The luggage we’d brought was left in a waiting room of the huge building, and in the flurry of scurrying after Julian I didn’t notice much of anything until we were in the office of our ballet mistress, Madame Zolta Korovenskov. Her stance, her arrogance immediately reminded me of Madame Marisha. But this woman was much older, if all those wrinkles could be counted as tree-rings to indicate her age.
Queenly stiff she rose from behind a desk that was impressively wide. Coolly, all business, she stalked over to us and looked us over with bead-black eyes as small as those of a mouse. What hair she had was skinned back from her dry brittle face like fine white floss. She wasn’t five feet tall, but radiated six feet of authority. Her half-moon glasses perched precariously on the end of an astonishingly long thin nose. Above those half-disks she peered at us, squinting, so her minute eyes almost disappeared in the crow’s feet. Julian was so unlucky as to gain her scrutiny first.
Her puckered little prune mouth drew up like a drawstring purse. I watched and waited for a smile to come and break her parchment skin. I expected her voice to crackle, cackle, witchlike.
“So!” she spat at Julian. “You take off when you want, and come back when you want and you expect me to say I’m glad to see you! Bah! Do that one more time and out you go! Who is this girl with you?”
Julian gave the old hag a charming smile, and quickly put his arm about her. “Madame Zolta Korovenskov, may I introduce you to Miss Catherine Doll, the wonderful dancer I’ve been telling you about for months and months—and she is the reason why I left without your permission.”
She looked me over with very interested gimlet eyes. “You come from some nowhere too?” she whiplashed. “You’ve got the look of another place, like my black devil here does. He’s a very good dancer, but not as good as he thinks. Can I believe him about you?”
“I guess, Madame, you’ll just have to watch me dance and judge for yourself.”
“Can you dance?”
“As I said before, Madame, wait and judge for yourself.”
“See, Madame,” Julian said eagerly, “Cathy’s got spirit, fire! You should see her whip her leg doing fouettés. She’s so fast she’s a blur!”
“Ha!” she snorted, then came to encircle me and next she gave my face such a close scrutiny I was blushing. She felt my arms, my chest, even my breasts, then put her bony hands on my neck and felt the cords. Those audacious hands roamed down the length of my body while I wanted to scream out I wasn’t a slave to be sold in the marketplace. I was grateful she didn’t put her hand on my crotch as she’d done to Julian. I stood still and endured the inspection and felt all the while a deep, hot blush. She looked up to see it and smiled sarcastically.
When she’d done and I’d been physically appraised and evaluated, she delved the depths of my eyes to drink up my essence. I felt she was trying to absorb my youth with her eyes and drain it from me. Then she was touching my hair. “When do you plan to marry?” she shot out.
“Sometime when I’m near thirty, maybe, or maybe never.” I answered uneasily. “But most certainly I’m going to wait until after I’m rich and famous, and the world’s best prima ballerina.”
“Hah! You have many illusions about yourself. Beautiful faces don’t usually go with great dancers. Beauty thinks it needs no talent and can feed on itself, so it soon dies. Look at me. Once I was young and a great beauty. What do you see now?”
She was hideous! And she couldn’t have ever been beautiful, or there’d be some evidence.
As if sensing my doubt to her claim, she gestured arrogantly to all the photographs on the walls, on her desk, on the tables, bookshelves. All showed the same lovely young ballerina. “Me,” she proudly informed. I couldn’t believe it. They were old photos, brownish in color, the costumes outdated, and yet she had been lovely. She gave me a wide, amused smile, patted my shoulder and said, “Good. Age comes to everyone and makes everyone equal.
“Who did you study with before Marisha Rosencoff?”
“Miss Denise Danielle.” I hesitated, fearful of telling her about all the years I’d danced alone and been my own instructor.
“Ah,” she sighed, looking very sad, “I saw Denise Danielle dance many times, such a brilliant performer but she made the old mistake and fell in luv. End of promising career. Now, all she do is teach.” Her voice rose and fell, quivering, gaining strength, then losing it. She pronounced “luv” with a long “u,” making the word sound foreign and silly. “Big-head Julian says you are a great dancer, but I have to see you dance before I believe, and then I will decide if beauty is its own excuse for being.” Once more she sighed. “You drink?”
