House on the Lagoon (20 page)

Tamara was still a beautiful woman, but lately she had gained weight. She always wore a black leotard, with a long gauze skirt covering her generous hips. Sometimes she danced by herself in the early afternoon, before any of her students arrived at the studio. I got there earlier than most, and I used to love watching her; the minute she started to move, you forgot she was overweight because she was so graceful. Professor Kerenski never danced with any of the students. He always danced solo in front of the class when he wanted to show us how to do a new step.

Tamara didn’t have anything to do with the advanced classes; she taught only beginner and intermediate classes. She had to teach the nine- and ten-year-olds to stand correctly, shoulders down and fanny tucked in, and train the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds to walk elegantly down the aisle, preparing them for the debutante pageant which took place at the Ponce Country Club every summer.

One day I was resting in the Kerenskis’ living room and I saw Tamara come out of the bathroom after a bath (the Kerenskis had restored the carriage house next to the studio as their private apartment; it had a living room, a bedroom, a bath, and a modern kitchenette). She was naked and I was surprised to see how beautiful she was. She reminded me of Ingres’s
Odalisque
—a reproduction of it hung in the living room of our home on Aurora Street. She had her back to me, so she didn’t see me, but when she stood before the mirror I thought she looked sad. She often had that same expression in class, as if she wanted to get away from everything. I thought maybe she was bored with her job, and I couldn’t blame her.

Professor Kerenski was more enthusiastic than ever. Sometimes he would take off his red silk jacket and show us how to dance a particularly difficult sequence, in his black pants and T-shirt. It was then that we noticed his chest was covered with a red nap, very different in color from the blond page boy he groomed with such care. What was even more curious was a faint odor of crushed geraniums that came from his armpits whenever he lifted his arms to show us a new step.

I had a good friend at the ballet school, Estefanía Volmer, the daughter of the owner of El Cometa, Ponce’s largest hard-ware store. Don Arturo Volmer was from a family of modest means, but he had married Margot Rinser, whose father was the founder of the largest rum distillery in Ponce. Her father had given them El Cometa as a wedding present, and Arturo had done everything he could to make it an ongoing concern, but he had had little luck. He wasn’t a good businessman; he made little money selling “tinker toys,” as he used to say—just enough to break even—and Margot still had to ask her father for the niceties she was used to.

Margot had been a great beauty, but she had developed bone cancer in her right leg a few years after her marriage, and the leg had to be amputated. Don Arturo never got over his wife’s tragedy. He lived only to care for Margot; he took her everywhere, pushing the wheelchair himself, and wouldn’t let a nurse near. He was so obsessed with his wife’s tragedy he hardly remembered Estefanía existed.

Margot herself never gave Estefanía a second thought: when she got pregnant, she was already in a wheelchair. Margot had been an only daughter and was used to being the center of attention at home, even more so when she became seriously ill. Whenever she saw Estefanía walk into her room, she was always a little surprised, as if she had forgotten she had a daughter.

Estefanía had been brought up by nursemaids, with very little supervision. She was much more of a rebel than I. She had Coca-Cola and devil’s food cake for breakfast—she wouldn’t be caught dead eating the soggy porridge with bananas Abby made for me every morning. When she turned fourteen, she refused to put on any underwear and went around with her breasts swimming under her blouse like jellyfish. At fifteen she began to go to parties by herself. She never had a chaperone, and she was the only girl I knew in Ponce who went to the movies alone on a date. I admired her for it; the whole town talked about Estefanía, but she went on doing what she damn well wanted to. She was a beautiful girl, with milk-white skin, a long swan’s neck, and red curly hair that reminded you of a burning bush when she stood under the noonday sun.

Estefanía was two years older than I. I had met her at the Lyceum, where we were both on the volleyball team. She was not a good student; she liked people better than books. But she enjoyed taking care of the younger children at recess time. She would organize games for them and play as if she were a child herself. She had a gay disposition and was always laughing and kidding, as if life were an ongoing party. She liked to dress to shock people, and sometimes we both did, as jarringly as possible—polka-dot pedal pushers with Hawaiian-style see-through blouses, for example—just to see people stare at us. Yet the reason I liked her was that I knew she was unhappy.

