by Judith Gould
Finding her feet, Senda forgot the footman and anxiously tugged Schmarya toward the balustrade. She leaned over excitedly. Below, the dancers were Lilliputian in proportion to the room itself. She caught her breath as she hungrily took it all in. Oh, the sight which fed her eyes!
The ballroom floor was a sea of elegant couples, the women in rustling, billowing gowns floating in the arms of their partners, their lace petticoats frothing like whipped cream under flowing hems, their delicate ivory shoulders bare, their patrician throats, heads, and arms encrusted with a staggering collection of precious jewels. And the men! They were the handsomest, most elegantly turned-out men she had ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on—tall and graceful for the most part, clean-shaven and neatly bearded, in formal attire or resplendent gold-braided dress uniforms with mirrorlike boots, they rivalled the exquisitely gowned ladies for attention. The oval dance floor was thronged with guests spilling into the adjoining chambers under the palm-lined colonnades. They talked, laughed, exchanged delicious titbits of gossip, or eyed the graceful couples swirling on the glassy floor under the twin rows of massive crystal chandeliers, twelve in all, each one sparkling as brightly as diamonds. Four tiers of creamy, flickering, beeswax candles bristled from each one. In a cul-de-sac of hothouse palms at the far end was the orchestra.
Oh, the sweet sounds! The splendid sight.
'There you are!' Countess Florinsky chirped breathlessly as she hurried toward Senda and Schmarya as fast as her short legs would carry her. With flutters of her open fan she waved the waiting footman away. 'My dear, your performance was positively magnificent!' she crooned, blowing three noisy kisses past each of Senda's cheeks. Then she stepped back and regarded Schmarya closely. 'Handsome,' she said, nodding. 'Yes, quite, quite handsome indeed.' She narrowed her eyes at Senda. 'If you're not careful I shall steal him for myself!' After introductions she happily slipped her arms through theirs, a bubbly, effervescent plump child-woman. 'Now, come, darlings, and do hurry, please,' she tittered. 'The Princess is simply dying to meet you! I was to bring you to her the moment you arrived!'
Countess Florinsky guided them around to the nearest of the two balustraded marble staircases which swept down, facing each other, to a common landing where the two staircases converged into one.
'This used to be called the Ambassador's Staircase, though heaven only knows why,' the Countess chattered excitedly. 'I think everyone's forgotten the reason!' When they reached the landing, she squeezed their arms with hers and let them go. The Prince and Princess stood side by side greeting guests who had not been invited to the performance.
The Princess smiled at a buxom woman in an off-white lace gown and turned. 'Ahhh!' she intoned in the lilting, well-modulated French of the upper classes. 'Voilà notre Mademoiselle Marguerite!'
Since Senda did not speak a word of French, all she could catch was the name Marguerite, but she guessed at what the Princess had said. The Countess made introductions. 'Your Highness,' Senda murmured in Russian. 'Happy Birthday.' As protocol demanded, she dropped a graceful curtsy, conscious of Schmarya grudgingly bowing beside her. Senda willed him to be on his best behaviour. No one knew better than she what he thought of the ruling class.
'Thank you, my dear. And do rise,' the Princess told Senda in a kind voice, switching easily from fluent French to native Russian. 'I wanted you to know that your performance was quite stunning. We enjoyed it ever so much. It was my favourite birthday present. I must thank you.'
'Your Highness is too kind.'
'I think not. Even their Imperial Majesties asked me to convey their congratulations on a dazzling performance.'
Senda's eyes widened in surprise, and at that moment she looked exceedingly girlish.
'But you are so young!' The Princess studied Senda closely, then looked at her husband. 'Why, she must be barely twenty, Vaslav!'
'But quite talented,' the Prince said mildly, as though he had little interest in Senda. But his intense, unwavering blue eyes belied his words as he looked at her strangely.
The Princess, apparently unaware of her husband's keen interest in Senda, patted his hand affectionately. 'My husband is right, as always. You are very talented. And now, I'm sure that you are anxious to have some refreshments and perhaps dance.'
A gentle but obvious dismissal. 'Thank you, your Highness,' Senda said.
'It is my pleasure. Do circulate.'
