Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  “Natalia, look at me,” he said, and when she turned her face to him, he could see the fear in her wide eyes and quivering nostrils—a fear that matched his own. He was thirty-six years old, yet he could not ever recall having felt such a constriction in his throat, not even when Marguerite—

  Abruptly, he stood up and went to the piano. He sat down on the stool and rolled back the top. Without giving himself time to think, he brought his fingers down on the keyboard and began to play a Chopin nocturne, the plaintive notes lifting like human cries into the night. Her head came up in bewilderment, for she had never heard him play like that, nothing of this sort, only ironic bits and pieces, parodies of Rimsky or Glinka. But this was so personal, so naked—so unlike him. She felt as though for the first time since she had known him, he was offering her a glimpse into his inner being. Oh, he had done so once before, but that had not been meant for her, only an explanation due her because of her discovery. This, on the other hand, was for her. She could feel each note reaching to sink into her very heart, and tears came to the surface of her eyes, trembled, and spilled onto her pale cheeks.

  Yes, she thought, he is more frightened than I, and so it is I who shall have to come to him. And she rose as in a dream in slow motion and walked hesitantly on the tip of her toes to the back of the stool where he was sitting. Her hands felt like lead, but she forced herself to raise them, then bring them gently down like folded wings over the slope of his shoulders. She felt him tremble slightly, and his fingers stopped playing. Complete silence hung in the room, silence sparked with tiny motes of electricity like red dots in the air.

  Then he looked up, his blue eyes meeting her unflinching brown ones. She held his gaze and wondered, with sudden panic, whether he would not now flee from her. Her chin quivered. If this was a mistake, they would never be able to continue, to backtrack. But his arms were reaching round to encircle her waist, and she bent her face toward his and covered his lips with her own.

  Chapter 12

  The British season ended in December, giving Natalia, Boris, and Galina barely sufficient time to return home for the holidays. New Year’s Day was a special occasion among the socialites of St. Petersburg. It was a time for all the ladies to be “at home” and for the gentlemen to call upon them one by one. Boris donned his cutaway and accepted from the ever-thoughtful Ivan a stack of engraved cards for those ladies he might miss, and a large purse of coins to tip doormen and butlers along the way. Natalia was sitting down to await her first well-wisher when her husband departed to start his rounds.

  It was a freezing day, and a blizzard was blowing. Boris had saved his sister Nina for the end of his rounds, knowing that this would be one visit he would enjoy. There had always been a solid understanding between the two of them. It was not that his sisters Nadia or Liza loved him less; in fact, they rather idolized him.

  By the time Yuri drew the covered troika up to the stone mansion on the Boulevard of the Big Stables, where the Stassovs lived, Boris was chilled to the bone. All afternoon, he had been alternating between the warmth of elegant sitting rooms and the sub-zero temperature of the snowy streets. He had not stayed long anywhere, sometimes merely dropping off his name card as was the custom, and now he longed for the comfort of a pleasant visit near his sister’s hearth.

  She was in her blue and gold sitting room, serving tea and cakes. It was rather late, and two elegant gentlemen were preparing to make their adieux. He waited at the side, smiling. When they had left, she threw herself with a small moan into his arms. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “What a bore and a trial these New Years are. I’m ready to drop! Tea, my dear?”

  “Yes, very strong. If you’re going to complain, don’t do it until I’ve had a turn. You, at least, stayed in one nice warm room all afternoon. I envy womanhood.”

  He sat down beside her and accepted the tall glass with its amber liquid. She looked up at him, smiling: “I’m glad you saved me for the end, like dessert,” she remarked. She took his hand. “D’you know, it’s a joy to see you these days. There’s something—I don’t know—something very ‘at peace’ about you. Natalia isn’t enceinte now, is she?”

  He laughed, and a sudden redness came over his cheekbones. “Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed, Borya,” she chided him. “After all, it’s a perfectly natural thing for a married woman. Well? Is she?”

  “No. You know she’s not the motherly sort. She wants to dance too much.”

