Encore (53 page)

Galina smiled. “That's like a fairy story,” she commented.

“Perhaps. The Tzarina brought her an enamel portrait of herself—and do you know what Boris Vassilievitch gave her? A necklace of pearls, with a ruby clasp! She was so overcome that she burst into tears.”

Galina's eyebrows rose, and her mouth widened with amazement. She touched the jewels around her neck shyly. “You mean—these?” she asked.

Karsavina was amused. “Ah, she gave them to
you!
Well, now you know their origin.”

“But Tamara should have them, not I,” Galina protested.

Karsavina shook her head. “Tamara was not Boris's niece,” she replied. Again the Kussov obsession, that immaterial, essential aura that had been placed around her. Galina looked at Keynes and at Dame Edith: Then they, too, saw her only as the niece of that illustrious balletomane Boris Kussov. As if reading her thoughts, Karsavina said: “Boris Vassilievitch did much for the Ballets Russes. We all thought highly of him. He was a friend to most of us. He understood artists, and he loved them. It's a shame you didn't know him well.”

Galina wet her lips. “Perhaps I didn't, but I don't think I'll ever be able to escape him.”

Then the curtain rose, and wonder replaced the vague self-consciousness that she had been feeling. Pierre's curtain …She really knew so little about the ballet, its history, its trends and countertrends. Unlike the people in the stall with her, she was ignorant, alone with her own opinions, rough-hewn and untested. But Pierre had told her that sometimes that was a good thing, not to know too much. Then one's creative ideas could rise up fresh and personal, not borrowed or planned. She sat back, folding her legs carefully so that they would not catch on the hem of her skirt. She watched the stage, wide-eyed.

The music was lovely—an enchantment really. She had heard it before, in her parents' house, bits of it on the piano, and at the Saturday matinees at the Petersburg symphony. But the costumes were wonderful, all ribbons and flounces. And Natalia moved so exquisitely, so small and dainty and flowing, capturing youth and hope. Galina felt a momentary flush of pain. Innocence! That was what Natalia was embodying: innocence, a floating quality that no longer existed on this earth. Natalia had never been innocent—and she herself had lost her innocence long ago. But there were still some innocents: Pierre was one, incontestably. Dear Pierre, the dreamer, forever angry because life did not meet his exalted expectations!

Oh, God, she thought fervently, wincing slightly, let them stop! Let this tension break between them, let them not fight, let there be peace this one time. She closed her eyes to the beauty onstage, reliving the ugliness of reality. It pierced her own body when they argued, so bitterly, so cruelly—yet she could not assign blame to one or to the other. I wish I could escape it all, she thought and then bit her lip. Oh, no, I don't wish that! If I were not there, God only knows that they'd do to each other.

She remained immersed in her thoughts until Tamara Karsavina leaned over to point something out to her, and then she thought, ashamed: This is Natalia's clever arrangement; it is she who has created this Dance of the Three Ivans, accompanied by the coda to the grand
pas de deux.
And here I am, not looking. She raised her opera glasses to the stage, where three robust Russian
danseurs
were offering their energetic homage to Aurora and Florimund. Galina smiled: This, then, was Natalia's ovation to her husband. She had taken his essentially Russian force of life and transposed it into this virile dance at the end of a classically perfect, rather feminine ballet not of her own true making. She stood up, forgetting Maynard Keynes behind her, her young face flooded with light and hope.

Later Galina did not understand the atmosphere of tense despondency that seemed to permeate the members of the Ballets Russes. She had gone backstage at once and found everyone in an uproar. “A failure, a total failure!” Diaghilev was exclaiming, cursing in French and Russian. Natalia was sitting on a low stool, her face very pale, her eyes enormous. Pierre stood in a corner, his hands balled into fists.

“Well, there's nothing to be done about it now,” Natalia said to Diaghilev. “We can only continue, for as long as they will let us. Classicism leaves them cold, Serge Pavlovitch. They want a short burst of exoticism, the sort of diet that Fokine fed them.”

“A fine time to say that!” he retorted.

She stood up then, frail and delicate. “I said it before,” she stated succinctly. “Don't you remember, Serge Pavlovitch?” Before he could answer, she left the area, her light footsteps carrying her like a billow of gauze away from his recriminations.

