Encore (47 page)

“Why is that?” Massine asked.

Diaghilev merely shrugged and lifted his hands palms up in the air.

Natalia said to the desk clerk: “You can bring the bags up. Right now I simply need to be directed to my husband's room.”

Still small, her face ringed by curls under a high-crowned velvet hat, Natalia seemed oddly proportioned. The rest of her was trim, petite, and elegant. Her skirt peeked from beneath her fur coat, eight inches from the ground, and her small buttoned boots of ivory patent leather gleamed attractively below it. The clerk looked at her with appreciation, but when his glance wandered to her midpoint, his eyes became worried. Not here, he silently begged.

The bellhop escorted Natalia to a baroque elevator, behind grilled doors. Halfway down the final hallway, a feeling of suffocation grasped Natalia's throat, and she laid a nervous hand over the young man's uniformed arm. “Wait,” she breathed. She fumbled in her purse and withdrew some lire, which she pressed into his hand. “Just give me the key,” she told him. “I can proceed from here.”

He retreated at once down the dark corridor with its tapestried walls and deep crimson carpet. She remained hesitant, and felt light-headed. It was just a feeling, and she tried to shake it off reasonably. But in the recent past, logic seemed to have deserted her completely: The events in Russia, the confusion of her own sentiments, and the pregnancy appeared to have chased order away with a cudgel. She held the key tightly in her gloved hand and arrived at the door.

Should she knock or simply open it? She did not wish to intrude upon Pierre. She had come on impulse, without warning. She had always prized a separate niche for her professional life, a kind of neatness that did not brook intrusion. She was a private person. She knocked.

It was close to two in the morning. Diaghilev and Massine had undoubtedly been on their way home from one of their late suppers. Natalia was very tired now that she had reached her destination: She did not even want to have to explain to Pierre. Let him merely hold me, she thought, which was as close to a prayer as she could come. With a stab of pain, she thought: But what am I to him now? He can't touch me the way I am. I'm simply a nuisance, in the way.

The door swung open on its well-oiled hinges and Pierre stood staring at her, squinting. He was wrapped in a large towel, from which his naked legs, powerfully muscled, emerged forlornly. The thick curls on his head fell over his eyes, and he reminded her of a young child awakening. All he needed was to rub sleep from his eyes with pudgy fists to complete the image. She touched his cheek and smiled at him, tenderness flowing into her heart. “It's all right,” she reassured him with amusement. “I'm real. I had to come, Pierre. The loneliness was unbearable, since the news of the Revolution.”

He was not reacting. His eyes had enlarged, but he stood like a statue before her, disconcerting her. He was also blocking the doorway. Feeling ridiculous with her bulging stomach, Natalia uttered a short, embarrassed laugh and squeezed by him into the room. It was dimly lit by a single lamp, and she could see the patterned carpet, the elaborate, ornate furniture: a table, two chairs with elaborate scrollwork, a portmanteau. To the far right was a large, unmade bed. The bedspread lay entangled with cover and sheet, and the pillows were scattered about. Pierre had always been disorderly.

“Natalia,” Pierre said. She turned to him, totally exhausted, ready to collapse. The smile was slipping off her face from sheer lack of strength. He appeared fully awake now, and she could not understand the expression: concern, anger, bewilderment, resentment, embarrassment? Not now, she answered mutely.
Not now.

He suddenly reached out and touched her arm, his grasp strong and imprisoning. “You're hurting me,” she said with some exasperation. “The bags should be arriving at any minute now. Put something on—or go back to bed.”

Then, she followed his gaze to the bed itself, and her extremities, fingers and toes, began to tingle with numbness. Her lips fell open. An overwhelming lethargy robbed her of rational thought. She could make out the form of someone in the bed, moving on the pillows, a young woman, wearing a white nightshirt trimmed with lace. I have one almost exactly like it, Natalia thought stupidly. She watched the girl descend from the bed, her graceful feet touch the floor. She is a dancer, Natalia thought, like recognizing like. The girl's hair was brown and shone from the soft yellow glow of the lamp. Her face was very pale and oval, a cameo.