Curtsying again, Senda could still feel the Prince's steady gaze. A flush heightened her features with glowing pink. She quickly took Schmarya's arm and led him over to where Countess Florinsky was waiting.
Together, the three of them descended the seven steps to the dance floor.
'I don't know what Vaslav would have done for entertainment had he not run across you,' the Countess was telling them. 'Irina loves the theatre so. Sometimes I get the feeling she would rather be onstage than playing the role of princess.' Countess Florinsky gave a little shrug. 'At any rate, what's important is that everyone agrees you were simply divine. Divine . . . hmmm, yes. La Divina. That is what I shall call you. The divine one.'
Senda laughed. 'That's carrying it a bit far, I think.'
At that moment, two dowagers passed by, flicking surreptitious glances in Senda's direction.
'De prés elle est encore plus belle.' Senda could hear one dowager whispering behind her fan. 'Et elle est si fraîche.'
'Si j'étais homme, je pourrais facilement m'enamourer d'elle,' the other dowager whispered back, nodding. 'Je crois qu'Irina devrait prendre garde . . .'
'You see?' Countess Florinsky said triumphantly, her magnified eyes twinkling. 'You are already the talk of the town!'
Senda flushed again, but she recognized the compliment and was secretly pleased. 'But what did they say? I couldn't understand a word.'
'Never mind what they say, as long as they keep talking. Anyway. I must be getting back to work and leave you two to enjoy yourselves.' The Countess pulled the décolletage of her gown higher. Then she tilted her head, looked around, and breathed deeply with satisfaction. 'It does look rather romantic, even if I do say so myself,' she said a little wistfully.
'I still can't believe you arranged all this,' Senda told her.
'It's easy,' the Countess said with a negligible wave of her hand. 'All a good party requires is money. Lots of money.' She giggled and fluttered her fan. 'Other people's money is so easy to spend! Well, off I go. And do enjoy yourselves, my dears!' She blew three parting kisses past each of Senda's cheeks and pressed Schmarya's hand warmly. Then she was gone.
Senda and Schmarya exchanged smiles and watched as the short plump woman waddled along the edge of the dance floor with that inimitable breathless bounce. When she was out of sight, Schmarya turned to Senda and took her hand formally. His touch was warm and gentle and mocking, but underlying it was an unmistakable possessiveness. 'A dance, my lady?' he asked teasingly as the orchestra switched to a lively mazurka.
Senda's smile dazzled. 'I would be honoured, kind sir.'
They swiftly danced into an opening on the dance floor, where they were swallowed up amid the rustle of swishing silks and the heavenly fragrances of perfumes. The huge room rose and dipped and whirled around her. Though the theatre troupe knew nearly every conceivable dance step, and often entertained itself by dancing, none of their dances, on or offstage, had ever been like this, Senda thought.
Her head was in the clouds.
The mazurka flowed into a quadrille, the quadrille into a chaconne, and the chaconne into a polonaise.
'Schmarya, I'm exhausted!' Senda had to gasp finally.
He grinned. 'And I'm hungry. Let's take a break.' Taking her hand, he led her off the dance floor. 'Now that we know how the other half lives, let's go see how they eat.'
Extraordinarily well, it turned out. The lace-and-damask-draped buffet tables behind the colonnades groaned under the weight of overladen gold and sterling platters. It was difficult to choose among the delicacies—roast duck with raspberry sauce
, cold sturgeon, pheasant, salmon mousse with crayfish sauce, whole squab, rack of lamb, shashlik, blinis, white marzipan flowers, petits fours, and cakes of all kinds. All this, plus four enormous gold bowls containing four kinds of caviar— large-grained greyish beluga, small-grained black sevruga, and golden nutty-flavoured osietra, as well as red-salmon keta. And there were no fewer than ten varieties of fresh-baked bread, their thin slices artfully stacked to create the base of an enormous butter sculpture of the Princess.
'Can you believe it?' Senda breathed, ogling the lifelike metre-high likeness of Irina Danilov with wide eyes. 'It's actually made of butter.' She had come to a stop with her plate extended, and thinking she wanted squab, a waiter with sterling tongs fished a whole tiny bird from a flock of crisply burnished squab and placed it on her plate with a flourish.
She eyed the bird suspiciously and moved on to the next table.
