Death in the Fifth Position (3 page)

The plot, if
Eclipse
could be said to have a plot, seemed to be about a girl (Sutton) who was in love with a boy (Louis) who liked all the girls in the company except her. So, frustrated and miserable, she took her revenge when, not having been laid as she so dearly wanted, she rushed furiously away from the happy boys and girls who at this point were indulging in some pretty sophisticated fornication on stage (so stylized, however, that one’s grandmother would never suspect what was happening);
for a few dozen bars Ella hid behind the rock while Louis did his solo. Then, when he was finished, she reappeared and with a look of sheer malevolence slowly ascended into the air, spinning like an avenging spirit until she had at last eclipsed the sun. It was quite a tour de force, I thought … in spite of the dress rehearsal which was sufficiently godawful to make everyone think that tonight’s performance would be a technical triumph: Louis dropped Ella in the midst of a complicated lift shortly after her entrance and they never got back with the music again, while the
corps de ballet
plunged wildly about in the best St. Petersburg tradition, knocking into scenery and one another, justifying all the cruel remarks I’d heard made about them by the more refined balletomanes.

“What do you think?” asked Washburn when the rehearsal ended.

“Wonderful!” I said, like a press agent.

“I think …” began Mr. Washburn, but he was not allowed to finish because they were having a row on stage. The curtain had remained up and the lights were on again. Louis, stretched out with his back to the proscenium, was carefully wiping the sweat from his face with a piece of Kleenex. The boys and girls stood puffing at the rear of the stage while Ella and Wilbur quarreled.

“You’ve got to change it, Jed. I insist. I will
not
go sailing up on that damn thing again.”

“It’s the whole point to the ballet.”

“So what? I won’t do it. I get dizzy and I can’t make those turns off the ground.”

“We can have one of the workmen turn you backstage … he’ll jerk the cable …”

“Oh, no he won’t!”

“The idea never seemed to bother you before.”

“The
idea
still doesn’t bother me. I never realized how high it was until now.”

“Why don’t you get her a net?” suggested Louis.

“And that lift!” she said furiously, turning on him. “I could have broken a leg. You did it deliberately. I
swear
he dropped me deliberately.”

Mr. Washburn let them fight it out a few minutes more; then he went up on the stage, accompanied by me, and quickly made peace. It was agreed that Ella
would
ascend by cable tonight, but more slowly than before, and, further, she would not have to turn in the air.

“Very statesmanlike,” I said to Mr. Washburn, as we moved toward the dressing rooms on the north side of the stage.

“We always have these little disagreements before a première … divertissements I like to call them.” Despite his attempt at lightness, however, he seemed not at all diverted. “Have you had any ideas yet about those pickets?”

I nodded. “I’ve already called Elmer Bush at the
Globe …
that’s where I used to work … and he’s doing a column called ‘Witch-Hunt in the Theater,’ all about Wilbur and the ballet.”

“First-rate,” said Mr. Washburn, obviously impressed. I made a mental note to call Elmer Bush and suggest such a column to him. For all I knew he might even do it.

“I would rather wait until after we see the pickets before I do anything more. I mean we may get a lead from them … you know, something about bad behavior, bullying is un-American, that kind of thing. By the way,” I
added, “speaking of bad behavior, does Miss Sutton often make scenes like this?”

“Not often,” said Mr. Washburn, as we approached a dressing room with a dusty star on the door. “She usually saves them for her husband.”

“Her husband?”

“Miles Sutton. He’s the conductor … big fellow with the beard.”

My head was beginning to spin. Everyone was related to everyone else, either officially or unofficially. I couldn’t keep them straight. The ballerina Ella Sutton was the wife of the conductor Miles Sutton and the choreographer Jed Wilbur was in love with the lead dancer Louis Giraud and Jane Garden the understudy to Ella Sutton was my idea of a fine specimen while Anna Eglanova the prima ballerina stood before me naked from the waist up. It was disconcerting. I was standing beside Mr. Washburn in the doorway of her dressing room; her maid had suddenly opened the door and darted by, leaving her mistress exposed to our gaze.

