I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [175]
“Okay, next, make sure my back is placed tight against the seat. Push that switch to fold the chair up, you can put it in the front seat next to the driver. Then you can go, get out!”
Have you ever noticed how quickly mourners leave the cemetery after a burial? Everyone wants to get back to life, as quickly as possible. When I wended my way back to the grave, only the four gravediggers were in sight. As I got closer, I could see someone else, a girl on her knees. It was sweet, round-faced Margot, sprawled out at the edge of the open grave, sobbing, with her arms reaching down toward Balanchine’s casket. The gravediggers stood nearby, uncomfortable, unable to shovel in the dirt.
“Get back, little missy,” one of the shovelers said. “It’s all over.” I put my arms around Margot and lifted her out of the way. Where were Karin and Morty? Tanny had taken the limousine and left. I was at a loss. I didn’t know how to get to the reception. I didn’t know where Carrie and Chris had gone. Frances Schreuder had vanished, and there I was stuck with a dead body and a sobbing teenager.
There was a car coming up the dirt road! Thank God! Karin and Morty were returning with Carrie and Chris to pick us up. PHEW!
When people are under emotional stress, they’re likely to indulge their pleasure centers—go shopping, buy themselves unnecessary gifts, drink, and gorge themselves on food. Or the reverse, they go alone into a dark corner and try to sleep, turn off the world. Everyone was confronting a future without Balanchine. The cemetery crowd gathered at Gold and Fizdale’s to party, and food was being gobbled and wine flowed. I headed straight for the biggest table and proceeded to slurp away, trying to sample every delicacy at the ample smorgasbord. Amidst all these people, grieving the loss of the giant of dance, I reflected that aside from his favorite muse at the moment—and, perhaps, Stravinsky—Balanchine never cared much for anybody.
Someone tugged my sleeve. I looked down, and there was Tusia at my elbow. Woeful Tusia. (The tugging reminded me of her once fiddling with my arm at Madame Karinska’s studio, where I had been summoned for a costume fitting on my day off. It was a sunny, brilliant day, and I stood patiently, half-clad in a pin-studded muslin mock-up of a ballet tunic. Under Madame Karinska’s eye, Tusia basted the gusset, and mumbled, with great foreboding, “Oh, Jacques, you must be careful today. The sun is out.”) Gloom was her nature—she had dark circles under her eyes, even when they weren’t there. Today, at Gold and Fizdale’s, fussing with my sleeve, she mumbled, “Balanchine is gone, Jacques, and soon Madame will be gone. What do we do now? What do we do?” Through a mouthful of shrimp remoulade, I managed, “What do you mean, what do we do? We do what we always do. We eat and drink and keep going.”
Karin von Aroldingen at Balanchine’s grave, 2003 (image credit 18.1)
Tanny had bolted with the limousine, so, champagne glass in hand, I made the rounds, trying to solicit a ride home. “L’chaim!” I proclaimed with every glass. A Hebrew toast, from a people who have suffered great loss and tragedy—responding with a cry “TO LIFE!” Go on, survive, continue! We had him once a little while, and dance did sport with song, but now no more.
I was reminded of a line from Aeschylus’ The Persians: “Death is long and without music.”
In August 2003, Karin von Aroldingen and I visited Balanchine’s grave. Standing on the grass over him, I took Karin in my arms, and we danced a waltz. There was an audience. Across a dirt path, less than ten yards away, stood a single headstone bearing the names of Gold and Fizdale; they were buried beneath, one on top of the other. Around a corner of the path was Alexandra Danilova’s grave.
Right around the death of Balanchine, I flippantly mentioned to a friend, Hope Cooke, “After fifty, it’s harder to stay in the air.”
But National Dance Institute kept my fingerprints