“But—why?”
“Ah, you are naïve, love,” Lydia said. “For men such as Boris Vassilievitch Kussov, wives mean handsome dowries to recuperate funds lost by marrying off his younger sister. Although I don’t suppose he’ll have much trouble finding a lady to his taste—there are so many who would wish to be selected!”
Natalia began to laugh. “Well then, let’s wish him luck!” she cried. “And I shall keep his rosebuds, for they have brought me luck, too, haven’t they?”
In Boris Kussov’s victoria, Pierre Riazhin, his cravat untied, his eyes wild and glowing like a cat’s, was laughing. He had never felt such ecstasy in his twenty-two years of life, and the champagne that had flowed at the Aquarium nightclub had only improved his already ebullient mood. He had consumed it like water, and now his head spun round and round. “The Paris exhibition!” he cried over and over, remembering that Diaghilev had been impressed with his sketches and ideas, and had suggested that Pierre come by his apartment to show him some of his more serious work. He might include Pierre’s work in the art exhibition which he was planning at the Grand Palais in 1906. Pierre could hardly believe his infinite good fortune.
“Naturally, there are no guarantees,” Boris was saying somewhat cruelly. “Serge’s taste—and that of our friends—is very particular.”
Pierre’s effervescence seemed to subside. He did not understand why his patron was placing a damper on his enthusiasm—he who had arranged this meeting with such apparent care. But Boris said: “Well? Are you going to accompany me to Prince Lvov’s gathering?”
Pierre shook his head. “I don’t think so, Boris Vassilievitch. I—have work to do.” He glanced uneasily at his sponsor, whose fine profile seemed tightly drawn at this late hour.
“Work? Now?”
“Yes. I could never settle down if I tried to sleep. Too much excitement.” He felt awkward about admitting what was on his mind. He had seen the loveliest creature in the world, an airborne sprite defying human limitations, and he wanted to rush home and commit her to paper. She was the sweetest, most mischievous fairy, a brilliant dancer. Svetlov had said so, too: “That is the first time I have seen a Sugar Plum with a sense of humor.” And although he had added criticism of her port de bras, Pierre had felt that he had done so only to preserve his reputation for tough judgment.
Clearly, Boris had agreed with this approval. Pierre realized that the count had purchased flowers during the intermission, but that he had not thrown them down until the end. He had even written a few words on one of his visiting cards. Well prepared, Boris Vassilievitch: a bouquet in case he should become transported with enthusiasm. Pierre sorely regretted not having possessed his patron’s foresight. Thinking about the ballerina, Pierre’s former euphoria returned. “I have never seen anyone so wonderful as little Oblonova,” he said. “Don’t you think so, too?”
Carefully appraising the young man, Boris replied: “Ballet is still new to you. But yes, I agree. She combines character with fluid grace. That is very rare. However, I shall have to take you to a performance of the greats. Pierre, Kchessinskaya is too staid these days, but you will enjoy our new ballerinas: Pavlova, Karsavina, Kyasht.”
Pierre shook his head in sudden animation. With profound emotion, he countered: “No, Boris Vassilievitch. As works of art, perhaps I shall appreciate these ladies, but for me, no one will ever surpass the charm, the absolute beauty, of Oblonova. I—I could love her.”
“Oh? Tell me, Pierre—what do you really know about love? It seems to me you’re being somewhat childish. Talented, yes: Of course, she’s that. But—love?” His mouth turned down in a smile of irony, but he could feel his throat constricting. Boris smoothed his mustache in a mechanical gesture and looked out the coach window, past the blur of nighttime mist. “Love ...” he intoned pensively, almost to himself. “Come now, Pierre. One doesn’t love a woman from afar.”
With sudden stubbornness the younger man resisted. “Then, I’ll arrange to meet her.” He glared at Boris. “Why should you care, Boris Vassilievitch? Clearly you already know all the ballerinas and could make love to any one of them!”