Pierre did not move, and Natalia could not breathe. The girl stepped resolutely across the carpet toward them. She was young and pretty, though not beautiful. Neither am I, Natalia thought wryly. She had never seen the woman before and knew at once that she was not a Russian. “I don't know you,” Natalia intoned, and there was an odd note of wonder in her voice.

The woman regarded her quietly. “I'm not important, Madame Riazhina,” she replied. “I am sorry.”

“I am sorry, too. But he is a most compelling man. I do understand.”

The girl blinked. Tears came to her eyes, and she looked away. But Natalia's brown eyes pursued her relentlessly. Her gloved hand reached out to touch the other's arm. “Please tell me who you are,” she asked.

“Diaghilev calls me Vendanova. My name is really Jacqueline, Jacqueline Vendane. If I had known you—”

“Yes, well. I don't own my husband. We are all individuals, Miss Vendane. We are born alone and we die alone, a cliché but nevertheless a fact. Another is that we must live with what we do. You went into this with a clear conscience: Who could be hurt? Live with it, my dear. I don't pretend not to be hurt, but it's hardly the end of the world. Good night, then.”

Jacqueline Vendane burst into tears, her cool composure falling away like a molting skin, and she ran into the adjoining bathroom. Why is this happening to me? Natalia wondered dully. She went to the nearest armchair and fell into it heavily. Pierre still stood mutely staring at his wife. She could not look at him.

The bathroom door opened, the young British dancer stepped out, dressed and coiffed. She passed in front of Natalia without meeting her eyes, but when she walked by Pierre, he seized her arm, and her face, frightened and wondering, turned fully toward him. Pierre's dark eyes seemed to bore into her, devouring her. She shook herself loose, but he blocked her passage with his absurdly clad body. She waited for him to speak, as Natalia had waited before her. But he simply squeezed his hands into two fists and pounded them into one another in frustration. His eyes were bloodshot.

When the girl had left, Natalia sank her forehead into her right hand. The room was dancing around her in all its baroque bad taste. Finally she raised her head with extreme will power and looked at her husband. “This has been going on a long time?” she asked, in a calm but weak voice. Only her fingers continued to tremble.

He chewed on his lower lip. “Do you intend to keep seeing her?” she added. “Tell me, for God's sake!”

Pierre shook his head. “Stop it. Don't question me now. If you do, I'm going to leave, Natalia. I can't stand this!”

“You
can't? It's a pleasant diversion for me, then? Are you going to blame
me
for this? Or maybe Boris? Is that it, Pierre? All this—Vendanova—is because of your hatred for Boris Kussov? You are retaliating by humiliating me, by stripping me of all dignity, because of a dead man?”

Her voice had taken an edge of hysteria. Now Pierre walked over to her, looming above her, his jaw tensed, his eyes cavernous and gleaming. “You're always holding back from me because of that man. You take and take and take and never give me what I need. Jackie demands nothing. She's uncomplicated. I don't love her, but I don't know whether I'm ready to give her up. What a relief it is to be with a woman who's foremost a woman, and a dancer second, who doesn't have the mentality of a goddamned
prima ballerina!
You have no idea.”

Natalia's fingers twirled into her hair and tightened until the curls cut off her circulation. Her scalp burned, and she was grateful for this physical pain that obliterated her other emotions. Her face still turned to him, she said: “I have no idea. You're right. But I shall never forgive you. it isn't
la
Vendanova—she's actually immaterial. I can't forgive the hatred. You hate me, Pierre. But you don't like yourself much, either, or you wouldn't hate me so. You're a weak, twisted man—an incomplete man, half a person.”

She looked away then, her eyes filling with tears. I can't cry in front of him—not now, she thought. And then: This is worse than the last time, when I found him with Boris. Last time I needed to learn the truth. But now? This?

