Encore (21 page)

“He hasn't seen you yet as Tahor, or as a Sylphide. And in the meantime, let us see if you can improve for the premiere. Most of the official reviews don't come out till after then, you know.”

He had made her no extravagant gift, nothing with which to celebrate the triumph. Ah, then, he was waiting for the premiere tonight. And Pierre? Unable to stop herself, she asked, her pulse racing, “Was anyone else in the box with you, before I came?”

Her question broke up the atmosphere like a snowball hurled into a hothouse. She regretted it immediately. Boris stared at her distastefully. Rising, he tossed the newspaper, which she had laid on his lap, onto the Chinese carpet. “Don't be a fool, Natalia,” he said in a clipped tone. “If anyone had been with me, he would have stayed for the rest of the show. And last night would have been a more appropriate time to ask me, don't you think?”

Pierre has stopped caring for me and Boris can't, she thought desperately, her bright joy fading to a purple ache. The review lay on the carpet like a forgotten relic.

Natalia would never forget the night of the premiere. The atmosphere backstage was joyful, a tense joy that bound everyone together in a winning team. There was also fear: What if something went wrong? What if the critics turned against them? The
répétition générale
had been like an engagement party: There was still the wedding to come, and the lengthy marriage between the Parisian public and the Russian artists.

Once on stage Natalia felt confident. The Russians were the exotic jewels with which the French, hungry for new and more exciting experiences, were adorning themselves this season. She felt a flow of love for them, wanting them to love her too, wanting their extravagant praises. This was the release, the fulfillment—this was exactly why she had put aside her life in order to dance, why she had told Pierre that marriage was out of the question. Katya Balina Marshak would never experience this oneness with hundreds of people. It was not at all like loving a single man. She felt swept away, exultant, febrile, alive—as if she would never die, never feel fear again.

She knew that she had never danced so well. It was the start of a new season, a new vigor, a new femininity and virtuosity. She glowed. She went into her dressing room to change, buoyed by her taut joy and vibrant nerves.

When the performances ended and Boris took her arm to leave the Châtelet, she heard Diaghilev say: “Natasha, you are the new Taglioni. Wait until tomorrow's papers!” She wanted to cry but didn't. It was a time for celebration. He had called her Natasha, the little mouse Natasha, ugly, odd little Natasha. What would her parents have said about her tonight? It did not matter: She was free of them, exultantly free, a woman at last.

Outside on the pavement, she felt Boris's arm tense up. Glancing up, she saw that he was rigid in his evening wear, tall and frozen. A pang of fear shot through her, a premonition. She clung to his arm, wanting to infuse her own life into him. He stood looking at a woman, and now she looked too, curiously and with apprehension. It was a young woman with dull blond hair piled ridiculously high with curlicues, a woman with a pert nose, a small body, and an enormous white fur cape. Natalia blinked back wonder, but Boris did not move, and the woman stared at him too, her blue eyes widening. Natalia whispered, “Come on, Boris. Serge Pavlovitch is holding the car for us. The supper—”

But now the other woman stepped forward, until she stood barely a foot away from Natalia and Boris. People had begun to form a circle around them, mystified by this strange approach. The woman held her finger out, pointing at them, and then she began to scream in a hysterical voice: “That's' her, that's Oblonova! That's the whore who took my husband!”

Horrified and disbelieving, Natalia grabbed Boris's arm and shook it, shivering under her coat. “What's going on?” she whispered. “Who is that? Please, please, let's go!” she pleaded. All around her people had stopped, hearing the name Oblonova. “Yes, yes, that's l'Oblonova!” they said, trying to touch her. Boris drew her closer to him but still would not budge.

The woman paled and cried, hoarsely, wildly: “Do you see her, everybody? She took my husband from me, the common prostitute! He left me on our wedding night to go to her, the strumpet, the whore, the whore!”

The commotion had drawn a larger crowd. Suddenly a man jumped out, a distinguished though nondescript man of middle age in a tuxedo and opera hat. He took the woman by the shoulder and began to whisper to her. He was murmuring in Russian: “Marguerite, it's all right, it's all right, don't think of him, let's go.” Then he said the same words in French. Diaghilev came running, having heard the hysterical voice.

