Galina loved Paris. She had to admit that Pierre’s own love of this city had certainly been an inspiration to her. He had made himself her guide as well as her teacher, and in her heart Galina was both touched and amused. She had been told that Boris had introduced Pierre to the French capital many years ago, dutifully showing him how to appreciate this city. Maybe she was, then, a bit like her uncle. But Pierre took pride in reversing the situation and helping her along as Boris had once helped him. She thought: Everyone feels he or she has a debt to pay to this man, my mother’s dead brother, and each one is attempting to do it through me.
“Why don’t you want me to be a set designer?” she had once asked Natalia. The other woman had been startled. “No, really—I can tell,” she added. “For some reason, I’m disappointing you by choosing that profession.”
“It isn’t that, lovey. It’s simply that I know what sort of life theatre folk live, and it’s so easy to starve. Pierre’s career has gone up and down and then up again. In between the good times there were moments when he thought he would go mad—with boredom, and with poverty, and with humiliation. A woman can’t be sure what will happen to her: You can’t count on getting married or on marrying a wealthy man, Galina. In Paris today there are a hundred Russian princesses for every bourgeois nincompoop from Rheims. You need to find a career.”
“Such as what?” Galina interposed.
“I don’t know. It has to be something meaningful to you. Dance was, to me. And we received good, solid contracts at the Imperial Theatres. Today dancers are not as lucky or as safe.”
Galina had remained quiet. It presented a delicate matter, this selection of Pierre’s own field. Had she announced that she had chosen set design in order to emulate Benois, Larionov, Bakst, or Gontcharova, instead of their colleague Riazhin, would Natalia have shown the same reluctance to support her? But I enjoy drawing, Galina thought, and that’s what’s important. At least her forced exile at the age of eleven from the Russian capital had made one thing obvious to all: Her knowledge of ballet was so minimal that a career in dance was out of the question. She had not been compelled to choose between her aunt and her aunt’s husband. Her choice had been made freely and not at all to please or flatter Pierre.
It would have been difficult to explain to Natalia that her world, that world she had so carefully created, composed of Firebirds and Sugar Plums and bold new steps, was so essentially her own world that no one else, least of all Galina, could have entered it without trespassing. Galina thought herself clumsy, and all she knew of dance was that it enchanted the spirit of its spectators while exerting impossible demands on the bodies and senses of its actors. She had been present at some of Natalia’s rehearsals, had seen her create—and had found it magic. How could she have explained that Pierre’s work was simply more understandable, that it involved the tangible: canvas, paint, materials, measurements? That for a person essentially earthbound, less visionary than literal, his art possessed the appeal of being grasped at once?
For Galina, Natalia was unattainable, a woman like herself but more than she could ever be—whereas Pierre had the simplicity of a man, the genius in him born of energy and color and space, his reactions those of a child who has not yet learned to assimilate and digest. They were equals, he and she—whereas Natalia stood above them, radiant in her clean, intellectual scope, in her ability to synthesize across media and through the bodies and ideas of other people.
Nineteen twenty-two had been a hard year for Natalia. She had ideas and a technique as well as the steady discipline to accomplish great works, but Diaghilev’s financial fiascoes had robbed the Ballet of its security. By herself she could not bail it out. “You mistake me for Boris, because he left me his fortune,” she had told the impresario. “But Boris was much more than a wealthy man. He was a financier: He knew who else had available funds and how to trick money out of misers. I am only a dancer!” Galina had overheard this exchange, had caught the passion in Natalia’s tone, the entreaty to be understood and accepted as she was and not as her first husband had been. She cannot live him down either, the young girl had thought.
But ‘22 had also been the year of Renard, which had held its première at the Paris Opéra on May 18. Men of intellect had praised Natalia’s simple, sharp choreography of this short Russian burlesque folk tale about a fox intent on capturing and killing a cock. The vastness and splendor of the Théâtre de l’Opéra were not, however, conducive to this terse, ironic rendition of a popular farce. The cleverness of Natalia’s fox, who disguised himself as a nun and was eventually outwitted by the cock’s cohorts, a cat and a goat, could not be clearly discerned by all the spectators.
