Encore (58 page)

She took his arm, and they walked to a corner of the enormous reception room. “I met your niece a few months ago,” Stuart said. “Did she tell you about it? At the Château Caucasien? I even saw your house and had a brief encounter with some man whom I assumed to be your husband. Tell me, does he always greet his guests with scowls and shouts of anger?”

“I don't know anything about this,” Natalia said, feeling suddenly cold in the warm room.

“Oh? Well then, I assume it wasn't very important. How are you? Apart from the stage, I mean.”

“I'm quite well. All right. But what's this about Galina and Pierre? And why didn't you come to see me if you were in Paris all this time?”

He raised his eyebrows quizzically and shook his head. “I helped Galina rid herself of some silly college boys, and Pierre was not amused. I don't think he took my chivalry the way it was offered. As for you, my dear—I've followed you about in the papers, and I've always been proud of your accomplishments. But it's not easy to forget. A friendship such as ours leaves its share of scars. I did love you, you know. Now it's been seven years, and no, I haven't moped about playing the romantic young fool, beating his breast while another man makes off with his fair maiden. But still, Natalia, you can't expect it not to hurt, being in the same city and being reminded daily that you are here with someone else.”

She bit her lower lip, suddenly embarrassed. Wordlessly, she shook her head. He patted her shoulder and said, with amusement: “It's all right. Life goes on. This Trojan prince never did get his Helen, but think of the carnage we avoided! We'll always be friends, Natalia. That's one of the reasons why I came tonight. I wanted to congratulate you, and to see you again. But for a girl who's just won at bingo, you don't look very happy. What's up?”

“I don't know,” she answered, looking at him with her large brown eyes. “Maybe Serge Pavlovitch was right. Maybe a woman can't handle this sort of thing—you tell me, Stu.”

He started to laugh. “But I'm not an oracle,” he demurred. “Wrong profession. How can I help?”

She held out her glass. “You can refill this and tell me all about your new book,” she said brightly. “I loved
Night Before Sunburst.
But your last one—
Toys That Don't Work
—that was so sad, so terribly depressing, Stu. So much waste among the rich set in your country.”

“For a Russian
contessa
without a country of your own, you are an arrogant one, aren't you?”

“But really now. Isn't there any hope at all? Can't there at least be one toy that functions properly?'.'

He poured amber champagne into her raised
coupe
and met her intense brown eyes with playful green ones. “Oh, come on, Natalia,” he commented lightly, “this is a party, remember? And in any case, you know I'm not a prophet, as I said earlier. I just chronicle what I see. But here's to us, and to the Ballet, and to your success! Drink up and be merry.”

In the back of the room Galina saw Stuart tilt up Natalia's chin and place one quick kiss on her lips. She shivered and walked away. She could not see the tears that glistened in Natalia's eyes, could see nothing but what lay inside herself. Suddenly it had become imperative that she leave, that she take her bag and coat and go home. Here the world was askew, here she would find no questions answered. She opened the door into the hallway behind her, and walked with long, rapid strides to the room where she had seen the maid place the wraps.

Galina stood alone in the dimly lit room and glanced at her reflection in the full-length mirror. She had designed this outfit herself and had it made by Natalia's seamstress. It was a long tunic that billowed out over tight pants, all black silk. The dainty fashions do not fit me, I am too big, she had thought. This will be “me.” Now she admitted that this parody of the masculine tuxedo was exactly what she'd needed. It made her look distinctive, setting off her tall structure as proud rather than awkward. As usual, her blond mane flowed over shoulders and breasts; and she wore no makeup. The Americans, she knew, had found her odd.

Ah well, she thought, suddenly amused. What difference can all this possibly make: who I am, what I look like? But the door was opening, and with quick embarrassment, she seized her black cape and her small bag. She moved into the shadows and watched to see who would emerge, hoping it would be a total stranger.

But it was Pierre, still in his evening suit, his ruffled white shirt emphasizing his darkness, his broad, sharp maleness, his quickness of gesture. She felt her throat beginning to swell, her ears to hurt from the beating pulse. “I'm going home now,” she stammered. “I don't know a soul here—”

“You know me,” he retorted sharply, unkindly.