She felt his hands on her shoulders, his arms wrapping around her torso. “God, how we do this to each other,” he murmured, his voice breaking, as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. She felt his wet tears. “Don't turn away,” he pleaded. “Don't let me hate you. Please, Natalia, help me to be a husband to you.”

“But I never wanted you to be my husband,” she whispered. “I only wanted you to love me. To love me—not to bind yourself to me in any fashion. I did not make you send Fabiana away. You chose to do so. Don't resent me for this marriage—it was of your own doing.”

“But not yours! How do you suppose that's made me feel? Generally when a man wants to marry a girl, he doesn't have to wait eight years! And when the woman becomes pregnant, it's usually the man who is defiant. Honestly, Natalia, don't you ever imagine what it must feel like to live inside this damned skin and know, truly
know,
that the woman I love never wanted to marry me, but that there was another man whom she accepted as a husband?”

“I did not marry Boris that way,” she protested lamely. “You know that the marriage came before the love. If anyone should have been jealous, it should have been Boris. I still loved you when I became his wife. That all changed later.”

“And it's never changed back! If there hadn't been the pregnancy, you would never have agreed to a wedding. I can't be grateful, Natalia. Every day I am with you, you make me feel that you regret being my wife, that you think I forced you into having the child and marrying me. I own the most precious gem on earth but am not free to remove it from its case and wear it openly.”

“I am not a gem, Pierre. I'm a woman. Are things so bad between us that you need other women? Will you always need them?”

“This simply happened. Don't go into it, Natalia. I am a man—incomplete as you think I am. You are never with me.”

“But do you really want me along? In the beginning you were right, I did not want to come. But now I feel it's you who don't want me—you who don't include me in your plans!”

“It's you who don't wish to be a part of them,” he retaliated. “You who quarrel with Serge Pavlovitch. I am a member of his company now. I like it. For the first time without the help of kind and not so kind mentors. I'm thirty-four years old. Isn't it right that some sort of sunshine falls on me, Natalia? What do you want?”

“I want you to love me. I want you to understand me. I want us to know each other, Pierre,” Her brown eyes sought his, and she touched his cheek. “I want your success. But I don't want to be swallowed by you, to be second to you. There should be room for us to walk beside each other without resentment.”

He stood up abruptly, the towel at last falling from him and showing him splendidly naked, the muscles glistening with perspiration. “Words,” he said. “Words! I need to feel you, Natalia, to know you are my wife! I can't continue to live in shadows. You're killing me every moment we're together. You suffocate me, tear the heart right out of me. You make me become that incomplete man, that half a person.”

In the silence that followed, Natalia's throat was clogged and she could only draw small, strained breaths. At last she cried out: “But how? Tell me how, Pierre. Indict me, for both our sakes!”

He sank to his knees and enveloped his arms around her legs, laying his head on her lap. “I do love you,” he said, beginning to weep. “I do love you!”

But her face above him was ghastly, pallid, and hollow and full of anguish. She could not reach out to touch his hair, to mingle with his pain. At that very moment her own first sharp pain had pierced through her abdomen, the pain of her labor. “You never share,” he was accusing her. “You are always apart, always alone!”

F
rom the beginning
Natalia felt excluded by Pierre and his little daughter. Tamara was plumper, stronger, and more colorful than Arkady. She lay next to her mother like a foreign object: her black curls, black eyes, and small red cheeks so totally unlike Natalia that her mother found it difficult to relate to her. She was a little Tcherkess baby, a female Pierre. Tamara Petrovna, Natalia thought. Another name, this one evocative of a Russia now torn in pieces. Thamar, fittingly, had been a ruthless, lustful Caucasian queen.