I remember that when Estefanía turned sixteen, her father gave her a red Ford convertible as a birthday present, a senseless gift. But her parents had no sense at all, so it didn’t surprise me when I saw Estefanía drive up to school in it. Since her family lived near the rum distillery on the outskirts of town, she said, they gave her the car so they could get rid of the chauffeur, who was always drunk. Now she could go everywhere on her own at night, to the drive-in theater, even out to The Place, Ponce’s cabaret by the sea, where she danced with the American sailors she met at the bar. But I know she never did anything she shouldn’t have with them.

I was enchanted when Estefanía decided to enroll in the ballet school. She soon became an admirer of Professor Kerenski, and after that we shared all our secrets. We weren’t in love with him; we didn’t care at all about his good looks. We worshipped him for his excellence as a dancer, for the extraordinary ease with which he soared into the air and did eight entrechats in the
Don Quixote
suite, for example, or for the forty fouettés he completed during the Prince’s solo in
Swan Lake.

André was like a god to us; he ruled our lives in every way. He told us how many calories we could eat a day, what kind of shoes to wear to prevent bunions, and how to comb our hair so it wouldn’t fly into our eyes when we danced. Most important, he forbade both of us to have steady boyfriends, because, he said, we had become his “spiritual” partners.

Our personalities changed as well. We turned meek and obedient, lost weight and looked more fragile every day. It was as if we had lost the desire to live our own lives. At home, our parents couldn’t believe their eyes. Abby was particularly worried. She was used to sparring with me, and she couldn’t figure out what was happening. She would come into my room to say good night and see me lying on the bed with a whimsical expression on my face, dreaming I was Giselle and had swooned on my tomb. Abby couldn’t get over it. I never complained about anything; I did everything I was told, without answering back. When I did something wrong, I hung my head and humbly accepted her rebuke; it was almost as if I were a different person. She didn’t guess I wasn’t really there. I was simply waiting for my chance to escape from the house and run back to Professor Kerenski. “The minute you start getting bad grades at school, I’ll punch that carrot-headed Petrouchka on the nose and take you out of the ballet school myself!” she told me one day. “You’d be much better off playing the piano for the poor children of the slums of Ponce at the charity bazaar next month.” “Don’t worry, Abby,” I said. “I’ll burn the midnight oil studying, just to please you.”

It was 1946, and it was our turn to dance at La Perla Theater. When Professor Kerenski picked Estefanía for one of the solos in
Swan Lake,
I was genuinely surprised, but I didn’t complain. It had taken me four years to reach C level and I had worked like a slave to get there. Estefanía, on the other hand, had been in our school only six months, and she had been selected for the part. When we found out that Professor Kerenski had chosen us to dance Odette and Odile from among a dozen advanced students, we squealed with delight and hugged each other. But things were never quite the same after that. Estefanía was a good dancer, but she was never better than me.

I simply couldn’t understand it. For months I had been the star dancer at school; no one could hold an arabesque at almost a ninety-degree angle as I did; no one could whirl ten chaînés at an almost disappearing speed. The minute Professor Kerenski saw Estefanía, however, he had been partial to her. He was always using her as an example: when the students dragged their feet and couldn’t get their grands jetés off the ground, he would make her walk to the front of the class and have her show everybody how to “soar into the air like a swan.” I think it had to do with the fact that her hair was geranium-red and that she reminded him of his mother, the Russian princess.

O
NE DAY I WAS
early to class and I heard Tamara and André arguing loudly behind the studio’s closed door. Andre insisted that he wanted to dance the pas de deux of the Prince in
Swan Lake
with one of his advanced students. He was tired of teaching the girls to dance by themselves, he said: the crown of every ballet was always the adagio—the lovers’ duet—and Tamara couldn’t dance it with him because she was too fat. No ballet master of any reputation would ever put a performance onstage with female students only; it was even more shameful for a disciple of Balanchine. Tamara sighed and said it couldn’t be; if he danced onstage with any one of the well-brought-up girls from Ponce, it would create such a scandal that all the fathers would come to the studio the next day and take their daughters away.