“I can't always stay with you and Natalia. I must get out on my own. You can see that, can't you?” she asked. “In fact, I've been mulling over an idea. I'd like to find an apartment of my own, as well. I need the space.”

“Need the space? God, Galina, Bugeaud has space enough for ten of us, plus servants! Don't be ridiculous!”

“I'm an artist just as much as you are, Pierre,” she said coldly. “I'd be more comfortable by myself, in an attic somewhere, overlooking Paris. Luxury isn't everything, you know!”

“No,” he repeated softly and looked at her. “It isn't everything.”

They remained standing apart, their eyes on each other. Then, his voice so low that she could hardly hear him over the strains of music from the party room, he asked: “What are we going to do, Galina? We have to do something.”

“But there's only one thing
to
do: I shall go and find another place to live,” she answered, suddenly relieved, calmed, now that it was out in the open.

“That's no solution. When the wound is bad, you amputate the limb, not bind it in gauze. Eventually, bandage or none, the limb falls off.”

“But if I go, that's exactly what will happen,” she countered. “The limb will have fallen off by itself and cause no more pain.”

He came to her and tried to take her hands, but she motioned for him to back away from her. “Don't,” she said in her clear, grave voice. “Don't do this. Just say whatever it is you feel should be said, and then I'm going to leave.”

“I can't tell you strongly enough how sickened I am by your solution. It's ghastly, Galina. And it's childish. Just because you'll sleep elsewhere isn't going to remove the problem. She'll still want to see you. If, that is, she ever lets you go in the first place. She loves you more than anyone on earth, more than Tamara, more than …me.”

“Yes,” Galina murmured. “I know. And it hurts. The whole thing hurts, it hurts us all. At least if I go, you two will keep on, and then later, when I've married, I can come back to you—to both of you.”

“When you've married? You can speak so blithely about this when you know how it is …between us?”

She twisted her hands together and looked away. “Nothing lasts forever,” she said bitterly. “Life, love—you know that, too. You loved her all these years—all these years—and now suddenly you think you love me, and I don't know if it's true, I don't know! The point is that one day I shall wake up free of you, as she did once also, and I shall be glad, and love another man who will be able to love me, with his whole heart. For as long as it lasts.”

“But I can't let that happen, Galina,” he said. He placed his hands on her shoulders and kept them there, looking into her face, so close to his, so pure and pink, the eyes so magnificently proud and azure, the eyes of a goddess. “I want to live with you, I want to be the one that loves you. You were a child when you came to us two years ago. And yet, not a child. You saw how things were—between her and me. How could you seek to preserve—that—to the detriment of—this, which is good, young, healthy? She never really loved me, or it wouldn't have gone bad. It was always Boris! And for me—I can't put it into words. It was a kind of possession. I wanted her and I couldn't have her, and I wanted what the world had, I wanted to devour her talent and make it mine, too. Oh, I don't justify any of this—or rather, of course, I do, but it's so bloody complicated, and your handling it as if it were a simple case of jumbled ABC's doesn't help us at all, not at all!”

Slowly he let his hands drop and sat down on an ottoman to the right of her. She watched him, motionless, as he pressed his fingers to his eyes. She watched him with a kind of eerie fascination, her emotions frozen inside her. “Do you know,” she finally said, “I understand her better than I do you. She and I are alike. We've lost so much, we've lost our very worlds, and yet, somehow, we managed to survive when others didn't. But you—you don't know what it's like to lose anything!” Her blue eyes widened, the pupils dilated. “And yet you're one of these people who shouldn't suffer, who should always be protected. I wish ... I wish I could stay to protect you, Petya, but I can't, I can't. For you see, I must survive this, too, like the death of my mother, like my family being burned alive. I have to make this love die inside me, so that I can keep on.”

He raised his head and saw that she had swung the cape around her like a cloak of gloom. Her blond hair cascaded over it, and she opened the door, a tall, black figure with yellow hair, leaving the small room. He wanted to rush up behind her, to crush her to him, to preserve her for himself forever—but he willed himself to sit still, to watch her depart. She had called him Petya, like Boris Kussov.

