by John Haskell
The details of Nureyev’s escape, as far as we know, go something like this. At Le Bourget, the Paris airport, while the dancers and designers were waiting for the London flight, two Soviet agents walked up to Nureyev. He was known as Rudy, and they told him he was needed back home, that he was scheduled to perform at a Kremlin gala. And as if that weren’t incentive enough they also told him his mother was sick, that she was dying, that she’d asked for him, and whenever you’re given multiple reasons for acting in a certain way, it’s usually an indication that the reasons are false. And Rudy, having grown up in the Soviet system, knew it. I want to be free, he’s supposed to have said, and although he knew he might never see his mother again he took the first step. And because he was a dancer, once he took that step what he did was like dancing, like Odette slipping out of Rothbart’s arms, or like any dancer, male or female, slipping out of the grip of the sorcerer or witch or malicious parent. With pirouette precision he twirled through the guards and checkpoints, performing a kind of pedestrian échappé, which literally means escape, but it wasn’t pedestrian because he was Nureyev. And because it was 1961, during what was called the Cold War, French police were there. It’s not clear how many policemen were leaning against the pillar, or what the arrangements were, but when Nureyev approached and asked them, or pleaded with them, it didn’t take long before the refuge of asylum was granted. And the word defection is from the same root as deficiency, and the sense was that Rudy was leaving a deficient place, the USSR, and coming to a place with opportunity and freedom. And whether it was freedom he found on the other side of the so-called Iron Curtain or not, his move became a template for similar moves, defections by Baryshnikov and Markova, and he later partnered with Margot Fonteyn and Erik Bruhn but the hardest part was probably that first step.
The café was hot, like a jungle. Steam rose from the frying egg foo young, fogging up the windows and the waitress, a middle-aged woman, walked to the register, turned on the television, and since I was facing it I couldn’t help watching, or at least noticing, and I knew the show, a comedy about prisoners of war. Hogan’s Heroes was set in a German concentration camp, and it was funny because the prisoners, who could easily have escaped, chose not to escape because they’d been given a job, to fight the enemy, and I wasn’t sure what my job was but I’d also chosen not to escape, to wait until our food arrived, and when it did, mostly it was brown and it sat, congealing on our plates. Nobody ate and I could tell that Sherri and Darlene weren’t having fun. I’d always wanted to be the guy you could count on for fun but now here we were, not prisoners of war but we were sitting at this greasy table and the air, when people talk about air being thick it was this, like being under water, and the water was yellow, like the walls of this sad café. And I wasn’t trying to be heroic but I knew the way to change the world was to change the way you see the world, so I took a step. Not a literal step but I said, let’s go to the movies, and the girls liked that idea. We’d been sad sacks sitting in the thick café air and I was suggesting we become happy sacks, that we jump up and if it’s raining, for instance, you’d be feeling wet and oppressed by the rain. But what if, like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, you went ahead and got wet? You let the rain infect you with its energy, and you sang and danced and the rain, which normally would have dampened your spirits, lifted your spirits. That’s what I was trying to do, suggesting we go to a movie. There must be a movie theater around here, and when we left the café, walking along the sidewalk, stopping at tourist shops, looking at kites and lanterns, everything red, it wasn’t that people weren’t staring at us, but no one seemed to be paying us much attention. No bookie appeared as we walked to the movie theater, bought our tickets, took our seats, and since it was Chinatown, the movie was in Chinese, and because it was incomprehensible it didn’t do what it was supposed to do. Our spirits weren’t lifted. Instead they wandered, like the ghosts in the movie, or at least I assumed they were ghosts. They seemed to materialize at will, haunting and marauding, like creatures in a Romantic ballet except engaging in martial arts. The story seemed to revolve around a lover or brother or father who disguises himself as a woman to get inside the walls of a castle to rescue a child and kill her oppressors. And in the movie killing was easy. When people fell down they were dead. I’d heard stories about Vietnam, stories of firing blindly into the jungle, not seeing who you were shooting, and if killing has to be done, although it should never be done, it ought to be done face to face. But not by me. I could never be a person who kills, simple as that. And because I didn’t want to be an accomplice to killing, although the movie wasn’t over, I stood up and we filed out of our empty row and out of the empty theater. And it was strange because, when we’d walked into the theater it was daylight, and the movie had been shot in the daylight, and maybe the change I was looking for wasn’t a change in myself but a change in the light, like the expression I see daylight, except now there was just the neon night. Which meant the show could go on.