A policeman drew near, and the crowd began to disperse, whispering loudly and angrily. Diaghilev seized Boris's arm in an iron vise and brought him to the waiting car. “Why didn't you go, damn it?” he hissed. “Do you think this sort of publicity does us any good?”

“But who was she?” Natalia repeated, her head spinning.

“It was Marguerite von Baylen, Boris's ex-wife,” Diaghilev told her. His voice was cold and nasty. “That's all we needed, all we needed!”

“I had no idea she was here in Paris,” Boris murmured, his voice hushed and toneless. “I'm sorry, Natalia.”

But Diaghilev could not be contained: “ ‘Sorry, Natalia!' It's the reputation of the Russian season you should be sorry for. Thank God her husband will do something about her, send her away or something. But you, Natalia: You have to return to Petersburg tomorrow. I can't afford to have our season besmirched by scandal!”

Natalia's eyes grew round, her throat constricted, and her palms began to sweat. “Return to Petersburg?” she cried. Angry tears rose to her eyes. “No! I'm part of this season. They approved of me. Brussel liked me! Boris!” she exclaimed, turning to him. “Do something! Say something! You can't let this happen!”

“There is absolutely nothing he can say,” Diaghilev replied quietly. “I do regret this, Natalia. But if you think about it, you'll see the predicament this situation has put me in.”

She burst into tears, sobbing loudly and without restraint. Boris placed a hesitant hand on her head, and Diaghilev stared grimly out the window into the night. She continued to cry, brokenly, raucously, she who cried so rarely and then, so discreetly. Finally Boris murmured, “There is a diamond brooch, at Van Cleef's, Place Vendôme, which I wanted to give you—which I had specially made for you.”

She raised her head, and looked at him from tear-stained eyes. “It won't make up for this,” she whispered. “Nothing will ever make up for this.”

They had stopped at an intersection, and, without warning, Natalia pulled open the door and jumped out, her cape opening like an umbrella around her. When they peered outside trying to find her, she had disappeared completely from sight.

Serge Diaghilev told Pierre Riazhin what had happened. The two men had nearly collided in the lobby of the Hôtel de Hollande, where a group of celebrants were meeting before going to a late supper. Boris had kept the carriage to look for Natalia. It was a pleasant spring night and she might be wandering aimlessly through the city. Already she knew it well, and had spent much time walking through its avenues and parks, and along the Seine where the booksellers and painters set up their open-air stalls.

Diaghilev had to abandon the search, for he had people to meet. Pierre wondered why the entrepreneur had chosen to tell him of all people about Natalia. Did he know about his feelings for her? Serge Pavlovitch did seem to possess an uncanny sixth sense relating to the undercurrents of relationships among “his” people. Or else he might have remembered the painting of the Sugar Plum Fairy . . .

But Pierre did not waste time in pondering this thought. He grabbed his cloak and ran hatless into the wide avenue. There, disoriented, he tried to imagine where Natalia might have gone. He began to walk briskly, a light wind caressing his thick black curls and rustling the silk of his evening pants. It did not occur to him until he had walked to the Place du Trocadéro that he should have hailed a cab—but where would he have told the coachman to go? He was better off on foot.

What a crazy girl, running off into the night this way! he thought. At first nervous energy kept him going. Then, on the marble square that separated the Museum of Man from that of the Navy, he began to laugh. A young couple, snuggling together on a bench, the plumes of the woman's hat blowing in the breeze, turned from contemplating each other to stare at him, his black eyes sparkling with dots of red, his hair wild and unruly beneath the stars. The irony of it! Natalia having to pay for Boris's sins; Natalia being accused by the deserted ex-wife! He wondered what Boris had said, how he had handled it. Pure hatred filled him, and Pierre thought: I hope to hell he botched it, made it worse!

Pierre concentrated on the sixteenth district. Toward dawn he had to admit defeat. He fell on a bench and removed his shoes. His feet ached. He laid his head in his hands, and thrust his fingers through his hair. It was no use. The damned girl! Well, perhaps Boris—or Diaghilev—or someone else had already found her. That was the pattern of his luck to date: to reach her too late, after someone else had laid claim to her.

