A Company of Swans (9 page)

She practiced on the top of the Number 15 bus going to the theater, marking the steps with the tips of her toes beneath the seat; she practiced in the tea-shop to which the others dragged her, hanging on to the edge of the table until her doughnut came. She danced with her bruised and bleeding feet, with her fingers, inside her head… and on the third day Dubrov, encountering her as she walked backward up the iron stairs to the dressing room in order to ease the aching muscles of her calves, smiled happily. He liked that; he liked it very much.

There was everything to learn: how to put on makeup, how to allow space at rehearsal between herself and the others which later the costumes would fill… How to anoint and darn and squeeze and thump the ballet shoes which seemed to be as often on the girls' hands as on their feet.

But it was class that made Harriet into a dancer. Class, that unfailing daily torture to which dancers come on every morning of their lives. Class in freezing rehearsal rooms, in foyers, on board ocean liners carrying them across the sea. Class with streaming colds, class after their lovers have jilted them, on days when women would give anything to be spared… Class for the prima ballerina assoluta as for the youngest member of the corps.

It was in class that Harriet saw what it cost Lubotsky, the aging character dancer, to get his muscles to warm up—yet saw too the marvelous authority he still carried. It was in class that she saw Maximov—the darling of the gallery—sweating, exhausted, crying out with the pain of a wrenched muscle… saw the grace and spirituality emanating from little Olga Narukov who ten minutes earlier had pinched a boy from the corps so as to draw blood.

And if Harriet watched the others, there were those who watched her. For even in class there are those who dance the notes and those who dance the music and, "A pity, yes, definitely a pity," said Grisha with increasing emphasis when Dubrov inquired after his latest swan.

It was not until two days before they sailed that Harriet saw the prima ballerina of the Company, for Simonova had been attending class privately with an old Russian émigré in Pimlico. She arrived for her first rehearsal with the corps on a gray drizzly morning, sweeping onto the stage in a ragged practice tutu set off by purple leg-warmers with holes in them. Her cheek was swollen from the ministrations of her dentist, her complexion was sallow; a muffler of the kind that old gentlemen wear when running along tow-paths during boat races concealed her throat. Beneath her widow's peak, with the center parting that is the hallmark of the ballerina, her black eyes with their pouches of exhaustion, her high-bridged nose and thin mouth gave her the look of a distempered bird of prey.

To Harriet, all this was quite irrelevant. "She is a true artiste," Madame Lavarre had said and Harriet's eyes shone with veneration.

Simonova raked the assembled girls and her eyes fell on Harriet.

"Who is that?" she demanded in her guttural and alarming voice.

Dubrov, who knew that she knew perfectly well who it was, introduced Harriet who curtseyed deeply. For a moment they gazed at each other—the ardent, worshipping girl and the weary, autocratic woman. Then, "There is nothing in the least unusual about her ears," pronounced Simonova in Russian, to the mystification of those who spoke the language.

She went over to the piano, unwound her muffler, handed her medallion of St. Demetrius to the accompanist—and raised her eyebrows at Grisha.

"Act One, Giselle," he confirmed. "From the entry of the hunting party…"

Everyone had expected Simonova simply to mark her steps. This was a routine rehearsal to give the corps their positions in relation to hers; she would rehearse seriously with Maximov later.

But she did not. Simonova, on that gray and drizzly morning in a draughty tumbledown London theater, danced. She danced fully, absolutely—danced as if she were back on the stage of the Maryinsky and the Tsar was in his blue and golden box. No, better than that—she danced as if she were alone in the world and had only this gift to pour into the heartbreaking emptiness.

And in the theater for the first time there was real' excitement; the mottled hands of grumpy old Irina Petrovna coaxed from the tinny piano some approximation to the delicious score, and Dubrov—who alone knew why she had done it—remembered not only that he loved this aging, difficult woman, but why…

By midnight on Thursday the last of the props had been packed up and piled into the carts to go to Euston Station. The following morning, the sleepy girls followed the principals onto the train and late that afternoon, Harriet walked with unforgettable excitement up the gangway of the RMS Cardinal with her slim dark funnel and snow-white decks.

"Come, let's find our cabins," said Marie-Claude.

