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  Now, alone in the rehearsal room, covered with sweat, Natalia thought: I shall never bear a child, never. It destroyed my father, took his freedom from him and beggared him to the Gudrinskys. And love? How could I love a child when I despise the notion of living for someone else, as Katya’s mother does, or as mine did with Vera? And a child should not grow up as I did; it costs too much in pain. I am afraid of joy, except the one pure joy of dance, this exhilaration brought on by embodying beauty with my own straining tendons. If I admit joy, then I shall admit pain with it.

  Katya is a fool: She loves the governesses, she loves the boy who sends her notes during ballroom dancing class, she loves the babies in the parks. Yet while she loves, she laughs and is joyful. Why? What lies forever beyond me, who am intelligent but within easy reach for Katya, whose mind is simpler than mine? Why does she pray to God, while I know He does not exist?

  Pink light flickered through a dismal cloud, and she stopped to watch it grow into a crimson flare. Daylight. Natalia quickly executed two pliés and cursed her poor turnout. She had chased away the ghosts, and now, golden and warm, she remembered her first glimpse of this school that she felt was hers. The architecture from the days of Tzarina Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, was simple and noble, with the Alexandrinsky dramatic theatre, topped with its three equestrian statues molded in bronze, bordering the Nevsky Prospect at the end. Theatre Street. A guard had let her and Masha pass into the Ballet School, and in the enormous rehearsal room—this very one!—she had seen more children than she had ever before imagined. One hundred fifty boys and two hundred girls had been lined up, the mothers and guardians standing against the walls to await the outcome. First, the doctor had examined her, then she had gone before the masters seated around a long table. A beautiful lady with dark hair had been there, and when Natalia had walked, jumped, and turned, this lady had exclaimed: “She’s a single continuous line, isn’t she?” Natalia had thought: I have failed. Later, she had learned that the lady was Matilda Kchessinskaya, prima ballerina assoluta, once the Tzar’s mistress before his marriage and now the consort of his first cousin, the Grand Duke Andrei. The words spoken by this great lady had been complimentary, not critical.

  During the grueling day, the children had taken a break and had tea. Sitting alone, not thinking, Natalia had felt a hand upon her arm. Alarmed, she jumped up, but it was only the blond-haired girl who had been behind her during the testing. “Hello,’ she had said, and her voice was different, with an accent that jarred upon Natalia’s ears. “I’m Katya. Ekaterina Nicolaievna Balina. And you? What’s your name?”

  “Natalia. Oblonova.”

  Katya, a well-groomed child whose mother had trimmed her hair with care around the ears so that it curled gracefully, would not be put off. “You will be chosen,” she had said. “You’re very good. Better than I.”

  Natalia had known that was true. She had smiled for the first time. “You’re not bad. But for you, dancing is not your life. For me—it means being able to stay here, being able to be a person, a real person….”

  “I think dancing’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Katya said. “Have you seen many ballets?”

  “I haven’t seen any yet. In the Crimea I lived on a farm. But I want to learn. I’m not afraid of being tired, and my body wants to grow, to make beautiful shapes. In the country I used to run, and move, and stretch—and then I was happy.”

  They had both been selected in the final analysis, along with six other girls. Then Katya had asked: “If you’re from so far away, Natalia, where will you live the first year? You can’t board at school, you know, until they accept you for the second year. Why don’t you come and live with us? I have four brothers, and I’m the youngest. Mama won’t mind—she loves children.”

  Madame Balina had, indeed, not minded. Baroness Gudrinskaya, swept up by her own part in her protégée’s good fortune, had made the arrangements with the Balins, the school, and the Oblonovs. Dmitri had been told that since his daughter’s future was now assured, a family of moderate means had offered to board her the first year. In return, he was to send them produce from the farm every season. He had grumbled; but after all, as Elena made him understand, if Natalia had been turned down by the Ballet School and become apprentice to the baroness’s seamstress, she might have proven unsuited for her work and returned home after a year or two. This way, the Tzar ensured eight years of bills, and a few sides of beef and fresh vegetables were well worth the bargain. Dmitri grunted and promptly forgot that he had ever fathered a second child. Vera’s wardrobe increased by two tea dresses. And Natalia found herself with a friend, although she had never thought herself in need of one before. But perhaps this was the custom of St. Petersburg; for she quickly noticed that most of the girls talked in pairs, laughed in pairs, practiced in pairs. Katya Balina protected her from curious glances and from taunts of provincialism; for Katya was a Petersburg girl, and she generously bestowed her city upon her new friend.

