“Yes. Chaliapin transports a person out of his depths. Do you know him?” she asked, awkwardly standing in the small room where the paintings hung.
He was removing his cape, hanging up his cane and hat. “Yes. He and Boris are quite congenial. We had supper with him afterward. He tells a good story.”
Now he stood in his tuxedo, a strange sight in the small, badly furnished room. She thought: Boris Vassilievitch has taught him how to dress, has probably loaned him the use of his tailor. Pierre did not look as rough and provincial as the first time she had met him. Perhaps the city was etching its indelible imprint upon him. Was that good? Or were people like Boris Kussov too refined, too rarified, too effete? She looked at Pierre quite frankly from her wide, clear eyes, brown and limpid. It felt warm, pleasantly tingling, to appraise him thus.
He appeared to enjoy the strength of his body, his well-proportioned thighs and shoulders, his powerful agility. Now he looked at her, and she was suddenly embarrassed. I’m so dirty, she thought, and wanted to take to her heels and forget that she had come, hoping that he would forget, too. With whom had he been, apart from Boris and Feodor Chaliapin? Beautiful, scented ladies of the aristocracy? Divas from the Opera? Demi-mondaines at the sinful Aquarium? A shiver of repulsion swept over her, and she imagined Pierre placing his hands upon a woman’s thigh, upon her bodice.
They had both stopped talking and in the soft glow of the yellow light he extended both hands to her, and she took them in her own, fingers to fingers. Neither wished to break this sudden intimacy. She was tired, hungry, and wanted to cry, but she was also exhilarated. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, a rough movement that tilted her head back in an uncomfortable position. She could not breathe, the wound her arms around his neck and returned his kisses, uttering little moans of unexpected delight. Then he stepped away from her and asked, “You will marry me, won’t you?”
Frantically, she seized the lapels of his dinner jacket and thrust her face into his chest, like a lost animal of the forest. She felt his heart beat, the life of him, the miracle that was the life of him! Tears came to her eyes. She raised her face and touched his cheeks with gentle, tentative fingers. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Then, shaking her head, her curls tumbling out of the French twist which had been holding them in place, she exclaimed: “Don’t talk about it now!”
Pierre Riazhin saw the anguish in her face and knew that something terrible had happened. But it was not the time to ask her about it. She had said, “I don’t know,” and that was closer to consent than anything he had heard from her before. Tomorrow she might repeat her former refusal, which he could not understand. If there were another man—Boris, and his damned pearls?—then she would not now be kissing him so passionately, with so much love. “But you do love me, Natalia?” he asked, a gnawing fear seizing him that she was somehow using him as substitute for something, someone else. “I have to know,” he added urgently, gently shaking her shoulders.
She nodded, biting her lower lip with perfect white teeth. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she looked pale, haggard. She tried to smile, but the smile was crooked. She reached his lips with hers, standing on her tiptoes, and this time he did not question her, but lifted her from the floor and carried her into his bedroom. She said nothing when he placed her tenderly on the bed, or when he removed his jacket. Keeping her eyes on his, she began to unbutton the front of her bodice, and her long, fine fingers were fast and sure. His own eyes filled with tears and he thought: Dear God in heaven, let me love her enough.
Natalia sat against the pillows, her brown hair around her like a gentle halo. He briefly wondered at the power in that young, strong female body, the muscled thighs, the small, round breasts, the shoulders that sloped into well-formed arms. He had not imagined she would be so firm, this small, frail girl with the wide eyes and vulnerable mouth, he had simply forgotten that this woman danced every day of her life, that dance had kept her apart in much the same way that convents secluded religious women with unfathomable rigors. Now he was confronted with this new Natalia, this firm but yielding body that lay exposed before him. She felt his eyes examining, appraising her, and all at once she made the timeless gesture of Eve, and covered her breasts with one hand and her pubis with the other, and turned aside, waves of embarrassment washing over her. She would have done anything to escape, to be done with this man and with this bed and with her own confusion and shame. She was ashamed of being human, of being a woman.
