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  Natalia went onstage and felt the response as she had never felt it at the Mariinsky, in spite of the balletomanes and the claques. Paris was ready for Fokine, for the Russian dancers, for Benois’s costumes of grace and lightness. She began her number: slow, then faster, with pauses for effect. She heard cries, applause, and a lump rose in her throat. Boris sat in his box, surrounded by elegant people: Misia, the comtesse Greffuhle, Diaghilev. Natalia gave herself up to her interpretation. There was gold inside her veins, wine and ambrosia. Karsavina and the sublime Nijinsky joined her, and their movements were filled with joy, three youthful bodies, three souls, mingling, joining, reaching the audience, making the supreme connection.

  It was over. Natalia was bathed in perspiration, but, as Karalli and Mordkin went to take their curtain call, as the tumult in the stalls and rows resounded like a volley of gunfire exploding close at hand, Karsavina put her arm around her and they fell back, exhausted, laughing, triumphant. It was time for their own encore. They stood on either side of Nijinsky. The others would have to dance again, in Le Festin, but for Natalia it was over, the evening was finished. It was time to change and join the others in Boris’s box.

  Already people were pressing backstage, not even waiting for the next number. Natalia made her way to her dressing room, and before she could reach it she saw the bejeweled ladies with their tuxedoed escorts, forming a crowd. Someone touched her, grabbed her, hugged her. “La jolie Oblonova!” she heard, and grew dizzy, smelling the expensive scents, reeling from the refractions of sapphires and rubies. “L’inoubliable Oblonova! another cried, and then a strong male voice said: “Laissez-la passer, laissez-la donc, nom de Dieu!”

  It was Boris, it had to be; he seemed to turn up in places like these. She tried to reach his extended hand, found it, grasped the fingers. He was holding her, supporting her, almost carrying her, and then they were in the dressing room filled with roses and boxes of chocolate. She smiled at him, her lips trembling, and he said urgently: “You’ve won! All of you—the Russian Ballet, the designers, the musicians. It’s the most marvelous success I’ve ever witnessed!”

  She took his hands. “We wouldn’t have reached Paris without you,” she reminded him. “It’s your success too.” Her eyes were limpid and wide.

  He kissed the top of her head. “Les français t’adorent” he said. And then, growing authoritarian, he added: “Hurry up. I don’t want to miss the Polovtsi tribe in the throes of violence!”

  Boris took the newspapers to her in the morning and made her read aloud from them, saying, “I didn’t spend all my money on these French lessons for nothing, did I?” He sat on the small ottoman while she read. Praises for the Russian dances, for the choreography, for the ballerinas and Nijinsky. Praises for Diaghilev, praises for Benois and Tcherepnine. And then she came to it: a photograph of her, Natalia.

  “Robert Brussel says that I am ‘a return to ancient Greece, where the women knew how to live, love, and feel,’” she exclaimed with a little laugh. “Oh, Boris—’L’Oblonova est un oiseau immortel, une femme oiseau.’ An immortal bird! What a kind, generous thing to write, don’t you think?” She was red with embarrassment and also with excitement and pleasure.

  “He hasn’t seen you yet as Tahor, or as a Sylphide. And in the meantime, let us see if you can improve for the premiere. Most of the official reviews don’t come out till after then, you know.”

  He had made her no extravagant gift, nothing with which to celebrate the triumph. Ah, then, he was waiting for the premiere tonight. And Pierre? Unable to stop herself, she asked, her pulse racing, “Was anyone else in the box with you, before I came?”

  Her question broke up the atmosphere like a snowball hurled into a hothouse. She regretted it immediately. Boris stared at her distastefully. Rising, he tossed the newspaper, which she had laid on his lap, onto the Chinese carpet. “Don’t be a fool, Natalia,” he said in a clipped tone. “If anyone had been with me, he would have stayed for the rest of the show. And last night would have been a more appropriate time to ask me, don’t you think?”

  Pierre has stopped caring for me and Boris can’t, she thought desperately, her bright joy fading to a purple ache. The review lay on the carpet like a forgotten relic.

