She did not know how to wire him for news, as there was no Russian embassy in Lisbon. She waited, adding this fear to the others. Yet all the while she persisted in thinking stubbornly: If he’s all right, I shall not communicate with him.
The defiance in her heart strengthened when Diaghilev finally wrote to her from Madrid. Somehow he had succeeded in evacuating them from Portugal, but his plans for a season in Barcelona had been canceled. “We are desperate, my Natashenka,” he explained in his letter. “We have absolutely no funds, not enough to eat. We can’t get out, and I can’t pay anyone, and so we shall be disbanding in an attempt to survive, each in his own fashion.” Clearly, she thought, Pierre is too proud to communicate at all. Well, if that’s the case, I’ll be damned if I’ll help him.
Still, regret seeped through her bitterness. Boris would have done anything to keep his company together. If I don’t owe it to anyone else, she thought, I do owe him the effort to sustain Serge Pavlovitch. Leaning her head face down on the blotter of her secretary, she wept with frustration and wrote out a large check to the order of the impresario. She mailed it to Madrid.
When a letter arrived in Pierre’s handwriting, she felt the bottom fall out of her stomach, and her hands begin to shake. He had sent her only a few lines, but when she read them, tears blinded her.
We’re still alive, and Serge Pavlovitch is terribly grateful. But I’ve missed you, missed Tamara, and wondered how a man can survive if he is not forgiven. We can’t continue apart, Natalia. Is there no way to mend fences with Diaghilev, to have you work alongside me in the Ballet? I think he would be ready to take you back on your own terms.
But the accompanying missive from the director himself was not as encouraging. Diaghilev thanked her for her financial help but explained that the crisis was far from resolved. Only the promise of a solid engagement would save the Ballet from total collapse, and at the moment no European impresario was willing to take a chance on the Diaghilev dancers. He had been trying in vain to strike a bargain with Sir Oswald Stoll in London—and could report little progress in the negotiations. He was at his wits’ end.
Boris would have known what to do, Natalia thought, suddenly grim. She called Tamara’s nurse and said to her: “I shall have to go to England tomorrow. But only for a few days, so you and the baby should remain here.” As she packed, she knew that she was making the only possible decision. Her marriage and her career both depended on it. On the train to Calais, on the ferry to Dover, and later on her way to London, she thought through what she would say, how she would look, how she would sound.
Once in the British capital, she went directly to Claridge’s and telephoned Sir Oswald Stoll, inviting him to tea the following day. She received him in her suite, in an afternoon dress of ivory wool with wide sleeves and a low waist. “I hear that you are negotiating with Serge Pavlovitch Diaghilev,” she said, pouring tea for him in the hotel’s fine china. “He is a desperate man.”
“And have you rejoined him, Madame Riazhina?” the impresario asked with a distinguished and subtle smile.
“That’s what I wished to discuss,” she replied, looking at him with quick coolness. “You are planning to book the Ballet into the Coliseum, between vaudeville acts? Would you have me perform Armida between the talking dogs and Lockhart’s elephants?” She smiled at him then, the most charming, unprepossessing smile that he had ever seen, and she knew at once that he had noticed, close up, the unmistakable aura of her beauty.
“I am a businessman first, a balletomane second,” he demurred.
“Of course. And we are infinitely grateful. London is special to us. I shall never forget the year of the Coronation Gala, Sir Oswald. The British have been most gracious to us. And so I have a proposal for you. Offer Diaghilev a contract, the contract he wants, and I shall pay you the sum of the advance. Between you and me.”
Sir Oswald coughed, his eyes betraying deep surprise. “Oh, don’t worry,” Natalia continued sweetly. “I have the Kussov fortune at my disposal. I cannot finance the entire Ballets Russes from my own purse, but I can help from time to time.” She regarded him directly. “But you see, I too have become something of a businesswoman. Diaghilev must not know of this, or it would lower my value as a performer in his estimation. A man must pay for quality, or he comes to disregard its inherent price. My late ex-husband, Count Boris Kussov, was a patron of the arts by profession. I’m not and must be considered no differently from any other aspiring choreographer. Because that is my goal, you see.”
