Authors: Monique Raphel High
Encore (66 page)
He dropped her hands and suddenly took her in his arms, holding her frailty close to him, so that she could hear the enormity of his beating heart. When he kissed her lips, she parted them swiftly, and thrust her hands into the curls of his hair. In front of the large bay window he tilted her back onto the thick Aubusson carpet, where she gazed up at him in an apricot flush, her eyes half-closed and luminous, her mouth slowly curling into a smile. They undressed without taking their eyes from each other for a single moment, and then, with urgent need, came together on the floor in a magnificent tangle of limbs.
Her skin felt the same as in the first flush of youth, but the tender softness of her breasts was of a different texture than he remembered: like the softness of feathers, where before all had been taut and firm. Suddenly desperate, he thought: This is what I want, this is how I prefer her. Not a girl, not a young brideâbut a woman in the middle of her life, who would accept my own imperfections. She smiled at him and ran her hand gently over his stomach, silken reminder that he had changed, too, from the days of their marriage. It did not matter. It was still his strength that drew her, the large broad shoulders, the muscular calves and thighs, all the same but altered. Maybe the attraction lay half in the past and half in the newness: They had never before made love knowing that time had left its mark on each of them and that the world would never be for them what it had been before. In the early days life had been unknown and wonderful and frighteningâand so had Pierre been to Natalia, and she to him.
Later, they lay silently entwined, and she could hear his breathing. She knew its very cadence, had been rocked to sleep hearing it against the softness of her hair time and time again. But now he did not shift her face against his chest, preparing her for rest. Instead, he sat up, leaning on his elbow. His dark eyes probed her. “So?” he asked, with a hint of tension. “You won't be going now, will you, after all?”
Pressing a finger to his lips, she shook her head. “I'll go. This was my farewell to you, my darling Pierre.”
“Is it Stuart Markham?” he demanded.
She shrugged sadly. “Stu is living his own life. I had two chances with him. Even if I could still choose him, I'm not certain I love him. I have to go for my own sake, because I want to dance, and this seems like the right opportunity at this moment. But who knows what could happen? I did receive some interesting offers. To go to San Francisco and form a ballet company. Another was to go there and open a studio for the daughters of the wealthy matrons of Nob Hill. Orâto go to Hollywood, and make a talking movie. Dancing, of course!” Her eyes flashed merrily now and then rested on his face with sudden gentleness.
“Don't begrudge me my life, Pierre,” she murmured. “Tell me to leave and to be happy.”
“But that is more than I can do,” he replied, rising swiftly and going to the window. She watched the well-muscled back and bit her lower lip. “It would kill me to send you away from me. You'll never return!”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I have a daughter, and I shall return. But not to you, Pierre. We've had our chance, and now it's finally over. Now we can finally stop hating each other, my dear. All the years of pain came about through the love, our hurtful, barbed, obsessed passion for each other. Now at last we can breathe again, without love, without hatred. We can see each other as people, Pierre, and not as demon angels. We can go on from here.”
She stood up, diminutive and naked, and went to him at the window. “I want you to move back here when I'm gone, to live in this house,” she murmured, draping her body gracefully across his back. “It's only fair. Boris wanted
you
to have it, not me. And Tamara loves it and wouldn't want to leave it. Galina,” she added in a soft, wistful tone, “was also happy here. Come, then. While I'm on this tour.”
He moved aside and let her step beside him, and together they looked out into the snow-covered garden. Behind them the lamps cast a burnished gleam over the varnished piano, over the armchairs and the little tables. The champagne glasses stood in shimmering grace near the uneaten canapés, and somewhere a clock chimed, sonorous and plaintive. She smiled, remembering, and then tears replaced the smile, and she swallowed them down.
“The spell of the Firebird,” she said. “One magic feather and all the monsters disappeared. Do you believe that such a thing can happen? A world without monsters?”
“A world of Sugar Plums,” he sighed. “That's how it all began, wasn't it? For all of us?”
She did not reply but turned around and started to pick up her clothes from the floor.