  Natalia was finished with her warm-up. She ran from the rehearsal room, aware that the bell was about to ring and that she must not be caught out of bed. She reached the dormitory in time, and slipped noiselessly onto her cot. A shiver of pleasure raced through her, and her skin tingled from the exercise. She closed her eyes. She envisioned the Mariinsky and herself in her Sugar Plum costume. And then, abruptly, she remembered the elegant blond man with the ironic smile whom she had encountered in the corridor the day of the rehearsal. What an odd expression on that princely face. “I don’t like him,” she murmured, not realizing that she had spoken out loud.

  “Who’s that?” Katya demanded from the neighboring bed.

  “A living statue with a top hat and scented hair,” Natalia replied.

  Katya began to laugh.

  The palace of Count Vassily Arkadievitch Kussov stood on the French Quay among the embassies, a cream-colored structure of simple, flowing lines that always pleased Boris whenever he came up to its enormous oak door. His father had neither chosen nor furnished it; he was a sturdy, uncomplicated man, happiest in his summer residence near the town of Dunaburg, on the train line to Berlin. There he possessed a vast stretch of fertile land around a lake, shaded by pleasant Mount Cavallo, where he liked to hunt in the company of other hardy men like himself. His palace in the capital had been selected by his own father, Count Arkady Kussov, a man whose delicate tastes had skipped a generation and resurfaced in Boris. Count Vassily’s wife, long-deceased, had added many treasures from France, Italy, and the Orient to the original furnishings. Boris resembled his exquisite late mother in looks and temperament, and his father’s father in the eclectic nature of his interests.

  The liveried Swiss doorman bowed and opened the doors for Boris, whose cloak of black seal was instantly removed by a discreet maître d’hôtel. “Is my father waiting?” Boris asked pleasantly.

  “Yes, Excellency. In his study.”

  Boris nodded and rubbed his hands together to dispel the ungodly chill of a Russian winter. When the servant had departed, he stood hesitantly in the hallway, then could not resist the temptation to take a quick look around the salon. He fingered a sculpted lamp base of opaline, representing a Chinese woman with stiff headdress, and gazed lovingly at a small boulle secretary. He straightened his back and consulted the gold watch in his waistcoat pocket. He stepped away from the salon into a corridor illumined by a chandelier of shimmering Venetian crystal, and stopped by a door which was ajar. Crackling sounds of a fire reached his ears from inside the room. He knocked, paused, and said: “Papa?”

  “Borya!” Now the younger man strode joyously across an Aubusson carpet of soft pastel hues. In front of a large mahogany desk stood a portly gentleman with hazel eyes beneath bushy brows, red bristles gleaming through darker sprouts. His fleshy nose curved toward a magnificent walrus mustache—in fact, he actually resembled a well-fed, elderly walrus still fighting to retain a grip on his prime. There was little gray mingling with the brown and red of hi
s hair, and his paunch was hard, as if possessing an entity of its own. This was Vassily Kussov, whose intimate friendship with Tzar Alexander III had made him a familiar at the court of this now-deceased sovereign.

  Boris embraced his father, and the two men sat down by the fire. “I hear much of your activities,” the older man commented, drawing on a briar pipe. “You and your artistic friends. When I do not see you, I can always rely on Grand Duke Vladimir to keep me apprised of all your doings. Not all, actually: only those with which he is acquainted as president of the Academy of Fine Arts.”

  “Come now, Papa, you sound as though I have been neglecting you,” Boris chided gently.

  “You don’t come often enough to suit me, my son. A daughter is a mixed blessing. That, in fact, is one of the reasons I asked you here today. Nina is dutiful and attentive, but her court wedding to Prince Stassov has cost me a fortune.”

