Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  Pierre Riazhin stood still in the corridor, clenched fists at his sides. His nostrils flaring with a rising tide of rage, he took the champagne cup, which he had deposited on a ledge, and hurled it against the wall where Boris had been standing. The corridor had been steadily emptying. Before anyone could stop him, Pierre ran out of the opera house, his heart pounding and his throat hoarse from panting.

  I’m going to kill the bastard, he thought, his mouth filled with an acrid taste. He tried to think, began to sort out the words. It wasn’t true! Fury seized him once again, shook him within its grasp of crimson madness, and he said aloud: “I’m going to kill him!”

  Boris could not sleep. His body was alive with tremors that shook him like an ague. His stomach twisted in knots, and disembodied thoughts came at him like screeching trains passing at full speed by a motionless onlooker. At the forefront of his mind lay Natalia, slumbering at his side like a misshapen goddess always hovering on the edge of pain.

  He had refused Dr. Fröhlich’s suggestion of a clinic. To place Natalia there away from him, to surround her with antiseptic bleakness, filled him with such dreadful feelings that the famous Darmstadt specialist had demurred. Boris had always considered himself an enlightened man—but the idea of a clinic harkened back to inexplicable superstitions: His mother had died in one, of consumption, and Marguerite had been sent to one after a serious mental breakdown. In his mind this Kussov birth, so unexpected at this stage of his life, had become endowed with mystical qualities that he could hardly reconcile with hospitalization.

  “Of course, if she or the baby will be in danger otherwise, you must make any arrangement possible,” he had added hurriedly, a sense of doom assaulting his insides. But Dr. Fröhlich had compromised: a nurse, Fräulein Bernhardt, was kept on hand in the village of Zwingenberg, lodging at the house of the cabinetmaker during the last three weeks of the pregnancy; and the medical men deemed the enormous bathroom adjoining the Kussov suite at the inn convenient enough for giving birth, with its open space in the center, the tub against one wall, and the sink, table, and chairs on the opposite side.

  Boris had never felt so helpless and inadequate in his life. On one elbow he examined Natalia, wondering if she were truly asleep or in that awkward twilight in which she often passed between rest and uncomfortable half-dozing awareness. He reached out to touch her white brow, then held back: He did not want to risk awakening her if she was asleep. Guilt trickled into his consciousness: to have turned this figure of grace and genius into a mountain of flesh, to have placed her wit and verve behind such bars was an appalling selfishness. Natalia had never wanted a child, and now she might die giving birth to one—to his! And yet sheer joy followed lustily on the heels of his guilt. Nina had felt sure that Natalia would want a child. He had never even considered the possibility—how could he? Now it was imminent, and he was overwhelmed with gladness. Gladness, pride, and hope filled him—but also terror at an unknown so dreadful and so vast that it paralyzed his reason.

  He had felt sudden fear when he had first become adjusted to the idea of the pregnancy, wondering if the old disgust would surge up again to destroy everything that he had built with Natalia. He had been afraid to come near her, to see her growing stomach become round and fecund and fully female. Somehow she had sensed this and given him space. But with hesitation he had watched the process. Within the first three months she had begun to show the child inside her, and he had been fascinated and touched, awakened to a new level of sensitivity. Their child!

  She moved on the bed, and a spasm passed over her pale face. Her eyelids flickered open and she looked at him, her dark eyes alive with questions. Poor angel, my poor sweet girl, he thought. She knows as little about this as I do. We are babes in the wood. He took her hand and found it moist and feverish. She uttered a sharp cry. Alarmed, he rose from the bed and turned on all the lights. “Something horrible is happening,’ she said, the words like small pointed daggers in the still night air. “My body is ripping open with something—a liquid—”

  Boris did not wait. He seized his dressing gown and ran out into the corridor, frantically searching for the room where he knew the innkeepers slept. When he found it, he pounded on the door until a man in an incongruous night bonnet threw it open and stared at him, dumbfounded. “Herr Walter, it’s my wife!’’ Boris said quickly. “Where is Frau Walter?”

