Encore Read online

  Encore

  Monique Raphel High

  Contents

  Copyright

  New Release Newsletter

  Praise for Encore

  Also by Monique Raphel High

  Quotation

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  New Foreword To The Second Edition

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Four

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part Five

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  Smart Women’s Fiction

  Encore

  Monique Raphel High

  * * *

  This edition published by

  Penner Publishing

  Post Office Box 57914

  Los Angeles, California 91413

  www.pennerpublishing.com

  Copyright © 1981, 2016 Monique Raphel High

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Encore/Monique Raphel High2nd. Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-944179-14-4

  New Release Newsletter

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  Praise for Encore

  “An all-stops-out romantic saga…a strong blend of passion, tragedy and art in a huge, colorful novel.”

  -Publisher’s Weekly

  * * *

  “Over 700 pages of extravagantly emotive grands jetés, in which three passionate Russians—an exquisite prima assoluta, an artist, and a brilliant aristocratic balletomane—sob and soar through the tumultous, Diaghilev-dominated days of the modern Russian ballet (circa 1905-1927).”

  -Kirkus Review

  * * *

  “A magnificent novel of passion and tragedy set against the world of dance in the opulen Russia of Nichala and Alexandra.”

  -Magainze & Bookseller

  Also by Monique Raphel High

  The Four Winds of Heaven

  The Eleventh Year

  The Keeper of the Walls

  Thy Father’s House

  Between Two Worlds

  “Dancers were allowed to give two or even more encores; there were no restrictions. But when the Tsar and Tsarina were present, if the audience demanded a third encore, we had to turn to the Imperial Box and wait for a signal from the Emperor and Empress…. When she nodded her consent, I curtsied low and reembarked on my coda to a veritable storm of applause.”

  MATILDA KCHESSINSKAYA, Dancing in Petersburg

  For my friend Ellen Yamasaki Williams, who encouraged me to write this book and can still quote from it verbatim. And for Robb, whose book this was from the beginning. And for all the ballet lovers of the world . . .

  “If two lives join, there is oft a scar.

  They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.”

  Robert Browning, By the Fireside, xlvi

  New Foreword To The Second Edition

  In further researching the history of my Russian family, the Barons Gunzburg, about whom I wrote in The Four Winds of Heaven, I discovered that my great-great-uncle, Baron Dmitri Goratsievitch de Gunzburg, had been an intimate of impresario Serge Diaghilev’s and his principal backer during the years of the Ballets Russes. Before that, Dmitri had been an active backer of the Mariinsky ballet in Saint Petersburg. He was an enigmatic character, used in the 1980 Herbert Ross film Nijinsky. It was Dmitri who translated Vaslav Nijinsky’s shipboard proposal to his “groupie” Romola de Pulszky, a proposal that had repercussions throughout the artistic world of the time.

  Encore is a work of fiction based on true happenings that occurred within the ballet, both the Mariinsky in Saint Petersburg and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Western Europe. Although Count Boris Kussov is not my uncle, he was largely inspired by him.

  I have allowed my lead characters to usurp the roles of actual dancers, painters, and choreographers who made the Mariinsky and the Ballets Russes famous. Thus, well-known works by Bronislava Nijinska, Picasso, Larionov, Gontcharova, as well as parts played by Karsavina and other illustrious ballerinas, have in this novel been assigned to my own protagonists. This was done in tribute to these eternal Masters and Mistresses of the Ballet—not in any way to take from their greatness.

  As in The Four Winds of Heaven, I have used the Russian naming tradition of official first name, patronymic, and last name when formality has been called for: “Count Boris Arkadievitch Kussov,” “Princess Nina Arkadievna Stassova,” etc. The nicknames (“Borya” for “Boris,” “Petya” for “Pierre,” “Arkasha” for “Arkady,” and all the other diminutives), appear when tenderness or closeness is intended. They are rather simple to figure out. I have also called Pierre, Léon Bakst, and Serge Diaghilev by their French names, rather than “Pyotr,” “Lev,” and “Sergei.” In his world, Diaghilev was indeed called “Serge,” but although his friends nicknamed him “Seriozha,” it seemed better to keep it simple. The same applies to Bakst. As for my choice of Pierre over Pyotr, I find the former easier on the eye and on the tongue for us Westerners than its Russian counterpart.

  In an effort to conform to the Russian world in which both women made their mark, I have called prima ballerina Mathilde Kchessinska “Kchessinskaya,” and choreographer Bronislava Nijinska “Nijinskaya.” Again, this choice was made in an effort not to tax my readers any more than they already will be by the complexity of Russian nomenclature.

  The rather formal style is meant to convey the atmosphere of the upper-class European world from the turn of the twentieth century to the late Twenties.

  I want to thank the wonderful editors at Delacorte, who published the original work, and my all-star editors at Penner Publishing for reissuing the novel. As always, kudos to my literary managers and friends at G.H. Literary, Italia Gandolfo and Renée C. Fountain. And, then and now, a deep curtsey to my close friend, ballerina emerita Barbara Chesney Schmir, whose careful eye looked over every jetée and entrechat I recreated and helped make them real.

