The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers

by Kerri Turner

  He pulled it out. It was a candy box. The exterior was faded with age, but Luka thought it was the kind the Tsar handed out to children on his naming day. With a sadness that surprised him, he realised there would be no more boxes like this. Russia had no Tsar any more.

  He cradled the box in his lap. Careful not to damage it, he eased the lid off. On the top of its contents rested a small pair of tattered gloves. They were the gloves Luka had lost; the ones his mother had lovingly repaired for him again and again. He picked them up in disbelief. How had Valya come to have them?

  Underneath was a white feather, plucked from a bush near the sea and announced as a symbol of things to come. A domino mask, taken off before the first of what would become many kisses. A silver bracelet of seven fine chains nestled inside a blue velvet box. The paper that had been wrapped around the Cartier brooch Luka had carried home for her. There was even a sock that he’d left behind when Maxim had almost caught them and he’d had to rush from the house half-dressed. All packed away in an old, crumbling candy box, ready to take with her.

  Luka slowly stood, the box clutched in both hands. He no longer saw the room in front of him; his gaze was a long way away, looking to a future that would never happen. He saw himself and Valya walking in public, their arms linked, no fear of being caught. He saw them dancing together on the stage; Valya finally Odette, with Luka her Prince Siegfried. And the candy box, no longer kept secret, was overflowing with mementos, shared moments from a bright and happy life together.

  The vision dimmed, and Luka was once more in the small room. There was no window, but even so he could tell the light outside was red again. The fires continued to burn, and the houses continued to be looted. He wondered—as Valya had, the day they’d watched snowballs explode against her windows—how long this could go on for. And whether he would continue to be a part of it.

  EPILOGUE

  Autumn 1920; Paris

  Luka inserted the key into his rented apartment’s door. He loved this time of the afternoon: rehearsals were over for the day, and he had a handful of hours to relax in the golden light that filtered through his tiny window, dappling the parquetry floors.

  The apartment was smaller than the one he’d had in Russia, but it was neat and central to the theatre, which was all that mattered. He threw the bag containing his ballet slippers and practice clothing onto the settee, then pulled his shirt off as he crossed the room. As he watched the water slowly fill the enamelled cast-iron bathtub, his feet stroked out unconscious battements tendus on the yellow and red tiles.

  Tonight, he would step onto the stage of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra in his first ever performance with the Ballets Russes. He would perform a whole season with them as a soloist; and afterwards Diaghilev had invited him to tour with the company. He’d warned Luka that the countries they visited would pass by in a whirl of stages, both grand and in disrepair, and there would be no time to explore. This afternoon would be one of his last quiet moments for who knew how long.

  Luka turned the taps off. He had to soak his muscles to prepare them for that night’s performance, but he held off climbing into the warm water. There was something he needed to do first.

  He went into his bedroom and reached under the bed to pull out an old, worn box. Only he would know it had once held candy; the image on its lid of the now-dead Romanovs was so faded, their faces could have belonged to any family. As always, Luka felt a dull pang as he remembered that bright family; the Tsar he hadn’t loved, but who had made his life of dance and artistry possible. It was like an old injury that would never quite heal.

  He carried the box into the living room and over to the window, collecting a pen and sheaf of paper on the way. He curled up on the windowsill, pen between his teeth, staring at the outside world through the mottled glass.

  Luka’s reluctance to leave Russia without Valya meant he’d stayed longer than he should have. A second revolution had broken out—and taken his father’s life—and was followed by civil war. He knew then that he should have gathered the courage to leave sooner; and had found himself trekking through the mountains without food or hope, sure that the long bitter nights would kill him. He’d joined up with a group of other refugees: men, women and children who wanted to escape the violence Russia was inflicting on herself. Some had wagons, on which they carried the elderly or infirm until they died. Many times Luka had found himself facedown in the cold dirt, bullets whizzing over his head. When all he could see around him was trees, he wished for a village to come into sight; but when one did, he would become sick with nerves, not knowing if the village was held by friendly Whites, or Reds who would kill him if they recognised him as an imperial dancer.

  At some stage—he could no longer remember when; those days were mostly a blur of misery and fear—Mathilde Kschessinska and her son, Vova, had joined their group. Mathilde had been unable to leave Russia after delivering her warning to Valya; instead, she and Vova had hidden in a friend’s house, cowering from bullets that took the life of her dog, Djibi. Vladimir Lenin, the leading revolutionary, had requisitioned Mathilde’s mansion as his headquarters; and the greatest dancer in Russia, and one of the richest women in Petrograd, had ended up trudging through the mountains in shoes worn down at the heel, wrapped in a coat that had lost all its fur and was cut off to the knee and elbows to disguise the many holes.

  Finally, their dwindled numbers reached Tuapse; and from there they were able to take a boat to Anapa. Istanbul and Yugoslavia followed, then France, where the group had dispersed. Mathilde had taken Vova to the Alpes-Maritimes, and reunited there with the Grand Duke Andrei. The Grand Duke Sergei had been murdered just after the Romanov family were killed. Mathilde refused to dance again, despite many offers to do so.

