Wild Lavender

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Esto es como bailar con troncos!’ Rivarola spat out just before Monsieur Volterra called me up on stage. I had no idea what he had said but knew from the tone that it wasn’t good. His insults were unjustified: he’d had the choice of some of Paris’s best chorus girls, many of whom were trained in ballet. I took my place opposite him and braced myself for the test by imagining the chocolate éclair I intended to devour as soon as it was over.

  Rivarola stared at my ankles then bent over and stroked them like a man choosing a racehorse. He seemed intrigued by the shape of them although no one had made any comment about my feet before. He brushed his hands over the bridges then slipped his fingers under my arches. I fought the tickle that irritated my windpipe; I was determined not to laugh. I wanted to make it at least as far as the second test before Rivarola declared me unsuitable. I was curious to discover how he made his decisions.

  The stagehand dropped the gramophone needle and Rivarola clenched me to his chest. I stifled a cry. Something like a lightning strike jumped from his chest into mine. I shook with the force of it but didn’t budge from my position. Rivarola stared into my eyes. Somehow I managed to hold his gaze. This is what it must feel like to be seduced by a gypsy, I thought, although of course Rivarola was no gypsy. He was a full-blooded Argentine.

  Rivarola guided me backwards but the power that sparked from his legs gave the sensation that I was being shoved back into a wall of air. It took me by surprise and I didn’t resist. Then the force of gravity around my body seemed to dissipate; my legs fluttered as if they were floating. It was not what I had expected from the tango, which I had imagined to be weighted down with drama and despair. Maria had always danced with her arms draped around Rivarola’s neck, like a shipwreck victim clinging to a piece of wood. Now I wondered if she had been trying to stop herself being swept away. Rivarola dwelt on each step as if he were testing bathwater with the tip of his toe. And yet everything he did was smooth. The music separated into layers and Rivarola danced to each one. Sometimes we followed the melody of the piano, then the nostalgic voice of the singer, then the violins. I had never paid such careful attention to the details of music when dancing, only its overall beat and rhythm. I had seen music as the accompaniment to my dancing, but with Rivarola it was the core.

  He suddenly stopped and thrust me away. I realised that in thinking about the music I had lost my concentration on the movements. Rivarola’s face contorted and he rushed towards Monsieur Volterra so swiftly that I thought he was going to punch him in the face. The impresario must have thought the same thing because he threw himself back in his seat.

  ‘Esta piba acaricia la música como una diosa bailando sobre las nubes!’ Rivarola shouted.

  Monsieur Volterra gaped from Rivarola to the lighting technician. The boy’s face blanched and he wobbled on his feet. The needle slid off the record and the room turned deathly silent. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for the technician to interpret what Rivarola had said. The boy crept to the front of the stage.

  ‘Rivarola says she is perfect,’ he told Monsieur Volterra, who had turned as white as a sheet. ‘He says that she caresses the music like a goddess dancing on the clouds.’

  Within a day, I went from being unemployed to being part of a duo with the world’s most renowned tango artist. Rivarola and I even had a billing, because we danced in several scenes and our act was the subplot to the show’s theme of forbidden love. It was the first time I had seen my name in lights since Marseilles, and this time it was at the Casino de Paris! But I worked for every letter of it. With only three weeks to the opening, the rehearsal schedule was punishing: three hours of tango lessons each morning and a rehearsal proper from two to six o’clock every afternoon.

  ‘Necesitas mas disciplina pa’ ser una bailarina seria que pa’ ser una cantante de comedia!’ Rivarola would shout at me at least three or four times each session. ‘To be a serious dancer takes more discipline than to be a singing comedian.’

  Having picked up English phrases by working at the Café des Singes, I was now becoming proficient in Spanish too—a necessity when spending several hours a day with an Argentine who refused to speak French—and I understood what Rivarola meant better than he ever gave me credit for. It was easy to hide behind cute lines; much harder to bring out what was deep inside for all to see. I knew that if I wanted to leave the childish songs and unglamorous costumes behind for good, then I had to make a success of the act. Monsieur Volterra was even having our portrait painted for the wall opposite the poster of Camille and Jacques Noir!