  “Still, Borya, didn’t Kchessinskaya dance till her sixth month? Isn’t that what most of them do at the Mariinsky? You’d have a nurse, and then a governess. Why, Fräulein has worked wonders with Galina. And you know how much Natalia loves Galina. You can’t tell me she wouldn’t love her own child—yours—even more.”

  “In May Natalia’s contractual five years will be over at the Imperial Theatres. We’re going to be traveling all year round then, Nina. I don’t know if dancing throughout the globe would be advisable if she were expecting.”

  “Well, it’ll happen someday,” Nina said soothingly. “You’d like it, wouldn’t you? And Papa would be ecstatic!”

  Boris kissed his sister. “How peaceful to be you, my love!” he commented with amusement, shaking his head at her. “You’ve analyzed the world into a straight line, from A to Z! Amazing girl.”

  But Nina sat pensive next to him. The fire danced red and orange in its marble setting, but she did not reply. She had not spoken to Natalia about what they should do once the portrait of Galina was completed. She bit her lower lip and at length said, with forced cheerfulness: “Borya, I’d like to let you in on a secret. I had something made for Andrei’s birthday in two weeks—but it’s so beautiful that I want you to see it now. Come.”

  He followed her down the corridor to her boudoir and she pushed open the narrow door. They passed into the small room with walls of gray silk, and she opened a closet door and pulled out a large canvas framed by the enamellist jeweler Fabergé. “Look,” she said. “It’s Galina.”

  Indeed it was. Golden Galina, pink and plump in a dress of white taffeta, white ribbons in her unruly hair. Boris felt as though someone had stabbed him unexpectedly from behind, and his hands began to tremble. The touch was still there, the marvelous imperfect lines, the Vrubel colors that seized and held one right inside the frame. His sister turned to him, the smile dying on her lips, for he stood rigid and white, with two hard lines on either side of his tense mouth. He stared at her with a stillness that frightened her, so that she brought her hand to her throat. “Borya,” she asked, her voice shaking. “What on earth’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s a Riazhin, isn’t it?” he said in a tone he had never used with her before. She had heard him speak this way to some of his associates when he was crossed by them—but never to her, his sister.

  “Yes,” she answered, feeling absurdly guilty. Remembering, she added: “You see, he did such a splendid job with Egyptian Nights! And I remember people praising him after the Paris exhibition.”

  “It’s all her doing,” Boris cut in sharply. “I should have known! You’re a terrible liar, Nina, so you may as well stop. Oh, I hardly blame you. But now I’m going to go home and deal with Natalia. This isn’t something I’m about to forget!”

  Nina cried loyally: “Natalia had nothing to do with this! Stop it, Borya! I have no idea what this is about, but you’re being horrid, and you’ve ruined my New Year and Andrei s present! Oh, go away. I don’t feel like being around you when you’re like this—beastly!”

  She turned to him with tears in her eyes, but he had already left the room.

  Ivan had never quite witnessed anything like this. His master pushed past him without a word, hurling his overcoat on the floor. The white rage on his face had distorted his chiseled Greek features. He strode through the hallway toward his wife’s room and burst in without knocking, and Ivan, who had been with him many years and thought that no man possessed more self-control than Count Boris Kussov, heard the
beginnings of an angry shout before the door slammed shut.

  Natalia was sitting at her vanity, and now the tortoiseshell comb which she had been inserting into her raised chignon fell to the floor. Her lips parted, and the blood drained from her face. She half-rose in her chair, but he pushed her down and held his hand roughly on her shoulder, bruising the tender flesh.

  “Nina showed it to me!” he cried, and the twist of his mouth made him look ugly for the first time since she had met him. “And now you’re going to explain to me why you did this!”

  She could not speak. Terror froze her very thoughts. It was unbelievable, what was happening, after all the good that had come to them. She felt dizzy and nauseated. Finally she whispered: “What are you talking about, Borya? What have I done?”

  “The painting of Galina! Nina told me she went to him on her own, because of the set designs of Egyptian Nights. That was four years ago! Nina’s memory isn’t that good, and one does not choose a portraitist for his scenic decor! When did you see him, Natalia? And why involve my sister?”

