Encore

by Monique Raphel High

  He never discussed these brief stays with Natalia. She knew that when he could no longer remain in one place, he replenished himself by going to Paris. In a sense this relieved her of a nagging guilt toward Tamara. Pierre would see their daughter, bridge the gap. But Natalia was also annoyed. He was a child, really, allowing petty problems to irritate him. The free spaces of his Caucasian childhood, then the confinement of his years in Germany during the war, explained this claustrophobia without justifying it. She was left behind, expected to continue, to take care of things.

  So, once again, Pierre had come home to the house on Avenue Bugeaud. When Chaillou opened the door to him, it was early evening and Tamara was having her bath. Pierre bounded into the large tiled bathroom, and the little girl, covered with suds, stood up in her pink nakedness and stretched out her plump arms to him in ecstasy. “Papa’s home!” she cried.

  Mademoiselle Pichenet regarded him with ill-concealed disapproval. “Isn’t she too old to be seen in the tub?” she demanded.

  Pierre burst into loud laughter. “Really, Mademoiselle! She’s my baby girl, aren’t you, lovey?” He scooped her in his arms, allowing her soapy wetness to stain the entire front of his suit and tie. She wriggled merrily, a sensuous child.

  “Hello, Pierre Grigorievitch,” Galina said in her calm, low voice. He had not noticed her before, for she had entered after him, carrying fresh towels, and was now standing beside him.

  “Why, hello, Principessa.” All at once it seemed foolish to be holding the wet child, and he handed Tamara back to her governess.

  “Chaillou’s put out some tea,” she said. “Will you come?”

  He smiled at her. “Only if you join me. It’s been so long since anyone’s talked to me—really spoken with me. You can’t imagine! Natalia’s choreographing, you know, and Bakst—well, we will skip Bakst, won’t we?”

  They were walking into the parlor, and she sat down first in front of the fine Meissen teapot. Her long fingers, tapered like her uncle’s, moved deftly, yet with a tiny hesitation. “Not like our samovars, I’m afraid, or our Russian glasses,” he commented gently.

  She looked up, startled. “Yes, I’ve often thought so.” She fell silent, abrupt, embarrassed. She poured his tea into a cup, adding the two cubes of sugar on the saucer. He was impressed: She always remembered everyone’s preference.

  “You were speaking of Bakst,” she said suddenly. “I am very interested in what you are doing, Pierre Grigorievitch. Yet you so rarely discuss it with me.”

  “I had no idea you really knew what it is I do,” he replied, amused.

  “But I’m not a child. Of course, I know. I know what set designs are. In fact”—she grew shy all at once, averting her clear blue gaze from him—“I have been trying to paint in my spare time. Oh, I’m hardly talented—but I’ve been thinking about what you do, and that sort of work appeals to me.”

  He arose with one bold gesture and pulled her up with him. “Then you must show me!” he exclaimed. “Really, Galya—Natalia never said one word to me about this!”

  But she drew away frantically, her golden hair falling into her face. “Oh, no, Pierre Grigorievitch! Natalia doesn’t know, and I don’t want you to see it! Not yet,” she added more quietly.

  He shrugged lightly, releasing her hands. “Very well, I don’t want to force you. But don’t you think it’s time you stopped calling me Pierre Grigorievitch and began calling me simply Pierre? You make me feel old, and on the outside.”

  She laughed breathlessly, still overcome by her sudden terror. “I thought you rather liked it that way,” she said.

  He could not help blinking. Actually, he had found it quaint, charming, and oddly ironical. A princess whom he called by her first name, or by a familiar diminutive, who persisted in this courtly formality. Once Boris had said nearly the same words to him about using the patronym toward him. Galina was a strange girl: astute and naïve, very young or quite old, a lady by birth or a woman of the streets. In some ways Natalia had become a woman of similar contradictions, after her years with Boris Kussov. But this girl was not in the least like Natalia.

  “Tell me about The Sleeping Princess,” she was saying. “Is it strict Petipa classicism or a Bakst fantasy?”