“No.”
“Why is your skin so pale? Do you never go in sun?”
“Too much sun burns me.”
“Ah . . . you and your lover boy—afraid of the sun.”
“Julian is not my lover!” I said between clenched teeth, shooting him a fierce look, for he must have told her we were.
Not an element of our expressions missed the keen observation of those ebony-bead eyes. “Julian, did you or did you not tell me you were in luv with this girl?”
He flushed and lowered his eyes, and had the decency to look embarrassed for once. “Madame, the love is all on my side, I’m ashamed to admit. Cathy feels nothing for me . . . but she will, sooner or later.”
“Fine,” the old witch said with a birdlike nod. “You have a big passion for her, she has none for you—that makes for sizzling, sensational dancing on your part. Our box office will overflow. I see it coming!”
* * *
That was, of course, the reason she took me on, knowing Julian had his unsatisfied lust and knowing I had a smoldering desire to find someone else offstage. Onstage, he was everything beautiful, romantic and sensual—my dream lover. If we could have danced through all our days and nights, we could have set the world on fire. As it was, when he was only himself, with his glib and often smutty tongue, I ran from him. I went to bed each night thinking of Paul prowling his lonely gardens, and refused to let myself dream of Chris.
I was soon ensconced in a small apartment twelve blocks from the dance studio. Two other dancers shared the three small rooms and one tiny bath with me. Two floors above, Julian shared an apartment with two male dancers in rooms no bigger than those we three girls had. His roommates were Alexis Tarrell and Michael Michelle, both in their early twenties, and both just as determined as Julian to become the best male danseur of their generation. I was astonished to find out Madame Zolta considered Alexis the best, and Michael next, and Julian third. I soon found out why she held him back—he had no respect for her authority. He wanted to do everything in his own way, and because of this she punished him.
My roommates were as different as night and day. Yolanda Lange was half British, half Arab, and the strange combination made for one of the most exotic, dark-haired, sloe-eyed beauties I’d ever seen. She was tall for a dancer, five eight, the same height as my mother. Her breasts, when I saw them, were small hard lumps, all large dark nipples, but she wasn’t ashamed of their size. She delighted in walking about naked, showing off, and soon I found out her breasts mirrored her personality—small, hard and mean. Yolanda wanted what she wanted when she wanted it and she’d do anything to get it. She asked me a thousand questions in less than an hour, and in that same hour told me her life story. Her father was a British diplomat who’d married a belly dancer. She’d lived everywhere, done everything. I immediately disliked Yolanda Lange.
April Summers was from Kansas City, Missouri. She had soft brown hair, blue-green eyes; we were both the same height, five feet four and a half inches. She was shy and seldom did she raise her voice above a whisper. When loud, raucous Yolanda was around, April seemed to have no voice at all. Yolanda liked noise; at all times the record player or the television had to be turned on. April spoke of her family with love, respect and pride, while Yolanda professed hatred for parents who’d pushed her into boarding schools and left her alone on h
olidays.
April and I became fast friends before our first day together was over. She was eighteen and pretty enough to please any man, but for some strange reason the boys of the academy didn’t pay April one whit of attention. It was Yolanda who made them hot and panting, and soon enough I learned why—she was the one who gave out.
As for me, the boys saw me, they asked for dates, but Julian made it clear I wasn’t available—I was his. He told everyone we were lovers. Though I persistently denied this, he would tell them in private I was old-fashioned and ashamed to admit we were “living in sin.” He chidingly explained in my very presence, “It’s that old southern-belle tradition. Gals down south like guys to think they’re sweet, shy, demure, but underneath that cool magnolia exterior—sexpots—every one!” Of course they believed him and not me. Why should they believe the truth when a lie was so much more exciting?