  ‘Che, prestame mas atención. No bailes pa’ la gente!’ The lighting technician, who acted as interpreter during rehearsals, had written that one out for me and I had posted it on my dressing room mirror. ‘Stay focused on Rivarola. Do not play to the audience.’ The instruction went against everything I had ever been taught as a singer, but it was the only way for a dancing duo to captivate a crowd. The people who saw us perform had to believe they were observing a real-life romance between a man and a woman.

  Whether Rivarola knew how seriously I followed his instructions, I couldn’t tell. I never took my dancing shoes off until I reached my room at the hotel, and when I did I had to peel the inners away from my bruised and blistered feet. With a scream of relief I would plunge them into a bowl of cold water. Often, after rehearsal, I examined my face in the mirror. Under Rivarola’s constant shouting, my eyes were growing haughty and my mouth was developing a rebellious curve. My cheekbones and chin were sharper than they had been when I first came to Paris. It was as if Rivarola was transferring something of himself into me. We usually danced cheek to cheek, but sometimes when we practised he would press his forehead against mine. ‘Asi podemos leer la mente del otro,’ he said. ‘So we can read each other’s thoughts.’

  I cringed the first time Rivarola pressed me so tightly to his chest that my breasts felt like they were being crushed into his ribs, but I didn’t protest. Nor did I say anything when during some of the patterns he rubbed his leg between mine when he was leading me backwards. Perhaps I saw it as the best way to rid myself of my virginity and still remain true to my art. To lose my innocence on stage was infinitely preferable than to surrender it for money to men like François. Purity did not suit the style of tango. If I was to be true to it, I had to convey at least a hint of lust and carnal desire, and it was in that, as much as the dance, that Rivarola was instructing me.

  When the audience and gossip columnists saw us perform together on stage, they assumed that Rivarola and I were lovers in real life too. Those who saw us backstage knew better. For the minutes we danced together, Rivarola and I smouldered with desire in each other’s arms. But as soon as the curtain came down and we ran to the wings, he discarded me like the sweaty shirt he tossed to the wardrobe assistant. In between acts he hid himself away in his dressing room, drinking whisky and smoking cigars. He was not interested in me beyond what I became for him on stage. I don’t think he knew my name until several weeks into the performance. And yet, from the first night, our dancing moved the audience to standing ovations and reviews that were full of admiration. The critic for Paris Soir wrote: ‘The sublime teaming of Rivarola with newcomer Simone Fleurier is one of the highlights of the show. The distinctive performance by Rivarola is enough to send anyone’s pulse racing and his partner matches him in every way with her grace and precision.’

  Monsieur Etienne was pleased with my success and, as a treat, took Odette and me to dinner at La Tour d’Argent.

  ‘It is one thing to be a great singer,’ he said. ‘And another to be able to dance the way you do.’

  ‘I don’t think there is anybody else in Paris who is a genius at both,’ gushed Odette.

  Monsieur Etienne raised his champagne glass. ‘Paris is your tango partner, Simone. She is within an inch of your grasp.’

  Until then, Monsieur Etienne’s assessments of me had been positive but reserved. The fact that he was handing out such high praise g
ave me the boost in confidence I needed. From him, I could be sure it wasn’t flattery. But while I might have been on the verge of conquering Paris, not everyone was enamoured of me.

  FOURTEEN

  The best thing about being lifted from the status of minor act to principal player was that I was included in the grand finale. The set was a Spanish villa, complete with pots of cascading geraniums, and a Moorish courtyard with a fountain as the backdrop. The audience sighed with admiration when Camille made her entrance, lowered from the flies on a chandelier like a deity descending from the heavens. She landed in the arms of the principal male dancer, who wore a matador’s suit with pants tight enough to raise every woman’s temperature. Camille’s costume was daring too: a Spanish dress cut away at the front to reveal a corset and knickers and a lace mantilla sprouting from a comb on her head and spilling around her shoulders. The chorus girls, in little more than sombreros and sequins in strategic places, swirled around the couple, waving feathered fans. The clowns, playing the part of the matador’s banderilleros, chased and were chased in turn by two clowns dressed as a bull. Just before Camille made her appearance I danced a kind of Frenchified flamenco, which Rivarola refused to perform because it had nothing to do with Argentina, but which the whole chorus line mirrored behind me. My exit came when I was swept away by a picador on horseback—a real horse’s back. The animal was named Roi and was the offspring of one of Monsieur Volterra’s racing thoroughbreds. After Camille and her lover danced and sang their triumphant number, the chorus girls broke out into a cancan. The dance had nothing to do with Spain, but the audience loved it.