Natalia had named her daughter after her much admired friend, the dancer Karsavina. But that had been her single contribution to the child since her birth. Tamara had been born in the hotel—am I destined to keep delivering in rented bathrooms? Natalia had wondered—under the care of Dr. Combes's associate, the tall, gallant Dr. Contini. The labor had been short: She had known what to expect this time, in spite of the suddenness of the initial pains. Perhaps this baby had pushed its way out with greater impatience, already possessing the will to live.

Natalia touched the child, the small crinkled fists, the tiny toothless mouth, like that of an old crone. Arkady was smoother than you, she thought. He was more noble, more subtle. He was fine and weak and translucent, and the world was too much for him. I had him once inside me, then in my arms. Once, too, I walked beside his father and we shared a bittersweet, poignant romance, fragile and tinged with ironies—a romance that sprang up unknown to us, a romance that enveloped us even as we still refused to believe in its possibility. Now I have a new family: you, my little one, and your father. Yes, you shall live: I have no doubt of that. You will cling to the pleasures of the flesh the way your father does, always clamoring for more. And I will always feel that in some measure I will not fill your needs. People like me never have enough to give to those like you.

When Pierre swept into the room, his face was ecstatic, his cheekbones flushed, his eyes glowing. He was like a tornado entering Natalia's presence. He delighted in the child but not in the same way that Boris had delighted in Arkady. To Boris, his son had simply been a miracle. He had been awed, touched, and grateful to her for having brought to life his unformed dreams. Pierre, on the other hand, relished Tamara as if she epitomized all earthly joys. She was his, and he burst with love for her, with the need to possess her and merge with her. Natalia felt that in his excitement he had forgotten her part in the formation and birth of this baby. She was jealous. At three days old, her daughter had already become the Other Woman.

Pierre was at the bright center of joy. He was happy with his creative endeavors on the ballet
Parade,
and now his daughter had completed his nerve-tingling awareness of the world. In this state of mind he was open to all things and all people. Those who had once found him sullen or moody now saw an ecstatic Pierre, not quite human but touched with the sublime. Natalia saw him, too, and recognized the young artist who had fallen in love with her and waited for her at the back entrance of the Mariinsky: an unreasoned young man, full of verve and imbalance, full of poetry, revelry, and mysticism. He had frightened her then; now she was disconcerted. Between his black brows were two strong lines etched in experience, and between the black curls were strands of gray, noticeable only when one stood close to him. She would wonder: How many see him from this close? And the agonies of her eighteenth year would return to haunt her. Could one ever trust a man like Pierre when he claimed to love a woman? Or was there simply too great a need to possess, too great a need for novelty and exploration?

She hated herself for these doubts. But her daughter's birth had left her in pain. It was taking her longer to shed the weight than the first time. Natalia went to the vanity and examined the fine, feathered lines around her large eyes. She had not done anything with her life in so long—the American interlude had been her single season, brief as it was, since 1913. To rely on one's past reputation for that long was unhealthy. A dancer's body began to change by the time she turned thirty; at twenty-seven, Natalia was nearing that, and because she had had such scant exposure to the stage in four years, she knew that her performance skills had decreased to a perilously low level. Her only exposure, in fact, had been outside of Europe. She realized all too well that she had become a legend, almost forgotten.

As soon as she could walk, she went to the company rehearsals at the Costanzi Theatre. At the end of May, they were to travel to Paris for some other performances, including Pierre's
Parade.
Meanwhile Natalia sat in the front row, silent and still, watching the present production
of The Good-humored Ladies,
a paeon to eighteenth-century Venice choreographed to music by Scarlatti. It was a gay, carefree production, based on the play by Carlo Goldini. The action revolved around a series of pranks, mistaken identities, and joyful lovemaking. Massine's dances were filled with the essence of
joie de vivre.
Nevertheless, illogically, Natalia's throat constricted. The quickly paced musical phrases, rolling in repetitive motifs, sentimental and courtly, reminded her of Boris. He had never particularly admired the Scarlatti family. But for her, right now, the expert simplicity of the toccatas and small sonatas rang true of him: all flowing charm on the surface, all cunning imagination underneath. For him, life had been a clever game of chess, which, ultimately, he had lost.

