by John Haskell
I knew it before, but sitting with these men, their hands on the table, the hairs growing out of the backs of their hands, I could see their friendliness was only a veneer of friendliness. And the thinness of that veneer became obvious when Freddie, who seemed to be the most volatile, certainly the most emotional, possibly retarded, pounded his large hand on the table. Make him pay, he said, make him pay. He owes us money, he should pay us back. And if they were playing good cop / bad cop, Freddie was the bad cop and the Commodore told him, relax. We’re all friends here, he said, and friendship is more valuable than—and he did his own version of swatting away a bothersome insect—financial considerations. That’s what he said, but then he said that something had to be done, unfortunately, about the financial discrepancy, the money I owed. He pretended to think about this thing he called a situation, and how it might be turned to everyone’s advantage. His hair was like a manicured lawn, damp not from dew but from hair oil or hair tonic, and like gravestones on a cemetery lawn he didn’t seem to be moving. He was quiet. And I was quiet too, waiting for the questions, most of which I answered truthfully because the best way to deal with situations like this, in my experience, is to tell the truth. I could have made up a story about coming into money, some investment I’d made. Or I could’ve pretended I was a wealthy heir apparent waiting for my trust fund. Or that I was insane, a buffoon. I could have started playing a role, and certainly they were playing roles with me, but even when you play a role you have to tell the truth. Within the confines of any role a certain amount of truth is going to leak out, and it should leak out, and the problem was, I didn’t know what role I was playing. Or what I wanted to play. I told them about my father. One of his businesses was a dry-cleaning shop, in San Diego, in one of the first shopping malls in the world, or so he told me, before they were called malls, and I didn’t go into detail because I didn’t know the point of the story. Stalling, that was the point. And by stalling I was revealing what I was, a middle-class kid who’d tried to be good, or do good, but not really, because what good had I ever done. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a grown human man, and the past I’d had was over, and I was moving on, not forgetting because I would never forget, and by trying to forget I’d gotten involved in a gambling game, which was stupid to do, I was sorry I did it, but I wasn’t the kind of person who could hurt someone. I can’t do that. And although I wasn’t an adamant person I was adamant about this, and if we wanted to come to an agreement, that was fine, I wanted an agreement too, but it would not involve killing another human being. Those two things are immutable, I said. Off limits.
What two things?
What?
Two things are off limits?
The night of the birthday ball has arrived. Siegfried’s mother, who designed the festoons, is proud of her party, and she asks her son if he’s happy, meaning happy with the decorations. He, of course, is thinking about Odette, whether she’ll come, and when, but he does as his mother instructs him. He sits on the dais while she, tapping a champagne flute with a spoon, gets everyone’s attention. This is the moment of his big decision. Six beautiful girls are brought in, girls his mother has chosen, and in a way they’re auditioning for him. Each one dances a dance from her part of the kingdom, and Siegfried dutifully dances with each of them. But none of them stir his blood, that’s the expression, the way Odette does. It’s either blood or a chemical, or an electrical charge in his body. And when the moment comes for him to choose, because he doesn’t feel it, he can’t choose, and that’s when the door opens and a man with a red beard leads his daughter into the hall. Everyone turns, and she’s stunning, dressed in black feathers, and at first Siegfried doesn’t recognize her. But then he does, her face, but Rothbart has disguised her real face. He’s disguised himself, and the daughter is his real daughter, Odile, who’s been transformed into a version of Odette. An exact replica. The ballet version of the story has the two roles played by the same ballerina. And Siegfried, thinking he’s talking to the girl he loves, when he asks her to dance, he doesn’t notice her dancing lacks passion because he’s dancing with his dream, and what could be better. He’s showing his mother, and the whole world, the person he loves, the proof that he can love, which takes his attention away from her. He’s not looking into her eyes, which would tell him she’s false, and his mother’s not looking because she’s being charmed by Rothbart. Tchaikovsky’s music is perfect for a solo, and after Odile performs it Siegfried joins her and she’s almost exactly like Odette. They dance together, spinning and lifting, and Odile becomes confident that her mask is fooling him and she toys with him, running from him, laughing at the power of controlling him. Only Rothbart, from his perch on the dais, sees Odette, standing outside the window, frantically flapping her wings to get her lover’s attention. He signals to his daughter who, seeming to be coquettish and playful, covers Siegfried’s eyes. And then, standing at the center of the hall, she executes the requisite thirty-two fouettés, a display of technique made famous by Legnani, in Russia, and fouetté means whipped, and having seen it, and seen her, Siegfried goes to the man with the beard and asks to marry his daughter. Yes, he says, but with one condition. He demands an oath, which Siegfried readily gives. He swears his love for this beautiful person in front of him, proclaiming to the world his desire to make her his wife. And as the music fades and the hum of the party subsides, that’s when we hear the knocking on the window. We see Odette, her long neck the neck of a swan, her face pressed to the glass, tears running down her cheeks. She’s crying because Siegfried, unwittingly or not, has pledged his love to another woman, and also because, by the law of the spell she’s under, now she has to die.
