She remained dry-eyed. Even the catharsis of tears, she thought, was more than she deserved.
Lausanne was built on the side of a hill, and all its streets, even those parallel to the crest and to the lake, went up and down unevenly. After crossing the Bessière Bridge, which straddled a large and deep ravine, the road continued to climb until it reached the University. Beyond the school was a plateau with fields, villas, and gardens, but to the left a steep cliff rose, the Sauvabelin. Here Natalia purchased a small house on some wooded land.
One could climb to the top of Sauvabelin in a cablecar, by driving up a winding road, or even by following a path on foot. At the edge of a vast blue-green forest stretched a magnificent panorama of Lausanne below, with the lake at its feet. Across the lake the white peak of Mont Blanc rose into the crisp fall sky.
There were no luxurious shops there, only the comfortable Hotel du Signal, where Natalia had stayed upon arriving in Lausanne. There was no other distraction or entertainment. But the small forest, now adorned with its mantle of snow, contained its own minuscule lake, with rowboats for hire. As winter approached, the lake froze and became a skating area for the local villagers. Not far from the lake was a vast space enclosed by wire, where deer ran free. They could be fed by hand, and would stretch their velvet lips through the trellised fence. These were Natalia Kussova’s surroundings.
Her house was really a chalet, with a ginger board facade and a peaked roof, and, inside, paneled walls and hardwood floors. She took only a single maid, a Swiss girl from Lausanne, Brigitte. The latter cooked and cleaned, and her husband, Alfred, occasionally tended the grounds. Wrapped in fur, Natalia spent her days waiting. She took walks to the forest and walks into town. She wrote letters to Boris, letters to Nina and Galina Stassova, letters to Lydia Brailovskaya, letters to Diaghilev, to Karsavina, to Benois and Bakst. She wrote and wrote in order not to think, to put off sorting through her reactions to her son’s illness. She carefully avoided writing to anyone about the slow erosion of her heart because of his condition.
At the beginning of November, Dr. Combes had said to her: “There’s more and more protein in his urine. The kidneys are degenerating, Countess. It’s nephrosis.”
She nodded mutely. What was there to say?
Natalia practiced ballet movements in her living room several hours a day. Only then did she feel lifted out of herself, out of this baser being that had engendered nephrosis in a newborn child. These were her only moments of peace.
Her worst times came when she received a letter from her husband. They had only just begun to reach her and took so long in arriving that the news was already stale by the time she received it. Boris, however, came alive for her through his words. Better not to have been so acutely reminded of his reality.
“My love,” he wrote,
If you still hate me for having abandoned you, then you’ll be maliciously pleased at my discomfiture here. I had imagined battles filled with blood and glory, with your humble servant—what an inappropriate epithet!—leading a battalion forward, bayonets pointing to the morning star. Instead, I am attached to the Headquarters of the Division Sauvage, where the closest I come to a bayonet is when I sharpen a pencil. A truly creative endeavor.
Because of my title and standing—which seem to throw the rest of humanity into quite a turmoil, both good and bad—I am at present the bearer of the rank of major. Like my golden hair, it’s only a facade, however. Svetlov got me in, and my fellow Sauvages are loath to trust me. What do I know of the trenches, I, dilettante par excellence? Who can blame them for their lack of enthusiasm? But at Divisional Headquarters I do the same paperwork as I used to do for the Ballets Russes, and our heroic savages are less entertaining than Serge. I wax impatient by the minute and squirm at the vision of your superior disdain as you read this woeful missive. Perhaps I was a fool after all, Natalia. I wonder if Arkady remembers me. Of course I know this is absurd. I am relieved beyond words to know that you are both in Switzerland, on neutral ground, and that Dr. Combes is taking care of our son. When I think of him, I cease to care what they will do with me here and remain quite content with my ineffectual activities among the pencils. For then I start to care about life as never before. He is so small, so frail, and he does need me. Even you, Natalia, are strong and independent, and will never need me as that little creature already does. How we two cynics, we two atheistic sinners ever came to form him, to bring forth the miracle of him, is still to me the greatest wonder of all. I shall have lived for something, after all.
