Chapter 22
The full bloom of spring had settled on Sauvabelin Hill. Violets, crocuses, and a myriad wildflowers were scattered beneath the trees around the Signal outpost, overlooking Ouchy and the sapphire lake. To Natalia, this scented beauty was like a heady cloud: It took her mind off herself and allowed her to feel instead of think.
Alfred had worked wonders with the garden. Fruit trees stood strong and young in the morning breeze, their buds still tight on the swinging limbs. The gravel path was clean and well tended, and her feet crunched on it with sudden haste. She did not wait to ring for Brigitte but opened the front door herself with her key. On the floor, at her feet, she saw a startling sight: a layer of bright red cloth woven with gold thread spanned the area like a gigantic carpet.
Natalia found herself face to face with an attractive young woman of her own age, with large black eyes and shiny black hair that hung straight down her back like the Mona Lisa’s. The young woman was tall and full bosomed, and when she smiled, her white teeth were large and glistening. Her skin was a dark ivory tint. “Yes?” she said, inquiring of Natalia and barring the way.
“I am the Countess Kussova,” Natalia declared, taken aback.
“And who are you? Where is Brigitte? And Monsieur Riazhin?”
At once the woman held the door wide, and then bent to the floor to push aside the red material. “Pierre!” she cried. “It’s the countess!” She extended her hand to Natalia. “I’m Fabiana d’Arpezzo,” she said. “I’m helping Pierre.”
“I see,” Natalia sidestepped the odd carpet and allowed the other woman to shut the door. This was her house, but Fabiana appeared to be the hostess, the one in charge. A slow anger began to creep into Natalia—not directed at the young Minerva who stood graciously before her, but at Pierre.
Fabiana was on the floor, rolling up spools of silk threads. She showed Natalia a sleeve being cut out of the shiny material. “It’s Monsieur Diaghilev,” she said conspiratorially. “He’s commissioned Pierre to design some costumes for a ballet. His next stop will be Spain, you know. But of course, you would know—you’re Oblonova!” She smiled delightedly at Natalia.
“Yes, I’m Oblonova,” Natalia echoed, wondering why this girl made her feel as if they were rehearsing a dream sequence.
“Pierre thought it would be easier to compose this costume if I could actually cut it up according to his direction,” Fabiana enlightened her. “It’s been rather fun. But this cloth is so heavy—I don’t see how one could dance inside it. What do you think?”
“I think that Pierre’s turning couturier is rather amusing,” Natalia remarked. Or ridiculous, she thought. Aloud she said: “Excuse me, mademoiselle,” and before Fabiana could continue her conversation, she left the room and went into the hallway toward the bedrooms.
As she had expected, Pierre was in her own room, arranging two pieces of cloth on the bed. He was on his knees and raised his head sharply when he heard someone enter. His face reddened. His lips parted. How much he and that girl look alike, Natalia suddenly thought. He has found his eternal partner, his âme soeur. Nameless fury rose into her throat, flushing her cheeks.
“Natalia! Why didn’t you warn me that you were coming back?” he asked.
“I didn’t know myself. What would you have done differently if you’d been prepared?” Her brown eyes bored into his, and he turned away, fumbling with the cloth. “Does she live here, the pretty Madonna? Your assistant, I mean?”
Pierre laughed abruptly. “Fabiana. Yes, she does. But she’s very clean, Natalia. She hasn’t made a mess of the house. Don’t be concerned.”
“Oh, I’m not! I like her. She’s pleasant and attractive. But this is a small house, my house, and there’s no room left in it for me. Is anyone else staying here, Pierre?”
The cutting edge of irony was so light that he hardly felt it. Nevertheless he rose quickly, his thigh muscles tensing, and, compressing his own rising anger, he said: “What the hell do you mean, Natalia? What are you implying?”
“That I am paying two servants to take care of this house, entirely as a gesture of friendship to you. That Fabiana d’Arpezzo was not part of the arrangement. This is not a house of assignations, Pierre. Nor is it a haven for unemployed couturiers.”
