My jaw dropped.
Mary, a little concerned, continued, “That won’t be a problem, will it?”
I was astounded at the naivete of her question. Putting on a performance in Magdeburg would be hard enough. Swan Lake! That was pushing impossible.
“Mary!” I wailed. “Magdeburg? Where would we perform? Surely there is no suitable theater?”
Mary didn’t even bat an eyelid. She just waved her hands casually. “Didn’t some ballet company put on a performance in Red Square in Moscow once?”
I had to nod. Yes, the Kirov Ballet had put on such a performance.
“If the Russians can do it I’m sure your people will have no trouble.” Having established that my objections were of no importance, Mary went off on a tangent. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous to hold the performance in Hans Richter Square? Think of it, the people of Magdeburg watching a performance by your company in the shadow of the monument to the Hero of Wismar.”
I thought about it. The whole idea reeked of cheap theater. Also, I could see nothing but problems. The Kirov Ballet had at least limited themselves to selected scenes and used a bare stage. A production of Swan Lake, on the other hand, would be a logistical nightmare.
I could see that ideas were zipping through Mary’s mind, some to be accepted, others rejected. It was a pity I couldn’t listen in on the process and give an opinion before her flights of fancy committed my company to something we couldn’t deliver.
“Maybe we could schedule it to coincide with the unveiling of the Hans Richter memorial? No. That wouldn’t work. It would be better with a ballet featuring a suitably glorious hero.” Mary shook her head in negation at some of her mumbled thoughts. It was fascinating listening to her. I leaned into Harvey. My husband had been silent throughout Mary Simpson’s monologue. We exchanged mutually horrified looks.
“Damn. It’s a pity I’ve already committed us to Swan Lake, Bitty. Well, it’s too late to change that now.” Mary chewed her lower lip in a discreetly ladylike manner. “Next time we really must get together beforehand.”
Struck dumb at Mary’s audaciousness I could only nod in agreement. It really would be a good idea to get together to discuss things before any more commitments were made.
“The summer season is only a few months off, too,” Mary continued. “We must get together before I return to Magdeburg and discuss what you will need for the performance. And that’s another thing. You really should give some thought to moving your company to Magdeburg permanently. Not immediately, of course, but as soon as we can find you some suitable buildings you really must make the move.”
This time I actually managed to speak. “What? The high school auditorium has some of the best facilities of any theater in the world! Why would I want to move away from first class lighting, acoustics, and sound?”
“Bitty, you need to bring your performers to Magdeburg where they will be properly appreciated. The people in Grantville aren’t interested in regularly attending the ballet. Not enough of them, at least, to sustain a professional company. Yes, the high school auditorium has the best facilities in the world. But even the best facilities aren’t any good if you can’t fill enough seats often enough. You aren’t even able to pay your dancers a living wage, are you?”
Embarrassed, I shook my head. That was one of my biggest disappointments. In almost a year of operation my dancers were still dancing for love. The money I had been able to pay them was peanuts, barely enough to cover the costs they incurred training and performing. Even the money they were being paid for the season of Nutcracker came down to a measly hourly rate when you counted up all the hours of practice.
“Think about it, Bitty. In Magdeburg you will have the whole imperial court, visiting dignitaries, and various hangers-on as potential audiences. Not to mention what will soon be a little horde of nouveau riche merchants and industrialists looking to enhance their social status. They will appreciate your performances-well, attend them, anyway, in the case of some-as the artistic and cultural artifacts they are. And with that potential audience we should be able to afford an Imperial Theater that would be the envy of the world. You owe it to yourself, Bitty! You owe it to your dancers, and to the Art of Dance!”
How she managed to capitalize Art of Dance verbally I’ll never know, but she did.
“The Mother of Modern Ballet!” she went on enthusiastically, still capitalizing like mad. Then, frowning with reproval: “But not if you stay buried in this cultural backwater. If not for yourself, think of your dancers. Don’t they deserve the opportunities Magdeburg has to offer?”
Harvey saved me from answering. He drew my attention to the time. In only a few hours I was supposed to lead rehearsals for Saturday night’s performance. Begging Mary’s leave I stumbled out into the night, my arms latched securely to Harvey. Mary had left me a lot to think about. I owed it to my dancers to do the best I could for them. However, Mary was expecting too much. I was just a small-town dance teacher. How could I possibly take on the responsibilities Mary was heaping upon me? All I had wanted when I started out all those months ago was the chance to enjoy a night at the ballet. A chance to watch my Christmas performance of Nutcracker again.
I certainly hadn’t planned on becoming this universe’s Sergei Diaghilev!
