‘He’s here for just one night?’ I was accustomed to visitors turning up at the gym. Some of them were world-class athletes who were perfecting some routine. Others wished to train for a routine that was beyond them, and wanted Jean-Luc to help them achieve a breakthrough. Or, more seriously, they required remedial work after some injury.
This secrecy was different. ‘I can ask Father if we can watch if you like,’ Thierry said.
I followed him past the sign and into the gym. Jean-Luc was taking the visiting gymnast through some conditioning and stretch exercises. Thierry spoke to him and pointed me out. Jean-Luc hesitated and asked the gymnast. At first he shook his head, but then he made a small moue, okay.
The gymnast went back to the conditioning and stretching, Jean-Luc speaking quietly and insistently to him. ‘No, you must continue! Thirty more repetitions! No, is still not enough! Fifty more stretches so that when you pump up you can reach maximum chest expansion! Your body is not at the level it needs to be to guarantee the excellence of your performance! Comprends?’
Not until Jean-Luc was satisfied did he allow the gymnast to complete the warm-up. And as he stood, Jean-Luc was measuring the gymnast’s chest, biceps, thighs and manipulating his feet and massaging the ankles. ‘Okay? We get in the harness now and you show me what you do.’
The gymnast turned, lifted his arms, and Jean-Luc fitted the harness to him. ‘Yes, Maître,’ he nodded. It was that action of lifting his arms that allowed me to recognise him:
He was the famous aerialist, Maurice Sernas, of Le Cirque du Monde, one of the most spectacular international circuses in the world.
‘What is Sernas doing in New Zealand?’ I asked Thierry, as I watched the aerialist approach a hanging rope. I’d noticed the rope many times before, but it was usually rolled tightly within the rafters.
‘He’s halfway through a tour with his new act, Boléro, for the Grand Chapiteau, the big top, and he has struck trouble with the performance. Circus acts depend on split-second timing and if one performer is out of synch he can destroy the entire choreography of the others. So Sernas has come to Father for a diagnosis.’
‘Why Jean-Luc?’ I asked.
‘Sernas is a former student of my father’s,’ Thierry answered, looking at me as if I was stupid. ‘Jean-Luc is the world expert in the corde lisse.’
The corde lisse!
It is considered the finest and bravest of all the aerial disciplines. Although the trapeze is still a main attraction, no circus today would even think of putting on a programme that did not have on its bill the best corde lisse exponent it could afford.
Climbing the suspended rope by a series of fluid wraps, hoists and pulls, and every now and then executing beautiful release moves and fluid acrobatics, the aerialist reached the top of the rope.
And then, down he (or she) would come. The suspended rope was an axis by which the aerialist described angles on a vertical plane. The vocabulary depended on the theme of the performance, and this was where the corde lisse reached the heights of athleticism and enchantment: anything was possible as the aerialist wrapped and unwrapped from the cord and described astounding arabesques in the air. You could be as athletic, artistic and imaginative as you wished.
The rumours were true, then: Jean-Luc had once been an aerialist. In France he ran off to join a Russian circus, and as a young man attained fame for his daring and virtuosity on the corde lisse. The circus had toured the world, including Australia. The troupe had taken a flight to Auckland, one of the cities scheduled in the tour.
You must have heard the story, it was in all the newspapers: they were stranded when one of the directors ran off with the takings. Jean-Luc and the other performers managed to get back to Europe but he never forgot his sojourn in New Zealand.
Ah, yes, New Zealand had always been regarded as a place where Baby Austins and planes with propellers went to die. At the end of his career, still a young man, Jean-Luc drifted down to that well at the bottom of the world, married a New Zealand girl and settled in Auckland. He had never been forgotten by circus colleagues who continued to send him their budding aerialists.
Or, as in Sernas’ case, sought him out when they were in trouble.
‘We begin,’ said Jean-Luc.
Sernas gripped the rope, the gym resounded with Ravel’s Boléro, and, to the insinuating and insistent rhythm of a snare-drum, Sernas went into action: he hoisted himself up with a front flip, snapped into a hip wrap knot, and by a series of other manoeuvres he kept climbing.
I’d never seen anything as masculine and beautiful. As Sernas hoisted himself further — sometimes deliberately unwrapping himself so that he fell a few metres, causing me to blanch — Jean-Luc shouted approval and guidance. ‘Yes, Sernas, good! No, Sernas, inhale! Yes, Sernas, excellent body extension! No, Sernas, tighten the solar plexus! Yes, parfait!’
The music mounted, seeming to climb with Sernas, and it was at the height of its passionate and percussive rhapsodic zenith when he reached the top of the rope and then … oh …
He launched himself down into an increasing wider and wider number of revolutions, toe drops, holds and spins.
My heart was in my mouth, the routine was so … spellbinding and breathtaking.
I happened to look at Jean-Luc and saw him give a slight shake of his head. ‘He pushes his technique. Why?’ Even so, Jean-Luc greeted Sernas exuberantly. While Sernas was recovering, they went into a huddle and I knew that Jean-Luc was giving him notes.
‘But what is wrong then, Maître?’ Sernas asked. ‘Why do I feel this great sense of — ’ He couldn’t find the words.
Jean-Luc interrupted him. ‘Two problems only. The first is easily fixed. You must extend the time you take for your warm-ups. After all, ten years have gone by in your career, oui? What you came by naturally as a boy must be worked harder for, now that you are a man. The warm-ups are two-thirds of the iceberg that the audience do not see. But you need the conditioning for the one-third that they do see!’
He chuckled, patting Sernas lightly on the back. Then his face became serious. ‘Regarding the second problem, I am not sure … But go through your routine again and I will try to locate it.’
As he spoke, his eyes gleamed, yes, as if he’d realised how to find it.
The music began again, provocative, demanding. Sernas gripped the rope.
Jean-Luc turned to Thierry. ‘Switch off the lights,’ he said.
Sernas looked at Jean-Luc, shocked. ‘I won’t be able to see what I am doing,’ he said.
‘Sernas,’ Jean-Luc commanded, sharp, peremptory. ‘Pay attention! Carry on.’
While Sernas went into his routine, Jean-Luc moved about purposefully, setting small arc lights — maybe four or five — on the floor of the gym, training them on Sernas. Then I saw that they were not focused on Sernas, but on the rope itself.
During the run-through, it was not Sernas that Jean-Luc was watching but the rope.
What was that? I thought I saw something. The second problem: the rope quivering, as if too much stress was being put on it. And when Sernas reached the top, the quivering was still visible, as if he and the rope were fighting each other.
Sernas descended; Jean-Luc handed him a towel. Sernas looked at the older man and I thought he was about to weep, but Jean-Luc smiled reassuringly at him. ‘I bow to you,’ Jean-Luc began. ‘When you first came to me you had the heart of a cub and now … you have the heart of a lion. You are the greatest exponent of the corde lisse in the world. And now I will tell you what the second problem is … and it is more serious than the first.’