They faced each other, trembling. His features twisted into an ugly grimace, and he cried: “You aren’t Boris Kussov, keeping some kind of pet! I am a free man, Natalia, and an employed man. Shortly I shall be going to Spain to join Diaghilev. Fabiana is my guest, and she’ll be coming with me. You offered me your house—she has done more to keep it clean and well-functioning than that idiot Brigitte. You should be grateful to her—instead of resentful.”
“Get out now!” Natalia said. Tears came to her eyes, and she brushed them furiously away. “I bought this house for my family: It’s Boris’s house, and Arkady’s, not yours! Not ever yours! I wanted you to use it because of him—because he once loved you! But I’m through—through!”
He uttered a short laugh. “Dear, kind, generous Boris. And how did you remember him, my love? Don’t you think I read the papers? Oblonova’s American shadow—how charming, how touching! Another one of your pets, darling?”
She took two steps forward to stand in front of him and raised the flat of her hand to his cheek. Just as it was about to hit him, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it until she cried out and fell on the bed, writhing. He did not let go, but continued to twist, until sobs escaped her and her face was bathed in tears. Then he released her, and stood above her threateningly.
She began to rub her wrist, crying, biting her lip. He loomed above her like a poised panther, his muscles tensed for action. Suddenly he put his hands palms down on the coverlet, on either side of her body, and leaned over her. She recoiled, bewildered but also expectant, her eyes wide, her nostrils quivering. Neither of them spoke.
She watched his face, his red cheekbones. His eyes reflected back her own image, crouching frightened on the bed. Yet, in the cocoon of her terror lay a thrill, an excitement, long buried but suddenly resurfacing. She could feel the pulse beating painfully in her throat, drowning her like the waves of a rushing surf.
All at once, without premonition, he moved his hands and fell with full force on her, breaking his fall at the last second to keep from smothering her below him. She breathed his own particular smell, which gave her the same weightless feeling as champagne. She was suffocating. She tried to cry out, but his lips found hers and pressed the cry back like a quail frightened by a hunting dog. His fingers streamed through her hair, over her scalp, scattering the pins about the untidy coverlet. Little shivers brought goose bumps to her skin, to the softness of her temples. She felt light, swallowed, submerged, and shut her eyes against the dizziness. Her own arms went to his shoulders, his neck, and finally they too mingled with the black curls on his head.
Natalia felt the sheer weight of him, and her own smallness beneath him. In the daylight his shoulders appeared broad and swarthy, and now, as they fumbled to undo buttons and tear off their clothes, .she could see the taut pectoral muscles tapering down, the dark nipples ringed with tendrils of black hair. Then she saw nothing, for he was kissing her neck, biting her lightly, then sucking in her tongue in that fierce way of his that left her possessed and robbed of all control. He entered her when she was least expecting it, when she had become almost numb with his kisses—and yet this time, her body was better prepared for the onslaught, ready to receive him. She had become a woman and was no longer the eighteen-year-old virgin whose skin had felt torn and bruised by the reality of a man’s desire.
More than eight years had passed since their first encounter, but this time urgency overwhelmed them so that neither had time to think things through, to absorb the changes. It happened with such rapidity, such readiness, that neither thought at all until it was over, and he fell beside her among their mound of clothes. At last, however, thought caught up with feeling, and, once again, she was Natalia, fully aware. She burst
into tears and sobbed, covering her face. She could not stop sobbing.
Tentatively, afraid of his own gentleness, he touched her naked shoulder. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right—isn’t it?”
From the living room they heard Fabiana laughing, and Brigitte’s voice. Filters of yellow sunlight streaked across her back, a glistening alabaster smoothness turned away from him. He felt helpless and confused. “You’re not ashamed, are you, Natalia?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not ashamed. Not that.” But still she would not look at him.
He rose then and wrapped himself ludicrously in the material with which he had been working. He resembled a tall, well-built Indian, or a Roman senator sheathed in a toga. “I’ll tell her to go,” he announced.
At last she turned her head and took in the absurd attire. She twisted her hands together and bit her lip. “If that’s what you want,” she said.