The story of your adventures leaving Darmstadt frightened me more than the nearness of the Turks to Tiflis, where we are stationed. Only you could have managed such an escape and survived. You’re right, I am despicable, to have left you to your own devices. Still, you have to admit that those devices were ingenious and worthy of all my faith in you. You are the better part of me, without doubt. But even so, is that a good thing? Before you I was without conscience, outlined in black. But if Pierre were to paint me now, in spite of your softening influence, he’d still omit pure white from his palette.
It is natural that I think of him now and then, darling, for I am in his native habitat here in Georgia. This is where he played and romped and had his black-haired maidens. How strange life can be, setting me down here of all places! Tiflis is a beautiful city, but our patrol squads travel far out to peer over the crested mountains. I envy them! A Turk would lend more color to my existence than those bloody pencils—pardon the pun. For you, in Lausanne, it must be the same: Boring routine and the same faces, no?
We shall have our summer home in Monte Carlo. Plan
its decor. It’s about time you worked on a house, isn’t it? Every place we’ve had is imprinted with my ineffable good taste, and people have begun to wonder just how bad yours might be. Gossip can kill a marriage: Prove them wrong, my darling, and then we can pick up the pieces of our life.
Seriously, seriously, that’s what I want: to pick up the jagged puzzle pieces and put back our life, yours and mine and Arkady’s. The Caucasus has brought out an oddly annoying sentimentality in me. Learn to overlook it, will you? I love you and belong to you forever, if you’ll still have me. I can’t go on too much longer without you.
How to survive such letters? How to read them without starting to tremble, without weeping? But she wasn’t weeping. Her tear ducts appeared to have dried out from worry about Arkady. She wrote to Boris because it would have been unthinkable not to—what would he have thought, so removed from the mainstream of life? That she no longer loved him? Or that something truly tragic had occurred? She knew that he loved the boy more than he had ever thought he would be capable of loving another human being. Sometimes she even felt jealous of her own son. To relate the illness, the progressive degeneration that Combes did not seem able to stop, would have been sadistic: One did not pull the life out of a man so close to combat. Besides, if she refused to acknowledge the nephrosis, perhaps it would go away.
Pierre did not write and did not come to see her. She had learned from Medveyev that the painter had moved to Locarno, on the Lago Maggiore. She remembered when she had written to break off their relationship in St. Petersburg, six years before. He had succeeded in shutting her out completely. He thought that she and Boris had each played with his life, pushing him in and out of their own lives at will. Perhaps he was right. Threesomes don’t work, she thought. We can’t love you, Pierre. We can only love each other. Had we lived in an enlightened society, the three of us might have tried to love each other and live together in understanding. But it wouldn’t have worked! Somehow, some way, someone would have felt forced out, loved less.
By December, when the small lake had thoroughly frozen over and Lausanne was indistinguishable from every other Swiss town beneath its hood of snow, Natalia’s existence had become regulated by her routines. Outside of them, her mind did not function. She rose and went to the hospital, saw Arkady, went home, exercised, went for a walk, and returned to eat
and write meaningless letters. She could not even read through the nonsense of others’ missives. She read only Boris’s. Sometimes she would bite her lip until it bled to drown out the pain. Then she would eat a light supper and go to bed. She had forgotten that she had ever danced on a stage or been married to a man of flesh and blood.
Dr. Combes worried about her. “You’re wasting away,” he said gently. “Are you still not sleeping?”
“On and off. I have nightmares. I see Arkasha’s face. All I can see are the eyes, and they’re eating me alive.”
“Have you been taking the pills I ordered for you?” Combes asked.
“No. I don’t care anymore whether I sleep or not.”
But the Swiss physician frowned and said: “Punishing yourself isn’t doing the child a bit of good. Do you want to let yourself die?”
Natalia’s enormous eyes, so like her son’s, fastened on his thin, craggy face. “Because that’s what’s happening to him, isn’t it?” she said dully. “He’s dying.” And then, in a sudden wail: “You’re letting him die! Why, Doctor, why? Why don’t you just inject him with poison and be done with it?”