  Natalia would never forget the night of the premiere. The atmosphere backstage was joyful, a tense joy that bound everyone together in a winning team. There was also fear: What if something went wrong? What if the critics turned against them? The répétition générale had been like an engagement party: There was still the wedding to come, and the lengthy marriage between the Parisian public and the Russian artists.

  Once on stage Natalia felt confident. The Russians were the exotic jewels with which the French, hungry for new and more exciting experiences, were adorning themselves this season. She felt a flow of love for them, wanting them to love her too, wanting their extravagant praises. This was the release, the fulfillment—this was exactly why she had put aside her life in order to dance, why she had told Pierre that marriage was out of the question. Katya Balina Marshak would never experience this oneness with hundreds of people. It was not at all like loving a single man. She felt swept away, exultant, febrile, alive—as if she would never die, never feel fear again.

  She knew that she had never danced so well. It was the start of a new season, a new vigor, a new femininity and virtuosity. She glowed. She went into her dressing room to change, buoyed by her taut joy and vibrant nerves.

  When the performances ended and Boris took her arm to leave the Châtelet, she heard Diaghilev say: “Natasha, you are the new Taglioni. Wait until tomorrow’s papers!” She wanted to cry but didn’t. It was a time for celebration. He had called her Natasha, the little mouse Natasha, ugly, odd little Natasha. What would her parents have said about her tonight? It did not matter: She was free of them, exultantly free, a woman at last.

  Outside on the pavement, she felt Boris’s arm tense up. Glancing up, she saw that he was rigid in his evening wear, tall and frozen. A pang of fear shot through her, a premonition. She clung to his arm, wanting to infuse her own life into him. He stood looking at a woman, and now she looked too, curiously and with apprehension. It was a young woman with dull blond hair piled ridiculously high with curlicues, a woman with a pert nose, a small body, and an enormous white fur cape. Natalia blinked back wonder, but Boris did not move, and the woman stared at him too, her blue eyes widening. Natalia whispered, “Come on, Boris. Serge Pavlovitch is holding the car for us. The supper—”

  But now the other woman stepped forward, until she stood barely a foot away from Natalia and Boris. People had begun to form a circle around them, mystified by this strange approach. The woman held her finger out, pointing at them, and then she began to scream in a hysterical voice: “That’s’ her, that’s Oblonova! That’s the whore who took my husband!”

  Horrified and disbelieving, Natalia grabbed Boris’s arm and shook it, shivering under her coat. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Who is that? Please, please, let’s go!” she pleaded. All around her people had stopped, hearing the name Oblonova. “Yes, yes, that’s l’Oblonova!” they said, trying to touch her. Boris drew her closer to him but still would not budge.

  The woman paled and cried, hoarsely, wildly: “Do you see her, everybody? She took my husband from me, the common prostitute! He left me on our wedding night to go to her, the strumpet, the whore, the whore!”

  The commotion had drawn a larger crowd. Suddenly a man jumped out, a distinguished though nondescript man of middle age in a tuxedo and opera hat. He took the woman by the shoulder and began to whisper to her. He was murmuring in Russian: “Marguerite, it’s all right, it’s all right, don’t think of him, let’s go.” Then he said the same words in French. Diaghilev came running, having heard the hysterical voice.

  A policeman drew near, and the crowd began to disperse, whispering loudly and angrily. Diaghilev seized Boris’s arm in an iron vise and brought him to the waiting car. “Why didn’t you go, damn it?
” he hissed. “Do you think this sort of publicity does us any good?”

  “But who was she?” Natalia repeated, her head spinning.

  “It was Marguerite von Baylen, Boris’s ex-wife,” Diaghilev told her. His voice was cold and nasty. “That’s all we needed, all we needed!”

  “I had no idea she was here in Paris,” Boris murmured, his voice hushed and toneless. “I’m sorry, Natalia.”

  But Diaghilev could not be contained: “ ‘Sorry, Natalia!’ It’s the reputation of the Russian season you should be sorry for. Thank God her husband will do something about her, send her away or something. But you, Natalia: You have to return to Petersburg tomorrow. I can’t afford to have our season besmirched by scandal!”

  Natalia’s eyes grew round, her throat constricted, and her palms began to sweat. “Return to Petersburg?” she cried. Angry tears rose to her eyes. “No! I’m part of this season. They approved of me. Brussel liked me! Boris!” she exclaimed, turning to him. “Do something! Say something! You can’t let this happen!”