But he was sinking to his knees before her, and laying his chin on her lap. “I’d like to tell them all to go so we could be alone,” he answered. And all the ghosts, too, my beloved, he thought. And all the ghosts that plague us, haunting our present. But, wisely, he did not say the words.
Some men, thought Pierre Riazhin, take progressive steps that lead, at their prime, to a kind of peak. His life had never before been so predictable, or so organized. He felt as though he had burst forth upon the earth, a splash of color on the Caucasian horizon, his talent a bright banner raised above the everyday in a gesture of defiance. Then he had met Boris Kussov, and for a moment he had possessed genius. Mirrored in the eye of his mentor, Pierre had lost all touch with the loathsome quagmire of normal existence. He had also met Natalia and made her his muse. Then the two had turned away and forgotten him. His splash of brilliance had lost the echo of their admiration. Without them he had found himself sapped of all but the most abject mediocrity. He was only now beginning to rise again, to set aside the blanket of common boredom that had been wrapping his fine instincts in dreary hopelessness.
He was happy, as only Pierre Riazhin knew how to be happy. The ecstasy of his flesh had pierced through to his spirit, for in Pierre heart, body, and mind tended to merge together. He was a mystic of sorts who, when transported, lost footing on the ground. Like all mystics, he believed in something beyond the earthly. As a child he had called this force God; now, he was not so sure. But he had not forgotten the icons of his youth.
“I have loved you since before I was born,” he would say to Natalia. She found this somewhat embarrassing. Being loved by Pierre was like delving into a box of rich, exotic Turkish delight or like taking a bath in gallons of bubbling champagne: It was tinged with the indecency of excess and, therefore, of decadence. Always a spare person whose desires and feelings rose to a pure point, this sensation of overflowing, boundless emotion staggered her. Yet she knew that she was only the focal point of a greater, all-encompassing enthusiasm: Pierre’s creativity was flowering into a riot of smells, sights, and sounds, and, to give it a name, he had called it Natalia.
This frightened her. It was exactly Pierre’s disorganized, devouring adoration that had kept her away in their younger days. She had wanted a more focused involvement, not this deification, this aggrandizement that was, essentially, not her at all. Pierre did not know her. He thought that he was grasping the essential core of her, but her mind lay unassimilated on the side. He considered her thoughts and beliefs simply beside the point. Why should he humanize an elemental passion that was also an adoration of divinity?
I could not have stood this as a young girl, Natalia thought, lying in bed covered only by a sheet. The evidence of her naked limbs was like the proof of a dreaded force unleashed from within herself. It did not matter, at this point, that she was not understood: for in a way she was more understood than ever before; she had been broken open and left to spill out. Pierre was offering her a barbaric feast, a splurge of creative bounty. She could lose herself in it, forgetting the fears and the hurts and the losses by drowning in a sea of sensations. There was truly no comparison between this love and that which she had shared with Boris—or even the dalliance in which she had partaken with the American writer. Someday, she said to herself, to reassure her conscience, which quaked at the back of her mind, someday I shall awaken replete and seize the reins to my own life again. But right now she could not: The reins still dragged in the dusty gutter while the horse galloped straight ahead, oblivious of obstacles in its way.
The house was a splurge of color that matched the summer splendor of the out of doors. The woods were filled with dark blueberry bushes, and strange birds made sharp sounds among the boughs. In the garden Alfred’s roses climbed strong and round, their velvet petals every shade of pink, red and coral, with sometimes a pale yellow head peeking among the thorns. The phlox, timid blue, and the tall gladioli seemed to have sprung up wild—which vexed the temperamental gardener. Inside, draped over every piece of furniture, Pierre’s designs were hung to dry, their magenta and deep gold tones creating a constant center of attention.
Natalia went through the house like a little girl, laughing, picking up strands of imitation pearls or wide-plumed hats, and trying them on. Pierre was making designs for the ballets that Diaghilev and Massine were now putting together in Madrid. Then softly, gently, he would lift her up to his chest and carry her to the bedroom, and there, banging the door shut with the back of his foot, he would make love to her in front of the open window, pushing aside the soft material of the costume that she had donned in merriment.
