Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  Galina’s posture straightened, her eyes darkened, and her regal young face set. That’s it, I’ve hurt her, Natalia thought with exasperation. But that absurd defense of Pierre, of his lack of responsibility . . .

  At the dress rehearsal everything failed that could fail. The work crew was having problems setting up the stage. Props were not standing up. Just when Natalia was ready to scream, her tutu caught on a nail. Pierre came running, his long strides dwarfing the romantic designs, and forcibly yanked her up from the floorboards like a recalcitrant flower. When he set her down abruptly, she saw how red his eyes were. There was an unhealthy flush in his cheeks. “Goddamn it!” he shouted, not so much at her as at the entire Ballet.

  “Don’t forget that this is my first production,” she whispered to him ferociously, her brown eyes gleaming. “You’ve had many ventures, but this one is mine—especially mine! Don’t steal it from me!”

  A group of dancers, lighting men, and prop men were staring at them, their breaths held. Any excuse was good enough for gossip, especially if a married couple were involved. Pierre glared at Natalia and moved away without answering.

  After the rehearsal everyone came to her dressing room: Diaghilev, Pierre, and Galina in a blue wool tailored dress that matched her eyes. “A disaster, a bloody disaster!” the impresario was saying, waving his monocle.

  “We did the best we could,” Pierre countered angrily.

  “The best you could? Because of you and Bakst I’ve overextended myself again! Stoll will confiscate the costumes—”

  “—which were poorly made to begin with,” Pierre interrupted. “Don’t blame us, Serge Pavlovitch. We ordered all our materials through you!”

  Natalia walked up to her husband and squeezed between him and Diaghilev. Both men were tall, massive, furious, and flushed. She wondered whether Pierre had been drinking. In a low, trembling voice, she said: “Stop it! The last thing we need now is a volley of accusations. We’re all in this together. Let’s pick up the pieces and go home. There is still tomorrow to get through.”

  Every muscle taut with unexpressed tension, she silently changed, folding her costume carefully. Galina had come to help her. They had not spoken much since Ashley. Natalia could feel the girl withdrawing, as if she were physically moving away. We all must grow up sometime, Natalia thought with irritation. I can’t continue to wet-nurse her forever—the way I do Pierre. He’s another sensitive one—sensitive to himself, primarily. He had disappeared after the argument—she vaguely wondered where or with whom.

  Later, as she undressed in the hotel suite, she had to sit down, because her head was swirling with anxieties, fears, and loneliness. The door that connected to the bathroom, which they shared with Galina, swung silently open, and she saw the girl, her blond hair falling in thick waves over her shoulders and breasts. Something inside her unknotted and relaxed. She looked up and Galina looked back, her face grave, unsmiling. “You’re right,” she said to Natalia. “He is a child. You know him better than I do. I’m sorry.” She sat down beside Natalia and took her hand.

  They sat this way for a while, their fingers entwined, and Galina leaned her head on Natalia’s shoulder, her hair caressing Natalia’s neck, warming it. Then Galina spoke again. “But you must love him. He needs you so much!”

  Natalia could not reply and simply raised her hands helplessly, shaking her head. “I love you, Natalia,” Galina said. “Don’t be unhappy.”

  Natalia’s throat tightened, and warm salt tears filled her eyes. Galina’s hold around her waist grew stronger. She could feel the young girl’s own tears on her shoulder, seeping through her chemise. She put an arm around her, stroked the blond hair. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Truly glad, inside.”

  “Me, too. You’re my family. You, and Tama—and Pierre.” She said this with some hesitation, then added more confidently: “The three of you belong to me now.”

  Natalia sighed and looked away: “Sometimes I think you’re my only family,” she murmured. “So many mistakes, so many false impulses ... I gave up my real family when I was ten and never wanted another one. Then, of course, it came anyway: Boris, Arkady.” She shut her eyes on the sweetness of pure pain. “But there, too, it was wrong. We poisoned each other.”

  “What do you mean?” Galina asked.