  The woman was arriving, attracted by the noise. She smiled. She was large and round, with a creased red face and small brown eyes. Natalia had nicknamed her Henny Penny from a nursery story that she had learned in England. “Go back to bed, Hermann,” she told her husband. “Babies are not within your province, as I can see they aren’t within the count’s.”

  Boris and the woman did not speak in the corridor, but inside the room she walked rapidly to the bed and turned to Boris. “Please leave us,” she said somewhat severely. She gave him a small, unceremonious push, and when he had gone into the small sitting room next door, she threw back the covers. “Ach,” she exclaimed, shaking her head, “it’s what I thought. The water broke. You’re a young one,” she said to Natalia, who was looking at her with silent terror. “There’s nothing wrong at all. You’ve just never been through this. I don’t think it’s time yet to call Fräulein Bernhardt, though I suppose your husband will insist. Men! Useless, if you ask me!”

  Unexpectedly, Natalia laughed. Frau Walter smiled back, pleased with their complicity. “We’re going to have to change the sheets,” she said, and went to the adjoining door. “Herr Graf,” she called to Boris, “please carry the Gräfin to the sitting room while I put clean linens on the bed.”

  There is nothing like a German Hausfrau, Boris thought with some humor. He took Natalia in his arms to the small sofa and sat down near her. Her face seemed brighter, more flushed, and her eyes more alive. “It’s all right,” she said to him in a strangely normal voice. “The worst is over. The worst was thinking that the baby would die along the way. Now we know it’s going to be born.” But he thought: What if you should be the one to die, from my selfishness and from my stubbornness concerning the clinic?

  Frau Walter settled Natalia comfortably against the pillows and went to telephone Fräulein Bernhardt at the cabinetmaker’s in the village. Boris paced the room, thoughts hurtling through his brain. Natalia said evenly: “You’re making me nervous. Sit down and read me something, will you? Something not too deep—Turgenev?”

  “I’m not a living library, Natalia,” he said. “But perhaps you want me to perform a one-man ballet for you. It’s too late to cable Vaslav to come.”

  She bit her lower lip and giggled. “I don’t know what else to make you do to stop from fretting. You can’t very well play the piano. It must be three in the morning!”

  Suddenly she pressed her hands against her stomach and writhed in pain. His face turned white. For a moment she could not breathe, but then, slowly, the color returned to her cheeks. Frau Walter returned with the meticulous Fräulein Bernhardt in a clinical white smock and neat gray bun. “I think I’ve had a pain,” Natalia told her. “Just before you arrived.”

  Her calm words rang like an alarm in the room. Boris sat down abruptly, all expression vanishing from his face. Frau Walter drew a chair near the bed and took a seat, her knitting in her ample lap. Fräulein Bernhardt, tall and birdlike, hovered between them, attentive. A half hour passed, then another. After two hours Natalia murmured in a small voice: “Must this vigil continue? Please, could I go back to sleep?”

  The two efficient women busied themselves in the small sitting room, making a bed for Fräulein Bernhardt on the sofa. “The labor isn’t beginning yet, so we should all shut our eyes,” the nurse announced. She closed the connecting door, and Boris heard Frau Walter leave the room, presumably to return to her own. He turned down the lights and slipped into bed. But he remained wide awake.

  He felt Natalia’s small hand slipping into his, tentative and questing. “I’m not going to die,” she whispered into the nigh
t. “Anyway, the queen mother and the dowager empress in the sitting room wouldn’t let me. We have years to spend together, Borya—years! Have you forgotten that you’re going to build me a house in the hills of Monte Carlo? With jasmine and mimosa and lilacs in the garden? You can’t go back on your promise. It wouldn’t be honorable, you know.”

  He could not find the words to answer her. Nameless oppression lay upon his chest, smothering all sensation.