  “There is absolutely nothing he can say,” Diaghilev replied quietly. “I do regret this, Natalia. But if you think about it, you’ll see the predicament this situation has put me in.”

  She burst into tears, sobbing loudly and without restraint. Boris placed a hesitant hand on her head, and Diaghilev stared grimly out the window into the night. She continued to cry, brokenly, raucously, she who cried so rarely and then, so discreetly. Finally Boris murmured, “There is a diamond brooch, at Van Cleef’s, Place Vendôme, which I wanted to give you—which I had specially made for you.”

  She raised her head, and looked at him from tear-stained eyes. “It won’t make up for this,” she whispered. “Nothing will ever make up for this.”

  They had stopped at an intersection, and, without warning, Natalia pulled open the door and jumped out, her cape opening like an umbrella around her. When they peered outside trying to find her, she had disappeared completely from sight.

  Serge Diaghilev told Pierre Riazhin what had happened. The two men had nearly collided in the lobby of the Hôtel de Hollande, where a group of celebrants were meeting before going to a late supper. Boris had kept the carriage to look for Natalia. It was a pleasant spring night and she might be wandering aimlessly through the city. Already she knew it well, and had spent much time walking through its avenues and parks, and along the Seine where the booksellers and painters set up their open-air stalls.

  Diaghilev had to abandon the search, for he had people to meet. Pierre wondered why the entrepreneur had chosen to tell him of all people about Natalia. Did he know about his feelings for her? Serge Pavlovitch did seem to possess an uncanny sixth sense relating to the undercurrents of relationships among “his” people. Or else he might have remembered the painting of the Sugar Plum Fairy . . .

  But Pierre did not waste time in pondering this thought. He grabbed his cloak and ran hatless into the wide avenue. There, disoriented, he tried to imagine where Natalia might have gone. He began to walk briskly, a light wind caressing his thick black curls and rustling the silk of his evening pants. It did not occur to him until he had walked to the Place du Trocadéro that he should have hailed a cab—but where would he have told the coachman to go? He was better off on foot.

  What a crazy girl, running off into the night this way! he thought. At first nervous energy kept him going. Then, on the marble square that separated the Museum of Man from that of the Navy, he began to laugh. A young couple, snuggling together on a bench, the plumes of the woman’s hat blowing in the breeze, turned from contemplating each other to stare at him, his black eyes sparkling with dots of red, his hair wild and unruly beneath the stars. The irony of it! Natalia having to pay for Boris’s sins; Natalia being accused by the deserted ex-wife! He wondered what Boris had said, how he had handled it. Pure hatred filled him, and Pierre thought: I hope to hell he botched it, made it worse!

  Pierre concentrated on the sixteenth district. Toward dawn he had to admit defeat. He fell on a bench and removed his shoes. His feet ached. He laid his head in his hands, and thrust his fingers through his hair. It was no use. The damned girl! Well, perhaps Boris—or Diaghilev—or someone else had already found her. That was the pattern of his luck to date: to reach her too late, after someone else had laid claim to her.

  He was hungry. There was a bakery on Avenue Kléber, near the Trocadéro, which he knew stayed open all night so that partygoers could pick up pastries before going home and workmen could purchase breakfast rolls just prior to work. Having come full circle in his search, he went to the bakery and bought a bag of hot croissants. When he walked outside, he found that a pink cloud had risen in the distance: dawn.

  He was exhausted and his emotional state, had reached its lowest ebb. Still, this was Paris, a Paris with which he had become enamored two summers before, and he thought: The Bois is so close that I might reach it before my legs give out. An artist can’t always create in comfort! He dreamed of the park’s color in the early morning light, and of strolling through its garden patches all alone, preparing himself for a painting when he returned to his rooming house. He should not waste this time—Natalia had eluded him, but there was his work. He might still make use of his exhaustion to produce something fantastic, a Parisian scene dredged up from the night’s peregrinations. Munching on a croissant, he made his way to the Bois de Boulogne, near which he had lived for two years with his benefactor and friend, the man who had then defiled and used him and wrecked his dream.