Would there ever come a time, he thought with sudden compassion, when a girl would be able to display herself naturally, without this ancestral guilt, this fear of judgment? But she was looking at him now, and the brief flush had seeped away, and she was very pale, as if bewildered. “You’re very young,” he murmured softly, knowing that she had never seen a man’s hardness before, and that the very first time wonder vied with a certain revulsion in most women. They simply did not come prepared. He came to her and knelt before her, so that his head was level with hers, and so that his maleness was hidden from her for the moment. When he touched her cheek it was very cold, and he knew she was numb with shock. Part of the numbness was desire, the other part an elemental fear, the fear of being opened up to this man, of being violated. After tonight she would never be the same again, never whole and her own.
Her throat constricted, tears clouded her eyes, and suddenly she began to cry soundlessly. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and held her to him, and she wept into his hair, rocking with him. It was all right this way, it would be all right. Then, with the hunger of his own impatient youth, he kissed the softness of her swan’s throat and crept downward with his lips, seeking the tips of her breasts, and she could feel his teeth around the puckered skin. Her lack of experience confounded her, and she grasped his hair with a sort of desperation, twirling her fingers through the thick locks. Then he pressed her down on the bed and she knew that she must confront him, the newness, the shock, the strange ugliness and fascination of his maleness. She lay back and watched him he down next to her, and then, horrified, she wrapped her nakedness in a side of the blanket and shrank to the edge of the bed, unthinking and trembling.
Tentatively he touched her shoulder, and, to his surprise, she turned to him, her eyes wide open. “It’s not new to you,” she whispered. It was a statement, oddly quiet after the weeping. She touched his face, caressed his cheeks, went lightly over the tulip softness of his eyelids, one after the other. “Please, please turn off the light.”
“But I want to look at you,” he answered softly.
“Why?”
“Because it is new to me. It’s never been you before—never Natalia. Let me make love to you properly. Don’t make me grope for you in the dark. It’s a sacrament, you know.”
“You’re breaking into me,” she said. “All of me—all of me at once. There’s no comfort in this.”
“No, there’s no comfort,” he agreed, putting his arms around her and gently drawing her to him. “There’s no comfort anywhere, Natalia. Don’t come to me for safety, because I can’t bring it to you. I love you too much.”
Then she kissed him and smothered herself in the smell and taste of him, and when he touched her firm taut stomach, she was still, and waited. He placed her hand over his hardness and she did not cry out. She felt it curiously—this something that she did not know, that was altogether too solid to merge into her. He was a man and the whole concept was electrifying, terrifying, mesmerizing. When finally he shifted his weight to his knees and moved on top of her, she closed her eyes and clenched both hands over his forearms, to steel herself for the assault. “Don’t fight me,” he said, as if she could have known what he meant, as if she could have known how much it would hurt. Instead she felt the searing pain, and he saw in her eyes the shock, the betrayal. They’d all felt like that, all of them. “It won’t ever hurt this way again,” he told her, watching her white face and feeling guilty.
For a while there was nothing—sim
ply an adjustment to the tearing inside, then a numb warmth. Something moved inside her, and she breathed again, slowly at first. He kissed her cheek, her chin, her lips. “There’ve been so many others in your life,” she whispered, almost accusingly. “Why did you want it to be me, if for you this is such a normal thing?”
“Because it’s different when you love,” he replied. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”
“I want to like it,” she whispered. “But it feels as if you’ve wounded me.”
The words, wondering and tinged with resentment, whipped into his consciousness, and he began to slide inside her, up and down and softly sideways. Her mouth relaxed. He could see her arms reaching up to him, her hands wrapping around his neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she murmured, pressing her breasts against him, the nipples hard and warm. She could feel the tip of him way inside her, pushing against the edge of the womb. The pain stayed with her, the burning sensation, but now there were other sensations, and the rhythmic flow of his body was like a dance—that was it, like a dance. But too quick, too hard. Part of it felt very good, very fine and mellow, but then it would begin again, the thrust too sudden. It was like a dance. You had to learn, you had to practice. It was like taking on a new dancing partner—you had to learn his style, his tempo, and adjust your own.
