Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  Pierre adored these demonstrations, which she had never shown toward the aristocratic Boris Kussov, who had taught her to be a lady but had never quite been able to obliterate the simple Russian girl from her heart. He was very happy. He was thirty-three, and his career was soaring; recognition had at last come to him. In Spain his designs were bringing him fame, and in Switzerland he lived with the girl he had always loved. The only problem lay in the fact that Diaghilev was constantly failing to fulfill his contract and paying him far less than had been promised. But money was not a problem, for Natalia lavished the good life on him, spoiling him shamefully when he was home. He only wished that she would come with him and forget her quarrel with the Ballets Russes.

  In September a change came over her, and she began to watch herself with a dreadful sense of calamity. Her fingers were swelling, and her breasts had grown tender and large. She measured her waist and was seized with panic at its increased size. Wringing her hands, she sat down on the bed and cried, then made an appointment to see Dr. Combes. Pierre, thank God, would not be back for several days.

  When he came home, she could not face him. Hearing his voice in the hall, all at once she felt overwhelmed with anger and resentment. He had done this to her! Then she thought: No, he has only loved me, again and again, and when one wants to be loved as much as I did, something is bound to happen! It was I who was crazy, I who threw all caution to the wind. Her misery was enormous, palpable, and she stayed in the bedroom, one hand on her offending stomach. I don’t know what to do, she thought. I don’t know what to do!

  Panic-stricken, she rang for Brigitte to tell her to keep Monsieur away, to find some reason—logical or not—to prevent his coming in to find her. But before the maid could answer her call, Pierre’s hand was on the doorknob and he was entering, his body framing the doorway, his curls atumble from the wind, a package in his arms. She stared at him, appalled and frightened.

  Pierre burst into the room, throwing the package on the bed and moving toward her, enveloping her in his embrace, crushing her. His forcefulness pushed her fear to the surface and she began to cry, at first small sobs, then more insistent, hysterical ones. Amazed, he dropped his arms to his sides and asked: “What happened, Natalia? Tell me!”

  She could not speak. She could only turn away, bending over in her grief and helplessness. “You can’t have missed me all that much,” he teased her softly. “Come now—what’s so bad?” He was becoming caught up in her despair, and a dull warning was spreading over the joy of seeing her, like a chilling blanket of ice.

  Finally she wheeled about and pointed at her stomach. “That’s what’s wrong!” she cried. “Look what we’ve done, Pierre! Two irresponsible fools! I’m going to have a baby, that’s what! And I can’t have another baby! I can’t! What are we going to do?”

  Tremendous relief flooded over him, then quick joy. Taking her hands, he raised them to his lips, his smile illuminating his handsome, dark features. “But that’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “That isn’t a reason to cry, my sweet! We shall get married at once. Is that the only problem? That we’re not married? You silly girl!”

  Her sobs increased, and now she said: “No, Pierre! I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to have this baby! Don’t you understand? The nephrosis—that was probably something Arkady was born with! I can’t take the risk of having another child, not ever! What was Arkady’s short life but a nightmare of incessant pain, for him and for me? I can’t go through it one more time!”

  He could not help it then and said to her harshly: “But you know what Dr. Combes has told you, many times! That you were in no way responsible for Arkady’s illness. Have you spoken to him about this pregnancy? Hasn’t he been able to reassure you?”

  “But there are no guarantees!” she cried.

  “No guarantees? What guarantees are there to any part of our lives? I only know I love you and that I will not have you abort this baby out of overblown fears! It’s time you grew up, Natalia.”

  “If I have this child, it won’t ever be the same between us, Pierre,” she told him. “I shall have to marry you, and that will destroy the spontaneity of our love. And what about dancing? I’ve been away from it now for a number of months—this will keep me away for nearly eight more! Is that fair, Pierre?! You won’t have to carry this baby, and it isn’t going to stop you from painting. But for me it will be different.”

  He said, slowly: “You would abort our baby for eight months of ballet? Then Arkady was just an excuse? All this time when I thought we were happy, you were really missing the dance and planning to go back?”

