I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [52]
The ballet was well received, but was not the smash hit expected. During the latter part of our London engagement, we faced half-empty houses, not because the public disliked us, but because most of the London cognoscenti and balletomanes had left for August vacations (that was why the Royal Opera House was available for all those weeks). However, many returned for our closing night. The house was packed with balletomanes and fans. It was a love fest. None of us had ever experienced such an ovation—flowers thrown all over the stage; doves released from the upper gallery; and, after twenty minutes of nonstop applause, a dilemma arose. The Cinderella deadline arrived, (hers was midnight; ours was eleven p.m.), for if the company remained onstage after that time, it meant the stage crew had to be paid overtime. The order was given to close the iron fire curtain and end the night. The massive iron wall came down, cutting off the fans still rhythmically clapping and stamping their feet. In the morning, a layoff-for-a-week began, and the company scattered. A paid vacation, albeit at half salary. I opted for a week in Paris.
On returning, before heading home to New York we would perform in Manchester, Liverpool, and Croydon—the Brits call them “the Provinces.”
A GLASS OF MILK
Barely sixteen years old, loose in Paris, I ensconced myself in a garret at a pension near the Paris Opéra and haunted the booksellers along the Seine. The August weather was sumptuous. I can still feel the pale sun and conjure up the scent of the damp stones along the quay. Mornings, I took class at the Studio Wacker, the Paris mecca for ballet dancers. The dressing room was amazing; there wasn’t any. You found a space in the hallway, stripped, put on dance clothes, and went in for the lesson. During class, I loved showing off and competing with dancers from all over the world, the American teenager who could jump so high and never put his heels on the floor.
Afternoons I spent tramping through every museum in the tourist brochures. Seedy men furtively offered, “Le sex postcard?” Of course, I was an easy mark, and bought them just as furtively, to discover nothing salacious—just photos of artwork, mostly nudes from paintings and sculptures in the Louvre. I already had a stack of them. One morning, I came across a sign, “Tour the Underground Rivers of Paris,” so I skipped ballet class and took the tour. It was a sewer trip—a boat ride in rivers of merde—claimed to be the same route Jean Valjean had taken fleeing Inspector Javert. The river wasn’t so bad, just brown water, but Jean Valjean didn’t have a boat. Oh, the scent! Staggering at first, but during the hour or so our bateau wended its way through the underground maze, I got used to it. As cigarette smoke sticks to your hair and clothes, so did the sewer stench stick to me for the rest of the day. To air myself off, I purchased a fishing line and hook, baited it with bread, and spent the afternoon on the banks of the Seine, fishing.
The next day, I bought a medieval-looking dagger, a bottle of cheap vin rouge, a chunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread and, ferreting a blanket from my room, boarded the train to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. From the station, I walked through cobblestone village streets to a forest on the outskirts. Deep in the woods, I made a campsite, ate my cheese, drank the whole bottle, and passed out, to dream through the night of tournaments, knights, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
Back in Paris, a meal at a two-star restaurant at Le Gare Saint-Lazare resonates as a formative experience. The restaurant’s elegant wood paneling and some twelve tables were waiting and expectant, dressed with white tablecloths, crystal, and silver settings. I was the only customer. Three bony waiters in black suits and white shirts, their collars frayed, buzzed around me, their aged bow ties tinged with a patina of iridescent brownish highlights. Five years since the Bosh had left,