David Dickinson - Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Literally ‘tail’. As in music, a coda is a passage which brings a movement or a separate piece to a conclusion.

In ballet, the coda is usually the ‘Finale’, a set of dances known as the Grand Pas or Grand Pas d’action and brings almost all the dancers onto the stage. A particularly large or complex coda may be called a Grand coda. If a large group of dancers are concerned, the terms Coda générale or Grand coda générale may be used.

In ballet there are many famous codas, such as the one found in Le Corsaire Pas de Deux . The so-called Black Swan Pas de deux from the ballet Swan Lake features the famous coda where the ballerina performs thirty-two fouettés en tournant .

Powerscourt thought there was something rather sad about watching the stages being dismantled shortly after seven thirty the next morning. Floorboards were being removed from the stages in the lake, the great staves that held them in position just visible beneath the water. He had already had a conversation with Inspector Jackson, who saw the logic, if not the practicability of his proposal.

‘Let’s try it by all means,’ he said. ‘Thank God it’s a Sunday and there are no performances of the Ballets Russes in London. I’ve got a couple more translators, students at the medical school, coming to help with the translation. But they say Diaghilev was refusing to talk to anybody at all last night. He stomped off and looked at the pictures and wouldn’t speak to a soul, even though the Duke’s guests had a couple of fluent French speakers among them.’

Michel Fokine was looking troubled when Powerscourt found him drinking coffee in the State Dining Room.

‘Of course I will take you to him. He is in a terrible mood. “The afternoon of my greatest triumph”, he keeps saying, “spoilt by some silly girl who decides to throw herself over the balcony.” For Diaghilev, my lord, art wins out over everything.’

They found him pacing up and down the Palladian bridge, as the planks and beams were being dismantled beneath him.

‘Good morning, Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt. ‘May I offer my congratulations on your ballet yesterday afternoon. It was a triumph. It will live long in the memory of all who saw it.’

Diaghilev stamped his cane on the side of the bridge. ‘They will remember it for the dead girl, that Vera Belitsky, not for the poetry of the Ballets Russes.’

‘Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think you are wrong about that. But I wish to speak to you about matters of today. The local Inspector here will not let your people go until they have been questioned by the police. It is just not possible. You wish to bring your company back to London for tomorrow’s performances in Covent Garden. As things stand, those interviews may still be going on when the curtain goes up. There will, inevitably, be one or two people to whom Inspector Jackson and his staff will wish to talk again. He is well aware of your problems, the Inspector. He has organized another couple of interpreters to come here with all speed from the Oxford Medical School. They are Russian born and one of them is also fluent in French from his time at the Sorbonne. If your people could be organized in groups of five or six, to be interviewed one at a time, of course, the process could be over by early afternoon, if not sooner.’

Diaghilev smacked his cane onto the bridge once again and muttered something to himself in Russian. Fokine kept his own counsel. Diaghilev began making short sorties away from the bridge as another three boards were carried off.

‘Think of it, Monsieur Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt. ‘If your dancers and your staff do not cooperate, you could still be here tomorrow or even the next day. You could miss out on two performances in London. Those who have bought the tickets, all people desperate to see your Ballets Russes, will be disappointed. Your reputation, so high after yesterday, will suffer. It’s bound to.’

A rather chastened Diaghilev stopped walking for a moment. ‘It is not my reputation I care about, Lord Powerscourt, but my art; the art we create and take with us wherever we go. Art is the only thing that makes life worth living. The rest is all show and vanity.’

‘Even art must go on,’ said Powerscourt, sensing that somewhere there must be a key to unlock Diaghilev’s intransigence, ‘art must go on on Monday and art must go on on Tuesday and art must go on on Wednesday. There’s another thing that would help mark the glories and the triumphs of yesterday.’

Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy later that he had no idea where this next suggestion came from.

‘I have one further thought, Monsieur Diaghilev. Why not erect a plaque on this bridge in memory of Vera Belitsky, the dead girl? You could say her death happened after the performance. Maybe you should start collections after each performance for a fund to start a scholarship in her memory.’

M. Fokine suddenly sprang into life. ‘It could be a scholarship for a poor dancer to attend the Imperial Theatre School back home, Sergei Pavlovich. That way her memory would live as long as the ballet.’

Diaghilev sighed. ‘Sometimes I think I am like that man in Shakespeare who is surrounded by a sea of troubles which come not in a single one but in battalions. I have to carry the entire weight of the Ballets Russes on my shoulders and sometimes it feels too heavy to bear. But I like the plaque. I like the scholarship. We shall do as you ask. Perhaps you could see to it, Fokine.’

With that Diaghilev waddled off away from the house towards the great obelisk on the high ground above the lake. Powerscourt couldn’t help wondering if he was going to take its measurements for an obelisk of his own.

Natasha Shaporova’s train was leaving Cologne, the twin spires of the great cathedral still visible from her carriage window. Once she heard from one of the corps de ballet that Alexander Taneyev was always writing letters home, she did not hesitate. She caught the earliest express that could connect to St Petersburg and set off. She packed a bag and Tolstoy’s War and Peace , which she had always meant to read but never got round to starting. She felt it would last her on the outward and the return journeys. Even as she read about the salons of St Petersburg, a part of her brain was saying to her: father, mother, three sisters, friends, sweethearts — was there one person Alexander Taneyev confided in? Who was it? She looked out at the German countryside now shooting past her window. Change in Berlin.

Arthur Cooper was as distressed as he had ever been in his new faith of world revolution, which had been inspired by the scriptures of Lenin and his followers. He had at last found the printer he wanted, a man who could organize the translation from the original Russian into English, and the printing of five hundred copies of each tract. ‘What Is to Be Done Now?’ he had learned, was the title of the latest gospel from Lenin’s fertile pen in Cracow. The comrade, one Harry Smith, had a regular press in Clerkenwell, on which he would print all sorts of subversive literature. In Arthur Cooper’s world he should be offering to carry out the work for a nominal sum. But he wasn’t. Cooper did not know it, but the tale of the roubles changed into pounds — and the very large totals of those transactions — was now common knowledge among a select few of the capital’s revolutionary vanguard. And Harry Smith was one of them.

‘It’s not like it was in the old days, comrade. With these new laws they could lock me up in jail for a long time for spreading this kind of stuff around.’

‘That’s not the point,’ replied Cooper, ‘it’s doing Lenin’s work. That shouldn’t be charged at your exorbitant rates and you know it.’