  A flood of comprehension rushed over her, and, at the same time, dreadful apprehension. She licked her lips. “Borya,” she said as calmly as she could, given the pounding of her heart through her dressing gown, “you must listen to me. I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen him! It’s just that—just that”—and now sudden panic erupted within her—“someone else saw him, my mend Lydia. Lydia Brialovskaya. She saw him, and she told me—this was last February, Boris! Last February, before—before—She told me that he was in bad straits, that he was not working, and that he was living in squalor. And when Nina said she had thought of having Galina’s portrait painted, naturally—I mentioned Pierre, because it’s not right, is it, for someone with his talent to let it all go to waste?”

  She felt as though she were being smothered, choked. “I don’t know why this is so important to you!” she cried. “I didn’t do anything wrong! Tell me!”

  “It wasn’t your job to find him work!” he said. “I can’t explain it any better than that. If he was starving, you should have let him! Don’t you see that?”

  “No!” she retorted, “I don’t see at all! I thought you would have wanted to see him work, after all the effort you went to on his behalf! I didn’t think you’d want to imagine him that way.”

  “At one time I would have given my life to him. Now I wish he were dead! I thought he was dead, for you! Tell me, do you still care? I thought, Natalia, that that was over, before the summer!”

  She jumped up, pushing his hand away from her shoulder, and cried: “But don’t you see that it is—and was? I wanted him out of our life as much as you did! Those memories bring me nothing but pain! I do not want to resurrect him for either one of us—but you’re the one who’s dredged it all up! Why won’t you let it lie? Borya, for God’s sake—let it lie! For our sake!”

  She fell silent and dropped her face into her hands. The crimson fury that had shaken him now seemed to be waning, although his face was still a distorted version of itself. He looked at the red bruise on her shoulder and gritted his teeth. He was shaking. She raised her head from her fingers and said: “Boris, what does it matter whether he paints Galina or anybody else? How could it possibly matter to us—to you and me? Love and hate, Boris, are really the same thing, after all. If you hate him this much, then you must still love him, and the obsession is still there inside you. Is it, Boris? Answer me!”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. There are things one doesn’t forget or let go. Bitterness dies hard.”

  “But it has to die! It died for me, with my father. Don’t you remember how I let him go, at long last? I don’t hate him anymore. He has simply ceased to play any role whatsoever in my life. But Pierre is a great artist, with true talent. Our feelings should not have any bearing on his work. Let him create, Boris! You don’t have to love or hate someone to let him go about his own existence!”

  Hesitantly, she reached up and touched his cheek. “You don’t own the man,” she said gently. “If you do, then your own heart is not free, and this obsession with Pierre will keep festering within you. Borya—I don’t want that. I can’t take that! Not now!”

  He made a helpless gesture, half shrug, half futile question, and turned away. “I’m sorry, Natalia,” he whispered.

  He felt her arms go around his waist from behind, and her head lean on his back. “Don’t leave me, Natalia,” he said, and his voice caught.

  For a moment they remained entwined, and then, slowly, he turned around and faced her. The soft hair was falling gracefully about her shoulders, and now he touched it, tentatively. A tremor passed through him. Natalia moved closer, so that he could feel the pressure of her firm young breasts beneath her dressing gown, and then, in one sudden motion, she shook the gown from her shoulders. It slid to the floor in a heap of silk, and he thought, amazed: She wants to make love now! and wondered briefly if all women were this impatient, their eager young bodies held tensely in waiting. The horrible quarrel still rang in his ears, strangely quickening his own pulse, and when he enveloped her firm nudity in his arms, he found his own need matching hers. He carried her to the bed, his temples pounding. It was not until he kneeled naked before her that he noticed there were bright tears glistening in her eyes.

  She held her arms out to him and caressed his neck and shoulder. As always when he approached her, there was hesitation, almost a pulling away at the last moment. She was attempting to quiet that tension, to ease him to her, to bind herself to him in small gestures. Her fingers touched his nipples, circled them. Her hand lingered along his lean, long torso. He was elegant even in his nakedness. Natalia drew him over her and wound herself about him sinuously, so that he could smell her hair, its soft scent of attar roses. “Don’t ever doubt me,” she murmured over his shoulder. And he thought, with wrenching pain: But I shall always doubt myself.