Luxury was heaped upon luxury. For the sweet-toothed, one table was devoted exclusively to crystal bowls of out-of-season fruit brought in from the Crimea. Another held more cakes—fruit cakes, pale almond cakes, and deep, dusky chocolate tortes. A third table of pastries held only white-frosted cakes, sugar-iced cookies, and white candies, all arranged among a sumptuous table of gilded nuts and masses of lustrous strung pearls.
Their plates filled, they carried them into one of four chambers adjoining the ballroom being used as dining rooms. From the other diners there was an almost simultaneous 'Nasdrovya' as they raised their glasses to toast Senda. Blushing, she returned the cheer and proceeded to a table. Each of the small tables had been set with an exquisite centrepiece: silver candlelabra were hung with heavy garlands made of pink roses. Senda and Schmarya saw lavishly wrapped boxes at each place and, following the lead given by other guests, opened theirs. They were stunned beyond words. For the men, Schmarya included, there were solid gold lighters, and for the women solid gold compacts. All were engraved with the date and the Princess's monogram. When they were finally recovered enough to eat, Senda picked up a heavy knife and fork and cut a crunchy piece of squab. She bit hungrily into it. 'I'm starved,' she said, beginning to chew. 'I haven't had anything to eat all day.' Suddenly she stopped chewing and looked stricken, her eyes bulging.
'What's the matter?' Schmarya asked.
With her tongue she shoved her food into the pocket of one cheek. 'This bird is all bones.'
He looked at her with amusement. 'Well, chuck it, then.'
She reached under the tablecloth and pinched his thigh. He jerked his leg, banging his knee on the table.
Countess Florinsky, her egret-feathered headpiece bouncing, swooped down upon their table, 'Enjoying yourselves, my dears?' she sang.
Senda nodded. 'Except for this bird, whatever it is.' She scowled at her plate.
'It's squab, I believe.'
Senda jabbed it with her fork. 'I thought it was a particularly starved pigeon.'
The Countess trilled with laughter. 'You do say the most amusing things.'
'What do I do with the bones? I have a whole mouthful of them.'
'I think you're supposed to chew and swallow them.' The Countess frowned. 'Or is that with partridge? Dear me, I keep forgetting. I can't see my way to eating fowl. They're really a delight to watch or wear'—she patted her headpiece affectionately—'but I simply can't eat the little creatures.'
'Oh,' Senda said, 'well, I'm having trouble eating this one myself. I'm afraid to swallow the bones. I'll choke to death.'
'Then spit the bones out into a napkin. If you're discreet, no one should be the wiser. By the way,' she said casually, looking around, 'you didn't happen to run into Vaslav?'
'Earlier, with you. When we came in.'
'No, no. Since then.' The Countess's eyes roved the tables. 'I ran into him. He told me he was looking for you.'
'For me?' Senda stared at her. 'I wonder what he wants.'
'To dance, probably. Oh! There he is. Vaslav!' The Countess got on tiptoe and raised her fan, waving it briskly to catch his attention. 'He's coming, and off I go, my dears!'
Vaslav Danilov approached their table. 'I hope you are enjoying your repast, Madame Bora?'
'Thoroughly, your Highness,' Senda assured him, though she wished she had something to eat other than the brittle, bony squab.
'Good.'
'Countess Florinsky said you wished to see me?'
He smiled. 'Later, after you have eaten. I was going to ask you for a dance.' He paused and looked at Schmarya. 'With your permission, of course, monsieur?'
'By all means,' Schmarya said, gesturing magnanimously.
'Then why not right now?' Senda asked. She swallowed, dabbed her lips with a heavy linen napkin, and pushed back her chair.
'But your food,' the Prince pointed out. 'You haven't finished.'
'I'm really not at all hungry,' Senda said. Especially not for squab, she thought, rising and proffering her crooked arm. 'Your Highness?'
'With pleasure.' Taking her arm in his, the Prince led her back to the ballroom, where an elegant Viennese waltz was playing. 'Johann Strauss,' he said his eyes sweeping the dance floor. 'A very sweet melody, though I am not at all certain that sweetness becomes you. A steamy Argentine tango, perhaps, or the wild new American jazz I have had the pleasure to hear on occasion.'
