Encore (28 page)

Color came to her cheekbones. “Don't!” she said miserably.

“Don't feel responsible, Borya.
I
was in the wrong. I am ashamed. I was afraid that you were never going to return to me. What's wrong with me, Borya?”

He took a deep breath, looked down at her hand, played with the wedding ring on the third finger. “You have no idea?” he asked her.

Her face had become all eyes. She tried to breathe, but instead, little gasps came out in staccato fashion. “I'm so scared,” she whispered. “I guess I've almost suspected—but I didn't even want to think it out in words.”

“And so that's why you turned against me.”

She looked away. “Don't talk about it, Borya,” she pleaded.

“But my darling, if you do not want it, you will have to decide now. You can't run away from this. We have to reach an understanding, Natalia.”

She uttered a short, half-hysterical giggle. “I've always run away, haven't I? Years ago, from the Crimea—Oh, Borya, what are we going to do? Do you want it?”

Looking at her with a level gaze, he said: “It isn't an ‘it,' it's our child, Natalia. If you want it, we are going to have to make plans. The doctor says that this is a difficult pregnancy, and you won't be able to dance—beginning now. That's why I'm afraid it has to be your own decision.”

“If I dance, you mean I'll lose the baby?” she exclaimed.

“That's exactly what I mean. We've both put all our hopes into your dancing—you'll never know how much!—but after the baby's born, you would dance again, as before. It's up to you.”

Tears came to her eyes. “I didn't think it would turn out this way,” she whispered. “Oh, Borya—I do want the baby. I've come to want it very much. A little part of you and me, making us immortal. But I thought I would dance at least till the seventh month! It's so hard—”

He brought her fingers to his lips and said very softly: “Yes, I know. It doesn't seem fair. But what's fair in life, Natalia? I've just realized something: Plans are the greatest absurdity of all in this world, and those who set stock by them are fools. The present moment, Natalia—that's all that truly touches us, isn't it?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked in a whisper.

“Of myself. Building intricate castles with feathers and clouds. Thinking that I was doing it for you, when all along it was to gratify my own sense of importance. I'm afraid you married the most ridiculous court jester of all, Natalia.”

She touched his cheeks with trembling fingers. “Tell me,” she said.

‘There's nothing to tell. You know that Serge will not accept Vaslav's marriage. But I'm afraid this isn't going to turn out quite as I'd wanted it to. I was going to pick up the pieces and branch off into a company of our own—with you and Vaslav as my stars. A silly man, your husband.”

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, Borya. It was for me—of course it was! And I didn't know.” She began to weep. “What a wonderful, ambitious project! And how like you to think of it! Serge Pavlovitch, Vaslav—nothing is too much for you to handle, is it? I don't know what to say, except that I don't want it now, this company. I want to have the baby! And then—afterward—we can discuss it again. Oh, Borya—why do I never know what is in your head, and why can't I answer you when I finally do learn what you've done?”

He laughed. “You are sure, about the baby?”

“Oh, yes. Right now, suddenly, I am positive. I want it very much. It's going to be very hard, but I'm going to lie down for the next seven months, and not even think of dancing.” She smiled. “And so you're going to have to think up every anecdote you know in order to amuse me! I'm not a good patient, you see.”

“Impatient, I'd call you.”

He bent over her and she placed her arms about his neck. “I'm really happy,” she murmured, kissing his earlobe, caressing his golden hair. “I did not think I would ever be happy—I, Natalia. It is rather frightening, this happiness. I do not want to become so happy that you grow bored with me.”

Disentangling herself, she asked, knitting her brow: “But what about Vaslav? My God—what will happen to him—?”

Boris shrugged lightly and replied, ironically: “I didn't force his hand with the girl, Natalia. Everyone felt that he'd grown restless. Serge should have realized it and strengthened his own position.” He added bitterly: “People fashion their own destinies. I have created nothing, only encouraged what already lay beneath the surface, waiting to emerge. Don't make me out a god of some sort.”

More gently, he kissed her fingertips. With deep, serious eyes, he said, his voice suddenly rich with feeling: “The only thing I've ever created, in these thirty-eight years, is the baby you are carrying for us.”