Across the café I noticed a man and a woman sitting at the table. They were looking at a document, a screenplay probably, and above them a fan was turning, the blades of the fan angled in a particular way, and I didn’t know if the people felt the breeze of the fan but this was when I realized I was scared. I was sitting at this table, my back against the wall, surrounded by faces that would as easily hate me as love me, more easily probably. And hurt me, and the expression that comes to mind, out of my depth, doesn’t seem right or descriptive because at that moment I was in a depth, deep in a depth, and I might’ve wished I wasn’t but I was, and Seymour said to me, you said two things are off limits. What two things?
Killing someone.
That’s one thing.
I wouldn’t be able to do it, I said. When I’d let them think before that I’d seen action in Vietnam, that wasn’t a complete lie. I had seen action, in a way, but the action I’d seen was on television. I’d been too young. And although I never actually told them I was over there, in the jungle, in combat, by letting them think it, I was lying. And I didn’t like lying. A lie is like a fist. It’s closed and tight and it can hurt someone. Lying is also like taking a first step, the first step determining where the next step will go and with each step the weight moves forward, creating the momentum that necessitates another step and then another and I wanted to be transparent. I wanted them to see who they were dealing with, an innocent person. A nice guy. Not that I was being completely myself, and not that I knew who I would’ve been if I had been myself, whatever that was, because, although I wasn’t calm, I was trying to seem calm. I was scared of these men, and the fear I was feeling would have been evident if they had looked behind my seemingly calm demeanor. I was trying to act casual, trying to seem as if talking with criminals was run-of-the-mill, as if mills still existed, and murder, which was basically what they were hinting at, was par for the course, and although it was a course I never played I was nodding with them, almost one of them, or like them, and we were all in the same boat except the boat I was in had holes in the bottom, and it was sinking, and as they watched the water pooling up around my feet and my legs the Commodore did his thinking face again. He put his fingers to his lips, rubbing them across the dead skin covering his lips and the other guys were waiting for him. And I was also waiting. In any negot
iation you have to negotiate, even if you have no power whatsoever, from a position of seeming power, and once I’d made my case there was a stillness at the table. The sound of silverware, like a hum, or like waves, not crashing on plates but washing over them, echoed across the room and then the Commodore cleared his throat. He said there might be a way to reduce my debt. Not erase it but make it more manageable. What might be arranged, he said, was for me to go to Chinatown. Not to kill anyone, don’t worry about that. Just go down there. Take some pretty girls. I’m sure you have friends, and take these girls because the person we want to talk to, this associate of ours, he has a weakness for pretty girls. What I was supposed to do was use these so-called girls, who he imagined I was acquainted with, to lure this Chinese businessman out of Chinatown. That was it. Do that, and they’d do the rest. And for my trouble, the Commodore said he’d knock off, and he pretended to be doing the math in his head, say ten thousand dollars off your debt. And I took some time pretending to give that some thought, but not too much thought, and although we didn’t shake hands we both agreed we had ourselves a deal.