  Luka chose the safety of crowded Paris, where he learned that almost half of the Romanov dancers had been killed in the revolution or lost in the exodus of refugees. The few remaining dancers struggled to survive, sometimes performing in workers’ clubs in exchange for bread. Ballet had become a pleasure most no longer admitted to because of its connection with the overthrown regime. There were rumours of attempts to begin a new company under the rule of the Soviets, but who knew where those would lead.

  Luka sighed, shaking off the memories. With tonight’s performance, he would leave behind that life and Luka Vladimirovich Zhirkov of the Imperial Russian Ballet. A new life was beginning, made possible by the great Diaghilev.

  Ludmilla Schollar, whom Luka had met in The Wandering Dog so long ago, had heard of his arrival in Paris. Having returned to the Ballet Russes herself, she made mention to Diaghilev, who had sought Luka out and given him an audition. Tonight, he would debut in the role of Cloviello in Pulcinella. It was a light ballet, and Diaghilev had warned Luka that if he was to fully become the character, he needed to shrug off his past, which he said Luka wore around his shoulders like a heavy cloak.

  That was why Luka needed to write this letter.

  He had never been a good letter-writer. Not like Xenia, who loved to regale him with stories of her new life. She’d escaped to London, and there married a man who gave her a new passion—that of motherhood. Xenia said being a mother was better than trying to compete with Anna Pavlova, who dominated the stages there.

  It was Xenia who had alerted Luka to Maxim’s fate. She’d heard that he remained in Russia, and had taken to spending most of his time drunk. He slept wherever he happened to fall in the street; and if sober when woken, wouldn’t settle until he found another bottle. His career had fallen apart with the loss of his contacts, and what money that hadn’t been in the bank and thus stolen by the Soviets had disappeared quickly. He had so degraded himself that the Soviets weren’t bothered by his existence and let him be, saying the drink would kill him before long. Luka never shared with Xenia that he knew what demons haunted Maxim.

  Xenia had finished her most recent letter with the words: Try not to be afraid to live your life. Although you might not think it now, you can
be happy again. And anyone who has loved you wants nothing more than that—Valentina included, I’m sure.

  Luka took the pen from his mouth and looked down at the crisp white paper before him. Xenia was right; as was Diaghilev. It was time to do that which he’d shied away from for too long.

  With only the slightest of sighs, he put the tip of the pen to the paper.

  8 September 1920

  My beloved Valya,

  For years I have held off writing this letter, thinking if I didn’t say my goodbyes it meant you weren’t really gone. There were times I thought I would die too, so there was no need for it—we would be together again. But death didn’t take me, no matter how many bullets came my way, nor how I longed for it. Life somehow kept moving forward.

  Finally I have come to realise I can’t keep trying to live with your hand still held in mine. So here is the goodbye I’ll never be okay with having to say. I won’t waste it with repeated regrets, for I am sure that even in the heavens you must feel the tremors that run through me every time I think of how I let you go to God alone.

  I have a confession to make: I went through your candy box. I think you would be irritated with me for it, but then laugh—that was often your way. (I wish I could remember your laugh. Its sound seems to have faded from my mind.) If only you were here to tell me about the things within the box. It mystifies me how you ended up with my gloves from my years at the Imperial Ballet School. I wish—another futile, too-late wish—I had known you then. In my dreams, we would save each other from all the foolish mistakes waiting ahead of us.

  I never wanted to leave Russia without you, Valya. Before then, I thought I knew the kind of man I wanted to be; what was right and what was wrong. But my journey out of Russia was something else. Surrounded by the worst that mankind could do to each other, I also saw the best. You’d be surprised to know I’m talking of your friend and mentor, Mathilde. We somehow ended up travelling together, and I assumed she would make things worse for the rest of us. But while we were scrounging around the villages for food, desperate and hungry, Mathilde was breaking up the little food she had herself and feeding it to the stray dogs.

  Some ridiculed her for wasting something so precious on already starving animals, but for me it was like that moment when you are dancing, oblivious to everything around you. Then the music stops and the audience starts applauding, and you realise the world is so much bigger than the stage you were dancing on. I’d been on my own stage forever, and suddenly I saw the world for what it is—its potential for pain and loss, yes, but also for love that isn’t defined by any parameters. A world where a woman who once had everything could lose it all, but still find something to give to those that were forgotten or ignored. I had always believed Mathilde to be the very worst example of what was wrong with Russia—I guess the revolutionaries and I had that in common. It took two revolutions, a civil war and countless deaths for me to realise: we can be so much more than our circumstances make us appear.

  I wish I had learned that earlier. If I had, perhaps I would have come to know the Valya I loved—still love—sooner. But that is one of the many burdens I bear; and I’ll not regret the time we did have, for it was so achingly sweet that sometimes I wonder if perhaps I didn’t just dream it all.

  Wherever you are now, my darling Valya, I hope you are free. That you are dancing the White Swan not alone at midnight, but with such exquisite truthfulness that the very angels cry.

  I will never forget all that we almost had together. And one day, when I am old and frail in my bed, I hope to close my eyes and find you waiting for me.

