A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

The ensemble nonsense which followed gave Simonova a chance to compose herself. Spanish dances, Arabian dances, dances for marzipan shepherdesses… The “Valse des Fleurs” next, the most loved of all Tchaikovsky’s waltzes, and it was Dubrov’s turn to notice how well Harriet was dancing. Whatever happened to her off-stage seemed to send her further into her work.

But now came the moment of high drama when the Prince leads out the Sugar Plum Fairy for possibly the most sensational and difficult duet in all Tchaikovsky’s works: the grand pas de deux to music that is the apotheosis of ballet.

Oh, God, thought Dubrov; she’s a bitch, but she can dance—those arabesques, those sweeping attitudes . . . the speed, the dazzle! And Maximov was partnering her well, unselfishly. He too was on his mettle against the usurper, youth.

Her solo now—and how the audience loved it: the tinkling bells, the sugary music, the pretty ballerina untouched by agony or time.

Maximov was back, lifting her… She soared, smiled. Smiled too much for Dubrov’s taste, but not for the audience.

And Simonova sat beside him with that unnatural, contained stillness, very upright, watching, watching… for mistakes, for human frailty.

There were no mistakes, no frailty.

It was only as the dancers came together for the final tableau that Dubrov perceived his danger.

Stumbling from the box, running down the corridor, choked by his collar, he heard the clapping begin—the stamping, the cries of “ bravo !” and “ bis !” That would be one curtain call already… two, three… Oh, God damn the fools who could not distinguish between a technically competent dancer and the flawed, true artist Simonova was!

He had reached the heavy door that led backstage and now pushed against it.

It did not open.

All doors between the auditorium and the stage had to be open by law in case of fire, but this door would not move. Someone had locked it.

Cursing, perspiring, the portly little man ran back again, up the stairs to the next floor… And still the applause came undiminished, and the roars.

The upstairs door was open, but there was a twisting iron staircase to negotiate before he reached the level of the stage.

A group of people were standing in the wings, among them Harriet with a towel over her shoulder, and her face creased with anxiety as she watched the curtain rise once more.

“How many?” panted Dubrov.

“Eighteen,” said Harriet miserably. “Grisha tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

She motioned to the stage-hand still turning the winch-handle to let Masha—as loaded with flowers as a hearse—curtsey ecstatically to her audience.

“That’s the nineteenth now,” said Harriet.

Nineteen… Four more than Simonova. Dubrov shook his weary head. No good intervening now; the damage was done. And still the curtain rose and fell… Twenty… twenty-one… twenty-two… Until at last it was over and with a triumphant smile, Masha Repin swept away.

Dubrov had expected Simonova to rage and stamp and make a scene, but it was worse than that. She came backstage to congratulate her rival; she insisted that they drink champagne.

“She is good, Sashka,” said Simonova quietly when they were back at the Metropole. “She is young and she is good, and the public loved her.”

“Idiots!” raged Dubrov. “She’s a balletic clothes-horse, all tricks and glitter.”

“No. She is inexperienced, but the feeling will come.”

Dubrov was silent, wondering if the door had been locked on purpose and waiting—praying—for the abuse, the tantrums, the talk of retirement and Cremorra with which he knew so well how to deal.

But she was quiet, almost docile, and remained so for the rest of Nutcracker’s initial run, and knowing her as he did, he was afraid that something had been damaged inside her in a way that he could not soothe or talk away.

And he was right for three days later, at the premiere of Giselle , Simonova hurt her back.

It was an inexplicable injury. The Act One pas de deux in which it occurred was as familiar to her as breathing and Maximov, as everyone agreed, was blameless. Yet as he came up behind her to lift her, turn her and set her down in arabesque her body sagged, she gave a despairing cry—and fell, to lie prone and unmoving on the floor.

The orchestra stuttered into silence; the audience hissed their consternation and as Maximov bent over the ballerina in anguish and Dubrov ran in from the wings, the curtain came down on a great dancer—and a great career.

An hour later, Simonova lay very white and very still in her bed at the Metropole.

“Well, Sashka, it’s over,” she whispered to the man who had loved her for twenty years. “But it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

There had been three doctors in the audience and though their diagnoses had differed, there was one thing on which they had all agreed, and in the injured woman’s presence—that she would never dance again.

“It was very good, doushenka . It was the best,” he said, and sat holding her hand until she fell into a chloral-induced sleep.

But Dubrov did not sleep. Instead, he surveyed the future. There was no question now of going on to Caracas or Lima. As soon as she was well enough to travel, she must be taken back to Europe—to Leblanc in Paris, the most famous orthopedic surgeon in the world. If it really was a hemorrhage into the spinal canal, as one of the doctors had suggested, there was probably little that could be done, but she must have every chance. Which left the rest of their time in Manaus… He couldn’t run Nutcracker for a whole fortnight, nor could he afford to shut the theater and lose all the takings. So Masha Repin must have Giselle …

In the small hours, in the still stifling heat, Simonova woke in pain and her mind turned to the past—to Russia and the snow.

“Do you remember those drives from the theater in your sledge?” she whispered. “Sitting all wrapped up in my sables, squashing the poor violets on my muff?”

“Yes, I remember. The frost made your eyelashes longer. You were so vain about that.”

“And the streetlamps making that lilac mist… There is nowhere else in the world where they do that—only in Petersburg.”

“We could go back,” he said with sudden hope. “I still have the apartment.”

Ill as she was, she fought him. “No! Not after the way they treated me at the Maryinsky. Never!”

It will be Cremorra, then, thought Dubrov; there is no escape—and half in jest, mocking his own misery, he moved over to a pile of books on the bureau and pulled out a brightly colored volume which he had hoped never actually to read.

“Yes!” said Simonova eagerly. “Read it aloud to me. I can’t sleep anyway, and I must learn. I must prepare myself. At first of course I’ll only be able to watch from the verandah, but when my back is better, ah, you’ll see! We’ll be so happy!”

The book was in English, as books on vegetable gardening are apt to be, and as the humid oppressive night wore in Dubrov read to her about the fan training of espalier plums, about the successive trench sowing of broad beans and the preparation of decayed vegetable matter to make a mulch.

“What is it , this mulch?” came Simonova’s hoarse voice from the bed.

Dubrov consulted the book. “It is something to put on the roots to stop them drying out. There is also a verb: to mulch…”

He looked up. Simonova, who had not cried out once when they lifted her battered body onto the stretcher, who had not shed one tear when the doctors pronounced their implacable verdict, was weeping.