by Kit Brennan
He left me at the stage door when his brother came to greet us. They bowed rather formally to each other, I thought, and the priest slipped away. Ventura de la Vega was a short, strong-looking man with dark skin and sleepy eyes, who seemed bone weary. He apologized for not meeting me the day before, but his wife had just had their third child and they were kept busy with its arrival. I was amazed at the difference in appearance between the two men; I would never in a million years have believed they were related. Ventura’s appearance told of his love for the good things in life—wine, women, and the arts—although I soon came to know that he worked like a dog to keep his household afloat. His fingertips were black with the ink stains of his writing.
“We were only made aware of your impending arrival yesterday,” he told me. “Of course we’d known you were on your way, but not exactly when to expect you. When the message came . . . It was slightly awkward, but we managed it.” How mysterious. What did he mean? Manage what? He was whisking me along the corridors, saying that everyone was exhausted; they hadn’t had a break from the show for several weeks because ticket sales had been so good. No one was pleased to have had to gather for a morning to meet the new deus ex machina. I told him I was determined to be fleet and fiery (my heart in my throat, courage high, and my best walking boots on). We passed the dressing rooms and finally emerged onto the stage itself where the actors waited. A quick glance around showed me that the theatre was a long and narrow rectangle, with seating below and three tiers of balconies surrounding the three sides above. On the stage was a permanent facade consisting of a two-story house, with openings for entrances and exits on both floors.
“Company, here she is.”
One by one I was told their names and roles. The young leading man and woman were sweet, both from the provinces (Seville and Granada) and obviously excited to have been invited to join the Príncipe, in the capital, for this latest revival. I was introduced to the great Antonio Guzmán, who had originated and maintained the virtuoso role of Don Simplicio. There were many other characters, played by men and woman who changed roles numerous times throughout the performance—and costumes as well, I was to discover, in an absorbed frenzy, while swearing at top volume. Introductions blurred past, I bowed and smiled, pretending to understand who, what, and where everything was but not understanding anything. Then Ventura turned to Guzmán and said, “She’s all yours.”
Señor Guzmán, chivalrously requesting that I call him Antonio, was directing operations for the day. The others smoked and waited, not so patiently, while he explained. “Señor de Grimaldi has ascertained that you are unafraid of heights?” he began.
“Um, heights? Yes, of course.”
How high, I wondered, just as he directed my eyes upwards. “The fly tower,” he explained. It seemed abnormally vaulted. I gulped, then met his amused gaze.
“That’s lucky,” he said softly. “Our last one had a bad fear of it. Probably what caused the problem in the first place.”
“Problem?”
“He’d grown too fat, even for a stock Cupid. The fly men were complaining. We had to hire extras, one each side, and even then it was difficult. And he kept missing the platform, very distracting.”
“Wait. You said Cupid?”
“That is the character you are playing. Not many lines, but a great deal of business.” His eyes watched me kindly, his sensitive face alive to what was going on inside of me—nervousness, surprise, disappointment.
“I was told deus ex machina. I’m the divine intervention?”
A hand on my shoulder, he began to walk me around the stage, to ensure that we were out of earshot. “Yes, Cupid is who he meant. My dear, I am not quite sure why Señor de Grimaldi has decided on this change of gender for our Cupid. Audiences are accustomed to chubby putto in the role, not slender slips of girls. But, Grimaldi usually knows best, and,” his eyes crinkling, “I have no doubt you will manage to sell even more tickets once the audience gets a look at you. We will practice your stunts together, by ourselves, this afternoon.”
He wheeled me around again and we came to a halt in front of the lounging, yawning actors. “Let me be clear, señoras y señores. We have been joined by Señorita Gilbert, who will be our new Cupid. She will be with us in performance tonight, so please unite with me in welcoming her.”
Tonight! My inner alarm bell clanged.
“What about Emilio?” someone called.
“Emilio is in no danger. He is in hospital but will recover; it’s only a broken leg.” Antonio shrugged and held up a finger. “It was an accident last night. That is all. He was careless.”