  Although she was a star, Camille did not have the top billing for the season. That place went to Jacques Noir, ‘the most adored comedian in the whole of Paris’. ‘Adored’ was the right word: whenever he appeared on stage, my dressing room trembled with the earthquake force of the audience’s applause. Once my photograph of Fernandel—which he had autographed for me after I had seen him perform at the Folies Bergère—fell off its hook from the violent vibrations and smashed on the floor. The glass cracked straight across the comedian’s dopey smile. Poor Fernandel, I thought. Although he was one of Paris’s most talented singing comedians, I doubted that with the dark circles under his eyes and his equine face he would ever be described as ‘adored’.

  Once Rivarola and I had settled into our act, I asked the stage manager if I could watch Noir’s first set from the wings. Because of the schedule I had never seen him perform. Noir appeared in the grand finale after me, when the stagehands were too busy trying to manoeuvre me, the picador and Roi outside before the horse splattered droppings where the other performers would step in them. Despite not being fed for six hours before a performance, a bowel movement was Roi’s usual reaction to his post-performance euphoria.

  ‘Only Noir’s wife sits in the wings during his performance,’ the stage manager informed me. ‘He doesn’t like distractions.’

  ‘I’ll be discreet,’ I promised. ‘I can’t see him at rehearsals. They are always closed.’

  ‘That’s so people don’t steal his material before he performs it.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to do that,’ I said. ‘Unless you think Rivarola and I have potential as a comedy act?’

  The stage manager relented and led me to a section of the left wing where there was a wooden stool. It was splintery and prickled my legs, but I smiled as if nothing were wrong.

  The stage manager put his fingers to his lips. ‘I don’t want you to even breathe,’ he said.

  I peered through the darkness and saw a woman sitting in the opposite wing, a circle of light falling in her lap from a table lamp perched on a shelf above her. That must be Jacques Noir’s wife, I thought, taken aback by the woman’s appearance. For the wife of one of the richest entertainers in Paris, she was dressed dowdily in a grey dress. Apart from the wedding ring on her finger there was not a glimmer of jewellery anywhere on her person. And if the stage manager was so worried about me breathing, I wondered what he made of Madame Noir’s knitting. The click of her needles was audible even from where I was sitting. Her birdlike neck and the wrinkles on her forehead made her look more like Noir’s mother than his wife. I had heard that Noir was only thirty-two years old.

  The chorus girls opened the act with a jazz dance performed on a chessboard floor with extra dancers dressed as kings, queens, bishops and knights. As the dancers were fleeing the stage via the staircase, one of them flipped up the crown of a giant rook. The chess piece opened and out stepped a man in tails and a top hat. He was as obese as a hippopotamus with three chins and beady eyes peering over his snout of a nose. Despite his expensive English suit I thought he was the most unattractive man I had ever seen. I was sure he was one of the clowns in extra padding and make-up until the crowd went wild and the women started calling out, ‘Jacques! Jacques!’

  My breath caught in my throat. If I had been surprised by his wife’s appearance, I was shocked by Noir’s. This was the most adored comedian in the whole of Paris? Maurice Chevalier was more handsome and bursting with Gallic charm. Even Fernandel didn’t seem so unattractive next to Noir. I thought about the poster in the foyer: the artist had taken some liberties in improving Noir’s appearance there. But from the reaction of the audience, he had a much more positive effect on them than he did on me.

  ‘Ladies! Ladies!’ Noir called out. ‘Please! What will your menfolk think?’

  The restless women giggled and settled down.