  She shook her head from side to side, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No. I don’t honestly know what I was planning to do. But I wasn’t planning to have a baby. I never wanted to have Arkady, but when I did, I loved him—and he died, and I don’t ever want to suffer like that again, ever again! The dance is something else; it just came up because it’s true, I suppose I have missed it, and never realized it. I always thought I would start my own company and ask you to work with me—to make a company with me, our company! I didn’t see that my resuming dance would separate us. On the contrary, I thought it would bring us closer together. You wouldn’t have to work for Diaghilev anymore. You wouldn’t have to leave me like this—”

  She fell back against the bed, small and grief-stricken. “I don’t understand,” he murmured, standing in front of her. “I don’t understand any of this. I only know that you don’t love me enough if you can even consider aborting my baby. Oh, certainly, Dr. Combes will explain to me about Arkady and tell me that there is medical precedent for such a drastic measure. But you know as well as I that this baby will be well because there is nothing wrong with either one of us.”

  She raised her head, an expression of amazed horror on her face at the implication. “You can’t live in the past!” he cried out then, taking her head and pressing it against his thigh. “You can’t deny us, Natalia, and destroy the life we’ve created together. If you do, I swear to you I’11 go, and this time, I won’t ever return!”

  He felt her wet tears through the cloth of his trousers, and laid a hand on the top of her head. Perhaps the timing for this baby was wrong, but having it would chase away her ghosts by replacing them with life.

  Chapter 23

  She twirled the name in her mind as if it were a ring on her finger: “Natalia Riazhina.” It brought to mind string instruments and Russia, as “Kussova” had suggested an arrow, powerful and direct, and “Oblonova” graceful curvature, voluptuous and honeyed. Names had always held a magic for her. “Natasha” had been in the prison of her youth, harsh and barren, and that was why only ever permitted Diaghilev to use it.

  Riazhina. She would not have married Pierre but for this baby. The pregnancy enveloped her as compressed heat does a hothouse flower. She fought its smothering effect, and yet her own self, Natalia, kept being pushed back, choked down by this invasion, which she resented even more than she had resented Arkady’s. She thought: They have conspired against me, Pierre and his child. In her heart she reared her head and cried out her rebellion, her feeling of doom. The child was killing the woman, as once before the woman had thought she had killed a child.

  This pregnancy had taken well. This time the fetus was firmly embedded in her womb, and, after much hesitation, the doctor had pronounced her fit and able to lead a normal life. She was even proceeding with her former ballet exercises. When Pierre was home in Lausanne, he walked erect and proud, as though, she thought with pain and a resulting anger, to show that his child was not harmful to her, that his child would be born whole and well. She hated him then and could not speak to him. It was as though the pregnancy had made Boris resurface in both their minds, bringing back old pains and frustrations—and on Pierre’s part, mixed feelings toward his old mentor.

  The double-edged quality of Pierre’s feelings for Boris came up more strongly now, in Rome, when Diaghilev and all the artists congregated in the impresar
io’s apartment. Pierre realized that Boris was still a part of the discussions. He had been much admired. Without him Diaghilev was like a boat with only half a rudder. One found oneself looking over one’s shoulder, expecting the blond phantom of Boris Kussov to materialize and participate in discussions of new projects. Something was missing. Pierre thought: The best years of my life are gone because the friction of his opinions will be forever lacking from what I do. We can all function, but without a mind such as Kussov’s, the ultimate finesse escapes us all.

  Under Boris’s helmsmanship, the Ballet’s financial situation had fared impeccably. Boris Kussov had had an astuteness that had been absolutely necessary to the group. Pierre sensed its absence and raged that he should now be making his artistic mark at a time when Boris, his evil genius, was already dead.