“So,” Natalia said, massaging her ankles, “you pack the next day after my biggest success. Do you think
Les Noces,
and the silly reviews in the newspapers, will compensate me for the loss of you, my dear, sweet child?” There was a faint glimmer of amusement in the brown eyes, but also something else, more remote, more faint.

“It isn't as if we won't see each other,” Galina said, sitting down. They were in Natalia's Chinese boudoir, the scene of so many of their intimate talks, and this made the girl acutely uncomfortable, watching her aunt.

“Stay, and then I'll help you find that blessed artist's garret,” Natalia suggested. “But this way—where are you going, Galina?”

“To a friend's, from the Beaux-Arts. I'll be eighteen in two months, and at my age you'd been living on your own for a full year.”

“Ah, yes. With Lydia ... I can't deny you your independence, Galya. I was the same at your age, and I'm not so old now that I can't remember that. It's just that—well, this is so sudden. What's really wrong, dear?”

Galina shook her head and looked away. “Nothing. I don't want to live in your shadow anymore. You've done so much for me, Natalia! You've been so dear to me, so generous, so loving! And all I've done is take! Now I'd like to see what life is really like, without help from anyone.”

“You saw what it was like in Tbilis, and in Constantinople,” Natalia retorted dryly. “And it wasn't very pleasant. We don't spoil you unnecessarily, Galina. Pierre does that to Tamara, but then that's a different story.” Her eyes fastened on the girl. She breathed in rapidly and said sharply: “It's Pierre, isn't it? Stuart Markham told me about a quarrel, some kind of problem. Did you quarrel with Pierre?”

“Yes,” Galina answered, much too quickly. She held her hands immobile in her lap, like dead weights. “Ask him, you'll see that it can't be mended—”

There was something in Galina's eyes, in the eager expression on her face that Natalia recognized, that pulled at her with such sudden force that for a moment she could not breathe at all. “Galina,” she said. A vein was throbbing on her temple. “Galina, no!”

The girl stood up, upsetting a book that her aunt had been reading. “I've got to leave now,” she stammered.

Natalia's eyes held her. “Not this,” she finally said. Tears came to her eyes, and she brushed them impatiently away. “Galina, sit down. Listen. You're eighteen. Your father was far away from you, then he was dead—and so of course now there's Pierre. It's normal, all girls feel this way! We grow up loving our fathers because who else can a little girl love? It's my fault for not giving you a proper début, for not introducing you to interesting young men! Pierre was all you had! For God's sake, Galina!”

Galina began to tremble. Natalia could see her whole body starting to shake, as though she had the palsy. “Darling, he doesn't know this, does he—how you feel?” she asked the girl.

Galina blinked, and tears fell on her cheeks. “He does know,” Natalia intoned, and all at once her limbs were cold, and her heart was numb. “He knows. So if he knows and hasn't told me—then that means—” She fell silent, and now she too started to tremble uncontrollably. Galina continued to weep and Natalia turned on her, blood rushing to her cheeks. “Galina,” she said, and her voice cracked slightly. “Galina, don't be a fool. He doesn't love you, except as a child, his own child—or as a young sister whom he cherishes. You've grown up, you're a woman now, at least physically—but you're not ready for a serious involvement, least of all with a man like Pierre.”

“Yet you were at my age!” Galina exclaimed suddenly. “You were even younger than I, weren't you? Do you think you know him so much better, that you can make him so much happier than I could? What makes you believe that, Natalia? You've hurt him and slighted him and God knows what else, and now you want to tell me that he's too much for me—but not for you?”

Natalia hid her face in her hands, and Galina saw tears trickling through her fingers and waited. “Yes,” the older woman sighed, “he's too much for you. Don't avoid the obvious. When I was seventeen and fell in love with him, he was twenty-four years old! Now he's a man of forty, Galina, a man with a lifetime of disillusionments, of despairs and glories. I can understand him because I've watched him grow, and because I've learned to be with him. I've earned that right!”