by Kerri Turner
‘I promise,’ he said.
Luka stood on the sidewalk, hat pulled low over his face. He fiddled with his jacket sleeves, trying to look as though he’d paused to adjust his clothing instead of surreptitiously watching the attractive wealthy couple making their goodbyes outside the pale brick building.
A child darted past, almost crashing into Luka’s legs, and he stepped back so she wouldn’t fall over. His gaze was averted for only a moment, but when it returned, Maxim was kissing Valentina. Her face was tilted up to receive the kiss, and when Maxim pulled away he said something that made her smile.
It was like an ocean wave crashing over Luka’s head, taking his breath away. What was he doing? Watching while another man kissed Valentina in the hope it would be his turn next? Xenia was right. He was playing a foolish game that he could never win.
He turned his back and stared down at his polished shoes. In them he thought he could see the reflection of a man who had become indistinguishable from Mathilde and her cohorts. A man who made excuses for himself so he could satisfy his own whims. This was not the man he wanted to be.
He’d already taken a few steps away from his source of shame, when he thought of how Valentina looked at him as they peeled their clothes off each other. In his mind’s eye he saw the way she studied him so intently, as if she had never seen a man before. And he felt the undeniable draw of her, the intoxicating pleasure of being admired by a woman whose notice he should have been below. Xenia wasn’t right about everything: no other woman would be able to offer him that. Perhaps it was ego; perhaps it was his desires taking hold of him. Whatever it was, Luka wasn’t sure he was able to let it go. Not yet anyway.
He turned slowly back to face Valentina’s house, glanced up under the brim of his hat, then froze. Not thirty paces from him strode Maxim. He hadn’t seen Luka, but another few steps and he wouldn’t be able to miss him.
Luka leaped onto the road. A carriage nearly knocked him over, and the driver swore at him. Heart racing, Luka hunched his shoulders to try to hide his face and ran to the other side of the street. He didn’t turn around to see if Maxim was watching. He kept walking, right past Valentina’s front door, and took the first corner he came to, wanting to be out of sight, hating himself for being the coward his father had accused him of being.
Luka breathed in the familiar smells of greasepaint, worn shoes, ropes and paint in the backstage area of the Mariinsky Theatre. Even the pieces of scenery seemed to buzz with life as he took in that indefinable thrill only familiar to those who performed onstage. He felt euphoric to be back for the new season. He had been cast as Arthur in the three-act ballet Barbe-Bleue. Arthur, a page, was madly in love with Ysaure, a woman who professed to love him back but married the villainous Bluebeard anyway. Despite her marriage to another man, Arthur did his all to protect her.
Xenia had been cast in a small role as Anne, Ysaure’s sister, whom Arthur danced with to cheer his unhappily wedded lover, and Luka had been thrilled to have the chance to dance with her onstage. Only once they had moved onto the black expanse, he got the feeling she was angry with him. Her face was lit with a confident smile, her movements light and lyrical as they danced in front of a full crowd, but instead of jumping up and holding herself in the way that made her lighter, she barely raised herself off the ground. She was a dead weight in his arms. Luka struggled to disguise it from the audience, his whole concentration focused on keeping her in the air whenever the choreography demanded it, his skin slick with sweat.
Finally, they were offstage and he was able to wipe his face on a rag, his hands trembling from exertion. Xenia stood in the wings, staring with pointed concentration at the mysterious figure of Curiosity, who was tempting Ysaure to follow him underground.
‘Xenia?’ Luka whispered, moving in close so he could speak right in her ear.
She didn’t even blink.
‘Are you angry with me?’
She glanced at him, then continued to watch the dancing couple.
‘Please, if you’re angry with me, tell me what I’ve done. I’ll make it right as soon as I know what it is.’
He had every right to be angry at her too—her behaviour onstage was unprofessional and risked them both getting fines. But it was so out of character for her that any annoyance he might have felt was subdued by concern.
