Dancer (24 page)

When we arrived there was a sort of hush, but then came a high-pitched scream which unleashed all the others. They ran forward, asked me to sign everything—umbrellas, purses, leg warmers, underwear. Gillian had, of course, arranged for a photographer to be there. Before I left one of the girls reached forward and tried to grab my crotch. (Perhaps I should wear the leg-warmers over my cock for protection!)

As a choreographer he steals liberally from everywhere, from the Greeks to Fokine to Shakespeare, etc. He says:
In the end, after all, many hands touch the artist's brush.
Margot took his suggestions and remolded them beautifully, although at first I felt I was dragging a carcass across the floor.

Every hour she phones Tito. Imprisoned by him. (Now that he can fuck nobody else, he must fuck her, her life.)

The heart returns to Paris. There is some sort of sticky tar there. (Tell Claudette to furnish new apartment, find four-poster bed.)

The letter came, sealed with red wax. A momentary hesitation, perhaps it was a Soviet ploy. (You cannot put anything beyond them, acid on the envelopes, etc.) But the seal was Royal and the note was handwritten and it had been folded very carefully. I said to the housekeeper:
Oh shit, not another letter from Her Majesty!

The new bodyguard (part-time) once protected Churchill. He told me he met Stalin at Yalta. Tried to explain that Stalin was very polite. (A train whistled in my mind, the hospital, watching from the trees as the old babushkas washed the soldiers—how many centuries ago now?)

Found the Derrida text in a secondhand stall along the Seine. Also found a treatise on Martha Graham at the same stall, what a coincidence. Both were water damaged and had their pages stuck together. I told Tennessee Williams about the books (he was drunk at the Desjeux party) and he said it was an obvious metaphor, though he didn't explain why, perhaps couldn't. His fingers and even his beard were stained with ink. He was astonished I'd read him in Russian. He put his head on my shoulder and said:
Oh such a nice child.

He grew tiresome and spilled a cocktail on my suit and I told him to kiss my ass. He replied with a grin that he'd be enchanted.

Claire brought a tape with
Rostropovich
scrawled in crude, spidery handwriting on the case. The Violin Concerto number 2, second movement, brought me to tears. Once, in Leningrad I stupidly told Yulia that I would allow Shostakovich to sit in the rain.

Smelled a plate of radishes in the kitchen at Lacotte's. Was transported back. Had to leave, much to Lacotte's displeasure. At the door he wagged his finger. Woke up dreaming of a white cloth being put over Mother's face.

Perhaps Margot is correct when she says that I dance so much—
too much
—in order not to think of home.

Such difficulty in talking to anyone about Mother. When the facts are in order the mood is wrong. When the mood is correct the facts are in tatters.
She worked in a weapons factory. She sold matrushka dolls. She was chased by a wolf.
Sometimes, in the same interview, I forget exactly what I've said, so it becomes even more tangled in fantasies. For the Austrian journalist she somehow turned into a seamstress in the Ufa Opera House.

The times I hate myself the most inevitably collide with the times I dance badly. In darker moments I think perhaps my best performances were in the Kirov. (The phantom feel of Sizova's hips against my hands.)

Erik ran into an acquaintance of Richter's who told him that when Prokofiev died there were no flowers left for sale in Moscow. They had all been bought for Stalin's funeral. Richter played at the funeral, then walked across Moscow to place a single pine branch on Prokofiev's grave. (Beautiful, but is it true?)

Mister Nureyev, your movements seem to defy possibility.

Nothing is impossible.

For example, when following on from the sharp flourish of your ronde de jambe are you aware of your body?

No.

Why not?

Because I am far too busy dancing.

My desire to comfort the journalists is almost as strong as my desire to alienate them. Afterwards I can feel my heart ballooning with apology.

The true mind must be able to accept both criticism and praise, but in the
Saturday Review
he said I hold my hands too high in arabesque, that the movement looks bloated and uncontrolled. If I ever meet him again he will hold his balls too high in his throat and then we'll see who looks bloated and uncontrolled.

As for Jacques, he is a typical
L'Humanité
shithead, another one of those socialist bastards with a vendetta. He said I was being too literal. But what does he want, my legs to deal in symbols, my cock to reel off metaphors? I would tell him to do something productive for his politics—commit suicide, perhaps—but the weight of his fat ass would probably bring the ceiling beam down to the floor.