Boris’s stomach turned. He pressed a hand to it, containing the crippling pain. Turning from the window, he stared directly at the young painter, his eyes intense points of metal, sharp and cruel. “Don’t be an ass, Pierre,” he said. “Let’s drop this discussion, shall we?”
But the other refused to let go. Something in Boris’s tone, a verbal dismissal, had hurt his pride, and now he cried: “I see it now! You’re incapable of love, and so you envy me! You could not understand my feeling for Oblonova. In my place you would simply want her for a toy, to be displayed at your convenience. You fancy that artists are your friends, but you can’t grasp our fundamental soul, what makes us live and breathe! If you ever felt love, it would not be the love we feel but something else, something tarnished, a need to use. Well, Oblonova is not a mechanical doll that can be wound up for your pleasure. She is an artist, and only another artist can really be touched by her performance. If I could meet her, I know that she could love me, too. She would understand what lies in my heart, and she would identify with my conception of the world.”
Boris now turned toward Pierre, and the young man suddenly shivered. The count’s face was distorted into a mask of Greek tragedy, tight and ugly. He jabbed the young man in the chest with an extended forefinger that seared like a talon. “You, my friend, are going to pay for this,” he whispered. “And may God damn you straight to hell.”
The coachman was now stopping in front of the shabby building where Pierre rented a small apartment. Before the horses had fully halted, the young artist pulled open the door and jumped out. Boris watched as he ran into the building without looking back. The points of fire in his stomach refused to subside.
Chapter 3
Princess Marguerite Tumarkina sat very quietly next to Boris. She was a small, thin girl with a bust too large for her petite build. Her face was plain, with pale ‘blue eyes, a small upturned and rather pleasant nose, and very slight, bloodless lips. Her hair was a dull blond, and too thin, so that the elaborate pompadour that dominated her head was always threatening to come tumbling down. Tendrils curled around her forehead, and she looked uncomfortable with herself, as if her natural state beneath her finery was one of shy simplicity and dull predilections. Or so Boris thought, speaking with her.
“You do not like Italian opera, Marguerite Stepanovna?” he now asked.
“I—I do not know enough about it for discussion,” she replied and bit her lower lip. She was embroidering a cushion in petit point and now averted her eyes to look intently at her work.
“That is fine artistry,” he commented, taking a corner of the material and examining it. “Marguerite Stepanovna, you must see the jewel that is our Mikhailovsky Theatre—all orange velvet and silver. I shall take you there to hear La Traviata. Our singers are magnificent—Battistini, the baritone, and the Swedish soprano, Arnoldson. You will be enchanted.”
She looked at him then, the color gone from her thin little face. I’ll be damned, he thought. She resembles a scared rabbit cornered by a hunting dog! He enjoyed his own analogy. But
she smiled, and tiny green and gold flecks shone in her eyes, and a spot of pink jumped into her skin where it was tightly drawn over her cheekbones.
“If you would like to go, of course I shall be glad to accompany you, Boris Vassilievitch. You—are so attentive. But you do not have to feel obligated to take me. The Brianskys have been most kind to me, and I am not bored. You—mustn’t worry.”
Good God, he thought; but he inclined his head and smiled. “It is my pleasure,” he murmured. “I never forgot our encounter in Kiev years ago.” Indeed no, he added wryly to himself.
She blushed to the very roots of her hair, and did not answer. Presently he took out his gold watch and exclaimed: “Dear Marguerite Stepanovna, you must forgive me! I am late for a meeting.”
“But of course. An art
istic meeting, Boris Vassilievitch?”
He appeared surprised. “Why, yes. Had I mentioned it?”
She shook her head, which was top heavy and garnished with a thick comb of mother-of-pearl. “Count Briansky told me that you are a great patron of the arts. He says that you have helped painters, and that you love the Imperial Ballet. I have done some water colors, and play the piano, of course—but I do not know any artists.” She looked wistfully at him, and he thought, Now she will want to play me a sonata, to please my artistic tastes…. Damn Briansky!
