Ballerina Read online

  ‘I will be as quiet as an acorn.’

  Madame had an inspiration. ‘And pretend to take notes.’

  Lvovna took Volmar into the studio. ‘Marius, this is Stephanie Lang.’

  The girl was stretching at the barre. She turned and saw Marius Volmar and her face went white.

  ‘I have asked Mr Volmar to look at your solo, Stephanie. He can tell us what you are doing wrong. Izzy, when you are ready.’

  Lvovna and Volmar took seats at the side of the room. Volmar set his face in a scowl. The girl walked quickly to the centre and waited. Volmar could see she was biting her lower lip.

  The music began. He took a note pad from his pocket and laid it on his knees. His ear winced. The melody was undeniably Tchaikovsky, but the harmony had to be Lvovna’s reconstruction. It didn’t matter.

  The girl’s balances were perfect. Volmar almost forgot to keep scowling. She had no trouble sustaining movements to retards in the music. Most surprising of all, she managed to suggest the presence of the invisible prince. There was a clear distinction between assisted pirouettes and unassisted, assisted balances and unassisted. At one point the prince seemed to lift her onto his shoulder, and it was clearly his left shoulder. At another she was dragged backward, just a beat, but definitely dragged with one toe trailing.

  Skilful, Volmar thought. More than skilful. Convincing. He was reminded that dance is, after all, theatre.

  As the music approached the coda he heard Lvovna suck in a whispered ‘Bozhe moi.’

  Now the girl’s movements came in dizzying fours: pas de cheval, pas de bourrée, piqué turns en dedans, each leap faster and longer and more daring than the preceding, ending with a leap into a perfect plié in arabesque, an instant of immobility that rose with absolute control into relevé en pointe; and then, right foot holding the pointe, the left leg extended up behind, the torso curved slowly down, supporting itself on shoulders that were not there.

  One seamless movement.

  The head and throat lifted, arching smoothly from bust up. She turned her head to the right, kissed a mouth that was not there. And held the penché.

  And held it.

  Eight counts. Twelve counts. Fourteen. Sixteen. On seventeen her eyes flicked sideways toward the piano.

  That was the only movement.

  On eighteen it was over.

  ‘May I clap?’ Volmar whispered.

  ‘No. I have told her she is bad. Do not contradict.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Volmar said in a grudging voice.

  The girl’s gaze brushed his and scurried away.

  ‘Go dress,’ Lvovna said. ‘Then come back and Mr Volmar will give his notes.’

  The girl went.

  ‘Well, Marius—was she perfect little Sleeping Beauty?’

  Already Volmar was planning. He would give her token corps work and start her in solos. Prayer in Coppélia and American Beauty Rose in Waltz of the Flowers and a wonderful little presto in the Enesco Rhapsody. In three seasons, perhaps two, she would be ready for Sleeping Beauty.

  ‘She was.’

  He kissed her and there was sadness in her smile.

  ‘She is yours, Marius. Take her. Make her grow. Perhaps you will grow too. It will hurt, but if that is what you want....’

  ‘I’d rather be hurt than dead.’

  She angled her head as though she saw him more clearly from the side.

  ‘Do you love this girl?’

  ‘Verushka, I love dance, I love music, and sometimes I love you.’

  ‘At least you put me in good company.’

  When the girl returned her eyes seemed near exhaustion. Her blonde hair was wavy now from the shower and Volmar felt a pressure in his chest that was like a young man’s remembering.

  ‘You show promise,’ he said.

  He saw her tremble under his eyes. He would have liked to emphasize the remark by laying a hand on her shoulder but he did not.

  ‘Your footwork is slow, and you must space your fingers evenly. I know it sounds like a small detail, but there are no small details in ballet.’

  She lowered her eyes acknowledging guilt. He noticed the neatness of her dress, the faint scar of darning thread on the collar of the blouse. He saw there was a mother in her life, and economy. He wanted her to know he could be kind.

  ‘I think we can make room for you at National Ballet Theater.’