The impresario began to smile and raised his teacup in appreciation. “My dear Madame,” he declared, “I hope that we shall have the pleasure of a long and fruitful association.”
Chapter 25
When Natalia returned from London, she found Pierre in the Paris house, feeding his baby daughter. He appeared more gaunt than before, and there were lines of fatigue etched around his dark eyes. For a moment stubborn pride fought for control, then it dissolved, and he came to her, burying his lips in her hair. She rested limply in his arms, exhausted from the worry and the trip, wanting to be made whole again, wanting to obliterate her pain in his sensuality. But he was seeking help from her, forgetting that he had left her, that, like Boris, he had disappeared from her life and not she from his. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter as long as we love each other, does it, Pierre?”
But there was so much for each of them to forgive. There were all the years when she had belonged to someone else, and then there had been Vendanova.
The reunion with Diaghilev proceeded with infinite smoothness. He simply accepted her back as prima ballerina, and she mentioned nothing about choreography. At this point, all she wanted was to dance again on a stage, and she received this opportunity at Sir Oswald Stoll’s arrangement. The Ballets Russes were booked into the Coliseum for six months in 1918, and the Riazhins took Tamara and her nurse to London with them. On November eleventh of that year, Pierre hoisted his small daughter to his shoulders in Trafalgar Square, and they danced in the streets with the British to celebrate the Armistice. But afterward Pierre said harshly: “How nice for the British! I wonder, however, if an armistice can occur in a civil war. Until such an event, we will all be exiles from our own mother country, won’t we?”
His wife clasped her hands together, thinking of a man who had been senselessly murdered by his countrymen even before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.
Several months later Natalia received a letter from Romola Nijinskaya, in Switzerland. Vaslav had been committed to the Sanatorium Bellevue Kreuzlingen for treatment of a condition labeled “schizophrenia.” Too many people had played with this man’s life, tampering with the delicate balance of his sanity. Natalia felt sad, anguished at the remembrance of times spent onstage with him and of the parallels in their lives. His daughter, Kyra, would have been Arkady’s age—and hadn’t Boris turned to a woman in the same way that Vaslav had? But Boris had virtually abandoned the Nijinskys after helping to arrange their coming together on the S.S. Avon, and Natalia felt a stab of bitter shame. As for Diaghilev, he had never overcome his need to avenge his lover’s “betrayal.” Had it been like that between Boris and Pierre, with her at the center of their conflict?
That spring, a new and even lengthier London season began, this time at the Alhambra. Natalia could never come to the British capital without being reminded of the summer of 1911, when Boris had finally made love to her at Ashley. But now Tamara Karsavina, who had been caught in Russia during the dreadful last months of 1917, unable to escape until now, rejoined the Ballets Russes in London. She told Natalia and Pierre about the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian capital, about the bloodshed and terror that had paralyzed the city. All the Kussov property had been destroyed.
“And the family?” Natalia asked. “My father-in-law? Nina and her daughter?” She felt her throat tightening and looked at her friend, her eyes insistent.
Karsavina glanced at the carpet, at her fine kid boots. �
�No one has learned anything about Princess Stassova and the girl. They weren’t in Petersburg—Leningrad—when the riots broke out on November 8. But the others—the old count, and his two other daughters, and their husbands and children—they were all killed in the old man’s home. There had been a christening, I think—Liza was visiting from Moscow—”
Pierre saw Natalia collapse in her chair, all color drained from her face. After he had put her to bed, he sat beside her, unable to read, unable to think. Their Russia had become a nightmare of bloodlust, its people brutal and depraved. And yet, in his profound shock, he could not help feeling a twinge of animal excitement at the notion that Boris’s fine people, with their august lineage, had been crushed without regard for their special status, just as Boris himself had been. In death the great fell with their inferiors, and breeding counted for nothing.
