Death in the Fifth Position (Peter Cutler Sargeant II, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Peter Cutler Sargeant II

Vidal, Gore

 
9780307741424: Death in the Fifth Position (Peter Cutler Sargeant II, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307741427 ISBN 13: 9780307741424
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

In Death in the Fifth Position, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is hired by a ballet company on the eve of a major upcoming performance.   Handling the press seems to be no problem, but when a rising star in the company is killed during the performance—dropped from thirty feet above the stage, crashing to her death in a perfect fifth position—Sargent has a real case on his hands.  As he ingratiates himself with the players behind the scenes (especially one lovely young ballerina), he finds that this seemingly graceful ballet company is performing their most dramatic acts behind the curtain.  There are sharp rivalries, sordid affairs, and shady characters.  Sargent, though, has no trouble staying on point and proving that the ballerina killer is no match for his keen eye and raffish charm.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-three novels, five plays, two memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two hundred essays. His United States: Essays, 1952–1992 received the National Book Award.

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CHAPTER ONE

1

"You see," said Mr. Washburn. "We've been having trouble."

I nodded. "What sort of trouble?"

He looked vaguely out the window. "Oh, one thing and the other."

"That's not much to go on, is it?" I said gently; it never does to be stern with a client before one is formally engaged.

"Well, there's the matter of these pickets."

I don't know why but the word "picket" at this moment suggested small gnomes hiding in the earth. So I said, "Ah."

"They are coming tonight," he added.

"What time do they usually come?" I asked, getting into the spirit of the thing.

"I don't know. We've never had them before."

Never had them before, I wrote in my notebook, just to be doing something.

"You were very highly recommended to me," said Mr. Washburn, in a tone which was almost accusing; obviously I had given him no cause for confidence.

"I've handled a few big jobs, from time to time," I said quietly, exuding competence.

"I want you for the rest of the season, the New York season. You are to handle all our public relations, except for the routine stuff which this office does automatically: sending out photographs of the dancers and so on. Your job will be to work with the columnists, that kind of thing . . . to see we're not smeared."

"Why do you think you might be smeared?" The psychological moment had come for a direct question.

"The pickets," said Mr. Washburn with a sigh. He was a tall heavy man with a bald pink head which glittered as though it had been waxed; his eyes were gray and shifty: as all honest men's eyes are supposed to be according to those psychologists who maintain that there is nothing quite so dishonest as a level, unwavering gaze.

I finally understood him. "You mean you are going to be picketed?"

"That's what I said."

"Bad labor relations ?"

"Communism."

"You mean the Communists are going to picket you?"

The impresario of the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet looked at me sadly, as though once again his faith had been unjustified. Then he began at the beginning. "I called you over here this morning because I was told that you were one of the best of the younger public relations men in New York, and I prefer to work with young people. As you mayor may not know, my company is going to premiere an important new ballet tonight. The first major modern ballet we have presented in many years and the choreographer is a man named Jed Wilbur."

"I'm a great admirer of his," I said, just to show that I knew something about ballet. As a matter of fact, it isn't possible to be around the theater and not know of Wilbur. He is the hottest choreographer in town at the moment, the most fashionable . . . not only in ballet but also in musical comedies.

"Wilbur has been accused of being a Communist several times but since he has already been cleared by two boards I have every confidence in him. The United Veterans Committee, however, have not. They wired me yesterday that if we did his new ballet they would picket every performance until it was withdrawn."

"That's bad," I said, frowning, making it sound worse than it was: after all I had a good job at stake. "May I see their telegram?" Mr. Washburn handed it to me and I read:

To Ivan Washburn Director Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet Company Metropolitan Opera House New York City: WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT JED WILBUR IS A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND THAT COMMA TO PROTECT OUR CHERISHED WAY OF LIFE AND THOSE IDEALS WHICH SO FINELY FORGED A NATION OUT OF THE WILDERNESS COMMA THE SUBVERSIVE WORK OF ARTISTS LIKE WILBUR SHOULD BE BANNED PERIOD SHOULD YOU DISREGARD THIS PLEA TO PROTECT OUR AMERICAN WAY WE WILL BE FORCED TO PICKET EVERY PERFORMANCE OF SAID WILBUR'S WORK PERIOD IN A TRUE DEMOCRACY THERE IS NO PLACE FOR A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION ON GREAT ISSUES CORDIALLY ABNER S. FLEER SECRETARY.

"A poignant composition," I said.

"We've had a bad season so far this year. We're the fifth ballet company to arrive in town this spring and even though we're the original Russian ballet it's not been easy to fill the Met. Wilbur is our ace-in-the-hole. It's his first ballet for this company. It's his first new work in over a year. Everyone is going to be on hand tonight . . . and nothing must go wrong. That will be your job, too, by the way: to publicize the premiere."

"If I'd had a few weeks of preparation I could have got Life to cover the performance," I said with that modesty which characterizes my profession.

Washburn was not impressed. "In any case, I'm told that you've got a good many contacts among the columnists. They're the people who make opinion, for us at least. You've got to convince them that Wilbur is as pure as . . ."

"The driven snow," I finished, master that I am of the worn cliché, "But is he?"

"Is he what?"

"Pure as . . . I mean is he a Communist?"

"How in the name of God should I know? He could be an anarchist for all I care. The only thing I'm interested in is a successful season. Besides, what has politics to do with Eclipse?

"With what?"

"Eclipse is the name of the new ballet. I want you to go over to the Met and watch the dress rehearsal at two thirty. You'll be able to get some idea of the company then . . . meet the cast and so on. Meet Wilbur, too; he's full of ideas on how to handle this . . . too damn many ideas."

"Then I am officially employed?"

"As of this minute . . . for the rest of the season, two weeks altogether. If we're still having trouble by the time we go on tour I'd like you to go with us as far as Chicago . . . if that's agreeable."

"We'll see," I said.

"Fine." Mr. Washburn rose and so did I. "You'll probably want to make some preparations between now and two-thirty. You can use the office next to mine . . . Miss Ruger will show you which one."

"That will be perfect," I said. We shook hands solemnly.

I was halfway out the door when Mr. Washburn said, "I think I should warn you that ballet dancers are very temperamental people. Don't take them too seriously. Their little quarrels are always a bit louder than life." Which, in the light of what happened later, was something of an understatement.

2

Until my interview with Ivan Washburn I could take ballet or leave it alone and since in earlier days I was busy writing theater reviews for Milton Haddock of the New York Globe, I left it alone: besides, the music critic always handled ballet and what with doing Mr. Haddock's work as well as my own I had very little time for that sort of thing, between eight-thirty and eleven anyway. Mr. Haddock, God knows, is a fine critic and a finer man and it is a fact that his reviews in the Globe were more respected than almost anyone else's; they should have been since I wrote nearly all of them between 1947 and 1949 at which latter date I was separated from the Globe, as we used to say in the army. Not that I am implying Mr. Haddock, who was writing about the theater the year I was born, couldn't do just as well as I did . . . he could, but there is a limit to the amount of work you can accomplish on Scotch whisky, taken without water or ice, directly from the bottle if he was in the privacy of his office or from a discreet prohibition flask if we were at the theater: he on the aisle fifth row from the stage and I just behind him in the sixth row, with instructions to poke the back of his neck if he snored too loud.

In a way, I had a perfect setup; Mr. Haddock was fond of me in a distant fatherly way (he often had a struggle recalling my name) and I was allowed all the pleasure of unedited authorship for he never changed a line of my reviews on those occasions when he read them at all. The...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307741427
ISBN 13 
9780307741424
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
228
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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