Gerald Elias

Sleeping Beauty

SLEEPING BEAUTY

1.

It was almost exactly three years ago when Leonard and I lunched at Gregory’s, the­ posh—some call it staid—eatery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I had all but forgotten about the remarkable event that took place there that day, but once my memory was reawakened, which it had been—jarringly—just this afternoon, all the improbable details flooded back in. It was like the experience we’ve all had when, after years of random accumulation, we clean out a closet and unearth a dust-covered carton labeled Snapshots. You pry open the top, and after sorting through a few faded photos, that long-forgotten Caribbean vacation or Grandpa’s eighty-fifth birthday celebration suddenly seems like yesterday. That’s what happened to me today. Except it wasn’t a celebration.

A symphony tour was the occasion that had brought us to New York three years ago. Eating a heavy dinner right before having to play an even heavier concert has always made me dangerously lethargic, so Leonard and I opted for a substantial midday meal instead. Leonard ordered Gregory’s “world famous” hot trout almondine and I a salad niçoise; not as famous, perhaps, but very nicely done with fresh tuna, French string beans, new potatoes that actually had flavor, and high-quality anchovies that weren’t overly salty. The restaurant’s ambience offered the intimate tinkling of expensive china and stemware, laid out on crisply laundered white linen tablecloths with polished silverware that had the proper amount of heft. The waiters, dressed in black trousers and white shirts, were always at the ready but never intrusive, the way waiters should be. Subdued, polite conversation blended with understated, piped-in selections of well-known light classical music: Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Pachelbel. The usual mix. As veteran symphony musicians, Leonard and I had performed all of it more times than we cared to, and reminisced over some of the more hilariously disastrous renditions we’d been involved in. From time to time we couldn’t help but laugh out loud and, as you may have experienced—say, at a wedding or, worse yet, at a funeral—the more inappropriate the setting for laughter, the harder it is to hold it in. We tried our best to keep it under wraps, confident we hadn’t disturbed any of the other patrons.

Sitting alone at the table behind Leonard was a gray-haired woman, her back to us. She was a bit disheveled, at least for Gregory’s, dressed in a fur-trimmed, off-pink woolen suit that might have been expensive when it was new, but whose color was now decidedly faded. While Leonard was telling me yet another uproarious yarn, this one about a conductor’s pants falling down in the middle of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” I noticed the woman buttering a piece of toast. Actually, I must only have become aware of that in retrospect, but that is what she must have been doing in order for what followed to have unfolded as it did. 

Our waiter—young, trimly built, and I suppose darkly handsome in an Eastern European sort of way—having observed the woman’s empty coffee cup, approached her with a silver carafe. As he began pouring, the woman became highly agitated, yelled something venomous at him, and raised her knife. I had never before experienced that oft-recorded sensation of watching an event take place in a split second that seemed to stand still in time. I knew without a doubt what was about to happen, but in that snapshot of a moment, which suddenly seemed to be one of exquisite silence, I was immobilized, powerless to prevent it from transpiring.

The woman plunged her knife into the waiter’s arm. His cry broke my spell. Time began to move again and I was roused from my paralysis. Many of the patrons, Leonard and myself included, rushed to the waiter’s aid. The woman, who had been so violent just a moment earlier, slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes in resignation until the police arrived. She offered no resistance when they escorted her from the premises. She looked neither to the left nor the right, gazing only straight ahead, not so much to avoid everyone’s stares, but more as if she were unaware of anyone else’s presence; as if her gaze was directed into time and not space. A physician among the patrons treated the waiter on the scene and declared the wound to be superficial. The restaurant returned to its equilibrium and, by the time Leonard and I demolished a shared dessert of Strawberries Romanoff, the singular incident we had so recently witnessed seemed almost to have never happened.