But Harriet could not tear herself away from the movement and bustle of the docks, from the tangle of cranes and masts, the cries of men loading the freight and hung, huge-eyed and entranced, over the side. Here, now swinging over the deck and dropping into the hold, was the wicker skip that she had sat on the night before so that the stage-hands could fasten the straps… and here the tarpaulin they had tied round the Act Two flats for Fille.

It was fortunate that she did not observe another, impressively strapped wicker basket waiting on the quay—a basket which had been unloaded earlier and contained three dozen silk shirts bound for Truscott and Musgrave in Piccadilly. For of gentlemen who sent back their shirts to Britain to be laundered, Harriet did not and could not approve.

A man with a megaphone came by, instructing visitors to leave the ship; a single hoot from the slender funnel announced their imminent departure.

It was only when she saw the ever-widening strip of gray and dirty water between herself and the shore that Harriet realized she had done it. She was safe.

Chapter Four

A soft breeze rustled the palm trees in front of the Palace of Justice; the flock of parakeets which had roosted on the equestrian statue of Pedro II flew noisily toward the river—and day broke across the Golden City. The cathedral bell tolled for mass; the first tram clanked out of the depot. Maids in colored bandannas emerged from the great houses in the Avenida Eduardo Ribero, bound for the arcaded fish-market. A procession of tiny orphans in black overalls crossed a cobbled square. One by one the shutters went up on the shops with their exotic, crazily-priced wares from Europe: milliners and jewellers; delicatessens and patisseries…

Down by the docks the men arrived and began to load the balls of black rubber which were piled on the quayside. The fast-dying breeze sent a gentle oriental music through the rigging of the luxurious yachts crowded along the floating landing-stage; from the crazily-patchea and painted dug-outs of the Indians on the harbor's fringe came the smell of hot cooking-oil and coffee. A uniformed official unlocked the ornate gates of the yellow customs house and on RMS Cardinal, at rest after her five-week voyage from Liverpool, sailors were scrubbing the already immaculate white decks.

But though this day began like all others, it was no ordinary day. Tonight the Opera House which presided over Manaus like a great benevolent dowager would blaze with light. Tonight carriages and automobiles would sweep across the dizzying mosaic square in front of the theater and disgorge brilliantly dressed women and bemedalled men beneath the floodlit pink and white facade. Tonight there would be receptions and dinners; every café would be full to overflowing; every hotel room had been secured months ago. For tonight the Dubrov Ballet Company was opening in Swan Lake, and for the homesick Europeans and the culture-hungry Brazilians there would be moonlit glades and Tchaikovsky's immortal music and Simonova's celebrated interpretation of Odette.

In the turreted stucco villa which she had christened "The Retreat," young Mrs. Bennett surveyed the blue silk gown which she had laid out on the bed, the matching shoes. The blue was right with her eyes, but should she wear the pearls or the sapphires? The sapphires would seem to be the obvious choice, but Mrs. Lehmann's sapphires were so much bigger and better and the Lehmanns had the box next to theirs. "The pearls, I think, Conception," she said to her maid, a cabacla—half-Indian, half-Portuguese—with caring eyes. And her husband Jock, coming to kiss her good-bye, smiled with relief for today at least he would not come home to find her weeping over Peter's photograph or staring with red-rimmed eyes at a letter with its childish scrawl. Of course the boy was homesick, of course seven was young to be sent so far away. But what could one do? A British boy had to go to a decent school—and anyway, you couldn't bring up a child in this climate.

Still, today at least Lilian would be occupied. He himself did not care for ballet, but as he climbed into his carriage and was conveyed to his office on the quayside, Jock Bennett blessed the Dubrov Ballet Company from the bottom of his heart.

Unlike Jock Bennett, the six-foot-tall and massively bearded Count Sternov was a passionate balletomane and since dawn had roamed through the long, low house—which he had had built in imitation of his parents' dacha on the Volga—in a state of exaltation.

"I shall never forget her first Giselle—never," he said to the Countess. "The year before she left Russia. That unsupported adage in the last act!"

"That was the time they found Dalguruky in the back of the box making love to the governess, do you remember?"

