Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  She could picture the child in her mind. Inevitably, it was a little girl that resembled Galina, yet Natalia did not want a girl. She wanted a male child, a different sort of being from herself. It would be far more difficult to rear a daughter—she herself had been reared with such lack of care that the mere thought of an infant girl in her arms made her afraid. She could not have explained the rationale behind that fear either, but it had something to do with self-love. Loving a boy would be like loving Boris all over again.

  Whenever she thought of Boris, something ached inside her. The whole tenure of their love was like the rarest of crystals, clear and precious and terribly fragile. She did not deserve to be loved this much, nor did she know how to handle these surges of inexplicable emotion for him. Loving him brought out the hidden place where pure joy was so strong that it became like pure sorrow. She was afraid to rest inside this love, oddly afraid to touch it, to trust it.

  In many ways this was the honeymoon that they had never taken, for they had not grown together until three years after their marriage, and by then the Ballet had taken precedence over everything else in their lives. She did not know whether the Ballet had pushed them toward each other, allowing them glimpses here and there into each other during the daily workings of an enterprise that consumed them both—or whether it had kept them from discovering what lay behind each of their veneers, because of the constant pressures it had placed on them. She did know this: Under no other circumstance would she have accepted marriage. She had married Boris only because he had not threatened to merge his life with hers; and she was his wife now precisely because they had merged, more perfectly than either would have thought possible.

  We have both lived outside society, she said to herself during this final month when Zwingenberg exploded with burgeoning life, and when the life that was taking shape inside her was preparing to be born. They had taken up residence in the sole inn of the village, and there the innkeepers were taking good care of her, knowing only that she was the Russian lady expecting the child, whose handsome, aristocratic husband was apparently a man of means and distinction. This made her smile. She wondered if they had ever heard of the Ballets Russes, these good people, and, if so, whether they knew of her, Oblonova. Sometimes an acute poignancy seized her, unexpected in these soothing surroundings, and she would long to dance again, to be in front of an audience. She wanted to hold onto her dancing, to retain the sharp memories of the stage and the parts she had played, especially the Firebird. Dance was what had made her, and also what had brought her to Boris.

  She had learned to put up with her weakness, with her forced immobility, with the constant visits from the doctor in Darmstadt. At first she had been quite ill, her body unsure whether to retain this child or to fight its intrusion. Like my mind, she thought wryly. She remembered Boris sitting with her and holding her hand, worried lines at the outer corners of his eyes. Boris, too, had changed during this pregnancy. He was thirty-nine, and a few strands of silver meshed with his gold hair, but there was a new gravity on his long face, and yet, simultaneously, a joy and youth. He is proud, she realized, more proud than he ever had been of his clever manipulations of people and situations. The simple act of having made a child and knowing he is loved have made him a whole man at last. She was unspeakably moved, as though a door had been opened on a private scene for her eyes only.

  Yes, she thought, we have lived outside society, but we have created a society of our own, for ourselves. Now that the child was rooted inside her, now that it was alive and prospering, she felt less pain. Her body, like her mind, had accepted.

  Natalia worried that Boris would grow bored in these quiet surroundings; similarly he was certain that she, so quick and vital, was withering from restlessness, too. At least, he thought, I have places to go, things to see. Yet he did not take full advantage of his mobility, for something inside prevented him from breaking the magic of this private time with her.

  Images of the SS. Avon, of the dark sea and the sensitive face of Armando Valenzuela, now and then intruded on his memory, and then he felt terrible pangs of agony and loneliness—pangs that could be washed away only by her closeness, by the cool reality of her love for him.

  Years before, he had met the grand-duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, Tzarina Alexandra’s brother, yet now he did not call upon him as he would have under normal circumstances. Sometimes Boris was almost tempted to enter the palace grounds through the grilled gates; the ducal residence was hidden, but one could see the vast park with its great old trees and thick bushes. Still, he wanted no one to know that he was here, that Natalia was going to have her baby in this remote part of the world.