  “But surely you have no objections, Papa? Nina already has a baby girl. And she lives so close by….”

  “I was not made to be the father of a daughter and the grandfather of another girl. All this business wreaks havoc on my mind. I call Nina Galina and Galina Nina.”

  “Surely you did not summon me to write you memory cards, did you, Papa?” Boris began to laugh, and got up to stoke the lazy fire. His father sat glaring at his back.

  “Borya, you are irresponsible. You spend money as if it were limitless, but you seem to forget that you have sisters, and with two more weddings on top of Nina’s, there will have to be two other large dowries. Your own income cannot remain the way it is, but your tastes are as extravagant as ever. I have this monstrosity of a household to keep up, as well as the summer estate, and there are the usual expenditures accruing to all members of the imperial court. Already, you have blithely consumed more than half the fortune left to you upon your mother’s death. And your artistic friends bleed you dry. How much did that Diaghilev fellow borrow for his Exhibition of Russian Portraits? No, don’t tell me: It was a gift, of course, from the bottomless purse of the bountiful Kussovs.” The old count snorted, and his nose twitched. Small red veinules seemed to swell over his cheekbones. “Damn it all, Boris! You will have sons, too, one day, and I shall not have you squander their inheritance before they are even born!”

  The young man turned around, his face merry. “So that’s it! You worry that, as with Pushkin’s fisherman, my luxurious predilections will cause the magic fish to turn my palace back into a hovel. But you forget, Papa, that the fisherman started out poor, and that it was his wife’s boundless greed that finally irritated the little fish. I have never wished for more than I had; I am not a gambler and have no debts. I merely live well, as we Kussovs have been living since the days of Ivan the Terrible. Am I so different from the sons of your good friends?”

  The older man glared at Boris, then puffed silently upon his pipe. “Yes!” he finally stated, his voice rising to a dangerous bellow. “God in heaven, yes! A mistress, even an expensive one—even two expensive ones—can only exact so much per month. But art …! Someone was telling me—I can’t for the life of me remember who—that you have a new protégé, yet another one—a young painter this time. And your travels—other men buy baubles, but you! Silks from the Orient, Renaissance paintings, first folios, Meissen figurines—it never ceases. Even Kussov money dwindles down. There is only one solution, for you are my only son and I refuse to beggar my daughters. You must marry, Borya. You must make an advantageous union with a woman of standing who will bring you a considerable dowry. You are too old for bachelorhood.”

  Boris was quiet. He fingered his mustache, his beard. “I love you very much, Papa,” he remarked after some thought. “But one no longer weds to please one’s father. Isn’t that a rather antiquated notion?”

  “I am asking for your sake. A dowry would not hurt your extravagance. And …one does not have to deny oneself certain discreet pleasures, my boy. If you loved someone, then all the better. But if you are forming a bond of convenience, there are means of easing the pressures. And those means are augmented by a second fortune.”

  “Do you have someone in mind, Papa?”

  “Indeed. Do you remember Princess Marguerite Tumarkina, the niece of the provincial governor of Kiev? Her father is an

  important sugar plantation owner there, and Marguerite is his only child. I saw her father at the Brianskys’ home last night. He asked me pointed questions about you, and from my own inquiries of Count Briansky, I gather that the Prince wishes to find a husband for his daughter.”

  “Why can’t she find one herself? She must be at least twenty-three. Why does her father travel to the capital to marry her off?”

  “He was here to see a minister. Don’t be an idiot, Boris. And don’t condemn this girl. Kiev does not possess the possibilities of the capital, and surely her father would wish the most advantageous life for her. As for you—you know all the unmarried women in St. Petersburg, yet you have chosen none. Perhaps you should search outside for a suitable bride.”

  “I simply do not wish to marry. I have a lovely sister, and would rather be loved by her than by a wife. Besides, I am not without female companions, Papa. Princess Marguerite is thin, nervous, and sickly, from what I remember. Do you not recall the rumors several years ago? She suffered a nervous collapse and was sent to Switzerland. Besides, she upset my constitution when I last saw her. It was when I made that trip across Russia in search of unusual icons—and I visited the provincial governor. Marguerite and I met then. It was quite enough, thank you.”