In the pub in Vauxhall a picture of me was suspended from the staircase on a thin rope. I asked the bartender if it was Yesenin but he didn't understand. At the counter there was a hush when Erik and I took our seats. The bartender asked me to sign the photo, which I did, across my chest, and everyone clapped.

All evening they expected some outrage, something Russian, something Nureyev. Smash glasses, kick bottles from the table. I drank four vodkas then took Erik's arm. We could almost hear the place moan.

There was another death threat waiting at the hotel. The police said the note had been clipped from the headlines of a Soviet émigré paper. Who are these assholes? Can't they understand that I am not their fucking puppet?

(Margot says to ignore them all, that the best way is to smile and be polite.
Unleash it all onstage,
she says. I haven't the heart to tell her she's talking rubbish. She, of all people, knows that everything I do is already sprayed with my blood.)

Secret wish: a house by the sea, children on the beach, a chamber orchestra on the rocks being soaked by the giant waves. I would sit in a deckchair, drink white wine, listen to Bach, grow old, though of course that too would become a bore.

Wisdom Defending Youth Against Love,
Charles Meynier: $47,500.

In the beginning he presents himself to her without, at first, betraying his true feelings. He is acutely aware of how he must look at her, neither revealing nor unrevealing. He must play this game of emotional roulette, fastidious, until they break into each other and become the movement (ratchet up the pas de deux and extend the solo).

He must be reinvented, after all, otherwise the role is pure shit—he will be a cardboard figure, a cipher without vitality.

Conceive the role as a fantasy of the protagonist's mind. In the end he must suffer agonizingly and, in full consciousness, be aware that all is lost.

A perfect rehearsal! We took an afternoon off.

He must remain in the wings long enough for everyone to feel uncomfortable and then he must burst from the other side of the world, frighten the mundane lives out of all who watch. For her, keep the tempo slow. She must arrive in cold at first. And then he must warm her into the dance. With every garment she takes off, it must look as if she is stepping into a future self. Finally she is spirited away from him, carried off, ghosts moving in diagonal lines, a moving vee. Light (moonlight) never quite touches the ground. Keep strings muted, do not allow the music to overwhelm.

“If and when Nureyev retires, it is obvious that his future as a choreographer is assured.”
Dance
magazine, December 1966. Ha! “He does not create solely
for
the body, he creates
on
it.”

Erik suggested that I am increasingly obsessed with Mother only because I am so far away. (As if he could talk, the ghost of that gray-haired Viking bitch still hanging over him.) After I slammed the car door and walked through the traffic it suddenly dawned on me that I knew none of the Copenhagen streets. I went back and sat instead in the front seat with the driver.

Later, crawling into bed, Hamlet (how he detests this nickname!) admitted his error. It is so difficult to drive him to anger, and yet he becomes voracious when ignored.

Boating on the lakes. Champagne. Fireworks. The Hamburg woman with the necklace:
You are a Rimbaud of the steppes!

Mother's exit visa application was turned down again, but this time the butchers asked her to sign a document refuting her desire to leave.

Erik waited at the airport, wearing glasses and a hat for disguise.

Within hours we were on the dance floor. A boy wore a white silk shirt and silver platform shoes. Ah yes, Piccadilly! I followed him outside.

The horse's hooves chopped up the immaculate green park as the other guests played polo in the rain. Erik came up behind me and put his head on my shoulder, nibbled my ear.

At dinner (mousseline d'ecrivisse, poussin rôti aux herbes, salad, purée of celery) the Baron looked at us severely. I whispered to Erik that the Baron was certainly a fine horseman but probably unable to control his whip. Erik laughed so hard he spat his sherbet out on the tablecloth.

The hollow of his neck. We dozed.

A speedboat to Galli. Erik, Pablo, Jerome, Kenzu, Margot, Gillian, Claire and me. Margot spent the whole weekend on the phone to Tito. We decided to get an orchestra boated in from the mainland. They were a ragtag bunch and we dismissed them but paid handsomely to borrow their instruments. We took turns playing until four, then dragged the piano inside to save it from the dew. (Erik quoted Homer about the sirens. The champagne was flowing. Jerome suggested that I plug everyone's ears with wax and tie myself to Erik's mast!)