“Then I'm glad we shall have it,” she answered, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

I
f one had
to live inside the velvet lining of a dream, thought Natalia, then it was only fitting to do so in anonymity. In Zwingenberg, nothing was real—or perhaps it was the true reality, and everything that had come before had been the dream. Her mind floated, rose above her, merging with the clouds, with the soft March breeze. She did not try to call it back but let it take on a life of its own, like the baby.

One could have reinvented the world in Zwingenberg. Boris had chosen this tiny village in the German province of Hesse-Darmstadt because of its physical charm and its total remoteness. It lay twenty-two miles by wooded road from the town of Darmstadt, where the train station stood. Spring had come early. Soft, pine-scented hills alternated with green meadows filled with flowers of every shape and color; there were groves and small forests, and in the fields, often a single majestic tree, always an oak, spreading its unhampered branches to form an uneven ball of leaves. Sometimes one could not even see the grass of the fields for the wildflowers; other places belonged to the lazy cows, which lent an added peace to the landscape. Even during the winter months the loveliness had not lessened: the white-capped hills had had a soothing effect on Natalia, had been a balm on her soul.

Her body was out of control, rebelling. At first terror and rage had filled her, in spite of her desire to have this baby. Something alien was bursting inside her, intruding on her being. Her breasts swelled, hurting, and her stomach pushed out. She felt gross and ugly, a monster. And the pain! After spending a lifetime controlling her body, taking pride in its muscular slenderness, her doe's agility, she now could hardly move. She was not allowed to do so, in any case. But she wanted to escape, to leave behind this grotesque shell that surrounded her. This thing inside constantly reminded her of its presence, making her drowsy when she wanted to stay alert, hungry when she had just finished eating. She had been invaded—but there was no retreat. She was a prisoner of her own body.

She had long since stopped trying to explain what had happened to her. If she had changed, then so be it, and if he had, too, then it was part of the same marvelous plan. If one questioned good things too closely, the mystique would shatter.

She could picture the child in her mind. Inevitably, it was a little girl that resembled Galina, yet Natalia did not want a girl. She wanted a male child, a different sort of being from herself. It would be far more difficult to rear a daughter—she herself had been reared with such lack of care that the mere thought of an infant girl in her arms made her afraid. She could not have explained the rationale behind that fear either, but it had something to do with self-love. Loving a boy would be like loving Boris all over again.

Whenever she thought of Boris, something ached inside her. The whole tenure of their love was like the rarest of crystals, clear and precious and terribly fragile. She did not deserve to be loved this much, nor did she know how to handle these surges of inexplicable emotion for him. Loving him brought out the hidden place where pure joy was so strong that it became like pure sorrow. She was afraid to rest inside this love, oddly afraid to touch it, to trust it.

In many ways this was the honeymoon that they had never taken, for they had not grown together until three years after their marriage, and by then the Ballet had taken precedence over everything else in their lives. She did not know whether the Ballet had pushed them toward each other, allowing them glimpses here and there into each other during the daily workings of an enterprise that consumed them both—or whether it had kept them from discovering what lay behind each of their veneers, because of the constant pressures it had placed on them. She did know this: Under no other circumstance would she have accepted marriage. She had married Boris only because he had not threatened to merge his life with hers; and she was his wife now precisely because they had merged, more perfectly than either would have thought possible.

We have both lived outside society, she said to herself during this final month when Zwingenberg exploded with burgeoning life, and when the life that was taking shape inside her was preparing to be born. They had taken up residence in the sole inn of the village, and there the innkeepers were taking good care of her, knowing only that she was the Russian lady expecting the child, whose handsome, aristocratic husband was apparently a man of means and distinction. This made her smile. She wondered if they had ever heard of the Ballets Russes, these good people, and, if so, whether they knew of her, Oblonova. Sometimes an acute poignancy seized her, unexpected in these soothing surroundings, and she would long to dance again, to be in front of an audience. She wanted to hold onto her dancing, to retain the sharp memories of the stage and the parts she had played, especially the Firebird. Dance was what had made her, and also what had brought her to Boris.

