Firebird (43 page)

“Stolen!”

“Yes.  May I touch yours?”

Alexandra tried to hide her disappointment as she slipped her hand beneath the broad waistband of her skirt, where she had pinned the brooch so that its stones rested against her skin.   Glancing around to be sure they were alone, she unpinned the brooch and set the Firebird in the woman’s palm.  “If it is your property, of course it shall be returned.  It’s the provenance that interests me the most.”

The older woman held the brooch closer to her face.  “Treasonous eyes,” she murmured, and then, as her fingers closed around the stones, “Ah, how beautiful.  It feels heavy and warm in my hand, intricate.  Like my brooch, except...”  Her fingers ran gently over the jewels.  “I don’t think my brooch was quite this heavy.  And I believe this firebird has more gems than mine.”

The woman lifted the glittering Firebird toward the night sky.  “It’s as if she’s ready to fly off into the heavens.”  She held the brooch out to Alexandra.  “Do you know the story of the Firebird, Dr. Marik?”

“My sister read me the legend as a child,” said Alexandra as she pinned the jewel securely behind her waistband once more.

“Then you know that the Firebird is an ancient and magical symbol of the Russian culture.”

“I do.”  Alexandra moved closer, the woman’s scars forgotten, captivated by the beautiful, mesmerizing voice and the graceful movements of her hands.

“Have you seen the ballet?” asked Madame Danilova suddenly.

Ballet
.  Now the bells became a sharp alarm ringing in Alexandra’s head.  She took a steadying breath and said, “The Firebird Ballet?  No, never.”

“Diaghilev’s most successful ballet.  Paris, 1910.  Magnificent scenery and costumes - the divine choreography of Fokine, and of course the magical score of Stravinsky.  Then, in the late 40’s, exciting new choreography by Balanchine.  Folk tales have been the inspiration for many great repertory works.”

The woman’s voice faded with reverie, then brightened.  “Oh, if you could have seen the stage, alive with light.  The curtain rises.  Prince Ivan is hunting in a dark and mysterious forest.”

Ivan
. 
I’m close, Eve.  So close
.

“Suddenly,” the woman continued, “Ivan is blinded by the light of the dazzling Firebird - half woman, half bird - whose entrance is as fierce and brilliant as the red feathers she wears.  He captures her, and she fights frantically, terrified of being earthbound.  Slowly, slowly, he wins her trust, and they dance together.  She gives him a feather that will grant him magical powers - and he gives her freedom.”

Alexandra was as still as the statuary that lined the courtyard, hardly breathing, transfixed by the woman’s tale.

“In Act II, of course, the heroic Ivan becomes lost and is threatened by a terrible sorcerer named Kastchei.  His only hope is the Firebird and her magic feather.  There is a brilliant flash of fire, and the Firebird appears in a blaze of flame.  She, too, has been tormented by Kastchei over the years...” 

The soft voice faltered, and Alexandra saw the shine of sorrow and tears in the gentle eyes.

“Are you unwell?” asked Alexandra with quick concern.

“No, no, just an aging woman’s memories,” murmured Madame Danilova. 

“Your memories are so personal and real.  You must have seen that ballet many times.”

“My dear, I
danced
it!”

“You are a dancer…” 
Of course she is
, realized Alexandra.  Madame Danilova had the severe, aristocratic face of a great dancer from an earlier time.  Even seated, she had a dancer’s unmistakable posture.  Now the earlier alarm bells hummed, racing across her skin.

The ballerina looked down at the wheelchair.  “
Was
, my dear.  Very few people know that I danced in my youth.  I was,” she bowed her head, “Prima Ballerina, with the Kirov, in St. Petersburg.  In those days, we set the standard for passionate, classical performance.” 

And there it was
. 
Alexandra was back on the Vaya con Dios, looking at the newspaper article Garcia had found. 
A performance in London, by the Kirov Ballet.

Madame Danilova looked into Alexandra’s eyes.  “The irony,” she murmured, “ is that I never cared about being a Prima Ballerina.  I only wanted to dance.”

“And you did.”

“For the blink of an eye.”  The woman gazed into the shadows.  “The ballerina Karsavina said, ‘Leave the stage before the stage leaves you.’  But I did not have that choice.  There was a terrible fire at the theatre during a performance of the Firebird in London
.” 
The aging dancer’s voice shook, remembering
. 