  Pierre was in the center of a new movement, one of the changes in the wind that Diaghilev, by wetting his index finger and holding it to the air, had been able to predict and abet. With the absence of Nijinsky, Karsavina, who was still in Russia, and Natalia, the Ballets Russes had to make do with lesser dancers. The new stars that were emerging, therefore, consisted of designers, composers, and librettists. Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painter, had enthralled Pierre with the cubic shapes that peopled his works. And he had renewed an old friendship with the French poet and humorist Jean Cocteau.

  Sometimes Pierre took long walks, to clear his mind, to revive his body. One afternoon as he climbed down to the Coliseum, the relic of a civilization killed by excess, a deep depression settled into his bones. He clambered onto the ruins and sat down where, more than a thousand years before, other men had gone to distract themselves from the weight of their worries. He felt an overwhelming sadness. Often before, when this black cloud had descended, he had busied his hands with work. But now he found that they were trembling in his lap.

  He did not notice the young woman who sat down not far from him. The enormous crumbling structure could seat thousands. But, after a while, the afternoon sun went below a wall of the stadium, and Pierre glanced about him. The young woman inclined her head, graciously. He remembered that she was a dancer, an English girl whom Diaghilev had recently hired. Her name was Jacqueline Vendane, but Serge Pavlovitch, who turned all his dancers into Russians, had changed her name to Vendanova. Pierre had no idea what they called this girl among the corps, but all at once he found her proximity warming.

  She was a tall, willowy girl with pale skin like Natalia’s and brown eyes smaller and less distinctive in their shape than those of his wife. But Natalia was twenty-seven. This girl was perhaps twenty, or twenty-one. Oddly, in spite of her tall stature, he was reminded of Natalia during the early years, when they had both been striving, unknown, and lovers. Jacqueline stood up, and he smiled. She came toward him, and he rose instinctively. “It’s pleasant to be out in the afternoon,” he stammered lamely.

  She laughed—a clear, tinkling, self-assured laugh—and sat down beside him. “But your thoughts weren’t pleasant ones, Pierre Grigorievitch,” she countered. “Aren’t you happy here?”

  There was nothing like a dose of English straightforwardness, he thought. He shrugged lightly. “Rome is magnificent,” he said. “But you’ve heard it all before.” Then, all at once, almost angrily, he turned to her and said: “No, I’m not happy. Not at all.”

  “I dare say.” Her small mouth made a circle of wonder, but she remained agreeably distant. “Perhaps you miss your wife? I should like to know her. She has become a sort of myth. You know—Oblonova. And also: Countess Kussova. But oh—I say—I’m terribly sorry! That was untactful in the extreme, wasn’t it?” She flushed scarlet and examined her shoes.

  The girl’s words and embarrassment pierced through him to a rare reserve of humor. He chuckled. “In the extreme, my dear. But everybody does it. They must think Natalia has gone down a peg, marrying me after Count Boris Kussov. He cut quite a figure.”

  “And you don’t?” It was a straightforward question, without pity, without cruelty, without false reassurances. She had felt the hard bitterness beneath his light tone.

  Pierre turned away. “God knows,” he answered. “I’m still covered with morning dew. A babe in the woods.”

  “You’re only thirty-four. I think you’re accomplishing a good deal, actually. Couldn’t your wife—Natalia—be with you here?”

  He had always begged Natalia to come to him, to mend her relationship with Diaghilev, but all at once Jacqueline’s question jarred him, unearthing new feelings within him. He turned to her, startled. “This will sound crazy to you,” he said, “but suddenly I know I don’t want her here. I love her more than the world—but I don’t want her to come here now. Not now! Do you see—in any way—what I mean?”

  The last words hit him with their absurdity, their childishness. But Jacqueline placed a smooth white hand on his arm, and squeezed it lightly. “Yes,” she replied. “I think I do. This is your world. If she came, you’d be afraid she might preempt it. How can you live with that? Doesn’t she feel how it tears you apart? Even I can feel it—and I barely know you. Mostly I know you through Olga—Olga Kokhlova, Picasso’s girl. Picasso feels that Natalia robs the creativity out of you.”

  Pierre turned away. “There’s nothing to be done about it,” he said, but his voice trembled slightly. “I found I could not live without her. And now—”

  “You can’t live with her. Maybe she feels the same way.”