  My dear, my love, my Odette.

  Yours always,

  Luka

  Luka folded the letter carefully in half, then half again. He looked at it for a moment, held between steady fingers. Outside, the streets danced with life. People ate, and laughed, and loved, and not a building was burning nor a gunshot firing. There was peace.

  He would join them soon. In front of him, the candy box was open, its contents carefully repacked within. This was the last time he would ever see Valya’s treasures, although he would carry the box with him always. It was only missing one thing now.

  Luka raised the folded letter to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to it. Then he put it on top of the remains of Valya’s life. With one long, lingering look, he closed the lid.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and this never seems quite so apt as when writing a historical fiction novel. While Valentina and Luka and their story are entirely of my own making, many of the other people, locations and events are taken from real history.

  It was a common practice in pre-revolutionary Russia for ballet dancers to take an aristocratic or influential protector to cement their position in both company and society. Given the Imperial Russian Ballet’s requirements for a high level of health and cleanliness, their dancers were considered a safe and, perhaps more importantly, respectable alternative to prostitutes.

  Mathilde Kschessinska is perhaps the most notorious example of a dancer’s use of protectors. Her former relationship with the Tsar as well as her simultaneous relationships with two Grand Dukes amassed her the kind of wealth and influence that likely reads as unbelievable, but is true. She did have her own power plant next to her home, a private beach at her country house, and one of the first motor vehicles in Russia. She was truly a woman of extremes, and this ran to her behaviour as well. Real life accounts from those who knew her, as well as descriptions in her own memoir, tell of her attending the theatre in the midst of the revolution, holding lavish celebrations at her homes (including a dinner party the night before the revolution began), and refusing to dance the Dying Swan when the Imperial Russian Ballet began including it in their productions of Swan Lake, due to her personal hatred for Anna Pavlova. It was these extravagances and wilful personality traits that made her a target after Grigori Rasputin’s death, when newspapers were looking for a new symbol of the vast divide between wealthy and poor; although propaganda was not limited to print, with films denouncing her even after the revolution was over.

  Like so many historical figures, Mathilde was a person of contradictions. To dancers she took a liking to she could be generous, going out of her way to help their careers. She set up a hospital for wounded soldiers during the war, and hired the artist Nicholas Roubtzov’s widow as her housekeeper so she could support herself and her family – an act of generosity which would lead to resentment and the housekeeper’s eventual betrayal of Mathilde to the looting revolutionaries. (For those wondering, the revolutionaries did attempt to kill Mathilde’s porter Denisov that day, but changed their minds at the last moment when they saw he wore the military Cross of St George.) One of the most striking anecdotes, that of Mathilde feeding stray dogs in the midst of her escape as a refugee, was taken from recordings of people who travelled in the same group as her, and are a reminder of the great love she must have held for her dog Djibi, who died from a heart attack while she was in hiding during the revolution. After taking on Lenin in an unsuccessful attempt to get back her mansion, which he’d requisitioned as his headquarters, she fled to France, never performing again despite many offers to do so. There, she married the surviving Grand Duke Andrei. Having lost most of her wealth to the revolution, she eventually opened her own ballet school, which trained some of the leading dancers of the next generation.

  The misguided Evening of Russian Fashion was a real event that failed as spectacularly as depicted. Similarly, the opera Fenella was performed only weeks before the revolution; records from the time note the nervousness of the cast in having to depict a revolution on an imperial stage. The use of the square outside the Mariinsky Theatre for training troops was somewhat more successful, with many dancers noting that they used the firing of the cannon to time their days to.

  I have done my best to depict the lives of imperial ballet dancers as authentically as possible, including having all ballets mentio
ned within this story correct to the era (shifting exact dates of their performances here and there out of narrative necessity). Many of these ballets continue to be performed today, although some were lost in the destruction of the two revolutions and the civil war that followed.

  Included in this novel are many small details on day-to-day life for both wealthy and poor in pre-revolutionary Russia. Their food and clothing, superstitions, Christmas rituals, the kinds of jobs available to them and the working conditions that went with them, hopefully give the reader some small idea of what life was like. While making a diaphragm out of a lemon, or washing oneself down with vinegar, might seem odd to a modern audience, they were just two of the many creative (and often ineffective) solutions to contraception women of the higher classes came up with. Baudruches had already been invented by the French, and were effective in preventing both pregnancy and disease, which was why they were in popular use by prostitutes throughout Europe; but women in Valentina’s position needed to define themselves as being different to common prostitutes, and thus shied away from using them to lessen the connection.

  Sadly, the Russian Revolution saw the end of the Imperial Russian Ballet. There have been other companies bearing the name in the decades since, but they are not a direct descendant of the original; it was disbanded, and ballet was shunned post-revolution as a reminder of the hated elite the country had overthrown. Many of the dancers who survived the revolution scattered across the globe, bringing with them the artistry and traditions of Russian ballet. This mass exodus resulted in a renewed interest in ballet, and helped shape it into the exquisite, demanding art form it is today.

  For further discussion on the historical facts and figures of The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers, visit my website www.kerriturner.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS