I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [82]
Carrie and I have attempted to recreate this experience—in many restaurants and our own kitchen—for over half a century. All attempts were mere foothills to the heights of that Chapon Fin feast.
A week later, Carrie got the flu, a day or two before we were to leave Bordeaux and fly to Lisbon. Usually, nothing could stop Carrie from dancing, but this time, there was no way. She sat shivering in the dressing room. “I know exactly what she needs,” Balanchine said, and, grabbing my elbow, ushered me to the buffet of the theater and demanded a bottle of cognac. The portly bartender announced, “We do not sell bottles.” Balanchine sniffed, “Well, maybe a bottle of Coca-Cola.” Then, he took that bottle of Coca-Cola into the bathroom, poured its contents into the sink, and returned with the empty bottle in his pocket. “Now, give my friend and me hookers of cognac. Nine, please.” The unfazed bartender poured the cognac. For every shot of cognac Balanchine poured into himself, he poured one into the Coca-Cola bottle, saying, “One for me, one for the bottle, and one for you, Jacques!” insisting I “bottoms-up” to Carrie’s quick recovery.
Meanwhile, I was twitching with anxiety and thinking, “HURRY UP, GEORGE!” The knowing bartender handed Balanchine a cork with the bill, and we headed back to the dressing room, Coke bottle in hand, loaded with cognac. I tried to get Carrie to swallow a sip, but she was shaking too much. Eddie Bigelow and I carried her, shivering, out of the theater. It was intermission. Eleanor Barzin, lady friend of our conductor, Leon, and an heiress to Mrs. Merriweather Post’s fortune, spied us. Elegant Eleanor removed her ankle-length fur coat and wrapped it around Carrie. All Carrie could think of, she told me later, was that her makeup and sweat were ruining the fur. “That coat … I’ll never be rich enough to have a coat like that, and Eleanor is wrapping it around me to keep me warm.”
When I finally got Carrie tucked into bed, I drank all the cognac and proposed. Trembling and feverish, she made me kneel by the bed and repeat it formally, before chattering out a “yes.”
The next day the company flew on to Lisbon. I wouldn’t leave without Carrie, so they left without us. A day or two later, she was better, and we boarded the cargo plane (carrying the scenery and wardrobe trunks) and flew to Lisbon, strapped into some kind of jump seat on either side of the cockpit. Carrie keeping warm in Eleanor’s fur.
She soon recovered in warm and balmy Lisbon.
In the 1950s, Portugal was ruled by the dictator Salazar, and his Ministry of Culture assigned a guy to keep tabs on us. José de Jesus Santos was short and pale-faced, with black hair, a long, thin nose, and gleaming eyes that continually flicked back and forth like windshield wipers. On inquiring, “Are you a dancer, performer, or something?” he would reply, “I am sent by God to assist you,” or “Fate has sent me to be of service.” His English was impeccable, and he was charming as he buzzed around. When I complained to him that the stage of Lisbon opera house had the most extreme rake of any stage I had danced on—the footlights were at least seventeen feet lower than the back wall of the stage—“It’s like dancing on the side of a hill!”—he replied, “Oh, but we built it that way to enhance your