  They did not speak. A light breeze rose from the stadium, and lifted Jacqueline’s skirt to her knees. She bent to smooth it, but all at once Pierre seized her hand. Jacqueline looked up, startled, embarrassed. She saw the strange expression on his face, the black eyes like smoldering coals, the curls tumbling over his wide brow, the lips parted over white, glistening, savage teeth. He frightened her, but she could not pull away. She closed her neat brown eyes against the sight of him.

  When he kissed her, she did not resist. He found her pleasantly compliant, not a virgin, and tender enough to bring a cool balm to his sores. He was grateful to her for the calm understanding, for the lack of fuss. Although something within him ached for Natalia, he also knew that he had not done this to wreak vengeance on her: He had done this only for himself, to make the passage less rough.

  It took several weeks for news to reach the Ballet that the Tzar’s government had been overthrown and that the reign of the Romanov dynasty had come to an end. Then pandemonium broke loose. Each Russian ran to the post office to send frantic telegrams, inquiring as to what had happened to members of his particular family. Pierre could discover no news of his mother. But she had not been wealthy, or prominent, and in the outlands fewer massacres had occurred. He presumed her shaken but alive.

  In Lausanne Natalia was nearing the end of her term. After the first fleeting thought, she did not even consider her mother and father. She had never really known her sister. Instead, she speculated about Nina and Galina Stassova, and Lydia Markovna Brailovskaya, and Katya and her parents and small children. Natalia sat frozen in fear, uncomprehending. Had Boris been there, he would have explained, cleared up the confusion, and succeeded in finding everyone of importance to her. She wondered what had become of Tamara Karsavina, of whom she had grown so fond. It was awful, not knowing.

  In March Natalia had been forced to endure Arkady’s birthday. Before that there had been her own, shrouded in the anniversary of Boris’s death. She had never thought herself fatalistic, but now she admitted that a deep, pervasive Russian gloom had seized her. Natalia wept with worry about Nina and Galina, last ties of blood to Boris Kussov. She sent Brigitte to the post office for several days, and mailed long letters to Medveyev, now no longer employed. She did not weep for her country. The Tzar’s court had truly been corrupt, and monarchs, after all, had to be held accountable to their people.

  After a week Natalia said to Dr. Combes: “I am going to Rome. I’ve never cared about this baby the way I did about the first—oh, don’t pretend you’re shocked! The trip wo
n’t harm me. But I need to be with my husband. We’ve always been vagabonds, in the service of the Ballet—but now we’re truly homeless. When the roof blows off, the inmates of the house must huddle together for warmth and safety.”

  In the face of her stubbornness, the Swiss doctor yielded. Natalia packed a light suitcase and had Alfred drive her almost at once to the station. “Why the master can’t come home, I don’t know,” the gardener said to his disapproving wife. The doctor would have been forced to agree with him. Combes had telegraphed a colleague in Rome to make certain that, if worst came to worst and Natalia did not return on time, there would be somebody on hand to deliver her baby. Why Natalia had not thought this through was utterly beyond his comprehension. It was almost as though she had ceased to care: about herself and about the child.

  When Natalia arrived in the lobby of Pierre’s hotel, it was late at night. Bulging with her pregnancy, ungainly and exhausted, she nearly collided with the elegant figure of Diaghilev, young Massine by his side. Natalia felt a moment of shock. She leaned against a tall marble pillar and fanned herself. Let him think what he wants, she thought miserably. Let them both think what they want. I am fat and ugly and I haven’t worked in ages, and now I’m here for God knows what reason. I don’t remember, I don’t want to remember. She hoped that because of their last interview Diaghilev would pretend not to notice her.

  But, naturally, he did not comply. He was too well educated and always enjoyed an obvious upper hand. He came to her with a sprightly step and kissed her on both cheeks. “Ma chère! I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you,” he said. She noted the undertone in his voice and realized he was having an even better time of this than she would have predicted.