A fire.  Unable to take her eyes from the woman’s scarred face, Alexandra felt the quick stirring of the truth. 

Madame Danilova had danced that night.  Had she known Ivan?

“I miss dancing,” the woman was saying.  “For a dancer, the body’s betrayal is the supreme cruelty of growing older.”  She shook her head.  “When I was young, I challenged my body to its limits.  Now, my body challenges me.  My feet used to
feel
the floor.  Now, the first steps of each morning are…” she winced, looking down at her slippered feet, “sometimes impossible.” 

“Please, tell me what you remember.”

Madame Danilova closed her papery lids and allowed the memories to come.  “Ballet is the most improbable art,” she murmured.  “It is about being high, taking flight
,
soaring
, ascending
!”  She raised her arm gracefully toward the sky.  “It began as the dance of kings, in the royal French court in the 16
^th
century, although women did not dance for another 200 years.” 

Her eyes glistened, remembering.  “When I joined the Kirov, I used four, perhaps five pairs of toe shoes every day.  I had three hour lessons that included 128 grand battements, if you please, 128 ronds de jambes en L’air.  Firebird needed 1,000 feet of tulle, 70 jeweled head dresses and animal masks.”

She shook her head.  “Forgive me, my dear.  Sometimes those memories are more real than this courtyard.”

“Please, go on,” whispered Alexandra.

“I had the long legs, the strong back, the light bones.  Like a heron, my partner said!”

The prima ballerina sat forward in the chair, and, with excruciating slowness, began to lift her right leg.  A narrow ballet-slippered foot appeared, followed by a thin, impossibly twisted calf.

“Every dancer knows pain, Dr. Marik.  My partner Sergei used to say, “If boy not there, girl fall down.”  She laughed softly.  “Ah, we had our share of falls, of sprains and tears, twisted tendons and jammed joints.  I was sore every moment from dancing.  It was my natural state.  And my heart’s passion.”

“Can you tell me what happened to you, Madame Danilova?”

The woman stared at Alexandra as if she had forgotten her presence.  “An accident,” she said, closing her eyes in pain.  “In the beginning, when I was first confined to this chair, I would dream of going to the theater and discovering I’d forgotten my toe shoes.  Terrible, horrible nightmares of not being able to dance.”

She shook her crowned head.  “Pavlova so identified with her role as the Dying Swan that when she was stricken with pleurisy she asked her maid to get her swan costume ready, and died moments later.”

Alexandra reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder.  “But not you.”

A shrug of narrow shoulders.  “There is a dance troupe called Axis.  It is for performers with and without disabilities.  I coach them every week.”  She smiled.  “But sometimes I wish…”

Alexandra waited.

Madame Danilova glanced across the courtyard toward the wall of glittering windows.  “In our Russian legend, the Firebird is trapped in a Palace of glass.  Perhaps I have built my own glass palace here…”

“Excuse me, Madame.”  The bartender stood at the French doors.

“Ah, Nicky.  Time to close already?  All of our guests have departed?”

“Yes, Madame.  Would you like me to – ”

Madame Danilova waved an expressive hand.  “Go home, Nicky.  You’ve been working for hours.  My guest will stay and visit awhile longer, if she is willing.” She looked up at Alexandra, who nodded and returned the smile.  “She can let herself out.”

“But, Madame…”

“
That will be all
, Nicky.  I’ll be fine.  Thank you for everything, my friend.”

“As you wish, Madame.  I will leave a small light in the foyer for Dr. Marik.”  The bartender bowed from the waist and disappeared into the shadowed restaurant.    

“I never told you what happens in Act III of the Firebird,” said the woman suddenly.  “But perhaps you should see it for yourself.  You must come to the ballet this week as my guest.  I have a box at Lincoln Center.  Stravinsky’s Firebird is being performed.” 

Shivers danced across Alexandra’s spine.  “The Firebird?  I would love to see it.”

The old ballerina raised her head to the sky, frosted now with tracings of ice.  “The snow is coming,” she murmured.  “Early this year.  I can feel it in the air.  My partner Sergei loved the mountains, especially when the forests were hushed with snow.”  She closed her eyes, lost in memory.

