Chapter 8 #2
Then, a round of applause from the assembled press pulled him from his reveries.
Kim was standing up to address them, Laia at his side.
With the director’s attention now outward, on the audience of reporters, Dídac was free to observe him again.
The man’s body was tall and muscular, the light slacks he was wearing hugged while showing off a spectacular ass.
Dídac found himself wondering who had been in there.
Did the man have a lover or partner waiting for him back in Melbourne?
Very little information about Kim Delatour’s personal life was available on the web.
You might have thought he was straight if not for him having pulled together a yearly production for Melbourne Pride from 2015 up until 2020, which was only curtailed by Covid.
It was during the Covid confinement that he had started writing The Swan.
This was pretty much what he was saying and Laia was translating right now.
But Dídac had already looked all of this up online, and knew the man’s biography well.
What he didn’t know was anything about the guy’s personal life.
His speech had now turned to Catalonia, causing Dídac’s ears to prick up.
He was saying how when deciding on the perfect country to stage The Swan for the sixth time, he had had to engage in very little internal debate.
Had he used that word “country” to acknowledge that he knew that Catalonia thought of itself as that within the state of Spain?
Where else but the country (there it was again) that produced the world’s best cava?
No champagne faux pas this time—he had quickly learned his stuff.
The guy was nothing if not a consummate diplomat.
In that moment, Dídac saw through him. He had almost been caught, but the reality, plain to see, was that the guy was a worthless sleaze.
A snake-oil salesman. Dídac wanted zero more to do with him.
Even so, Dídac joined in the applause that the press were washing over Delatour. Then suddenly, it was his, Felipa and Domènec’s turn to give the press something quotable. Dídac had been thinking about what he would say, something made up, obviously. He wasn’t a brilliant actor for nothing.
However, suddenly he was standing there, before the lights, facing another audience—an audience of press, but an audience none the less. And he relaxed. This was his element, his natural milieu.
“When I was in my final year of high school,” he found himself saying, “I was trying to decide on my career between becoming a chef or becoming a teacher.
They were two totally conflicting and contrasting career choices, yet each one represented certain values that were fundamental to who I was at that time in my life.
“To me cooking meant creativity, sharing and giving something to others. It was a primary activity that every human being needed in order to live healthily, and so I thought it would be a worthy path to pursue in my life and career.
“Teaching was also giving and sharing, but rather than stopping there, you were giving young people the tools to make their own lives, to cook their own meals, stand on their own two feet. ‘Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach him how to fish, he eats forever.’ I don’t know who said that, but it was my favorite quote back then.
So, I was starting to lean more towards teaching as the most noble profession, even if cooking might give me the tools to travel far and wide and visit amazing countries. ”
Dídac had no idea why he had gone down this path. This was not what he had meant to say at all. But now he was in the flow, the confession just seemed to keep unreeling out of himself, and he was helpless to halt it.
“And then my parents took me to see a theater show, one of the big lights of the Festival Grec that year. It was a touring company, from…” Here it was… “…from Australia.”
Below he heard, or felt rather a murmur or ripple flow through the audience, like the sighing of a massive beast. He knew he had them. This was why you did this, for this moment when you had them eating out of the palm of your hand. He went on:
“That production, ten years ago now, was the first major starring role of one of Australia’s greatest talents.
Being in the audience of that show, feeling the transformation that young actor worked on me, ripped from me all of my carefully laid-out plans; every conviction, every sensible career choice I’d carefully pored over in consultation with my parents.
It thoroughly transformed me, burning out of me all my adolescent certainties, the way a forge vaporises the wax original from a mold, leaving an empty cavity ready to receive the molten bronze.
“From that night forth, I knew that, though I might cook for friends or even work as a kitchen hand, even if someday I gave the occasional class, I would never be a professional chef or a full-time teacher. From that moment on I knew my destiny was to be an actor. I wanted to shatter people’s preconceptions, help lay bare their soul, examine ideas, inspire hope, make people laugh, cry, and think—and even perhaps, to transform humanity as thoroughly as I had been moved that night.
I wanted to change the world for the better for years to come.
What force could ever be a greater good to which to dedicate one’s life than that, the theater?
“That show was Boomerang, by the Melbourne Theater Company, on its European tour, and its young star was a dynamo of talent, who was just twenty-five years old. His name was Kim Delatour. So, my dedication to The Swan is a further step in my evolution as an actor, and a further commitment to change the world for the better through the power of acting and the stage. That is why I stand before you today, ready to give everything I have within me, to The Swan. The only thing I ask is that you come here in five weeks’ time on press night, sit in the same seats where you are presently seated, and judge for yourselves whether we have been successful in transforming humanity, just a tiny bit. Thank you.”
The applause, as Dídac returned to his seat, sounded enthusiastic—not quite thunderous, given the audience were only a few dozen press bodies, but excellent under the circumstances.
He was drained, found himself blushing, which never happened when he was on stage, and was afraid to look over at that figure seated under the spotlight.
Had he just said all that he had said? About a snake-oil salesman?
He had practically bared his innermost soul!
Why? For the rest of the press conference, he stared at a spot on the stage, possibly a grease stain, which somewhat resembled a cat’s smiling face.