The Lost Ballet

  Chapter 5 – Seeds of the Production

  The four retired dancers sat on the edge of the stage at The Hall, eating scones and drinking tea. They felt depressed, and weren’t doing much talking. On one of the long folding tables behind them was a musical score for a ballet; not the Stravinsky score. But like the Stravinsky score, this one had never been produced on stage. Unlike the Stravinsky, it was young, only six months old, a baby waiting to take its first steps. This score had been written by two friends of theirs, a young Russian woman and an older American man. Selgey and Bart had played around with creating choreography for the music, and had produced some good stuff, and some not so good stuff. They were enthusiastic, but in learning mode. The composers had finished a first draft of the music, and had done some revisions, when the Russian woman was offered an opportunity to be in a movie in France. The couple had left Charleston a month earlier, and since then, progress on the choreography had slowed.

  Between bits of scone and sips of tea, the dancers now thought about the discovery of the Stravinsky score. This had the effect of dulling the light that had been shining on their own efforts to do the choreography for a new work. After all, Stravinsky is world renown. What was going to come out of the discovery of a lost ballet?

  Selgey hopped down off the stage and looked at the other three. She said, “God, what an unbelievable thing, finding the music in the desk. What are we going to do with it?” Selgey had not been part of the Hermitage heist team that stole the desk from a warehouse in Saint Petersburg, but over the last year or so, she and Bart had become close friends with those who had, and she now thought of herself as one of the team. Bart felt that way too. Which is why Selgey was cutting herself into the decision-making apparatus which would determine what to do with the Stravinsky score.

  A half mile away, Gwen and Roger played with their dog in the back yard, and asked themselves the same question. The Junes know a lot about art and antiques, and they know a lot about fine wine, and Roger knows something about private investigating, which he does when some interesting case comes his way. The Junes don’t know much about ballet, other than that they like going to performances, which they have done many times, at theaters in Europe and New York. They threw the ball around for the dog, and thought about the document that now sat on the Gromstov’s dining room table, smelling musty.

  The Gromstovs were in the Kiawah Island town offices, making another contribution to the new fire engine replacement fund. Their dog, the big, lovable, but dumb borzoi puppy, was lucky in that his master would let it out of the house regularly, where it ran for miles and miles on the Kiawah Island beach. Town regulations prohibit dogs off leash on the beach, and town police enforce the regulation. When the cops first encountered the puppy, it only weighed sixty pounds. They got it on a rope, figured out which house it came from, knocked on the beachfront patio door, and informed the wealthy residents with the thick Russian accents that the dog couldn’t run loose on the beach. When the beach patrol found the dog running loose the next day, they presented its owners with a $40 ticket. Henric did the math. If he got three tickets a week for the next ten years at $40 per, that would come to $67,200. He could afford that without even blinking. His dog was bred to run down wolves in Siberia. It had to run, right? Let it run.

  The Town of Kiawah Island also did the math. If they tripled the cost of the tickets, at the end of a ten year term, they would have collected $201,600 from this resident, which just happens to be the cost of a new fire engine. The Town is used to dealing with rich residents, and is very skillful at coming to mutually beneficial financial arrangements. In this case, the dog pretended to chase wolves down the Kiawah Island beach on a regular basis, and the fire engine replacement fund grew on an exactly equivalent basis. Now that’s cooperation. Helstof wrote out a check for $400, which covered the last ten tickets the police had issued.

  When they got home, they let the dog out the front sliding glass doors, and it took off down the beach, looking either for some wolves to chase, or some kids to play with. They sat down at the dining room table and looked at the pages of the book that was covered in squiggles and quarter notes and arpeggios and clefs. They had found the document in the desk they had gotten as part of the Hermitage caper, and so technically it was theirs. But the Gromstovs knew that possession of the desk and the document was the result of a team effort, so they felt they were looking at group property. What to do with it had to be a group decision.

  Helstof watched her husband as he sat staring at the score. Something was going on with him, and she didn’t know what it was. He never really had been into art in any significant way. With his high level position in the Russian bureaucracy, they had been to more than their share of cultural events, but these, for Henric, had been more of a duty than a pleasure. Something had captured his attention, and Helstof waited to find out exactly what it was.

  He looked up at her and said, “Remember the dinner at McCrady’s, when Gale ran around the private dining room in her underwear for half an hour?” She nodded. “And the maître d' kept trying to get in, but the sommelier kept the door locked, because Gwen told him if he let anyone in to see what was going on, she would shoot him?” Helstof nodded again, remembering the dinner well. Gale was a friend of the Junes, a fashionista of the highest and wildest order. Get a few glasses of champagne into her, and you were guaranteed an interesting evening. Henric said, “Remember what else happened that night? Selgey and Bart?” Helstof couldn’t forget that either. Gale wasn’t the only one who shed clothes there in the back room of the restaurant. Selgey, the retired American Ballet Theater prima ballerina, had gotten into the spirit of the event by springing onto the long dining room table, posing gracefully, and peeling off her cashmere sweater. Unlike Gale, she wasn’t wearing underwear. Bart decided he had to match his wife’s lithe demonstration of the dancer’s prowess, and with one twitch of his massive leg muscles, he was on the table next to her. Selgey had had to take a single step towards the table in order to launch and achieve blastoff trajectory. Bart didn’t. He stood perfectly still on the floor, and then he was up on the table, no step necessary.

  “That was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And I’m not talking about Selgey’s knockers, though those were nice. I’m talking about her and Bart just standing there on the floor, and then the next second, they were on the table, perfectly balanced, perfectly posed, no exertion evident. Amazing. I loved that.”

  Helstof said, “And they’re retired. Think of what they used to do when they were at their peak.”

  “This book here, with all the notes in it, was written by a great man, a Russian. Written a hundred years ago. And we’re the only ones in the whole world that have seen it, and know it exists. We gotta do something about this. We gotta get involved in making some stuff happen like what Selgey and Bart did that night after dinner. Only bigger. Lots bigger. Big as Stravinsky. Big as Russia. Can we do that?” He looked at his wife.

  She said, “What’s it take to make something great happen? First, it takes talent. We have that here, in the score. We have Stravinsky. Second, we have Selgey and Bart. When they were working, they were among the best dancers on the planet. They know about dancing and choreography. So we have talent there. What else does it take? Money. How much are we worth today, anyway?”

  Henric sat back and thought for a moment. He said, “I have no idea. I used to keep track, but when we started coming to Charleston, I kind of lost interest. We’re worth less than four years ago, that’s for sure. Everyone’s lost money since then. We’re worth between one and two billion.”

  “What are you planning on doing with it?”

  “Well, after I learn to sail better, we can buy a bigger boat.”

  Helstof didn’t ask why a 52 foot Beneteau that sleeps six in luxurious comfort wasn’t enough boat for him. She knew when to clam up. “So, wh
at else? A bigger boat doesn’t cost a billion dollars.”

  “Ah, I got no plans for the rest of the money. I’m pretty happy here, hanging out with the Junes. Whenever I’m around them, something interesting seems to happen. Not just interesting. That’s not the right word. Something unusual, and fun. What do you want to do with the money?”

  “Umm, maybe buy some new shoes. When I’m around Gale, I feel underdressed.”

  The rich Russians sat thinking about this state of affairs. They also kept looking at the book on the table. By now the musty smell had dissipated. The object was fascinating, even though it was written in a language neither of them understood. After five minutes of silence, Henric rose and went into the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. He poured and they sipped. He looked at his wife and said, “I guess we know what we’re gonna do with the money.”

  She said, “I guess we do.”