  -Monique Raphel High

  January 2016

  Los Angeles, California

  Part One

  The Mariinsky

  Chapter 1

  From the outside, the Mariinsky Theatre appeared elegant and stately, a palace of smooth Grecian lines where it seemed fitting to produce flowing performances of the Imperial Ballet. Boris Vassilievitch Kussov, however, knew the
edifice from the inside out, and now, hurrying through its dark corridors, his mind passed over his interview with the director, General Teliakovsky. They had discussed many matters regarding the current state of unrest at the Ballet. The younger dancers wanted more autonomy and were demanding changes. But Teliakovsky was of the old guard and did not think that lesser members of the company had the right to pit their own small experience against that of the Mariinsky’s choreographer, Marius Petipa, who had been producing splendid ballets and revivals for half a century. He had asked Boris Kussov to confer with him because Count Boris was an important patron, respected by all concerned. But little had been accomplished.

  All at once, however, Boris Kussov’s thoughts were interrupted by a small invasion of students from the Imperial School of Ballet. Ah, yes, he thought, stepping aside to let them pass, they are coming here to rehearse for the Christmas production of The Nutcracker. Then his eye, casual and amused, was caught by the girl who headed the little procession. She was older than the rest but wore the same blue-gray uniform of the student dancers. She was small and slight, and her compact young body at first reminded him of a boy’s. In the semi-darkness of the corridor, her tender heart-formed face glowed, translucent as skim milk, the blue veins in her temples gently throbbing. Her eyes were almond-shaped and very brown, almost russet. They met his own without shyness, only curiosity. Her nose was too long and thin, and her lips had a sculpted delicacy, sharply defined and rather bloodless. But it was the neck that made him look twice: A smooth, vulnerable line, it proudly supported her head with its bun of fine mahogany hair.

  “Excuse me,” the girl said, and then she was gone, her receding figure hidden from him by the group of younger pupils. He forgot her: just another ballerina in the forming, not as extraordinarily ethereal as Anna Pavlova, or as blooming and fresh as Karsavina or Lydia Kyasht. The directress of the ballet school, Varvara Ivanovna Lithosherstova, graduated girls like these every spring, and it was impossible to predict which ones would rise to stardom and which would remain ensconced in the corps de ballet. Count Boris Kussov raised the astrakhan collar of his coat and steeled himself for the bleak December winds of Theatre Street.

  As he spotted his carriage, he thought gloomily: It is almost Christmas again, but why, then, is joy eluding us? The last two years snapped into focus, first the war with Japan in ‘04, which had decimated the Russian navy, and then the year now coming to a close, 1905. For over a month, a workers’ strike had virtually immobilized St. Petersburg, his lovely city. Nearly a year ago on Bloody Sunday, armed Cossacks had fired upon a peaceful procession bearing a petition to Tzar Nicholas II. The Tzar, who was not Boris’s favorite member of the Imperial Family—his own intimate friend was the Tzar’s uncle, the Grand Duke Vladimir, expansive and a lover of the arts—had not been at the Winter Palace, where the procession of innocents had been headed. But Boris’s own victoria had nearly been overturned in the mêlée, and his coachman hurt. And now even in the rarified atmosphere of the Mariinsky there hung clouds of unrest, germs of dissent.

  “Home, for God’s sake, Yuri,” he said to the driver as the latter bundled him into the warmth of his carriage. Abruptly he recalled the girl’s white face, her autumn eyes, and an odd thought occurred to him. “You, too, have not known joy,” he said to her remembered image. She was so young, and very nearly beautiful—but somehow incomplete, somehow tarnished. And then he smiled ironically. What a fool he was, speaking to himself! . . .

  When Count Boris Vassilievitch Kussov entered his bachelor quarters on the Boulevard of the Horse Guard, not far from the Winter Palace where the Tzar resided, he was heartened by the orange-red flames that crackled in the fireplace. The thick quilt that his coachman had placed upon his lap in the victoria had not kept him warm in the subzero weather, and he was cold to his very bone. His valet removed the fur coat, and now Boris stood with his back to the fire, surveying the charming living room, the only place where his restive soul ever felt at peace. His intellectual friends mocked his taste for personal luxury but had to grant him excellent marks for decoration. Small tables with delicate inlays stood beside Louis XV chairs and love seats, and Renaissance paintings made interesting contrasts with sketches by his friend, Léon Bakst, and the green and gold hues of a Cézanne. Boris touched the Delia Robbia enamel medallion hanging above the alabaster fireplace and felt revived. “Do I have an appointment, Ivan?” he asked rather absently.

  The valet cleared his throat. “Yes, Excellency. The young man from the Academy of Fine Arts is coming here in fifteen minutes. Pierre Riazhin.”

