Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  “What’s the matter, Mama?” Tamara asked, interrupting her narrative. “Is it that you miss the Mariinsky?”

  Natalia laughed. “Heavens, no! I was done with it years ago.”

  “Still,” Tamara persisted, biting her nail, “I feel it’s strange, being a Russian and not knowing my own country. You don’t miss it at all, ever?”

  “The Russia of my early days is no longer there, dear. We’re not really Russians, actually. I mean, we wouldn’t want to go back and be a part of what it’s become—and the old Russia had to die, it was corrupt and rotted through.”

  “Then, what are we? French?”

  “I’m not sure.” Natalia scrutinized her own reflection in the mirror and remarked: “I don’t think I am. You, yes. You’ve always been a little Parisian. Even professionally you’ll be formed by the French, whereas I may love it here, but I came as a foreigner and shall always be one to a certain extent. I don’t quite know where I belong. Perhaps nowhere!”

  “We have this Russian lady in the costume department, and she was somebody’s wife—a grand-duke or something—in Moscow, and she’s always throwing up her hands and rolling her eyes and telling us how nothing, nothing will ever replace her beloved country. She smells of dust and dead things, and people laugh at her behind her back. But I find her sad. I’m glad you’re not that kind of Russian exile, Mother. I feel sorry for her.”

  “They take all forms—the Russian exiles, I mean,” Natalia reflected. “I saw Mala Kchessinskaya today. She’s in Paris for a brief visit and asked again if I won’t help her open a new ballet studio here. She’s a grand lady. But still …there are plenty of other Russian dancers who can do this as well as I could. Mala’s a classical ballerina in the Petipa mold, primarily. Teaching her skill here will be an ideal outlet for her—less so for me.”

  Tamara raised her eyes to the ceiling. “But I’ll be a classical dancer, Mother,” she said with the forced patience of the very young. “Isn’t there anything that tempts you? People ask me, you know. ‘When’s Oblonova going to dance again? What does she have planned?’ It’s embarrassing!”

  Natalia rose then, regarding her daughter with a strangely quizzical narrowing of her eyes. She went to her bedside table and pulled out a drawer, which was full of letters. Sitting on the coverlet and picking one up from the top of the pile she said: “Listen to this, Tamara. It’s from Sol Hurok—you know, the Russian-born impresario in America, who arranges tours for concert artists: pianists and dancers and what-not. I received this two days ago:

  Dear Madame Oblonova,

  Perhaps you remember me from 1916, when you were in New York with the Ballets Russes. My purpose in contacting you is that you are one of the few dancers today whose name is a known entity at the box office and who is still remembered with affection as a pet of the United States public.

  Since you are no longer a member of Diaghilev’s illustrious company, I should like to issue a proposal to you. I have successfully booked tours for many of your colleagues, among them Pavlova herself, who is so popular in our country. I would like to arrange for you to appear again in various cities throughout America, dancing your favorite pieces as well as some of your own compositions. Our audiences appreciate one-woman shows such as this.

  Then he continues on and on about finances: who backs him, what he can guarantee, etc., etc. But that, my dear, sparked my interest.”

  Tamara said warily: “I didn’t think you liked America. Didn’t you find it uncivilized in ‘16?”

  “Yes, but since then eleven years have gone by, almost twelve. And there’s a staleness here in Europe that is rather depressing, at least to me, right now. I’m ready to tackle the ridiculous small towns with their Puritanism and their general stores. Actually, they can be quite an experience to a seasoned dancer. When I was there last, I was still quite young, and I arrived expecting the Opera or the Mariinsky. Now I know better. America wants to have its eyes opened artistically—and I think I can be one of those to accomplish this.”

  “In one short tour?” Tamara asked.

  Natalia shrugged lightly. “Who knows? Anything’s possible. Go on, now, Clara—it’s time for your bath, isn’t it?”