  Lvovna stood back, nodding, and Volmar explained the contract. He made it clear he was giving the girl an opportunity. He made it clear that many girls were waiting for this chance. He made it clear that, despite what he had seen today in this rehearsal room, he bad confidence in her talent.

  She was silent and seemed embarrassed.

  He had not expected the silence.

  ‘Stephanie,’ Lvovna said, ‘Mr Volmar’s time is precious. He has already been kind. Tell him yes, tell him no, tell him one thing or the other.’

  Her voice was pale and tiny. ‘I have to ask my mother.’

  Volmar was annoyed but not disappointed. A mother who darned collars could not object to a daughter’s earning money.

  ‘I’ll be at the theatre,’ he said. ‘Let me know before curtain time.’

  She promised.

  When she had gone, Volmar asked about this mother who darned collars.

  ‘A workhorse,’ Lvovna said. ‘But you know her—the woman danced for you.’

  ‘Lang? I never had a woman called Lang.’

  ‘Anna Barlow.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Volmar said. ‘I remember Anna Barlow. Long ago.’

  ‘Nowadays,’ Lvovna said, ‘everything seems long ago.’

  When Steph told her mother the news a gust of triumph blew through Anna like the spark from a pilot light rushing to all four burners at once. ‘Honey, you made it!’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  They were in the kitchen drinking coffee, Anna’s late afternoon pick-me-up. She almost knocked over the sugar bowl jumping from her chair to hug her little girl. ‘Thanks to no one. You’re a born dancer. And don’t think Marius Volmar doesn’t see it. He saw it at your recital. He saw it at your audition. He’s been wanting you two years.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. Marius Volmar—wants—me.’

  ‘Believe it.’ The news, Anna decided, called for a celebration, and not just warmed-up coffee left over from breakfast. She pried a box of Bavarian cream-filled chocolate éclairs from the freezer. Supper wasn’t for two hours, and Steph loved sweets—what dancer didn’t?

  ‘How did he look?’ Anna asked.

  ‘All right.’

  The éclairs felt hard as popsicles. Anna read the directions to see if there was any mention of quick defrosting in the oven. Nothing.

  She set the oven to 450 and laid the pastries on a cookie sheet on the top rack. ‘Did he ask about me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t say, "Hello, how is she?" ‘

  Steph shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t he know you’re my kid?’

  There wasn’t time for small talk.’

  ‘Small talk? Who does he think you are, anyway?’

  ‘Somebody he wants in his company.’

  Anna stared at Steph and saw a child happy as a Christmas tree. Kids, she thought. They were all rush and clatter, never any time to think things through. ‘Well, he’s not doing you any favours. Get that idea out of your head.’

  ‘Mom, I’m a nobody. He could have anyone.’

  ‘He’d be lucky to have twelve nobodies like you. And he knows it.’

  ‘He’s invited me to company class day after tomorrow.’ ‘Invited you? What’s he got now, spectator seats?’ ‘No, he wants me to start taking his class.’ Anna’s mind fumbled with a suspicion. ‘He’s had his look. He doesn’t need to check you out twice.’ ‘He wants to put me into the company right away.’ ‘You mean he wants to put you into the corps right away.’ ‘It’s a good corps—and it’s a good contract. Fifty-two weeks paid. And during the season it’s two
-fifty a week.’

  ‘If it’s such a good contract, where is it?’ Anna held out her hand. She knew Steph didn’t have the contract on her. She knew, too, that, like a baby in a carriage, Steph needed someone else’s hand on the bar and someone else’s foot on the brake.

  ‘Oh, Mom, stop being so suspicious. It’s only one or two classes. I’d have to go to class anyway, and at least his are free.’

  ‘I’m not talking about classes. I’m talking about that role he made on you—without telling you. Without permission. Without pay. Do you know what you just did? He’s seen how the role dances, and now he’ll hand it to one of his ballerinas and you won’t dance a step of it or see a penny.’

  For Steph, it was as though a hand had nudged her out of a dream. She tried to delay the moment of reality. ‘You’re wrong, Mom.’

  An instinct as sudden as the drop of a guillotine made Anna say, ‘Turn him down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. He hasn’t signed you yet, it’s his own fault. Don’t join NBT.’