  “Riazhin? I had forgotten. But I did finance his studies, didn’t I? And now he’s graduated? Probably a jaded young man who paints with the constipation of all the Academics.” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Or maybe he’s rebelled and joined the Ambulant school—then he’s probably crude and intense, as befits the son of a liberated serf, out to educate the mujiks. Ah, well, Ivan, prepare us a lavish tea. But without caviar and such. This Riazhin comes at a bad time. I’m exhausted.”

  When the servant had departed, Boris walked to the large gilt mirror and examined his reflection. He was indeed tired, but his fatigue in no way detracted from the artistry of his elegant figure, which was like one of his own beloved works of art. The mirror did not reveal his tall stature, his slender hips, but it captured the symmetry of his straight shoulders and narrow waist, of his poised neck and long face. His eyes, a light, metallic blue, made him look cold, and his hair, pure Florentine gold interspersed with an occasional thread of gray, was brushed back from a high forehead. The creases at the outer corners of his eyes, coupled with the somewhat lopsided smile of his rather thin lips, hinted at irony rather than mirth. His nose was aquiline, with nostrils that quivered like those of a nervous Thoroughbred. He put a fingernail to his waxed mustache, then gently scratched beneath his neatly trimmed beard. People had told him he resembled his mother, who had died in his youth, and Boris was pleased, for Countess Kussova had been one of the great beauties of Tzar Alexander’s court. One of Russia’s treasures, he thought with wry amusement. His friend, Serge Diaghilev, had created quite a stir earlier that year by setting up a massive exhibition of national masterpieces at the Tauride Palace: What a shame that he had not had a portrait of the deceased countess at his disposal….

  The doorbell sounded, gently muted, and presently Ivan entered, announcing Monsieur Pierre Riazhin. Boris did not think he had ever met the young man, for over the years he had supported many artists and musicians during their education. Boris felt in the artistic endeavors of other men a vicarious catharsis that filled a void in his own being. Now, he looked up to see Riazhin enter—and at once, he registered surprise.

  Pierre Riazhin was not elegant. He was young, perhaps twenty-two, and if Boris had not seen him face to face, he might not have noticed any quality to set Pierre apart from others. But Boris saw the vitality in Pierre’s face, square and strong with high cheekbones healthily flushed, from which dark eyes beneath thick black brows moved with instant attention over the delicate furnishings of the room and over Boris himself. Riazhin’s body was compact and quick, and his host thought: He is a black panther out of its element, sniffing at a strange lair. But the young man’s clothing denoted, above all, spare means. He clasped a large portfolio beneath his arm. “Sir,” he said. He gave a quick jerk of a bow, and Boris was suddenly glad that he had not said “Excellency.” He himself

  said to the valet: “We shall have the caviar sandwiches, Ivan.”

  Boris Kussov motioned his caller to a small settee facing the fire and sat down in an armchair on the side. “My dear Riazhin,” he began, with a charming smile, “I have forgotten your patronym. You are Pierre …?”

  “Pierre Grigorievitch Riazhin. I have come to you for several reasons, sir. First of all—”

  “Yes, yes, we can dispense with that. You want to thank me, of course. I accept your thanks. But I am curious as to what sort of brushstrokes I have set in motion,
so to speak. When did you finish at the Academy, Pierre Grigorievitch?”

  “In the spring. I then returned to my native Georgia in the Caucasus and have attempted to put together the best of my work. I wished to show it to you in this small collection, for I know that your opinion is valued by painters whom I greatly admire.”

  “Ah. And who may they be?” Boris accepted the large portfolio and laid it open on his lap. An intense splash of color drew his attention, and he forgot the young man and instead concentrated on the riot of magentas and oranges on the page before him. Riazhin had depicted a girl, a gypsy or a peasant, Boris could not be sure, but a girl of the wild, of the Steppes. Her look was defiant, maybe angry, certainly proud. To Boris she resembled the young man in his sitting room.

  “I can see why you planned a trip to your homeland,” Boris said, slowly stroking his mustache. “I do not know that area well—the Caucasus. But you belong there, in full costume: a long red tunic closed with gold braid and a sling of cartridges around your chest, your rifle at your back, black trousers stuffed into high boots of fine leather. With a fur cap upon your black curls, to complete the effect. Certainly a vast improvement over your present attire, I dare say.”

  But the young man did not smile. His eyes blazed offense.

  “Is it true then that Caucasians punish the slightest affront with a shot in the back?” Boris continued, mockingly.

  Riazhin clenched his fists in his lap, then regarded the older man with disconcerting directness. “Not quite, sir. When a guest offends us, we smile so long as he remains within our premises. He may kill our brother or rape our sister, yet that does not alter our obligation as hosts. But when he bids us farewell, and we escort him out, hospitality ceases the minute he crosses the boundary line of our domain. At that point, revenge is ours. It is possible, sometimes likely, that we may shoot him then. We are savage, cruel but proud. In the capital we learn to adjust, but when we are children, we are taught to ride wild horses long distances, and so we grow up as centaurs, half man, half beast.” The young man was smiling, revealing large white teeth between full, sensuous lips.