“No accident,” someone else muttered.
“How did we manage to get another Cupid so fast—and a woman? Why wasn’t it one of us, moved up from the duennas?” This came from an aggressive-looking female standing at the back with her arms folded.
“Silencio, por favor,” Antonio told her mildly. “Señor de Grimaldi’s orders. He knows what he is doing. Until tonight, then, friends.”
Tonight! Another clang. Dear God, I’d have other things to worry about, pronto, never mind a discontented actress from the chorus.
Dismissed, the company trailed off, clouds of cigarillo smoke in their wake. Ventura heaved a table from the wings onto the front of the stage, Antonio brought chairs, and the three of us sat down around it on the apron. I learned terminology from them that day: wings, fly tower, apron, thrust, down stage, up stage, stage right and left. These words and their meanings are life-threateningly important when you are about to do what I was about to do. I was introduced to the trapdoors in the stage floor and the reveals, which were small cupboard-like openings in the walls that actors could lean out of, like windows. Because the stage facade was permanent to the theatre and not specific to La pata, I was told that spoken cues were used by the actors to establish the where and when of the play’s settings.
The two men then talked me through the action: what happened from scene to scene, as well as my cues. Luckily, considering that I was to début that evening (ye gods!), I didn’t have many lines. The business was tricky enough both to understand and to execute. During the play, the necessary changes were accomplished by complicated machinery as well as people, so I also needed to know where to be to get out of the way. The production required forty-eight stage hands just to do the shifting and coordinate the flying (most of them standing about leering at the actresses, I was to discover, when they weren’t being required to use their muscles).
The plot to La pata de cabra goes something like this: Young hero Don Juan is about to commit suicide, despairing that he cannot marry his sweetheart, Leonor. Just as he is about to pull the trigger, the pistols fly out of his hands into the air and I step out of a tree trunk (my first appearance!) with a talisman, a goat’s foot (hence the play’s title). I promise the lovers eventual happiness and exit. Complicated set change number one, with things coming in and going out in front of the fixed facade, then enter Don Simplicio, the bumbling villain—a big entrance for Antonio, much applause as he does a full circle of the set, acknowledging it, then the action begins again.
Next scene: The earth opens up, Simplicio is befuddled and amazed, the young hero hides in his love’s bedroom by way of a trick mirror, some of the duennas transform into nymphs—I was foolish enough at this point to ask, but why? Finally the lovers are locked up in separate upper story rooms: Cue me! I fly by in an elegant carriage and rescue them! End of Act I. Most of Act II, I have a little rest while Simplicio tries to recapture the lovers and all sorts of other stage tricks and machinery are put to use. The most amazing piece of business: Antonio’s cap inflates like a hot-air balloon and he flies up into the stage tower at top speed. Cue me: I rescue the lovers again. The third act has more flights, levitations (I have to levitate!), and changes of furniture and properties, ending finally with the lovers being allowed to marry, Simplicio declaring, “Love conquers all,” and buckets of applause.
I felt rapturous and terri
fied at the end of this recital. Antonio patted my hand reassuringly as Ventura added, “The fly men arrive in twenty minutes to put you through your paces.”
A woman came out with a number of tapas and I ate quite a few with nervous alacrity before wondering whether that had been such a good idea if I was soon to be hoisted aloft. The men disappeared backstage and I wandered around, murmuring my lines to myself. How would I keep everything straight? Would my voice be loud enough? Fanny Kelly’s words returned to haunt me: “No amplification whatsoever apparent.”
A crew of burly men arrived and stationed themselves at their posts in the fly gallery. For my second entrance, I was to be backstage right, up on a platform and seated in my carriage (really just a rickety wooden box with painted scenery attached to the front of it). At the requisite cue, I was to hold on tight and the fly men would whisk me across the stage to the lovers’ second floor tower—a platform behind the facade—and the actor and actress would climb into the box with me and back we’d go, flying across the stage again. We tried it a few times, and it seemed to go smoothly. Next piece of business: Ventura helped me strap myself into an ingenious sort of harness. It went on over my day clothes at this point, but during the performance would be under my costume, only the connecting hooks visible and easy to reach. When I was required to levitate, I’d be using this harness and a small one buckled around my left ankle. Practicing, I discovered that it requires a great deal more muscle control to keep your body straight and horizontal while trying to appear Cupid-like, even with a harness, than it seems. I was thankful to be in good condition and wondered how a fat Cupid could possibly have done it without sagging in the middle.