  One could almost forget one is in Germany, he thought with some bitterness. Kaiser Wilhelm filled him with disgust and disdain, but also with fear. Madmen, Boris said to himself, were more dangerous than calculating foes. Nero and Caligula had perpetrated more massacres than Caesar or Napoleon! Then, of course, there were the well-meaning fools. Poor Tzar Nicholas! He was limited, narrow, stubborn—yet essentially not an evil man.

  Sometimes—more frequently, lately—dark thoughts assailed Boris. Decidedly, he thought with self-deprecation, age is creeping up as I near forty. It was becoming difficult to dispel these attacks, as he called them. He wondered whether Natalia, uncannily perceptive, had sensed them and, if so, had been able to guess at the more troubling aspects of some of his sexual yearnings. Fervently he hoped that he had hidden them from her. No one had been asked to accept more, to forgive and to forget more totally than she; and she had done so without ever looking back. Once she had come to him, she had locked the past behind thick doors. Still, he wondered, perhaps she had placed some of herself in reserve, fearful of committing herself completely. But he detested himself for doubting. It was difficult to trust someone after so many barren years of half-lived existence: He owed Natalia his life, he thought. She had given him the freshness of sharing.

  He did a lot of horseback riding through the hills, and between Darmstadt and Zwingenberg. The road was lovely, crossing woods, flowered meadows, and large brooks with rustic bridges. For over a mile the trees on either side were so tall that their branches met over the top of the road, forming a bower of romantic shadows. In his elegant jodhpurs Boris cut a Byronic figure against this natural paradise, alone with his thoughts.

  He had been surprised at the intense reaction that he had felt at the news, in December, of Diaghilev’s summary dismissal of Nijinsky, and of Vaslav’s subsequent difficulties setting up his own production company. The dancer’s troubles had been on his mind in a strangely nagging fashion. “Aha!” Natalia had exclaimed, somewhat ironically. “Could it be that you possess a conscience after all, dear heart?” He’d been annoyed, yet he’d had to grudgingly admit that there was some truth to the matter.

  “I started the whole damn thing—or rather, as I told you, I helped it along. And now I suppose I should go to Vaslav with some sort of offer. This London season of his isn’t working out; you can’t have someone like Nijinsky running a company—he’s still a child! And the Palace is a variety theatre that puts the dancers between two vaudeville acts: He isn’t equipped to handle that the way a hardened professional such as Pavlova could!” Natalia had listened and waited, her large eyes on him. “But the truth is, my heart wouldn’t be in it,” he concluded. “I want to stay here, with you. My interest in helping Nijinsky would be purely altruistic, and”—he half-smiled, and his eyes twinkled—“you know how poorly altruism fares with me!”

  “What has happened to the patron saint of all Russian artists?” Natalia had asked, holding out her hand to him.

  “I’m not sure. It does disturb me, I’m afraid. Love does me no good. I’ve become domesticated, and vastly uninteresting. But when you dance again, my energies will start to flow once more, you’ll see!”

  He also thought about Serge Diaghilev, and old bitterness flowed into him. If Serge had suffered, well then, so did we all. People spent their lives zigzaggi
ng through dangerous paths between two rows of flaming torches, ending up scorched more often than not. Diaghilev had never intimated that he had had the slightest suspicion of Boris’s involvement in the matter of Romola and Vaslav Nijinsky. He had shown a great deal of concern for Natalia and had entreated Boris to continue to help him in running the company. For all intents and purposes three associates, two of them longtime friends, had temporarily parted because of health problems. They would once more join forces after the birth of Natalia’s baby.

  How characteristic of us! Boris thought, laughing. Yet we are and shall always be friends. We have an odd friendship based on similar traits and a complete lack of trust. Trust could generate boredom. Only with Natalia was Boris not afraid that this would develop. One did not become bored with Natalia, for she never took anything for granted. It was better this way, for if they trusted the fates as they learned to trust each other, their lives would fall to ruin and their love would die.