  “What can I say? You will have to see for yourself. In fact, we must arrange for you to do so, if you are truly interested. The decor is romantic. The Forest of the Lilacs is green and mauve, which hints at wistfulness. The stairway is classical, with a romantic glimpse of the white castle walls. But there are purple trees and a blue foreground and those are modern touches.”

  “Impressionistic,” she interjected. Her oval face was very grave and attentive, like that of an earnest student.

  He laughed. “You make me feel like the master lecturing a disciple,” he remarked. “But the costumes are airy and colorful, an overstatement of the characters of the ballet. Aurora’s is wispy, classical, ending at midcalf. Aurora should be danced by you, really, Galina: She’s so engaging, so young and lovely and innocent in the beginning. But then you’re not those things anymore, are you, my dear?”

  “I don’t know. Am I?”

  “You are still a mystery. I’m hardly a subtle man, Galina. It isn’t in me to read character. The Queen has a red train—highly dramatic. But what does that really say about this woman? Red is the color of lust, and of anger, and of tragedy.”

  “It’s also a beautiful color in and of itself. Would you like more tea ... Pierre?”

  He sighed, shook his head, rose and stretched. “No, mon enfant. I’m off—to the Jockey Club, I think. To hear some jazz. It soothes one’s nerves after so much Tchaikovsky.”

  “Have a pleasant evening,” she said, remaining seated. He inclined his head briskly and left the room. Sometimes he likes me, other times he doesn’t at all, she thought with wonder. Yet it was the first real conversation they had ever had, and she relived it in her mind, somewhat bemused. He was a puzzling individual, with a sea of hostilities brewing under the surface. Some of the hostilities were in some way connected with her, but she did not understand why.

  When Pierre returned from his evening’s outing, the house stood in total darkness but for a tall lamp in the entrance gallery, at the foot of the stairs near the bronze statue and the potted plants. He took his moccasins off, removed his wraps, and went to the sideboard in the large living room. From a decanter of Armagnac he poured himself a thimbleful and took it to the window overlooking the neat garden. It was comforting to gaze out to green bushes, to trim but joyfully arranged flower beds. French gardens all possessed the feeling of not having been formally cultivated, of having sprouted up naturally—and yet he knew how carefully they were tended, this one above all. He had loved this house since the beginning, since that summer of ‘06 with Boris. He realized now that Boris had bought it with him in mind, as a gesture of wooing. Yes, Boris had known how to love him totally—more than Natalia could ever learn to love him, in all the years of her life.

  Suddenly he was weary, demoralized. Why couldn’t life develop normally, like a French garden? Why did the sexual tension never abate, pulling apart and then throwing together? He sat down and pressed his fingers to his temples. He had never felt so alone in his life.

  A series of piercing shrieks wrenched him from his reflections, sending adrenaline through him like mercury, and beads of sweat broke out over his chest, around his neck, and under his arms. Tamara! With a leap he rushed from the salon and up the stairs, his heart pounding. The door to the child’s room stood ajar, and he pushed it open and turned on a light. In the second bed the governess had risen to her elbow, covering herself demurely. “Oh, it isn’t the babe, it’s the princess,” she told Pierre hastily. “Don’t worry so, monsieur. The princess has these bad dreams now and then. We’re all used to it.”

  Horror-stricken, Pierre studied the woman’s face and blinked. “The Princess Stassova? Nightmares? Why weren’t we told? Shouldn’t a doctor—?”

  “Oh, doctors wou
ldn’t help. She hoped you wouldn’t find out. Tamara sleeps through the screams now. But the poor little princess. It’s that dreadful time she had, when her mother died.”

  Pierre turned away, shutting off the light. In the hallway he hesitated. Then, resolutely, he walked to Galina’s door and knocked once, softly. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “Me, Pierre. May I come in?”

  “Please, it’s all right,” she said miserably, her tone pleading. But he had already turned the knob and stood on the threshold, looking into the small bedroom.

  The lamp had been switched on by the large canopied bed, with its rose silk hangings. Sitting on it was Galina, in her frail cotton nightgown, shivering. Tears were drying on her cheeks, which were totally devoid of color. Pierre came to her, but she refused to look at him. “I had to check,” he said lamely. “To make sure you were all right. Mademoiselle told me ...”