  The next morning she slept. There was no change. Boris dressed quietly and began to pace the floor. Fräulein Bernhardt opened the door connecting the bedroom to the small sitting room where she had slept, and came to him. “There is no purpose in your remaining here, Herr Graf,” she murmured in her quiet, dry voice. “If the labor begins, I shall send for Dr. Fröhlich. In the meantime, she needs her rest.” She hesitated, then continued. “It’s an unfortunate timing for the Gräfin, but there’s to be a village feast here today, with dancing and a band. The Walters tried to stop the players from coming, but they were already on their way. It was too late to warn the villagers. I’m afraid the best Frau Walter can do is to make sure that all the doors are shut to the front room.”

  An absurd sense of unreality seized hold of Boris. He uttered a short spurt of laughter. “My God,” he said, “a band! I suppose I could offer to buy the instruments at a profit, so they won’t have to play?”

  “Come now,” Fräulein Bernhardt remonstrated, a tinge of kindness seeping into her competence. “Why don’t you go for a walk or a drive through the countryside? It will do you a lot of good. Babies are born every day, you know. This is 1914—women no longer die in childbirth the way they did years ago.”

  “But we almost lost this baby,” Boris retorted angrily, annoyed at being treated as though he were constantly in the way. A flush spread over his face: “A band! How will she rest in all this noise?”

  “I’m certain that the Walters will do what they can. In any case, Herr Graf, at this stage she is too exhausted to be deterred by dancing music. She’ll be oblivious to it. But she’ll sense your nervousness. It will make her very frightened, and then she will not help with the birth and will suffer a great deal more. Husbands’ feelings are contagious.”

  Boris turned away and slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. He seized his riding whip and cap, and, without saying a word, strode out of the suite, into the corridor, and down the stairs. In the large front hall Frau Walter, her husband, and a few chambermaids were setting chairs against the wall and rolling back the carpet. The innkeeper’s wife opened her mouth to greet him, but before she could speak, he had left, slamming the door behind him. They stared after him, blinking.

  Boris stood uncertainly in the morning air. It was a chilly day, with a strong, bracing breeze. Energy tingled through him, charging him with a heightened awareness of life. Unable to think clearly, he abruptly gave up and walked to the back of the inn, where two horses were hitched in a very small stable. The one he usually rode, Banditt, was a white, nervous stallion that reared his head when he saw Boris. “I suppose you and I are alike, old boy,” Boris said, untying him and leading him out to the bridle path. “We don’t take well to being caged.” He mounted the beast in one swift, graceful motion.

  Once on the horse, he felt relieved. He was marvelously one with Banditt, a single male strength and flow, a savage might contained in elegant leanness. He spurred the horse toward the large path that led to Darmstadt, over bridges and under the bower formed by the merging treetops.

  He was assailed by conflicting emotions and sensations, but the wind brushed these cleanly from him, making him whole. But something—he didn’t know exactly what—kept urging him forward, into Darmstadt itself. Suddenly he knew: He was right on the edge of the Künstler Kolonie. For a moment he was angry, and almost turned the horse around; then, with a grim set of his jaw, he directed Banditt onto the winding streets.

  Why had he come here? To square away what misunderstanding? Or had he merely allowed his worry over Natalia to raise from his consciousness another worry, caused by his run in with Pierre at the opera house? He had had his revenge, had ostracized Pierre from the Ballet and from his Petersburg sponsors. Why, then, could he not let go? One simply did not forget past agonies; one had to lay them to rest. He had believed all this to be over. Pierre had proved that it was not. What did he want with Pierre? I want to finish it once and for all, he told himself. I want it finished before the baby’s born so that the three of us—she, I, and our child—may proceed without being haunted by the past. I need a resolution.

  Suddenly, Boris felt cold sweat on his shoulders, under his armpits. He remembered his first sight of Pierre at the opera, that instant before thoughts had entered his head: that split-second of complete emotion unclouded by reason. What, in fact, had he felt? It would have been better not to have raised the question, not to have analyzed it. Armando Valenzuela had sought him out, recognizing him as one of his own—that had been bad enough. But Pierre had always been with him, a memory to haunt him. He had never really been able to let go, to stop the anguishing treadmill of desire and love: not even converting the love to a vengeful hatred. Not even his love for Natalia, that other love that could bring him peace and self-esteem, had been able to eradicate the memory of his passion for Pierre Riazhin. It was essential that he test it one last time. For his family’s sake and his own sanity and well-being.

