Paris Times Eight (20 page)

Max said more money could easily be made in the States. “But I'm in Paris because you can't put a price on beauty, and Paris is one beautiful town.”

I went to the kitchen to get the red-wine cabbage, glad to leave the table. We were a small group, strangers really, celebrating Christmas in a city not our own, eating food we didn't normally eat, far away from our own families, pretending, each of us, that we were having a marvellous time.

I brought out the goose that before going into the oven had been dressed like a courtier, with sliced olives as buttons down its puffed-out chest and red pepper as trim. The color had burned away in the oven, and it was now just a regulation Christmas goose. Still, it cut a dashing figure when placed on the table. When I sliced into it, steam rising from the incision, Max and Rosemarie raised a glass to Danielle and me. We had actually pulled it off, a real French dinner.

As we were eating our
bûche,
a chocolaty confection resembling a Christmas log, Danielle broached the topic of the nativity. “Like most Jews,” she said, “I've never understood how you Christians can buy into this idea of an immaculate conception. I mean, that's the biggest cuckolding story around, right?”

Rosemarie laughed. Her family had been Catholic, but she hadn't been to church in years. “I can think of better things to do while sitting on the floor on my knees,” she said saucily.

Max blushed.

“I was an illegitimate birth,” I blurted. I had finished the champagne and was into my third glass of wine.

The table went silent.

“My mother said she got pregnant with me on purpose. She wanted someone to love her.”

“What a bunch of bullshit,” said Rosemarie.

“I don't think so,” I said, taken aback. “It means she wanted me.”

Rosemarie rolled her eyes. She didn't know of my work troubles, had never met my mother, didn't know I was feeling vulnerable. “That's a lot of pressure to put on a kid, don't you think? Jeez, and I thought my Polack mother was a piece of work.”

“Yes, I think my friend here is more Jewish than I am,” quipped Danielle. “She's a sucker for guilt.” Danielle winked at me. I smiled faintly back.

“I know!” I suddenly shouted. The others looked at me, startled. “I propose midnight mass at Notre Dame.”

“That would just give me the creeps,” replied Danielle.

“Sorry,” Max said. “I haven't been to mass in years.”

“I'm not saying you have to go to confession,” I said. “Let's just go. All of us. Come on. It's a Paris tradition. We'll light a candle.”

All eyes landed on Rosemarie.

“Please,” I said. I no longer cared if it sounded like begging. Danielle left the room, but soon reappeared with a cache of gifts.

“Speaking of Paris traditions,” she said. “I did some research and found out that on Christmas Eve, you are supposed to give gifts.”

I gasped. I hadn't bought her anything.

Danielle put a wrapped parcel in front of me. Inside was a strangely shaped backpack, narrow at the top, wide at the bottom. It looked like it was made to carry a violin. “It's the Eiffel Tower,” said Danielle, grinning. “I hope you like it.” She was a kind soul, and at that moment I was sorry we had fought. For Rosemarie she had bought a ballpoint pen with a pink feather at the top. “I heard you like to write.”

“Now get thee to a nunnery,” she scolded. “Leave me and my husband alone.”

Rosemarie stood up from the table. The gift giving had turned her suddenly charitable. She reluctantly agreed to join me on my journey to Notre Dame. “But I'm warning you,” she said. “The crowds will be awful.”

I WOKE LATE
on Christmas Day, past noon, to find myself alone in Danielle's apartment. She and Max had left early in the morning to catch their flight to the Bahamas. She had left me a note on the table, which still bore signs of the party from the night before, saying good-bye. I wandered from room to room, not sure what to do with myself. I watched French television. I tried to read a book, but couldn't concentrate. I browsed through a pile of old newspapers. I made café au lait, and put on some music. I looked out the window at all the other windows closing in on the apartment and saw the old man across the way. He was looking out his window. He caught me looking at him and, in a huff, slammed his shutters closed. I reached for the telephone. I had one number in Paris, the number belonging to a stranger, but a famous stranger. I dialled it—I had nothing to lose, I thought.

“Yes!”

Nureyev himself answered the phone with a terrifying monosyllable, tossed like a grenade, as if the ringing had been a great nuisance to him.

