Encore (30 page)

Her calm words rang like an alarm in the room. Boris sat down abruptly, all expression vanishing from his face. Frau Walter drew a chair near the bed and took a seat, her knitting in her ample lap. Fräulein Bernhardt, tall and birdlike, hovered between them, attentive. A half hour passed, then another. After two hours Natalia murmured in a small voice: “Must this vigil continue? Please, could I go back to sleep?”

The two efficient women busied themselves in the small sitting room, making a bed for Fräulein Bernhardt on the sofa. “The labor isn't beginning yet, so we should all shut our eyes,” the nurse announced. She closed the connecting door, and Boris heard Frau Walter leave the room, presumably to return to her own. He turned down the lights and slipped into bed. But he remained wide awake.

He felt Natalia's small hand slipping into his, tentative and questing. “I'm not going to die,” she whispered into the night. “Anyway, the queen mother and the dowager empress in the sitting room wouldn't let me. We have years to spend together, Borya—years! Have you forgotten that you're going to build me a house in the hills of Monte Carlo? With jasmine and mimosa and lilacs in the garden? You can't go back on your promise. It wouldn't be honorable, you know.”

He could not find the words to answer her. Nameless oppression lay upon his chest, smothering all sensation.

The next morning she slept. There was no change. Boris dressed quietly and began to pace the floor. Fräulein Bernhardt opened the door connecting the bedroom to the small sitting room where she had slept, and came to him. “There is no purpose in your remaining here,
Herr Graf,”
she murmured in her quiet, dry voice. “If the labor begins, I shall send for Dr. Fröhlich. In the meantime, she needs her rest.” She hesitated, then continued. “It's an unfortunate timing for the
Gräfin,
but there's to be a village feast here today, with dancing and a band. The Walters tried to stop the players from coming, but they were already on their way. It was too late to warn the villagers. I'm afraid the best Frau Walter can do is to make sure that all the doors are shut to the front room.”

An absurd sense of unreality seized hold of Boris. He uttered a short spurt of laughter. “My God,” he said, “a band! I suppose I could offer to buy the instruments at a profit, so they won't have to play?”

“Come now,” Fräulein Bernhardt remonstrated, a tinge of kindness seeping into her competence. “Why don't you go for a walk or a drive through the countryside? It will do you a lot of good. Babies are born every day, you know. This is 1914—women no longer die in childbirth the way they did years ago.”

“But we almost lost this baby,” Boris retorted angrily, annoyed at being treated as though he were constantly in the way. A flush spread over his face: “A band! How will she rest in all this noise?”

“I'm certain that the Walters will do what they can. In any case,
Herr Graf,
at this stage she is too exhausted to be deterred by dancing music. She'll be oblivious to it. But she'll sense your nervousness. It will make her very frightened, and then she will not help with the birth and will suffer a great deal more. Husbands' feelings are contagious.”

Boris turned away and slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. He seized his riding whip and cap, and, without saying a word, strode out of the suite, into the corridor, and down the stairs. In the large front hall Frau Walter, her husband, and a few chambermaids were setting chairs against the wall and rolling back the carpet. The innkeeper's wife opened her mouth to greet him, but before she could speak, he had left, slamming the door behind him. They stared after him, blinking.

Boris stood uncertainly in the morning air. It was a chilly day, with a strong, bracing breeze. Energy tingled through him, charging him with a heightened awareness of life. Unable to think clearly, he abruptly gave up and walked to the back of the inn, where two horses were hitched in a very small stable. The one he usually rode, Banditt, was a white, nervous stallion that reared his head when he saw Boris. “I suppose you and I are alike, old boy,” Boris said, untying him and leading him out to the bridle path. “We don't take well to being caged.” He mounted the beast in one swift, graceful motion.

Once on the horse, he felt relieved. He was marvelously one with Banditt, a single male strength and flow, a savage might contained in elegant leanness. He spurred the horse toward the large path that led to Darmstadt, over bridges and under the bower formed by the merging treetops.

He was assailed by conflicting emotions and sensations, but the wind brushed these cleanly from him, making him whole. But something—he didn't know exactly what—kept urging him forward, into Darmstadt itself. Suddenly he knew: He was right on the edge of the
Künstler Kolonie.
For a moment he was angry, and almost turned the horse around; then, with a grim set of his jaw, he directed Banditt onto the winding streets.