“Come in, Ivan,” said the great ballerina. “Who is the young man?”

“Peter Sargeant, Anna, our new public relations man.”

“So young! Ah!” She sat down before her dressing table and began to arrange her hair. She looked young for fifty. Her body was firm … the skin like antique ivory and the breasts more like worn china door knobs than glands intended for the suckling of the young. Her neck was slightly corded and her face was ugly but exotic, with deep lines about the mouth, a beaked nose and narrow slanting Mongol eyes. Her hair was dyed dark red.

“I get ready now for
pas de deux
, Ivan.” Her English was so heavily accented that it sounded to me like a different language altogether. In fact everything about her was different, including her casual disregard for the conventions.

“I think I better go,” I said, a little hastily. “I’ve got some calls to make. I’m going to try and head the newspaper photographers off.”

“Good plan,” said Mr. Washburn.

“Nice boy,” said Anna, as I left.

Halfway down the hall, a loud voice said, “Hey, Baby, come in here.”

Now I am twenty-eight years old and shave every day of my life and, though I wear a crewcut in deference to my collegiate past, I flatter myself that I look every inch a man of the world. But Louis Giraud obviously had about as much respect for other men as Don Juan had for little girls so I controlled myself. I walked into his dressing room.

He was lying on a steel cot. He had an electric fan going just above his head and a pair of sweaty tights were hanging over the radiator to dry. He wore nothing except a towel around his middle.

I said, “Hi.”

“You like the ballet tonight?” He spoke good English with only a faint French accent; he had started life as a longshoreman in Marseille. No one knew how he had got started in ballet but I suspect that the rumor a certain rich gentleman discovered him in a bordello and took him to Paris was probably true.

“I liked it pretty good,” I said.

“Real lousy,” said Louis, stretching his long knotty legs until the joints cracked. “I hate this ugly modern stuff.
Giselle
was good enough for Nijinski and it’s good enough for me. All these people running around stage with funny faces.
Merde!
” He had a deep voice and he wasn’t at all like the other boys in the company who were inclined to be rather tender: Louis had shoulders like a boxer. I decided I wouldn’t like to tangle with him and so I sat near the open door, ready to make a quick exit if he should decide to tear off a quick piece.

“Well, it’s a new medium,” I said absently, noting the comic books and movie magazines on the floor by the bed. Each to his taste, I said to myself in flawless French.

“But it’s not ballet.” Louis looked at me and grinned. “Hey, why’re you trying to fool me, Baby?”

I measured the distance from my chair to the door: two long steps or one broad jump, I decided coolly. “Who’s trying to fool you?” I asked, getting up slowly with a look of innocence which would have done credit to Tom Sawyer. He was too quick for me, though. I made a leap for the door but he got there first. It was a very silly moment.

“Now, look here, Louis,” I said as he made a grab for me. We played tag a moment and then he grabbed me, holding me the way a boxer holds another boxer in a clinch and both of us trying not to make any noise, for different reasons. I wondered whether to knee him or not; the towel had fallen off. I decided against it for the good of the company. I would be fired if I did. On the other hand I was in danger of being ravished; I couldn’t move without seriously injuring him and, on the other
hand, I couldn’t stand like this forever pressed against his front while he fumbled and groped with his one free hand, embarrassing me very much. He smelled like a horse. Controlling myself with great effort I said in a very even and dignified voice, “If you don’t let go of me, I will break every one of your toes.” And with that, fairly gently, I put one hard leather heel on top of his left foot. He jumped at that and, breathing hard, I slid out the door.

I was mad as hell for several minutes but then, since no damage was done, I began to see the funny side and as I walked across the stage to the other set of dressing rooms I wondered if I should tell Jane what had happened. For one reason and another I had decided not to when I came upon Miles and Ella Sutton, quarreling. He was standing in the door of her dressing room; she was sitting at her make-up table in an old gray bathrobe. I caught one quick glimpse of her as I walked by, as though on urgent business. I have found that people who hang around to watch fights usually end by getting involved.

