Nijinsky (24 page)

HAVING BID FAREWELL
to Diaghilev, Benois and Nouvel, Vaslav boarded the SS
Avon
in Cherbourg on the afternoon of 15 August 1913. Except for Karsavina, who was travelling separately, the rest of the company had boarded earlier that morning in Southampton. Romola de Pulszky was with them. Without paying much attention to whether or not she could dance (her lessons with Cecchetti had been sporadic, consumed as she was with her pursuit of
le petit
), Diaghilev had engaged her for this tour as a member of the
corps
, providing that she could keep up with the routines. She had been lucky that not all the regular dancers wanted to go to South America and that Diaghilev was preoccupied by other matters.

Giving the second-class ticket bought for her by the company to her maid Anna, Romola had reserved a first-class cabin for herself, hoping it would be close to Nijinsky's.
‘Twenty-one days
of ocean and sky – no Diaghilev,' she told herself. ‘He can't escape.'

The
Avon
's passengers soon slipped into
‘the agreeable routine
of deck life'. Each morning before most of them were up, Vaslav, attended by his masseur and Zuikov, who stood beside the watering can and rosin box holding his towel, went through his daily class on deck, apparently unaffected by the motion of the sea. Sometimes a small crowd of
curious admirers would gather, but he was relaxed and well rested, and for once he did not mind being observed. He would smile and occasionally explain a movement or answer a question. Then he would dress and take a stroll on deck before lunch, or read in a deck chair.

He spent the afternoons in a small hall with a piano off Deck C with the conductor, Rhené-Baton (Monteux's replacement for the South American tour). Baton played Bach, while Nijinsky was in the very early stage of creating something that was intended ‘to be as pure dancing as his [Bach's] music is pure sound',
*
something he had been discussing with Diaghilev and the others in Baden-Baden. One afternoon Romola found them and sat down on a stair to watch before being ushered away by the chief steward. The next day she was there again and Baton asked her to leave. Then Vaslav looked up from his reverie and pantomimed to Baton that she could stay.

From then on, she was there every afternoon; and after rising unusually early one morning and noticing Nijinsky practising on deck, she was there every morning too. He noticed the awe with which she watched him and attributed it to her loving ballet,
‘our art
'. In his last letter before they began their crossing of the Atlantic, postmarked Madeira, Vaslav told Bronia and his mother about one of the other passengers, a beautiful blonde girl with blue eyes.
‘She is also alone
and we are often together.'

Romola, meanwhile, was making friends with Vaslav's masseur, cultivating the Batons, pumping the other dancers for information – Marie Rambert remembered having
‘endless talks about Nijinsky
, whom we both adored' – and in short finding out everything she could about him. She knew that
‘he was only absorbed
in one thing – his art. Society, success, wealth, fame, and flirtations did not seem to mean anything to him … [and] we had all heard that he had no interest for us women … But didn't I catch, in spite of this, here and there a smile, a glance which he threw to me? Where others had failed, why shouldn't I succeed?'

It is hard to describe Romola de Pulszky without slipping into the language of melodrama. Her parents were Emilia Márkus and Karoly, or Charlie, de Pulszky. The Pulszkys, though aristocratic, were liberal, artistic and above all political, prime movers in the struggle against the Austrian Empire for Hungarian autonomy. After the failed revolution of 1848, Romola's paternal grandparents fled to London, where Charlie was born (hence the nickname). One of his godfathers was Giuseppe Garibaldi. Neither the Pulszkys nor the Márkuses particularly approved of the marriage between Charlie and Emilia, and though Charlie doted on his beautiful, flirtatious wife, it was not an especially happy union. In 1896, while he was buying paintings for the National Gallery of Hungary, which he had co-founded, Charlie was accused of misappropriating state funds. He was disgraced and briefly imprisoned before fleeing to England and then travelling on to Australia, where three years later he committed suicide. It is possible that he had been framed, but the evidence even at the time was inconclusive. Romola was eight when her beloved ‘Charlie-Papa' died.

She always blamed her mother for her father's tragic fate and throughout their lives the two women, mother and daughter, were entwined in the most destructive kind of filial relationship in which bonds of intense love and interdependence were joined on both sides by jealousy, competition, contempt and selfishness. From childhood, wrote her daughter, Romola
‘harboured a burning
ambition to prove to her father's memory that she, Romola de Pulszky, was
somebody
in her own right'. When she saw Nijinsky, she seems to have decided that capturing him would achieve this aim.