The Countess was in her dressing-gown. She seldom dressed before the afternoon, the heat did not suit her and her cris des nerfs were famous, but today she was happy. Today it would end as it had so often ended in St. Petersburg, discussing the finer points of a cabriole in a lighted theater… and the next day was the party for the cast at Follina, that fantastic riverside palazzo where everything that mattered out here took place. And there will be girls, thought the Count happily—young, lovely Russian girls…

The girls were uppermost in the mind of Colonel de Silva, the Prefect of Police, glancing at the clock in his office to see if it was time to go home and change. His scrawny domineering wife could stop him talking to them, stop him sending them flowers; she could drag him back to his carriage with her hand dug into his arm the second the curtain went down, but she couldn't stop him seeing them—their legs, their thighs, their throats—thought the grateful Colonel, rescinding the death warrant of a bandit who had turned out to be a distant relative. Opera was better for bosoms and hips, but in ballet one saw more.

By the afternoon a veritable armada of small craft had begun to converge on the city. From the far shore of the River Negro, some ten miles across, came Dr. Zugheimer and his wife, sitting erect in the bows of the Louisa, already in their evening clothes. The bespectacled Herr Doktor, a paternalistic employer who had put his seringueiros into uniform, thirsted for Lohengrin or Parsifal, but no one missed an opening night at the Teatro Amazonas and the blue eyes of his plump wife—who spent her lonely mornings struggling to turn the pulpy mangoes and guavas of the tropics into the firm and bread-crumbed Knödel of her native land, shone with excitement. Opera, ballet or farce… what did it matter? Tonight there would be gossip, companionship, laughter.

A launch chartered by the Amazonian Timber Company at Boa Vista disgorged twenty of their employees, who made their way into the town carrying their evening clothes under their arms. The mission boat belonging to the Silesian Brothers at Santa Maria brought Father Joseph and Father Anselm, who knew that all art was for the glory of God and had made sure of excellent seats in the stalls.

The cafe's were now filling up. A party of lady schoolteachers from a select seminary in Santarém, offered the choice of sleeping in the street or in Madam Anita's brothel, sensibly chose the brothel. The captain of the Oriana escorted two massive, middle-aged Baltic princesses, (on a round trip from Lisbon) down the gangway and into the car sent by the Mayor.

And now the lights were going up. Lights beneath the frieze of gods and goddesses on the Opera House facade; lights in the tall streetlamps lining the square. Lights in the blue and green art nouveau foyer; in the candelabra between the Carrera marble columns of the upstairs promenade… Lights limning the tiers of white and golden boxes; pouring down from the great eight-pointed chandelier on de Angeli's frescoed ceiling with its swirling muses of Poetry, Music and Art…

Light, now, sparkling and dancing on the tiaras of the women as they entered; on the diamond and sapphire choker of Mrs. John P. Lehmann, on Colonel de Silva's Brazilian Star…

The seats were filling up; row upon row of bejewelled bosoms, of bemedalled chests. The stout Baltic princesses entered the canopied box reserved for the President and stood, dowdy and gracious, bestowing kind waves. In the orchestra pit, the musicians were ready.

But the performance could not begin yet; all the citizens of Manaus were aware of that. For the box next to that of the President was still empty—the box that belonged to Mr. Verney, the chairman of the Opera House trustees. Until Rom Verney came from Follina the curtain would stay lowered—and knowing this, the audience settled down to wait.

Verney woke early, as he always did, on the morning of the gala; he stretched in the great jaruna wood bed and pushed aside the cloud of white mosquito netting to go to the French windows and look out on his garden.

There was no garden like it in all of Amazonia. Only the gardens of the Moghul emperors—of Akbar and his heirs—had the same vision, the same panache. Only those despots—like this wealthiest of all the rubber barons—had the tenacity and labor to make real their dreams.

On the terrace below him, orchids and hibiscus and the dizzying scarlet flame-flowers which the humming birds loved to visit rioted in flamboyant exuberance from their urns, but elsewhere he had maintained a savage discipline on the fast-growing plants. In the avenue of jacarandas, shiveringly blue, which stretched to the distant river, each tree grew distinct and unimpeded. Beneath the catalpas in his arboretum he had planted only the white, star-petalled clerodendron, so that the trees seemed to grow from a drift of scented snow.