The stories of the great ballets are mostly unbelievable. There are no sylphs or Wilis or women who turn into swans. But the emotions inside the stories, the loss and betrayal and obsession, they’re the same ones I’ve known except now they’re happening in a castle ballroom. Odette, who’s been watching from outside the window, once the clock strikes midnight, once she’s able to assume her human form, runs in to the ballroom. She’s been crying, and still is, her face red and swollen, her hair falling into her eyes. She’s been deceived, as Siegfried has, but just because a dream deceives us doesn’t mean it’s wrong. That’s what Foucault says, and because Siegfried’s dream was a dream of desire, under the spell of Odile, who embodied that desire, he was blinded. And it takes him a while to realize what just happened. It takes a while because, like the muscles in our bodies, our minds, once they get accustomed to a way of believing, keep believing that way, and when she tells him she has to go, that she has to leave him, forever, he can’t believe it. He thinks she’s worried about that woman, Odile. But I don’t love her, he says, I love you. But it’s not Odile she’s worried about. It’s the promise. You made a promise, and now you’ve broken your promise. And it’s true, he did, but that was a trick, what could I do? And it doesn’t matter now, he says, because now we have each other, that’s what matters. When he looks into her face he hears himself talking, hoping that what he’s saying might be true but knowing it’s not, and a good dancer, or a dancer who’s a good actor, is able to communicate that confusion. Nureyev, when he danced with Margot Fonteyn, was able to feel the hundreds of emotions swirling around in his body, and when confusion, or any of them, rose to the surface he didn’t pantomime their appearance. He felt his life being taken away. Margot Fonteyn was nineteen years older than he was, but to him she was still a girl, an innocent young girl, and he’d pledged his life to her and now he’s broken that pledge, and like a man being torn in half he can’t believe it happened.
As George Balanchine got older his wives got younger, or at least the difference in age between them got greater, which was only natural. Ballerinas came to him, and some of them inspired him, and when he was inspired he couldn’t help it, he fell in love. And the term love, in this case, sometimes implied sex. We don’t know what his intimate life was like but we can imagine that, as old age took its famous toll on him, he wanted to keep his vitality. He made his dances by dancing them, and he wanted to keep making the dances that gave him his reason for living. But how do you hold on to something that’s already gone? That was his question. Although it was easy enough to feel what a young person feels, how do you do what a young person does when the body doesn’t want to do it? Maria Tallchief, who was married to him for six years, said their marriage was filled with passion, but it was a passion for dance. And that was fine with his wives, they loved him for that and were satisfied, but he was not completely satisfied. He felt the difference between what he was and what he had been, and in an effort to regain what he had been he attempted some cures. That’s what they were called. They usually happened in clinics in Switzerland, and sometimes they involved injections. And it’s logical, given the science of endocrinology, to think that hormones taken from one body, even if it’s an animal body, even the testicles of sheep for instance, might be used to supplement the hormones in another, human body. Since he was often flying to Europe, it wasn’t hard to visit one of these clinics, and I picture him, sitting in a straight-backed but comfortable chair, a yellow chair, and there are plants in the room, it’s an expensive clinic. He’s not wearing his bolo tie because that’s his trademark, and he doesn’t want to advertise his presence. He’s just a man, an average, regular man in a brightly lit waiting room, and because it’s an expensive clinic it’s not like a typical waiting room with other people. It’s just him, sitting with a coat, a shirt, no tie, and there might be magazines on a table but he’s not reading them. His feet are about hip width apart, his knees over his ankles, his hands on his knees, and he probably knows what he’s doing isn’t healthy. The fountain of youth, by it’s nature, is poisonous, but what’s his choice? He can grow old, stop dancing, stop being with beautiful ballerinas, or he can try something, and he does, choosing to dance even if it kills him.
Nureyev, dancing for the Kirov Ballet in Russia, was already a star in 1961. He was loved in Europe and loved in Paris and he loved Paris in return. When the Kirov toured the French capital Nureyev took advantage of the freedoms he didn’t have back home. This was the beginning of the swinging sixties, of disco balls and pop art and turtlenecks worn unironically. He had minders, KGB guards meant to watch him and keep him in check, but part of his genius, and his greatness, was the impossibility of keeping him in check. He’d been introduced to a socialite, a wealthy, unmarried woman who, along with other dancers and actors, frequented clubs and parties, and I don’t know what deal he had with the socialite but the minders had to follow. I don’t know if drugs were involved but there was probably drinking, and at this point there was also the question of Nureyev’s homosexuality. It sounds old-fashioned to talk about homo sexuality as if it’s a thing, different than any kind of sexuality, but at the time it was considered questionable, even taboo. And after the company’s engagement in Paris it was decided, by the KGB or the Politburo, that Nureyev was getting too wild, that he was expressing unwanted ideas, that he would need to be taken out of circulation. It was decided to bring him back to Leningrad, and maybe to prison, and because he expressed himself by dancing, and would certainly have to stop dancing, it would probably kill him.
