Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby

For Nadia, Geza first develops a choreography highlighting her suppleness and speed to a military march in four-four time. Béla and Márta reject it. In his second version, to an air from Scheherazade, he instructs her to increase the languid droop of her wrists, to make her pelvis flexible and to work on the oriental tilt of her head. Geza doesn’t even need to wait for Nadia to finish to realize his mistake. Trying desperately to appear sensual, the little girl barely wiggles her hips and only looks lopsided. She casts almost embarrassed glances at them, as if all she wants is to go and put her clothes on. They thank her, send her off for a shower and to bed.

For a moment Béla says nothing, they are on their own in the gym, then, well-nigh incoherent with rage, he accuses Geza of wanting to sabotage Nadia with his crap, you make me sick, and when Geza threatens to pull out there and then, he begs him to find something else, anything rather than having to keep those horrors, I’m sorry, Geza, I need you, so much, so much, I want something tailor-made for Nadia at Montreal, something really, really new! Still clasping his cigarette, he tries out a few steps, singing to himself, Like this, you see, perhaps in this style, a heavy transvestite mimicking childhood, ‘something light, enchanting, tralala’.

Friends again, the two men go in search of salami and tomatoes in the kitchen and, sitting at the big Formica table, review the competition. The Soviets of Ludmilla’s generation, coached by Bolshoi ballet dancers, who slip a desolate port de bras or two into some perfect acrobatics to an air by Tchaikosvky, that’s old hat. They need to look instead at what Olga does. Olga who, in Munich, tied ribbons in her hair. She wrinkles up her nose like a comical hamster, simpers before launching into a skill (E) which, if she messes it up, will break her neck; with her, intensity and drama have become old fashioned. Olga, miming a memory of childhood she won’t let go of, because, as Béla remarks, she will soon be twenty-one.

And Nadia, what is there to say about Nadia? It’s true she fascinates thanks to her technique, she excels at that. But how long will it take the Russians to find one similar, a Super-E? A few months? And if you had only three adjectives to describe her, what would you say about Nadia? Serious-perfect-imperturbable? Impeccable-precise-impressive? What she needs is a ‘trick’, something fucking big, really special, like a signature, you see? Something simple, they tell each other, by now completely drunk. But none of those stupid tricks for fat old ladies, eh, you’re not going to dirty my smooth-cheeked squirrel, Béla insists, laughing when they finally say goodnight, and Geza goes to bed without a single fresh idea apart from one certainty: it is embarrassing to see Nadia wiggle her hips. It’s embarrassing, ridiculous, to see Nadia waving her arms coquettishly through the air: she needs to be seen climbing a tree or running along a beach, opening Christmas presents and clapping her hands, Nadia is the age the others are pretending to be, flimsily disguised as little girls, trying to ward off the very unsporting desire they arouse, their chests emphasized by the elastic fabric.

Geza searches. For weeks he experiments. Nadia skimps on her schooling and her rest periods. They try different types of music, cast them off like unsuitable garments, no, those folk songs and waltzes are just too hackneyed. Dan the pianist rummages in his bag, comes up with a tune a friend has brought back from abroad: ‘Young Americans’ by David Bowie. What if the judges thought this was too risqué? Another no. That afternoon they spend hours getting nowhere, Dan has a cigarette in his left hand, while with his free hand, almost as an afterthought, to relax a bit, he plays the tune ‘Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’, a charleston from 1925. Nadia, who for lunch is drinking some lemonade, is sitting cross-legged on the big floor mat that is so threadbare in parts it’s hard to see the white line marking the performance square. She starts nodding her head to the rhythm, then stands up in front of the pianist and to amuse him begins to make exaggeratedly jerky gestures as if she is in a silent film. She advances towards Béla, stamping her heels on the floor, arms swinging. She is quite funny, far more than she usually allows herself to be with them, she is playacting to lighten the atmosphere, but above all, Geza thinks dreamily as he watches her, she is adorable. Unbearably cute. You feel like pinching her cheek, slapping her bottom and sending her out to perform again, and again. From that moment on, he composes with her as the starting point. He re-engineers very little of what she does. There’s not much for him to adjust, she has got it already. Once the ‘fussy stuff’ – that’s what Béla calls the dance steps – are out of the way, he sprinkles the choreography with acrobatic skills that as yet have no name, invents what he dreams for her at the same time as he instructs her on the movements he requires; she succeeds in doing what no one ever dared think she would accept.

She falls. Flat on her back/her front/almost on her head, and one morning he rushes over to her, frightened she might have concussion. The speed with which she escapes from his arms and holds out her hands for him to lift her up again… They bind up her ankles. Her Achilles tendon is swollen, an excrescence protected by foam held in place with Scotch tape, the stigmata from the number of times she has struck the lower bar with her foot. Her knees fill with liquid as a reaction to all the repeated shocks, her joints are covered with patches of hard skin. They have to be careful that the open blisters on her hands don’t get infected by dust from the floor or the chalk. Her body–weight ratio is so perfect that when she runs to leap into backward tumbles you can’t quite believe her feet are even touching the ground. Dan complains that Nadia is always getting ahead of the music in her first diagonal. Follow her, he is told. Stay with her. As the games draw nearer, no one from outside is allowed into the gym; the doors are locked. They invent names for the newly invented skills, the Super-E is baptized the ‘Comăneci salto’, a birth celebrated officially at an impromptu party at Béla’s place, where he gives Nadia a new doll for her collection.

‘I’m not calling too late am I, Nadia?’

‘No, it’s OK. I’m sorry, but I haven’t had time to read the most recent pages.’

‘Don’t worry. Look, I saw a documentary yesterday. The commentator says this, and I quote: “At the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968, it’s true Věra Čáslavská was a very beautiful woman, but one never had the impression she could hurt herself if she fell.” Whereas at Munich in 1972, Olga gave him goosebumps because she was so pretty and so young and because for the first time ever in a gym, people were frightened. For her, for her life. To hear veteran journalists getting excited by danger makes me think… is it a must to have little girls flirting with an accident? There’s something… pornographic… about it… And… hello, are you still there? Do you think I’m exaggerating?’

‘…No. Let’s talk about it later. About the risk. As soon as you’ve got beyond my childhood. I wish you a very good night.’