Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  Jimmy and Andres thrashed through a male pas de deux. Amazement shielded her like a bulletproof plastic bubble. She could make out homicidal acrobatics, metal glinting through air, leaps and pursuit and wrestling, one dancer strangling the other with a chain, a body being dragged offstage.

  Abruptly, as though a blade had sliced though an electric cable, the rock music stopped. The stage was dark except for two soft spots on the pianists.

  There was only Arensky’s waltz and Stephanie Lang lying on a piano top, yearning to move her arm and touch that knee and count how many pieces it was in. The music grew thinner, wispier, dissolved in one last silvery tinkle.

  The spots dimmed out.

  After an instant’s silence the patrons broke into applause and bravos. Steph sat up, reached, felt. She still had a knee, thank God.

  The asbestos curtain came down and the dancers stayed on stage, wrapping themselves in robes and sweat shirts and towels. Volmar—yellow-pad jottings clenched in a gesturing fist—shot off his notes.

  ‘Andrés, before you strangle Jimmy, could you play more with the chain? I want the impression of classical ballet manacled. Jimmy, when you’re dead, be dead. Theatrical dead, not ballet dead. It’ll be more shocking.’

  Andrés and Jimmy listened, nodding, agreeing, then tried it.

  Sergio seemed to have turned his eyes to some blank inner wall of his mind. He reminded Steph of a man hauled bodily from a traffic accident. His face made no acknowledgement when Volmar spoke to him.

  ‘Sergio, you were fine. Give us a little more panic when the boys interrupt, but act it, don’t try to dance it. Let the audience think hoods really have invaded the stage.’

  Volmar turned to Steph. She detected an instant’s hesitation. ‘Miss Lang, you’re supposed to embody the indomitable spirit of the white tutu.’

  In other words, she thought, I’m supposed to be a damned fool?

  ‘Even after the interruption, please try to keep dancing as long as possible. Jimmy and Andrés will be doing their best to stop you, but the important thing is don’t stop dancing. It doesn’t matter if you miss a step or fall behind the beat—keep the dance going. Now when Andrés lifts you—’

  ‘That’s not a lift, Mr Volmar,’ she broke in quietly. ‘It’s an attack.’

  Volmar’s gaze dusted over with sarcasm. ‘That’s right. As he lifts you, your arms and feet continue the classical ballet movements. Don’t try to fight back, don’t defend yourself. Above all, don’t give up the dance till Andrés lays you on the piano top.’

  Steph fought to control the anger building in her. ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then you’re dead. Just lie there. You can do that, can’t you, Miss Lang?’ He smiled for all of them, then turned and strode into the wings.

  Steph followed him. ‘Mr Volmar, why didn’t you warn us what you were planning?’

  Amusement flickered in the flint-grey eyes. ‘That would have killed the surprise.’

  ‘That rehearsal almost killed Sergio and me.’

  ‘My dear Miss Lang, you’re a good deal stronger than that.’

  She knew the danger of letting him sting her into unguarded honesty, but she couldn’t keep her rage to herself. ‘It was cruel of you.’

  A smile bent the thin line of his lips. ‘I could have been crueller. I could have let you go into performance not knowing.’

  Wariness stirred in her. His gaze flicked across hers, teasing as a hand-held fan. At that instant it occurred to her that he might have planned something even worse for the performance, some far crueller amputation.

  But she didn’t learn what it was till the night they premiered.

  twenty-seven

  For the first time in twenty years, Sergio Moritz was happy.

  Tonight he had a dressing room. Actually it was Raymond Johnson’s, but Ray was out for the season with a fractured tibula, and so tonight Sergio Moritz had a dressing room of his own, a dresser of his own, a role of his own.

  ‘Do you know, Harry,’ he confided to his dresser, ‘I was a little nervous about this role?’

  ‘Nervous? But you’re a pro, you’ve danced this type of schmaltz a hundred times.’

  Sergio watched Harry pluck invisible lint from the blue braided jacket that was the upper half of tonight’s costume. Harry was forty, chubby, almost bald, but a nice boy. Two things the Harrys of this world never outgrew were boyhood and a love of ballet. Some had actually begun as corps members, but most had never even made it that far. They recognized their own lack of talent and—embittered by it—catalogued music, fetched coffee, stitched costumes, dressed dancers, led underpaid, unrecognized lives in the kitchens and pantries of ballet and felt they’d been rewarded in gold when a dancer smiled at them or whispered a bit of gossip in their ears.