  Boris regarded his pipe with an ironic detachment he did not feel. He was almost thirty-seven, and the other side of his life stretched ahead of him, more ponderous challenge than the first. One attacked the years of one’s youth with the voracity of a predator, but before the second half of life, one paused to consider more carefully. Here, in Budapest, one of his Slavic glooms had descended, and he found it difficult to rid himself of the dead weight. In addition, there had been the death of his friend, the painter Serov, only months after the assassination of the Russian prime minister, Peter Stolypin. Boris still mourned these men.

  Alone in his hotel room, he sat stroking his mustache. A kaleidoscope of visions passed through his mind. Vaslav Nijinsky, irritated like a raw nerve ending, was rehearsing his first choreographic work, Afternoon of a Faun. Diaghilev was excited over his protégé’s creation: Vaslav had to be more than a mere dancer; he had to explode into composition in order to fulfill his promise to the world. But Michel Fokine had heard of these secret rehearsals conducted behind his back and was threatening to quit the Ballets Russes. He’ll go, Boris thought grimly: Serge has seen to it by crushing his pride.

  Abruptly, Boris thought of Romola de Pulszky, a young blond Hungarian debutante, whose mother was the leading actress in Budapest. Romola’s interest in the Ballets Russes had at first amused him and irritated Diaghilev. She was ostensibly an admirer of the danseur Adolph Bolm. She was taking ballet lessons and wanted to be a dancer of some sort. Natalia, a real dancer, lived and breathed her movements day and night, and somehow Romola’s excessive zeal seemed off-key, beside the point.

  Absentmindedly, Boris tapped the bowl of his pipe onto the edge of an ashtray. He was still pondering the issue of Romola. I shall use that girl, he said to himself. With Fokine’s departure, there would be only Vaslav, and Natalia. Always, at the center of his plans there was Natalia. but not now, later. He began to laugh, a low, hearty chuckle.

  “As long as I can practice my craft, I am glad to do so,” Pierre said. He raised his black eyes to his subject, seated on the dais, and cleared his throat. �
��An honor,” he added self-consciously.

  “It is we who are honored that you could come to Kiev for this setting,” the gray-haired Princess Tumarkina said, lifting a strand of her daughter’s limp blond hair and securing it behind the comb of mother-of-pearl. “Marguerite comes so rarely to visit us, now that her husband is with the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.”

  “Well,” Marguerite interjected, spots of pink appearing on her cheeks, “if Pierre Grigorievitch had not been able to come here, I would have insisted that he come to me in Germany.”

  “Hush, dear,” her mother said. “If you excite yourself, he will make your color look quite vulgar.” She moved to the side and smiled at Pierre. “There now, isn’t that better? More sedate, for the wife of a diplomat. You won’t be too inexact, will you, Pierre Grigorievitch?”

  “Mama,” Marguerite said, “Pierre Grigorievitch is known for his freedom of line and for his bright hues. I do not want to look like a sepia-colored Hausfrau, do I?”

  The old princess sighed. “What can I say? I am vieux jeu. Well, I suppose I shall leave then and see to your father, Marguerite. Au revoir, Pierre Grigorievitch.”

  “Your Excellency.” Pierre bowed, thinking, as he always did, that manners were a confounded nuisance, especially when they got in the way of his work. He stood back and examined the canvas: a pale face with blue eyes that he had tinted with sea-green, a pert nose that he had rendered bold, and blond hair massed on top of a wide forehead. How could he add character without adding …madness? A delicate question, one which a master of the dialectic might handle better than he. His jaw set.

  “Pierre Grigorievitch, you painted for the Ballets Russes, didn’t you?” Marguerite asked, and he saw that her eyes had become curiously distended.

  Yes, Your Excellency, but that was before they became the Ballets Russes, when the company was composed of borrowed dancers from the Mariinsky and from Moscow.” He did not smile, and his breath came hard for a moment. “I haven’t been a part of that enterprise for quite some time.”