would break into a paso doble, a spirited Spanish dance accompanied by castanets and tambourines. They would fall out of step and begin to run a little to keep up with the fast rhythm of the music, and from the back of the column it looked as if they were dancing the rumba. This made Madame laugh.

  “Where are they off to?” she asked.

  “They’re companies A and B of the Puerto Rican Battalion,” Molinari replied. “They’re sailing this evening for Colón and the Panama Canal, to defend it from possible German submarine attack.” And he pointed toward the Buford, the ship anchored on the harbor, where it had docked that morning.

  Madame was amazed. “And why should they defend Panama? It’s not their country, is it?” she asked.

  Molinari smiled ingratiatingly. “It is now, Madame! We were made American citizens only last month, and we have to defend our citizenship with our lives.” Dandré agreed stolidly while Madame stared at him in disgust. She had long ago given up trying to civilize him, but he always surprised her with his crassness. “That’s impossible. How can you become citizens of one country if you live in another?” she asked. “That’s exactly what you’ll be doing, Madame, in order to survive,” Molinari answered with an unctuous smile. Madame stamped her foot in anger, but couldn’t deny what Molinari had said. She would soon be a British subject, whether she liked it or not.

  Madame raced ahead of us to march beside the last soldier, who held a shorn lamb in his arms. “Where are you taking the poor thing? Is it going to Panama, too?” she asked. “Of course! It’s the battalion’s mascot. St. John’s lamb is our country’s national symbol.” Madame laughed and clapped her hands. “I think I’m going to love it here, Masha,” she told me. “How can you resist a people who have a lamb as their national symbol?”

  As we crossed the city we looked around more carefully. Well-to-do women on the island dressed much as they did in Russia during the summer when they went strolling down Nevsky Prospekt: in white muslin or linen gowns, with elegant hats on their heads and parasols in their hands. Men wore traditional white linen suits and straw boaters. Adults in the street were very friendly and looked at passersby directly in the eyes instead of avoiding our gazes, as they often did in St. Petersburg or, for that matter, New York.

  Fortaleza Street was full of stores: hardware, textiles, shoes, bedding, children’s clothes, all exhibited in the windows in an unsophisticated way. My favorite was La Casa de las Medias y los Botones, “The house of stockings and buttons.” Madame and I stopped in front of it as we walked by. The display window looked like something out of A Thousand and One Nights: buttons made of ivory, of fake mother-of-pearl, of glass that shone like diamonds, fake gold, silver, all displayed on wooden drawers that rose all the way up to the ceiling. They also sold silk ribbons by the spool and all sorts of feathers: ostrich, marabou, pheasant. The rolls of lace, silk damask, brocades, wools, and linens recently arrived from Europe stood spilled over the mahogany counters like newly discovered treasures. The store was swarming with customers, all of them asking to be helped. Madame and I stood there and stared at what was going on. “People in San Juan must love to dress up,” Madame said. “We must come back here soon, to have new costumes made.”

  Fortaleza Street was narrow, and it had a chapel named after Saint Jude, one of my favorite saints because he intercedes for lost souls, and mine strayed long ago. His statue was in a niche, and Madame and I liked to pray to him. It was a nice chapel, with domino-marble-tiled floor and a gilded image of La Monserrate—a black Virgin—sitting under the altar dome. We didn’t mind praying in Catholic churches because they resemble the Orthodox so much. They are dark and mysterious, so you can meditate on life’s enigmas. We disliked Protestant churches, where everything was
bare and cold, like the churches in New York where there wasn’t a single saint and Madame and I got so bored we immediately started to yawn. Catholics love their saints, and on this island they seem to love them in a special way, because in almost every house we looked in there was a small altar with old saints carved in wood holding small, lighted candles in their hands.

  Most of the buildings were dilapidated. Balconies with wooden balusters or elaborate ironwork looked toward the Atlantic and took in the breeze. Walls hundreds of years old were shedding plaster as if they were molting. The whole place smelled of moss, and a dank humidity crept up from the slippery cobblestones. And yet I liked it. In St. Petersburg, everything is old. Trees, sidewalks, houses are full of the sounds of the present and of the past. San Juan was like that, too.

