White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  Nico sniffed humorously. ‘Italians – what do they know?’

  ‘It is beautiful,’ Olga protested.

  ‘But not practical, you must admit. Why are we Russians always running after foreigners thinking they know something we don’t– we ought to have more confidence in our native artists, they’re just as fine and who else could express our national spirit?’

  The two junior lovers of art, whose eyes never fell on an ugly object from waking to sleeping, fell into the fashionable argument with enthusiasm.

  A moment later Olga let out a hysterical shriek. ‘The toad! The toad is coming!’

  The school’s governesses were known by this charming nickname. Olga sprang aside, her ribs heaving with fright. ‘It’s Varvara Ivanova – help!’

  Nico and Leo fled to the wings as one boy. The school rules on chaperonage were inflexible. Boys and girls had separate lessons and their dormitories were situated far apart. They met rarely and were absolutely forbidden to talk to each other. One of the great bonuses of a performance was the opportunity of a stolen exchange.

  ‘Queen of all the toads. Now we’ll catch it. No puddings for a week!’ The thought of seven days without a jam pie at last subdued Lydia’s spirits.

  The stern-faced directress bustled swiftly towards the group, her black skirt swirling in agitation from her cinched belt. With her tiny waist and full bosom Lydia thought she looked more like a large angry ant than a toad, especially when she waved her arms in fury.

  ‘You wicked girls. Do you think you can wander around in the Tsar’s own theatre as if it was just anywhere? And why aren’t you wearing your wraps? You were warned particularly about getting cold. Especially you, Spessitseva, no wonder you’re always sick.’

  ‘Please, Madame, we only wanted to see …’

  ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why aren’t you warming up? Take that smile off your face, Kusminskaya, there’s no cause for amusement, I promise you. Now behave yourselves, go back to the dressing room and practise. You’ll disgrace us all anyway, no doubt.’

  The girls filed off the stage, shamefaced until they were halfway down the corridor backstage and out of the governess’s sight, when they began to recover their spirits.

  ‘The stage here goes right out to the stalls, doesn’t it? I can’t believe I’ll be dancing so close to the dear darling Tsar he’ll almost be breathing on me.’ Marie led the way to their dressing room.

  ‘Dear darling … since when, Marie?’

  ‘Oh don’t be silly! I don’t mean anything romantic and you know it, although he is wonderfully handsome, you must admit.’

  ‘You’re not taking over La Kchessinskaya’s role yet, then?’ Lydia’s teasing was not completely idle. She had a fine piece of gossip about La Kchessinskaya, their prima ballerina.

  ‘That would be the day! I’m not ready to end my career before it’s even begun, thank you!’

  Mathilde Kchessinskaya, a petite woman of intense glamour, arrived for class every morning in her own carriage drawn by three thoroughbred ponies. In summer she was swathed in lace; now, in the winter, muffled in sables, she herself seemed like a forest beast, quick, supple, ferocious, with glowing eyes and a decisive long nose poking from the depth of the pelts. She was a goddess to them all not only for her dancing but even more for the skill with which she managed her many intrigues. Kchessinskaya was a woman who made the whole world dance to her tune, and was moreover feted and adored in consequence.

  In the empire of the ballet, Kchessinskaya ruled absolutely. She owed her untouchable position to the fact that, as a young prince, the Tsar Nicholas II had fallen madly in love with her. She had been a promising student of seventeen, but his favour swiftly raised her above her equally gifted rivals.

  Their affair had continued at epic emotional pitch for four years, until his father’s death brought Nicholas to the throne and compelled the lovers to part. Tsar Nicholas married the German Princess Alice and Kchessinskaya was commended to the care of his uncle the amiable Grand Duke Sergei. She was a magnificently strong dancer, and her vibrant personality positively burned on the stage, but her present eminence as prima ballerina assoluta was owed to the Tsar’s patronage. She exploited it to the full; whenever she was crossed by the management, she appealed directly to the Emperor.