  Halfway up the first street, Boris realized that he had no idea where exactly Pierre lived. He stopped a blond woman walking with a child. “There’s a young Russian painter, Pierre Riazhin,” he began. “I’d like to find him if you can help me.”

  “There are no Russians here, mein Herr,” the woman replied. “Only Germans. Are you certain he lives here?”

  Taken aback, Boris replied: “That’s what he told me. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, dark curly hair, and black eyes. In his early thirties.”

  “Oh! You must mean the Swiss man. I’d forgotten about him. His German isn’t so good, but it’s not bad. He doesn’t speak to many of us here, but he’s a courteous enough young fellow. He paints beautiful, vivid scenes. Peter Habig, that’s his name. I don’t know what you called him, but I can assure you he’s not Russian.”

  Utterly bewildered now, Boris merely raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I must have been confused, gnädige Frau,” he remarked smoothly. “But tell me, if you will, where I may find this Habig?”

  “Up the road, the two-storey house with the semicircular outer staircase,” the woman replied cheerfully. Taking the small child’s hand, she started down the road once more. Intrigued, Boris spurred Banditt in the opposite direction.

  He stopped Banditt in front of a small garden planted with pansies, marigolds, poppies, and short-stemmed daisies. Several pieces of white wicker lawn furniture stood between the flower beds. The house itself was small, like all the houses in the Künstler Kolonie; it was boxlike, of white sandstone, with windows of varying shapes. Boris half-smiled and tied his horse to the post outside. With easy grace, he mounted the semicircular staircase to the front stoop, and rang the doorbell.

  At the back of his mind he must have wondered whether Pierre would be the one to answer the door. When it was pulled open, the young painter stood before him in his shirtsleeves, wearing an expression of ill-concealed hostility and outrage. Boris inclined his head and raised one hand. “Don’t be banal, my Petya, and ask me how I found you or what I’m doing here. Instead, ask me in, won’t you?”

  Pierre’s black eyes snapped with anger and the muscles in his neck tensed into cords. “What if I killed you right here, with my bare hands?” he whispered.

  Boris shrugged lightly and entered. He looked around him. They stood in a small salon adorned with carved ebony furniture lightened by multicolored cushions and a large tapestry on the wall. The chairs and sofa were low and streamlined, of an unusual design. The effect was open, yet busy.

  “Since you’re here, what do you want?” Pierre broke in.

&nb
sp; Boris looked at him directly, coldly. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said. “Simply that, without histrionics and physical assault. Is that permissible?”

  He scanned the room and went to an armchair by the tapestry and sat down, slinging one leg easily over the other. “You’re doing all right, I take it?” he asked.

  “Well enough. The disfavor you did me in Petersburg has taken years to mend. It’s still not mended, not by a long shot.”

  “You must learn to accept adversity, Pierre. The past is the past. If you allow bitterness and hatred to consume you, you won’t be able to accomplish anything in the future.”

  Pierre’s mouth opened. “And whose advice is this, may I ask?” he cried. “Because it sure as hell isn’t yours, Boris!”

  Boris laughed ruefully. “No, it isn’t. Well done, Pierre. Touché. Actually, it’s Natalia’s. Sound advice, really. You should pay heed to it. So should I, for that matter.” A frown marred his smooth brow, and he quickly passed his fingers over his eyes. Then he looked up at Pierre, still standing. “Natalia is going to give birth any moment now. That’s why I’m here: This is too damned important a time for her and for me to allow other matters to cloud the issue. If you’re here, then so be it. But I don’t want you to take it into your head to find her and cause problems. Should you run into us somewhere, I want to make sure you’ll behave like a gentleman.”

  Pierre took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and sat down opposite Boris. On his knee, his right hand clenched into a fist, then spread out, and became a fist again. Suddenly he looked at Boris and said: “Natalia came to see me three years ago, in Petersburg. After you turned everyone in the committee against me. Did you know that?”