The only dancer whom she knew well in this production was Lydia Lopokhova. They had been together at the Imperial School and in New York. Now Natalia watched the other small dancer, married to one of Diaghilev's secretaries, Barocchi, and sudden anguish seized her. Lydia had always been the lesser known of the two, an excellent dancer but not quite on Natalia's level. Now Natalia thought: She is superior. Shall I ever equal her again? It was not envy, but self-doubt and self-deprecation. She had allowed her career, her better, unique self, to fall by the wayside. Now she was suddenly afraid of becoming like other women, women she had always despised for the narrow scope of their existences, women such as her mother.

She sat in the theatre and ached. She hurt because she felt shut out from her chosen life, set aside by her husband and unwilling to be bound by her little baby. Perhaps I've been wrong about Serge Pavlovitch, she thought, angry at herself for indulging in self-pity. It would have been wonderful to choreograph a ballet, many ballets. But to give up dancing in a fit of pique—I must have been mad!

On stage, Lydia Lopokhova noticed her and bent down to wave. Natalia held her hands up and made a clapping gesture in mime. Bravo, my dear. If no one cares about Oblonova, it's because Oblonova doesn't deserve it. She hasn't really cared about herself. She's become a relic.

Pierre could not sort through his feelings. He knew that she was attending the rehearsals, that she even joined the soloists when they held their practice classes. Maestro Cecchetti had told him—she had not. Pierre chewed on his lower lip and paced the floor. He took long walks. He went to the hotel and startled the nurse by seizing Tamara and bringing her with him to the workrooms. People smiled at him but were also bewildered. Pierre Grigorievitch was behaving erratically again. His exuberance would give way to anger, which in turn became a pure fount of exquisite joy. If he could combine Tama and the paint pots, he was supremely himself, a man fulfilled—almost.

One afternoon Diaghilev came upon him with Tamara in the hotel gardens. Amiably, the impresario fell into step beside him, and for a moment they ambled companionably together, smiling at the tiny infant in her red nightshirt. Then Diaghilev motioned to a bench, and they sat down, Tamara in Pierre's arms. “She is very lovely, your daughter,” the older man commented.

“I wish my mother could see her,” said Pierre. “And I wish Tamara could see our country. But Rome is a good city in which to be born—it's a city with a heart, a city for artists.”

“They call it the city of lovers,” Diaghilev said indifferently, but his sharp eyes scrutinized Pierre as he held the child, supporting her flaccid neck. He saw Pierre's cheek twitch.

“You are hardly the simpleton you allow others to make you out to be,” Diaghilev suddenly remarked. “You are certainly not a man of words, but genius has many languages, don't you think?”

Surprised and wary, Pierre stared at him with his deep black eyes. “What do you mean, Serge Pavlovitch?” he demanded. Somehow he knew that this had some bearing on Natalia. His body went rigid.

“I helped launch you. I like you and I find your work outstanding. I am proud to call you my friend. Once, too, I was Natalia's friend. I had a father's affection for her.”

Pierre's jaw set, and over his daughter's body his fingers were clamped together, white at the knuckle. “I wish to God you had put it to her in those very words,” he finally said.

“I felt like a father to her—a guide, a mentor,” Diaghilev continued. “She is still dear to me in those ways. But she rejects my overtures at reconciliation. You know of our old quarrel?”

“Quarrel? Oh yes, certainly I knew of it, Serge Pavlovitch. I am sorry if my wife has offended you. I'm certain she meant nothing of the kind. Natalia is very proud—”

“Yes, she is. It is a Kussov trait never to forget the smallest slight. You and I both had the ill luck to find ourselves more than once on the wrong side of the cannon in the Kussov camp. Of course, Natalia is only—a Kussov in-law. But don't worry: I am not insulted by her behavior. I am merely concerned. Natalia is no longer a young girl—for a ballerina, that is. Unless she dances soon, she will never again live up to her name. Do you want her to dance again, Pierre?”