The next day, when I read the story in the Times, I was astounded by the headline: Imogen Stansted Implicated in Restaurant Altercation. My first thought was, could it be the Imogen Stansted? My second thought was, how many Imogen Stansteds could there be in this world? I had only to read the first sentence to confirm it was indeed the Imogen Stansted who several years before had precipitously resigned from her lofty position as prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet. Who, at the peak of her brilliant career, had inexplicably entered into a life of seclusion. Still, could it be that the stout, slope-shouldered, elderly woman I saw the day before had, in a matter of just a few years, so aged from the lithe, athletic, poetic presence she once was? 

A week later, the Times published a follow-up. Imogen Stansted, seeking to avoid the harsh glare of a trial, pleaded no contest to a lesser assault charge, though no explanation was ever provided for why she attacked the waiter. Her lawyer simply attributed it to “erratic behavior” for which Madam Stansted was “unconditionally remorseful.” The judge suspended her sentence, the result of her previous spotless record, her former fame, and her reduced circumstances, but required her to seek counseling. With no scandal attached to the story, it soon faded from public view. And so, after three years, did my memory of it.

2.

This morning I was again in the city for a pair of mid-week concerts at Carnegie. Our plan for a brisk walk around the Central Park reservoir was thwarted when it began to rain by the time we hit Fifty-Ninth Street. As I had left my umbrella in my hotel room, Leonard continued without me, and even though it was too early for lunch, I ducked into one of those trendy farm-to-table cafés that requires you to sit with strangers on uncomfortable, faux rustic wooden benches. With a backdrop of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on the café’s speakers, I ordered a croque monsieur and cappuccino—no cocoa powder, thank you—and eyed the seating prospects. No familiar faces and no lovely young ladies with a space next to them. Roaming off-leash at one end of the café was a gaggle of obnoxiously entitled toddlers, enabled by see-no-evil, hear-no-evil parents. I carried my lunch to the opposite end, where there was a vacancy opposite a nicely dressed older woman absorbed in a bowl of lobster bisque. I had managed one leg over the bench when the woman looked up from her soup.

It was Imogen Stansted. I hadn’t recognized her initially, partly because she actually looked younger than the previous time our paths had so briefly crossed three years earlier. Though my first instinct, that of self-preservation, was to retrieve my leg and flee, I tried not to betray my recognition of her. My ability to disguise my reaction obviously failed because Madam Stansted gave me a knowing smile. “I’ve seen that look often enough,” she said. “Sit down. I’m not going to stab you.”

I can say I was more than a bit relieved, not only by her words but also by her secure and confident demeanor. I apologized for my lack of courtesy, and little by little we engaged in pleasant and increasingly open conversation. I expressed admiration for her inspiring dancing of the past, which clearly flattered her. When she found out that I was a professional musician, she mentioned a few names and it turned out we actually had some mutual acquaintances. But then, my guard down, I made a bit of a faux pas when I blurted out that she looked much better than the last time I had seen her.

“And when was that?” she asked.

I confessed that I had been at the next table at Gregory’s on the day of her attack and said that I felt almost as badly for her as for the poor waiter.

“That day was the nadir of my existence,” she said. “And the days after, of course. The public humiliation was even worse than a jail sentence and I never thought I’d be able to show my face on the street again. But, out of that catastrophe I found out I had more friends than I thought, so there was a silver lining after all. And an expensive psychiatrist didn’t hurt, either.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Should I apologize for having brought back the worst of bad memories, or congratulate her on her return to an existence which, if not the pinnacle of her glamorous career, at least—

“You want to know why I did, it. Don’t you?” she asked, mistaking the cause of my silence, which apparently had been longer than I thought.

“I wouldn’t dream of asking,” I said.

“But you still want to know. Everyone does.”

“Yes. I suppose so.” 

“Well, I’ve never told anyone,” she said, “because it’s no one’s business but mine. But fate seems to have brought us together twice now, and you’re a musician, so maybe it was meant for me to finally tell someone.” 

I leaned forward.

“But first you must buy me a coffee,” she said, almost coyly. “It’s very good here.”