I was happy enough though. I adapted to New York as one native born, rushing about as every New Yorker had to—get there fast, don’t waste a second, there was so much to prove before someone else with a pretty face and more talent showed up to knock you off the board. But while I was ahead in the game, it was wild and heady stuff, exhausting and demanding. How grateful I was that Paul kept sending me a weekly check, for what I earned at the dance company, wouldn’t have paid for my cosmetics.
The three of us who shared rooms 416 required at least ten hours of sleep. We got up at dawn to limber up at our home barre before breakfast. Breakfast had to be very light, as was lunch. Only during the last meal of the day, after a performance, could we really satisfy our ravenous appetites. It seemed I was always hungry, that I never had enough to eat. In just one performance in the corps de ballet I lost five or six pounds.
Julian was with me constantly, shadowing me too closely, keeping me from dating anyone else. Depending on my mood or state of exhaustion, I was resentful of this, and other times happy to have someone around who wasn’t a stranger.
Madame Zolta said one day in June, “Your name is silly! Change it! Catherine Doll—what kind of name for dancer? An inane, unexciting name—it doesn’t suit you at all!”
“Now you wait a minute, Madame!” I snapped back, abandoning my attitude position. “I chose that name when I was seven and my father liked it. He thought it suited me fine, so I’m going to use it, stupid or not!” I longed to tell her Madame Naverena Zolta Korovenskov wasn’t exactly what I’d call a lyrical name either.
“Don’t argue with me, girl, change it!” She used her ivory walking cane to pound on the floor. But, if I changed my name, how would my mother know when I reached the top? She had to know! Still that wretched little witch in her outdated, silly costume could narrow her fierce dark eyes and lift that cane and brandish it so I was forced to yield, or else! Julian slouched nearby and grinned.
I agreed I would change the spelling of my last name from Doll to Dahl. “That is better,” she said sourly, “somewhat.”
Madame Z. rode my back. She nagged. She criticized. She complained if I was innovative and complained when I wasn’t. She didn’t like the way I wore my hair and said I had too much. “Cut it off!” she ordered but I refused to snip off even an inch, for I believed my long hair a great asset for the role of Sleeping Beauty. She snorted when I said this. (Snorting was one of her favorite means of expression.) If she hadn’t been a wonderfully gifted instructor we’d have all hated her. Her very dour nature forced the best from us, for we so wanted to see her smile. She was also a choreographer, but we had another too who came and went and supervised when he wasn’t in Hollywood, in Europe, or off in some remote spot dreaming up new dancing scores.
One afternoon after class, when we dancers were playing about foolishly, I jumped up to dance wildly to a popular song. Madame came in and caught me, then exploded, “We dance classical here! No modern dance here!” Her dry, wrinkled face screwed into a dried headhunter’s belt ornament. “You, Dahl, explain the difference between classical and modern.”
Julian winked at me, then fell backward to rest on his elbows and cross an elegant ankle over a knee, as he delighted in my discomfort. “Succinctly, Madame,” I began with my mother’s poise, “the modern form of ballet consists mostly of groveling about on the floor and posturing, while classical stands up on its toes, whirls, spins, and is never too seductive or awkward. And it tells a story.”
“How right you are,” she said icily. “Now get you home to bed and posture and grovel there if you feel the need to express yourself in such a manner. Never let me catch you doing such before my eyes again!”
Modern and classical could be blended and made beautiful. The tightness of that small shrew enraged me, and I screamed back, “I hate you, Madame! I despise your ratty old gray costumes that should have been thrown away thirty years ago! I hate your face, your voice, your walk and your talk! Find yourself another dancer. I’m going home!” I flounced off toward the dressing room, leaving all the dancers standing in shock staring after me.
I ripped off my practice clothes and yanked on underwear. Into the dressing room stalked the grim-faced witch, her eyes mean, her lips pressed tightly together. “If you go home you never come back!”
“I don’t want to come back!”
“You will wither away and die!”
“You’re a fool if you think that!” I snapped without regard to her age or respect for her talent. “I can live my life without dancing, and happily too—so go to hell, Madame Zolta!”