Why had he come here? To square away what misunderstanding? Or had he merely allowed his worry over Natalia to raise from his consciousness another worry, caused by his run in with Pierre at the opera house? He had had his revenge, had ostracized Pierre from the Ballet and from his Petersburg sponsors. Why, then, could he not let go? One simply did not forget past agonies; one had to lay them to rest. He had believed all this to be over. Pierre had proved that it was not. What did he want with Pierre? I want to finish it once and for all, he told himself. I want it finished before the baby's born so that the three of us—she, I, and our child—may proceed without being haunted by the past. I need a resolution.

Suddenly, Boris felt cold sweat on his shoulders, under his armpits. He remembered his first sight of Pierre at the opera, that instant before thoughts had entered his head: that split-second of complete emotion unclouded by reason. What, in fact, had he felt? It would have been better not to have raised the question, not to have analyzed it. Armando Valenzuela had sought him out, recognizing him as one of his own—that had been bad enough. But Pierre had always been with him, a memory to haunt him. He had never really been able to let go, to stop the anguishing treadmill of desire and love: not even converting the love to a vengeful hatred. Not even his love for Natalia, that other love that could bring him peace and self-esteem, had been able to eradicate the memory of his passion for Pierre Riazhin. It was essential that he test it one last time. For his family's sake and his own sanity and well-being.

Halfway up the first street, Boris realized that he had no idea where exactly Pierre lived. He stopped a blond woman walking with a child. “There's a young Russian painter, Pierre Riazhin,” he began. “I'd like to find him if you can help me.”

“There are no Russians here,
mein Herr,”
the woman replied. “Only Germans. Are you certain he lives here?”

Taken aback, Boris replied: “That's what he told me. He's tall, with broad shoulders, dark curly hair, and black eyes. In his early thirties.”

“Oh! You must mean the Swiss man. I'd forgotten about him. His German isn't so good, but it's not bad. He doesn't speak to many of us here, but he's a courteous enough young fellow. He paints beautiful, vivid scenes. Peter Habig, that's his name. I don't know what you called him, but I can assure you he's not Russian.”

Utterly bewildered now, Boris merely raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I must have been confused,
gnädige Frau
,”
he remarked smoothly. “But tell me, if you will, where I may find this Habig?”

“Up the road, the two-storey house with the semicircular outer staircase,” the woman replied cheerfully. Taking the small child's hand, she started down the road once more. Intrigued, Boris spurred Banditt in the opposite direction.

He stopped Banditt in front of a small garden planted with pansies, marigolds, poppies, and short-stemmed daisies. Several pieces of white wicker lawn furniture stood between the flower beds. The house itself was small, like all the houses in the
Künstler Kolonie;
it was boxlike, of white sandstone, with windows of varying shapes. Boris half-smiled and tied his horse to the post outside. With easy grace, he mounted the semicircular staircase to the front stoop, and rang the doorbell.

At the back of his mind he must have wondered whether Pierre would be the one to answer the door. When it was pulled open, the young painter stood before him in his shirtsleeves, wearing an expression of ill-concealed hostility and outrage. Boris inclined his head and raised one hand. “Don't be banal, my Petya, and ask me how I found you or what I'm doing here. Instead, ask me in, won't you?”

Pierre's black eyes snapped with anger and the muscles in his neck tensed into cords. “What if I killed you right here, with my bare hands?” he whispered.

Boris shrugged lightly and entered. He looked around him. They stood in a small salon adorned with carved ebony furniture lightened by multicolored cushions and a large tapestry on the wall. The chairs and sofa were low and streamlined, of an unusual design. The effect was open, yet busy.

“Since you're here, what do you want?” Pierre broke in.

Boris looked at him directly, coldly. “I'd like to talk to you,” he said. “Simply that, without histrionics and physical assault. Is that permissible?”

He scanned the room and went to an armchair by the tapestry and sat down, slinging one leg easily over the other. “You're doing all right, I take it?” he asked.

“Well enough. The disfavor you did me in Petersburg has taken years to mend. It's still not mended, not by a long shot.”