I reminded him who I was, the Canadian who had been with him three days earlier.

“Yes! Yes!” he said again, impatient.

“Why you not wait?”

“Pardon?”

“Why you not wait at Opéra? To eat with me. Eat salmon. Come to my apartment!”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I hadn't realized his intentions.

“Well, um, sorry, I didn't know,” I said. “So, um, you got it then, the salmon?”

“Yes. Divine. Too bad you not wait. But you come again. To Opéra.
Don Quixote.
You come backstage, after. Come see me!”

Nureyev abruptly hung up, and for a long while I sat there, holding my end of the phone, stupefied by his suggestion that I was to have had dinner with him. I couldn't believe that I had misunderstood and lost what would have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have dined with Nureyev,
chez lui.

I reflected again on the rarity of him as I dressed the following night to go to the ballet. The evening's performers were Nureyev's protégés, the long-limbed Sylvie Guillem and the dashing Patrick Dupond, rival to the throne at the Paris Opera and, indeed, its then-new artistic director. They constituted ballet royalty. I inwardly thrilled at the mere mention of their names. I took a taxi to the theater and entered through the front doors this time. Where backstage was a dark labyrinth housing mysteries, front of house was bright, expansive, and palatial. Everything was so luxurious, it could have been Versailles. Outside Paris was gloomy, but there, at the ballet, it was eternal summer I thought as I admired the mosaic ceiling, the golden chandeliers, the walls of gilt-edged mirrors. I climbed the grand staircase made of marble, already feeling uplifted. I handed a uniformed usher my ticket and was shown to my seat. And not just any seat. Nureyev had put me in the box reserved for dignitaries. It was front and center, where a person of great distinction was supposed to sit. I couldn't believe my good fortune. But more, I couldn't get over Nureyev's generosity, his desire to please encompassing every detail and extending to me, someone relatively unfamiliar to him.

The curtain rose on a performance that, from start to finish, was a blistering, fast-paced romp through Cervantes' castanets-clacking Spain. It was raucous, robust, a pyrotechnic showcase for the unsurpassed talents of the Paris Opera dancers. I sat on the edge of my seat throughout, thrilled to have been a part of it, each step, each twirl, each jump and unshakeable balance forever seared on my memory.

When the last of the ballet's three acts was over, I rushed backstage, eager to see Nureyev again and to thank him for making my first experience of the Paris ballet so extraordinary and wonderful. He was there, waiting for me. Initially I had breezed right past him; I had hardly recognized him. He seemed oddly diminished in comparison to the magnificence of the evening. His clothes hung loosely on his withered frame. They looked slept in. Their drabness accentuated the forlornness of his solitary figure. I felt sad to see him like this. He was the artist whose trailblazing dancing had set the standard for the young dancers who had impressed us that night with their iron-clad technique, their sparkling presence. They were, like all the dancers who have come after him and benefited from his gifts, Nureyev's disciples. He watched them from the sidelines, as if tacitly acknowledging his glory days to be over.

I approached, and when he saw me, he flashed me a ready smile. “Not bad, huh?” He winked at me, and leading me by the elbow, took me over to meet his principal dancers. He called them
mes enfants.

I was aware of the background story. Relations between him and Guillem were reportedly stormy. She had lately announced her decision to leave Paris for the Royal Ballet in London. Dupond, meanwhile, was being portrayed in press reports as the usurper of Nureyev's throne. The mercurial Pierre Bergé had recently appointed him artistic director of the Paris Opera after demoting Nureyev to artist in residence. That was the gossip, and the journalist in me wanted to see how things would play out. Would there be a scene? Would I have a scoop? Yet when the two principal dancers saw Nureyev walking in their direction, they shook off the backstage admirers asking for their autographs and focused all their attention anxiously on him. They were like schoolchildren waiting for the verdict—pass or fail. Both still had on their costumes and were in full makeup. Perspiration had dampened their eager-looking faces. I stood aside to watch as Nureyev took each by the hand. Looking them in the eyes, he told them they had made him proud.
“Je suis très fier,”
he said.
“Très fier.”
Both dancers emitted loud exhalations of relief. Guillem leaned toward him to lay her head on his chest. Her tiara got caught on his scarf. He untangled her, and then she limped away, eager, I thought, to get out of her pointe shoes.