He was hungry. There was a bakery on Avenue Kléber, near the Trocadéro, which he knew stayed open all night so that partygoers could pick up pastries before going home and workmen could purchase breakfast rolls just prior to work. Having come full circle in his search, he went to the bakery and bought a bag of hot croissants. When he walked outside, he found that a pink cloud had risen in the distance: dawn.

He was exhausted and his emotional state, had reached its lowest ebb. Still, this was Paris, a Paris with which he had become enamored two summers before, and he thought: The Bois is so close that I might reach it before my legs give out. An artist can't always create in comfort! He dreamed of the park's color in the early morning light, and of strolling through its garden patches all alone, preparing himself for a painting when he returned to his rooming house. He should not waste this time—Natalia had eluded him, but there was his work. He might still make use of his exhaustion to produce something fantastic, a Parisian scene dredged up from the night's peregrinations. Munching on a croissant, he made his way to the Bois de Boulogne, near which he had lived for two years with his benefactor and friend, the man who had then defiled and used him and wrecked his dream.

Pierre found her when he reached the bank of the large lake of the Bois. He had already scattered some crumbs to the ducks in the water, when he looked out toward the romantic island and saw the little rowboat, and the lone figure crouched inside it. The blue cape, the delicate form, the haphazard pile of smooth brown hair were immediately recognizable. His heart lurched: She was so pitiful, so appealing, so waiflike in her little boat, alone in the dawn! How could he reach her without frightening her off?

He waited, sitting on a bench, eating his rolls. Presently, she turned the boat around in the water and returned. Evidently she had convinced the attendant to let her go out before opening hours. He saw her moor the boat with the others, and hop out, a light gazelle upon the pier. Then she began to walk, slowly, with apparent aimlessness, along the edge of the water. She had not seen him on his bench.

He approached her gently, not wishing to break too harshly upon her solitude. He placed himself in her path, and when she looked up to see who was blocking her way, she did not seem surprised. They resumed walking, side by side, smelling the dawn, the lake, listening to the awakening birds calling to one another. Hesitantly, he placed her small hand in his own, still without a word. The springtime buds were bursting on the brown branches of the tall trees bordering the path.

At length they sat down, and he broke the final croissant in two and handed her half, although it had grown cold. She ate, suddenly very hungry. Then she looked at him full in the face, and smiled a small, wavering smile. “Why are you always here when I think that my career has washed away?” she asked.

He didn't answer. Instead, he cupped her pale face in his strong hands and tilted it upward. He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her chin. Then, with mounting thirst, he plunged his lips into hers, merging himself into her coolness. She did not fight him, but she was tired, drained, and disoriented. When he rose to the surface again to breathe, she said: “But there will always be this doubt between us, won't there?”

For a moment he was angry, disillusioned, poignantly hurt. But he saw that she was right. He loved her—he adored her—but would he ever cease to wonder how she had sold herself to Boris? He could understand her own lack of trust as well: She would never be sure of what had happened between him and Boris.

They rose simultaneously, no longer touching. A zigzag of pale yellow was reaching across the horizon, and he caught his breath at its beauty. Yet he knew he would not paint it when he returned to his room. A lifetime had evolved since the night when he had found her on his doorstep. He felt old.

When they drew up to the white stone house on the Avenue Bugeaud, the front door opened from within and Boris, pale and drawn, with purple circles under his eyes, stood like a specter in the hallway. With a weary sigh, Natalia went in. By the bronze statue she stopped to look at them, the tall blond man holding the door, his eyes narrowed and hard—and the young man on the steps, his nostrils flaring, his black eyes iridescent in the morning light. She shivered slightly, then turned away. It would be best for her to go to bed at once.

T
hat summer
, Boris spent a great deal of time thinking. He had rented a villa in the aristocratic resort of Pavlovsk, not far from St. Petersburg and a bare fifteen minutes by carriage from Tsarskoïe Selo, where the Imperial Family had its Summer Palace. Pavlovsk was pleasantly wooded, the villas snuggled within immense bowers of fruit trees and flowers.