Combes did not answer. Slowly Natalia’s eyes filled with tears, and the tears overflowed onto her thin, colorless cheeks. “I never wanted a child,” she said.
A week before Christmas 1914, Natalia arrived early at the children’s wing of the hospital. She walked into Arkady’s room, for which she was paying a small fortune. He was so tiny among the white sheets, in a child’s bed, which was too large for him. Why hadn’t they simply put him in a crib? His small body was turned to her, and he was sleeping. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at him. All alone, covered with patches where the needles had been inserted, he slept, his features drawn. They had to feed him through tubes now, but today he was singularly free of them, alone in the cot, almost normal in his stillness. Natalia touched his forehead and could not breathe.
My child, my own, myself. Do something, do something! Children your age crawl everywhere. I saw one at the lake yesterday; he made me think of you. He was just beginning to walk. You’re nine months old now; maybe you’ll walk soon. Why don’t you open your eyes and say my name, Arkasha? “Mama.” My name.
Why don’t they paint the children’s rooms a different color? Something bright and cheerful to encourage you to live. Your papa, whose bright joy you are, would hang this room with Lyon silk, but I’d have my say, and pick something plebeian, such as checkered wallpaper. To make you laugh. Or smile, at least. Why can’t you smile? You’ve never once smiled at me. Am I such a bad mama that I don’t deserve a smile?
She kneeled down to stare at the sleeping face and touched the tip of his nose. When are they going to put the tubes back in and feed you? How much do you weigh now? They don’t tell me anymore; they’re afraid I’ll become hysterical.
Natalia sat, mesmerized by the sleeping child. Why was no one there? No nurses, no doctor. She stood up, unsteadily, and moved to the open door. No one was in the corridor. Then she heard a small whimper and started. The child on the bed had moved, spasmodically. She ran to him and took his hand. It was limp. She stroked his forehead again. Then, wildly, she began to scream: “Somebody, somebody come! Somebody come now!”
A nurse, clothed in the standard white uniform, brushed past her into the room. She went to the cot and sat down. Natalia saw her expert hands feel his face, his pulse, his chest. Slowly she turned to Natalia and regarded her without saying a word. She was a plump, middle-aged woman, and now her chin trembled.
But Natalia did not tremble. She asked: “Why was no one here? Why weren’t the tubes in?”
The nurse shook her head listlessly from side to side. “Countess, Countess. Dr. Combes told you last week that we were stopping the intravenous feedings. I’m so sorry.”
But Natalia couldn’t remember. “Dr. Combes? He said that? Really? But why?”
Now the nurse looked away at a speck of dirt on the wall. Her voice was so low that Natalia had to strain to hear it. “Because,” the nurse answered, “nothing was doing him any good anymore.”
Natalia blinked. She stood before the nurse, a diminutive figure in a cape of black sable. “So what are you going to try now?” she asked in a cold, matter-of-fact voice.
The nurse seemed taken aback. She twisted her hands together. Then she cried out: “I’m so sorry, Countess! Your son is dead. He just passed away. I thought you were aware of it, and that this was why you’d summoned me. I—”
“He isn’t dead,” Natalia stated firmly. Her eyes appeared totally vacant. The nurse reached for a cord above the bed and pulled on it frantically. She had seen many cases of grief prostration, but never such a calm, assured denial. Natalia sat down on the chair that faced the bed and said to the nurse: “Of course he wouldn’t die, just like that. I’ve never been sick in my life, and my husband is as healthy as I. Our child is still alive, and you will be fired for lying to me this way. Dr. Combes will be shocked that you could be so cruel for no reason. I have never disliked you, Nurse Trévin. Why do you hate me, then?”
But Dr. Combes, roused by the alert, had entered the room. He went first to examine the baby and exchanged glances with the nurse. Then he placed his hands on Natalia’s shoulders, looked into her glassy eyes, and said: “Countess Kussova, this is dreadful for you. Dreadful for all of us. Please, let me keep you in the hospital tonight, under sedation. You haven’t slept in days.”