  “Nothing you could possibly understand. Boris wanted to love me, wanted our child—but I don’t think I made him happy. Something was missing that I couldn’t provide. He was always going from one experience to another, seeking some kind of validation—the Ballet, me, Arkady, the Division Sauvage. I failed him, or he wouldn’t have gone into the war.” Her voice caught. “But I can’t keep blaming myself! I did the best I could! For years, I preserved his feelings, I cared for his needs—I was there for him, always! I couldn’t be all that he wanted because he wanted too damned much! I was only one woman, one human being.”

  “And was Pierre simply a substitute?” Galina asked, her clear tone carrying a certain sharpness.

  “Pierre? Of course not. Pierre was my first love. Every young girl should fall in love with a Pierre Riazhin: wonderful, impossible Pierre, who lives in a different world from mine, and who probably has his share of regrets, too. Don’t listen to me, Galina, I shouldn’t be speaking this way to you, I know I shouldn’t—but you’re a little bit me, aren’t you? More than Tamara will ever be, I’m sure of it. There’s no one to talk to, ever!” she added bitterly.

  “We can talk to each other,” Galina replied. “Between us we’ve lost everyone there is to lose. You’ve lost a husband and child; I’ve lost my parents and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins. But Natalia, we both have Pierre. Don’t discount him!”

  Natalia turned to look at Galina and was struck by the intensity of expression in the large blue eyes. She said nothing, but her lips parted. She closed them, freed herself from Galina’s embrace, and placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders. She scrutinized the young face and then sighed, shaking her head. “Don’t count too much on him, lovey,” she said with muted harshness. “He can be very thoughtless. And he’s impatient: When he breaks something, he doesn’t always bother to pick up the pieces. But still, he’s a remarkable man.”

  She pressed her lips together, and her eyes grew cloudy.

  Galina watched from the stall, her long hands folded neatly on her lap, a line of apprehension on her high forehead. Being here felt so unreal to her, so artificial. She was wearing a simple ivory-colored gown, with a neckline that revealed the graceful line of her throat, where a single strand of pearls was the sole decoration. Her skin glowed pink and slightly moist. The pearls had been Natalia’s gift to her for her sixteenth birthday, and Galina knew that Boris had made a present of them to his wife many years before. This made the girl vaguely ill at ease. It was as though Natalia sought to make her a Kussov in spite of herself—whereas, in actual fact, the real Kussov was Natalia.

  Galina’s mother, Nina Vassilievna, had been quiet, composed, and gentle, a retiring but charming lady. Did I ever really know her? Galina asked herself, touching the pearls. She remembered best those moments of physical closeness, moments she knew Tamara, for one, rarely shared with Natalia. Galina had often settled snugly in the crook of her mother’s arm and listened to her speak to a guest, or to her father. What had the words been? She couldn’t recall, and it didn’t matter. Nina’s scent had mattered: jonquils and lilacs and apricots. Later there had been the war and the death of Uncle Boris. Nina had been nervous, inconsolable—but still the same pervasive mother, with time for a touch, with a backward look that signified: “Coming?” They had truly never been apart.

  But had her mother been “a Kussov”? Galina doubted it. Nina had blended so well into her husband’s family, the Stassovs. Galina had known that her mother belonged to a great family, refined, cultured, and influential. But these words had meant nothing special to her. Everyone among their set had borne those qualities. Her grandfather, Vassily Arkadievitch Ku
ssov, had been gruff and elderly, a bon vivant who had reveled in good food and an occasional hunting expedition: a kind man, but not one who stood out from the grandfathers of other girls; apart from a perfunctory question or two about her doings, he had generally not paid her much attention. He had been a man’s man, with little time for the frailties of women and small girls. He had seemed very different from her mother, and therefore it had been all the more difficult for Galina to conceive of that elusive quality that might have distinguished Nina and made her first and foremost a Kussov.

  There had been Boris, golden, elegant, an arbiter of taste. But he had been the only real Kussov! Whatever the Kussov mystique had been, he alone had created it—and perhaps his own mother, whom Galina had never known, and his grandfather Arkady, dead long before her own birth. Boris had been a dream and had created himself. He had chosen a bride who had been plucked from the very earth, a girl without antecedents but who had been extraordinary in her talent, in her unique grace and ambition. He had created her, but her own inborn gift had helped to make him complete. They had been the Kussovs: Boris and Natalia, above society, above culture, above mere talent. They had been the Kussov mystique—not she, Galina Stassova, who was neither particularly brilliant nor particularly distinctive. Natalia had not owed her a thing!