He had selected it because of Natalia's state of mind. After leaving Paris in May, she had been so withdrawn that he had not known how to reach her. The reviews after the première spoke of her as a mistress of the plastic arts, an elf, a sprite, a modern virtuoso in the vein of La Camargo or Taglioni. But reading them to her would have made matters worse. He was only relieved that she had come home and not done anything foolish. He was furious with many people over this debacle, but mostly with himself. He should have checked on the whereabouts of that madwoman Marguerite! Yet never in a million years could he have predicted such an outburst. It had been humiliating, undignified—and the result, so unjust! Why hadn't that new husband of hers, the Prussian diplomat, done something about her?

Natalia had buried her tremendous anger under a total passivity that frightened him. He had come to understand her pride, her wounds, her defenses—but this complete remoteness was new and impenetrable. The gift from Van Cleef and Arpel's, a splendid diamond sunburst, had left her indifferent. He knew that if he had taken her to Vienna or Switzerland in this mood, she would have remained unseeing, seemingly unfeeling—a pillar of stone, beyond emotion. Yet he sensed the hurt inside her, which she refused to allow to surface, of which she was ashamed. He had rented a villa near the Russian capital, hoping that at least she might rest in the golden sunshine.

Now, lifting his eyes to the blue-green pines that spread like parasols around the villa's terrace, he pondered over the complexities that faced him. He remembered the look of pure hatred on Pierre's face, that morning after Natalia had run away. The blood pulsed inside him like a waterfall, and his stomach burned. To love so much and be hated in return—to have gambled everything on this love, and to have lost every chance.

Well, maybe not every chance, he countered silently. His eyes became slivers of steel. He had more control than Pierre, poor innocent. Pierre would twist the knife in his gut, but Boris still held Natalia. Her return that morning, when she might just as easily have gone with Pierre, proved the strength of his own hold on her. Yet there was more to Natalia than that. She had become a part of him, and he could no more conceive of letting her go than he could imagine voluntarily stripping himself of his keen intelligence. What was it about the girl? She was not very pretty—at times, beautiful, opalescent, something out of the Grecian past, but otherwise just a small, trim girl of nineteen. Pierre's love for her had made her more valuable to him, that was certain. But that had been in the beginning only. Now she possessed an essence of her own, an entity—yes, he needed her.

Then it came to him: This little dancer with the brown and white tones of an old postcard was the single person who had seen him stripped of his veneer. Although a provincial girl, she had accepted him, as he knew his own adoring sister would never have been able to, had she, instead of Natalia, learned the truth about him. Now they would never learn—of this he felt certain—mostly because of Natalia, because she had played the part so well, so naturally and convincingly.

He remembered the scene in his father's study before his quick, disastrous marriage to Marguerite. Nina, newly a mother to three-month-old Galina, the Princess Stassova come to have tea with her father and brother…Nadia and Liza, both engaged to scions of the highest aristocracy …And the old man, blunt and virile, always baffled by his artistic son but loving him with the strong faith of the blood tie…. Boris felt a sudden spasm of anguish. If he had loved them all any less, if he had been a casual profligate like his friend Prince Lvov—or even if, like Diaghilev, he had resided far from his close relations—then he might not have cared so much, and life would have been easier, with fewer lies and fewer restraints. There were those who shared his predilections more openly, and surely they were the lucky ones. But the Kussov blood had burdened him with a need for the most stringent discretion, and Natalia's presence had stopped certain questions from ever having to be asked.

He smiled ironically. He was drawing odiously close to sentiment, and that was an absurdity not to be considered. So—Natalia was a fine dancer and loyal to him; furthermore, in her, he possessed something Pierre wanted. Having her was a fit manner of revenge. Yet, how long could he hope to hold onto her? She was drawn to the young painter by the most elemental magnet: sex, old as the ages. And the disaster of the Paris season had not endeared him, Boris, to her in the least. He knew, in fact, that she was furious, outraged; she still blamed him for what she considered the downfall of her career as an international dancer.