  The saints of dance, Sergio reflected.

  ‘The problem was the lifts,’ he said. ‘That Lang girl refuses to plié. There’s no preparation. I can tell you, it’s like lifting bricks.’

  ‘She just has too much thigh. She’s scared if she bends her leg someone will see.’

  Sergio smiled. ‘And, to be honest, it is my first role in ten years.’ Fourteen years, but he doubted Harry would remember.

  ‘Ten years? But I saw you do an Illuminations only last—when was it, two or three years ago?’

  ‘Ah yes.’ The poet. A last-minute cover, and a disaster. Critics had been kind. ‘Not my best work.’

  ‘But you projected. That gesture with your right hand—’

  ‘What a memory you have, Harry. Tell me, did you watch my dress rehearsal yesterday?’

  ‘And loved it.’

  ‘Interesting, hmm?’

  ‘Fas-ci-na-ting.’

  Sergio had been utterly unprepared for the punk-rock onslaught on his pretty little waltz. It had left him shocked, depressed, a little suicidal around the edges. But with twenty-four hours to reflect, he had come to see the ballet for what it was: a major Volmar statement.

  A Sergio Moritz comeback.

  He had, of course, been jittery creating a principal role after so many years of covering. He had taken a Dexamyl for energy and a vodka for his spirits. Now he felt secure. The trembles were gone. His head was clear and logical. Since no one had seen the ballet before, since the punk rock wiped out the waltz anyway, no one would be sure whether he was making mistakes or dancing intricately self-destructing choreography.

  He was safe.

  He was happy. There were telegrams in his mirror, bouquets on his dressing table. Alonso had cabled from Havana. A dresser was helping him slip his arms into a lovely blue jacket.

  He was home again. Home where he belonged.

  Someone knocked. Two sharp raps. Marius Volmar asked if he could be alone with Sergio.

  ‘I like that jacket,’ Volmar said.

  Sergio rhumbaed his shoulders comfortably against the robin’s-egg blue. ‘My favourite colour. I wish I could take it with me.’

  ‘You can.’

  Sergio’s finger, on the verge of flicking an excess spot of blush from his cheekbone, hesitated. His eyes met Volmar’s in the mirror, just beneath the telegram from George Balanchine.

  ‘You mean after the season?’

  ‘No. You can take it tonight.’

  ‘Wardrobe wouldn’t like that,’ Sergio smiled.

  ‘It wouldn’t fit anyone but you. It’s no good to us.’

  ‘If I take it home, my cat will chew it. Better to leave it here. You don’t want your stars dancing in chewed blue, do you?’

  The chew-blue rhyme was a sort of joke, and Sergio had hoped at the least for a sort of smile in reply. But Volmar’s lips held a straight line, not smiling, not frowning. He pulled out a chair and sat and placed a hand on Sergio’s knee.

  ‘Sergio—you’ve been with us twenty-five years.’

  ‘A member of the family, yes?’

  ‘You’ve worked hard, and loyally. Tonight is the company’s way of saying thank you.’

  Sergio shifted uneas
ily. His knee stayed locked in Volmar’s grip. ‘Tonight is special for you, Mr Volmar, but for me—well, I’m just doing my work. I love my work and I don’t need thank you’s.’

  ‘Tonight is special for you, Sergio. Very special.’

  Sergio pulled his lips in tight against his teeth, determined to keep any expression from showing till he knew exactly what Volmar was saying.

  ‘Sergio—this is your farewell appearance with NBT.’

  Sergio shut his eyes, blanking out the moment, the reality, giving himself an instant to breathe deep and tell him his ears had heard wrong.

  Volmar’s gaze awaited his patiently.

  ‘Why?’ Sergio was shocked at the whimper of his own voice.

  ‘You’re old.’

  ‘Forty-two.’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  ‘In any business but ballet that’s young!’

  ‘But this is ballet.’

  Sergio saw himself in the mirror, a man made magically a boy, a brave smile framed in cablegrams and cut roses.