  And how had Pierre fit into this scheme of things? Why did both Pierre and Natalia cling to this absurd fantasy of her being the true heir of Boris Kussov? She was only herself, and it would have been better simply to forget her useless relatives, who hung as an albatross around her neck. She wished she could push this dubious inheritance all away.

  She looked around her cautiously. They had surrounded her with illustrious people, wanting to make the evening perfect for her. Just as they’d like to be able to erase my past and mold my future to a beam of perfect light, she thought with amusement. She sighed. Sometimes their dreams were a burden to her. She was so ordinary—couldn’t they see it, and leave her to develop as she wished? She wanted only to learn how to draw better so that some day she might be able to assist in the building of theatre sets and costumes. She enjoyed bringing imaginary worlds to life—but she had no special ambitions to become the next Léon Bakst! Galina chewed on her lower lip. At least Natalia is sensible, she thought. She’d like to make my life perfect, but she also knows that it’s my life, and that there’s very little she can do for me. But Pierre ... he thinks that by showing me Paris by night, he will prevent my nightmares from recurring. How can I make him understand that I simply enjoy being with him, learning from him, but that what I saw really happened, and that no paint can cover the dark areas of experience? I can’t ever tell him! Unlike Natalia, he believes in magic, in his own magic.

  They had placed her there in the most elegant stall with Tamara Karsavina and her husband, Henry Bruce, here for a brief vacation from his diplomatic post in Bulgaria, and with the economist Maynard Keynes, who was in love with Lydia Lopokhova. Those strange Sitwells were there too: Dame Edith, and her brothers, Sir Osbert and Sacheverell. They were all poets, all highly intellectual and erudite; Edith was also a critic, Osbert an essayist, and Sacheverell (Galina could never remember his name) an art critic. Karsavina was Tamara’s godmother, Galina knew—and of all these people, she spoke most easily with Galina, and not as though she were a hundred years old. “I remember when your aunt was sixteen,” she said to her. “She appeared in the school production of The Daughter of Pharaoh and made such an impression that the Tzarina came to see her, and your uncle, too. That was how they met.”

  Galina smiled. “That’s like a fairy story,” she commented.

  “Perhaps. The Tzarina brought her an enamel portrait of herself—and do you know what Boris Vassilievitch gave her? A necklace of pearls, with a ruby clasp! She was so overcome that she burst into tears.”

  Galina’s eyebrows rose, and her mouth widened with amazement. She touched the jewels around her neck shyly. “You mean—these?” she asked.

  Karsavina was amused. “Ah, she gave them to you! Well, now you know their origin.”

  “But Tamara should have them, not I,” Galina protested.

  Karsavina shook her head. “Tamara was not Boris’s niece,” she replied. Again the Kussov obsession, that immaterial, essential aura that had been placed around her. Galina looked at Keynes and at Dame Edith: Then they, too, saw her only as the niece of that illustrious balletomane Boris Kussov. As if reading her thoughts, Karsavina said: “Boris Vassilievitch did much for the Ballets Russes. We all thought highly of him. He was a friend to most of us. He understood artists, and he loved them. It’s a shame you didn’t know him well.”

  Galina wet her lips. “Perhaps I didn’t, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to escape him.”

  Then the curtain rose, and wonder replaced the vague self-consciousness that she had been feeling. Pierre’s curtain …She really knew so little about the ballet, its history, its trends and countertrends. Unlike the people in the stall with her, she was ignorant, alone with her own opinions, rough-hewn and untested. But Pierre had told her that sometimes that was a good thing, not to know too much. Then one’s creative ideas could rise up fresh and personal, not borrowed or planned. She sat back, folding her legs carefully so that they would not catch on the hem of her skirt. She watched the stage, wide-eyed.

