Colum McCann - Dancer

Somebody stuck the cover on my mirror and added devil’s horns. I wouldn’t mind but the bastards ruined my eyeliner pen — it is probably the fat cleaning bitch who left in tears yesterday.

The fans slept all night outside in the cold in Floral Street. Gillian made several flasks of hot soup and convinced me to go along with her — she said it was good publicity.

When we arrived there was a sort of hush, but then came a high-pitched scream which unleashed all the others. They ran forward, asked me to sign everything — umbrellas, purses, leg warmers, underwear. Gillian had, of course, arranged for a photographer to be there. Before I left one of the girls reached forward and tried to grab my crotch. (Perhaps I should wear the leg-warmers over my cock for protection!)

As a choreographer he steals liberally from everywhere, from the Greeks to Fokine to Shakespeare, etc. He says: In the end, after all, many hands touch the artist’s brush. Margot took his suggestions and remolded them beautifully, although at first I felt I was dragging a carcass across the floor.

Every hour she phones Tito. Imprisoned by him. (Now that he can fuck nobody else, he must fuck her, her life.)

The heart returns to Paris. There is some sort of sticky tar there. (Tell Claudette to furnish new apartment, find four-poster bed.)

The letter came, sealed with red wax. A momentary hesitation, perhaps it was a Soviet ploy. (You cannot put anything beyond them, acid on the envelopes, etc.) But the seal was Royal and the note was handwritten and it had been folded very carefully. I said to the housekeeper: Oh shit, not another letter from Her Majesty!

The new bodyguard (part-time) once protected Churchill. He told me he met Stalin at Yalta. Tried to explain that Stalin was very polite. (A train whistled in my mind, the hospital, watching from the trees as the old babushkas washed the soldiers — how many centuries ago now?)

Found the Derrida text in a secondhand stall along the Seine. Also found a treatise on Martha Graham at the same stall, what a coincidence. Both were water damaged and had their pages stuck together. I told Tennessee Williams about the books (he was drunk at the Desjeux party) and he said it was an obvious metaphor, though he didn’t explain why, perhaps couldn’t. His fingers and even his beard were stained with ink. He was astonished I’d read him in Russian. He put his head on my shoulder and said: Oh such a nice child.

He grew tiresome and spilled a cocktail on my suit and I told him to kiss my ass. He replied with a grin that he’d be enchanted.

Claire brought a tape with Rostropovich scrawled in crude, spidery handwriting on the case. The Violin Concerto number 2, second movement, brought me to tears. Once, in Leningrad I stupidly told Yulia that I would allow Shostakovich to sit in the rain.

Smelled a plate of radishes in the kitchen at Lacotte’s. Was transported back. Had to leave, much to Lacotte’s displeasure. At the door he wagged his finger. Woke up dreaming of a white cloth being put over Mother’s face.

Perhaps Margot is correct when she says that I dance so much— too much —in order not to think of home.

Such difficulty in talking to anyone about Mother. When the facts are in order the mood is wrong. When the mood is correct the facts are in tatters. She worked in a weapons factory. She sold matrushka dolls. She was chased by a wolf. Sometimes, in the same interview, I forget exactly what I’ve said, so it becomes even more tangled in fantasies. For the Austrian journalist she somehow turned into a seamstress in the Ufa Opera House.

The times I hate myself the most inevitably collide with the times I dance badly. In darker moments I think perhaps my best performances were in the Kirov. (The phantom feel of Sizova’s hips against my hands.)

Erik ran into an acquaintance of Richter’s who told him that when Prokofiev died there were no flowers left for sale in Moscow. They had all been bought for Stalin’s funeral. Richter played at the funeral, then walked across Moscow to place a single pine branch on Prokofiev’s grave. (Beautiful, but is it true?)

Mister Nureyev, your movements seem to defy possibility.

Nothing is impossible.

For example, when following on from the sharp flourish of your ronde de jambe are you aware of your body?

No.

Why not?

Because I am far too busy dancing.

My desire to comfort the journalists is almost as strong as my desire to alienate them. Afterwards I can feel my heart ballooning with apology.

The true mind must be able to accept both criticism and praise, but in the Saturday Review he said I hold my hands too high in arabesque, that the movement looks bloated and uncontrolled. If I ever meet him again he will hold his balls too high in his throat and then we’ll see who looks bloated and uncontrolled.

As for Jacques, he is a typical L’Humanité shithead, another one of those socialist bastards with a vendetta. He said I was being too literal. But what does he want, my legs to deal in symbols, my cock to reel off metaphors? I would tell him to do something productive for his politics — commit suicide, perhaps — but the weight of his fat ass would probably bring the ceiling beam down to the floor.

In the pub in Vauxhall a picture of me was suspended from the staircase on a thin rope. I asked the bartender if it was Yesenin but he didn’t understand. At the counter there was a hush when Erik and I took our seats. The bartender asked me to sign the photo, which I did, across my chest, and everyone clapped.

All evening they expected some outrage, something Russian, something Nureyev. Smash glasses, kick bottles from the table. I drank four vodkas then took Erik’s arm. We could almost hear the place moan.

There was another death threat waiting at the hotel. The police said the note had been clipped from the headlines of a Soviet émigré paper. Who are these assholes? Can’t they understand that I am not their fucking puppet?

(Margot says to ignore them all, that the best way is to smile and be polite. Unleash it all onstage, she says. I haven’t the heart to tell her she’s talking rubbish. She, of all people, knows that everything I do is already sprayed with my blood.)

Secret wish: a house by the sea, children on the beach, a chamber orchestra on the rocks being soaked by the giant waves. I would sit in a deckchair, drink white wine, listen to Bach, grow old, though of course that too would become a bore.

Wisdom Defending Youth Against Love, Charles Meynier: $47,500.

In the beginning he presents himself to her without, at first, betraying his true feelings. He is acutely aware of how he must look at her, neither revealing nor unrevealing. He must play this game of emotional roulette, fastidious, until they break into each other and become the movement (ratchet up the pas de deux and extend the solo).

He must be reinvented, after all, otherwise the role is pure shit — he will be a cardboard figure, a cipher without vitality.

Conceive the role as a fantasy of the protagonist’s mind. In the end he must suffer agonizingly and, in full consciousness, be aware that all is lost.

A perfect rehearsal! We took an afternoon off.

He must remain in the wings long enough for everyone to feel uncomfortable and then he must burst from the other side of the world, frighten the mundane lives out of all who watch. For her, keep the tempo slow. She must arrive in cold at first. And then he must warm her into the dance. With every garment she takes off, it must look as if she is stepping into a future self. Finally she is spirited away from him, carried off, ghosts moving in diagonal lines, a moving vee. Light (moonlight) never quite touches the ground. Keep strings muted, do not allow the music to overwhelm.