  ‘You look fine, Sergio, you look twenty years younger than your age—but your movements—‘

  ‘Then why?’ Sergio smashed a fist into the Kleenex box. ‘Why did you drag me back and give me the role? Why not just let me crawl offstage? Do I have to die out there in front of everyone? Is that what you want? Is that part of your new ballet?’

  ‘The premiere is a present.’ Volmar’s hands were on Sergio’s shoulders, steadying. ‘How many dancers end their careers creating a role?’

  ‘I don’t care how many. I care about me, Sergio Moritz.’

  ‘You’ll have full pension.’

  ‘I want to dance.’

  ‘You can teach class, you can coach. Perhaps you can even stage a ballet for us now and then.’

  ‘Mother Goose? Valses Nobles? No no no thank you.’ Sergio raised his hands, blotting Volmar out. ‘I’ll dance your ballet, but I won’t take your blue jacket.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Volmar stood, one hand on the doorknob.

  ‘As for the pension, I’ll have to consider it.’ Sergio’s hand snatched blindly, yanking cablegrams from the mirror. ‘I’ve had offers: Balanchine, Alonso—Marcia wants me to come to Stuttgart.’

  ‘You’d do very well in Stuttgart.’

  Unthinking, Sergio pressed a fistful of cablegram to his face, blotting tears, wrecking make-up. When he stumbled to his feet it was Harry, not Volmar, who blocked his way.

  ‘Let go of me.’ Sergio pulled free.

  ‘Don’t you want to fix that make-up before you warm up?’

  ‘I’m not warming up.’

  Sergio wrenched his ballet slippers loose and dug his feet into a pair of loafers. He was halfway to the elevator before he managed to fasten his raincoat. He ignored greetings and merdes and stares, plunged across Columbus Avenue to the bar in O’Neals’ Baloon.

  ‘Double vodka on the rocks, please, with a twist.’

  The voice on the box called, ‘Places, please.’

  Steph adjusted her tutu, made sure her toe shoes were securely glued to the soles of her tights. She hurried out to the wings. Stagehands, electricians, and lighting men were making their last-minute adjustments. The pole of lights was still in the third wing, still blinding, and Steph clutched at the lighting designer’s sleeve as it wisped by.

  ‘Mildred, you said you’d do something about those lights.’

  Mildred, a heavy-set woman who should not have worn slacks and who ought to have worn a bra and who could outshout any man in the stagehands’ union, gave her a shrug of a glance. ‘Sorry, hon. Can’t do anything about it now. Just lower your eyes.’ Then shouting up to the catwalk, ‘Can you see if that dimmer’s working on 23?’

  The stage went pitch-black. Sparks hissed down in Fourth-of-July rainbows.

  Someone cried, ‘Shit!’

  Steph banged her hip against something, and as the lights groped back up to half strength, she saw it was the pre-amp unit for the electric guitar, placed smack in the way of her entering diagonal.

  She called to a stagehand. ‘Could you help me? This isn’t supposed to be here.’

  Heavy hurrying shoulders bunched in burly apology. ‘Sorry, miss, that’s musicians’ union.’

  ‘Can’t you just help me move it two feet?’

  ‘Not allowed to.’

  ‘But I make my entrance from this—’

  The stage manager crossed the stage, calling, ‘Places! Anyone seen Sergio?’

  ‘Let’s give this mother a shove,’ a voice whispered in Steph’s ear. It was Jimmy, leather-jacketed, charcoal-unshaved. He bent low like a football lineman, placed his hands low on the 300-pound switch-studded box. Together they budged it just far enough to let a ballerina bourrée past.

  ‘Seen Sergio?’ The stage manager’s face blurred by anxiously.

  Steph flexed her toe shoes and pressed her palms to the canvas floor.

  ‘Who’s covering for Sergio?’ someone shouted, distant and desperate.

  ‘That’s all I need,’ Steph groaned. ‘I haven’t rehearsed a step of this with Wally.’

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ Jimmy pointed. Across the stage, a rain-coated figure wobbled through a flickering cone of light. Jimmy cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Wrong wing, Sergio! Over here!’

  Steph gripped Jimmy’s leather sleeve. ‘Something’s the matter with him.’

  Sergio crossed the stage, weaving, colliding with a piano, fending it off. Steph sucked her breath in. Mascara and eye shadow had trickled to his jaw, tracing a network of cracks like shattered glass. The unmistakable sour smell of drunkenness floated three feet ahead of him. Steph recoiled.