  Because of the military celebrations the streets were teeming with automobiles: Studebakers, Peerless Eights, Franklins, Willis Overlands. People had come from all over the island to see the parade, and they went on arriving. It seemed as if half of them were driving luxury cars, and the other half were straggling barefoot down the cobblestone streets. But we didn’t see the magnificent yellow-and-black Pierce-Arrow that had picked Madame up at the wharf anywhere, no matter how hard we looked. As we went down San Justo Street a group of children, barefoot and wearing tattered, grimy smocks, skipped over a hopscotch grid they had drawn on the street with chalk. Many looked ill-fed and in poor health. They stopped playing and began asking Madame for money. They broke her heart, and she would have taken them back to the hotel with her if it hadn’t been for Mr. Dandré.

  We were almost back at the Malatrassi when we passed a large concrete building which was evidently a school. It looked relatively new; the American flag stood in front of it also. The windows that faced the street were open, and we could hear the children singing in English. The school day was just beginning. First they pledged allegiance to the flag; then they sang the American national anthem. Madame and I climbed on a nearby bench and watched, fascinated. How could it be possible that children on this island were taught in English when they only spoke Spanish? This was a mystery to us.

  A very elegant gentleman entered one of the classrooms on crutches, apparently about to give a lecture. There was something remarkable about him: he seemed to exude an extraordinary energy, his eyes blazed from his pale face with a dark fire. He only had one leg. The other one had been amputated, and his pant leg, immaculately pressed and starched, was carefully folded around the stump. He was talking to a group of students, obviously a class. The youngsters listened reverently, and people on the street also stopped to hear. Suddenly the man raised his voice, and the whole school, the street packed with people, even the trees full of birds, fell silent around them—or so it seemed.

  We couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but we were sure he was reciting a poem. A police van pulled up in front of the school, siren screaming, and a group of officers ran up the front steps and barged into the classroom. They lifted the poet up unceremoniously by the arms and whisked him away. Madame was horrified and ran after them, wanting to stop them from roughing up the crippled man, but Dandré ran after her and held her fast. Molinari muttered angrily at our backs: “That’s Manuel Aljama, reciting trash to our students again. American school principals are too lenient. The traitor should be shot!” Dandré hurried us on toward the hotel. “San Juan may not be as peaceful as it seems after all,” I heard him say as he escorted us away.

  11

  WE WERE ALL INVITED to La Fortaleza, and that evening we went to the governor’s mansion to meet some of Madame’s local admirers. She was to dance The Dying Swan in a private performance in the gardens. La Fortaleza was near the Malatrassi, so a few minutes before 7:00 p.m., we walked there single file wearing our evening finery, because the sidewalks were so narrow. Many of the shop and restaurant signs were in English, although everyone spoke Spanish in the streets. With Molinari leading the way, we turned right on General O’Donnell, formerly Calle San José, and then right again on General Allen, formerly Calle Fortaleza. Molinari kept translating the names from what they were before as if he enjoyed it, which made us cringe. We much preferred the Spanish names, which were several centuries old: San Francisco, San Sebastian, and San José, who are also holy in our Orthodox faith.

  We passed a small chapel built over the city’s ancient walls. “A miracle happened here some years ago during a popular feast,” Molinari said. “Horse races are an important part of San Juan’s Carnival celebrations, and dozens of horsemen participate in them. One day a runaway horse plunged over the eighty-foot embankment at the end of Calle Cristo. They say horse and rider hurtled into the rocks below, but the rider was saved by the Virgen de la Providencia.” Molinari told the story with an ironic snigger, but Madame ignored him. “Look, Masha! A sacred place!” she cried, kneeling in front of the chapel’s altar. Madame looked at the jagged rocks below, imagining the poor rider’s terrible fright as he tumbled through the air. Devoutly, she crossed herself.