  Her daughter gave her a sour look and grumpily picked up her shoes from the bed. Then she walked out, exaggerating the heaviness of her step. Natalia sighed. I am being watched, she thought, to see how I can be manipulated. But don’t be so certain it will work, Tama. There are two strong-willed women here, and I’m older and more adept at defending my position.

  Natalia bit her lower lip with nervousness. In her short bob and bangs, her full skirt cinched by a wide black belt that made her waist appear childlike, she looked like a waif caught on the pages of a fashion tabloid. She could not sit down but paced the floor of the formal salon, walking back and forth in front of the deep windows overlooking the garden.

  Chaillou entered unobtrusively, wheeling in the tray of caviar, smoked salmon, foie gras, and pumpernickel rounds, and the heavy bucket in which the magnum of Moët et Chandon was chilling. “You and the others can leave now,” she informed him, unexpectedly touching his arm with a small, graceful gesture. “It’s late, and all of you are tired. I can let Monsieur in myself,’

  But when he turned to leave, she felt a quick pinch in her chest, as if his presence had somehow been warm and reassuring. Tamara was practicing for the Christmas ballet at a friend’s house, and suddenly Natalia missed her. She ran her fingers through her hair, still surprised after seven years by its shortness. Then the doorbell rang, and she went out to open it, a quick flush rising to her forehead and cheeks.

  “Good evening, Pierre,” she said as he passed into the entrance gallery. He paused for a moment before removing his topcoat, and she saw the slight heaviness in his jowls. The salt and pepper of his hair had lightened considerably, but she thought it attractive, softening his predatory appearance.

  “Natalia.” She took his coat, hung it in the wardrobe by the potted palm, and turned quickly into the salon, where Chaillou had discreetly turned on the low lamps before taking his leave. She knew that Pierre, like her, had no desire to linger in the entrance hall, where, the last time he had set foot in the house, she had called him a murderer. It was a scene best forgotten, yet impossible to forget.

  She sat down in one of the Louis XIII armchairs and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m glad you could come,” she said. “There’s something I need to discuss with you. Would you like some champagne?”

  “Champagne? Are we celebrating, Natalia?”

  She read the hostility in his eyes and looked at once at the tray. Pouring the golden liquid into fluted glasses, she said: “That’s vulgar. Even from you.”

  “You’ve always thought me vulgar. But I wasn’t thinking of Galina. Do you think I could ever forget that she died this month?”

  “I’m sure you couldn’t. None of us can.” A tense silence hung between them, and she handed him his glass and began spreading caviar onto a round of black bread. “The champagne isn’t to celebrate. It’s merely a courtesy on my part toward you because it always was your favorite drink. Was I wrong?”

  “Oh, no, Natalia, you’re never wrong. No, indeed.” He sat back now, accepted the caviar, and bit into it with appreciation. “That’s very good. Things are always very good here, though, aren’t they? The ghost of Boris Kussov hovers over us, replenishing our glasses like the best of butlers.”

  “Don’t make me angry, Pierre. I wanted to talk to you about Tamara.” Natalia looked at him now, and the directness of her gaze made him uncomfortable all at once. “I’ve decided to take a trip to the United States,” she announced evenly. “Sol Hurok is going to book a tour for me. I’ll go at the beginning of the year—if you’ll take Tamara, that is.”

  He allowed the coolness of her tone, the fact of her declaration, to sink in, and then he leaned forward, and his jaw worked. “How long will you be gone?” he asked.

  “I’m not certain. Two months, six m
onths. Tamara can’t come with me because of her training, and she’d like to stay with you. In fact, lately, she and I have been together too much. Symbiosis isn’t good for either of us, and a short break could benefit us both.”

  “Six months isn’t a short break!” he exclaimed.

  “Will you or will you not take her?”

  His face colored, and he breathed in deeply, two lines jutting out around his lips. Her brown eyes still held him, not letting him avoid their searching light. “Why are you going?” he asked, but this time his voice was pitched low and intense.