She had learned to put up with her weakness, with her forced immobility, with the constant visits from the doctor in Darmstadt. At first she had been quite ill, her body unsure whether to retain this child or to fight its intrusion. Like my mind, she thought wryly. She remembered Boris sitting with her and holding her hand, worried lines at the outer corners of his eyes. Boris, too, had changed during this pregnancy. He was thirty-nine, and a few strands of silver meshed with his gold hair, but there was a new gravity on his long face, and yet, simultaneously, a joy and youth. He is proud, she realized, more proud than he ever had been of his clever manipulations of people and situations. The simple act of having made a child and knowing he is loved have made him a whole man at last. She was unspeakably moved, as though a door had been opened on a private scene for her eyes only.

Yes, she thought, we have lived outside society, but we have created a society of our own, for ourselves. Now that the child was rooted inside her, now that it was alive and prospering, she felt less pain. Her body, like her mind, had accepted.

Natalia worried that Boris would grow bored in these quiet surroundings; similarly he was certain that she, so quick and vital, was withering from restlessness, too. At least, he thought, I have places to go, things to see. Yet he did not take full advantage of his mobility, for something inside prevented him from breaking the magic of this private time with her.

Images of the SS. Avon, of the dark sea and the sensitive face of Armando Valenzuela, now and then intruded on his memory, and then he felt terrible pangs of agony and loneliness—pangs that could be washed away only by her closeness, by the cool reality of her love for him.

Years before, he had met the grand-duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, Tzarina Alexandra's brother, yet now he did not call upon him as he would have under normal circumstances. Sometimes Boris was almost tempted to enter the palace grounds through the grilled gates; the ducal residence was hidden, but one could see the vast park with its great old trees and thick bushes. Still, he wanted no one to know that he was here, that Natalia was going to have her baby in this remote part of the world.

One could almost forget one is in Germany, he thought with some bitterness. Kaiser Wilhelm filled him with disgust and disdain, but also with fear. Madmen, Boris said to himself, were more dangerous than calculating foes. Nero and Caligula had perpetrated more massacres than Caesar or Napoleon! Then, of course, there were the well-meaning fools. Poor Tzar Nicholas! He was limited, narrow, stubborn—yet essentially not an evil man.

Sometimes—more frequently, lately—dark thoughts assailed Boris. Decidedly, he thought with self-deprecation, age is creeping up as I near forty. It was becoming difficult to dispel these attacks, as he called them. He wondered whether Natalia, uncannily perceptive, had sensed them and, if so, had been able to guess at the more troubling aspects of some of his sexual yearnings. Fervently he hoped that he had hidden them from her. No one had been asked to accept more, to forgive and to forget more totally than she; and she had done so without ever looking back. Once she had come to him, she had locked the past behind thick doors. Still, he wondered, perhaps she had placed some of herself in reserve, fearful of committing herself completely. But he detested himself for doubting. It was difficult to trust someone after so many barren years of half-lived existence: He owed Natalia his life, he thought. She had given him the freshness of sharing.

He did a lot of horseback riding through the hills, and between Darmstadt and Zwingenberg. The road was lovely, crossing woods, flowered meadows, and large brooks with rustic bridges. For over a mile the trees on either side were so tall that their branches met over the top of the road, forming a bower of romantic shadows. In his elegant jodhpurs Boris cut a Byronic figure against this natural paradise, alone with his thoughts.

He had been surprised at the intense reaction that he had felt at the news, in December, of Diaghilev's summary dismissal of Nijinsky, and of Vaslav's subsequent difficulties setting up his own production company. The dancer's troubles had been on his mind in a strangely nagging fashion. “Aha!” Natalia had exclaimed, somewhat ironically. “Could it be that you possess a conscience after all, dear heart?” He'd been annoyed, yet he'd had to grudgingly admit that there was some truth to the matter.