Evenings on board the
Avon
had a carnival atmosphere. As they neared the equator, Baron de Günzburg donned a white dinner jacket, wrapping a Bakstian shawl in wild colours, purple, green and orange, around his waist. He and his elegant mistress, Ekaterina Oblokova, had been charged by Romola's mother and stepfather with looking out for her on the voyage.

One night there was a fancy-dress ball. The Russian dancers, determined to have the best costumes, spent the afternoon racing between
cabins, borrowing and lending clothes to one another. Romola put together a Hungarian gypsy outfit, but then Günzburg advised her – surely deliberately – to go as a boy, with her hair slicked back and wearing a pair of his tailored apple-green pyjamas. At the last minute she lost her nerve and came down to dinner in an evening gown. The only other person who had not worn fancy dress was Nijinsky, for whom costumes possessed a special magic: they were not something to be assumed and cast off on a whim. Besides, he didn't like parties. He had once been so nervous at an official reception that he began
eating his glass
. When he looked at Romola, she saw a sigh of relief in his eyes.

Still they had barely spoken. One evening soon after this, out on the moonlit deck, they were formally introduced by a Monsieur Chavez, an Argentinian couturier who had befriended the Russians. Josefina Kovaleska – the most chic of the dancers, who had been the Aga Khan's mistress, and the only one Romola considered her peer in looks and style – translated for them, telling Nijinsky how passionate Romola was about ballet. They talked, or rather Romola talked in the simplest French she could manage about music and dance and her passion for Wagner, for a long time as they watched the phosphorescence sparkling on the waves beneath them. She had no idea how much he understood, but she was so nervous she couldn't stop speaking.

It was perhaps on this night that Rambert saw Nijinsky lighting Romola's cigarette with a
‘courteous
, elegant gesture'. Once someone shook her hand too vigorously in greeting her and Vaslav cried out, ‘
Pas casser! Pas casser!
' Rambert also noticed Romola's glorious ash-blonde hair, which Anna brushed out every evening. When Vaslav told her he was in love with Romola, she asked him how he could speak to her, having no language in common. Smiling wistfully, Vaslav replied,
‘Oh, she
understands everything'. But Rambert consoled herself, certain it could not be serious. ‘We all knew he was Diaghilev's lover.'

The next morning they sighted land, a long brown smudge on the horizon that was Brazil. But when Nijinsky saw Romola it was as if their conversation the previous evening had never taken place. Apart from a polite bow, he did not speak to her again until one evening a few days
later when some passengers from first class went down to steerage to see the Italian and Spanish itinerant workers who helped bring in the Argentine harvests, playing, singing and dancing: boleros, tarantellas, real tango, flamenco. On the way back up to their cabins, using Kovaleska as her translator, Romola boldly asked Vaslav if he remembered having lost a little travelling pillow, or
dumka
, that his mother had given him, that she had heard he treasured. Would he like it back?

‘Nijinsky gave me
one long look and, mounting up the stairs, said to Kovaleska, “Tell her please to keep it.” I could have choked him.' That night, when Anna tore another page off the calendar, she quoted a Hungarian proverb to her mistress: ‘The sixteenth day. Really, Miss Romola. I wouldn't run after a hay-cart which refuses to give a lift.'

The following day Romola was sitting in the bar before lunch with the Batons, Kovaleska and a few others when Günzburg came up and asked to speak to her. Romola thought she was about to be sacked – that her dancing, which she knew to be not good enough, had been noticed. He took her out on deck and, very formally, said,
‘Romola Carlovna
, as Nijinsky cannot speak to you himself, he has requested me to ask you in marriage.' Thinking it a joke, a humiliated Romola burst into tears and fled to her cabin.