  By this means she had annexed all the plum roles to herself, made sure she starred in all the most prestigious performances, demanded the richest gifts and even procured the resignation of the Director of the Imperial Theatres only eighteen months ago. He had displeased her by insisting that she wear the traditional hooped skirts for the role of La Camargo in a ballet designed in the style of Louis XV. Kchessinskaya preferred a lighter, more flattering costume, and so, after a public squabble, the Director lost his position over a petticoat. Shortly afterwards Chinchilla, the disgraced Director’s young protégé, had almost been expelled by the new management, but he had prudently admired Kchessinskaya in his years of ascendancy and she rallied support for him.

  Her appetite for scandal was insatiable. Now she had taken up with another of her former lover’s cousins, the shy, good-looking Grand Duke Andre, who was younger than her by almost seven years. And furthermore she was carrying his child, and had retired formally from the stage a few days earlier, with her pregnancy quite visible to the informed eye.

  ‘You’re very wise, Marie.’ Lydia crossed the empty dressing room dramatically and perched on a battered gilt chair in a far comer. ‘Especially since Kchessinskaya is dancing tonight.’

  There was an immediate sensation and the girls crowded around in excitement.

  ‘She can’t be!’

  ‘The scandal!’

  ‘With the Tsar and the Grand Duke Sergei watching!’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘It’s true, I promise you. Her name went on the notice board at the very last moment this afternoon. Tamara Platonova overheard the whole thing when she was sent to see the Principal and she told me herself.’

  ‘It must be true then.’ Tamara Platonova was a senior student whose honourable character was very much respected; if she had passed on the news then there could be no doubt.

  ‘But won’t she … I mean, won’t it …’ A deep blush rose up Olga’s fine white neck as she tried to put the scandalous thought into words. ‘I mean, you could see already …’

  ‘Yes, they’ve been letting out her costumes for weeks. It’s absolutely obvious.’

  ‘And there’s nowhere to hide on that tiny stage.’

  ‘Her parents must be dying of shame,’ Olga announced in a pious tone.

  ‘Well, they’re taking long enough about it. How many years is it since she left her father’s house for that little villa the Tsar bought her?’ Lydia suddenly checked herself, realizing that she was again about to cross the borders of good taste.

  ‘And she’s dancing Camargo again – one in the eye for the old Director, eh?’ Marie chuckled and turned to the mirror to rearrange her curls. ‘Well, I bet she’s sorry she turned down that hooped skirt now.’

  Before they could settle down for a long exchange of gossip the brisk footsteps of Varvara Ivanova were heard in the corridor and the girls fled to the barre to begin their pliés.

  An hour later, arranged in a charming tableau on the stage, they strained their eyes against the glare of the lights to make out the noble figures beyond. The drop curtain, painted to show the audience a mezzotint scene of the river and bridge outside, rose slowly to reveal the small auditorium shimmering like rough seas by moonlight. Lydia realized that after all she was not to be cheated of a glorious vision. Jewels and gold, rich brocades, braids and embroidery sparkled even in the half darkness as their wearers applauded the opening scene.

  From Christmas onwards, while the city lay under fathoms of snow and the river Neva froze to such a depth that the people used it as a highway, the Winter Palace indulged in a frenzy of merrymaking that lasted throughout Epiphany and reached a crescendo at this
time, the week before the beginning of Lent. Then quietness and relative austerity would reign for forty days and forty nights: no balls, no state dinners, and no ballet.

  Now however was still the time of lavish celebration. At the start of a new century, with the vigorous new Tsar and his lovely bride cherished in the splendour of St Petersburg, there was the sense that a great and beautiful new era had dawned for Russia. The harvests had been good, so the peasants were content. After centuries of darkness and struggle, enlightened government was leading the country into the future. Only the superstitious, the disloyal and the wicked could still believe that catastrophe was somehow a part of the nation’s destiny. The Court agreed that informed folk felt otherwise.