“I truly must leave you,” he stated, and bowed over her frail hand. His senses were rebelling against his rational mind, which argued that she was not, after all, such a bad sort. But reason could do little to dispel the revulsion he was feeling toward Marguerite.
She was drab, timid, not as cultured as a girl of her station should have been—but perhaps that was due more to a deficiency in taste and intellect rather than education. Other men had wives such as this one stashed away in elegant palaces on the Quays—and surely this little rodent of a girl would hardly be bold enough to impose her own predilections upon the furnishings, or bemoan his absences. Still, his entire being shied away from Marguerite Stepanovna, and it was with physical
relief that he stepped outside the Briansky mansion and into his waiting victoria. He began to hum an aria from La Traviata, then stopped suddenly. He had committed himself to escorting her to hear the opera, and he would choke rather than bring the agony closer by association.
He was going to meet Walter Nouvel and the painter Leon Bakst, friends who had been associated with the Diaghilev projects for many years. Boris had known Nouvel during their adolescence at the May Gymnasium, although the other man was five years his senior. Bakst had joined the group later. He was a red-haired, elegantly attired Jew who had been born “Rosenberg” and had adopted the name of his maternal grandfather; Bakst was nearsighted, and his small mustache matched the high color of his hair. His background was very different from that of any other member of the group. He did not possess a university degree, but not because, like Diaghilev, he had abandoned his studies; indeed, he had never begun them. As a Jew, he had not known the easy, aristocratic life of his companions during early youth; his social class was rooted in commerce. Young Pierre Riazhin had most attached himself to Bakst; not only did he admire the vivid tone of his work, but having begun as an outsider, too, Pierre felt drawn to him.
They were to have met at Boris’s apartment, and now, because of Marguerite, he was late. Ivan had settled his friends in the sitting room, with a plentiful supply of tea and cakes. He joined them. Bakst had brought some samples of the gold brocades with which he planned to hang the icons in the Salon d’Automne of the Grand Palais during the exhibition of two hundred years of Russian painting, concerning which project Diaghilev was in Paris making further arrangements. “And is Pierre going to contribute anything?” Boris asked nonchalantly.
“Several pieces,” Bakst replied. “One is most interesting—of a ballerina. Have you seen it? Nothing so dark as Degas’s works. This one is full of joy, incandescent. I have never heard of this girl, but after seeing Pierre’s rendition, I am much intrigued.”
Boris regarded his friend with a level gaze. “I dare say,” he commented dryly. He was somewhat shocked: Pierre had never shown him the canvas in question. Yet Pierre always came to him first. If this was to hang at the Paris exhibition, then surely
the boy must have known that Boris would see it then. Why then, and not now?
Walter Nouvel, who was most knowledgeable in music and had straight, intelligent features, now said: “Boris, there is a slight problem. Serge’s calculations fell somewhat short, and the patrons—Grand-Duke Vladimir and the others—have already clinched their various contributions. We shall need a loan.”
“Oh? A Kussov loan, I presume?”
Nouvel smiled. “We have all given what we could. You have more at your disposal than the rest of us.”
Boris frowned. “But at this moment, I have less than usual. Damn it, Walter, you know it isn’t a loan that’s needed, but a donation. Do you remember my sister Nina’s wedding the Christmas of ‘04? Even the Tsar’s own marriage was no more extravagant. In any case, my own yearly income will be reduced because of it. I don’t begrudge my sister anything, of course, but Father would not understand the importance of our needs here.”
Marguerite wore a cloak of pale blue velvet lined with white ermine, its hood covering her small head beneath its pompadour. It was really too cold for a walk, but Boris seemed to need the brisk exercise, and she had not wished to refuse his request. He appeared disturbed, and she, who absorbed others’ moods like a sponge, was growing nervous. The Summer Garden stretched before them; they were like moving figures in a still life, and she thought that the large statues seemed grotesque replicas of a time when the sun had shone and blood had coursed through human veins. Now, only she and Boris traversed this lovely French-styled park, only he and she existed in this frozen landscape. In Kiev there were the sugar plantations, enormous stretches of flat ground. But she had pictured more movement in the capital, and the emptiness gave her a headache.
