Colum McCann - Dancer

Dance with the balls. The brain follows the balls.

Lots of nodding heads. Snickers behind their hands. I left them alone when really I should have stuck my tongue down their throats to pierce their empty hearts.

Twenty-three years old. The constant (unrevealed) thought of being an impostor. But you cannot become a history of what you have left behind. No tea, no heirlooms, no weeping. No stale bread, soaked in vodka and tears. You must boot yourself down the boulevards of Paris in your white silk shirt!

Mother was weeping uncontrollably on the telephone. Later during the night there was the thought of her at the wireless, turning white knobs: Warsaw, Luxembourg, Moscow, Prague, Kiev, Vilnius, Dresden, Minsk.

Tamara said: You have betrayed us.

Menuhin played Bach at the Salle Pleyel: the heart quickened and almost forgot everything.

A bath. Honey in the tea. Rehearsal. The perfection is not so much in the performance as in the journey towards it. This is the joy. You must burn!

Each corner, each sculpture, each painting takes the breath away. It is like walking through a history book that goes on forever, refuses to meet its own back cover. It is a marvel, a seventh wonder, almost as good as the Hermitage (although half the size and not quite the grandeur).

Already the guards recognize me and one of them greeted me in pidgin Tatar. His family left generations ago. He was with the Impressionists, so I lingered.

Claire took me along the Seine away from the museum. She gave me a pair of giant sunglasses for disguise then pulled the brim of my leather cap down. Four people immediately shouted, Nureyev!

At a stall a bookseller was waving a signed copy of A Farewell to Arms. Only a few weeks dead and his books are selling at ridiculous prices. (Perhaps one should die in the middle of a dance, en l’air, have the performance auctioned, frozen, sold to the highest bidder.) Claire looked in her handbag, but the book seller said he didn’t have change. She bought it for almost one and a half times the price. She was curious that I was so appalled. Later she showed me the workings of the bank account — such foolishness.

Rumors that they tortured Sasha, questioned Xenia, took Yulia and put her in a cell for a week. Surely this cannot be true.

A new hairstyle in Paris: the Noureev. In Le Monde some vulture said it has appeared as quickly as the Berlin Wall, but as Cocteau explained, it is just their desire to commodify me. Oh, to have a mind like Cocteau’s. (He said that in a dream he was once trapped in an elevator listening to Symphony Divine.)

The bearded Jew walked east through the Jardins de Luxembourg, his long overcoat swishing at his ankles. He had his hands behind his back, holding a prayer book. Then he sat on a bench under a tree and picked his teeth. He might have been thinking, Ah, Petersburg.

Madame B. waited while the Algerian tailor measured. Then she bought the black velvet suit. She said I should take endless delight in new beginnings.

In the apartment the maidservant made a disgusting drink of minted tea. I sipped it and immediately spat it back into the glass. Madame seemed delighted, as if she had found the elemental savage.

She came to the divan, ran my suit lapel between her forefinger and thumb. I excused myself to the window. Down below, on the sidewalk, the men walked with their overcoats draped across their forearms and the women wore their hats as if something were alive on their heads. The traffic stalled. Bits of newspaper blew along the Seine.

Madame was at the window, trying to shout down to me as I walked away along the quay.

The wristwatches were all German handmade and they had no price tags. It was difficult to be nonchalant when Madame asked which one I wanted. She desires to smother me with her wealth, yet why should I say to a fountain that I am not going to drink from your water?

Later Madame pointed out that, when nervous, I pull my shirtsleeves down over my knuckles. She said it was uncouth, the gesture of a peasant, but that time would fix it. She leaned back against the balcony railing, holding a long cigarette. Her chin tilted as if she had just said something very wise. I tugged at my sleeve again. She waved her cigarette in the air. Oh, non non non, Rudi, mon Dieu!

Then came the extraordinary look on her face when I flung the watch from the balcony down into the garden.

If you wish to wear your hat indoors, who is to tell you no? (She forgets that a bucket of shit is an easy thing to pour, especially from a spiral staircase.)

You cannot end up mad (Nijinsky) or complacent (Tikhomirov).

A fan was waiting outside the Palais in the rain. Hungarian. Said he escaped in ’59. He stood in the spill from the gutter and said that until he saw me perform he did not know who he really was. Such an idiot. He held a newspaper above his head and the ink had run down his face. Also he reeked of cognac. Still, I signed his autograph book.

Maria took my arm. At dinner we talked about the great ones, Karsavina, Pavlova, Fonteyn, etc. Of course I put Maria top of the list. She blushed.

Later she suggested wisely that one must experience an older dancer as one would eat a lobster claw. She demonstrated quite nimbly, ripping the claw and noisily sucking it clean.

The fools put sequins along my sleeve so that when I lift her they scrape the inside of her thigh.

In the pas de deux there were tears in her eyes, and the streak of blood became apparent. It was dress rehearsal and the crowd was impatient. In the wings she was screaming in pain, God damn, god damn, god damn, I am ruined. She spat at the French costumier. Then she changed her outfit and the doctor patched her skin. All in the space of two minutes.

When she reappeared she had the same angelic smile as always.

The Le Monde critic said she had begun to feel immune to beauty but, after the Bayadère pas de deux, she wobbled out of the theater with tears of joy in her eyes.

Do not allow the critics to make you so good you cannot become any better. Correspondingly, do not allow them to rip the cartilage from your carcass. (Sasha: Your duty is to disprove those who don’t believe.)

Truth: When criticized you go berserk, but in your defense remember that it is those who calmly listen who never change.

Madame arranged for the boy to come over. She said he was from a good family and is studying Russian at the Sorbonne. She answered the door to him. Her lips pursed tight when she brought him into the library. He walked brazenly across the room, tossed his leather jacket on the Louis XV furniture. Madame froze and winced at the sound of the zipper as it touched the arm of the chair.

She put on Stravinsky, then excused herself delicately. We sat looking at each other. He put out his hand and said: Gilbert.

Sometimes the least word breaks the spell.

Gilbert said they had put the silverware on the table in my honor. He watched me eat the melon. I ran my tongue along the fork for him to see and could feel his shivers all the way across the room! For dessert I left the spoon in my mouth an extra few seconds. His young wife looked out from under her thin eyebrows and then excused herself to bed.

On the drive out to Rambouillet, Gilbert licked the steering wheel of his roadster and began laughing. We watched the champagne cork bounce in the rearview mirror. I thought that hundreds must be out on the roads, happy, in the darkness everywhere.

At Dominique’s his friends made a fuss. Rudi! Rudi! Rudi! Gilbert shouted a Cossack toast after stacking glasses in a pyramid. The émigré waiter sniggered at my accent. I threw my coffee in his face, splattering his fine white shirt. The manager came over and groveled, assuring me the waiter would be fired.