Galina did not know what to do. She felt out of place, unsure of what had happened to mar this perfect evening. No one was explaining anything to her; no one had even noticed her. Pierre and Natalia had probably completely forgotten her existence! She saw Pierre stride over to the backdrop of the Enchanted Forest and kick it savagely. She rushed up and laid a hand hesitantly on his arm, restraining him. For some reason no one but she had found his outburst extraordinary. “Please,” she whispered urgently, “don't destroy your work! It was so beautiful—a real magic wood. What's wrong, Pierre?”

“The whole damned thing's wrong!” he cried. “Bloody trees wouldn't rise, nothing worked! Magic that didn't succeed. But what's to be expected? Nobody cared enough! Everybody was too busy blaming everybody else! Even Natalia had stopped caring!”

“No, she hadn't at all. I thought she was lovely. Didn't you?” she added with dismay.

He gave her a look of pure disgust. “Lovely. My wife hasn't been lovely in fifteen years. Don't talk to me of loveliness, Galina. Natalia is a workhorse, and a good, competent dancer. But she's dried up inside along the way, and it shows! She's simply not the same—in any way!”

Galina was profoundly shocked and swallowed her terror. She looked around her and saw that small groups had formed, and that, once again, no one was near them. “Look, Pierre,” she murmured, “let's go for a walk, shall we? Please, you can't just stand here like this, all wound up, ready to kill someone.”

He uttered a short laugh, like a gasp, and once more she was frightened. So much was compressed inside this man—so much that she did not understand! How could she help him? He had helped her, again and again. Embarrassed at his display of mounting hysteria, she took his arm and gently but surely propelled him outside, away from the noise and eyes of curious onlookers. He was all hers now, to somehow repair.

It was very cold outside, and she shivered in her gown. He walked at a fast pace, and although her legs were long for a girl's, she had difficulty keeping up with him. Finally he stopped in the amber light of a streetlamp. Leaning against its post, he regarded Galina as if noticing for the first time that she had come with him.

“Ah,” he said, blinking in some bewilderment. “Galya. Why did you follow me?”

“I didn't follow you. I had to lead you out before you destroyed the sets. Why was this such a failure, Pierre? I don't understand. I thought the production was marvelous.”

“But you were never here for a real success! Then, my dear, you would have been struck by the amazing difference. Tonight's audience was bored and disappointed. Revamped Petipa isn't for Londoners. They liked Fokine too much. Even Massine.”

Galina wrung her hands and looked away. “Poor Natalia,” she said. “Her first choreography—”

“She'll do many more. No one is blaming her. Her dancing was perfect, the arrangements were good. It was my sets that didn't work! But she will not let me forget this. I ruined her first show. Mark my words, sweetheart, she will never allow me to live this one down.”

“You're wrong!” Galina retorted angrily. “How can you speak of her this way? You act as though you hate her! Why, you're a selfish, cruel man, Pierre Riazhin! All these years she loved you, and took care of you, and paid your bills! And yet you accuse her of—of unmentionable insensitivities.”

He started to laugh, and she stopped, overcome with anguish and horror. She stepped back and he bent over, clutching his stomach. “Ah, my pet, the bills, the bills!” he exclaimed between gusts of bitter merriment. “Have you known all along that she was ‘keeping' me? She doesn't love me and never did. I serve a purpose, though God knows what it is at this point, because I don't!”

As he continued laughing, Galina began to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and small sobs came to her lips. She brought her hands to her face, and held them there. “Come now, I can't be that evil,” Pierre said, and he was not laughing any longer. His face was serious and drawn, the cheekbones well defined in the changing light.

“If my mother and father had lived,” Galina whispered fiercely, “they would have known how to love each other. You and she—you are criminals! Yes, criminals—I'm not exaggerating. People who waste love, who distort it the way you do, both of you …Oh, Pierre, why do you do it? Is it really so hard to love someone, to cherish that person and treat her well, to fill one's home with harmony and joy, instead of this endless wounding? You are two emotional assassins. I don't know why I stay with you, I really don't!”

But he had seized her hands and was caressing them softly. “You stay because we need you,” he replied quietly.

