Flight of the Swan (5 page)

“Ever since Niura was a little girl she loved to dance: if it was snowing outside she’d copy the way a snowflake drifted down the windowpane. If it was autumn she’d sway like a leaf fluttering in the wind. Once, when she was in the park with me, she saw a dragonfly and began to imitate its nervous flight with marvelous precision. The rabbi saw her do this, and he must have said something to the Poliakoffs because a few days later he brought me a note from Lazar’s father. The Poliakoffs were a cultured family, and they had influence in all the right places. The note said I was to take little Niura to the Imperial Ballet School on Theater Street, between Nevsky Prospekt and the Fontanka River—St. Petersburg’s most exclusive district—and leave her there. I’d be able to visit her on Sundays, and she would be well taken care of. I was shattered, but I prayed to the Virgin and left little Niura in their hands.

“I had seen the Imperial Ballet School from the outside on my way to services at Vladimir Cathedral from Kolomenskaya Street. It was an elegant eighteenth-century palace, with many windows to let in the light and large salons with thirty-foot ceilings. When we arrived and I asked how much the tuition would be, a lady in a black shift said I shouldn’t worry, everything was paid for in advance. She handed Niura two brown cashmere uniforms, four white muslin shirts, a pair of pumps, a pair of short leather booties, books, and study materials. I looked at the woman in wonder, but didn’t dare ask questions for fear it would all evaporate like a dream.

“The pupils of the Imperial Ballet School were formally adopted by the czar; the parents virtually relinquished all rights over them. Niura was a boarding student for ten years. She loved it there. The school was run with an iron discipline based on military principles, the same that ruled the Imperial Cadet School. Niura’s days were spent in rigorous exercise classes to develop her body, and she took courses on harmony, composition, and musical theory. She could read music and even direct an orchestra. I thought all this was wonderful, but my old fear hadn’t left my heart, and I prayed every night that when Niura finished her studies she could stay by my side.

“The Imperial Ballet School owed its existence to the czar’s subsidy, and the Romanovs considered the ballerinas their personal baubles. They went to the school often, to observe the students’ progress or just to talk to them about art, music, or perhaps more private subjects, discreetly discussed. Niura saw the czar several times up close during the matinees given for the parents of the students. Like most Russians, she had ambivalent feelings toward him.

“Every year, on December sixth, there was a lavish celebration for Czar Nicholas’s birthday. On that day the theater was full of small children and young people: tiers of boxes tightly packed with girls and boys in uniform from the Lyceum, the Naval Academy, all the popular St. Petersburg schools. Every child received a box of candies with a portrait of either Czar Nicholas, the czarina, or the czarevitch on the lid. During the intermission, tea and refreshments were served in several foyers, and the wait staff wore gala red uniforms adorned with imperial eagles on their collars. Cool almond milk, deliciously perfumed, was served. On one occasion they were all taken to kiss the czar’s hand after the performance. Nicholas II was sitting in the imperial box next to Czarina Alexandra, and they must have been going to a ball afterward, because both were regally dressed. The czar wore a blue sash across his gala uniform and the czarina had on a coronet of stars. The czar inquired: ‘Who was the little girl who danced the golden fish in
Le Roi Candaule
?’ Niura stepped forward and curtsied gracefully before him. ‘How did the shepherd’s magic ring happen to be on you, when it was supposed to be at the bottom of the sea?’ Niura was wearing a fish costume, modeled out of gold papier-mâché, and inside the fish’s mouth was hidden a small box where the ring was put. Niura bent down and explained how it worked. The czar was enchanted. He smiled. ‘I would never have guessed it,’ he said.

“You can imagine Niura’s amazement when the next day she heard that the czar had gone on a hunting expedition to the province of the Urals, where there was a terrible famine. He came back ten days later with one hundred deer, fifty-six goats, fifty boar, ten foxes, twenty-seven hares—two hundred forty-three animals shot within a week’s time. ‘Why did he shoot them? He can’t possibly eat all that,’ Niura asked. Poor heart, she was that innocent!