The painter was startled by the directness of this query. He licked his upper lip. “Frankly, I don't know,” he replied. “There's Tamara. I want my daughter to have a mother. And I want to have a wife.”

“Most of my dancers are wives, my dear boy. One hardly precludes the other. The point is, Natalia wants to dance again. Any day now she will ask me to take her back. I'm not certain what my answer will be.”

Pierre's jaw dropped in frank amazement. “You're not? But no one is a better ballerina!”

Diaghilev inclined his massive head. “True. But right now you are the Riazhin that I need more. There are Lopokhova, Sokolova, Chabelska. But I cannot continue these ballets without my Riazhin. You are necessary to me, Pierre.”

“Thank you, Serge Pavlovitch. I am most flattered.”

“And I am most sincere. My single problem has to do with financing. Always, always the same rigmarole, the same convoluted entanglements. That was where Boris was most useful to me. I am sorry, dear boy, to keep bringing up his name, as I'm aware that you two had your share of disagreements. But during these lean times I am constantly reminded of how precious all that Kussov savoir faire was—not to mention the money.”

“For a profligate hedonist, he managed it quite well,” Pierre remarked coldly.

Diaghilev laughed. “We are all profligate hedonists, aren't we, though? Now that you are a wealthy man yourself, aren't you the least bit of a spendthrift?”

Pierre's hands began to tremble slightly. “I am not a wealthy man. My wife, as you well know, is a wealthy woman.”

Diaghilev's eyebrows shot up quizzically. “But I didn't know. Surely all's equal between a man and his wife?”

“I could not take the Kussov money,” Pierre said. “It would not have been right. Our marriage contract specifies a separation of goods. Natalia still controls her inheritance. Now, of course, she's one of the few wealthy Russians left. Boris Kussov had his funds transferred to France and Switzerland years ago.”

“I see. You are a generous man, Pierre. I trust that Natalia appreciates that. Most people would be shocked to hear that you are not a joint tenant to her estate. After all, you are the head of your family. And, as I stated before, you are far from being a fool.” He started to chuckle, shaking his head amiably from side to side. “You will now judge me to be the fool. For you see, I was going to come to you on bended knee to beseech you to invest some of your money in the Ballet. Now I fear that the money I plead for is not yours to offer.”

White-faced, Pierre rose, his daughter clutched in his arms. “I shall speak to Natalia,” he said shortly. “If, as you say, I am no fool, then she will do as I ask. After all, the Ballet may be yours, Serge Pavlovitch, but it is also mine. I could not let it go to ruin because of foolish—yes, foolish—pride. Kussov or not, the money is solvent.”

“And if she truly wishes to rejoin our company, a father's arms will, of course, be wide open. I do not generally allow older stars to make comebacks—but for Oblonova, I might make an exception. If she works very hard, and if her husband gives her his permission.”

The teasing irritation in Diaghilev's voice finally made Pierre angry. The painter's cheeks reddened, and his muscles tensed. ‘That's enough, Serge Pavlovitch,” he said in a furious undertone. “Or I shall know once and for all how much of a fool you deem me.”

Tall and massive, he turned on his heel and marched away toward the hotel. The baby began a bleating refrain of protest, but for once he ignored her totally. His mind had become a churning tide of fury. But, oddly enough, the focus of his hatred was, once again, Boris Kussov.

Natalia leaned her head on her arms and closed her eyes. The letters and business documents she had been working on were starting to depress her and she was trying to avoid despondency by keeping safely to the factual and the obvious. How strange, she thought, that I have thus turned out to be a financial manager—I, who wanted only to dance! But someone had to keep track of the family estate. Pierre had neither the head nor the inclination for it, and in a way she was relieved. Doing things herself had always been her particular approach to life, apart from the few years when Boris had been there to do them for her.