Encore (32 page)

She drew away. “But he's not supposed to! I wanted him to be like you—not me!” There was an edge of hysteria in her voice and in her wide eyes.

“But I'm glad. He's exactly what I wanted. What we both wanted, Natalia.” He caressed her cheeks, her nose, her temples. He smiled at her, regaining control. “I love you. Thank you for my beautiful son. You'll never know how much I love you both—and everything I want to do for you. Are you all right, Natalia? They wouldn't let me in to be with you.”

Then she smiled. “It wasn't so bad, really, darling. But I kept thinking you'd never come back—and that the baby was dead. Don't leave us, Borya. Don't ever leave us. We'll never get in your way, we'll be good. The baby and I shall always love you.”

There was a soft knock on the door, and Fräulein Bernhardt appeared with the baby. She brought him to Natalia and deposited him in her arms. Natalia's face bent over her son so that her nose caressed his cheek. “Such a lot of pain you've caused me, little one,” she murmured gently. “Such a lot of pain and all those months of boredom. Do you know what that is, boredom? No? Well then, we shall make certain that you never learn, all right? Your papa will keep misery and cold and hunger from you, and I shall keep the boredom away. You're so little!”

“Send up as many bottles of champagne as you've got on hand,” Boris said to Fräulein Bernhardt. When she had gone, he placed one arm around Natalia's shoulder and put his other hand on the baby's blanket. “We have to find you a name, little Count Kussov,” he said.

Natalia looked at her husband. “We should call him Arkady,” she suggested. “For your father's father, the one who bought the Kussov palace on the French Quay. You admired him a lot, didn't you, sweet?”

Boris felt something melting inside him. “Yes. More than anyone, I wanted to be like him. He was a man of honor and of taste—an aristocrat of the heart. I gave up trying to emulate him years ago, but that's an old story. I'm surprised you remembered.”

“I remembered. Many months ago I decided that if we had a son, we should give him your grandfather's name. So,” she said, “Arkady Borisovitch, how do you like your new identity? Count Arkady Borisovitch Kussov. Such a complicated name for such a tiny fellow.”

The innkeeper, Hermann Walter, wheeled in a bucket with a bottle of iced champagne in it. Boris stood up and deftly popped the cork, and in the noise that ensued the baby began to yell in his tiny voice. “Come in, everyone!” Boris cried. “Doctor, Fräulein, Frau and Herr Walter! We must toast Count Arkady Borisovitch Kussov!”

In the background German folk music was playing, the big drum beating and the accordion twanging to a fast-paced marching rhythm. But upstairs in the white bathroom nobody paid attention.

O
n either side
of Darmstadt stood two sharp cliffs, covered with fields at their base, then rising into blue-green forests scattered with walking trails. These two hills protected the countryside from the harsh north winds of winter, but already now, in late May, the heat was becoming stifling. Only beneath the branches of the pine trees was there a welcome coolness.

Natalia removed her small demure hat with its brim and sat down on a log. She pushed her sleeves up on her forearms and began to fan herself with the hat. Her white and black boots, showing beneath the cotton skirt falling well above her ankles, were tight and painful. It was strange how the mere fact of having a baby changed one's body. She wondered how her feet would have reacted to ballet slippers.

In front of her the child fretted in the perambulator. More and more she felt the need to go alone into the hills with him, taking him away from Mademoiselle Allard, the Swiss nurse whom Boris had hired for Arkady. Natalia needed to be with her son in order to ease the awful sensation of suffocation under which she had been living since the second week of the baby's life. It was a nameless, haunting oppression that prevented her from sleeping and kept tears close to the surface.

It had taken her some time to recover from the birth. At first, Dr. Fröhlich had made her stay on her back, and, unable to fall asleep without turning, she had remained awake, wondering about the child. He was so pale, so fretful, so nervous. She had wanted to take him to her breast and hold him there, to shield him from whatever frightened him, whatever ailed him. He did not seem to like her milk, but when Fröhlich put him on condensed milk in a bottle, he did not accept that any better. Yet, when Boris entered the room, she would look up and smile, presenting him with a radiant face.

But it isn't my imagination,
it isn't
she now said to herself, beginning to tremble. Dr. Fröhlich, the only doctor of repute in the area, had taken his family to a medical conference in Vienna, and planned to remain there on an extended holiday. He was collaborating on a series of important articles for a journal on obstetrics with a Viennese physician. How can he do this to me, to Arkasha? Natalia thought with strident anguish. She rose from the log and pulled back the covers in the perambulator. Her son, who truly did resemble her, stared back at her, stared back at her intelligently. He knows, she thought, he knows he isn't well.

Then she caught herself: Natalia, you are losing your mind, attributing God knows what ridiculous knowledge to an infant only ten weeks old. She touched the frail cheek, smooth and pale like her own, and felt a well of tenderness flowing out to him. Dear little being. I am going to break down completely, she warned herself.