Pablo sat naked to play Shostakovich (badly) and his ass left a sweat stain on the piano stool.

Early in the morning Erik came to watch me swim. I made my way underwater to the rocks, surfaced and hid. He called my name and soon became frantic. He jumped up from the sand and began to scream for help. After five minutes he dived into the sea in his pajamas. How he hates the chill of the sea. He didn't notice me until a few meters away, then in Danish called me a cunt.

I told him I had seen a bright star move in the darkness. He said it was obviously a satellite looking down on me, perhaps Russian. He was getting his revenge, but the thought was chilling.

In bed we read Flaubert's letters from Egypt. Outside the sea crashed.

The pair of underpants hung on the bedpost. An exuberant flag.

The stewardess hardly seemed pleased when she told me to take my shoes down from the seat and I replied that it was a first-class cabin, would she prefer my foot somewhere else—up her enormous German ass for instance?

Jan. 6. New Year promise to Margot: I shall keep my mind free from attachments to everything but dance.

Valentina's classes: her movements are like prayers in a church. One feels almost shy in her presence.

A bad class and the day was ruined. Then at performance the lights were too bright and I was looking down more than usual, away from the glare, and my feet tangled. Arthur, in his high pitch, said:
We all have our nights.
The glass narrowly missed his head.

(At times like these I hate myself. The idea of being a genius-madman is tiresome.)

At the gathering Bacon asked why dance? I retorted, Why paint? He dragged on his cigarette and said painting was the language he would give his soul if he could teach his soul to speak. Yes!

*   *   *

Each night he waits for the cue, stretches, meshes his fingers. Onstage, Margot unspools a length of chaînés, sweeps, descends and is still. He touches his left ear for good luck, waits a moment beyond the quietness, breaks the wings, takes flight, is released.

Music reaches into his muscles, the lights spin, he glares at the conductor, who corrects the tempo, and he continues, controlled at first, each move careful and precise, the pieces beginning to fit, his body elastic, three jetés en tournant, careful of the landing, he extends his line, beautiful movement ah cello go. The lights merge, the shirtfronts blur. A series of pirouettes. He is at ease, his body sculpted to the music, his shoulder searching the other shoulder, his right toe knowing the left knee, the height, the depth, the form, the control, the twist of his wrist, the bend of his elbow, the tilt of his neck, notes digging into his arteries, and he is in the air now, forcing the legs up beyond muscular memory, one last press of the thighs, an elongation, a loosening of human contour, he goes higher, and is skyheld.

The audience leans forward, necks craned, mouths open. He descends, lands and is off again towards her, the wind rushing past his ears, a blur of unbroken energy, to where she is waiting, headbent. He plants his feet before her, she accepts him, he lifts her upward, she is light, she is always light, he stays away from her ribs, bruised from rehearsal. A bead of sweat spins out from his hair. His face against her thigh, her hip, her stomach. Both of them burning away, they are one movement, a body nation. He allows her down, a gasp from the hall, they are alive—a French audience, the good ones are always French, even in Lebanon, New York, Buenos Aires, Vienna, London, they're always French—and he can smell her perfume, her sweat, her approval, he moves stage left and off. She will control it now, her solo. Standing in the shadows, he regains his breath, tissues his face, dams the sweat, his chest rising and falling, begins to calm, ah yes this darkness an embrace.

He scuffs in the resin box for traction, waits as she receives her applause. Here it is now, take it, grasp it, explode!

He returns from the wings already in midair, moves through four cabrioles, keeping his line long until the sound catches up, an instant of conjunction, a flash of muscle and he sweeps the stage with his body, owning it, no limits. Eight perfect entrechats-dix, a thing of wonder, the audience silent now, no body anymore no thought no awareness this must be the moment the others call god as if all doors are open everywhere leading to all other open doors nothing but open doors forever no hinges no frames no jambs no edges no shadows this is my soul born weightless born timeless a clock spring broken, he is in flight, he could stay like this forever and he looks out into the haze of necklaces eyeglasses cufflinks shirtfronts and knows he owns them.