After dinner a note arrived from Günzburg, hoping she felt better and asking for a response as he could not keep Nijinsky waiting. Perhaps it was true. Romola got dressed and cautiously went out to find Günzburg. When she came out of her cabin, Nijinsky appeared and, pointing to her ring finger, said, ‘
Mademoiselle, voulez-vous, vous et moi?
' All she could reply was, ‘
Oui, oui, oui
.' It had been the missing
dumka
which convinced Vaslav: in his account of their meeting, he wrote that it showed him
‘her affection was not
just for my art, but also for me. Then and there I decided to marry her.' Evidently he never suspected she might have stolen the pillow, as I instantly did on reading this; Romola was as enthusiastic a Nijinsky fetishist as any of the fans who bought a discarded rose petal from Zuikov or crept into his dressing room to filch his underwear.

As they steamed towards land the next morning, an excited Kovaleska
burst into Romola's cabin and threw her arms around her, kissing her three times in the Russian fashion. Vaslav had asked her to come with them into Rio when they docked there for the day, as chaperone and interpreter, to help buy their rings.
‘This is indeed
wonderful news. I congratulate you with all my heart. Unbelievable. But somehow I always knew Vaslav Fomich is not as people say.' Then she stopped, catching herself. ‘I mean, I am glad for both of you … Oh, to see the faces of the others when they hear.' After choosing the rings they drove up into the mountains above Rio for lunch, meeting some other passengers from the
Avon
. It was the first time they had ever sat together at a table.

Back on board that evening, heading for Buenos Aires, Rambert heard Vaslav's news. She had to bury her face in her trunk, pretending she was looking for something, to hide her tears. ‘I suddenly realised I was hopelessly in love with him, and had been for a long time.' She envied Romola so much, she thought she might throw herself overboard. That night after dinner, one of the girls (Romola does not say who) was in hysterics because of Nijinsky's engagement, and earned Madame Baton's ire by fainting in her husband's arms; probably it was Rambert.

That night Nijinsky and Romola sat together in the
Avon
's dining room for the first time, with the Batons, Günzburg and Oblokova. Afterwards Adolph Bolm pulled Romola aside, asking her if the rumours were true. As a friend of her parents, he said, he had to warn her that Nijinsky would ruin her life. He was
‘utterly heartless
' and the friendship between him and Diaghilev was ‘more than merely a friendship'. Romola told him stiffly that she would prefer to ‘be unhappy serving Nijinsky's genius than be happy without him'. When Nijinsky left her at her cabin door that night, kissing her hand, Romola remembered Bolm's warning and was
‘not quite sure
if I should be flattered or offended'.

Vaslav refused the captain's offer to perform the ceremony on board; he wanted a real wedding in a church. They would marry when they landed in Buenos Aires. With Günzburg's help they sent a telegram to Romola's mother, formally requesting her permission, but they did not inform Eleonora or Diaghilev. As Romola would later say to Bronia, ‘I
am not
stupid
. To give advance notice of our wedding plans to Diaghilev or to Vaslav's family and risk you stopping us …'

One great mystery remains: why Günzburg did not warn Diaghilev. There is no doubt that Diaghilev would have wanted to know about Nijinsky's blossoming romance long before any announcement was made; and that Günzburg, whose specified role was to keep Diaghilev fully informed about the company as a whole and Nijinsky in particular, had failed in this duty first by obviously encouraging them and second by not letting him know as soon as they were engaged. Perhaps he was simply swept away by the shipboard magic of it all, or perhaps for Nijinsky's sake he hoped to see him free of Diaghilev's influence. Benois and Grigoriev speculated afterwards that Günzburg was trying to separate Nijinsky from Diaghilev so that he could set up a rival company with Nijinsky, though since (according to Bronia) Günzburg had apparently already agreed to fund Diaghilev's new season with Fokine rather than Nijinsky, this is unlikely. Maybe, guessing that Nijinsky might not be dancing with the Ballets Russes the following year, Günzburg thought Romola would serve as a consolation.

Their first days in Buenos Aires were spent rehearsing frantically while Günzburg, still without contacting Diaghilev, arranged the wedding. When Romola made her confession before the service (as required by the Catholic Church), the priest made her promise that she would try to prevent Nijinsky from ever dancing in
Schéhérazade
again. Nijinsky's confession was short: thankfully the priest could speak neither Russian nor Polish. On the morning of Wednesday, 10 September, four days after arriving in Buenos Aires, Vaslav and Romola went through a civil ceremony at the city hall. He was twenty-four, she was twenty-one (though later, romanticising things, she claimed to have been under-age) and they had left Europe as virtual strangers less than a month earlier.