  “Because I’m suffocating. It’s no one’s fault but mine, but I have no life of my own right now, and I can’t live through Tamara as if I were eighty years old. There’s still so much I want to show the world—there’s still so much in me! I remember,” she added wryly, “when Diaghilev first told me that he was going to show Europe the manifold riches of Russia. I didn’t understand the need to do this. Now I’ve come full circle. Who knows? I might even decide to stay!”

  He blinked slowly and said: “Stay? In that godforsaken country?

  “How do you know it’s that? You’ve never even been there,” she retorted, but without bitterness. Pausing between words, she said: “It’s what I want. Tamara understands that; why can’t you? I’m not going to abandon her. I’ll be home shortly, and if I do go back to stay, I’ll return here regularly to see her. And she’ll be able to visit me there. I’m not leaving her behind out of neglect. She wants to stay, to complete her years at the Opera. That’s her choice, and I respect it. But I must do what’s best for myself, too.”

  “How can you be so sure, Natalia?” Pierre suddenly rose and came around to her armchair. “Natalia, we haven’t exactly been friends since before Galina’s death. Even when Tamara was in the hospital, I know you blamed me in your heart for that senseless death. And you were right. Every day of my life these past three years, I’ve blamed myself, scourged my heart with memories of that last day and what I said to her. It doesn’t really matter what I said—just that I felt the need to hurt her, to crush her. She was so beautiful, so pure and strong, and yet so vulnerable, so breakable. I’d wanted to mold her, to protect her, and also to be loved and cherished by her, in that soft, warm, comforting way of hers. But it didn’t work out like that, Natalia. Or rather, it did, but I was disappointed. Galina wasn’t enough—you know I still wanted you!”

  “No,” she said. “You’ve always wanted what you couldn’t have. You’d stopped loving me. Whether or not you were the right man for Galina is immaterial, but you didn’t love me. You despised me. Afterward, if you missed something, it was just a memory—the early memory of us when we were young, in Petersburg. Twenty years ago.”

  “But the truth is that I’ve always loved you. During the bad times I overlooked it, and yes, I even hated you. But I hated you for hating me! You were too strong for me, you cared about other things too deeply. I wanted you to be my girl, and you were always first and foremost your own girl.”

  She smiled ironically and raised her eyebrows. “What’s the point of all this reminiscing? Galina was a tragedy that could have been avoided, like Boris’s death. But I couldn’t influence him the way you could her! That’s why I blamed you. However, it wasn’t fair. She was your wife, she was carrying your child. I forgot that for a while and remembered only my own grief, my own guilt. It’s so easy to blame someone else for one’s own failings. Let’s leave all that behind us now, shall we? For Tamara, because she needs us both.”

  “You can say that, and still think of leaving?” He put one knee on the floor and gazed at her earnestly, his nostrils quivering. “Natalia, I feel as though we’ve just crossed an ocean toward each other—don’t cross one away from me again! I love you, Natalia. You should never have let me go when you did because if you’d only said: ‘Don’t leave,’ I would have stayed with you!”

  She looked at him in disbelief. Slowly she took a sip of champagne, then said: “But you wanted to make a new life with another woman. What nonsense you speak: ‘Don’t leave!’ How simple you make it sound, how ridiculously simple! As if Galina didn’t matter at all, as if we two had simply had a lovers’ quarrel. But she did exist, and she pointed out to me how right I’d been, years ago, when I refused to marry you in Petersburg. We were wrong for each other, Pierre! Certainly then—and as for now, how can you think of it, after so much has happened to prove otherwise?”

  “We’re violent people, Natalia. Galina got crushed between us without understanding, and for that I can’t forgive myself. But I can’t continue to deny the obvious, out of a sense of guilt for somebody we both loved but who’s dead and can’t be helped any longer. We’ve always loved each other, Natalia. Face it with me!”

