and disputatious students. One of the Schwab girls had attended for just one year and had emerged so deformed, so stripped of delicacy, that Mrs Schwab had had to search as far afield as Winnipeg, Canada, to find her a husband.
So I was not enrolled there, nor anywhere else. From the age of thirteen I had been tutored at home. By which I mean I received erratic visits from teachers of French, piano and dancing, and Ma taught me the correct way to serve tea. Of the Balkans, or Belgium, or Kaiser Wilhelm, I knew nothing. But I was a fast study, and Ma depended entirely upon me to explain about the Eastern Front.
‘All this rampaging around is most unsettling, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘If only people would be polite and stay in their own countries. Prussians and Russians and Macedonians. It’s all too hectic.’
I was a little confused myself whether the brave Russians who had taken on the Hun were the same ones who had cruelly chased Malka Lelchuck from her home, and I should have liked to ask the Misses Stone about it, but they never called anymore. They were too busy with war work.
Then the Ballet Russe came to the Century Theater and as a reward for recent good behavior I was invited to join Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel to see the opening performance of Petrushka. Preparations began immediately after breakfast when Honey arrived with her burnt-orange Directoire gown and a chocolate-brown velveteen evening coat.
Burnt orange, it turned out, was not my color, but with a little help from Ma’s seed pearl choker and a dab of cream rouge my skin was coaxed out of a tendency to mealiness. The shoe problem was not so easily solved. Honey’s tapestry evening slippers were size 4. My feet were size 7.
The Irish was assigned to do the best she could with a can of boot black and my battered day shoes.
‘No one will see,’ Ma said, ‘if you are careful to take small steps.’
After luncheon I was excused all further duties and sent to my room with instructions to double my dose of Pryce’s Soothing Extract of Hemp and lie still with my eyes closed.
‘Attending a ballet is a very draining business,’ Ma advised me. ‘You must conserve yourself, otherwise you will be no use to me tomorrow and then what shall I do?’
At six I was collected by Uncle Israel’s driver. We no longer had one of our own. After Pa’s death Ma had given him notice.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘we shall hardly be going anywhere.’
Ma had plenty of money, but she seemed always to derive pleasure from small economies.
‘Remember, Poppy,’ Ma called after me as I bounded downstairs to the front door, ‘small steps.’
We ate an early supper of clear soup and epigrams of mutton, and I was supplied with an extra precautionary napkin, to be tied under my chin.
‘It would be a tragedy,’ Aunt Fish said, ‘if Honey’s beautiful gown was ruined, when she has been generous enough to lend it.’
It wasn’t all that beautiful a gown.
Uncle Israel asked, ‘What is it again we’re going to see?’
‘It will come to me momentarily,’ Aunt Fish said, ‘though why you ask I cannot fathom. I see you are quite determined to dislike it, whatever it’s called.’
I suppose musical comedies were more to Uncle Israel’s taste. I suppose he took along the evening paper as a fall-back in case of boredom.
I had never dreamed how wonderful a theater might be. The carpets were thicker and deeper, the chandeliers were vaster and sparklier than anything I had imagined. And there were marble staircases curving either side of a palm garden. I should have liked to practice majestic sweeping on those stairs.
But most exciting of all was the frenzy of the orchestra preparing to play and the roar of the audience. Aunt Fish was examining every face in the grand tier, and occasionally she would flutter her hand.
‘The Elmore Ferbers are here,’ she observed, ‘in spite of the talk. How brave she looks.’
Uncle Israel looked up from his paper and rolled his eyes.
‘And I spy Mrs Root,’ she pressed on, ‘with a person who may be her sister from Buffalo. What a serviceable gown that twilled silk has turned out to be. I declare I must have seen it a hundred times.’
The lights went down.
‘Now, Poppy,’ she whispered, patting my hand, ‘we need only stay for the first act. And do sit up nicely. With good posture and Honey’s lovely gown I believe you look rather pretty this evening.’
The curtain went up. The stage appeared to be covered with snow, and crowds of people were walking about, just like they were in a real town. There were candy stalls and a merry-go-round and a puppet theater, and everyone seemed happy, except for Petrushka who looked sad and the Ballerina who looked plain dumb. Petrushka wore beautiful blue boots and red satin trousers, but the clothes I liked best were the Wicked Moor’s. He wore gold trousers and a bright green jacket and his hat was made of twisted yellow and violet silk.
Uncle Israel didn’t care for the music.
‘Darned racket,’ he said, and he took out his newspaper again, even though it was far too dark for him to read.
Aunt Fish kept wondering aloud why they hadn’t been able to find a dancer who could point his toes.
I said, ‘I think he’s meant to be dancing that way.’
‘Meant to?’ she said. ‘Of course he isn’t meant to. Ballet is danced with pointed toes, as I would have expected you to know. And I’m sure one pays enough to see correct technique.’
I was anxious that the combination of rackety music and incorrect feet might provoke an early exit, so I fairly begged Aunt Fish to be allowed to stay to the end. This made a sickening spectacle, I dare say, but it worked. I believe she was so astonished by my fawning she quite forgot about leaving the theater early. So the Moor killed Petrushka, the curtain came down, and far below us the livelier element of audience divided, two-thirds whistling and stamping, one-third booing.
With the house lights up, and the prospect of a second supper drawing near, Uncle Israel became cheerful again.
‘Nine-thirty and our duty is done,’ he said. ‘Now that’s what I call a decent show.’
I said, ‘I should like to see it all again.’
‘Well, don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘I’ve swallowed my dose. Bring your sister. Bring your mother.’
Aunt Fish gave him a warning tap with her fan.
‘Dora would find the stairs far too taxing,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know that anything so progressive would suit Honey. Besides, it seemed to me a rather silly story. How much more satisfactory it would have been if someone had married the dainty little doll.’
But I was glad Petrushka never got the Ballerina. It was bad enough he always had to go to his poky room and couldn’t wander around and buy gingerbread and just please himself, without having a prissy girlfriend, too. He was better off dead.
Uncle