Arkady had her eyes but his father's perfect nose and chiseled lips, her complexion and dark hair but Boris's hands and feet, long and thin. He is not at all like Galina, she thought. At first she had minded his points of resemblance to herself, wishing him instead to be a total Kussov. But no, I'm not so bad, she had finally concluded. That's it! He'll be the new Nijinsky. Vaslav and Romola are expecting their own child at any moment. Perhaps they will have a girl, and then my son and their daughter will dance together as I did with Vaslav. She smiled with self-mockery.

Boris had asked her about that. “When you're completely recovered, shall we try again to form our own ballet company?” he'd said.

But a black cloud of worry had fallen over her, obliterating all other considerations. She had risen with a jerky movement and said, without looking at him: “It's still too soon. Let's discuss it later—when Arkasha can hold his head up by himself.”

Reading the momentary surprise on her husband's face, she had recoiled from admitting the truth. Let him think that she was merely reluctant to leave the baby. She actually ached for the stage, her young body firm and whole again. In secret she did floor exercises in the room. Had he known, he would have guessed at her desire to resume dancing, and then he would have also realized that she was keeping something from him.

But she could not broach the subject of her anxiety to Boris. As long as she did not say out loud: “My son is not normal!” then it would not have to be faced as a reality, but merely as a mother's hysteria. Besides, she could not do this to Boris—his son was too precious, too miraculous to him. Contaminating his joy would mean contaminating the whole fabric of their existence and of their love.

Bending over the perambulator, Natalia began to weep, very softly. She was alone and no one could help her, no one could see that her baby was ill. No one could tell her what to do.

“It simply isn't like you,” Boris countered dryly. They were sitting at a restaurant atop the Ludwigshöhe, one of Darmstadt's hills. He stood up and began to pace up and down in front of her. He is like a nervous racehorse, she thought, suddenly afraid.

The fear flew into her throat and remained lodged there. “Go, if you like, Boris,” she said breathlessly. “I understand your boredom here. Go to Serge Pavlovitch—I'm certain he needs you. I'll join you later—with Mademoiselle and Arkady.”

“That's ridiculous. Besides, it's the end of June, Natalia. Mademoiselle is due to leave for her month's vacation. If you stay here, who will take care of the boy?”

“I shall!” she answered hotly.

He looked at her narrowly, his face masked in shrewd appraisal. “You are treating me like a fool,” he said, his cold voice shaking with fury. “Tell me exactly why you insist on staying here. What are you hiding from?”

Half-rising, she cried, “Hiding from? What do you mean?”

His eyes had become slits. His elegant frame stood perfectly still, poised. She forgot her fears for Arkady and concentrated instead on her husband. He was looking at her as if attempting to see through her to her very soul. She had not felt such contained passion inside him since that awful New Year's Day when he had burst upon her in her boudoir to ask about Galina's portrait. “My God,” she said in a hushed voice, “what exactly are you accusing me of, Boris?”

I am wrong, he thought, she doesn't know he's here. He breathed in deeply, and touched his forehead. “I don't know,” he replied shortly, irritably. “It doesn't make sense, that's all. I'd have thought you, of all people, would have been chomping at the bit to leave this place and move on! The weather's growing unbearably hot and stuffy. If you don't want to join the Ballet again, I'm not going to force you—but I don't understand. You won't tell me what's in your head. How can I be a husband to you when you persist in hiding things from me? But so be it. You don't want to be a dancer anymore. Let's go to Venice then. Or Geneva. Or Timbuktu or the moon. But let's go!”

On a crest of terror, she cried: “No!” Then, blushing, she looked away. “I'm tired,” she said. “If you won't stay here with me, I told you, I'll manage. I'm not hiding anything,” she added, miserably, seeing the distaste in his eyes.

“Very well, Natalia,” he sighed. He called the waitress and asked for the bill, and, while they waited, he shifted in his chair so that he was no longer next to her but facing toward her left. She bit her lower lip to repress a sob.

On the way down to the inn, he refused to speak to her. What was he thinking to make him hate her so? It had to be more than annoyance at her delaying tactics. But he didn't suspect the truth. What truth? Arkady did not suffer from a normal childhood illness. He had no fever, he didn't cough. Was she imagining things? Infants were frequently peevish and colicky.

Leaving Boris at the inn, she ran to the sitting room, where Mademoiselle Allard sat knitting. Arkady's small, insistent wail came from the crib with its cascades of white tulle. She bent down and lifted him up, and he arched his back away from her touch, like a cat. She brought him close and held him against her chest, silently. “He's a complaining boy today,
Madame la Comtesse,”
the nurse commented mildly. “He hasn't learned his manners, has he? The little love!”

How can this woman be a professional caretaker of children and not see what I see? Natalia cried inside herself. A lump rose to her throat. She heard Boris come in and took the baby to his father. “Here,” she said, forgetting their quarrel, “your son.” Gently, she held Arkady out to her husband.