  No information ever reached this jewelled enclave without first being groomed for the occasion. The Court heard only official facts and rumours and, like the rest of the country, placed little reliance on information which had been managed from its origin. Nothing that had happened in recent years seemed beyond reasonable explanation. Peasants and factory workers had rioted, but this was the natural consequence of their terrible conditions, which were being improved. Students protested, but the young were always extremists. It was true that an incontrovertible assassination occasionally took place, but the murders had been incited by foreign agitators and the police had caught them. Russia was blessed with many able statesmen to take the place of the victims. In the Court theatre, on another glittering evening among many, the noblemen stretched their legs in the braided uniforms designed for them by Peter the Great himself and contemplated the coming years with confidence.

  The audience was quiet but animated. Their excitement warmed the entire auditorium, making the girls’blood tingle in their veins and their feet itch to be moving. Lydia could make out the shapes of jewelled aigrettes and tiaras, nodding like sparkling flowers in a breeze. She sensed the silk dresses heavy with the weight of their gold-thread embroidery crushed carelessly together. As the applause died down it was even possible to hear the rattle of the long ropes of pearls, of which most of the women would be wearing as many as their necks could carry.

  Now I know

  That Chinchilla is out there

  I am so

  Afraid I’ll die of fear.

  Without disturbing her cherubic smile, Marie hummed the little song which the girls had made up to warn each other that their exacting overseer was among the audience.

  ‘Where?’ hissed Lydia, her piquant simper deepening with the effort of whispering from the side of her mouth.

  With a blink of her round doll’s eyes Marie indicated the left side of the auditorium, and Lydia saw the dark bulk descend heavily into the gold armchair at the end of the third row. Another large figure stirred beside him and the Grand Duke Sergei’s bull-like grunt resonated in the hush. All the Tsar’s uncles were huge men. A few rows further back were the most favoured seats, where she could distinguish the Tsar Nicholas and his family, so smothered in precious stones and cloth of gold that they resembled those old icons which seemed to move by the flickering light of their lamps. The Tsarina sat stiffly, wearing a gauze veil under her tiara.

  As the music gave them their cue, Lydia dragged her attention away from the half-hidden splendour of the Court and the girls regrouped around the handsome figure of Nikolai Legat, who created the role of the dancing master as a caricature of one of the legendary teachers at the Imperial School, an elderly and choleric Swede who sat wearily in a chair directing the pupils with febrile gestures of his violin bow. For the devoted balletomanes this piece was a delicious tapestry of allusions and private jokes. Legat’s own talent for drawing caricatures was hinted at in his performance; wicked details such as this were Chinchilla’s hallmarks.

  The girls performed an opening divertissement based on their daily class, each having a few bars of solo dancing to display her talents. As Lydia stepped forward to prepare her opening steps a radiant calm posessed her. It was very quiet; she heard little, but felt the music running in her body like blood and when her cue came she flew into motion without knowing what she did. The Court, the audience, her teachers and the other dancers were distant presences. Inside her being she was all-powerful. Her limbs took possession of the air as if their proper space was already marked out. There was no doubt, fear or hesitation and as she came to rest and her normal consciousness returned she knew before the applause that she had briefly created perfection.

  In one corner of the auditorium the applause redoubled and she paused for an instant, glancing into the wings to see if she might be granted a second curtsey, but a gesture from the startled régisseur sent her to rejoin the others at the back of the stage. Tingling with pleasure she fell into line beside Marie and the girls turned and froze into a tableau to complement the first of the soloists.

  Tinkling and rattling in her costume sewn with coins, an older dancer made her entrance and paused for applause in the stylized attitude typical of the gypsy dances which were currently a fashionable addition to every work.

  ‘I can’t bear to watch, she’ll end up flat on her face, I know it.’ Marie lowered her eyelids as the older girl passed them, already white with the effort of forcing her feet through the rapid sequence of steps.

  ‘Why in the world did they give her this one? The poor thing – she just isn’t fast enough.’ Lydia herself excelled as a gitane. When it was her turn she would show them all; her legs were simply made for those wild turns.