  These were strange thoughts for a promenade through the countryside. Boris could not help being amused at his own somberness. He would have to fight this onset of melancholia with greater self-will. But between moments of sheer joy there were sharp gaps when his very soul would sink to a purple sadness, like a sunset. Boris shook his head. His happiness was so deep that his mind was demanding balance. Hence the sadness. It was natural, then. He dismissed the guilty feelings toward his wife and toward Nijinsky, separate but anguish-laden: There was no time for such futile emotions. Then he kicked his horse lightly to spur him on, threw back his golden head, feeling energized by the wind—and laughed at himself, frankly and heartily.

  It was the off-season, and, apart from Boris and Natalia, there were few other guests at the inn. Sometimes after supper Boris would have Natalia transported to a chaise longue in the sitting room downstairs, and he would play the piano for her. There was so little to amuse her. Yet she felt that it would be unfair to make him share the confines of her seclusion, he who cherished the refinements of civilization. Although he said that he did not miss his friends in the Diaghilev committee—Bakst, Benois, Serge Pavlovitch himself, Svetlov, the ballet critic—she knew that he must be padding the truth. Her body was shapeless and distended, her weary face more gray than white, with circles beneath her eyes; she preferred not to be seen by him this way. The end of her term was coming. Since she was convinced that they would be satisfied with a single child, she thought: Thank God, it will soon be over, and I can be myself again, and he can start to breathe again the fresh air of culture. In the meantime, there was the piano.

  Natalia was totally unfamiliar with Wagner. “But,” Boris told her, “this is as good a place to learn him as any. He embodies the spirit of Germany.”

  “Play something Italian instead,’ she suggested.

  He smiled. “No, I’m going to initiate you in Wagneriana. It’s everything we’re not: ponderous, glorious, majestic, and unsubtle. But it must be heard, and then assimilated. You’ll learn to understand him,’ He opened the music cabinet, found some sheets, and arranged them above the piano. Then he rolled back the top and began to play from the first act of Die Walkyrie. He started to sing. Natalia leaned on her elbow, fascinated. The innkeepers came in, surprised. Boris possessed an excellent voice, which they had never heard. Even Natalia had not heard it frequently lifted in song. It rang deep and rich, and he sang with complete ease. Sometimes he stopped to repeat a passage to make it more familiar to Natalia. When he stopped, it was late, and he had played through two full acts. The innkeepers were still hovering in the doorway.

  With some effort she reached out to him, holding out tremulous fingers. “Please go tomorrow,” she whispered. “Go to the opera. I won’t have the baby without you. Besides, you’ve kept me up tonight, and it would do me good to go to sleep early tomorrow.”

  With a graceful sweep he slipped his arms under her and carried her carefully up the stairs. She was heavy, where before she had been weightless, a flower in the breeze. Or maybe it was merely the mental weight that he had been attributing to the baby. He positioned her carefully on the bed and kneeled down beside her. The little face was still delicate and pale, but it did not seem as frightened as before. He touched her hair and removed one pin, then another, until, free, it fell in soft waves, Madonna-like, around her cheeks and forehead. There was something otherworldly about a woman with child, something poignantly desirable about her intangibility. He drew a line with his fingertip over her nose and chin.

  “Sleep now,” he said, feeling oddly moved and not at all ridiculous. “My own sweet girl.”

  The following evening he drove into Darmstadt to go to the opera. He felt exhilarated. Natalia was reading in bed, exhausted after having spent a comfortable day; there was no need to worry. Still, a nagging voice grated within him, telling him that he should have stayed. But she had wanted him to go, and frankly he had longed for such an evening. It was such a beautiful time of year, and Darmstadt was a jewel of a town, so gentle and charming, sogemütlich.

  Yes, he thought as he entered the opera house and found his reserved seat, she’s right, of course, and I’ve been a fool to deny it: I do miss the productions, the talent, and the creativity. But I also needed this time alone with her, time apart from the pressures of a jumbled existence, time to sort things out, to grow up a little.

  At intermission he went out into the corridor to stretch his legs and smoke his pipe. Decidedly, Darmstadt was not a town of elegant people. Boris leaned nonchalantly against a wall and appraised the theatre crowd. The women had thick waists and florid countenances. Their hats were too broad-brimmed to be fashionable. True, there were some aigrettes, plumes of the egret—His eyes began to wander. All at once he abruptly froze.