As I walked by, however, I heard Miles Sutton threatening to kill his wife. It gave me quite a turn. I mean temperament is all very well but there are times when it can be carried too far.

Now that I look back on that night it is perfectly apparent to me that almost everyone, including myself, sensed that something serious had gone wrong … but what? I knew of course that there was always a great deal of
tension before a première and the childish bad temper of ballet dancers was familiar to me, by reputation anyway. Yet when the curtain went up on the blue-lit stage for the first ballet of the evening,
Swan Lake
, I had a knot in the pit of my stomach.

I remember taking a good look at the audience just before the house lights were dimmed and I remember feeling thankful that I didn’t have to appear on a stage in front of all those people, for the interior of the Met, seen from the stage, is like the mouth of a great monster, wide open, yawning and red, with tiers of golden teeth.

I have always had a personal superstition that when something begins badly it will end well and vice versa. Since that night I have discarded the superstition of a lifetime for this particular evening began badly and ended tragically.

The pickets arrived at seven-thirty, twenty well-fed veterans of the First World War; they were quiet but grim and their placards suggested in red ink that Wilbur go back to Russia if he liked it so much there. I had already telephoned the photographers, tipping them off; all publicity is good is my conviction and I had a scheme by which we might eventually be able to make considerable capital out of the veterans. Mr. Washburn took a dark view of this but I reassured him. I even wrote him a little speech to make to the audience right after
Swan Lake
, before
Eclipse
, saying that Jed Wilbur was a hundred per cent patriot and so on.

The trouble began, officially, after
Swan Lake
when one of the girls collapsed in the wings and had to be carried up to her dressing room.

I was standing beside Alyosha Rudin to stage right when this happened.

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

The old man sighed. “A foolish girl. Her name is Magda … a little heavy to be good dancer but she has the heart.”

“You mean she has a weak heart?”

Alyosha chuckled. “No, she is passionate. Shall we go out front?”

On our way we passed Mr. Washburn. He was dressed in white tie and tails and his glittering skull looked pale to me in the dim light of backstage. He was very nervous. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go through with it,” he said in a voice which trembled.

“With what?” I asked.

“The curtain speech.”

“Courage, Ivan,” said Alyosha. “You always say that; then, when the time comes, you have the courage of a lion.”

“All those people,” moaned Mr. Washburn, moving toward the lavatory.

Alyosha was a pleasant companion and most knowledgeable of ballet; as he should be since, like Eglanova, he is a genuine Russian dating back to the Fall of Rome … perhaps even to the pyramids for he is very old with the classic Russian greyhound head: hair brushed back, long features and eyes like gray metal. He looked very old-world and distinguished in a smoking jacket of mulberry velvet. We found ourselves two seats in the front row.

“What was wrong with that girl?” I asked when we were seated. Already I was beginning to think of a press
release … dancer upset by pickets: lover killed in Korea.

“She will have baby,” said Alyosha.

“But she shouldn’t be dancing if she’s pregnant.”

“The poor child. She must. She has no husband and her family doesn’t know.”

“Do you know who the father is?”

Alyosha smiled sadly; his teeth were like black pearls. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter,” he said gently.

Then the house lights were turned down and Mr. Washburn made his curtain speech; there was polite applause. Miles Sutton, looking nervous and sick, I thought (we were sitting right behind him), rapped his baton sharply on the music stand and the ballet began.

Artistically, everything went off quite well, according to the critics the next day. Both Martin of the
Times
and Terry of the
Tribune
thought
Eclipse
a triumphant modern work, praising Wilbur, Sutton’s interpretation of the Bartok music, the set designer, Louis and, above all, the ballerina Ella Sutton who, they both felt, gave her finest performance: a dedicated artist to the very end for, when the cable broke thirty odd feet in the air, she maintained complete silence as she fell in fifth position onto the stage with a loud crash, still on beat.

Alyosha who was sitting beside me, gasped and said something very loud in Russian; then he crossed himself as the curtain swept down over the stage and the house lights went on. The audience was too stunned to react. Mr. Washburn came on stage but I missed his announcement for I was already backstage.