Odette runs out of the ballroom. She’s warned Siegfried not to follow her but he has to, he loves her, and she runs back to the pond, to the clearing where they first fell in love and she waits for him by a fallen branch. When he finds her he tells her that everything is fine, or is going to be fine, the kind of thing you say to a child but she believes in the curse, a ridiculous curse that Siegfried doesn’t understand. I want to apologize, he says, and he does, repeatedly, hoping that if she believes in his love she can use that love to change her life. And of course she forgives him, it was no one’s fault, but the spell can’t be broken, she says. But I don’t believe in spells. The only spell I believe is saying I love you, telling her he loves her, over and over, as if by saying that, like an incantation, the curse on her will lift. And by holding her. Remember when we held each other? But when he tries to reenact the moment from their past she steps away from him. She just doesn’t want to be touched. Touching would lead to feeling, and as much as she might desire that feeling, it can’t happen. It? I remember my wife telling me, after our daughter had died, it can’t go on, I can’t love you anymore. Which I didn’t understand at the time. I was focused on my own loss and my own sadness, but I understand now, I think, that as much as she wanted to love me, she couldn’t be that person anymore, the person she had been. And I understand, or said I did, which seemed to calm her down. We weren’t arguing anymore, just talking, and I thought there might be hope.
It seemed we had a chance, if we wanted to take it, to wake up, realize we were in a dream, or the nightmare part of a dream, and I was still hoping we could step out of the dream when the other swans, the girls who aren’t swans now but will be when daylight comes, gather around Odette. And that’s when Odette suddenly rushes into the water. It seems sudden, even to her, as if her body had spoken to her, and when she heard it she did what her body demanded. And because she wasn’t a swan anymore and she couldn’t float, she died. Pavlova, when she danced in The Dying Swan, wasn’t playing the part of Odette, but she was letting her body, her swanlike body, tell her what to do. It’s a wholly different ballet, choreographed by Michel Fokine, who worked for Diaghilev. And it’s short, one that Pavlova performed in cities around the world. And like Swan Lake, it’s full of sadness, but also there’s joy, the joy of release, of finally releasing the false self and becoming another self, not necessarily better, but by dying Pavlova becomes more who she is. Like Odette, she’s trapped in the guise of a swan, and when she dies she’s liberated, that overused word, but that’s what she felt, what Odette felt and Fonteyn felt, and Pierina Legnani felt it when she created the role a hundred years ago. Over the course of those years the story of Swan Lake has mutated into various versions with various endings and usually Rothbart, who probably loved Odette, like a father or a lover, and wants her for himself, is killed by Siegfried. Sometimes Odette, as a swan, flies off into the morning sky, leaving Siegfried alone, consumed by grief. The pictures in my daughter’s ballet book showed the two lovers, united in death, ri
sing up from the watery mist like spirits. In Russia, in Soviet times, Rothbart, watching the lovers bid their last farewells, to each other and to life, and seeing the honesty of their love, removes the curse and the curtain falls with everyone living happily after. I prefer the version when Siegfried, realizing that the only way he can be with Odette is to follow her into the pond, not to save her but to end his own life, a life he knows and is tired of, does that. And we don’t see the thrashing of the water as they try to swallow the water, fighting against the human body’s prime directive, which is to live. We only see first their heads, disappearing under the surface of the water, a few bubbles floating up, and then the surface becomes like glass, like a mirror, reflecting the distant mountains as the sun slowly rises.
ACT FIVE
Petrushka
Petrushka is a puppet. As is the woman he loves, the Ballerina. What stands between them are a lot of things, but one of them is a character named Charlatan, or the Charlatan. He’s both a magician and an impresario, and the show he presents in the town’s central square is an old one. He brings puppets to life. When he pulls back the curtain of his makeshift stage there they are, the Moor, the Ballerina, and Petrushka, hanging lifeless from hooks. When the crowd presses closer he plays his flute and the puppets, freeing themselves from the hooks they’ve been hanging on, begin performing a dumbshow in which Petrushka’s love of the Ballerina gets him beaten up by the Moor. It’s always the same show, with the same plot, and the helpless puppets have no choice but to do what they do.
I was sitting at the Crazy Horse bar, on a bar stool, with an unobstructed view of the stage. Mr. Sophistication was under his spotlight, sitting on his stool, speaking into the microphone with a fake Viennese accent. It was Viennese because the show was the Vienna number and Teddy, wearing his top hat, cane in hand, was thanking the audience for sharing with him a modicum of pleasure on this, his tour of la Ville Lumière, the City of Light. Oh no, he said, that’s Paris, and as the audience laughed the music swelled, and his song began. Falling in love again, never wanted to, what was I to do … My view of the stage included the silhouetted torsos of the customers, drinking and cheering, blowing smoke in the air, some of them laughing, most of them silently watching the dancers and waiting. I felt the sticky bar on the skin of my forearm, the rung of the stool pressing into my foot, doing what they call nursing my drink. Sherri was up on stage, along with a red-haired dancer I didn’t know, and after the last Falling in love again, never wanted to, what was I to do, after he whispered into his microphone the last word, helpless, the lights dimmed. The performers disappeared behind the curtain and the intermission music, which was intended to make conversation impossible, did, and I ordered another drink from Sonny, the bartender.