Xenia closed her eyes for a second in a gesture of exasperation, then took a step back so they were further from the stage.
‘You didn’t even think about it, did you?’ she hissed, flicking her foot in an irritated battement frappé. A nearby dancer glared at her, holding a finger to her lips. Xenia glared back until the dancer looked away. ‘You didn’t keep your promise.’
‘My promise?’
A group of dancers flitted off the stage and through the wings, and Luka grabbed Xenia’s elbow to pull her further out of the way. The movement brought them closer, their heads bent towards each other so they were almost touching. He could see the tremble on Xenia’s painted-red lips when she spoke again.
‘Valentina Yershova,’ she whispered, her voice so low Luka could barely hear it. Even so, he glanced around to check no one else could have heard.
‘What is it you think you know?’ he asked.
He hadn’t spoken to Xenia about Valentina since they’d returned to the ballet. Whether it was because he had avoided the subject or she had, he couldn’t be sure.
Xenia sighed and looked over her shoulder at a scene-shifter about to edge his way around them. He was dressed in costume so as to blend in with the ballet. Luka gently touched her cheek, urging her to look back at him. When she did, her eyes were shadowed, made larger by the darkness of the wings and her make-up.
‘She came back to the ballet earlier than I’ve ever known her to. That alone was enough to make me wonder. But today, when you walked into the theatre, you were wearing a very fine pocket watch. A Buhré if I’m not mistaken. Those don’t come at the kind of price a corps dancer can ordinarily afford.’
Luka let his hand drop and took a small step away. His knees, still trembling from carrying Xenia’s full weight, felt even weaker. On the stage, Mathilde was making her way through a series of treasure-filled underground chambers, delighted as caryatids, gold and silver vessels, heavy silks and precious stones all came to life to dance with her.
‘That’s why you danced the way you did?’ he questioned.
‘That was unfair and unprofessional. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have behaved that way—especially on the stage where everyone could see. I was just so … Luka, I worry about you. I don’t think you realise the risks you’re taking. You have such a future ahead of you—’
‘A future can be taken away at any moment by anything,’ Luka snapped back, thinking of his brother. He realised he was being too loud and took a deep breath. ‘I did keep my promise, Xenia. I did think it over. I just didn’t come to the conclusion you wanted me to.’
‘I see.’ She took a long breath that echoed Luka’s. ‘I should never have brought it up like this, in the middle of a performance. I’ll go and touch up my make-up, give us both a chance to calm ourselves. See you back on stage?’
‘Yes.’
She turned to go, then paused, her gaze fixed on the stage. Frowning, Luka turned to look too. The music had softened and the delicate notes curling into the air weren’t loud enough to cover the shout that had exploded from the audience. The words were unmistakable: ‘Imperial slaves!’
With a glance at each other, Luka and Xenia moved closer to the stage, shoulder to shoulder with others who had done the same. Mathilde was still dancing, but her smile had a frozen quality. From where they stood in the wings they couldn’t see the audience, but the next shout that came was clear.
‘Are you content to dance while your countrymen die?’
Murmurs in the audience followed. Then the sounds of a scuffle, followed by another shout.
‘How long will you continue to feed from the Romanov teat while the rest
of us starve?’
Mathilde’s face was stony now, no longer pretending she hadn’t noticed. She continued to dance, and they heard the slam of a door as the man who’d interrupted was thrown out. The audience was unsettled, though, and their chatter competed with the orchestra, who played louder in an effort to bring their attention back to where it should be.
Xenia’s face was white beneath her make-up. Instinctively Luka gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, hoping she couldn’t feel the tremble in his fingers. Never, in the entire history of the Imperial Russian Ballet, had an audience member dared to interrupt a performance. Remembering the scene at the private performance at the Hermitage Theatre, Luka was glad Rasputin was not present.
The dressing room was alive with chatter, everyone talking about the interruption that had marred what would otherwise have been a standard performance. Luka dodged between bags and hanging costumes to get to his place at the long bench that stretched around the mirrored walls. He wasn’t interested in picking over the details; he just wanted to get his uncomfortable costume off.
