Colum McCann - Dancer

For me, at least one would be at the Kirov. My legs still feel for the floor’s rake. In a dream I was barefoot in the resin box.

She is sitting in a darkened hotel room when a young girl enters, smiles and opens the curtains. Good afternoon, says the girl, your appointments are here. She places a bowl of cut flowers on the table and Margot waits for the procession to begin.

Out the window is another city, all sky and light and glass, although Margot can’t quite remember which city it is. Her ankle has recovered, although she wears it bandaged. Earlier, on the telephone, she talked to Tito, who said yet again that it was time for her to retire, it has been three and a half decades, she should have quiet now, come back to the ranch in Panama.

Tito, the runaround. Tito, the flirt. Tito, the man she adores, wheeled around their house these days, reduced to eye movements and hand waves.

She recalls standing at the foot of the stairs a week ago when he told her he still loved her. When she said the same thing in reply his face seemed to shed layers, and they played catch-up on their lives. In bed Margot positioned him so that he snuggled against her neck. She hadn’t been able to sleep and so she rose, stood for a while by the door listening to his raspy breath and found herself moved by the shape of his body. When she told Rudi about watching Tito sleep he understood, he was able to fathom how hushed and vulnerable she could become — it is at times like these, when Rudi is good to her, that he protects her and they dance well together.

The room begins to fill with promoters, publicists, a journalist. Sporadic conversation, elegant and well-meaning. But after an hour Margot declares she is tired — most of the morning was spent at class with Rudi — and when the room eventually empties, she pulls back the covers on the bed to take a nap. Her dreams are merciless and Tito-peppered, visions of pushing a wheelchair through a river but the current is too strong and the chair is fixed in one place.

A foghorn wakens her and she remembers now: Vancouver, late summer.

It is then, from the neighboring room, that she hears the sound of Rudi and another making love, the noises alarming, fierce, intimate. She is knocked off balance, they never normally share adjoining rooms, one of their rules, and so she turns the television loud.

Vietnam at first. Then a cartoon. She presses buttons, finds a soap opera — a woman strides lightly across a floor to slap another woman’s face.

There is a pause in the program and she hears a moan from next door, then the jingle of commercials. In the bathroom she runs hot water and adds herbal powders. Margot has worked her body hard in recent weeks, beyond previous extremes. The violence tells in her everyday gestures, the way she checks the time on her wrist or brings a fork to her mouth. She is aware of how extraordinary it is, what the body does to the mind, and what the mind does to the body, one convincing the other it is in control.

Some days she recognizes the private graveyard of her body, the callused toes, the headaches from pulling her hair back all these years, the mangle of her knees, yet had she known as a young woman how her life would be she wouldn’t have cared, she would have danced it anyway.

She slips into the bath, lays her head against the rear of the tub. The sounds from next door take on a new form, muffled yet amplified, more intense for their lack of clarity. She puts two pieces of cotton wool in her ears so the voices disappear. Years ago, with Tito, he would always open the windows when making love.

Later she wakes, someone shouting her name from behind the doorframe, Margot, Margot, Margot! She opens her eyes, sits up in the bath, and the water breaks in waves around her. She smells cigarette smoke, knows immediately who it is.

She takes the cotton balls from her ears and says: I was just back in my good years, Erik. I was dreaming.

But it is Rudi, not Erik, who steps forward with a bathrobe, holds it open. She rises from the bath as he places the robe around her shoulders and kisses her forehead. Behind Rudi stands Erik, smoking. She feels a flush of warmth, these two beautiful men spoiling her.

We phoned, says Erik, pulling hard on the cigarette, but nobody answered. Rudi was afraid you were drowning.

The clerk took one look, threw his arms wide and said he had a pair of red drainpipes that would suit me to perfection.

The disco lights spun. We took a booth, ordered a magnum of champagne, and how we laughed! Lara was funniest of all. She is aware of Erik but still she said my lips were sensuous to the point of irresponsibility! I told her I would marry her. Her joke about the French nurse: Roll over, Monsieur, I have to jab you. And then, when the others were dancing, she leaned across with her long hair in my lap and she tickled my balls in full view of everyone!

Her grandfather was from Moscow but emigrated before the Revolution, made his fortune, she said, selling paper clips. (This crazy country.) She now owns four houses and, bizarrely, six swimming pools. She whispered that she enjoyed nude bathing, as if I couldn’t have guessed. She was so drunk she said she had an idea for a nude ballet — Orpheus Descends (!) — curtain comes up, gentle cellos, soft moonlight, and then swinging penises everywhere. I told her I would dance it except I didn’t want to bruise my thighs. When I explained the joke (silly girl) she spilled her drink down the front of her dress.

She said being alive is the bread, yes, but sex is the yeast.

RosaMaria appeared at the door. I recognized her instantly. Red satin dress, white rose in her hair. Erik nudged my elbow as she ran across the room to me, arms open. I twirled her in the air and her foot briefly caught on a tablecloth, but she extricated it with perfect grace while still spinning, then kissed me.

Everyone watched, especially Erik, as we went out onto the veranda. The night warm with cicadas. Tell me everything, I said. But she wanted to talk about me, the success, the years gone by. I beseeched her and, after much cajoling, she told me that when she had returned to Chile in ’59 she had married a young journalist, a Communist, who had ascended in politics until he was killed in a car accident. She had moved to Mexico City and that was it. She danced for six years until her ankles gave in. She said she would like to dance with me just one more time, and yet she was clever enough to know that it would be nothing more than sympathy on my part.

Erik came out holding three champagne glasses and we toasted. In the end RosaMaria was cornered by a handsome Mexican writer with gray hair who wrapped her up in his eyes. We bid good night and she wiped away a tear.

His raspy baritone, his tough face, the hair over his eyes. He woke and his name escaped me, though I remembered him saying he was amazed any man could live that hard. The whole day had been spent fucking, rehearsing, fucking, performing and then fucking again (once during intermission).

He got out of bed, jubilant, made me tea, five lumps of sugar, and prepared a scalding bath in a claw-footed tub with gleaming brass fixtures. He sat on the edge and sprinkled fragrant salts. Precision. I left immediately afterwards, still couldn’t remember his name.

Erik had left a message at the hotel front desk. You shit, in very shaky handwriting.

Do you regret anything, Monsieur Nureyev?

When everything is said and done I would not swap anything I have either said or done. If you look back you’ll only fall down the stairs.

That is very philosophical.

I can read.

On Fifth Avenue all the heads in the crowd turned like a field of sunflowers. Warhol shouted Goddamn! and hailed a car. He said that it was a gypsy cab and that the price was outrageous. He refused to tip. When we stopped, the driver spat out the window, almost hitting Warhol’s shoes. Andy is a pompous ass, although he said he will sketch me some day.