“I started the whole damn thing—or rather, as I told you, I helped it along. And now I suppose I should go to Vaslav with some sort of offer. This London season of his isn't working out; you can't have someone like Nijinsky running a company—he's still a child! And the Palace is a variety theatre that puts the dancers between two vaudeville acts: He isn't equipped to handle that the way a hardened professional such as Pavlova could!” Natalia had listened and waited, her large eyes on him. “But the truth is, my heart wouldn't be in it,” he concluded. “I want to stay here, with you. My interest in helping Nijinsky would be purely altruistic, and”—he half-smiled, and his eyes twinkled—“you know how poorly altruism fares with me!”

“What has happened to the patron saint of all Russian artists?” Natalia had asked, holding out her hand to him.

“I'm not sure. It does disturb me, I'm afraid. Love does me no good. I've become domesticated, and vastly uninteresting. But when you dance again, my energies will start to flow once more, you'll see!”

He also thought about Serge Diaghilev, and old bitterness flowed into him. If Serge had suffered, well then, so did we all. People spent their lives zigzagging through dangerous paths between two rows of flaming torches, ending up scorched more often than not. Diaghilev had never intimated that he had had the slightest suspicion of Boris's involvement in the matter of Romola and Vaslav Nijinsky. He had shown a great deal of concern for Natalia and had entreated Boris to continue to help him in running the company. For all intents and purposes three associates, two of them longtime friends, had temporarily parted because of health problems. They would once more join forces after the birth of Natalia's baby.

How characteristic of us! Boris thought, laughing. Yet we are and shall always be friends. We have an odd friendship based on similar traits and a complete lack of trust. Trust could generate boredom. Only with Natalia was Boris not afraid that this would develop. One did not become bored with Natalia, for she never took anything for granted. It was better this way, for if they trusted the fates as they learned to trust each other, their lives would fall to ruin and their love would die.

These were strange thoughts for a promenade through the countryside. Boris could not help being amused at his own somberness. He would have to fight this onset of melancholia with greater self-will. But between moments of sheer joy there were sharp gaps when his very soul would sink to a purple sadness, like a sunset. Boris shook his head. His happiness was so deep that his mind was demanding balance. Hence the sadness. It was natural, then. He dismissed the guilty feelings toward his wife and toward Nijinsky, separate but anguish-laden: There was no time for such futile emotions. Then he kicked his horse lightly to spur him on, threw back his golden head, feeling energized by the wind—and laughed at himself, frankly and heartily.

It was the off-season, and, apart from Boris and Natalia, there were few other guests at the inn. Sometimes after supper Boris would have Natalia transported to a chaise longue in the sitting room downstairs, and he would play the piano for her. There was so little to amuse her. Yet she felt that it would be unfair to make him share the confines of her seclusion, he who cherished the refinements of civilization. Although he said that he did not miss his friends in the Diaghilev committee—Bakst, Benois, Serge Pavlovitch himself, Svetlov, the ballet critic—she knew that he must be padding the truth. Her body was shapeless and distended, her weary face more gray than white, with circles beneath her eyes; she preferred not to be seen by him this way. The end of her term was coming. Since she was convinced that they would be satisfied with a single child, she thought: Thank God, it will soon be over, and I can be myself again, and he can start to breathe again the fresh air of culture. In the meantime, there was the piano.

Natalia was totally unfamiliar with Wagner. “But,” Boris told her, “this is as good a place to learn him as any. He embodies the spirit of Germany.”

“Play something Italian instead,' she suggested.

He smiled. “No, I'm going to initiate you in Wagneriana. It's everything we're not: ponderous, glorious, majestic, and unsubtle. But it must be heard, and then assimilated. You'll learn to understand him,' He opened the music cabinet, found some sheets, and arranged them above the piano. Then he rolled back the top and began to play from the first act of
Die Walkyrie.
He started to sing. Natalia leaned on her elbow, fascinated. The innkeepers came in, surprised. Boris possessed an excellent voice, which they had never heard. Even Natalia had not heard it frequently lifted in song. It rang deep and rich, and he sang with complete ease. Sometimes he stopped to repeat a passage to make it more familiar to Natalia. When he stopped, it was late, and he had played through two full acts. The innkeepers were still hovering in the doorway.