  The kitchen was hospital-quiet. You could hear the throb of the freezer pump, the laboured sigh of gas in the coils. Anna’s instinct took on the hard certainty of ice. She realized she’d been dealt a hand with an unexpected wild card, and for Steph that card could mean all the difference between getting to the top and getting to the top fast.

  ‘Are you serious? Mom, he’s the top man in ballet. He runs the best company in the country. I couldn’t do better anywhere else.’

  ‘Yes, you could. Take Lester Croyden’s offer. Go to Empire.’

  There was shock on Steph’s face. ‘Empire’s dancers are on unemployment eight weeks a year. And the pay’s less.’

  ‘Go to Empire.’

  ‘They’re a museum. They’re still dancing Folkine’s Firebird. They only do one Balanchine, and the only choreographer they have is—’

  ‘I don’t care. Go to Empire.’

  ‘Mom, they dance junk!’

  ‘And you can dance that junk in your sleep. Which is why you’ll move fast. You’ll make soloist in six months. With Volmar, you don’t advance. Believe me, I know. He stockpiles talent. He’s got dancers buried at Fort Knox and he’s got them in holding patterns at JFK and the only place he doesn’t have them is on that stage. At Empire you’ll be seen. You’ll be reviewed. And when Marius Volmar comes crawling back to you, you’ll have leverage.’

  ‘Marius Volmar isn’t going to come crawling back to anyone.’

  ‘And you’re not crawling to him either.’

  ‘I’m not crawling.’

  ‘You are if you take that contract! You’re crawling and he’ll bury you!’

  Steph sat staring, mouth open. She had the tangled look of someone trying to fend off two conversations at once. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘To get back at me. To get back at your father. Because we stood him up.’

  ‘Oh, Mom—a man like Marius Volmar’s too important to hold grudges.’

  ‘A man like that is never important enough.’ Anna’s mind skimmed the past, counted the years that had turned to powder like rosin on a dance floor. ‘Honey, I know, I’ve been through it. This is your mother talking. I’ve made mistakes, I’m the first to admit it. My whole life has been nothing but, and if you don’t learn from my mistakes, then what’s the point? Honey, I know the business. I know him. I know you. Trust me. Just this once, trust me.’

  Anna lifted the telephone from its wall cradle. She placed it in Steph’s hand, underbelly up with plastic pushbuttons twinkling.

  ‘Call him.’

  Marius Volmar was in his office, frowning at sketches for the new mounting of Alborado—too much pink—when the telephone buzzed. Stephanie Lang began talking in a soft, uneasy voice.

  ‘I’ve talked your offer over with my mother, and the problem is, it’s not my only offer.’

  ‘Naturally not. But that shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Empire has made me an offer, and Lester Croyden is a good friend of my mother’s....’

  ‘I’m glad your mother has good friends.’

  ‘She doesn’t think I should join NBT.’

  The words cut with gentle unexpectedness, like a blade of grass. Pride was stronger than disappointment, even this disappointment. Volmar allowed himself not a sigh. But his heart clutched painfully. For an instant he thought he would have to take a pill. And then his breath returned.

  ‘May I ask you a personal question, Miss Lang? What do you think you ought to do?’

  ‘Mr Volmar, my mother was a dancer and she knows the dance world much better than I do, and she’s never given me bad advice.’

  His reply was that of a man absolutely in control: of others, of his art, of himself.’ You do realize it’s a question of your future, my dear, not your mother’s.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Volmar. I’m really very sorry.’

  She was making a mistake, a serious one, but there was nothing he could do to stop her.

  ‘In that case, my dear, I can only wish you all good luck with Empire.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Volmar.’

  And then the voice was gone. Something had died. He had experienced a loss so personal, so unexpected, that he could not at first make out exactly what it was.

  He felt helpless, strange to himself. There were vestigial stirrings beneath the pain that blanketed him. Memory flashes of Denmark, winter, his mother waving for the last time from the window of a moving police car. He sat adrift in a sudden emptiness, drowning in a now that had no shore. The future receded into the fog like the light of a departing ferry.

  A ferry that he had missed.