Professor Kerenski was furious, but he soon found a solution to the problem. If he couldn’t dance the adagio with one of his advanced students, he would find someone who could. He visited the slum of Machuelo Abajo and interviewed several teenage boys from poor families. A few of them were on the neighborhood basketball team. He had them run two miles and jump the high bar to test their stamina and physical condition. He finally chose Tony Torres, a fifteen-year-old mulatto with finely chiseled features. “Please drop by the Kerenski Ballet School in the morning,” he said to him. “We’re going to put on our new production at La Perla Theater, and I need a helping hand onstage.”

Tony was a handsome young man. He had curly hair, and skin as smooth as bronze. He reminded me of one of those statues of Greek youths that turn up once in a while at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Professor Kerenski didn’t choose him for his good looks, however. He was the only young man among the athletic boys he interviewed that day who admitted to being gay. “He’s the perfect partner for girls from good families,” he said to Tamara, unable to keep an ironic tinge from his voice. “He can dance the Prince in
Swan Lake
and won’t pose a threat to any of them. The fathers of our well-to-do students will be able to sleep in peace.”

Professor Kerenski trained Tony Torres for several weeks before teaching him the role of the Prince. What Tony had to do was relatively simple. Professor Kerenski had pared down the part so Tony could learn it quickly, but I suspect he resented having to do it. He imagined what his artist friends who came to visit him periodically from New York would say: “André couldn’t dance the part himself because, in that two-bit town where he lives, even Balanchine would be considered a pansy. He had to train one of the locals to substitute for him.” It was all so silly he couldn’t help being bitter about it.

“In classical ballet, the ballerina’s partner is really nothing more than a mannequin,” Kerenski said to Tony on his first day of coaching. “Your main role will be to put your hands around Odile’s waist and lift her up as if she were a feather. Please don’t grab her by the hips, or turn her around as if she were a roasting chicken.” One day he told Tony not to shave the scant beard that grew on his chin: he had decided to add Stravinsky’s
Firebird
to the program, and Tony would dance the main role as well. For that, he had to appear as virile as possible.

Tony was very sensitive, and at first he was hurt by Professor Kerenski’s comments. He decided not to give them any importance, however, because dancing at La Perla Theater was a great opportunity for him. He hoped to be able to continue as a regular student at the Kerenski Ballet School once the recital was over. He was even willing to help out as a janitor if necessary, as long as he could continue taking classes. He meant to go to New York one day; he dreamed of dancing in a Broadway chorus or at a first-rate cabaret. When his family found out he would be dancing the two main roles in the ballet school’s recital that year, they were ecstatic and gave him their full support. The young people in Machuelo Abajo saw him as a hero; it was the first time anyone from the slums had ever danced at La Perla or taken part in any of its elegant cultural events. When posters advertising the performance, with Tony’s picture, appeared all over town—affixed to the telephone poles and to the walls of buildings and to fences—the people of Machuelo Abajo took them down, framed them, and hung them in their living rooms.

One afternoon Abby came to the ballet school to see me in class. Professor Kerenski went up to her and said I had possibilities; there was a chance I could become a serious dancer. He suggested that, once I finished high school, my parents not send me to the university right away but let me study ballet with him for a year or two. I should take my time before I made up my mind about what to do with my life. He was even willing to recommend me to the School of American Ballet in New York, where he had many friends. When I heard what he said, my heart skipped a beat. I was ready to do anything to become a first-class ballerina.

When we returned home, Abby began to rail against Professor Kerenski. “If you postpone your entrance to the university, it’ll be over my dead body,” she said. “I didn’t sacrifice my whole life baking custards and cakes just so you’d end up dancing cancan soufflés in Radio City,” she went on. I wasn’t surprised at her outburst. But I was in my fourth year at the Lyceum and I could be as headstrong as Abby. I knew she couldn’t force me to enter the university once I graduated from high school—not if I didn’t want to.