What was it that Boris wanted? She sneezed and tried to keep pace with his long strides. She was certain that her father was concerned for her, and that he had forced her to come here for a reason. She had never before wanted to leave the safety of her home—not since that awful year when everything had turned into a dark hole and she had stopped sleeping. Even now the memory of Baron Revin made her eyes burn. He had not loved her—had not found her worthy. Or had someone told him stories of her frail constitution, of her fainting spells? Because she was genuinely sickly, nobody knew how frequently she had enlarged on this weakness and literally made herself black out or attain heights of hysteria when she rolled on the floor—to frighten her parents or her nurse into granting her fulfillment of a wish. She had wanted Revin, had wanted somehow to bind him to her, and in the effort Marguerite had become very ill. But Revin had returned to Moscow without proposing marriage. She had set her mind to win him and had failed. Even her considerable dowry had failed. After that her parents had sent her to the rest home in Switzerland. And since then she had been afraid to appear much in public. She knew that some of her former friends in Kiev said that she was crazy, that there was a streak of insanity in her that could resurface at the least provocation. But the Brianskys were most kind to her, and as for Boris—who could have hoped for a more enviable escort?
Suddenly she did not want to hear what Boris had to say. She already knew what it would be: He had not wanted to mislead her, but he did not care for her. Somebody must have told him about the sanitarium. She clasped her hands together until they hurt. She had not allowed herself to want a life, any kind of life outside her calm existence in Kiev—until now. Going out into Petersburg society with this handsome, intelligent man—she did want this, desperately. She remembered wanting a ruby necklace once in Geneva and sitting down in the middle of the street with her arms crossed, while coachmen maneuvered, cursing, around her, until her father had been forced to give in and purchase the gems. She had been barely twelve years old at the time. No, most decidedly, today she did not want to hear Boris’s excuses. Marguerite uttered a small cry and started to run, light as a sparrow, across the snow-covered park.
At first Boris watched her erratic advance in bewilderment. Then, with annoyance, he ran after her. His steps were longer, quicker than hers, and soon he had reached her side. “What on earth—?” he began, then stopped, for the small pale face turned to look at him with an intensity of emotion that robbed him of speech. She bit her lip until it was almost bleeding, and he saw that the rims of her pale eyes were red. “What is it, Marguerite Stepanovna?” he asked. Her expression was so strange that he felt ill at ease so close to her.
She took a step toward him and stood right in front of him, her hands touching the lapels of his coat. “Do you love me?” she whispered.
/>
He thought he had surely mistaken the question. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said: ‘Do you love me?’ Because you see, it is essential that you love me. I need your love! Now you must propose marriage to me.”
Boris felt that he had entered a dream, or rather a nightmare. “Marguerite Stepanovna—” he began, but she interrupted him, putting a finger on his lips.
“Don’t speak unless you love me,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed. Boris thought: Perhaps the sickness has resurfaced and she is truly becoming insane. Had his own father done this to him? What was he to do? Such a wave of revulsion swept over him that for an instant Boris thought he would vomit. Then the nausea drained away, and when he regarded Marguerite once more, she too seemed to have calmed down, returned to normal. She had stepped back a decorous distance from him, and her face was pale and reserved, if somewhat embarrassed. She said, tremulously: “It’s all right, Boris Vassilievitch. I am sorry.”
But the incident could hardly be erased. He gave her his arm but could not help trembling with ill-concealed repugnance. They resumed their promenade, each silently locked with his own thoughts. She was, in actuality, too afraid to think. But he was pondering the question of the loan, or the donation, to the committee of friends. What would happen if no one came up with these funds? And afterward? There would be further shortages, further demands. He had absolutely no illusions: His friends liked him well enough, but among all these gifted people, his most important contribution was money. And he needed them more than they needed his money. He lived through all of them, and if he were to be excluded from their enclave—It was better not even to formulate the thought.
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