Eva Ibbotson: A Company of Swans

It was to this theatre that Dubrov proposed to bring a visiting ballet company led by the veteran ballerina he had the misfortune to love; it was to recruit young dancers for the corps de ballet that he had visited his old friend Sonia Lavarre.

‘Manaus,’ murmured Madame. ‘Caruso sang there, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. In ninety-six. And Sarah Bernhardt acted there… So what more fitting than that the Dubrov Ballet Company should dance!’

‘Hmm. The fee must be good, if Simonova has agreed to go.’ But her face belied her words. She had worked with Simonova in Russia and knew her to be an incomparable artist.

He shrugged. ‘There is more money in those few hundred miles of the Amazon than in all of Europe put together. They paid Adelina Patti a thousand dollars to appear for one night! Everybody who has gone out there and managed to acquire a piece of land has made a killing with the rubber trees; Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, Germans. The English too. The richest man of all out there is English, so they say.’

‘So why do you come to me for dancers? Why are all the young girls not queueing up to go out there with you?’

Dubrov sighed into his glass of tea. ‘Diaghilev has all the best dancers. The rest are with Pavlova.’ He glanced at her sideways from beneath his Santa Claus eyebrows. ‘And of course there are a few who don’t like the idea of the insects and the diseases and so on,’ he admitted. He threw out a dismissive hand and returned to his present preoccupation. ‘I could take the blonde with the curls, I suppose, but I can get girls like that from an agency. It’s the little brown one I want. Let me talk to her myself; perhaps I can persuade her.’

‘How obstinate you are, my poor Sasha! Still, it will be interesting for all the girls to hear of your plans. I shall stop the class early and Harriet can listen with the others. It is always instructive to watch Harriet listen.’

So the advanced class was stopped early and the girls came down. Phyllis had removed her bandeau to let her curls tumble round her face, but Harriet came as she was and as she sank on to a footstool, Dubrov nodded, for she had that unteachable thing that nevertheless comes only after years of teaching: that harmonious placing of the limbs and head that they call line. And obstinately, unreasonably — for she would be only one of twenty or more girls — he wanted her.

Like all men of his class, Dubrov had had an English governess and spoke the language fluently. Yet beneath his words, as he began to describe the journey he would make, there beat the grave exotic rhythm that enables the Slavs to make poetry even of a laundry list.

‘We shall embark at Liverpool,’ he said, addressing all the girls yet speaking only to one, ‘on a white ship of great comfort and luxury; a ship with salons and recreation rooms and even a library… a veritable hotel on which we shall steam westwards across the Atlantic with its white birds and great green waves.’

Here he paused for a moment, recalling that Maximov, his premier danseur , had managed to be seasick on a five-minute ferry crossing of the Neva, but rallied to describe the beneficial effects on the Company of the ozone, the excellent food, the long rest as they lay back on deck-chairs sipping beef-tea… ‘But when at last we reach the port of Belem in Brazil, our real adventure will only just be beginning. For the ship will enter the mouth of the greatest river in the world — the Amazon — and for a thousand miles we shall steam up this waterway which is so mighty that they call it the Rio Mare … the River Sea.’

He spoke on, untroubled by considerations of accuracy, for the flora and fauna of Brazil were quite unknown to him, and as he spoke Harriet closed her eyes — and saw…

She saw a white ship steaming in silence along the mazed waterways of the River Sea… She saw a shimmering world in which trees grew from the dusky water only to find themselves embraced by ferns and fronds and brilliantly coloured orchids. She saw an alligator slide from a gleaming sand-bar into the leaf-stained shallows… and the grey skeleton of a deodar, its roots asphyxiated by the water, aflame with scarlet ibis…

Standing in the bows of the ship as it steamed through this enchanted world, Harriet saw a raven-haired woman, pensive and beautiful: La Simonova, the Maryinsky’s brightest jewel and beside her, manly and protective, the leonine premier danseur , Maximov… She saw, streaming away from them on either side like a formation of wild geese in flight, the white-clad dancers who would be Simonova’s snowflakes and cygnets and sylphides… and saw a golden-eyed jaguar peer from the trellis of green in wonder at the sight.

Dubrov had reached the ‘wedding of the waters’, the place where the leaf-brown waters of the Amazon flowed distinct and separate beside the black waters of the Negro. It was up this Stygian river that he now took them and there — shining, dazzling, its wonder reflected in Harriet’s suddenly opened eyes — was the green and gold dome of the Opera House soaring over the roofs of the city.

‘We shall be giving Swan Lake, Fille Mal Gardée and Casse Noisette,’ said Dubrov. ‘Also Giselle — and The Dying Swan if Pavlova does not sue.’ He paused to wipe his forehead and Harriet saw the homesick Europeans, the famous ‘rubber barons’, leaving their riverside palaces clad in their opera cloaks, their richly attired wives beside them, saw them converge in boats from the river’s tributaries, in carriages, in litters carried through the jungle, on to the Opera House ablaze with light… heard their gasps of wonder as the curtain rose on Tchaikovsky’s coolly sumptuous woodland glade — while outside the howler monkeys howled and the brilliantly plumaged parakeets flew past.

Dubrov paused to light a cigar and threw a quick glance at Harriet. Even with her eyelashes she listens, he thought — and went on to speak of the ‘Arabian Nights’ lifestyle of the audience for whom they would dance. ‘There is a woman who has her carriage horses washed down in champagne,’ he said, ‘and a man who sends back his shirts to London to be laundered,’ — and here Madame smiled, for as she had expected a small frown mark had appeared between Harriet’s eyebrows.

Harriet did not think it necessary to wash carriage horses in champagne or to send one’s laundry five thousand miles to be washed.

Dubrov now was nearing the end of his discourse. Lightly, almost dismissively, he touched on the triumph, the innumerable curtain calls which would follow their performances of the old ballets blancs , chosen particularly to appeal to those exiled from their own culture; then with a last flourish he brought the Company back to England, laden with jewels and silverware, with ocelot and jaguar skins — to loud acclaim and an almost certain engagement at the Alhambra, Leicester Square.

‘You may go now,’ said Madame when Dubrov had been thanked, and as the girls slipped out Phyllis could be heard saying, ‘I wouldn’t fancy going out there, would you? Not with all those creepy-crawlies!’

‘And the Indians having a gobble at you, I shouldn’t wonder,’ added Lily.

But when Harriet prepared to follow her companions, Madame barred her way. ‘You will remain behind, Harriet,’ she commanded. And as Harriet turned and waited by the door, her hands respectfully folded, she went on, ‘Monsieur Dubrov came here to recruit dancers for the tour he has just described to you. He has seen your work and would be willing to offer you a contract.’

‘Your lack of experience would of course be a disadvantage,’ interposed Dubrov quickly. ‘Your salary would naturally be less than that of a fully trained dancer.’