  “Oh, Pierre!” she cried, rising and clasping her hands together. “Look, my darling, I will tell you how it is for me, since you insist. All my life until Galina, I lived for the moment, knowing inside that whatever happened, Pierre Riazhin was somewhere in the world, loving me. I carried this certainty in my subconscious, like a talisman: Pierre loves me! Then you broke away and took my good-luck charm away from me, leaving me only with myself. I was downtrodden and miserable, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t really care whether I lived or died. It took Tamara’s accident to bring me around again. I thought: This isn’t so bad, this self I’m stuck with, my one and only wealth. So now it doesn’t matter if Pierre Riazhin loves me or not. I don’t need his love to keep me alive!”

  She turned to him, her elfin face aglow in the soft lights, her eyes all at once bright with triumph. He stood up and approached her, towering above her, tall and broad, and she did not step back. He hesitated, and she could feel the electric tension in the space between them, could almost hear its crackle. He took her hands and kissed them, and still she regarded him with that same expression, ardent and unafraid.

  He dropped her hands and suddenly took her in his arms, holding her frailty close to him, so that she could hear the enormity of his beating heart. When he kissed her lips, she parted them swiftly, and thrust her hands into the curls of his hair. In front of the large bay window he tilted her back onto the thick Aubusson carpet, where she gazed up at him in an apricot flush, her eyes half-closed and luminous, her mouth slowly curling into a smile. They undressed without taking their eyes from each other for a single moment, and then, with urgent need, came together on the floor in a magnificent tangle of limbs.

  Her skin felt the same as in the first flush of youth, but the tender softness of her breasts was of a different texture than he remembered: like the softness of feathers, where before all had been taut and firm. Suddenly desperate, he thought: This is what I want, this is how I prefer her. Not a girl, not a young bride—but a woman in the middle of her life, who would accept my own imperfections. She smiled at him and ran her hand gently over his stomach, silken reminder that he had changed, too, from the days of their marriage. It did not matter. It was still his strength that drew her, the large broad shoulders, the muscular calves and thighs, all the same but altered. Maybe the attraction lay half in the past and half in the newness: They had never before made love knowing that time had left its mark on each of them and that the world would never be for them what it had been before. In the early days life had been unknown and wonderful and frightening—and so had Pierre been to Natalia, and she to him.

  Later, they lay silently entwined, and she could hear his breathing. She knew its very cadence, had been rocked to sleep hearing it against the softness of her hair time and time again. But now he did not shift her face against his chest, preparing her for rest. Instead, he sat up, leaning on his elbow. His dark eyes probed her. “So?” he asked, with a hint of tension. “You won’t be going now, will you, after all?”

  Pressing a finger to his lips, she shook her head. “I’ll go. This was my farewell to you, my darling Pierre.”

  “Is it Stuart Markham?” he demanded.

  She shrugged sadly. “Stu is living his own li
fe. I had two chances with him. Even if I could still choose him, I’m not certain I love him. I have to go for my own sake, because I want to dance, and this seems like the right opportunity at this moment. But who knows what could happen? I did receive some interesting offers. To go to San Francisco and form a ballet company. Another was to go there and open a studio for the daughters of the wealthy matrons of Nob Hill. Or—to go to Hollywood, and make a talking movie. Dancing, of course!” Her eyes flashed merrily now and then rested on his face with sudden gentleness.

  “Don’t begrudge me my life, Pierre,” she murmured. “Tell me to leave and to be happy.”

  “But that is more than I can do,” he replied, rising swiftly and going to the window. She watched the well-muscled back and bit her lower lip. “It would kill me to send you away from me. You’ll never return!”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I have a daughter, and I shall return. But not to you, Pierre. We’ve had our chance, and now it’s finally over. Now we can finally stop hating each other, my dear. All the years of pain came about through the love, our hurtful, barbed, obsessed passion for each other. Now at last we can breathe again, without love, without hatred. We can see each other as people, Pierre, and not as demon angels. We can go on from here.”

  She stood up, diminutive and naked, and went to him at the window. “I want you to move back here when I’m gone, to live in this house,” she murmured, draping her body gracefully across his back. “It’s only fair. Boris wanted you to have it, not me. And Tamara loves it and wouldn’t want to leave it. Galina,” she added in a soft, wistful tone, “was also happy here. Come, then. While I’m on this tour.”