He was a wonderful lover, holding back the moment of fulfillment to be sure her pleasure was as great as his. If he was impatient, it was only in wanting to possess her often, over and over. She loved being exhausted by his passion, being filled with him again and again. When he worked on his designs, she followed him, suddenly very young and insecure, needing to be near him, to touch him, to smell him—for he overpowered her senses in every way.
He was amused by this new dependency but also startled. It was an odd reversal of their previous roles. I suppose I was right, he thought, when years ago I wanted her to stop dancing, to be my wife. Once he lay down his paintbrush and, searching her face for signs of trouble, asked: “Shall we get married, Natalia?”
She cried then, pressing her fingers against her eyes. “Marriage! I hate being married! Then the loving stops and you begin to own each other. I never want to be married again—do you hear me, Pierre?”
“But I love you. I want the world to know how much I love you. Are you ashamed of me—or do you just want to remain Countess Kussova?”
The pain on her face made him feel instant guilt. “You see?” she exclaimed. “It’s already starting—your wanting to own me!”
“But isn’t that the way love goes, Natalia? When someone is as much a part of the other as of himself—isn’t that ownership? What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything! You wouldn’t understand, Pierre. If we were married, you would love me less freely, and obligation would enter into it. We both care too much about our freedom to allow this to happen. No ‘musts,’ no ‘duty.’ Oh, my beloved Pierre, is it so bad to want to be happy, without looking back and without looking ahead?”
She touched his sleeve and felt the tension go out of his arm as he fought the impulse to rebel against her fears of the future. He would take the horror out of loving for her; he would soothe away whatever crept up between them now and then, the specter of Boris Kussov, of his death, of the baby. He knew exactly how but this was not the moment, not yet.
“I shall have to go to Spain soon,” he said to her one evening. She turned to him, and he saw her dismay, the small helpless opening of her mouth, the way her hands moved to her breasts as if to protect herself. Had she been that badly wounded, then? “Come with me,” he suddenly cried. “Pack a bag and come! You’ll love Spain, and the king will love you, too. The court is like a Velázquez painting, all baroque pageantry. It will be fun!”
“I can’t,” she replied, her eyes filling with tears. “Diaghilev—I don’t want to see him, Pierre. I know you work for the Ballets Russes, and you and Massine have become work friends. But that dreadful scene in New York—”
“Do you want me to have a talk with Serge Pavlovitch?” Pierre offered.
“What’s to be said? He’s broken with Nijinsky for the second time, and now he’s broken with me. Or rather, I’ve broken with him. He’d be only too glad to watch me hanging on the outskirts of his organization. I don’t ever want to see the man again, Pierre.”
“You never talk about it, but you miss it, don’t you?” he asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “It isn’t enough, then—us?”
She rushed to him, and he could see the pulse beating in her delicate throat, an exposed vulnerability that suddenly moved him. “Oh, my darling!” she cried against his chest. “I miss nothing! I just don’t want you to go. I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be robbed of you.”
“But I’ll come back,” he murmured gently, stroking her hair. “There’s no war in Spain, only a work project!”
The way she reared her head, the shock in her eyes, told him how tactless his words had been, and he threw his hands up in despair, shaking his own head helplessly. “Damn it, Natalia,” he began, and then his own emotions dissolved in the shaking of his knees, the realization that he loved her more than he had ever thought it possible to love another person. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he whispered, tears of contrition mixing with her tears of fear and pain. And then she uttered a small tremulous laugh, and he knew it was going to be all right, this new, this half-formed love of theirs, this passion and this caring.
During his absences she remained for hours at the window, smiling in bemused fashion, counting the hours that remained until his return. She hated the bed that was empty without him, hated and conversely loved the workroom with his paintbrushes and palettes, with his bolts of colored cloth and his many easels backed one against the other. She hated him for being gone and yet loved these small and large reminders of his imminent return. Sometimes she prepared Russian pastries and zakuskis, which she knew he loved. When he came home, she placed platters of his favorite food before him and watched him eat them morsel by morsel, each one a testimonial of her love for him, of her devotion.
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