I was annoyed at her crassness. Later, however, I became better acquainted with her. She lived in the same hotel as I did with her two daughters, who were members of the Folies Bergère ballet The younger, thirteen, was the première danseuse, very pretty and talented, but the older one, fifteen, had neither talent nor looks. The mother was French, buxom and about forty, married to a Scotsman who was living in England. After we opened at the Folies Bergère, she came to me and apologized for being so abrupt. That was the beginning of a very friendly relationship. I was continually invited to their rooms for tea, which they made in their bedroom.
When I think back, I was incredibly innocent. One afternoon when the children were out and Mama and I were alone her attitude became strange and she began to tremble as she poured the tea. I had been talking about my hopes and dreams, my loves and disappointments, and she became quite moved. As I got up to put my tea-cup on the table, she came over to me.
‘You are sweet,’ she said, cupping my face with her hands and looking intensely into my eyes. ‘Such a nice boy as you should not be hurt.’ Her gaze became inverse, strange and hypnotic, and her voice trembled. ‘Do you know, I love you like a son,’ she said, still holding my face in her hands. Then slowly her face came to mine, and she kissed me.
‘Thank you,’ I said, sincerely – and innocently kissed her back. She continued transfixing me with her gaze, her lips trembling and her eyes glazed, then, suddenly checking herself, she went about pouring a fresh cup of tea. Her manner had changed and a certain humour played about her mouth. ‘You are very sweet,’ she said, ‘I like you very much.’
She confided in me about her daughters. ‘The young one is a very good girl,’ she said, ‘but the older must be watched; she is becoming a problem.’
After the show she would invite me to supper in her large bedroom in which she and her younger daughter slept, and before returning to my room I would kiss the mother and her younger daughter good-night; I would then have to go through a small room where the elder daughter slept. One night as I was passing through the room, she beckoned to me and whispered: ‘Leave your door open and I will come up when the family is asleep.’ Believe it or not, I threw her back on her bed indignantly and stalked out of the room. At the end of their engagement at the Folies Bergère, I heard that the elder daughter, still in her fifteenth year, had run off with a dog-trainer, a heavy-set German of sixty.
But I was not as innocent as I appeared. Members of the troupe and I occasionally spent a night carousing through the bordels and doing all the hoydenish things that youth will do. One night, after drinking several absinthes, I got into a fight with an ex-lightweight prize-fighter named Ernie Stone. It started in a restaurant, and after the waiters and the police had separated us he said: ‘I’ll see you at the hotel,’ where we were both staying. He had the room above me, and at four in the morning I rolled home and knocked at his door.
‘Come in,’ he said briskly, ‘and take off your shoes so we won’t make a noise.’
Quietly we stripped to the waist, then faced each other. We hit and ducked for what seemed an interminable length of time. Several times he hit me square on the chin, but to no effect. ‘I thought you could punch,’ I sneered. He made a lunge, missed and smashed his head against the wall, almost knocking himself out. I tried to finish him off, but my punches were weak. I could hit him with impunity, but I had no strength behind my punch. Suddenly, I received a blow full in the mouth which shook my front teeth, and that sobered me up. ‘Enough,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose my teeth.’ He came over and embraced me, then looked in the mirror: I had cut his face to ribbons. My hands were swollen like boxing gloves, and blood was on the ceiling, on the curtains and on the walls. How it got there, I do not know.
During the night the blood trickled down the side of my mouth and across my neck. The little première danseuse, who used to bring me up a cup of tea in the morning, screamed, thinking I had committed suicide. And I have never fought anyone since.
One night the interpreter came to me saying that a celebrated musician wanted to meet me, and would I go to his box? The invitation was mildly interesting, for in the box with him was a most beautiful, exotic lady, a member of the Russian Ballet. The interpreter introduced me. The gentleman said that he had enjoyed my performance and was surprised to see how young I was. At these compliments I bowed politely, occasionally taking a furtive glance at his friend. ‘You are instinctively a musician and a dancer,’ said he.
Feeling there was no reply to this compliment other than to smile sweetly, I glanced at the interpreter and bowed politely. The musician stood up and extended his hand and I stood up. ‘Yes,’ he said, shaking my hand, ‘you are a true artist.’ After we left I turned to the interpreter: ‘Who was the lady with him?’
‘She is a Russian ballet dancer, Mademoiselle —’ It was a very long and difficult name.
‘And what was the gentleman’s name?’ I asked.
‘Debussy,’ he answered, ‘the celebrated composer.’
‘Never heard of him,’ I remarked.
It was the year of the famous scandal and trial of Madame Steinheil, who was tried and found not guilty of murdering her husband; the year of the sensational ‘pom-pom’ dance that showed couples indecently rotating together in