“It would be my pleasure,” I said. I was half-convinced her request was a ploy for her to vanish while I was gone, but when I returned she was sitting placidly, her hands folded on her lap. To my relief, though, the neighbors who had been within eavesdropping distance at our pretend farm table had departed.

Madam Stansted spun two spoonfuls of sugar into her cup with the delicacy of sand through an hour glass and stirred reflectively, as if the dark currents of her coffee would reveal hidden truths. Gazing into the cup, but not lifting it, she took a deep breath.

“When I was with the Royal Ballet,” she began, “I had many dancing partners. One of them was Yuri Ivanov.”

“Your collaborations were legendary,” I said, as encouragement.

“Well, more than legendary,” she replied, and looked up at some image unseeable to all but herself. “But I’ll get to that a little later.

“As you know, male ballet dancers are often referred to as ‘furniture movers’ because, for all the world, one of their main tasks is to haul us ballerinas from point A to point B. Gracefully, if they’re capable. I won’t bore you with all the terminology, but for many of them that really is essentially the limit of their capability.

“Yuri was different. He was an amazing athlete and an amazing artist.”

“His leaping was legendary,” I said, not being able to think of a different word than legendary again. But it was, in fact, legendary.

“Yes, yes, leaping, of course,” she said dismissively. The swan-like hand gesture that accompanied her comment made it clear what a consummate artist she had been and how out of my depth I was. “That’s what gives the audience its cheap thrills. But Yuri had a combination of grace and strength that was absolutely unique. And so dependable. I would have jumped off a cliff, knowing he would catch me at the bottom. Such a calming influence.”

Again, her gaze went heavenward. 

“Until I started working with Yuri I was a nervous wreck,” she said, coming back to earth.

“One would never have known that from your stage presence,” I said. “You were always so…regal.” I had almost said legendary again.

“And that’s as it should be. But you should have seen me in the wings. I would break down from the smallest flaw in my performance. I would throw up between numbers. I can’t tell you how many times I had to have my makeup reapplied during intermissions because of the tears.

“A lot of ballet dancers are chain smokers,” she said, changing direction. “Did you know that?”

“No,” I said. “I’m astonished. You’d think they’d need to keep their lungs in shape. Is it to reduce stress?”

“More to keep the weight down. But for me it was weight and stress. I was sure I was losing my stamina. My nerve. I didn’t think I’d last another year. Until I met Yuri.”

Imogen Stansted took a pause in her narrative. Though I was sitting opposite her and she was looking right at me I had a feeling she didn’t see me at all.

“When he put his hands around my waist to lift me,” she finally resumed, “I felt weightless, as if I were flying. I could feel his fingers through my costume meld into my body, finding the perfect balance points. We breathed together. I felt like the two of us were a single being. It gave me a confidence I never had with another partner. He gave me such assurance that I knew I would not fail. Not with Yuri. I felt as if I could go on forever. With Yuri, I could fly.

“We soon became lovers,” she said without reticence. “I’d had lovers before, of course, but nothing like this. I had never been so happy in my life, either onstage or off. I had never danced as well, nor had the reviews ever glowed more brightly.

“One night, here in New York, we performed Sleeping Beauty. I adore Tchaikovsky ballets, don’t you?”

“I agree,” I said, meaning it. “I think his ballets are his finest works.”

“Yes,” she replied. “They are so visual. So visceral. The audience screamed its head off after the waltz. You could hardly hear the orchestra. After the performance Yuri told me had to meet with his manager and I should wait for him at the Essex—we had adjoining suites. As I was getting out of my costume, he kissed me on the neck. Here.”

She touched a very precise spot just above her collarbone with a subtly dramatic index finger—the manicured nail, long, tapered, and red—where it remained, almost nostalgically, for several seconds.

“I was halfway back to the hotel when I realized I had left my purse in the rehearsal room. So I returned to the theater. The rehearsal room locked. I went to the security desk where I found someone with a key to open it for me.