The final big stunt I had to accomplish was similar to Don Simplicio’s: Cupid flew up and away at the end of the play. Just prior to attempting this one for the first time, Antonio gave me a fatherly hug. “Breathe deeply, just before you’re lifted. I find it helps,” he counseled. And I don’t know exactly what happened, but as the head fly man gave me the cue (“un, dos, tres, ya!”), I was seized with a little frisson of panic and must have clenched my muscles, and the fly men—accustomed as they were to a much stouter Cupid—heaved with a force greater than necessary for my size. I flew up into the air with an involuntary holler, my head got wobbly, my stomach lurched, and Antonio yelled, “Slow! Slow! Are you crazy men, let her down!” They did, apologizing profusely; as I touched the floor, I kept on going, and collapsed in a heap. Ventura rushed over, very contrite but, well, it’s odd but nevertheless true, I looked up, ecstatic, and cried, “Let me try it again!”
I was an actress in a play! I was about to appear before an audience!
After the practice, I was fitted into my costume, which they’d been forced to throw together at short notice. The wardrobe mistress, pins sticking out all around her mouth and a frown between her eyes, kept shaking her head and grumbling, despite Ventura’s soothing comments. Finally they deemed me presentable, and from a distance it looked quite grand, all in gold and pale blue. The problem was that it smelled a bit—no, a lot. It had seen better days and a great deal of use. Someone’s, or many people’s, stale perspiration, revitalized by the warmth of my body, was brought to life again in all its complicated piquancy. Night after night in this, I thought? Mon dieu. And dios mio.
Once released from the costume, there was an hour or so before Ventura was to take me for a meal, prior to the evening’s performance. I wandered around, accustoming myself to the world I had entered. In truth, I was disappointed by the shabbiness. I’d had no idea. The Príncipe was one of Madrid’s national theatres, and yet I could see that working conditions were appalling. No wonder actors were often sick—though the show would still go on with them in it, they’d be coughing or puking severely backstage, then launching out from the wings into their scenes full of verve. They had to, or they wouldn’t eat. On that afternoon though, I tried not to see the stains and the rips. I substituted the mystique, the audience-to-come, and the coiled energy of the building, until dirt, dust, and suspect smells disappeared. That’s how it is when you are about to enter your dream.
At the restaurante, Ventura was good-hearted about my increasing nerves and burbling questions: “Yes, you will have a big success, and no, you will not fall, not a chance of it.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Has Señor de Grimaldi informed you—”
“He’s told me everything, but we won’t tell the rest of the company. It will be our secret. Your cover is that you are learning traditional dance, yes? I have someone in mind. And we shall put your lessons to use. Grimaldi wishes you to dance a short fandango before your ascent to the roof.”
“And the princesses?”
“Early next week is my hope. We will be arranging a royal invitation.” He smiled across the table at me. “What did you make of my brother? Never mind, I can see. He and I are very different, perhaps you’ve noticed. He resents me, thinks my whole life is a game: third son, writes for the theatre, not a care in the world. He lives a sheltered life, my brother. Sometimes I worry about him.”
I immediately warmed to this de la Vega. He was easy with women because he worked with them as equals. They were part of his enterprise; he admired and appreciated them for the many skills they possessed. So unlike prissy Father Miguel.
“Have you finished? Then come along, Cupid.”