  ‘At least you have the good taste to be at the Casino de Paris tonight,’ he grinned, swaggering across the stage, ‘and you haven’t gone to see Mistinguett at the Moulin Rouge.’ He stopped, eyed the crowd and rolled his tongue in his cheek. ‘You know the difference between Mistinguett and a piranha, don’t you?’

  The audience tensed, waiting for the punch line.

  ‘The lipstick.’

  The crowd roared with laughter and clapped. Noir quickly followed up with, ‘What is the first thing Mistinguett does when she gets up in the morning?’ and, after a staged pause, answered his own question, ‘She puts on her clothes and goes home.’

  This joke brought more hoots of laughter and applause. I wondered if I was hallucinating. Could that obese man really be Jacques Noir? He was being paid over two thousand francs a performance? He was appalling.

  I glanced across the stage to his wife. She didn’t appear to be paying attention to her husband’s performance; she looped and stitched at her knitting as if she were waiting for a train instead of sitting in the wing of a music hall. Meanwhile, Noir moved on from savaging Mistinguett to humiliating Chevalier who had featured in the gossip columns that week with the rumour that he had tried to kill himself. ‘You know what happened there, don’t you?’ laughed Noir, eyeing the audience. ‘They say it was because of his bad war memories. Hah! It was because of his bad New York memories. He was trying to sell himself as a big star on Broadway when a kid and his mother approached him and the kid asked, “Mister Chevalier, would you sign my autograph book?” “Sure, kid,” said Chevalier, loud enough for everyone within a mile radius to know that someone had recognised him. Well, the kid pulled out this tiny notepad, no more than two inches by two inches, that he’d bought at a five and dime store somewhere. “Gee, kid,” Chevalier said, “there’s not much room here. What would you like me to write?” The kid thought about it a moment and then his eyes lit up. “You know, Mister Chevalier, perhaps you could write out your repertoire.”’

  The joke brought the house down. Noir’s rapport with the audience baffled me. Was I missing something? Had working with Rivarola cost me my sense of humour? I wondered what Monsieur Volterra made of Noir’s digs at Mistinguett and Chevalier; after all, they were two of his biggest stars at the Casino de Paris. I wondered if after tonight they would ever perform there again. But Noir had something in store for Monsieur Volterra too.

  ‘How do you tell if an impresario is dead or not?’ he quizzed the audience. ‘You wave a thousand fr
anc note past his face.’

  With that the orchestra started up and Noir burst into song. The whole mood of the act changed and I understood what was so appealing about him. Noir hummed, half-sang and half-talked his way through the song in a voice that was the best I’d heard from a male singer in Paris. It was more resonant than Chevalier’s argot, and more agile in its jumps and skips than Fernandel’s. If you closed your eyes, you could forget the song was being sung by so hideous a man. The voice belonged to someone dashing. But even with my eyes open, Noir’s appearance improved when he sang. There was something magnetic about him. I tried to pinpoint what it was, because I feared it might be that elusive ‘star quality’ I was desperately seeking myself. Perhaps it was the confidence that radiated from every pore of his generous body. He was good and he knew it.

  I was so swept away by his song about a dandy who loves his mistress’s maid that I forgot about the splintery stool and the cruelty of his earlier jokes. Noir’s voice smoothed his rough edges the way the sea blunts sharp stones. But the next instant, I was jolted out of my pleasure. Noir picked up a cane and skipped around the stage, bouncing the stick in time to music I recognised.

  La! La! Boom! Here comes Jeanne

  Checking out my new Voisin.

  La! La! Boom! She asks, ‘What are you doing?’

  What am I going to tell her?

  La! La! Boom! I’m warming up my little machine…

  Noir was parodying the song I had sung in last season’s show, only his version was full of double-entendres. But worse than just parodying the song, he was lampooning me, bouncing and skipping and wiggling his behind as I had been made to do by Madame Piège. I looked from Noir to the audience; they were laughing, their mouths open like hundreds of dark caverns. I had hated that number myself but that didn’t lessen my humiliation. Noir turned my previous trivial act into a truly embarrassing memory.