  The two girls solemnly rearranged their arms for the next dance and exchanged glances of disgust as Anna Pavlova wafted through the romantic variation, gossamer wings quivering at her nothing of a waist.

  ‘God, she’s pathetic,’ Marie hissed under cover of the applause. ‘Why doesn’t she eat more, she looks like a ghost. However did she get chosen for this?’

  ‘Kchessinskaya insisted. You know she’s making a pet of Anna Matveyana.’

  Close, chassé, demi-plié in fourth, port de bras, don’t forget your head … they heard their teacher’s voice in their minds as they regrouped for the final variation. Deliberately the conductor extended the pause in the music. A faint spray of reflected light signified the audience fidgeting in anticipation. The baton rose in a grand sweep, plunged the orchestra into a brilliant crescendo, and all at once Kchessinskaya had leapt into the centre of the tableau and was acknowledging rapturous applause.

  The music resumed and the great ballerina darted across the stage, her shoulders never losing their imperiously coquettish tilt while the extraordinary power of her pretty limbs propelled her across the boards like a lightning bolt. At the age of thirty many dancers were past their best, but Kchessinskaya’s strength was still a marvel, enough to carry her through the most dazzling athletic moves with her smile bright and every appearance of ease. Her diamond earrings, famous as the Tsar’s gift and the cause of another victory over the directorate, flashed with every snap of her head as she finished the final series of pirouettes.

  Criticism was all that the girls heard, and naturally it made up most of their own conversation. With Kchessinskaya tonight there was nothing to criticize as they scurried away for their wraps at the interval.

  ‘Wasn’t she ill yesterday?’ Marie made a feeble effort to start the conversation.

  ‘Not much wrong tonight,’ responded Olga with frank envy in her voice.

  ‘My mother says a woman can never be the same in that condition,’ volunteered an olive-skinned girl. ‘Did you notice how she moved all those attitudes round so His Majesty couldn’t catch her in profile? So, so clever.’

  ‘And I swear she’s had the roses sewn lower at the front of her dress.’ The Camargo costume was always swagged with garlands of silk roses to recall the dancer’s famous portrait by Boucher.

  ‘I don’t see the point – we know, everybody knows and surely His Majesty must know as well. She ought to go away quietly until it’s all over.’

  ‘No, why should she? Nobody’s offended. It’s one thing to be pregnant, but loo
king pregnant – that’s quite different, isn’t it?’ Lydia pulled a chair over to the blue and white tiled stove whose warm mass occupied the entire end of the room.

  ‘I don’t see why, surely being pregnant is all that matters.’

  ‘No, it’s how you look as well.’ Marie joined Lydia in the warmth.

  ‘How you look is most important really,’ Lydia continued abstractedly. ‘You can be what you like, after all, but if you don’t look it then nobody can be sure and it doesn’t really matter. After all, nobody will be scandalized by La Kchessinskaya tonight, will they? I think she’s doing everything absolutely properly. After all, if she didn’t dance, His Majesty would have to know why.’

  ‘Kusminskaya! Why were you born a guttersnipe!’ The door flung open to reveal Varvara Ivanova, fortunately too full of the urgency of her message to have heard the improper conversation which she had interrupted. ‘They can see at the back of the house that you’re wearing old shoes! Surely you could have worn new shoes for your Emperor? Change immediately! And the rest of you’ – her gaze raked the room with disapproval – ‘stop dozing like a litter of stray cats and make sure you look perfect. You’re all to be presented to Their Majesties after the performance. I don’t want to see a hair out of place. Spessitseva! You’ve tied your ribbons the wrong way. Somebody help her! And all of you – five minutes!’

  The virago swept away, and while the other girls leaped to the mirror with squeaks of excitement Lydia changed her shoes in silence while she calculated her response. Now more than ever she was anxious to behave correctly, and aware that whatever instinct dictated the behaviour of her companions, she had been born without it.