Suddenly she sprang up, throwing off Combes’s hands. Her face was alive again and twisted into a grimace of total horror as, finally, the truth hit the bottom of her soul. “You want me to stay here, where you have killed my child?” she exclaimed. “Here? Do you think I shall let you kill me, too? You are all butchers and murderers, and one day you will pay for this! One day you will awaken in hell, and—and—”
She collapsed on the floor, her face drenched with tears, and Combes and Nurse Trévin watched in shock as she began to tear out her hair in clumps. The doctor kneeled down and took hold of her hands to restrain her. She spat in his face. Then, just as suddenly as this had begun, her paroxysm of hatred and self-loathing died down. Her eyes closed, and she lay back, un-moving. Nurse Trévin began to cry.
Several hours later Natalia regained consciousness in a small, white hospital room. She was in a large cot, in infirmary clothes. She got out of bed and swayed unsteadily on her feet but went to the chair where she had noticed her clothes. Silently she dressed. She pulled the cord to summon a nurse. “Please inform Dr. Combes that I’m going home,” she said to the bewildered young woman. “I’m going home and I shall never come back again. Let him make all the arrangements. I shall pay the bill, but I don’t ever want to see him again—not ever.”
“The doctor?” asked the young nurse.
Natalia shook her head impatiently. “No, my son,” she replied. “From now on I’ve never had a son. The doctor was going to take care of him, so I’m going to let him: He can take better care of him now than he could when he was alive. Tell him that for me.”
She adjusted the collar on her sable cape and walked out.
Chapter 19
Pierre Riazhin slammed the fist of one I hand into the palm of the other. “I’m not the one to do it,” he said. “I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time coming out here.”
Nicolai Medveyev, the Russian consul from Basel, scratched the top of his head and sat pensively in front of the fireplace. They were in the living room of the small chalet that Pierre was renting in Locarno, in Italian Switzerland. “Still,” he insisted, “it’s imperative that Boris Vassilievitch be told. For such a delicate task, only someone close to the Kussovs should be chosen. She refuses to write to him about their son, but he has a right to know.”
“If she refuses, then it is her decision. I no longer wish to involve myself in their affairs. This story, tragic though it may be, does not concern me.” Pierre sat down abruptly in front of Medveyev.
“You are a hard man, Pierre Grigorievitch
. If you had only seen her! She’s moved out of the villa in Lausanne, and that’s understandable, given the suffering she’s had to endure in that city. She’s taken up residence in Geneva. I fear for her sanity.”
A spasm of emotion passed over Pierre’s face, but when he turned to look at his guest, there was only grim resolution in his black eyes. “Nicolai Petrovitch,” he said slowly, “you could not possibly understand why I don’t choose to go to Natalia Dmitrievna. Each person has his own anguish to bear, and I’ve had mine. She’s a strong girl. I’ve known her a long time, and she’s never lost her hold on reality, as for her husband, there could not exist a less feeling individual on the face of this earth. Write to him. He’ll survive. Little children die every day, and they’re two healthy people. When he returns home from his dabble in heroism, he can make her a number of other babies.”
Medveyev stood up, his drawn features white, his frame shaking with suppressed indignation. “You are not a man, Pierre Grigorievitch,” he whispered. “Have you no heart? A vague acquaintance should not be the person to write to a father about the death of his only son. If you will not do it for the count, or for her—then you owe me this favor. I took you in, I arranged to obtain false entry papers for you, a resident’s visa—and in return I ask only this.”
Pierre sat down, the muscles in his legs visibly twitching beneath the broadcloth trousers. “Very well!” he cried, color flowing into his cheeks. “I’ll write the damned letter for you. But don’t ask anything else of me, Nicolai Petrovitch. Don’t ever ask it!”
The brilliant sunlight made tiny dots, like golden buttercups, on the white snow and on the blue tips of the pine trees. Pierre looked out the window over the large Lago Maggiore, almost purple in its depth, and ran his fingers through his thick curls. Perspiration ran in rivulets down his temples, and the whites of his eyes were shot with red. The Kussovs always came out the winners, he thought, resentment swelling again within him. Even when they lost, he lost even more.
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