  “I’m sorry. Did I waken you?”

  “Of course not. I hadn’t even gone to bed, I’d just come in. What frightened you, Galina?”

  “It was nothing,” she stammered.

  Pierre bent down on one knee, and gazed at her squarely. “It’s all right,” he said softly. He tucked his fingers under her chin, and raised it to his eye level. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We’re all here. I’m here.”

  Then she burst into tears, like a small child, and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing onto the side of his shoulder. “I saw Mama dying,” she cried, “and the officer who’d lost his mind, crawling on all fours, drooling like an animal. And then there was a fire, and Papa was caught in it, struggling, screaming—and I was outside and couldn’t reach him! I couldn’t get to him, I was helpless, I was letting him die!” She lifted her tear-stained face to his, terror in her eyes. “Don’t you see? I let my own mother die in that awful village, with no care, no medicines. I thought only of myself. I should have walked to the nearest town, found help—”

  “Stop it!” Pierre pushed her from him and took her by the shoulders. “No wonder you have nightmares. Such foolishness! Your mother was a big girl, she went to the Caucasus of her own free will. It’s terrible that she was struck with the cholera. But it wasn’t your fault! Listen to me, Galya—there’s nothing you could have done for her that you didn’t do. Not one damn thing! You were there when she died. She didn’t have to die alone. Think about that!”

  She nodded. “Not like Uncle Boris,” she added in a hushed voice.

  “That’s right.”

  They remained silent, their eyes on each other, intent and sober, drained of their emotions. He drew back the sheet and patted the mattress, and she lay down, and he covered her lightly, for it was hot and humid. “Go to sleep now,” he said. “I’ll stay right here. Nothing bad will happen, Galina. You’re with us now, you’re safe.”

  But her eyelids had already closed. He touched the velvet coverlet, and noticed with surprise that his hand was trembling. He could picture Boris receiving his own dry, cold letter about Arkady’s death, and all at once shame flared up inside him. To die alone… He glanced at the sleeping girl and sighed, a sigh that was like a wrenching sob. Yet he did not know for whom that sigh was intended.

  The Sleeping Princess didn’t feel right to Natalia. She had many conflicting thoughts about this production, her first effort as a choreographer. Through these many months of life in Great Britain after the war, she had come to understand the cultural climate of its inhabitants. Reserved in their emotions but open-minded in their acceptance of new art forms, they had responded with discreet enthusiasm to Diaghilev’s aesthetic. Fokine’s graceful ventures into lyricism, into exoticism, had charmed them; the traditional romanticism of Giselle had left them cold. The British defied one’s preconceptions: They tolerated novelty when it was couched in good taste but did not always respond to tried and true staples. How, then, would they react to a revival of a Petipa classic?

  The old masters of the Ballet Russes were showing a middle-aged lack of vision, she thought to herself. Bakst was ill, she could see it. There had been quarrels with Diaghilev, strained moments with his former disciple, Pierre. She had watched with discomfort and sadness. Serge Pavlovitch presented a different problem. Too much time in England, sandwiched between vaudeville acts, which he found degrading to the Ballet, had dimmed some of his acute perceptivity. Turning back the clock to the Mariinsky—to The Sleeping Princess—had not been an altogether good idea. Perhaps, she surmised, he had wanted to make a statement: that Russia, imperial Russia, was not dead after all.

  But it was dead, Natalia thought stubbornly, with a kind of desperation. The Russia of Nicholas and Alexandra, and even of Boris Kussov, had died a bloody death in November of ‘17, exactly four years before. To attempt to resurrect it for the intellectual, skeptical British, made pragmatic by four years of war and by King George, was an error in judgment. Bakst and Pierre had created beautiful decors, splendid costumes of airy gauze suggestive of fairyland. Two older grandes dames of the Imperial Ballet, Svetlov’s wife, Vera Trefilova, and Lubov Egorova, would take turns with Natalia herself in dancing Princess Aurora. Lydia Lopokhova would be the Lilac Fairy, and Prince Florimund, a role of the traditional male supporter, was to be portrayed by another Mariinsky danseur, Vladimiroff. All of these dancers had been formed by the Imperial School, all possessed a solid base in classicism. Stravinsky was orchestrating the Tchaikovsky scores, interspersed with music from another classic, The Nutcracker. The ballet would be a mixture of the tried and true that was supposed to result in an innovative whole flavored with old favorites.