“I would enjoy going to the ballet with you,” said Alexandra softly.  She leaned forward to kiss the rough, disfigured cheek.  “Thank you, Madame Danilova.  If the brooch given to my sister is yours, it will be returned immediately.”

“Thank you.  And, Dr. Marik?”

Alexandra looked down at the scarred face.

“Go and see an Axis performance.  A person incapable of walking can still create great beauty.  Dance comes from within, my dear.  The plie of bent leg can become the curved lift of arm.”  She gazed toward the moonlit garden.  “In Swan Lake, for a few hours each night, the captured swan is allowed to be alive again.  To dance
, to be real once more
, before she must die.” 

The Prima Ballerina lifted her arm with slow, dramatic grace.  “No, I am not ready to don my swan costume and die just yet.  When I dream now, my dear, I’m never wheeling.  I’m still dancing.”

* * * *

It was after midnight.  The Palace of the Firebird was dark except for the single lamp near the entrance.  The bartender and doorman were long gone.  Alexandra sat on a barstool, alone in the darkness, waiting.

Soon, Madame Danilova would drive her electric chair to the small elevator near the kitchen, and return to her private rooms on the top floor of the brownstone.  And then she could take a closer look at those old photographs on the dining room wall before letting herself out.

Madame Danilova would have danced - when?  In the mid sixties?  She would have known Ivan, danced with him.  What would those photographs show?

Then she heard the music.

Making her way quietly back through the shadowed dining room, Alexandra stopped at the French doors and caught her breath.  In the dark courtyard, classical music – Stravinsky? -  spilled from a small radio.  And there, a sudden flash of red.

The electric chair moved into the center of the terrace, spinning slowly in time to the music.  Suddenly, with an imperious gesture, the woman locked the brakes.  Then, with the help of her ivory cane, the aging, injured Prima Ballerina rose haltingly to her feet.

She spread her thin arms like a bird’s wings and flung her long scarf so that it drifted like a red feather against the night sky.

Alexandra watched, entranced, as the ballerina began to repeat, with excruciating slowness, steps learned so long ago.  A pointed toe, a lifted calf, the graceful curve of arm just so - every movement exquisitely beautiful but in agonizing slow motion, as the scarred ballerina danced one last time in her ghostly lover’s arms.

Alexandra felt as if her own heart were breaking.  Aware that she was an intruder on an intensely private moment, she forced herself to turn away.

Her eyes sought the old black and white photographs strung along the dining room’s far wall, and her sister’s words spun suddenly into the deserted shadows.

Look for the truth in the photographs.

As Stravinsky’s music flowed around her, Alexandra slipped on her glasses, lit a candle from one of the tiny tables, and, shielding the light with her body, examined the row of grainy photographs.  The city now called St. Petersburg, she realized, before the Revolution.  And there, the early days of World War II and the Cold War.  Her finger touched, passed over the faces.  Personal photographs, some signed, from another country, another time. 

A well-dressed mother and her children outside a large frame house.  A heavy-set man in front of a sleek black touring car.  A gowned, be-jeweled woman in a palace room.

When she came to a series of ballet photographs, her heart skipped and she examined them carefully.  These were in color, softened by time.  Beautiful young swans folded in white-winged tutus, handsome bayadieres on a spot-lit stage.  Her finger passed over, moved on. 
Wait
.

A deep stage, framed by a forest of dark, twisted trees.  A man in an emerald hunter’s costume, bowing to a ballerina dressed in feathers of fire.  Writing in black ink scrawled across the bottom.  Alexandra leaned closer, squinting to decipher the faded script.  The words swam into view.

Prince Ivan & Tatyana.  London.  September, 1966.

Tatyana
!  September, 1966...

“Oh, dear God,” murmured Alexandra.  The answer was thirty feet from her, dancing in the garden.  She’d felt it from the moment they’d met.  And here was the proof.

Madame Danilova was the Firebird
. 

Tatyana Danilova, her beautiful face youthful and unmarred in the old photograph.  The prima ballerina who had danced the Firebird role with Ivan during the Kirov’s tour in 1966.

The tour that had ended in a terrible fire.

An accident
, the prima ballerina had said.  She’d been burned in a fire…

And now, after all these weeks of searching, Ivan’s photograph was waiting for her on the wall of a small Russian restaurant on West 46th Street.