Poor Natalia! He had not even known her when he'd married Marguerite! Oh well, there was nothing he could do now about the lost Parisian season. But he might be able to do something about the next one.

Yes, Serge had known how to protect his new company from the slightest blemish of scandal. And God knew that enough of it had occurred after their departure. He had to smile, malevolently: Mavrin had run away with one of the Feodorov sisters from Moscow! There was justice in this, too: Serge had lost his lover to a woman! Poor Serge. Yet Diaghilev had had his eye on Nijinsky before then, anyway. Still—to be left for a woman—that was a stab at one's pride as well as at one's heart, and Boris knew exactly why his friend had told Astruc not to give a single kopek to his disloyal secretary, although he had owed him back pay. For Serge was always behind in his remunerations. Then, of far more serious consequence to the Ballet, Vera Karalli had run off with the tenor Sobinov.

But Boris was amused rather than disturbed by Diaghilev's problems. He was also coldly angry. There was something humiliating about how Serge had dismissed Natalia, something that had nothing to do with her at all. It had been a means of showing Boris that this enterprise was his alone, not Boris's or anyone else's. It was exactly what he had later done with
Cleopatra,
pitting Pierre against Leon Bakst, friend against friend, so that in the end only he kept the whole thing together. Boris smiled: He knew this tactic well, having made use of it many times—but to have had it used against Boris himself was an even greater insult. He had saved Diaghilev's hide so often with gifts of money. But this time, although Astruc kept writing desperate notes concerning thousands owed to him by his entrepreneur friend, Boris would not lift a finger to help. Natalia had been used, and if she could not reap the glory due her, then he would cease to aid Diaghilev's adventure. Perhaps there was another possibility ... to separate Natalia from the Diaghilev enterprise altogether.

Boris turned his thoughts to Pierre, who persisted in being childish. Pierre wanted to hate the only person who truly loved him. Turning against Diaghilev would also give Boris the delectable pleasure of impeding Pierre's growing career, to watch him suffer as he himself was being made to suffer by the young man.

Boris thought again of Natalia and turned to regard her in her chaise longue across the terrace from him. How it must hurt her to know that Karsavina and Pavlova had replaced her in every role, that they had conquered Paris while she sat here nursing her wounds. He examined her covertly, thinking: Her career means everything to her—but still she wants Pierre. I can't ever let the two of them come together again—not ever. He thought of Diaghilev's affairs, of his friend's despair over lovers' abandoning him. Only marriage could prevent desertion, could provide the ultimate bond. If Pierre and Natalia were ever to marry ... He could not finish the thought, for bitter sadness twisted his insides, and the desire for revenge, for salvation, for the end of pain all tore him.

“If I could promise you the best roles to dance, and the most agreeable working conditions, what would you say, Natalia?” he demanded carefully, walking toward her.

‘There's only so much that even you can promise,” she replied. “There was Paris, remember?”

He stroked his mustache. “Yes. That was my fault. Protection is not enough. If you'd been my wife, no one could have touched you with the hint of scandal—and of course Serge would never have dared send you home. But—if you
were
my wife—think of the possibilities!”

“An Oblonova doesn't marry a Kussov,” she said dryly, suddenly smiling. “Even the Tzar could not marry Kchessinskaya!”

“But we are only nobility, Natalia—not royalty. I could marry you. In fact, I rather think I should. It would strengthen our bond, and I owe it to you.”

“I don't believe in marriage, and besides, you're teasing me,” she countered, beginning to sit up. “Why do you speak this way?”

“Because I've been thinking. We live together, and in that sense, we're already married. I don't want children—so I don't need a woman of aristocratic blood. What I do need is an artist in residence, if you will—an everlasting, understanding friend. And how could it hurt your status to become the Countess Kussova? There are those who would sigh with relief in society and open their palaces to you.” He said the last with his twisted half-smile of irony, and then laughed. “Wouldn't you like to shock them, Natalia? Wouldn't it be fun?”

“We have an adequate arrangement,” she said stalwartly. “You don't need to question my friendship.”

