I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [115]
I ate, slept, and recuperated.
One morning, Max told me a little about his youth. He was born in the town of Wesel, and between World War I and World War II, under the Weimar Republic, became mayor (a sort of Bürgermeister) of another small town on the Rhine—and, as a member of the Republic, a target for the Nazis when they took over. “After the convent, I hid out in this apartment, Jacques. Hmmmm, it was terrible. Word would go out, ‘Curfew tonight!’ That meant they would be moving the Jüdin through the streets to the train station. We would hear over the loudspeakers, ‘NO ONE OUT! NO PHOTOGRAPHS! NO WINDOWS OPEN! EVERYTHING SHUTTERED!’ We could hear them crying and wailing for help,” Max confessed. “We would cover our ears, hide under the bed as Kinder do. In the morning, we would smile and nod to our neighbors, as if nothing had happened. We knew, but were afraid. No one trusted anyone. One word, one report, and you would join the Jüdin.”
I was counting on making that plane to Russia. Max took me to the Munich airport on September 29, and with gingerly hugs, sent me on my way to Vienna. Shaun was waiting for me at our hotel, the Sacher, where he had just been shooting a scene with our fellow dancer Deni Lamont, the paper bag, and a Sacher torte. We immediately went off to the theater. Mr. B was there, and ill at ease. Through my whole convalescence, I had never heard a word from him. I’d like to believe he felt a little guilty. Anyway, I hugged him. Lincoln walked over and was much more honest, glowering, “Well, Buster, we didn’t think we’d see you alive again!”
Shaun kept me busy, insisting I join him to film the paper bag scene at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. He had tickets for Rosenkavalier at the opera, and tons of gossip. “Daisy!”2 he’d coo, “Taras and his boyfriend had a row at the restaurant the other night. The boyfriend stood up dramatically, and slowly poured a glass of wine over Taras’s head! Taras let the wine drip down his face. He sat unblinking and unmoving, until a little twitch at the edge of his upper lip marked time.”
Within a day—October 1—I tried my first barre, and lasted three minutes. So I sat and watched, jealous of everyone able to move. In the next day’s class, I lasted maybe ten minutes, up to the rond de jambe. It was impossible to do center work. Any attempt to jump was too painful.
On October 5, the last day before Russia, Shaun corralled me to go to Vienna’s legendary gay bar, announcing, “We’re all heading to the Piccadilly for one last fling! Daisy, it’s like before crossing the Sahara—you load up with water!” It had been rumored that there was only one gay bar in all of Russia.
The airplane landed at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, and we looked out at an enormous crowd at the gate. The dancers deplaned first and waited at the foot of the stairs for Balanchine, who timed a grand entrance with Diana Adams at his side. I caught the whole thing on film with Quentin Keynes’s camera. Balanchine made a big deal of introducing Diana as his prima ballerina, bobbing and beaming with delight as he presented her to his brother, Andrei, whom he had not seen in four decades. We hung around for hours, while the press photographed and interviewed Balanchine, flashes and microphones shoved in his face. We were exhausted, looking around in trepidation at the dark, dismal airport. Why was it so dim? I looked up. Take a light bulb the size of a baby’s fist, about eighteen watts, bury it in the bottom of a large brown coffee can, and glue it to the ceiling. The miserable, descending light was like spit in the shadows. And there were a lot of them. A claustrophobic caging of illumination that became, for me, a metaphor of the strictures Leninism imposed on Russia.
I’m dumping on the Soviet system, not the Russian people, and definitely not their dancers.