Style. That’s the word we use when referring to outward expression. Style makes the man, that’s what they say, meaning that we don’t choose style, style chooses us, making us who we are, which is why I was trying to be stylish. If you lack a trait, assume it. And I was trying to assume that I could do the job I’d been given, find this Chinese man, and normally I wouldn’t have been concerned with style, but style meant expressing yourself. It’s why I’d put a carnation in my lapel. Cosmo wore carnations, but I wasn’t doing it because of him. He’d been my guide for a while, and my benefactor, but now I wasn’t using a guide, not him anyway, but he offered to do me a favor. He couldn’t pay my debts for me but he did arrange for his driver, Lamar, to pick up Sherri and Darlene, dancers who worked in his club, and have them spend the day with me, in Chinatown. That’s where we were, driving along the hot streets in an air-conditioned limousine, and this isn’t bad, I thought, meaning life, meaning the good life, the enjoyable life, and the trick is slowing it down. The technique of finding happiness involves slowing down, and when happiness appears, even if it’s only for a fraction of a second, realizing it. And enjoying it. Which takes work. But if you’re willing to do the work, which I was, and the girls were, and Rachel no longer worked for Cosmo. She’d quit I found out, gone back to doing whatever dancing she’d been doing before. But Sherri and Darlene stil
l worked for Cosmo, and I didn’t know if he was paying them but when we found a café in what seemed like the center of Chinatown I told Lamar to stop. We were overdressed but that was all right. We wanted to be noticed. We walked into the empty restaurant, empty except for tables, a kitchen in the back, and a silent television by the cash register. When we sat, we didn’t put our arms on the table because it was greasy. And the menus were greasy but we ordered food, and I hadn’t told them why we here here and I didn’t tell them now. I told them, periodically, to check outside to make sure the car was still there, hoping that when they walked outside, in their bright dresses, the bookie we were supposed to be looking for would notice them. Other than that it was just waiting. Waiting, and since there wasn’t much talking there was room for thinking, first of all about money. The money I’d lost was a fact. And I was dealing with that fact. The other thought was about being a loser. Although I’d never thought of myself as a loser, that’s what I was, and the money I’d lost was peripheral to the fact that I’d lost it, or it would have been peripheral except it wasn’t just my money, it was the Commodore’s money. And the only way to be happy, in the face of the fact of being a loser, is to acknowledge what you are and acknowledge what you’ve lost, and I can’t go back in time because I’ve lost that too, what I used to be or what I used to think I wanted to be, and now I was something else. I couldn’t deny it because it always comes back, the truth, to roost as they say, so I told myself, okay, fine, I’ll be a loser. But I would be my own version of a loser. And by being my own version I would be comfortable, and by being comfortable I would be able to salvage a certain amount of, not happiness but like Rachel dancing. Be yourself. That’s the expression she used, and Rachel didn’t love stripping but she was good at it because, when she took off her clothes in front of an audience she was comfortable being herself. And she thought being herself was the same as revealing herself but the only way to remove your clothes in front of a bunch of strangers is to create a personality, pretend to be that personality, and from the security of that pretense you can be naked. And that’s how she did it, if she thought about it. What I was thinking about was killing someone. The thought was still an abstraction to me because, although everyone I’d truly loved had died, death was still an abstraction. My father and mother and my child had all died, and I’d seen my father and mother when life left their bodies but I hadn’t absorbed in myself, or hadn’t allowed myself to absorb, the reality of death. I only knew the reality of things I did, eating food and having sex, and riding downhill on a bike with the wind in my face, the road vibrating beneath the tires, and it was because I’d never killed anyone. I’d never fought in Vietnam, and maybe I should have because then the fact of killing wouldn’t have been hidden. Which it was. It’s why the image of death is hooded, carrying a scythe but unseen, therefore unknown. And although we all know that everything dies, there’s a gap between knowing in our minds and understanding in our bodies, and this Chinese man they’d told me about, because he was an abstraction I could say yes, I’m willing to kill him. But I wasn’t. Because I knew the event itself wouldn’t be abstract. The actual act of ending the life of a person like me, or enough like me, it was impossible. Let them kill him if that’s what they want. So I thought. But there I was, working for men I found reprehensible, an accomplice, sitting in a bright fluorescent restaurant, more like a café, with Sherri and Darlene, using them as bait to lure this Chinese bookie, like a fisherman, and because no one seemed to be taking the bait I kept waiting for something I didn’t want to happen to happen.