Then she knew she wanted this breaking open of her, this merging, this deep penetration to the core of her being. She held him tightly and began to lift her legs to allow him further access, and a great joy took possession of her, the joy of wanting another person, this person, Pierre. She called his name, “Pierre, Pierre,” like a declaration, a fondling. He was making her beautiful, making her human, making her a woman. When his face contorted into a grimace of pain and pleasure, and he cried out, incoherent animal moans that at first profoundly frightened her, she realized that it was different for him, different for men, that the passion overrode the searing and the burning and maybe even the love. But it was all right. He was young and he was hers, and he had made himself vulnerable, by crying out, by letting go. She loved him for it, more than for the kisses, more than for his beauty.
Afterward it was he who wept, not she, and she did not understand. “It’s not fair,” he said. “I love you so much more than this, and it’s too soon for us, you’re not used to it.”
“But I want to try again, because I can’t seem to stop loving you back,” she murmured, moving to the crook of his arm. “I’ve never been in love, and I’m still afraid of you, Pierre. My beautiful Pierre.” But he had fallen asleep, and so she closed her own eyes and allowed herself the luxury of floating into space, hypnotized by the cadence of his breathing and by her own exhaustion. She wanted to laugh and sob at once, but she was too tired. At last she raised herself on one elbow, turned down the wick in the lamp, and welcomed the darkness.
She awakened drenched with perspiration. There had been a beach, and the sea, and suddenly a wave like a pillar, blue-green and ominous, coming toward her. She had felt pressure in her throat, a strangling and a suffocation. She sat up, gasping for air, her eyes distended. Relief flowed her over like balmy breath: She had escaped, she was alive. It had only been a dream.
When she lay back upon the pillows, she realized that she was not wearing the high-necked negligee in which she usually slept. She felt the soft grain of her skin—her arms, her knees, the small mounds of her breasts. She was completely naked! Goose bumps spread over her. Slowly she turned her face toward the left and saw his tousled curls. His large back lay next to her, and she felt it tentatively with her finger. He moaned in his sleep. Shivers, tremors passed over her then, one after the other. Horror, joy, fear, remembered pleasure—all these sensations struggled within her half-awakened consciousness, and she sat up again, willing the night away.
Then misery overwhelmed her. The previous day came to mind, and every nerve cried out in agony. What was she to do? She looked at Pierre and was afraid to touch him. The broad back, the pronounced muscles, the strength, the manhood of him—what wonder, what beauty, what strange sensations they provided! But what had he to do with her predicament as a dancer? What of the Mariinsky, the suspension, the shame? Was she finished at eighteen? She shut out the tears with her eyelids and clenched her fists. She could not stay, she must not succumb to his presence, his smell, the way one thigh straddled her effortlessly—the way he had tried not to hurt her but to relax her, gently, unselfishly. She would never have suspected his kindness. She would have thought him brutal and self-serving with a woman. Not at all—But if she stayed with him she would not be able to think, to plan, to dance, to sort out her life.
She threw back the covers and jumped to the bare floor. Quickly she found her scattered undergarments, the drawers, the corset, the corset cover. There was no time to waste. She had to leave before he awakened and claimed her again, before he looked at her with his ebony eyes that dragged her soul into his, that closed the narrow gap separating them. Hastily, she stuck the tortoiseshell comb into her topknot, buttoned the top of her blouse, and grabbed the bag stuffed with her belongings from the Imperial Ballet. She did not think to leave a note. Pierre had become a demon now, one from whom she must flee as rapidly as possible. Only outside in the bitter cold of the early morning did she think, with a sudden pang of dreadful yearning: But when shall I see him again? Will he ever speak to me again?