“He opened the door and turned on the lights, and there, against a pillar in the center of the room, were Yuri and a first-year girl from the corps de ballet. They were half-naked and rutting like farm animals. At first they tried to hide around the back of the pillar but, you see, the entire room was mirrored. So there was no hiding. I saw them from every angle, all at once.”

How was I supposed to respond to that? I had no idea, so I said nothing.

“Do you know what they did next?” she asked, looking me directly in the eye. But I knew she did not expect an answer, so I didn’t offer one. I think I might have shaken my head.

“Protestations of innocence?” she continued. “No. Abject apologies? No. ‘All a terrible misunderstanding?’ No. Madam Stansted finally took a sip of coffee.

“Cold,” she said.

When I looked at her questioningly, she said, “The coffee.” 

She paused, as if waiting for some internal decision whether or not to continue.

“What they did was to laugh,” she said, still looking right at me. “The two of them snickered. Like drooling, lascivious hyenas. In front of me and the security man.

“I shut the door and left the ballet world behind me. It was the end. I knew that immediately. Do you understand? There was no choice.”

Imogen Stansted took a deep breath, picked up a spoon, toyed with her coffee, and put the spoon back down again with finality.

“So there you have it,” she said to me. “I can’t say that it makes me feel better, though it is somewhat of a relief to get it off my chest after all these years.”

“And if I’ve been of any help in that regard,” I said, “I feel very, very honored. And you can be assured I’ll never mention this to anyone.”

She brushed that notion aside with a flick of her articulate wrist. Whatever, it said. 

“But, if you don’t mind, I do need to ask you one question.”

“Yes?” she asked. She seemed surprised, almost irritated. “Haven’t I given you the blow by blow in sufficiently lurid detail?”

“Yes. Of course,” I said. “But you haven’t really explained why you stabbed the waiter in the arm.”

She looked at me as if I were an absolute dolt.

“But you said you were a musician!” Stansted exclaimed. “I would have thought it would be perfectly clear to you!”

I apologized for still being in the dark.

“The music!” she said. “The music being played that moment at the restaurant was the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. And someone was laughing. Hideous, mocking laughter! It was intolerable. I was no longer in that restaurant. I was in the rehearsal room at the theater. When that waiter came to my table, I didn’t see a waiter. I saw Yuri. God forbid, I could have killed the poor boy had my aim been better. My psychiatrist told me the laughter must have been in my imagination—my subconscious reliving the memory of that horrid rehearsal room—triggered by the waltz. He said, “Why would anyone laugh at Sleeping Beauty?” But it all seemed so real. So, so real. It was the laughter that made me do it.”

At that moment I could have told Imogen Stansted that the laughter was by no means her fantasy. That is was real. I could have gone further and confessed that it had been none other than me who was laughing. That, in a real way, it was I who had spurred her to attack the waiter. That it was I who had caused her the pain and humiliation of the past three years. Yes, I could have confessed all those things.

“Music can make people do odd things,” I said, lacking anything better. Was I a cad? I felt like one, but what was I to do?

She looked at me strangely. Maybe it was the way I said it. Or was it a sudden recognition of my critical role in her drama?

Imogen Stansted wrapped her exquisitely expressive fingers around the coffee spoon sitting on the wooden table. We both looked at her hand, then at each other. She released the spoon.

I hurriedly offered to paid her bill and mine.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “You’ve already done enough for me.”

She said, “for me.” Did she mean, “to me”? Did she believe I had somehow helped her? That her confession to me was cathartic? Or did I detect a cold undercurrent in her voice? 

I shook her hand, thanked her for sharing her confidence, disentangled myself from the bench, and escaped into the street, where the rain had somewhat abated.

“Sleeping Beauty” was originally published in Level Best Books’ Noir at the Salad Bar, Culinary Tales with a Bite, in 2017 and is included in “…an eclectic anthology of 28 short mysteries to chill the warmest heart.”