But when he saw his spot, his feet froze. His belongings, which only that afternoon had sat in careful order, were all pushed to one side, some knocked over.
‘Who did this?’ he asked. ‘Who moved my things?’
He turned to stare at the other men in the room, eyes burning as he waited for the guilty party to come forward. His chest was tight, and he tried to tell himself to calm down, not let anxiety get the better of him. He’d never been as superstitious as many others in the company, even getting on fine after losing his lucky pair of gloves. But an undisturbed ritual after a performance was essential.
He asked the question again; most of the men shrugged their shoulders and returned to what they’d been doing before.
‘Excuse me.’
The arrogant lilting voice belonged to a young man who shouldered his way up to the chair next to Luka and sat down. He rattled through the belongings in front of him and his elbow knocked to the floor a little statuette Xenia had given Luka the Christmas they’d spent together. It was a flat wooden figure of the Ballets Russes dancer Adolph Bolm, striking a pose from Fokine’s Thamar, and she’d ordered it especially from London.
Ignoring what he’d done, the man grabbed a comb and pulled it through his wavy hair.
‘Excuse you indeed,’ Luka snapped, snatching the figurine up and checking it for damage.
The young man glanced at him in the mirror. ‘Did I do something?’
Luka gritted his teeth. Very deliberately he placed the figure down where it had been before. ‘You knocked this. And my other stuff—did you move it?’
‘Oh, yes. Sorry about that. I needed a little more room.’
‘Well, you don’t get any more room.’
Luka couldn’t believe this man. It was true he was only new to the company, but even students knew a dancer’s place in the dressing room was sacrosanct. He began slamming his belongings back into their original places. The young man pretended not to notice, but when Luka banged a greasepaint pot down particularly loudly, he flinched. Luka thought he knew what the boy was doing. For those newly accepted into the company, seeing their classmates overlooked and resorting to foreign companies could go to their head. A few years in the Imperial Russian Ballet, only one of one hundred and eighty dancers, would bring him back in line. If he even lasted that long.
Luka continued to tidy his space, pointedly pushing the other man’s belongings away. He carefully picked up a picture of Nijinsky that had fallen down and pinned it back on the edge of the mirror, smoothing it with his thumb to get rid of a small crease that had appeared in one corner. He’d heard the ugly rumours that Nijinsky was succumbing to madness and had pinned the picture up in defiance of them. Seeing it knocked down felt like a particularly cruel blow, not just against Luka, but against artistry itself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his juvenile neighbour put down his comb and pick up a cloth. As he wiped away the greasepaint that decorated his face, he opened his mouth and spoke so quietly no one besides Luka could have heard him.
‘Maxim Sergeivich sends his regards.’
Luka, who was lifting his own comb to his hair, froze.
The young man gave him a significant look in the mirror, and Luka’s heart pounded in a way he usually didn’t experience unless he was waiting in the wings, ready to step onto the stage.
‘What are you … Are you saying—’
‘Just his regards. That’s all.’
The boy continued to groom himself and Luka knew with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would get no more from him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Autumn 1916
Valentina slipped out of the bed, careful not to wake Maxim. It was the very early hours of the morning. The air was balmy from the hidden stove, but when her bare feet touched the timber floor, goosebumps rippled up her arms. She reached for the manteau she’d left on the floor and wrapped it around herself, pulling the soft polar-fox collar high so it brushed her jawbone.
She hesitated, looking down at Maxim. One leg was thrown out from underneath the covers, the curve of his buttock exposed. She picked up the edge of the uppermost blanket and covered him, then tiptoed out of the room and made her way through the darkened house, one hand feeling the way. In her other hand was a glass perfume bottle filled with vinegar.