Natalia herself had danced the fox, her small, agile body ideal for the role. Pierre had worked on the scenery with Larionov and Gontcharova. Galina had gone to watch them, fascinated. The four characters they had designed were stark and simple, as befitted the rough, clear minds of the people who had passed this story down through the generations. The cat was blue, the goat yellow, the cock had slitty eyes above a V-shaped beak, and the fox had a huge snout, a black-visored cap and a nun’s drooping black veil. The barn in which they attempted to outwit one another was a wooden A-frame of rough planks. Galina thought that she had entered a sideshow on the main street of a small village in the outlands of Podolia or in the Steppes.
On the whole, Natalia had been pleased. The production had been a good one, achieving what it had set out to do. If the spectators had been less responsive than to the pageantry of Schéhérazade, which had startled them and raped their very senses, nonetheless it had provided her with a proper introduction to the Parisian public as an innovative and intelligent choreographer. Galina had been struck then by the differences between Pierre and Natalia: He always expected the world to offer him its riches, and, when it failed to do so, his disillusionment was abysmal and self-punishing; whereas she expected life to be a never-ending struggle, with few if any gifts along the way, and none that was not earned. Each half-step upward constituted a grim victory for her. Why was it then that during the spring, Galina was afraid for her aunt? Afraid for all of them?
The young girl found her answer when Natalia took her to Monte Carlo, hoping to rent a house for the family to live in during the approaching ballet season. During the first day Natalia had taken her niece to the quaint, yellow harbor, and to the Palais-Gamier, which was the Casino. They had sat at outdoor cafés and looked at the turquoise sea. Now it was evening and Galina was ready for dinner. She went to find her aunt.
When she opened the door to Natalia’s hotel room, it was dark but for one lone light by the roll-top secretary. She saw the older woman, wreathed in the shadows of the spreading dusk, seated on a stool with her head in her hands, bending over something. Galina entered the room, and Natalia looked up. She was holding something crumpled in her hands. Galina swallowed, feeling like an intruder, and her blue eyes met Natalia’s brown ones, and she licked her lips, ready to make a discreet exit.
But in a quiet voice Natalia said: “You can’t forget, can you? Those dreams of yours, they still come, don’t they?”
Galina nodded. “Sometimes. Less and less, but still.”
Natalia turned aside, and Galina could see her clear, delicate profile below the mesh of the bangs. “For me it’s more and more.” She held out her hand, and Galina took the crumpled object and examined it with hesitant fingers. It was a tiny infant’s woolen booty, dirty with age.
“Why here?” Galina asked.
“Because this is where we discovered we wanted him. I fought wanting him. I had always rejected motherhood, but when he came, it was different, somehow. I should have listened to my earlier self.”
Galina took a step forward, until she was facing Natalia. “But you can’t live in the past!” she cried passionately. “Especially not you, of all people! You’re a woman of today, one of those people who can create the future! Why are you destroying yourself, Natalia?”
“I am not destro
ying myself,” Natalia replied bitterly. “I am merely allowing the illusions to destroy themselves. We’d all be better off if we were born hopeless, as well as naked.”
She tossed the dirty woolen garment with a clean sweep of her arm out the open window, through which the scent of fruit trees had come wafting.
Galina watched, motionless, and then, holding her head up, she said: “If you’re through caring, there isn’t anything I can do. I can’t help you anymore, Natalia.” She walked away while the other woman stared after her in stunned silence.
We have reached the end of this stage in our relationship, Natalia thought, suddenly afraid. She isn’t my little sister anymore. Something has changed, in her, in me. Does she think I’m through caring for her? Anguish filled her chest, pushed up into her throat. Doesn’t she understand that if I can let Arkady go, it’s because of her, because of what she’s come to mean in my life?