  It has been so long since the Diaghilev dancers had put on a classical show! How ironic, really! Their master had initially rebelled against what he had considered stale: the formality of Petipa’s choreography. Now he was honoring his nemesis, in time for Petipa’s commemorative hundredth birthday in 72. There were other ironies as well: Natalia had been born the same year as the original production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky, and although she had never danced Aurora, she had appeared in the role of the Lilac Fairy before. The introduction of the Nutcracker music, of course, brought to mind her first real success as a soloist. In a sense, then, it was appropriate, after all, for her to have been chosen to choreograph this ballet.

  She was exhausted. The summer had dragged on, with Diaghilev spending more and more money on loan from the impresario Sir Oswald Stoll. She had said to Diaghilev, with irritation: “Isn’t it enough that neither Pierre nor I is being paid a full salary? I have a growing niece to educate, as well as my daughter! Surely you can learn to curb your spending!” It was good that he had no inkling of her previous transaction with Stoll.

  Why wasn’t Pierre worrying about this financial question? Natalia sat in the sitting room of her suite at the Claridge, perspiration seeping through her bangs, her fingers trembling as they twirled through her hair. It was always like this—always! Pierre concerned himself with materials, with cardboard props, with color schemes, and could stay up for nights in a row, infused with the creative urge, which animated him as nothing else did. Then, when he grew impatient, he would take the ferry across the Channel to spend a few days in Paris, vacationing. He would blithely take his four-year-old daughter to the Tour d’Argent for luncheon, tipping the waiters lavishly. There was always a matinée at the Comédie Française, and lately he had begun taking Galina to some of the places where he spent his evenings: cafés in Montpamasse or the Île-St.-Louis, clubs in Pigalle, outdoor restaurants in the Place du Tertre near the Sâcré-Coeur in Montmartre. He seemed to share Diaghilev’s illusion that her funds were limitless.

  Summer evolved into fall, and it was now November. On the night of the premiere Natalia herself was to dance Aurora. Yet she felt heavy with depression, with unfair responsibilities and strange misgivings. Galina had come for the occasion, and Natalia wished for the girl’s sake that she could feel more festive and less out of sorts. They took a short drive to Ashley on the weekend, just the tw
o of them, without Pierre. “Now you’re really my sister,” Galina murmured with her odd maturity. “But when I was a child here, you were like my mother, the mother one dreams of having: talented, independent. You led such a romantic life then, didn’t you, Natalia?” She had not called her “Aunt” since she had arrived from Turkey; they had never spoken of it, yet the term of deference had been dropped in favor of the more equal, less formal given name.

  “Yes,” she answered, her eyes misting over suddenly. “Those were good times.”

  For a minute Galina was silent. Then she said: “Pierre does not like England.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if that’s it, or if he just misses Paris. He’s not at home in this logical, intellectual country. Paris suits him now—with the American expatriates, who demand nothing more than a rollicking good time, and all the exiled Russian noblemen in quest of the past. He’s a child too: His eyes are still full of the wonder of bright, new things.” She said this with some asperity.

  “But that’s what makes him different,” Galina countered gently. “Yes, he is a child. I’ve seen that side of him, too. But in this world different people are born to play different roles. There are those who toil endlessly to keep civilization alive and working. And then there are others—the da Vincis, the Van Goghs—and even the Riazhins. The price we pay to keep them happy is reimbursed to the entire world, when they produce their miracles!”

  Natalia stared at her then, a hard, flat stare, and shrugged her delicate shoulders. Unkindly she remarked: “You’re a child, too, if you think that way, Galina. But then what else could I have expected of you? One forgets that you’re just sixteen.”