It did not occur to her to feel ashamed of what she had done, or to fear Pierre’s subsequent rejection. She knew that he loved her, that they had bound themselves to each other completely—and that it was this very commitment that had to be broken, for it went against all that she had spent her lifetime achieving: her sense of self, her independence. With renewed trembling she thought, Pierre could eat me alive. It would do no good to ask herself if the half-life to which she might consign herself without him was worth the sacrifice. Her young life had already been paved with many sacrifices.
Gently, Boris knocked on the door. When there was no answer, he turned to his manservant and said: “Open up then, Ivan.” The other, in his black broadcloth, the very symbol of his calling, deftly removed a key ring from his pocket and, without a moment’s hesitation, inserted the correct one into the lock and turned it. Boris passed into the small hallway and sniffed: ‘This place smells of sleep—and of sweat. Also of something else. What is it, Ivan?”
“A lady, Your Excellency.” Ivan turned on a light, and preceded his master into the room with the paintings. He was carrying a small basket and a large bag, and now he began to empty the latter. He placed floor polish, furniture wax, and dust cloths of the finest chamois on the floor. Ivan then took out a freshly baked poppy-seed cake, and a small box of Calville apples and Muscat grapes.
Boris stood with his erect, graceful back to the wall hung with paintings. He had clasped his hands behind him and appeared lost in thought. The manservant observed him from hooded eyes and wondered at the taut skin over the cheekbones, the small wrinkles around the eyes. His master wore a tragic mask this fine morning. He cleared his throat and said delicately: “If there is a lady, Your Excellency, should I still awaken monsieur?”
“That wouldn’t do,” Boris replied, the words dripping like icicles from his tight lips. “No, Ivan—a lady would faint if you were the first sight to greet her in the morning. I would be infinitely more suitable.”
“Quite, Your Excellency. I shall make the coffee.” Boris watched Ivan carry the foodstuffs into the tiny cubicle that was Pierre’s kitchen. He waited, listening. Then, almost in sprightly fashion, he shook himself into action and walked to the doorway of the bedroom.
Before looking, Boris closed his eyes, a sudden quick pain flashing through his stomach—the burning warning of anxiety that seemed to tear his body in two. It passed, and he breathed deeply. He tugged on the lapels of his light brown Norfolk jacket and touched his waxed blond mustache. Pierre lay sprawled in his bed, and Boris entered, blinking. The elegant tuxedo was on the floor—the ruffled shirt, the pants, even the
undergarments. Boris scooped to pick up something that gleamed: a gold cufflink emblazoned with a topaz, his own present to the young man. Boris sat down on the edge of the bed, watching the other breathe, and his jaw set tightly. But he did nothing to disturb the scene.
At length the sleeping figure stirred, feeling a foreign presence. Pierre’s hand groped on the neighboring pillow, and he turned his head toward Boris. He mumbled something, and Boris stiffened, then bent forward to catch the words: “Darling, darling.” Still he did not speak. Like all heavy sleepers, Pierre was taking his time to bridge the gap between dreams and reality. He was opening his eyes, searching. “Natalia?” he said.
“She’s not here,” Boris replied clearly. It was better this way, knowing. He shut his mind to the searing in his stomach lining and said calmly: “Wake up now, Pierre. It’s past ten. Breakfast time, you know.”
Pierre sat up and rubbed his eyes, the gesture of a small boy. “Borya?” he intoned. “I don’t understand. What—?”
“You forgot Ivan, then,” Boris answered lightly. “How can anyone forget Ivan? He came to clean this hellhole. It’s Friday. I promised you Ivan’s services on Friday. And then I thought: ‘Knowing Pierre, after the supper party last night, and the opera, he will sleep late. Why not share a breakfast with him when he rises?’ Was it a bad idea?”
Pierre’s face grew red, and tendons stood out on his neck. “For god’s sake, Boris!” he exclaimed, fully awake now. “Without warning? You come at all times of the day and night—I tell you, I can’t stand it! This is my home, for whatever it’s worth—mine, not yours! You may own the rest of the world, but not this hellhole, as you call it. You can take Ivan and—”
“And what? Would you discard my friendship in one fell swoop?”
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