Eva Ibbotson

“I’ve told you, you cannot have her,” interrupted Madame. “So don’t waste my time. Her father is the Merlin Professor of Classical Studies; her aunt comes here as if there was a bad smell in the place. Harriet was not even allowed to take part in a charity performance for the police orphans. Imagine it, the orphans of policemen, is there anything more respectable than that?” She inserted a Balkan Sobranie into a long jet holder and leaned back in her chair. “The child was so disappointed that I swallowed my pride and went to plead with the aunt. Mon Dieu, that house—it was like a grave! After an hour she offered me a glass of water and a biscuit—one biscuit, completely naked, with little holes in it for drainage.”

Madame had changed into French in order to do justice to the horrors of the Mortons’ hospitality. Now she shook her head, seeing through the clouds of smoke she was blowing out of her imperious nose the twelve-year-old Harriet standing in the wings of the draughty, improvised stage of the drill hall, watching the other girls dance. All day Harriet had helped: pinning up Phyllis’s butterfly costume, ironing the infants’ tarlatans, fixing Lily’s headdress for her solo as Princess of Araby… And then just stood quietly in the wings and watched. Madame had repeatedly heard Harriet described as “clever.” In her own view, the girl was something rarer and more interesting: good.

“No,” she said now, “you must absolutely forget my poor Harriet.”

“Surely to travel is part of every young girl’s education?” murmured Dubrov.

“They do not seem unduly concerned about Harriet’s education,” commented Madame drily. “She is to marry a young man with an Adam’s apple—a cutter-up of dead animals, one understands. But I must say, I myself would hesitate to let a daughter of mine travel up the Amazon in your disreputable corps de ballet and endure Simonova’s tantrums. What are you after, Sasha; it’s a mad idea!”

“No, it isn’t.” The blue eyes were dreamy. He passed a pudgy but beautifully manicured hand over his forehead and sighed. Born of a wealthy landowning family which had dominion over two thousand serfs somewhere on the Upper Volga, Dubrov might well have led the contented life of his forebears, riding round his estates with his borzois at his heel and seasonally dispatching the bears and boars and wolves with which his forests were plentifully stocked. Instead, at the age of fifteen he visited his godmother in St. Petersburg and had the misfortune to see the sapphire curtains of the Maryinsky part on the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Carlotta Brianzi had danced Aurora, Maria Petipa was the Lilac Fairy—and that was that. For the last twenty years, first in his homeland and latterly in Europe, Dubrov had served the art that he adored.

That this romantic little man should become obsessed with one of the truly legendary names on the map of the world was inevitable. A thousand miles up the River Amazon, in the midst of impenetrable forest, the wealth of the “rubber barons” had brought forth a city which was the very stuff of dreams. A Kubla Khan city of spacious squares and rococo mansions, of imposing fountains and mosaic pavements… A city with electric light and tramways, and shops whose clothes matched those of Paris and New York. And the crown of this city, which they called Manaus, was its Opera House: the Teatro Amazonas, said to be the most opulent and lovely theater in the world.

It was to this theater that Dubrov proposed to bring a visiting ballet company led by the veteran ballerina he had the misfortune to love; it was to recruit young dancers for the corps de ballet that he had visited his old friend Sonia Lavarre.

“Manaus,” murmured Madame. “Caruso sang there, didn’t he?”

“Yes. In ninety-six. And Sarah Bernhardt acted there… So what more fitting than that the Dubrov Ballet Company should dance!”

“Hmm. The fee must be good, if Simonova has agreed to go.” But her face belied her words. She had worked with Simonova in Russia and knew her to be an incomparable artist.

He shrugged. “There is more money in those few hundred miles of the Amazon than in all of Europe put together. They paid Adelina Patti a thousand dollars to appear for one night! Everybody who has gone out there and managed to acquire a piece of land has made a killing with the rubber trees; Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, Germans. The English too. The richest man of all out there is English, so they say.”

“So why do you come to me for dancers? Why are all the young girls not queueing up to go out there with you?”