  The music was lovely—an enchantment really. She had heard it before, in her parents’ house, bits of it on the piano, and at the Saturday matinees at the Petersburg symphony. But the costumes were wonderful, all ribbons and flounces. And Natalia moved so exquisitely, so small and dainty and flowing, capturing youth and hope. Galina felt a momentary flush of pain. Innocence! That was what Natalia was embodying: innocence, a floating quality that no longer existed on this earth. Natalia had never been innocent—and she herself had lost her innocence long ago. But there were still some innocents: Pierre was one, incontestably. Dear Pierre, the dreamer, forever angry because life did not meet his exalted expectations!

  Oh, God, she thought fervently, wincing slightly, let them stop! Let this tension break between them, let them not fight, let there be peace this one time. She closed her eyes to the beauty onstage, reliving the ugliness of reality. It pierced her own body when they argued, so bitterly, so cruelly—yet she could not assign blame to one or to the other. I wish I could escape it all, she thought and then bit her lip. Oh, no, I don’t wish that! If I were not there, God only knows that they’d do to each other.

  She remained immersed in her thoughts until Tamara Karsavina leaned over to point something out to her, and then she thought, ashamed: This is Natalia’s clever arrangement; it is she who has created this Dance of the Three Ivans, accompanied by the coda to the grand pas de deux. And here I am, not looking. She raised her opera glasses to the stage, where three robust Russian danseurs were offering their energetic homage to Aurora and Florimund. Galina smiled: This, then, was Natalia’s ovation to her husband. She had taken his essentially Russian force of life and transposed it into this virile dance at the end of a classically perfect, rather feminine ballet not of her own true making. She stood up, forgetting Maynard Keynes behind her, her young face flooded with light and hope.

  Later Galina did not understand the atmosphere of tense despondency that seemed to permeate the members of the Ballets Russes. She had gone backstage at once and found everyone in an uproar. “A failure, a total failure!” Diaghilev was exclaiming, cursing in French and Russian. Natalia was sitting on a low stool, her face very pale, her eyes enormous. Pierre stood in a corner, his hands balled into fists.

  “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now,” Natalia said to Diaghilev. “We can only continue, for as long as they will let us. Classicism leaves them cold, Serge Pavlovitch. They want a short burst of exoticism, the sort of diet that Fokine fed them.”

  “A fine time to say that!” he retorted.

  She stood up then, frail and delicate. “I said it before,” she stated succinctly. “Don’t you remember, Serge Pavl
ovitch?” Before he could answer, she left the area, her light footsteps carrying her like a billow of gauze away from his recriminations.

  Galina did not know what to do. She felt out of place, unsure of what had happened to mar this perfect evening. No one was explaining anything to her; no one had even noticed her. Pierre and Natalia had probably completely forgotten her existence! She saw Pierre stride over to the backdrop of the Enchanted Forest and kick it savagely. She rushed up and laid a hand hesitantly on his arm, restraining him. For some reason no one but she had found his outburst extraordinary. “Please,” she whispered urgently, “don’t destroy your work! It was so beautiful—a real magic wood. What’s wrong, Pierre?”

  “The whole damned thing’s wrong!” he cried. “Bloody trees wouldn’t rise, nothing worked! Magic that didn’t succeed. But what’s to be expected? Nobody cared enough! Everybody was too busy blaming everybody else! Even Natalia had stopped caring!”

  “No, she hadn’t at all. I thought she was lovely. Didn’t you?” she added with dismay.

  He gave her a look of pure disgust. “Lovely. My wife hasn’t been lovely in fifteen years. Don’t talk to me of loveliness, Galina. Natalia is a workhorse, and a good, competent dancer. But she’s dried up inside along the way, and it shows! She’s simply not the same—in any way!”

  Galina was profoundly shocked and swallowed her terror. She looked around her and saw that small groups had formed, and that, once again, no one was near them. “Look, Pierre,” she murmured, “let’s go for a walk, shall we? Please, you can’t just stand here like this, all wound up, ready to kill someone.”

  He uttered a short laugh, like a gasp, and once more she was frightened. So much was compressed inside this man—so much that she did not understand! How could she help him? He had helped her, again and again. Embarrassed at his display of mounting hysteria, she took his arm and gently but surely propelled him outside, away from the noise and eyes of curious onlookers. He was all hers now, to somehow repair.