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 A
venue 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.”
Boris remarked acidly: “Not quite. But perhaps, Gabriel, I might be able to do something to help you. I was not at all happy with the way he treated my wife. She was unwell for several months after being dismissed.”
“And how is Natalia now?”
Boris smiled. “She dances La Fille Mal Gardée this week at the Mariinsky, an old Kchessinskaya role. This little talk is giving me ideas, in fact. But Natalia is fine. I shall be sorry to miss her performance.”
With a sparkle in his eyes, Astruc retorted: “She will doubtless be sorry to miss yours. What exactly do you have in mind?”
Boris placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Listen to me,” he urged quietly.
When Boris returned from Paris, the winter season was in full swing. He surprised Natalia by announcing that they would give an important dinner, and that the guests of honor would be Kchessinskaya and Chaliapin. “You are not to concern yourself with this,” he told her. “Ivan will help you plan it, and the seamstress will make you up a splendid new gown. I would have brought one back from Pacquin, or Worth—they still have your measurements to make to order—but this time I did not want you to outdo Mala. It is of utmost importance that she feel the star of the evening.”
Natalia said nothing. This strange man was her husband now, but she was still not certain what to make of him. She had agreed to marry him—for only this way would she impose the final check on her instincts, barring even the possibility of Pierre’s interference in her career plans. Boris would not force himself upon her sexually, leaving her magically untouched. But what of him? How had she possibly been able to add to his life? He had actually been prepared to defy his father in order to marry her, although that had proven unnecessary. She could feel his protectiveness, his respect—but she also knew he did not love her. Yet she had been chosen over women with family and funds—and there were times when she could not comprehend it.
Reflecting upon her marriage made her think how her life had changed because of a single official ceremony. Now she was the Countess Kussova. She was received at court. But she knew better than to mention this within the ballet company. Among the artists tempers flared, jealousy erupted at the slightest provocation. Kchessinskaya, not yet a married woman herself, treated her affectionately and had even helped to train her for her own favorite role in La Fille Mal Gardée, a classical comedic ballet of the eighteenth century. Pavlova seemed less openly hostile. Why, even General Teliakovsky, still paternal, found a nice word here and there when he encountered her in the passageways of the Mariinsky. Natalia thought: They are hypocrites. To them I’ve become a passageway to Boris.
Now there was this dinner. As usual, Ivan and Boris had outdone themselves, leaving very little up to her. But, she thought with a certain amount of pride, she was learning. She was learning how to place her guests, how to speak to them in the finest French. That was a bitter pill to swallow: her perfect French, for which Boris had provided the lessons, and which she had learned for Paris. She braced herself: She would not allow self-pity to destroy her. Diaghilev was already hard at work planning a second season for that summer, in 1910.
On the night of the dinner Natalia looked around her, surveying guests and servants from her hostess’s vantage point at the head of the long table. The supper was delicious: clear consommé with meat-filled pirozhki pastries, followed by salmon in a thick velouté sauce, with white wine. Chaliapin sat on her left, and, laughing at one of his innumerable funny anecdotes, she wondered: I am at ease with him. He can tease me and I no longer wish to die of embarrassment, as I did two years ago. Then her thoughts returned to the pork roast with prunes, baked apples, and an enormous salad of exotic greens and fresh vegetables. If she concentrated, she could hear strains of conversation at Boris’s end of the table. Drinking her Bordeaux wine, Kchessinskaya was saying, in her melodic but rather
loud voice, which carried effectively: “He told everyone in Paris at the Châtelet and the Opera that he was a representative of the Tzar? Why, the gall of him, the nerve of that despicable man! Wait until I tell Andrei. What an impostor!”
Boris was replying quite seriously for a spirited dinner conversation: “Perhaps it was only a misunderstanding, Mala, darling.”
A gigantic duckling, piquant with grated lemon peel and a lemon sauce, with roasted onions and potatoes and baked tomatoes â la provençale, was being served, with a rich Madeira wine. Natalia barely sipped it; her head was beginning to reel, and she did not wish to consume excessive amounts of food and wine because of her dancing weight and fitness. Boris was saying, “Poor Astruc does not know what to do. It seems so unjust, after all his hard work.”
“I gather,” Kchessinskaya remarked with a pert toss of the head, her eyes glinting with mischief, “that you, my love, are not going to offer to pay the fifteen thousand francs? Not even out of compassion for Astruc?”
Boris took her hand and bowed over it with mock gallantry. “My dear,” he said, “I have a wife to support now. Remember?”
Across the yards of white linen spread with silver goblets and crystal bowls, and lined with hand-painted china from Sèvres, the prima ballerina assoluta caught Natalia’s eye and waved gaily. Then another guest leaned across the table to ask something, and Kchessinskaya and Boris were obliterated from her view. Natalia was intrigued.
The servants came in with chocolate and orange ices. Champagne was presented. Then came the fresh fruit trays and the sweetmeats. At long last the supper was over. One by one, each man took the arm of his dinner companion, and in twos they came to congratulate Natalia on her splendid meal. This was a gracious tradition honored by all members of Russian society, but Natalia still felt awkward about receiving thanks, especially since she had had so little to do with planning the evening. But she was Boris’s wife, and the hostess: There was no evading this ceremonial finale.
Encore Page 20