That night, giddy-headed from the mad butterflies inside, I stepped out from the tree trunk with the goat’s foot in my trembling hand. I smelled the hot lights, the stale costumes, the audience’s good will. I said my lines in the correct order and without a stumble, and exited. True, I tripped and fell down backstage after that first exit, but no one important saw me, just a few stagehands. The play seemed to be rushing by—soon I was clambering into my painted box-carriage and winging across the stage, heads in the audience turning to watch me go. From the wings, I devoured Antonio’s performance, holding my sides with laughter, shivering with joy. Again I climbed into my carriage and flew across the stage, and then the dreaded Act III. Onstage, I managed to get the tricky harnesses attached to my back and my foot, and levitated with all my might, skirt showing perhaps a bit more leg than had been intended—but the more the merrier, I thought, for then the audience might remember me. Finally, hook the connecting buckles to the flying harness with swift, trembling fingers and—oh gods!—my trajectory into the fly tower. Up I went, up and up in a moment’s breath! I landed on the uppermost platform, high in the very roof! Steadied by the fly man I then wobbled carefully all the way down the long perpendicular iron ladder (clamped to the backstage wall) to join the company in final bows. And that’s when I felt it, really felt it, and I knew, standing there on the dusty, dirty stage of the Príncipe Theatre in Madrid, Spain, soaking in the applause, the warm sound of a large number of living, breathing people putting their hands together and shouting “¡bravo!” This was what my heart and soul had craved all my life. Now I understood Concepción’s tension, her frustration at having to give it up. This was her core. This was where she lived. And I fell, like a stone, into knowledge. Into the deep pool of longing and desire, the stone sinking further and further: I must have this. There is no going back.
When I returned, triumphantly, to my rooms, I wrote a brief note to the earl of Malmesbury letting him know of my wonderful evening. I told him I was safe and with good people. I was cocky and full of the exultation the evening had given me—nothing seemed too difficult for Señorita Gilbert, royal spy and actress extraordinaire! I sealed the note with a kiss, then fell into a heavy sleep on top of it for the rest of the night.
When I woke, the small decorated box Grimaldi had included in my luggage to remind me of my purpose had fallen off the night table and was lying on its side, broken. With shaking hands, I tried to put it back together. From a distance, it may have fooled others, but I knew. It was no longer whole. Oh, I’m a superstitious creature. Juan had gauged me correctly. Thrill or not, having found my vocation or not, that mishap jarred me into reme
mbering that I must fulfill my mission.
The theatre is an enclosed circle, a serpent swallowing its own tail. A bit like moving to a small village; you may reside there for twenty years, but if you’re not one of them, you will remain the outsider, catch the sideways glance, the eyebrow twitch. In those first weeks I ignored the twitches, the sneers—or maybe I didn’t yet see them.
On the nights following my opening, my skirts (somehow) rode up during my levitations, revealing quite a bit more leg. Now my final whoosh up into the fly tower received a round of applause, which was intoxicating, although Ventura reprimanded me sternly. Antonio gave a little smile and said nothing; he understood the crucial desire to be noticed. How else, in this business, to get ahead?
My role in La pata—as I drank up applause—also helped channel my vigorous appetite. I’d written to the earl because I missed him. I missed him in bed; I missed our funny dalliances. I was itchy and hungry for love, and I suppose others in the company sensed it. A spirited young woman acts as a kind of lightning rod. Women don’t like her, or they attempt to belittle her; that was happening with some of the duennas in the chorus, though I tried to ignore it. With a few of the men, there were disturbances: One older actor became infuriated with me for some small slight (he thought I’d tittered at his loud ritual of gargling before performances). Then he turned thickheadedly possessive, as if he owned me or something. I had to quash that ridiculousness tout suite. One silly ninny simply fell apart, becoming tongue-tied and half-witted every time I passed him backstage. Meanwhile I went about my business, ever my own person, oblivious to the raging emotions around about me because I never intended to arouse them. I had an arousal of my own that was consuming me: a newly discovered joy in exercising my young passions, my young body, and that was what was driving me. That autumn in Madrid, I reached the full prime of my being. I was a nectar-filled flower with its petals open to the sun and the bees. And that, I was to realize, can be fatal.