“The day of Niura’s graduation I was very proud of her. Her grandmother came all the way from the village of Ligovo to be there, and Niura looked beautiful in the white tulle skirt and delicate diamante wings in which she danced
La Sylphide
, her graduation ballet. All the dancers took part and the audience was mainly composed of parents, although the royal family was also present. They were sitting in the Maryinsky’s royal box, just to the left of the stage, with the gilded crown carved on top and the gold fauteuils with blue velvet upholstery. They looked like a postcard: Czar Nicholas with his watery eyes; the czarina with her hard, unyielding German mouth; and their children, dressed in angel-white muslin. It was hard to see them as the oppressor, or a flock of devils in disguise.

“I had sewn the wreath of tiny roses that Niura wore that day around her head and she looked happy and carefree during her graduation exercises. That’s why I was so surprised when, a few days later, she arrived at the apartment carrying two suitcases with everything she owned. She was moving back with me, she said, and we would have to change our lifestyle. ‘At school we were taught that our progress in the world depended not only on the quality of our dancing, but on the magnanimity of our patrons. I’m tired of being poor, Mother. I should have made that my motto to start with.’ I sighed with resignation. Now we would both have to survive on the small income the Poliakoffs sent us, which was barely enough for one person.

“When Niura began to get flowers from bewhiskered, portly gentlemen who brought her home from the theater in splendid carriages late at night, I began to worry. One evening I went to her room after she went to bed and said, ‘You don’t have to do this, Niura, I can go back to washing and ironing.’ Niura looked at me with her large, luminous eyes. ‘Thank you, Mama,’ she answered. ‘But my dancing will support us both; you have nothing to worry about.’ That calmed me, because my little Niura was never wrong.

“Every time I saw Niura dance at the Maryinsky, I thought the same thing. Sitting high up in the gallery I could see the audience in the orchestra seats below, sumptuously dressed in lace and velvet and glistening with jewels. On stage the dancers wore similar apparel and jewelry. No wonder
Le Miroir
was St. Petersburg’s favorite ballet. The aristocrats were convinced they deserved it all and were fascinated by their own spectacle. Meanwhile in the countryside the peasants continued to starve, because all the food was needed for the soldiers who were fighting a war against Japan.

“Matilde Kschessinska was prima ballerina when my Niura graduated. They danced together at the Maryinsky Theater a few times, and were always competing for the limelight. Matilde also had many followers who would have done anything to advance her career. Being older, she had much more experience than Niura. She obtained the favors of Nicholas II when he was still the czarevitch, and he bought her a magnificent house on the English Embankment, a very fashionable address. Matilde loved to dance wearing the jewelry the czarevitch gave her as a present. Sometimes she wore three diamond necklaces at a time, which made her look like a poodle because she was short and wore her curly hair cropped close to her head. She was not a great ballerina. She was very polished but she only danced ‘on the surface,’ to entertain the audience. She never danced from the depths, like my Niura did.

“Czar Nicholas had many artist friends, not all of them dancers. One of the most famous was a little girl, an American diva whose name I can’t remember. She was ten years old, and created a furor when she appeared at the Winter Palace singing ‘Ah! non giunge’ from Bellini’s
La Sonnambula
. She was warbling like a nightingale and standing on a little red plush platform with wheels when they rolled her out to the center of the stage. The ovation was so great that the czar and the czarina sent for her at the end of the performance. That was the same night my Niura danced in
Le Roi Candaule
. She was very young, but she never forgot the doll-like diva, dressed in a fanlike frock and wearing a hussar’s red jacket, who threw her a rose as she went by. The czar presented the young prima donna with a coronet of diamonds that night, a smaller reproduction of the one that graced the czarina’s head.”

“A
T THIS TIME NIURA
took a large apartment in Anelisky Prospekt. I didn’t know how she could afford it, but it was better not to ask. It was a new building, and we were to move in together. I was ecstatic. It meant I didn’t have to be separated from my daughter again. I’d cook for her, wash and iron her clothes. No one was to know I was her mother, so my presence wouldn’t embarrass her.

“The apartment was beautiful—big, lofty rooms decorated with white Empire furniture upholstered in blue silk. Niura’s bed had a latticed headboard and footboard, with garlands of roses carved over them, and her bedspread was exactly the same ice blue as the Neva, which could be seen from her window. In what was once a salon for entertaining guests, Niura set up her own dance studio, with an immense mirror on one wall and a barre the length of the room on the opposite side.