  ‘Get Wally,’ she whispered to Jimmy.

  Jimmy’s eyebrows flexed and hooked somewhere near his greased-back hairline. He turned and torpedoed a path through stagehands and dancers and vanished.

  The chattering and buzzing of the audience that had come spilling through the curtain like sea surf suddenly dropped to silence. Steph realized they’d lowered the house lights. Her throat tightened.

  ‘You’re not dancing like that, are you, Sergio?’ The stage manager was at Sergio’s shoulder, helping him out of his raincoat.

  ‘He can’t dance,’ Steph said. ‘He’s drunk.’

  The words made no dent on the wreck of Sergio’s face. Not even his attention flicked up. He was somewhere else, beyond denting or further wrecking.

  ‘Volmar says he dances.’ The stage manager crouched, twisted Sergio one foot at a time out of his loafers and into a pair of new shoes.

  ‘But don’t you see he can’t even stand up?’

  The stage manager darted a faintly amused glance in Steph’s direction. ‘If Volmar says blow up the stage, I blow up the stage. If he says this is Sergio’s farewell performance, this is Sergio’s farewell performance. Knock ’em dead, Sergio boy.’

  The stage manager gave Steph a wry shrug and then the curtain was hissing up and a house of three thousand was holding its breath.

  Sergio placed a hand on Steph’s shoulder, bracing himself against some inner sway. A death’s head smile ran like a gash across his face. ‘Sorry,’ he slurred. ‘Very, very sorry.’

  One instant was all she could bear of the eyes, the breath. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s his.’

  Her music began. She went up on pointe, ready for her entrance.

  Anna saw the fall from the twenty-third row of the orchestra.

  She could not believe it had happened. A moment ago the stage had been a ballroom filled by one whirling couple. Now, barely two minutes into the ballet, it was a motionless graveyard, her daughter a heaped lump of tutu on the floor.

  In the silence of three thousand held breaths, terror began to set on Anna like chilled gelatin. Needles ran pricking up and down her legs. She felt a strength flowing out of the audience, godlike in its power to forgive or destroy. The silence thickened like falling snow until it had the icy weight of a verdict.

  Unthinking, she crossed herself.
The pianos went on like a clock in an empty room, ticking off the instant of motionless shock.

  Anna darted a sweeping glance around her. The audience sat frozen in darkness. She could not read them. There were too many faces with too many expressions, and when she narrowed her eyes to make them out, her eyelashes only made them dimmer.

  A sudden rushing gasp filled the house. It exploded into a thousand-throated cry of dismay and shock and tut-tutting pity and hot, thrilled bitchery: this was the blood they had come to ballet to see.

  A split second passed before Steph scooped herself up. She began moving in time to the music again, rapid and vulnerable like a bird with broken wings.

  Anna clenched her eyes shut and wished she could die.

  In the shadow of his first-ring seat Marius Volmar shifted weight back into the comfortable depth of his chair. He lifted one hand with elegant unhurry. His fingers moved up the side of his jaw and down again, unlacing the concern that had gripped his face. He allowed his eyes to close partially, almost blotting out the stage and its shimmering, insignificant figures.

  Perfect failure was as delicate an achievement as success. Tonight he had achieved it, and he was satisfied.

  In the dressing room Steph sat at her mirror and stared at the bouquets from her mother and Chris, from Lvovna and Danny. She reread the notes, so full of hope and encouragement; lingered at Danny’s Fond best wishes; and felt dull and used up.

  If the fault had been Sergio’s, for being drunk, or Volmar’s, for springing leather boys and punk rock on her, she might have felt less shocked, less adrift on a sea of humiliation. But there had been no hidden trap door tripping her, no jealous rival’s ground glass in her toe shoe: she had slipped on a single pirouette, alone and unsabotaged. There was no one to blame but herself.

  She wondered if she would ever have the chance she had thrown away tonight.

  ‘Can I get you something, miss?’

  Steph turned her head slowly toward the voice. It was Lily, a middle-aged Korean woman who was one of the seven corps dressers.

  ‘Coffee? Something from the candy machine?’

  Steph shook her head.

  Dressers understood when dancers needed chitchat or needle and thread or a kind ear; and they understood when dancers needed to be left alone. Lily nodded and slipped away.