In the months that followed, he sometimes wondered if the little princess, Galina Stassova, had been able to survive the ordeal. He had never quite forgotten the golden perfection of her features, which he had painted with the love that artists always bear the objects of true beauty.
In June of 1919, Tamara watched her mother perform in La Boutique Fantasque. The girl of two stood up in her seat to see the mechanical can-can dancer who wore a short, flouncy skirt, and could not understand how this live doll onstage could be her actual Mama, as her nurse was telling her. But she clapped and clapped with her chubby hands, giggling aloud, and afterward she was taken backstage. There, approaching her, came the mechanical doll herself! Tamara was filled with wonder. Bending toward her, the doll said: “Did you enjoy it, sweetheart?” and then the little girl knew, really knew, that this was Mama! She went home bewildered and excited, and before going to sleep, she hugged to her breast one of Natalia’s old ballet slippers.
When Tamara turned three, she was already strong and willful, a tiny replica of her father, with black curls circling a round face endowed with black eyes and long lashes. She had her mother’s graceful, sloping shoulders, her delicate hands. She was a little princess, conscious of her domain, already able to manipulate the young nurse who took care of her. Natalia spoke to Pierre about her development. “She needs to be taken firmly in hand,” she said, “and we can’t do it, working such long hours as we do. Tamara needs a governess, and she needs a home, not a hotel suite. I’d like to send her back to Paris and hire a French or a Swiss governess to take care of her and begin her lessons.”
“But I don’t want her away from us,” Pierre countered abruptly. “No one knows how long this British season will last.”
“No, and where will we go from here? We’re traveling minstrels, Pierre. A child can’t traipse around the world with people like us. She needs to put down roots, to have a country. Since we can’t send her back to Russia, the best we can do is to settle her in Paris, the nearest either of us comes to having a real home! And besides, London isn’t far. We can visit her whenever we want!”
“You find her a burden,” he tossed at her, but he could think of no valid argument with which to counter hers. To Tamara’s dismay, they took her back to Paris and hired Mademoiselle Pichenet, a middle-aged matron from Normandy with the beginnings of a mustache on her upper lip. Chaillou, the white-haired butler who presided over the house on Avenue Bugeaud, declared himself delighted to have part of the family back again. Pierre missed his daughter and blamed Natalia, but he was silent, and the child, ever sensitive to the moods of the grownups closest to her, absorbed his resentment and hoarded it in the secret part of herself. Mama had shoes of magic, but she was also a tyrant, to be opposed.
Natalia was in Paris to prepare for Christmas. It was snowing outside, and this year, 1920, marked the sixth anniversary of Arkady’s death. Had it been up to her, she would never have celebrated the holidays again, for the pain of loss made her want to sleep and forget, to obliterate this part of her past that was still with her. But for Tamara she had to push on, to make plans that were abhorrent to herself.
Pierre had fallen in love with her during a Christmas season fifteen years before, a lifetime ago, she thought, touching her hair, which she now wore clipped in a bob. She was sitting in the cheerful parlor, her favorite room of the house, and now she laid down the large print sheet of winter fashions that she had been perusing and thought: But we were all in love that year, each of us hopeless and each of us in the throes of anguish! Somehow this made her smile, and she felt a little better. It could only have been resolved this way, she said to herself—with her and Pierre together. What would have happened if Boris had not died? Horrified, she laid her head in her hands and shivered. But I wanted him to live, and I did love him!
“Mama, I don’t want to go for another walk in the Bois!” Tamara was crying, bursting into the room, her curls tumbling over her shoulders. In her fur coat she resembled a small, fluffy rabbit. “I won’t go! Tell Ma’zelle I don’t have to go!”
“You most certainly do have to,” Natalia said sternly. “Go to your room and apologize to Mademoiselle and tell her that I have something to discuss with her. Then you two will take your walk and work up an appetite for tea. Don’t forget to put on your hat before you leave.”