“The income from Niura’s friends and the Poliakoffs’ stipend meant we could live with a certain degree of comfort. Niura also began to make more money dancing. Whenever she performed at benefits and galas people flocked to see her, because it was rumored that she came from a humble background. This was pleasing to people with Bolshevik sympathies. Matilde Kschessinska’s imperial connections hurt her, and although she still held the title of prima ballerina at the Maryinsky Niura was gradually taking her place in the public’s eye.

“Niura never showed any interest in meeting the Poliakoffs, for which I was grateful, although I always suspected my daughter was secretly proud of her Jewish blood. It set her apart from the St. Petersburg haut monde we both despised. Although no one knew who Niura’s real father was, one of Kschessinska’s friends at the Maryinsky could dig up the secret by asking questions about my illegitimate daughter, which could lead to Niura’s expulsion from the city.

“The Imperial Ballet was not exempt from the upheavals tearing Russia apart. Many of the dancers were students at the university and were thus very well informed about political developments. Niura began to attend Bolshevik meetings, and one day she stood up on a desk at school and made a forthright speech in which she poured scorn on an army that cut down defenseless people and saw innocent workers as the enemy. She was the daughter of the washerwoman from Kolomenskaya Street, she said, and she had everything to gain if the revolution was successful. She lent her apartment to the students of the ballet school who went on strike, so they could meet there. Then one day the Poliakoffs shut down their bank and unexpectedly left the country. Niura and I were left practically destitute.

“The night she found out about it Niura was dancing
La Fille Mai Gardée
—The Unchaperoned Girl—a ballet full of verve and playful coquetry, at a benefit gala for the families of the sailors who had perished in the destruction of the Russian fleet. At the end of the performance she received a bouquet of roses in her dressing room with a card from ‘the Honorable Victor Dandré’ attached to it. Each rose came skewered by a piece of wire and Niura couldn’t bear the sight of them. She asked me to free them from their torture, taking out the wires and placing the flowers in water. I did so immediately, and put the vase on her dresser.

“The Honorable Dandré wished to invite Mademoiselle to a private dinner at his apartment after the performance, the card said. Niura received dozens of cards like that every night. This time, however, instead of ripping the card in two, Niura penned a quick answer on the back and had it returned to her admirer.

“Victor Dandré was a Frenchified Russian who had lived in Paris for a while. He was tall and bear-chested, with a red mustache that compensated for his bald head, and large, ruddy jowls that trembled when he laughed. He was known in St. Petersburg as a successful investor, and he had a comfortable situation. That night he invited Niura to one of the city’s many luxurious restaurants with private chambers at the back. Afterwards they went to Dandré’s plush apartment on Italiansky Street.

“‘Our economic problems are over, Mother: now we won’t have to starve or sell our home because of the strike. I’ve finally found the protector the Maryinsky Imperial Ballet School always expected me to have,’ Niura said. I began to cry; I understood well enough. I made her kneel down before the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and ask for forgiveness. Niura kissed the lower corner of the icon and bent her head in front of it. The decision cost her a great deal. She’d always looked down on Kschessinska and the other ballerinas, who readily accepted the Maryinsky’s patrons’ demands in order to go on dancing.

“Mr. Dandré always kept his bachelor place in Italiansky Street; he never moved in with us. Niura didn’t feel attracted to him, but he was a strong man and a shove from him would send any unwelcome admirer crashing against the wall. At the time, Dandré had a theater box at the Maryinsky, which he shared with a gentleman friend, and he went to see Niura dance every evening. He realized she had a unique talent, and that if she stayed in Russia she’d never be able to free herself from the ‘shroud of the Imperial Ballet School,’ as he used to say. She was stifled at the Maryinsky, where only old-fashioned ballets were produced. In Paris and London she could blossom into a true artist. One day he suggested she go on tour and visit Helsinki, Riga, Stockholm, and other cities of the Baltic coast. She could dance there accompanied by a small troupe and he would escort her part of the way. The tour was an enormous success, and after that, Niura began to go abroad more often. Dandré convinced her to buy a house in London, in the suburb of Golders Green—William Turner’s famous Ivy House—so she already had one foot out of the country when the Russian Revolution began.