  Pierre found her when he reached the bank of the large lake of the Bois. He had already scattered some crumbs to the ducks in the water, when he looked out toward the romantic island and saw the little rowboat, and the lone figure crouched inside it. The blue cape, the delicate form, the haphazard pile of smooth brown hair were immediately recognizable. His heart lurched: She was so pitiful, so appealing, so waiflike in her little boat, alone in the dawn! How could he reach her without frightening her off?

  He waited, sitting on a bench, eating his rolls. Presently, she turned the boat around in the water and returned. Evidently she had convinced the attendant to let her go out before opening hours. He saw her moor the boat with the others, and hop out, a light gazelle upon the pier. Then she began to walk, slowly, with apparent aimlessness, along the edge of the water. She had not seen him on his bench.

  He approached her gently, not wishing to break too harshly upon her solitude. He placed himself in her path, and when she looked up to see who was blocking her way, she did not seem surprised. They resumed walking, side by side, smelling the dawn, the lake, listening to the awakening birds calling to one another. Hesitantly, he placed her small hand in his own, still without a word. The springtime buds were bursting on the brown branches of the tall trees bordering the path.

  At length they sat down, and he broke the final croissant in two and handed her half, although it had grown cold. She ate, suddenly very hungry. Then she looked at him full in the face, and smiled a small, wavering smile. “Why are you always here when I think that my career has washed away?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he cupped her pale face in his strong hands and tilted it upward. He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her chin. Then, with mounting thirst, he plunged his lips into hers, merging himself into her coolness. She did not fight him, but she was tired, drained, and disoriented. When he rose to the surface again to breathe, she said: “But there will always be this doubt between us, won’t there?”

  For a moment he was angry, disillusioned, poignantly hurt. But he saw that she was right. He loved her—he adored her—but would he ever cease to wonder how she had sold herself to Boris? He could understand her own lack of trust as well: She would never be sure of what had happened between him and Boris.

  They rose simultaneously, no longer touching. A zigzag of pale yellow was reaching across the horizon, and he caught his breath at its beauty. Yet he knew he would not paint it when he returned to his room. A lifetime had evolved since
the night when he had found her on his doorstep. He felt old.

  When they drew up to the white stone house on the Avenue Bugeaud, the front door opened from within and Boris, pale and drawn, with purple circles under his eyes, stood like a specter in the hallway. With a weary sigh, Natalia went in. By the bronze statue she stopped to look at them, the tall blond man holding the door, his eyes narrowed and hard—and the young man on the steps, his nostrils flaring, his black eyes iridescent in the morning light. She shivered slightly, then turned away. It would be best for her to go to bed at once.

  Chapter 9

  That summer, Boris spent a great deal of time thinking. He had rented a villa in the aristocratic resort of Pavlovsk, not far from St. Petersburg and a bare fifteen minutes by carriage from Tsarskoïe Selo, where the Imperial Family had its Summer Palace. Pavlovsk was pleasantly wooded, the villas snuggled within immense bowers of fruit trees and flowers.

  He had selected it because of Natalia’s state of mind. After leaving Paris in May, she had been so withdrawn that he had not known how to reach her. The reviews after the première spoke of her as a mistress of the plastic arts, an elf, a sprite, a modern virtuoso in the vein of La Camargo or Taglioni. But reading them to her would have made matters worse. He was only relieved that she had come home and not done anything foolish. He was furious with many people over this debacle, but mostly with himself. He should have checked on the whereabouts of that madwoman Marguerite! Yet never in a million years could he have predicted such an outburst. It had been humiliating, undignified—and the result, so unjust! Why hadn’t that new husband of hers, the Prussian diplomat, done something about her?

  Natalia had buried her tremendous anger under a total passivity that frightened him. He had come to understand her pride, her wounds, her defenses—but this complete remoteness was new and impenetrable. The gift from Van Cleef and Arpel’s, a splendid diamond sunburst, had left her indifferent. He knew that if he had taken her to Vienna or Switzerland in this mood, she would have remained unseeing, seemingly unfeeling—a pillar of stone, beyond emotion. Yet he sensed the hurt inside her, which she refused to allow to surface, of which she was ashamed. He had rented a villa near the Russian capital, hoping that at least she might rest in the golden sunshine.