The child glared at her and opened her mouth to protest. But her mother stood up and propelled her out of the room, pushing her gently but firmly ahead of her into the hallway. When she had gone, Natalia returned to the sofa and picked up her fashion tabloid, sighing deeply.
She heard Chaillou coughing delicately, and looked up, startled. “There is a letter for Madame,” the old butler said, carrying it to her on a silver tray. “It is addressed to the Countess Kussova.”
Natalia raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Ah? That’s interesting. For some the appeal of a title is irresistible, although one would think it might have less value now, since the outpouring of exiled Russian nobility into France.”
She took the heavy, soiled envelope, and Chaillou unobtrusively turned on his heel and left the room. Natalia fingered the envelope, examining the large round handwriting with which she was not familiar, and the postmark from Constantinople. The letter had obviously traveled far and taken its time to reach her. She slit it open and withdrew a series of folded sheets. Inexplicably, foreboding seized her, and she felt her fingers begin to tremble. She started to read, her heart palpitating in her throat and echoing in her ears. She was so intent that she did not hear the governess enter, discreet in her soft-soled shoes.
“Darling Aunt Natalia,” the letter began, and she experienced a profound shock upon assimilating these words:
It also strikes me that if you don’t remember who I am, I can’t possibly blame you. The last time you saw me was seven years ago, when I was eight. But I remember you so well—you were my most special aunt. My mama loved you too, and that is why I’ve decided that since I need to ask for help, I should turn to you.
I shall backtrack now and explain how I have ended up in Turkey. When Uncle Borya was killed at the start of ‘15, my mother was beside herself with grief. She adored him, if you recall. Everyone tried to be strong, especially Grandfather, but it really didn’t do Mama any good. She couldn’t make effective contact with you at the time. Your little boy had died, and you were not up to writing anybody. Then one day, in 1916, while you were still in America, Mama received a letter from a man in a small Caucasian village just south of Tiflis—Tbilis they call it today. He claimed that he had been harboring an officer of the Division Sauvage who appeared to have lost his memory after having been seriously wounded in the head. Instead of going to the divisional commander, this Caucasian man, who resented the intrusion of the Cossack division almost more than he feared the Turks, had decided to write to Mama, for among the things that he had found on the person of the amnesiac officer had been an old envelope bearing her return address. Did she have any notion as to who this man might be?
You can imagine how long she hesitated before going to the Caucasus. Perhaps half an hour. She did not want to raise Grandfather’s hop
es, or Aunt Nadia’s and Aunt Liza’s. Papa had gone to Kiev to conduct some business, and so she decided that I would travel with her. I’m still not exactly sure why she made this decision: It was war time, and if you remember, 1915 had been the worst year for the Russian front. A year later everyone still talked about the fearful losses, and no civilian approached a war zone. Mama never did explain why she chose to risk two lives, and why she burdened herself with an unruly child on such a delicate mission. But the fact remains that she did—thank God for my sake!
When I think about it a lot, as I am doing now, it seems to me that Mama must have possessed a strange premonition and did not want to be separated from me for the slightest reason—even an obvious one such as safety. Or else it was because she always thought I should have been Uncle Boris’s daughter, even more than hers: She found my resemblance to him so very remarkable. In any event, we hastened onto a series of trains, squashed among traveling soldiers, and then, from Tiflis, we hired a car and driver. Mama didn’t even want to stop to talk with General Baranov, whom she had known when she was a girl and who had commanded Uncle Boris’s division. She had to learn if the wounded man in the hilltop village was her brother.
We were able to locate our correspondent, who was a leather-faced old man of Tcherkess blood, fierce as the devil in person but evidently kind to the bone. He had been feeding and tending this officer for months now, not knowing who he was. We went to see him—the officer—and no, it wasn’t Uncle Boris, although we think it was one of his men because of the letter from Mama which he had apparently picked up somewhere. War is such strange business.
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