Flight of the Swan (3 page)

When Madame lost patience with the girls, calling them muttons or
vaches
, Mr. Dandré immediately came running, supposedly to defend them. But he was really after something else: he wanted the girls to become dependent on
him
, so later he could do as he wanted. On one occasion, a month before the company arrived in Puerto Rico, we were staying at the Ansonia Hotel in New York when tragedy struck. A young dancer named Maria Volkonsky, who had recently arrived from Russia, was feeling very lonely. As a result of her anxiety Maria had begun to eat fattening foods and had gained ten pounds. Dandré realized it, and he immediately took advantage of the situation. He began to coddle her; he supervised her meals and was with her constantly, trying to win her confidence so that she would let him in her room when he tapped on her door at night. Maria felt terrible because, apart from me, she was the dancer who most revered Madame. Yet the more she admired her, the more Madame despised her because she was fat. Finally, Madame refused to let her perform. She made Maria teach the understudy her roles, and this made the girl even more unhappy. Maria became so distracted one night that she threw herself from her hotel window, which opened onto one of New York’s dreary back alleys. It took the company weeks to overcome its grief and to be able to dance again.

One day Nadja Bulova, Madame’s understudy, was feeling ill and Madame sent for me to rehearse the pas de deux of
Les Sylphides
with her. She bourréed next to me during Chopin’s lyric arpeggios, and suddenly she leaned forward during an arabesque and her hand brushed my breast. It could have been unwittingly, but I felt a shudder of delight rush through me. Madame always made it a point not to touch any of us or let us touch her; it was part of her discipline when she gave classes. She usually carried a slender baton in her hand and would introduce it under an arm or a leg when it needed lifting, or tap us lightly in the back if our posture was deficient. To touch her on the shoulder or attract her attention plucking at her dress would have been considered a sacrilege. Her inaccessibility was part of her mystique, and we accepted the taboo without questioning it. For some reason, on the day of our rehearsal she broke her own rule.

The caress surprised me. Maybe I was wrong all along and Madame could love me! But I didn’t say anything. I told myself I had to be careful, or I could end up like Maria Volkonsky.

F
OR MR. DANDRÉ BALLET
was a business venture like any other. He never closed a deal with an impresario without first demanding half the money on the table as an advance. Even with Bracale we were never at his mercy, because Dandré demanded a good amount for our performances. Madame, on the other hand, never danced simply for the money. She wanted to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of ballet, even those who had no money.

We were living in troubled times. More than ten million people had died in Europe and twice that many were wounded. Sixty million men served in the various armies, and now, with the United States having recently joined the conflict, there would be even more devastation. Europe was being torn apart, but compassion and love were still possible; that was Madame’s message.
The Dying Swan
, the solo piece that made her famous all over the world, was a prayer for peace. Our beloved St. Petersburg was the swan, torn by strife and civil war, its churches smoldering to heaven, its golden domes now sheltering atheists who murdered priests as they tended to the devout.

Madame’s relationship with Dandré was, after twelve years of living together, understandably more filial than anything else. Desire had long since run its course between them. I was sure of that, because I put clean sheets on their separate beds every morning. Dandré understood Madame and was content to serve her because he was making a good profit. He was like a huge punching bag, absorbing her explosions and always bouncing back when the crisis she had provoked was over. Dandré was one-dimensional, what you saw was what you got. Which was more than you could say of Madame.

Madame would say to her followers: “If you want to be an artist you must remain free.” And at other times: “When you dance, you must dance for someone. Art is always a reaching out, an effort to meld with the beloved.” How to interpret these blatant contradictions? During our tours, the girls often met rich, good-looking gentlemen who became infatuated with them and came knocking at their dressing-room doors. (Not me—I never considered leaving Madame for a minute; she was my sun and moon; my North Star.) If the gentlemen offered them diamonds or pearls it was fine; but if they came asking for the girls’ hands in marriage, Madame would lock herself up in her room and begin to smash cups and saucers against the wall. Most of the girls didn’t have the courage to cause her so much pain, and they would break off their engagements. One day she asked us to kneel before the holy icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and made us take a vow: “A career and love are impossible to reconcile. That’s why, when you dance, you must never give yourself to anyone,” she told us, as she lit a ruby-red votive candle in front of the Virgin with a long taper. And we kissed the holy icon and gave her our promise.