As if a spell had been broken that old hag smiled at me, and sweetly too. “Ah . . . you have spirit. I was wondering if you did. Tell me to go to hell, it is nice to hear. Hell is better than heaven anyway. Now, seriously, Catherine,” she said in a kind tone, kinder than I’d ever heard from her, “you are a wonderfully gifted dancer, the best I have, but you are so impulsive you abandon the classical and toss in whatever comes to your mind. I only try to teach you. Invent all you want, but keep it classical, elegant, beautiful.” Tears glistened her eyes. “You are my delight, did you know? I think you are the daughter I never had; you take me back to when I was young and thought all life was one big romantic adventure. I’m so afraid life will steal your look of enchantment, your childish wonderment. If you can hang onto that expression, you’ll soon have the world at your feet.”
It was my attic face she was speaking of. That enchanted expression that used to so enthrall Chris. “I’m sorry, Madame,” I said humbly. “I was rude. I was wrong to scream, but you pick on me all the time, and I’m tired, homesick too.”
“I know, I know,” she crooned as she came to embrace me, then rocked with me back and forth. “To be young and in a strange city is hard on the nerves and confidence. But remember, I only needed to know what you are made of. A dancer without fire is no dancer at all.”
* * *
I’d been living in New York seven months, working even on the weekends until I fell into bed dead tired, before Madame Zolta thought I should be given a chance to dance a lead role with Julian to partner me. It was Madame’s rule to alternate lead roles, so that there would be no stars in her company, and though she’d hinted many times she wanted me for Clara in The Nutcracker, I thought she just used that to dangle before me, like a rich plum I’d never be allowed to eat. Then it became a reality. Our company was in competition with much larger and better-known companies, so it was an absolute stroke of genius that she was able to sell a television producer on the notion that people who couldn’t afford to buy ballet tickets could be reached by television.
I called Paul long distance to tell him my great news. “Paul, I’m going to appear on TV in The Nutcracker, I’ll be Clara!” He laughed and congratulated me. “I guess that means you won’t be coming home this summer,” he said rather sadly. “Carrie misses you an awful lot, Cathy. You’ve only paid us one short visit since you went away.”
“I’m sorry, I want to come but I need this chance to star, Paul. Please explain to Carrie so her feelings won’t be hurt. Is she there?”
>
“No, she’s finally made a friend and is ‘sleeping-over.’ But call again tomorrow night and reverse the charges, and tell her yourself.”
“And Chris, how is he?” I asked.
“Fine, fine. He gets nothing but A’s, and if he can manage to keep that up, he’ll be accepted for an accelerated program and can finish out his fourth year of college while starting his first year in medical school.”
“Simultaneously?” I asked, marveling that anyone, even Chris, could be that smart and accomplish so much.
“Sure, it can be done.”
“Paul, what about you? Are you well? Are you working too much, too many long hours?”
“I’m healthy and yes, I do work long hours, as every doctor does. And since you can’t come to visit us, I think it would be nice for Carrie if we came to visit you.”
Oh, that was the best idea I’d heard in months and months. “And bring Chris,” I said. “He’ll love to meet all the pretty ballerinas I can introduce him to. But you, Paul, you’d better not look at anyone but me.”
He made a strange sound in his throat before he chuckled. “Don’t worry, Catherine, there’s not a day that passes that I don’t see your face before me.”
In early August the television production of The Nutcracker was taped for Christmastime release. Julian and I sat close together and watched the rushes, and when it was over he turned to take me in his arms, and for the first time he told me with the kind of sincerity I could believe, “I love you, Cathy. Please stop taking me so lightly!”
Hardly had we rested up from The Nutcracker when Yolly fell and sprained her ankle, and April was visiting her parents, so I had the chance to be Sleeping Beauty! Since Julian had played two roles in the TV production, both Alexis and Michael thought it should be their turn to partner me. Madame Zolta frowned and looked at Julian, then at me. “Alexis, Michael, I promise you the very next lead roles, but let Julian dance with Catherine. They have a rare magic between them that is spellbinding. I want to see how they do in a really lavish production like The Sleeping Beauty.”
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 57