  Boris felt his body tense into a single, taut nerve. His lips parted. Not more than a hundred feet away stood a man in black evening wear, holding his opera hat in one hand and a champagne coupe in another. Boris could feel himself perspiring into his elegant ruffled shirt. He wet his upper lip. Then the man turned, and could not avoid encountering Boris against the wall. Boris saw the crisp black curls, the black eyes that always seemed to possess a life of their own. There was a new crease in the forehead, lines forming at the mouth. No wonder, he’s not a child anymore; he’s past thirty, older than I was when we met.

  Faced with the dark eyes, Boris made an instant decision. He smiled, inclined his head, and raised his hand in an ironic salute. He had caught the other off-guard. Warming slightly after the first shock, Boris took a step and walked with casual grace toward him. Reaching him he said: “Hello, Pierre. I’m afraid you’ve brought me up short. I can’t think of a single clever thing to say.”

  Pierre Riazhin stared at him, nostrils twitching, the color high on his cheekbones. A sort of grimace playing over his features made him look like a wild beast cornered by a pack of bloodthirsty hunting dogs: angry, rebellious, and aware that the outcome was unavoidable. He said harshly: “What are you doing here, Boris?”

  Boris smiled. “Enjoying the opera. Et toi?”

  Pierre reared his head, and this time Boris was reminded of a black stallion snorting in the open field. It was odd how one thought of animal parallels when standing with Pierre.

  “I live here,” the young painter said.

  “You do? And where, may I inquire?”

  “What business is it of yours?” Pierre retorted. The hostility in his eyes was like a sliver of ice thrust into Boris’s stomach.

  Boris smiled. “Come now, Pierre, such animosity toward an old friend! It isn’t becoming. But let’s leave all that aside, shall we? What are you saying, you live here? In Darmstadt itself? What on earth for?”

  “I live at the Künstler Kolonie. It’s a good place to work. I’ve built a house there.”

  “Indeed?” Boris raised his eyebrows, intrigued. The Künstler Kolonie had been set up by the grand-duke from a wooded area, which he had divided into small lots and paved with winding streets. Sculptors, poets, and painters o
f all sorts had purchased the lots and erected small houses on them.

  “Tell me, Pierre. Have you turned your back on Russia?”

  “For the moment. I like it here. I have even learned German.” Pierre hesitated, then laughed shortly. He coughed and asked, “What are you doing here during this off-season? No ballet?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Boris regarded Pierre from narrowed eyes. “Natalia is expecting a child,” he said.

  Pierre’s face became suffused with blood. He made an impulsive motion to spring forward, then caught himself. His lips worked. For a moment Boris felt sorry for the young man. Pierre’s black eyes had begun to glow with a strange red glint. “It’s been difficult for her,” Boris said, to cover the tension. “She’s going to give birth any day now, but she hasn’t been able to dance for nearly seven months.”

  Pierre uttered a small noise in the back of his throat, and then burst out: “Difficult? Any day now? Why, you disgusting—” He stopped, took a deep breath, and asked: “Whose is it? Obviously not yours!”

  Swiftly, in one movement, Boris closed the distance between them and, before a single person could notice, he slapped Pierre squarely on the cheek. Pierre did not utter a word, but his eyes grew wide, and he seized Boris by the lapels of his dinner jacket and began to shake him. “I’m going to kill you,” he said, raising his voice so that several people turned to stare at them.

  Boris thrust his shoulders up, making Pierre’s hands drop to his sides. “You haven’t changed much, Petya,” he said. “And that’s a damn shame. People change, you know—or they should. They don’t necessarily become better human beings, and that’s all right. Yet they do change. I’d rather hoped you would have shed your Neanderthal behavior in favor of more intelligent ways. But I see it’s still eluding you—adulthood, I mean.”

  They remained staring at each other for a minute. Then Boris slowly turned and walked resolutely into the auditorium. He sat down stroking his mustache and smiled at the old woman seated next to him. But the churning in the pit of his stomach was almost blinding him, and when the curtain rose, red dots still played before his eyes.