Had Madame ever fallen in love? Did she know what such a promise meant? I had heard rumors that in her youth she had loved someone passionately, but that she had had to give him up. In fact, she remained faithful to her oath until we arrived in Puerto Rico. Here she underwent a metamorphosis.

Most of the girls in the company had had unhappy love affairs, and they found consolation in Madame’s celibate example. She was pure as snow, unsullied by the mud of sex and betrayal. I, for one, was always on the lookout to fend off marauders, who were usually not too far away. The girls and I were constantly pampering her. We would brush her hair, rub Pond’s cold cream on her face, massage her feet. Once a woman has experienced the softness of another woman’s caresses, the delicate fingertips like silk buds on her skin—even if it’s an
amitié en rose
—how can she ever go back to loving a man? It was difficult to understand at the time.

It was true that during our tours around the world Madame paid her dancers miserly salaries—our wages were a pittance, more crumbs than pay—but we didn’t mind. We knew
why
we were dancing and what we were dancing
for
. It didn’t have to be mentioned; it was taken for granted, like the tide that pours from the Black Sea into the Dardanelles every day at dawn.

Madame’s dancers lived like birds, totally at the mercy of God’s will. We had to pay for our own hotel accommodations, our food, our taxis, even our toe shoes. The English and the French girls (there were both) wrote home constantly, asking their parents to send them money to survive. We Russians, of course, had no one to write to since our country had gone up in flames. Madame would become incensed when she was criticized for these things by her enemies. “The families should pay
me
, because now they can say their children were my pupils, and this will assure their prestige in the world,” she’d maintain. But none of it mattered to us. We would have danced for nothing if we could have remained by Madame’s side.

T
HE S.S.
COURBELO
WAS
really a cattle boat headed for Panama which was detoured to Puerto Rico for repairs, and as soon as it began to roll from side to side, the mournful bellowing of the animals below deck began to echo through the ship. We spent a miserable night and everybody was depressed, but there was no getting away from the steers or from the stench of their manure, which seeped through the cracks in the hold. No one slept. Seeing that the journey to Puerto Rico was a short one and that we would only spend one night at sea, we hung our hammocks up on deck, and spent the night under a sky full of stars.

As we approached the island the next morning, Madame came up on deck and stood near me. She put an arm around my shoulders and snuggled against me, then made the sign of the cross on my forehead. “Good morning, Masha! Have you had a glass of fresh milk yet? At least there’s plenty of it on board!” she said with a little laugh. That’s what I always liked about Madame. No matter how bad things were, she always saw the silver lining.

I smiled back at her and admitted I had had a cup of
café con leche
in the galley a few minutes before. “The coffee is very good. I hear the Catholic pope only drinks Puerto Rican coffee in Rome,” I said to tease her, knowing how passionate she was about her Orthodox faith. I leaned on the rail and looked at the approaching coastline, a bare line of vegetation floating between two immense canvases of blue—navy-dark water beneath, a pale azure sky above—with not a cloud in sight. At this latitude sunlight was even stronger-than in Havana; it fell on the waves like liquid bronze, bathing our arms and faces. I was in good spirits. “What sun!” I cried, spreading my arms wide. “I wonder what our dancing will be like here, with a sun like this to warm us!” Madame kissed me on the cheek. I embraced her and didn’t say a word. Her kiss made everything I had endured worthwhile.

As we neared the fortified city of San Juan, the light became even stronger, refracted by the looming medieval walls and ramparts. Madame turned her face toward the sun’s rays and closed her eyes. I imagined she was thinking of St. Petersburg, remembering its relentless drizzle, the sharp golden steeple of the Admiralty piercing the slate-colored sky. “If only I could absorb this sunlight and take it with me when I leave!” Madame said. “Maybe that way I could get rid of the periodic depressions that visit me, when I feel lost in the St. Petersburg mist.”

When the cattle boat docked at the busy port, Madame and Dandré disembarked together, ahead of everyone else. I watched them from the ship, leaning on the banister. Dandré was carrying Madame’s alligator
nécessaire
with her jewelry—her diamond necklace, her earrings and bracelets, and the czar’s Fabergé egg with the tiny diamond fish inside—his gift to her when she graduated from the Imperial Ballet School. Madame carried Poppy, her black-and-white American bull terrier, in her arms. Custine, the ballet master, and Smallens, the orchestra director, walked along smartly behind them, each holding a birdcage. Madame had been presented with two beautiful silver-gray nightingales in Santiago de Cuba before she left, and naturally she had brought them along. (“Look, Masha, darling, nightingales on these islands have whiskers, little black hairs on their beaks!” she pointed out to me gaily when she saw them.) Madame never traveled without her pets, and she wasn’t going to leave such wonderful gifts behind.