In the adjoining room Galina sat on her bed, her large eyes limpid and clear, but her breath quick and uncomfortable. There’s nothing more that I can do, she thought. I can’t try to merge with her, she’s too independent, and so am I. I’ve tried to love her, more than my own mother. I don’t know what she wants, what she needs. She’s too complex for me. Her suffering is too much like mine; I can’t live hers too as well as my own. There has to be a life here for me, for myself!
Abruptly, her heart constricted with hot pity. Poor Pierre, she thought, poor, simple, joyful Pierre, and poor Tamara.
Natalia and Galina returned to Paris shortly thereafter. They had found a pleasant house for rent in Monte Carlo, and it was time to go home. On Avenue Bugeaud, without its ever having been discussed, Natalia had taken to sleeping more and more frequently in her boudoir. At first Pierre had been bitterly resentful; then, half from spite and half as a practical measure, he had made the adjustment. Somehow the large master bedroom with its molded ceiling had evolved into his room, and he no longer felt apologetic about enjoying its size and decorations. She had always seemed to prefer the smaller chamber that she had occupied when she first came there in the summer of 1909—and her boudoir had become her personal enclave. Now she stepped into Pierre’s room, her slight figure draped in a silver-toned dressing gown trimmed with Brussels lace, her soft hair like a cap around her young girl’s elfin face. He was sitting on the large bed, removing a shoe.
Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Ah, Natalia.” He did not know how else to hide his embarrassment, for he had no idea why she had come, and the budding expectation was dangerous, treacherous, as past disappointments had taught him. They fenced with each other now, protecting themselves from any possible attack on their respective vulnerability. They were like two wounded warriors sheathing themselves in yet another coat of mail.
Natalia twisted her wedding ring on her finger. She had not entered of her own accord in a long time. Since Monte Carlo she had found it difficult to sleep, remembering Galina, the impenetrable quality of the girl’s judgment of her as Pierre’s wife. Clearly, to the younger woman, Natalia had failed, giving up her marriage in a bitter, self-pitying fashion. Was this, in fact, true? She looked at the floor, emotions sweeping with a flush over her breasts and shoulders, up into her face. He was still wearing his evening jacket, and she remembered how he had looked that night in Petersburg long ago when she had waited for him outside his door, like the Little Match Girl. He did not invite her to sit down, to stay. “You had a pleasant evening?” she asked, her voice low and tentative.
“Yes, very. Our people are finally making a mark on this city. The Pigalle area is becoming infested with Russian nightclubs. You should go some time. The Château Caucasien has a wonderful tzigane chorus and Caucasian dancers. I felt right at home.”
She could feel his eyes on the point between her breasts, could almost touch the challenge in his words. She looked at him fully and smiled. “You’re right. I should go. You should have asked me tonight.”
He allowed the shoe to drop and leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows. A slow smile spread across his face, and he nodded. She was such a part of his life, such a beautiful woman, that even now, at thirty-three, she surpassed any other female he knew. He had loved her forever. But then a grim line formed between his eyebrows, and he bit his upper lip with caution. “You know why I didn’t, Natalia,” he said dryly.
He saw her wince, but instead of the usual flare of responsive anger, her face only registered a moment of mute hurt. “Please, Pierre,” she murmured, “not tonight. We’re still so young! We have a lifetime stretching before us, don’t we? You were the first man I ever loved. And I still love you. We’re at the peak of our careers, we have a child we cherish. I’m trying to put the past away in a box, but you haven’t let me, all these years. It’s as if now that you have me, you’ve decided you don’t need me anymore. Our lives have become so separate that we might as well not be married. Is this what you want for us?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he replied, looking away, away from the pale, tender throat, from the parted lips and the large brown eyes. “Why are you speaking to me about this now? Why now?”
“Does it matter?” She sat down on the bed beside him but did not touch his hand, so close to her on the bedspread. “So much doesn’t really matter! I don’t care whether there ever was a Vendanova, or what truly took place between you and Boris. I do know he loved you—he loved us both. In my heart I’ve come to feel that he would want us to be together. As long as he lived, he wanted us apart, but now he would wish for us to merge, the two people he most loved, apart from his son. It gives me peace to think this way. I know that it would give you peace as well. We have each other, and Tamara, and Galina. Now.”