In February Natalia was visited in her suite at Claridge's by Serge Diaghilev, around whose eyes deep circles had been etched. He appeared old, and his massive bulk seemed proportionately shrunken. A hardness came into Natalia and, as she offered him tea and crumpets, she thought: He feels I have been forced on him, he's never liked me. And yet how hard I've tried for him—every time!

“Are we floundering badly?” she demanded, sitting across from him and cupping her chin in her hand.

“Box office receipts are disastrous. You know what's been happening,
ma chère. The Sleeping Princess
is simply not being accepted by the London public. Sir Oswald Stoll is threatening to seize everything because we have not recouped his advance.”

More kindly she said: “You can't be right every time, Serge Pavlovitch. It's a lovely ballet—in spite of our calamity on opening night, when Pierre's Enchanted Forest creaked and groaned and didn't rise. Nobody could have helped that.”

“But you were right. It was the wrong public for it, the wrong time.” His eyes sought hers, and he smiled slightly. “We're going to have to close, Natalia. Just like that. There's no other option at this point. Do you see one?”

“Frankly, no. We are none of us Croesus, Serge Pavlovitch. The best I can do for you is one thousand pounds.”

“Thank you, my dear. It will help. I shall repay you.”

She shook her head, all at once angry. “No. Use it to quell some of the troubled waters around you. All the artists who haven't received any of their salaries. The Ballet is disbanding, Serge Pavlovitch, because you were too extravagant on the decor. Yet this is a ballet for dancers! If anything, Petipa's works should have proven that to you. Above all,
The Sleeping Princess,
like
The Sleeping Beauty,
on which it is based, displays the plastic arts first and foremost. But if you insist on paying more for an Enchanted Forest than for a Florimund—what can I say?”

Diaghilev's brow shot up quizzically, and he touched the white lock of hair mingling with the dark on his head. It was always carefully dyed and had earned him the nickname Chinchilla. “My dear Natalia,” he declared, irony seeping into his voice, “surely you cannot begrudge me Fokine's three
sine qua nons
for a good ballet: the music, the setting, and the choreography in equal proportions? Come now!”

“I begrudge you nothing at all,” she answered sweetly. “It is Sir Oswald who does the begrudging, and your company of dancers. Pay them, Serge Pavlovitch. And pay my husband. But do not tell him at any time that I gave you this check. I don't want him thinking that I pay his emoluments.”

“I would try to be nice to Natalia, my dear boy,” Diaghilev warned Pierre. “Sometimes you are impatient and cause her pain. I am concerned about her.”

Something in the director's undertone caught Pierre off-balance. He glanced quickly at Diaghilev, then turned away, and a sudden flare of anger swept inside him. “A few years ago you were informing me that Riazhin was more important to you than Oblonova,” he said, his voice compressed with resentment. “Now you are reprimanding me! Why, Serge Pavlovitch? Because she is the financial backer, and I am the one responsible for the unenchanted forest? Well, it was not my fault. Blame the English machinery, but don't lecture me about my own wife!”

“Easy, Pierre. I was merely cautioning you. Natalia is a charming girl and you have not always been considerate—shall we say?—of her sensitivities. I like you both, dear boy. There is no other purpose on my part. Only sympathy.”

Pierre stood very straight, his black eyes wide with anger, and regarded Diaghilev with the most profound hatred possible. But the director laid a hand on his arm and said, quite softly: “I mean it, Pierre. No false moves, no bad feelings. We are about to crumble to ashes, and that means your reputation as well. Oswald Stoll is closing us down.”

“Then I shall do what others have done in this company!” Pierre cried. “I shall go to Massine at Covent Garden and join him!”

Diaghilev's eyes, fishlike and shining, grew narrow. “He wouldn't want to take you right now, my boy,” he said in an almost singsong undertone. “I'd take another risk with you, but he isn't in that position. Think it through, my impulsive young mustang. Think it through. Because Natalia's absolutely right: Her choreography was perfect, and I allowed your work to overshadow it. My mistake, it would appear.”

“May you both be damned!” Pierre exclaimed and strode from the room. As he passed across the threshold, he nearly collided with Natalia, whose face looked white and pinched and whose eyes he avoided with a flush of shame, hostility, and embarrassment.