She had to bite her lip to stop from crying out when she tripped over a chair that didn’t appear until she was right on top of it. She hated staying at Maxim’s house; at least in her own, she knew where things were. Briefly she wondered if she were to become his wife, would he make her give up her house? She couldn’t bear the idea. It would be bad enough having to give up Luka.
Instead of thinking about it, she stood on one foot and waved the other in the air, willing away the pounding in her stubbed toes. She was lucky she hadn’t done herself an injury that would prevent her from dancing. She felt cold at the thought of it.
Gripping the manteau even more tightly around herself, she skirted the offending piece of furniture and entered Maxim’s study. Once inside, Valentina pulled the door closed and opened the curtains to let the moon illuminate the room. Absent-mindedly, she drifted into a pas de bourrée, ending with a solemn arabesque. Her toe was still throbbing and she favoured her left leg so as not to hurt it more. Coming down out of the arabesque, she took another few steps then paused, staring at the perfume bottle in her hand. She’d left Maxim’s presence in order to wash herself with the vinegar—another precaution against having a child.
She walked over to his desk and turned the velvet-lined chair around to face her. She placed one foot on it, ready to tip some of the vinegar into her cupped hand, when she noticed one of the desk drawers was open. What would she find if she looked in that drawer, she wondered. Would it give her some insight into the man she shared her life with? Perhaps a clue how to turn him from protector to husband?
She glanced at the doorway, folding her bottom lip between forefinger and thumb. If Maxim had wanted to keep the drawer safe from prying eyes, he would have made sure to close it fully, perhaps even lock it.
She placed the perfume bottle to one side, turned the chair back around and sat, then slid one hand into the open drawer. Her fingers clasped what felt like a pile of thick papers, and she pulled them out. After checking the door one more time, she bent in close to look at what she’d found. A gasp slipped out of her mouth.
The papers were all about her. There were photographs of her, both in everyday dress and in ballet costumes. Ticket stubs from performances she’d been a part of—dating back to before she and Maxim had ever met—were caught up in programs whose corners were folded down to mark the pages her name appeared on. There was even part of a program from the disastrous Evening of Russian Fashion, torn so that only the little piece with her name was left. Her hands were overflowing with remnants of her own life. How many times had Maxim sat where she was, fondling the pictures, p
erhaps running a finger affectionately down her still face? Dreaming over a woman he’d set his sights on before even meeting her?
Trembling, Valentina let the papers fall into her lap. She sat completely still in the silent room, staring at nothing, trying to control her ragged breathing. A few moments later, she pushed the tangle of photos, programs and ticket stubs back in the desk drawer.
She mechanically washed herself down with the vinegar, not even its acrid smell jolting her out of her stupor. She stoppered the bottle, then tiptoed back to the bedroom and crawled into bed next to her protector.
Maxim’s leg was twitching, and every time his skin brushed her own she felt her chest convulse. Somewhere in there, a cry was trying to get free. But she wouldn’t let it. She closed her eyes and focused on quelling the feeling, squeezing it into a tight ball. She willed herself to sleep, but sleep never came.
When Maxim woke and turned to her, it was all she could do not to cringe away from him. She tried to be pleased, to welcome his embrace, but it was all an act. Once he was satiated, he left for his study, and Valentina dressed and escaped to the recessed balcony that adjoined his reception room, welcoming the weak morning sunlight that shone on her neck. Her head felt thick and heavy, like she’d drunk too many glasses of champagne.
She forced down some food that she didn’t taste. Her lips were numb, her hands moving without thought. She couldn’t stop picturing the bundle of programs, clippings and photographs she’d found. The secret collection was troubling. A certain amount of proprietorship was expected from a protector of course; and love had its usefulness when one knew how to keep control of it. Valentina had hoped to inspire in Maxim the kind of love that would lead to marriage. But that collection seemed to speak of something else, something she wasn’t sure she liked. The fact that it had begun long before their relationship disturbed her.
She didn’t want to hear the thoughts that began to surface, but they crammed her head, impossible to ignore. Perhaps it was time to find herself a new protector.