“I don't. But you questioned mine, in Paris, with Diaghilev. Marry me, Natalia. Things won't change between us—but to the world, things will have changed a great deal. That's important to me, for my own reasons.”

She turned her rich mahogany eyes to him, and her face was very still. Paris. Pierre. The walk back to the house on Avenue Bugeaud. The end of a shattered, childish, impossible dream. To clinch it for good. She thought, with sudden shock: Of course! It's on his mind, too—that's his reason. But she would never marry Pierre, that part of her life was over. Should she marry Boris? What he had said was true: In the most important sense—their cohabitation—they were already married in the eyes of their acquaintances. And yes, he did owe her something—something to help assuage the old betrayal, something to formalize her role in his life. She had helped protect him by hiding his secret, and surely it was silly now to resist the honest compensation. In any case, theirs would not be a true marriage, not the suffocating, destructive relationship she had always vowed to avoid. Then she would be able to put her memories of Pierre behind barriers that the live Pierre would never be able to cross.

“All right, I accept,” she stated, wondering why her voice was firm and clear, so unemotional. She felt him kneel beside her chaise longue, smelled the spearmint of his breath as he kissed her forehead—and all at once tears came, and she trembled. What had she said? What was she doing?

“You will be the new Taglioni, my dear, the new Sallé,” Boris was murmuring. “You'll see!”

Now Boris Kussov sat in the Restaurant Weber, on the elegant Rue Royale, in Paris. It was October, and as he lifted the goblet of wine to his lips and planned his next words carefully, he once more saw the image of Natalia on their wedding day, a month before. He had not wanted an extravagant affair that would remind him of his marriage to Marguerite; but his father had argued him out of a quiet ceremony, emphasizing that the first event had taken place in Kiev, and that members of the court would be more likely to forget that debacle in a wash of champagne in honor of the new bride. Boris had smiled to himself: Certainly some people had been shocked that a Kussov had actually allied himself to a simple girl from the Crimea, but others had envied him the new soloist at the Mariinsky.

Boris tasted the wine, an excellent Mouton Rothschild, and recalled his wedding. It was odd what stayed in one's mind from the important events of one's life: the smell of the chapel; the melodic voice of the metropolitan bishop; kissing the Eastern Orthodox cross; kneeling on the velvet cushions with that waif of a girl, all wrapped in lace and silk yellowed with the age of thirty-five years. It was his mother's wedding dress, with tiny pearls scattered over the lace and in Natalia's hair, his sister Nina's
kokoshnik
on her head. He had lifted the veil for the chaste nuptial kiss. Then the wedding night, quiet and graceful: a parting of the ways by her boudoir, another small, dry kiss on her forehead, as he might have given to his small niece, Galina.

Boris put down the goblet and folded away his thoughts of Natalia. Today he was dining with Gabriel Astruc, the impresario of the Societé Musicale, who had secured the Châtelet and provided all the publicity for the first Parisian season of Russian opera and ballet. “Of course, a second season was foreseen,” Astruc said. ‘The success of the first was inevitable”—he smiled, inclining his head toward his companion—“given the fact of our participation,
mon cher
Boris. However, Serge has treated us both shabbily, I should say, and I shan't stand for it any longer.”

“No, indeed,” Boris commented. He took a forkful of partridge. “These are succulent,” he said. “But tell me more about the Opera. Serge is arranging to take his company—or rather, I should say, the company that he gleaned from the Moscow and Petersburg Imperial Theatres—to the Opera next year, but has failed to include you in the negotiations?”

“No. And you are aware that he owes me a great deal of money from the first season. Two and one-half percent, that was all I asked for! Well, he owed me fifteen thousand francs as of several days ago, and I intend to collect this time. I need to live, too! He overspends so that he is always operating at a deficit—but that is no longer my problem. My real problem is this: If he goes ahead and brings the Russians to the Opera on the proposed days in May and June, he will be competing directly with me, for I have booked Caruso into the Châtelet at that time. It is a very unpleasant situation. Without me, the last season would have been a disaster, and Serge is the most ungrateful man I know.”