On the wharf a magnificent, four-door Pierce-Arrow was waiting with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. Madame was astonished; she wasn’t expecting anyone to pick her up. She asked who had sent the vehicle and the uniformed chauffeur bowed, whispered something in her ear, and then conferred with Dandré. Dandré signaled that it was fine, and they all got into the car and set off, riding rapidly up the cobblestones of Calle Tanca.

The rest of the troupe—Lyubovna Fedorovna, Madame’s mother and lady-in-waiting; the electrician; the seamstress; the beautician with her hatbox full of wigs; and myself helping to carry the luggage—all trundled heavily up the hill on foot toward the Malatrassi Hotel, a narrow, four-story building which stood on Plaza de Armas, the town square. It was a second-class establishment next to the Alcaldia, the mayor’s house. Because of La Habana’s fiasco we couldn’t stay at a first-class hotel in San Juan. Everybody seethed, of course, and they all blamed Dandré. But although there were groans and complaints all around, nobody considered even for a minute going back to New York.

Madame was always followed around on her ballet tours by a group of admirers who called themselves the Swooning Swans. In Australia, two young girls followed her train for thousands of kilometers, admiring her from a distance until they reached Sydney and then, too shy to introduce themselves, turned right around and went back to where they came from. There was a time when her followers, myself included, could have killed for a strip of Madame’s tulle skirt, for a ribbon from one of her silk slippers. We fought like cats over each little memento. When she danced the mad scene in
Giselle
, for example, and actually wrenched a handful of hair from her head, the girls searched around the stage for hours after the ballet was over, looking for the silky strands to preserve in their lockets as talismans. Fans waited at the theater entrance and pounced on her the minute she was out of the door. Eventually she realized that she needed protection from the Swooning Swans. That was when Mr. Dandré came in handy. The white lie of their marriage served as a very effective armor: thanks to Mr. Dandré, no one ever dared approach Madame beyond a certain point.

I
NEVER DARED SPEAK
to Madame in public or get too close. It was as if she radiated perfection, not only through the movements of her body but through her onyx-dark eyes, and I didn’t want people to see how ugly I was by comparison. I never missed one of her performances; I traveled in the same trains and stayed at the same hotels as Madame. Later, when I was lucky enough to be admitted into the troupe, I discovered that many of the other girls felt the same way I did toward her. But it took me three years of sharing the vicissitudes of a ballerina’s life—of fasting in order to keep my figure, of taking care of my deformed feet and cramped legs and thighs; and most important, of observing her every movement at ballet class—to realize that I was part of a sacred order.

Madame was very pious—her dressing room was full of icons of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Anne with candles flickering in front of them; before every performance she’d kiss them and ask for inspiration. But she was
our
saint, and we were her devout followers. We weren’t at all interested in making a name for ourselves, we never wanted to be famous individually. Our duty was to spread Madame’s doctrine around the world.

Madame loved children. Often I’d see mothers bring their daughters to the stage exit when they were no more than twelve years old. “Take her with you, she’s yours,” they’d plead, bowing respectfully. “We want her to be like you. Please do whatever you have to do to teach her your secrets.” When someone brought her a prospective student, she’d stand before the child for a few minutes studying her, observing her poor or good turnout or the frailty of her ankles; she’d put her hands on the child’s head and, on most occasions, advise the mother to take her daughter, back home. “Girls have a difficult time making their way in ballet,” she’d murmur softly. “They get paid very little—less than the boys. And since they have to dance on their toes”—boys dance in soft kid slippers, and on their half toes—“soon bunions sprout on their feet and their toes eventually overlap, so they often have to be operated on in order not to become crippled. Yes, classical ballet is a spiritual experience, but it’s also very painful,” Madame insisted, pulling her shawl about her a little bit tighter and tilting her head delicately to one side, as swans are wont to do. But the mother wouldn’t listen, and the child, watching Madame with enamored, incandescent eyes, would listen even less.