The dancers had done their job: they had satisfied him. That was all that mattered. They were free to go to their dressing rooms and wash away the face paint, become mere mortals again.

I turned to look at the former god of the dance standing before me. He was also a mere mortal, flawed like the rest of us. We were soon sandwiched between sycophants and other hangers-on as fans started to crowd him. I said my good-byes. I mentioned that I would be at his upcoming performance in Toronto, but even as I said it, I knew there was no chance for a repeat encounter. This had been a rare occasion. It had been like ballet itself—beautiful, but gone in an instant.

When I got back to Danielle's empty apartment, I was still high with excitement. I had no one to tell my story to, so I wrote a postcard to my mother. I quoted Théophile Gautier, a pioneer of dance criticism and a Parisian, who had written on the rise of the Romantic ballet: “All things turn to dust/Save beauty fashioned well.” I hoped that my mother would understand me. Ballet was my tree house in the wilderness, where no one else in my family went save me. It was an art form known for escapism, but it brought me face to face with myself. My dreams.

I looked out the window, Paris twinkling in the darkness. In that moment I was aware of myself as being one of the millions of stars in the universe that together create the light by which we can see the heavens. I was part of the constellation called humanity. I thought of my newspaper, the reason I had come to Paris, the reason I had connected with Nureyev. “Please God, don't let me lose my job.” The words popped out of me before I even knew what I was doing. “I will go back to Toronto. I will eat crow. I will submit. Please, I love writing. I love art. Don't take them away from me.”

I had finally said the prayer that had gotten stuck in my throat at the tourist parade that had been Notre Dame. I fell asleep, fully clothed, on top of the upstairs marital bed.

LIFE ISN'T A
ballet. In reality, the curtain doesn't fall on a tidy ending. I did return to Toronto. I did try to be humble. I found a skating show to review, something I thought I could tackle with some competence, thinking it to be dance on ice.

The leads were Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano, she from Germany, he from the United States. My thesis was that by pushing the limits of their own sport, these dynamos on blades were transporting skating out of the arena and into the world of art. An editor with knowledge of figure skating looked over my shoulder. I had asked him for advice. I hadn't wanted to make any mistakes.

In the final minutes before the deadline, he suggested I Canadianize the content. “Isn't Kurt Browning now at the top of his game?” he asked me. “He is famous for something. What is it?” I had at my disposal the skating show press kit, and I quickly opened it. People were screaming for my copy. I flipped rapidly through the pages. Aha! There it was: “A quadruple toe-loop completed three-quarters of a second before landing.” Browning had just performed the maneuver at the Winter Olympics. I showed the phrase to the editor. “That it?” I asked. “That's it,” he said.

With seconds to go before deadline, I typed the phrase into my story. I copied it verbatim, and deliberately so. I thought it was an accurate description of what had made Browning special. The article was edited and published, and that seemed to be the end of that.

But a few days later, a letter of complaint arrived at the paper. The writer said in his letter that I had “parroted” an expression that had originally appeared in a magazine article on Browning. Included in my press kit, it was what I had relied on to nail the technical description. It ended up nailing me. Siding with this letter-writer
100
percent, management seized on the article as evidence that I was a plagiarist, tried and true. I had not learned my lesson. On February
15
,
1991
, I was fired. A security guard escorted me to my desk. I was ordered to pack up my things and immediately leave the building.

The assumption was that I would never return, but I knew I had done nothing wrong. I had to fight back. I launched a grievance, backed by the newspaper's union. It was while fighting for my reputation—really, my life—that I experienced a sea change. I grew from being fixated on the outside of me to caring for the inside. I grew to value kindness above all other human traits. It was part of learning to be kind to myself. For a long time I had hated myself, and that self-loathing continued for the first few years following my expulsion. As soon as I lost my job, I cut off all my long hair. I thought often of killing myself. I stopped going to the theater. I stopped going out.