  He stared at his left hand and then his right hand. They were shaking. He thought: What am I doing? Why am I letting this happen? This is absurd. This is not real. This is not Marius Volmar.

  He made fists of his hands. His mind clenched, secreting the fluids of thought. Finally he picked up the telephone receiver again and dialled.

  Lvovna’s voice came on the line, bad-tempered. He was interrupting her dinner or her television. With Lvovna everything was an interruption.

  "Vera Alexeyevna? Am I calling at a convenient time?’

  He spoke Russian because she was pleasanter in her own language; and, since her vocabulary was larger, she could be made to gossip more easily.

  ‘Marius—it is you? Let me turn down the news.’

  The shouting in the background stop. He recognized the clink of spoon against glass. She had brought her stakanchi chai, her excuse for vodka, to the phone.

  ‘Now we can hear each other. What do you want?’

  ‘I was thinking of you, Verushka. That is all. I called to chat.’

  ‘Very well. Chat.’

  ‘I need to know more about the Lang girl.’

  eight

  The blow fell the next evening. Anna had fixed a supper of cold cuts and soup. Steph had seen the movie Stars of the Royal Ballet that afternoon and she was trying to cheer Chris up with a description of Fonteyn’s arabesques.

  The telephone rang. Anna answered. A man asked for Miss Avery. The voice disturbed Anna; she wasn’t sure why.

  ‘Chris,’ she said. ‘For you.’

  Chris walked slowly to the phone, munching a raw carrot stick. She stood listening for two minutes. There was an expressionless ‘Thank you.’ She fumbled the receiver back into the cradle. When she came back to the table Anna could see there was trouble.

  ‘Who was that, Chris?’

  Chris hesitated. A look of something like panic passed across her face. ‘That was Marius Volmar’s secretary.’

  Anna was silent. She stared at Chris, her mind refusing to believe what she had just heard. Finally she picked up her soup spoon and said, ‘What did Mr Volmar’s secretary want?’

  Chris pushed her soup plate away. Her voice was very slow and even and faint. ‘He wants me ... to join ... National Ballet Theater.’

  Steph squealed and jumped up from her chair and ran to hug Chri
s. They were laughing and kissing like two kindergarten playmates and then they were dancing in circles around the table.

  Anna’s mind moved swiftly, sorting one buzzing suspicion from another. Volmar couldn’t want Chris—she wasn’t nearly ready for NBT. The man was a gambler, with a gambler’s larger-than-life vanity. Dancers were dice to him. He had a scheme, Anna was certain of it, something to do with Steph. And he was working it out as cunningly and elaborately as he did the steps in a ballet.

  Chris kissed Anna. Her eyes were sparkling. ‘You were right, Mrs Lang! You were right! How can I ever thank you?’

  ‘You’re going to take the job?’ Anna said.

  Chris stiffened. The laughter was erased.

  ‘Take it,’ Steph cried. ‘Please take it.’

  ‘But we promised—’

  ‘What does that matter? We’ll be working in different companies, but we’ll both be working and that’s what counts!’

  ‘Steph is right.’ Anna began clearing dishes. Her hands were shaking and she needed to keep them busy. ‘It’s a good company. Take the job.’

  Chris telephoned Marius Volmar’s secretary and then she telephoned her parents. ‘Mother, I made it!’

  ‘Made what dear?’

  ‘National Ballet Theater has given me a job!’

  ‘Oh—are they good?’

  ‘They’re the best.’

  ‘And you’re happy?’

  ‘Happier than I’ve ever been in my life.’

  ‘Then we’re happy, dear. I’ll tell your father.’

  ‘Could I tell him myself?’

  ‘We have dinner guests. I’ll tell him later.’

  Anna had been able to overhear only half the conversation. She asked Chris, ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I guess they’re pleased.’

  Chris looked let down. Anna felt sorry for the girl and wondered what the hell kind of idiots she had for parents. Nothing, really, when their kid landed a job with the top outfit in the USA.

  Nothing, really!

  Steph and Chris both had jobs. They were eighteen and supporting themselves. It seemed silly not to have their own apartment.