“You must learn to accept adversity, Pierre. The past is the past. If you allow bitterness and hatred to consume you, you won't be able to accomplish anything in the future.”

Pierre's mouth opened. “And whose advice is this, may I ask?” he cried. “Because it sure as hell isn't yours, Boris!”

Boris laughed ruefully. “No, it isn't. Well done, Pierre.
Touché.
Actually, it's Natalia's. Sound advice, really. You should pay heed to it. So should I, for that matter.” A frown marred his smooth brow, and he quickly passed his fingers over his eyes. Then he looked up at Pierre, still standing. “Natalia is going to give birth any moment now. That's why I'm here: This is too damned important a time for her and for me to allow other matters to cloud the issue. If you're here, then so be it. But I don't want you to take it into your head to find her and cause problems. Should you run into us somewhere, I want to make sure you'll behave like a gentleman.”

Pierre took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and sat down opposite Boris. On his knee, his right hand clenched into a fist, then spread out, and became a fist again. Suddenly he looked at Boris and said: “Natalia came to see me three years ago, in Petersburg. After you turned everyone in the committee against me. Did you know that?”

Boris's eyes narrowed. “I suspected it,” he answered directly. “But if you'd been a little more secure within yourself, and if you'd capitalized more cleverly on your growing reputation, I could not have harmed you. In a way, Pierre, I hoped that you'd be strong enough to withstand me, and I was disappointed in my easy victory.” He sighed. “You haven't lived up to your potential, Pierre. Something is missing inside you: a fibre of determination, a sense of mission. Natalia's always had it about dance. You don't, and more's the pity because you are truly a genius.”

Pierre shook his head. “Everything that you touch you contaminate,” he said. “I simply wanted a patron. You made yourself much more, more than I'd hoped for, but also more than I really wanted. Why didn't you just leave me to my own devices, Boris? I could have managed better without your playing with my life. It was my life, and you made it your game. Why?”

“Isn't the answer self-evident?” Boris asked. “Don't play the innocent.” Without removing his eyes from Pierre's ruddy face, he said: “We're none of us innocents, are we? If we agree to play the game, then it's fitting for us to be graceful losers if such is our fate. You, Pierre, have never learned this.”

“I would hardly call you a graceful loser. To have me dismissed from the ‘committee'—”

Boris put up a hand. “No, don't confuse the issue. I was not the loser there. The game wasn't over yet. There was still a card left to be played, and I played it.” He opened his eyes completely again. “I may win more often than most players, but I'm still human. Nobody likes to be despised and hated. You should have known me well enough to have realized that.”

Pierre burst out: “What would you have had me do? Love you? For having cheated your way into Natalia's life—and ruined my own?”

Boris smiled. “Love and war are really not so far removed, are they? What possible difference can it make who the love object is—man, woman, dog? As long as one can hope for an end to loneliness, love is elevating and sanctified. But once the hope dies, love becomes war. Didn't it occur to you, my young fool, that a man does not turn his life around for another unless love is involved?” He made an ironic, self-deprecating gesture of uplifted palms.
“Mon cher
Pierre, I even married Marguerite Tumarkina, poor ignorant soul, to provide extra funds for the Paris exhibition. I suppose I was the ignorant soul, too, then, wasn't I? But you, my young friend, were merely a self-serving egotist on a treasure hunt. You haven't changed in nine years, have you?”

Pierre's dark eyes flashed with maroon reflections. “And you have? What about Natalia? You married her to take her away from me, and that's all. You can't love her! A man like you doesn't change—and she's as female as they come. I know! Or didn't you know that?”

Boris nodded slowly. “Oh, yes, of course I knew. You don't have to rub it in with such glee, Petya. Your sexual prowess doesn't impress me. Perhaps once it impressed her—I haven't asked. It's not my business. But yes, some people change. I don't say I'd like every woman, or any woman.” He laughed shortly. “But the fact is that Natalia is my sort of woman, and we are happy together. I have no idea quite how it happened—only that it did. And that's been my life.” He smiled and said: “Now, be a good fellow and tell me how you're doing. Happiness is contagious. It would do me good to think that you had put the past behind you, as well.”