Like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, the puppets in Petrushka have a life outside the show they perform in. It’s a truncated life but it’s all they know, and it’s truncated because it’s just the three of them. They each have a small backstage apartment where they live, and the lives they live are replicas of the lives they perform. Petrushka can’t stop loving the Ballerina, who finds him pathetic. She’s attracted to the handsome Moor who despises anything pathetic, especially Petrushka. And being despised, Petrushka retreats to his room, like a cell, like a jail cell except worse because he has no visitors, only the Charlatan, and although he thinks he hates the Charlatan it’s his own life he really hates, and because the Charlatan is responsible for that life, or lack of life, for his weakness and his inability to woo the Ballerina, between his shows Petrushka sits in his room, on the floor, under a life-size portrait of the Charlatan, imagining himself killing the Charlatan, living with the Ballerina, sometimes writing in his diary and always going a little mad, banging his head against the walls of his room, cursing the person who makes him be who he is.
Mr. Sophistication was pathetic, a fool and a clown but at least he knew it. And the art of the clown is convincing the audience, when they look at him, that they aren’t looking at themselves. That’s why they put up with Teddy. It’s why their booing, while they waited for him, was affectionate. It’s why Teddy, behind the mask of Mr. Sophistication, could be himself. The audience was booing as the music faded and Cosmo, in his usual tuxedo, stepped up to the stage. He did his welcome-to-the-club routine, told a few jokes and then he introduced the next show, the Tokyo number. Teddy peeked out from behind the curtains, parted the curtains, and when he walked to the microphone, once Cosmo had left the stage the music faded up and it all seemed improvised. As Teddy began his spiel the dancers appeared, and they seemed to be making it up but their lines were all memorized. Teddy began with a short historical digression, about the ancient Japanese city of Edo and the masks of the Noh theater, and Darlene was playing the part of a concubine. It was her duet with Teddy, and wearing an extremely thin kimono she bowed to him. And because they were pretending to be in Japan, Teddy bowed to her, a little lower, and she then bowed to him a little lower and they kept that up, deferentially bowing to each other, lower and lower, and because Teddy was facing the audience and she was facing Teddy, her ass, with its sparkling decorations, was presented to the audience. People were half drunk and cheering, and I was distracted by a dream I’d had in which I was in a boat, a small rowboat. The Commodore, in the bow of the boat, was ordering me to row, to pull and pull, and because my back was facing forward I couldn’t see where we were going and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I came out of the dream the show was still going on, and the hand on my shoulder, which wasn’t a dream, was connected to Seymour. It was Seymour’s hand, and when I turned I saw on his face his smile, and although it was absolutely believable, I didn’t believe it. Because it was too believable. It was too wide, the teeth too white, and it didn’t leave his face when he asked me if I’d found the Chinaman. There was a discontinuity or disparity or disunity between what was happening on the surface of his teeth, which were white, and what happening in his eyes, or actually in my heart when I looked into his eyes, which was darkness. We went to Chinatown, I told him. But we didn’t find the bookie. And I’ve given it some thought, I said, and I’m not interested in finding this bookie anymore. I’ve had a change of plans. I’ve decided to pay back the loan in a regular way, in installments, and his eyes were still empty, and his mouth was still full of teeth when he asked me to join him outside. Sorry, I told him, I can’t. I’m watching the show and the show’s not over. Seymour, pulling at his mustache as if he was caressing a pet, a small rodent, said, just for a few minutes. You can spare a few minutes. And as he said it I felt his fingers grip my upper arm and he pulled my arm. After you, he said, and he pulled me off my stool and I signaled to Sonny that I’d be right back, not that he cared but I wanted a witness. And his fingers on my arm, as they pulled on me, made me feel like a girl, a young girl, an innocent girl and Seymour was putting the moves on her. He led me outside and we walked past the lights of the LIVE NUDE GIRLS sign, down to a doorway where it wasn’t so bright, where Freddie seemed to be waiting. As if they were passing me off. Freddie, who was quite a bit bigger than I was, placed his arm around my neck as if cradling my head, and he walked me across the street, dodging the cars driving up and down the street, and he led me into a concrete parking garage. He took me to the elevator doors, which opened, and he took me to the second floor, and when we stepped out into the darkness he finally spoke. You know what’s going to happen, right? And I didn’t. Until he asked me the question. And when I looked at his eyes they actually seemed to have some sympathy. His teeth were crooked but his eyes were expressing, not a sadness for himself but a sadness for me, and I was about to respond to his sadness with a smile, or a plea, and that’s when he threw his fist into my stomach. Because it was unexpected my stomach, when he hit it, the muscles that might normally have tensed to protect me were soft, and his hard fist sunk into my belly, into my intestines, deep enough that I doubled over or tried to double over but he took hold of my hair. He lifted my head by the hair and hit me aga
in, again in the stomach, in the umbilical region, the place where, long ago, I was connected to my mother. And I don’t know how many times he hit me there, and he slapped my face, and I suppose when he thought I’d gotten the point he lifted me by the collar of my shirt, like I was a puppet, and he pulled me back to the elevator, down to the street, and across the street, and he pushed me into a car, a Cadillac.