'Oh?' She lifted a studied eyebrow. 'And why should that be?'
'Because'—he smiled—'I sense passions smouldering within you.'
'Then perhaps you have overestimated the power of your senses, your Highness. Perhaps they have misread me?'
'They never misread anything,' he said quietly.
She turned away quickly, a flush intensifying the red of her hair, the slivers of aqua in her emerald eyes dimming as though a veil had descended over them. 'I think we had better dance,' she said soberly, casting furtive glances around her. 'Everyone's looking at us.'
'And why shouldn't they? I am, after all, Vaslav Danilov, and you are the evening's star attraction. And a beautiful woman by anyone's standards.'
'You are making me feel conspicuous and uncomfortable.'
'You will soon be over that.'
'Shouldn't you be dancing with the Princess? It is her birthday.'
'I led her in the first dance of the evening. Besides, Irina would rather not dance.'
'Oh?'
'She dislikes showing her hands to disadvantage.'
Out of the corner of her eye Senda could see Countess Florinsky and the Princess staring in their direction. She caught the speculative glances of other guests, the openly appreciative looks of the Hussars in their elkskin breeches, and she could hear whispers carrying gossip on sibilant lips. 'I think,' she said rather unsteadily, 'that if we do not begin to dance soon, this waltz will be over before we start.'
'This waltz is unimportant.' He looked down at her keenly, a film glistening over his eyes. 'It is the next dance which interests me. I asked for it myself.'
'And what would that be?'
'Something infinitely more Russian. Livelier and, I daresay, closer to your heart.'
Even as he spoke, the waltz reached its last honeyed strains, and then, without warning, furious balalaikas broke through the last note, thundering into that most Russian and soul-rousing of music, an authentic Gypsy dance. The couples on the dance floor were momentarily at a loss. They looked about in astonishment.
'So wild music is closer to my heart, is it?' Senda asked, raising her chin challengingly. Her eyes sparkled. 'Then so be it!'
She did not wait for him to lead, but tossed her hair and clicked her heels as if a fine madness had swept over her. To her surprise, the Prince did not hesitate. He dropped his stiff aristocratic veneer. The other couples on the dance floor parted as swiftly as if Moses himself had ordered the Red Sea to recede. The floor was theirs, and theirs alone. Except for the balalaikas, silence descended. The two of them, she in Madame Lamothe's exquisite gown, and he in his black, gold-laced formal uniform, swirled and stomped and kicked with their hands on their h
ips.
As the ballroom bounced and jumped and spun madly around her, Senda caught a fleeting glance of open mouths, of guests jockeying for a view from the packed balustrades above, of Countess Florinsky's fan stopping mid-flutter, of the Princess's inscrutably veiled eyes, and then Schmarya's amused grin from the perimeter of the dance floor. So he had been drawn by the music too.
Knowing he was watching, she let herself go, flinging aside any inhibitions which remained, and assumed the dervish moves of a devilish gypsy gone beserk on the steppes. When the racing instruments finally reached their crescendo and stopped, spontaneous applause thundered in the ballroom.
Senda reeled dizzily. She was panting.
'And now,' the Prince whispered between gulping lungfuls of air, 'we can catch our breaths during a waltz.'
She felt his hands gripping her as he led her to The Blue Danube. One by one, other couples began to whirl around them, and soon the ballroom was as before, elegant with the sweetness of civilized music and the expensive rustling of billowing gowns. Senda couldn't help thinking that she had preferred the gypsy music. It had had torment and ecstasy and soul.
The Prince was in his element. He grinned at her and danced faultlessly. 'I was right, you know,' he said softly.
'Right?' Senda frowned. 'About what, your Highness?'
She could feel the breath of his words on her bare shoulder. 'The smouldering passions I was so sure you possessed.'
Her eyes narrowed. 'And if they smoulder, your Highness,' she countered tartly, 'I think it best you take care before you're burned.'
'For them, I daresay I would gladly burn anywhere, hell included.' Despite the soft timbre of his voice, he seemed to loom over her. There was an animal surety glowing in the depth of his eyes.
She couldn't help laughing. 'I don't know whether you are incorrigible, or merely persistent.'
And then the perfect ball was marred.