  “She is coming to Petersburg, Borya. Her father is sending her, to enjoy the remainder of the winter season. She is to stay at the Brianskys’. I should appreciate it if you called upon her and took her somewhere. The theatre—wherever. I see in her an excellent possibility. You do not need a flamboyant hostess, for you are sufficiently flamboyant yourself. She is not a bad-looking girl, and her family is excellent. In short, I would be pleased to have her bear your sons. I would have preferred a truly unique woman along the lines of your late mother, a charming, witty beauty, as was the dowager empress in her youth. But short of that, a cultured, aristocratic girl, a bit shy and provincial, will do. The Tumarkin connections cannot hurt a Kussov in court circles, and Nina’s Stassov would like that. He does business with Marguerite’s father.”

  Boris’s eyes had half-closed to slits and now the irises shone

  between his lashes like bits of blue glass. He had intertwined his fingers so that his hands were gripped together like taut vines. His father regarded him with a scowl that turned into a look of surprise, then of dismay. Boris resembled a carved alabaster statue of compressed anger and restrained force. The two men remained wordless as the flames rose and fell listlessly before them, sending out no warmth.

  Then the study door was opening, and a gay female voice filled the room, dispelling the static between father and son. The young woman who greeted her brother filled Boris’s nostrils with the perfume of attar of roses.

  “Nina!” he cried, seizing her wrists, and she collapsed into his arms, joining him in laughter. Count Vassily closed his eyes, crossed himself in the Orthodox fashion, and touched the wedding ring on his finger as though it were a soothing icon. The flames in the great ebony hearth had subsided to dying embers, and the brass tong stood forgotten near Boris’s chair.

  Chapter 2

  Natalia awakened in the middle of the night from a vague dream of Christmas trees growing and children playing with life-sized toy soldiers. While she had been dreaming, her conscious voice had spoken out, telling her that the children were only an illusion, that the tree was a fantasy teasing her, that she herself was really in bed, sleeping. She had awakened with a jolt, and now, sitting up, she thought: My God, yes! That is the secret—so simple, after all! We do not have to take The Nutcracker seriously, for it was meant to be a dream within a dream, a joke. The spectators all know it is a fairy tale. Then why can’t I dance the Sugar Plum as though I am on their side, as tho
ugh I, too, know I am merely an illusion for their momentary pleasure, for Clara’s pleasure? I will be an intelligent, humorous Sugar Plum who enjoys the game while knowing full well that it is a game. She could not go back to sleep, although she had often been told that it was essential to rest properly before a performance. She was so excited at the notion of dancing her unusual Sugar Plum that she could not relax. She had never felt so wonderful. In time for the performance, the black, hearselike carriages used to convey dance students from the school to the Mariinsky took Natalia’s group the short distance between the two buildings. Natalia and Katya, who was to be an older girl at the Christmas party in the first scene, went to the dressing room reserved exclusively for members of the school. Katya chattered continuously, but Natalia said not a word, her thoughts riveted on the movements that she would have to perform. She put on her costume of pink tulle and her small headdress. A spot of rouge on each cheekbone, and that was that. Natalia fretted, and yet she yearned to feel a part of the Mariinsky, longing for the moment of almost nuptial blending of herself into the company of dancers, when she would cease to be set apart as a student and finally become her true self. Impatiently interrupting Katya, she said: “I must go to the water closet.” Quickly she turned on her heels and left the room, which had begun to oppress her.

  Natalia leaned against the door of the students’ dressing room and shut her eyes. Red dots moved on the inside of her lids, and her mouth tasted of iron. She looked around and, seeing no one, ran on tiptoes through the corridors of the Mariinsky Theatre, in search of the room where she knew dancers of the corps de ballet must be preparing themselves. Now, for the first time, she did not want to be around other students: She wanted to see and be a part of the real world of ballet, to smell real makeup and listen to bona fide dancers as they gossiped before a performance.