Shipwreck by Louis Begley
Author:Louis Begley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307416636
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-04T00:00:00+00:00
SHIPWRECK
A Readerâs Guide
LOUIS BEGLEY
In memoriam Siegfried Unseld
Read an excerpt from
Memories of a Marriage
By Louis Begley
Available from Doubleday
July 2013
I
ONE EVENING IN May 2003, not many days after George W. Bushâs astonishing announcement that the âmissionâ had been accomplished, I went to the New York State Theater to see a performance by the New York City Ballet company. I had hoped to find an all Jerry Robbins program, and there was, in fact, such a program scheduled for later that month. Unfortunately, the date was inconvenientâI had accepted a dinner invitation from a newly remarried classmateâand I had to settle for a performance that included the official premiere of Guide to Strange Places, one more of Peter Martinsâs empty creations. The music by John Adams left me indifferent. If only, I said to myself, Martins had allowed us to go on thinking of him as the magnificent dancer he had been in his prime and being grateful for his management of the company, instead of giving us again and again occasions to deplore his choreography. Unable to concentrate on the movements, brilliantly executed by the cast, that seemed to me to lead to nowhere, I allowed my thoughts to turn to Jerome Robbins. He had been my wife Bellaâs and my dear friend, regularly inviting us to rehearsals. We would watch him go over each segment of a ballet tirelessly: scolding, correcting, and cajoling, until a mysterious change, often imperceptible to Bella and me, signaled that the music and the dance had come together and now corresponded to his vision. He would clap his hands, turn to his assistant Victor, and say, Thatâs it, the kids have got it, letâs go and eat. Jerry was ravenously hungry after rehearsals. We would tag along with him and Victor to Shun Lee, a Chinese restaurant on West Sixty-Fifth Street, where Jerry, so abstemious in daily life, devoured one after another the mild Cantonese dishes that were his favorites. He died in 1998, fifteen years after George Balanchine, and the curtain went down on a great era in ballet history that their work had defined. I was grateful to have seen so much of it while they were still alive, danced by dancers they had formed. Would the company for which they had created so many masterpieces continue to perform them in high style? I hoped it would, at least for the remainder of my years.
At the intermission, I got a whiskey at the bar and, the weather being mild, went out on the open terrace. The fountain in the center of the plaza had not yet been redesigned and programmed to keep time to a beat as intricate as Fred Astaireâs steps and no easier to decipher, but I liked it anyway and never tired of looking at it. I was bewitched. How wonderful, I said to myself over and over, how gladâreally how happyâI am to have come back to live in this city! For much of my life I had dreaded admitting to myself or others that I was happy.
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