On the morning of June 29 Boris rushed into the sitting room like a harsh wind, striding toward Natalia with his outstretched hand clutching a newspaper. She had been reading next to the crib, and his sudden entry, coupled with the excitement in his eyes, made her look up in alarm. They had hardly spoken to each other for several days, but now he exclaimed: “Yesterday the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was killed in Sarajevo, in Bosnia. There's going to be a lot of trouble this time—with no reprieve in sight.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide and frightened. “What does that mean to us?” she asked.

He did not look directly at her. “It means we're going back to Russia,” he said.

Her lips parted. She shook her head. “We can't,” she whispered. “I can't. You can if you feel you must.”

An ugly grimace distorted his features, and he threw the tabloid on the floor. Clenching his fists, he cried: “Don't be ridiculous! If Austria declares war on Serbia, the Kaiser will follow suit and Russia will have to protect its neighbor. You'd be here as an enemy alien. Besides, he's thirty-one years old, young enough to want to go home himself to serve his country!”

“Who? Who's thirty-one, Boris? I don't understand you at all!”

“Then tell me why you refuse to return to Petersburg with me. Give me one good reason that doesn't spell ‘Riazhin'!”

Natalia stood up, white and shaking. “Riazhin? Why are you bringing up Riazhin, Borya? He has nothing whatsoever to do with Zwingenberg—or does he?”

Boris compressed his lips into a thin line. He regarded her sharply. “He lives in Darmstadt,” he said with disgust. “Isn't that why you want to stay here, on and on? For old time's sake?” The words fell from his mouth with infinite sarcasm, like pellets of hail.

He saw the shock on her face, the horror, the hurt, and turned away, pounding a fist into his thigh. She was completely speechless. Slowly he wheeled back around, chewing on his lower lip. “All right,” he said in a low voice. “I was wrong, I behaved like a boor. You would like to slap my face or some such melodramatic gesture of contempt and outrage. But then tell me, tell me what it is, if it isn't our old friend Pierre. How can you blame me for thinking the worst if you will not share the best with me?”

Tears were rolling down her pale cheeks. She could not take her eyes from his face, but the tears would not stop. He took a step toward her, held out a hand. “I was wrong, then?” he murmured abjectly.

She fell backward onto the sofa and dropped her head into her hands. Silent sobs began to shake her. He sat down next to her and put an arm around her frail shoulders. Raising her eyes to him she whispered: “If you so much as mention his name ever again, I shall leave you for good, and you will never see Arkasha again. Do you understand me, Boris?”

Her intensity startled him. Reddening, he nodded. “I mean every word of this,” she added.

“But you have to explain,” he countered. “This is a possible war we're facing—not just a decision about where to go for our next vacation!”

She brought a finger to her mouth and bit it. More tears came, and she blinked them away. “It's Arkasha,” she said, not looking at him. “I know he's ill. There's something very wrong, and I don't want him exposed to train drafts and discomforts. Oh, Borya, I've been so afraid, so afraid he'd die.”

He seized her chin and forced her to face him. “What are you saying?” he exclaimed. He took her by the shoulders and shook her once, twice. “Natalia! Why didn't you tell me? He's my child as well as yours, and if there's something wrong, for God's sake, I want to know!”

“There's something wrong, but I don't know what. Not anything common. He's never comfortable, he almost never sleeps. I stay awake and go in to him, and usually he's fretting and crying, as if he's in great pain that he can't express. It's awful. But Fröhlich's away, and I'm afraid that if we move him, he won't make it! I mean it—I just don't think he could stand a voyage.”

Boris stood up and began to pace the room. “Don't you see?” she cried. “I knew it would be awful for you, the uncertainty. Maybe it's nothing at all—just colic!”

“I doubt it, Natalia,” he answered evenly. “You're not a doomsayer. But it was wrong not to tell me. I don't know what to say. This is one hell of a mess we're in. If you'd told me before, we could have sent for Fröhlich by telegram. Now, with this bloody war about to break up every family, he'll want to stay put for a while in Vienna.”

“Arkasha wasn't born healthy,” she said softly. “No one believed me. Fräulein Bernhardt thought I was a hysterical mother.”

“For all the good they've been, we could have lived without Bernhardt and Frau Walter! Oh, Natalia, it shouldn't have lain entirely on your shoulders. But of course, I should have noticed. I suppose I was too busy planning how to get you to leave Zwingenberg, the utopia of Western Europe!”

“You couldn't have seen it,” she demurred. “The worst part was at night. One of us had to sleep. If he's ill and I've gone mad with insomnia, we shall need your refreshing sanity.”

He walked to the crib and lifted the lace curtain. She watched him touch the coverlet with the very tips of his elegant fingers, saw the curve of his agile back, of his graceful neck. A release of love burst inside her and flowed out of her, encompassing him and the baby. Incongruously, Fräulein Bernhardt's words came to mind: “What a handsome man! Is the
Herr Graf
a diplomat?”