At the beginning of May 1997, I flew from Houston to London. The Royal Ballet
was then based at the studios in Barons Court, in a cramped and
uncomfortable building. When I entered the studio I recognised some of the
dancers I had performed with at galas in previous years, but I could not see
any of the directors anywhere. The class began, we finished our barre work
and still nobody had come to see me. I had almost forgotten I was
auditioning, when, just before the end of the class, a well-dressed man of
noble bearing, with expressive eyes, and a sweet-faced woman with completely
white hair turned up. Iwas going tohave to show them what I could do in the
15 minutes remaining.
“Come on, you bastard!” I told myself. I did the exercises as well as I could,
the pirouettes and the jumps, and at the end of the class I walked over to
the two people and stretched out my hand.
“Hi, I’m Carlos,” I introduced myself. “Yes, I know. I am Anthony Dowell, and
this is my assistant director, Monica Mason.”
They looked me long and hard in the eye and then led me into the director’s
office. I was nervous. If I was not accepted by the Royal, I would have to
remain at Houston Ballet, which I did not want. Worse than that, if neither
the American Ballet Theatre nor the Royal wanted me, I would have to accept
that I was not good enough to dance with the major-league companies, which
would mean that all the accolades the critics had piled up on me were no
more than lies.
“So, how do you see yourself in the company?” Dowell asked, once we were
sitting in his office.
I told him I had danced with the English National Ballet five years previously
and that ever since then I had aspired to dancing with the Royal Ballet. I
now felt I had sufficient experience to be a principal dancer with the
company. I also added that, if it were possible, I would like to dance
occasionally with the Houston Ballet, because it was a company that had done
so much for my career. He listened to me carefully, then offered me a
contract for the season that would begin in September 1998. I left the
studios flying with happiness.
I travelled to Havana to give the news to my family in person. I arrived
around midnight and caught a taxi to my mother’s apartment in Vedado. It was
a Wednesday and the moon was in its final quarter. The street was deserted
except for four men sitting playing dominoes underneath a lamp post. I
looked at the buildings, the washing strung across the windows, the dogs
roaming the street. There was no mistaking it, I was home.
My mother opened the door. “Yuli, my baby! Quick Marilin, Berta . .. Yuli’s
here!” I hugged her tightly, savouring the smell of her. It was the scent of
the countryside, as though she had been born among the orange groves. Nobody
smelt like my mother. It made me feel as though I was nine years old again.
Marilin ran out from the bedroom. “Let me see you! How white you’ve become.
You’ve even got straight hair. Michael Jackson himself!”
She was as pretty as ever, with not a wrinkle in sight. I noticed the swelling
belly beneath her blouse. “Yes, I’m nearly seven months gone, and the oldest
is two, but you never call, so I can’t keep you up to date with my
activities.”
I walked slowly over to the kitchen. My things had vanished, and the whole
place was so different from when I had left it that it looked as though I
had never lived there. I had a nephew I had never met and a nephew or niece
whose birth I would not witness. I had spent so long away from home that I
felt the only thing that united me with my family was my unconditional love
for them.
The next day the disillusion set in. It started from the moment I went
downstairs and saw that the building was ugly and dirty, and that people had
different faces, older and careworn. I thought perhaps it was me who had
changed. Nothing seemed to fit with my memories; the trees were stunted, the
houses ruined, ragged vagrants prowled about on street corners. It seemed to
me that people had relinquished any sense of decency in order to survive.
Girls as young as 16 walked along with tourists who were old enough to be
their grandfathers. The worst thing was when children asked me for money, as
if I was a foreigner.
I was not welcome inside the headquarters of the Cuban National Ballet because
I had asked for leave to continue my career full-time in Houston. The few
people who recognised me crossed the road to the opposite pavement as if I
was some kind of deserter. I was not a deserter. I had maintained very good
relations with my country.
In Los Pinos, our old neighbourhood, I found overgrown gardens and dilapidated
houses. There was nobody there I knew. Most of my friends had left for the
USA. Candida, our neighbour, and Yolanda, whose mangoes I used to steal, had
moved out of the area. The Street Plan competitions and the communal parties
were no longer celebrated. The scissor-sharpener and the other strolling
street vendors had all disappeared. People no longer sold their homemade
products, and the scent of ripe fruit, so characteristic of the
neighbourhood, had vanished. Now everyone just smelt of old age.
When I knocked at the door of our house, a man of 79 answered it. His hair was
completely grey now, lending him a rather distinguished appearance, like one
of the great prophets. He did not smile, but his ash-coloured eyes, still as
hard as ever, narrowed into slits, indicating that he was pleased to see me.
A part of me wanted to hug him, but that was my weaker side. I squeezed his
hands tightly and gave him a couple of pats on the shoulder. He remained
silent.
After I had given my father his presents, we sat on the balcony for so long,
it seemed like a century of silence. We had so much to say to each other,
but neither of us knew where to begin. As dusk began to fall and my eyes
roamed around that unfamiliar neighbourhood, my sense of displacement grew
even stronger. The search for success had snatched away the most precious
thing a person can ever ask for: a place to belong. Suddenly, my impulse to
conquer the world was completely meaningless because my worst nightmare had
been realised. I had become a citizen of nowhere.
— © Carlos Acosta 2007. Extracted from No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer’s
Story, published by HarperCollins on October 8 at £20.
