Free Encore by Monique Raphel High

attempting to summon his strength of character, recalling phrases he had heard concerning his strength. Men wished to remain on Count Boris’s good side, for he was a fierce opponent. Men were afraid of him. He possessed a will of iron. He wanted to laugh and to follow that with countless bottles of vodka. Instead he watched her lie quietly upon the coverlet of the magnificent bed. He removed his coat, his jacket. He went into the bathroom and undressed completely. Too late for the bath that his body craved. He placed an elegant maroon dressing gown over his nudity, tied it securely, and emerged into the bedroom once more.
    Then he came to her and sat down upon the bed, while the lights still blazed in the lamps. He pulled the silk gown from her shoulders and looked at her, fully. The stomach was nearly
    concave, with the pelvic bones showing. The breasts flopped loosely. She had shut her eyes in misery, aware of his scrutiny and not understanding. Tears formed in the inner corners of her eyes, but he had no pity for her. In one swift move he took the coverlet and pulled it over her. Silently he left the room, reentered the bathroom, and donned his dinner clothes and his shoes. He took three bills from his wallet and left them on the sink. He was not fully conscious of performing these tasks, knowing only that they could not be avoided.
    Then Boris Kussov slipped from his bridal suite into the corridor, and from the corridor into the early Moscow dawn. He hailed the first coach he saw, and told the driver to take him to the station. There he purchased a first-class ticket to St. Petersburg.
    More and more frequently now, Natalia did not spend her Sunday leaves with Katya’s family. Their predictable gaiety and teasing, their large meals interspersed with gentle stories about old Russia, and their summers in the country seemed oppressive now that they were no longer new. It was almost as if the Balins had two daughters, and she was one of them. They fretted and fussed about her health, about her occasional sad moods, about her abstraction. They tried to teach her to be a lady, with mild manners and a kind, sweet disposition. Natalia had lived sufficient years without the benefit of parents; now their efforts bored her somewhat and made her impatient. Instead, she visited Lydia Markovna Brailovskaya.
    Lydia lived alone with her old nurse in a small apartment not far from the school and the Mariinsky. It was on a side street, pleasantly shaded in the spring and rather dark during the winter. Manya, the old nurse, was devoted to Lydia but had grown too old to be of much use to her in the house; she had remained because Lydia loved her, and because she was the only person who represented “family” to the coryphée. Natalia liked the old peasant woman, and found her gruff, superstitious admonitions amusing and touching.
    Lydia was the daughter of a premier danseur at the Mariinsky, a friend of Pavel Guerdt and Enrico Cecchetti. He had died several years before, and though he had not bequeathed his talent to his daughter, she had inherited his friends. Lydia was invited places by members of the Ballet, by Chaliapin, the basso profundo, and by the French actors who played during the winter season at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. She knew everyone in this varicolored world of theatre folk. She also learned St. Petersburg gossip more quickly than anyone. Natalia found her biting wit a challenge: Here was a person who was interested in Natalia’s thoughts, in her own irreverence. And Lydia did not treat Natalia as an inferior because of the ten years that separated them. She recognized that Natalia had bypassed childhood.
    By Lent, the scandal over Count Boris Kussov’s marriage to Princess Marguerite Tumakina had erupted full scale, and Lydia said to Natalia: ‘Tour admirer has certainly engendered a mess. At court people have formed two camps—the Kussov one and that of the Tumarkins, Princess