PART III:
THE TROUBLE IN FRANCONIA
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
Ezekiel 37:7
Motherhood And Apple Pie,
While You’re At It
Virginia DeMarce
December 1632: Grantville, Thuringia
Arnold Bellamy looked at the assignment that the congress of the New United States had given the Special Commission on the Establishment of Freedom of Religion in the Franconian Prince-Bishoprics and the Prince-Abbey of Fulda. Its members were to go to the area that King Gustavus Adolphus had assigned to be administered by Grantville the previous autumn. They were to establish a headquarters at Wuerzburg. There were to be regional offices in Bamberg and Fulda. They were to hold hearings. In the course of these hearings, they were, basically, to explain a number of things to the civil down-time administrative personnel of these regions. The most important were, reduced to their essence:
1) Under the Constitution of the New United States, there is Separation of Church and State;
2) Religious Toleration is a Great Thing;
3) Burning Witches is a Bad Idea;
4) We Mean It; -and, also, added as a rider during a late afternoon committee meeting;
5) Voter Registration is Good for You.
Congress had passed it. Naturally, Congress expected someone else-in this case, as it happened, the Department of International Affairs-to figure out some way of actually doing it. Looking at the three newly appointed commissioners, Ed Piazza grinned. “See if you can instill a proper appreciation of motherhood and apple pie in them, while you’re at it. And good luck. I’m going to be busy with other projects for the next few months, so talk to Arnold Bellamy if you run into any problems. This is his baby, now.”
Bellamy frowned. He always found the bureaucratic acronym NUS rather unfortunate, since the German word Nuss meant “nut” and could be easily extrapolated to “nuts". Knowing how humans react to any opportunity to put down the enemy, he could see a “laugh at the interlopers” campaign coming. “They’re all nuts.”
* * *
The Special Commission, for all practical purposes, could be interpreted to mean the Grantville Commission to Force the Franconians to Accept the NUS’ Laws Establishing Freedom of Religion. It was one of those things Mike Stearns thought needed Ed’s personal attention quite a bit more than the upcoming Rudolstadt Colloquy, if only because the administration already established by the NUS probably wouldn’t appreciate being gifted with a special commission. Its very existence at least implied that they wouldn’t be doing their jobs right. Or that something, somehow, was lacking.
“I wish you were going to handle this, not Arnold Bellamy. It’s not that he’s hard to work with. He’s just . . .”
“ . . .reserved,” Ed said. “Reserved and still not entirely comfortable working with you.”
“Stiff,” Mike said. “Rigor mortis and all that.”
“It won’t get better unless you work with him. Arnold is perfectly competent. He had a different teaching style than I did, sure, but the students never really griped about it.” Ed thought a minute, “It’s likely, of course, that not even his wife ever calls him by a pet name. But this is no longer a few thousand people with an administration run by an Emergency Committee that you by and large picked because you knew them and – mostly at least, with a few exceptions like Quentin Underwood – liked them. It’s a country of nearly a million people. With an administrative staff comprised mainly of down-timers whom you have never met and may never meet face-to-face. Whom you probably will never meet face-to-face. The commissioners report to Arnold; Arnold reports to you, at least for as long as I’m otherwise occupied. Welcome to the bureaucracy, Mr. President.”
* * *
Arnold Bellamy, looking at the congressional resolution, cleared his throat and commented, “’Civil?’ Congress does understand that these were ecclesiastical principalities, don’t they? That the rulers of the three biggest ones were two Catholic bishops and a Catholic abbot? That the best one can say about the distinction between ‘civil’ administrations and ‘ecclesiastical’ administration over there is that it’s pretty vague?”
“Well,” Mike Stearns answered, “the down-timer delegates do, at least. On the other hand . . .”
“I know. The congress has a couple of Catholics among the down-timers. And for Grantville’s senator we have Becky, who’s Jewish. And if Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel ever showed up to take his seat in the House of Lords, otherwise known as the Senate, we would have a Calvinist. He, however, is chasing around northern Germany in command of an army unit. For all the rest, we’ve got Lutherans in the NUS Congress. For the simple reason that Lutherans are what we landed in the middle of the state church of almost every place that’s joined the NUS confederation: Badenburg, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Sommersburg, Sondershausen, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Eisenach, Saxe-Everyplace Else, you name it. Except for the transients, the refugees who’ve come in from outside because of the war, they’ve all been Lutheran for a century, give or take a couple of decades here and there.”
Mike Stearns sighed. “You know perfectly well what they thought they were voting for. They thought, no matter that it’s officially titled a Commission for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, that it’s really a Commission to Make Catholic Franconia Safe for Lutherans.”
“So does Gustavus Adolphus, for that matter, according to the letter he sent down. Our Captain-General thinks that it’s a grand idea. So does his chancellor, Oxenstierna.”