“But you’ve never loved Tamara,” Pierre retorted. His entire body was drawing into itself, pulling away from her nearness, which was making him tremble.
“She’s never liked me,” Natalia answered. “You’ve always put yourself between us, so that by comparison I seemed the mean one, the dictator, the one who punished and took away privileges. You’ve never been a father to her, Pierre, only a kind of youthful Father Christmas, present at the good times but never at the bad. I watched Arkady die, and I shall not allow my daughter to be lost as well, through your spoiling. She is like a small animal, without conscience and responsibility!”
“Maybe so,” he answered wearily. His surge of hope was quickly dying down, like a graying ember. Nothing was different, then.
“Don’t give up,” she said, and placed her hand on his. “Don’t throw me away, Pierre. I love you, I want to try to make you happy. Don’t tell me I’m too late.”
But to his amazement, all he could feel was a pervasive, sickening numbness. She was bending over him, her lovely face closing in, her scent erotic, making his head swim. He felt exhausted, depressed, cold, and impotent. Slowly, trying not to hurt her, hurt him, he turned on his side and sank into the coverlet, shutting his eyes. He felt tears sting his lashes, but no sound could rise from his lips, and he could not move.
The last thing he heard was the door opening and shutting. The next morning she had left again for Monte Carlo, leaving him a note that read: “I’ve decided to go to the new house, which needs renovation. The owners are causing some small problems, and I want to talk to them in person. I’ve taken Tamara with me. It’s time she got to know her own mother. Take good care of Galina.”
He crumpled the piece of vellum into a small ball, and hurled it to the floor with a hoarse cry that Galina, who was walking quietly past, interpreted as one of pain and fury. Later, when he had gone, she went into the room and found the remnants of the note, worried lest the servants discover it first. She had heard him and seen his face, and now concern overrode common ethics in her mind, and she smoothed out the paper to see what it said. Her smooth oval face set in grim lines, and, tearing the note into tiny pieces, she said aloud, her voice trembling slightly: “Damn Natalia.”
Several days later, Pierre received a letter from Serge Pavlovitch i
n Monte Carlo:
“Dear Pierre,” the letter said,
I have given Les Noces careful consideration this past year, and have been thinking over Natalia’s suggestions. Perhaps her ideas are more on target after all. Stravinsky seems to believe that they are. A ballet that pulls and tugs, with the same sort of ponderous ritual as the Song of the Volga
Boatmen. And for this, she’s right, we’d need stark costumes and a sparsely furnished set, something rather functional. For at heart this wedding is functional. One can almost feel the fathers discussing the dowry of two heads of cattle.
Therefore, I have invited Natalia once again to participate in this project. She seems delighted. I hope you will be pleased to be collaborating once again—you worked so well together on Renard. When I return to Paris, I shall expect your reworked sketches.
Pierre’s hand began to tremble slightly, but he stilled it with the strong fingers of his other hand. He was tired, so very tired.
Sometimes Galina felt caught on a precipice between two worlds, in a no-man’s-land where she would begin to wonder who, in fact, she was. There was the world of the Riazhins: bright, artistic, unpredictable, and temperamental, with immense riches in the background. These people were the geniuses of the world. They created colorful new worlds of their own, which defied measure and containment. These were the gods of today’s society: Natalia, Pierre, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, and their cohorts. They were never conventional or dependent on society. Then there was a cruder world, that of the strugglers, the mediocre. She had lived among them in Tbilis and in Constantinople, and, in many respects, still believed that she was one of them rather than a part of that other, more unique realm governed by her step-family. Among this other set the tziganes and the less talented painters’ models had achieved success—while the rest of them were still anonymous, still barely surviving. Yet Galina had been born into neither of these worlds. She had participated in both, but had been reared in yet another environment, altogether different in its values and precepts: that of the most elite Russian aristocracy, with its Christian Orthodox outlook and its arrogant sense of self-sufficient noblesse oblige.
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