  When we arrived at the governor’s mansion, there were already many guests waiting for us in the garden and almost as many security guards. The guards stood around like stolid mannequins in their uniforms, staring with glassy eyes straight ahead of them, their hands clasped behind their backs. We wondered if the reason there were so many police agents was because we were Russian and the governor was suspicious of us. Political assassinations were common enough in our country and Madame, they were informed by the police, was a Bolshevik sympathizer. The whole thing was absurd.

  Governor Arthur Yager, tall and bewhiskered, stood next to his slender daughter, Diana, in the receiving line of the Blue Room, under a portrait of an overweight Queen Isabel II of Spain, a huge dumpling wrapped in blue satin. Diana often gave teas at La Fortaleza, and since her mother was ill, she graciously performed the functions of official hostess. She was the one who, upon hearing that Madame had arrived on the island, had insisted that her father hold a reception in her honor.

  Molinari informed us that Governor Yager was a graduate and former president of Georgetown University and a good friend of President Wilson’s; he certainly looked the part. He wore a white linen suit and the suede shoes that were his trademark. His hair grew in tight silver curls around his head in the manner of the Roman emperors. He was evidently a cultured man and the mansion was decorated in good taste: colonial oil paintings hung on the walls, and antique mahogany chairs and consoles graced the corners holding up candelabra like oiled, dark-skinned servants. He had heard about Madame’s Ballets Russes in New York, and was excited to meet its dancers. As we entered the receiving room he bowed graciously before Madame and kissed her hand.

  Governor Yager was from Kentucky, Molinari explained, and because he was familiar with the Appalachians, he understood the problems of an agricultural island mired in poverty. In fact, that was why President Wilson had named him to his post as governor. I thought I detected a sarcastic tone to Molinari’s words but I couldn’t be sure. Molinari was a puzzle—I didn’t know what to think of him. He was Bracale’s sub-agent, but I suspected he also worked for the police commissioner. The day before, he had told us himself that he was a translator for the government. Today he went on about how he “hated the gringos’ guts,” because he had lost thousands of dollars in his coffee plantation when the U.S. left Puerto Rican coffee outside its tariff walls. His product couldn’t be shipped to Europe as it used to be, and on the mainland no one had heard about it. His coffee grains were rotting like drops of blood in the dense forest.

  As a native Kentuckian, Molinari explained, Governor Yager was familiar with the ins and outs of the liquor business, and he was aware that the healthy revenues from rum production kept the island from sinking completely into ruin. Yager opposed the dry law vigorously, but Congress insisted that a plebiscite be held; the law was applied to Puerto Rico, after all. In Congress’s opinion, the least Puerto Rico could do, in exchange for American citizenship, was vote for Prohibition. “
And Congress was right!” Molinari told us. “Since Puerto Ricans are only semi-civilized, it’s better if they don’t drink rum at all, because it only makes them more ungovernable.”

  The whole story was incredible. “Russians drink vodka from the cradle, and pouring it into the Neva would not alter our taste for it,” Madame snapped at Molinari, shaking a finger at him. But Molinari shrugged his shoulders and ambled on.

  Madame made her way among the guests; her four principal ballerinas and I surrounded her in a tight little phalanx. We could feel danger throbbing around us, in the heat of the crowd. The men wore dinner jackets, and the ladies’ evening gowns were ablaze with jewelry. Although most of the guests were Puerto Rican, it was considered impolite to speak Spanish because the governor and his daughter didn’t, so everyone spoke English with a thick accent. We saw the police commissioner there, too, probably a fixture at all the formal affairs at the governor’s palace.

  Madame wore her black-draped chiffon Madame de Grès evening gown, which ended in a vanishing point at the waist, baring her back provocatively. The governor asked for silence and tapped his knife against his glass: “I wish to present to you one of Russia’s greatest artists,” he said. “Madame is one of the wonders of the world. Let us drink to her health and happiness.” He lifted his champagne glass (the dry law didn’t apply at the governor’s) in Madame’s direction and raised it to his lips.