On the enormous stage of the Opéra, the ten-year-old Clara stood out from the other children in the Party scene. She was tall and slender, with a fluid but stately form, well-molded shoulders and graceful hands. Black curls tumbled over her neck, held back by a ribbon and velvet flowers. Her long dress with its wide skirt was deep yellow, trimmed with lace and a border of fur. To Natalia she suddenly appeared older, a presage of the dancer she would be in later years. Not an elf, like Lopokhova, nor an intellectual beauty, like Karsavina, but rather a flowing, sensuous power, a magnetic personality with regal charm.
N
atalia sat
in the red velvet box, her hands clasped in her lap. Beside her was Pierre, but she could not turn to look at him, for her throat had suddenly constricted and tears had come into her eyes. It felt so strange to be observing rather than performing in this grand but familiar opera house, stranger yet to be watching another woman, who was part of herself and yet not herself. She wanted to cry out, to merge with Tamara on the stage, and yet something held her back.
The music rose, and Clara stood back in awe at the nutcracker that her godfather, Councilor Drosselmeyer, was giving her for Christmas. She moved with ease in the thick dress, her arms flowing in a single, fluid line, her throat young and stately as she drew back her head.
She's good!
Natalia cried inside, her feelings soaring with an intense emotion that startled her in its vehemence. She's good, she'll be all right, she's going to be all right from now on, my daughter, my own heart!
Slowly she turned to Pierre and saw that his eyes were wide with concentration and luminous with wonder. All at once she touched his hand, softly, quickly. She could imagine him at the Mariinsky, watching her on the stage, watching and wanting her from that very moment. Perhaps, right now, in this theatre in another capital, twenty-two years later, a young man was falling in love with Tamara. Oh, God, no, I don't want that for her, Natalia thought. She's still a child, and I don't want her to repeat my life.
How odd it is, she mused then, that we have somehow come together, she and I! She is going to be a ballerina, not for my sake, not to please me, as I once feared. She is dancing to prove to herself that she is not afraid to compete on my territory. Oh, the battles aren't over, not nearly so. She still resents me for going to America next month, for not placing her ahead of my personal needs. And she still prefers her father; he is the bright god in her existence. But that's all right; I have no wish to be a goddess, only her mother. In the long run she and I are quite close. We understand each other and will not destroy each other in the process of loving.
I have had a son, and loved him, and now I have this beautiful young daughter, who has risen from myself and Pierre, and from the untamed passion that we thought was love. But look at her! She is whole and she is lovely; she radiates the best of him and maybe a little bit of good from me.
Clara was sinking softly, delicately into sleep on the sofa, while the Christmas tree was growing, growing. Yes, Natalia thought, her Clara is wise and naive at the same time, a true woman-child. Where had Tamara found this interpretation? And then, with a momentary wrenching of her heart, Natalia remembered golden hair and a look of pure, azure sky: Galina! So Galina lives again, through Clara, through my own Tamara, she thought.
Pierre's eyes had filled with tears, and tactfully Natalia concentrated on the stage to give him his privacy. So he's seen it, too. Well, that is good. I'm glad. So long as we're alive, none of the others will be dead, for we shall not forget.
She fumbled with the clasp of her purse and removed from its depths a dry and withered flower. For a moment she hesitated. Then, gently, she tapped Pierre on the arm and showed it to him. It was one of the rosebuds that Boris had thrown to her at the premiere
of The Nutcracker
in 1905, a flower that had been a promise, the promise of glory and of love. It had come in a tight bouquet and landed at her feet, telling her of curtain calls to take, of certain encores that would be shouted to her from the stalls. Tonight she would lay it on her daughter's pillow. For as long as a dancer lived, there had to be an encore.
M
onique Raphel High
is a Franco-American author. She was born in New York City to French parents who met in the expatriate community where each had taken refuge during the Nazi Occupation of France. When she was only a few months old, her parents returned to Europe, where she was reared in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.
Monique graduated from high school in Paris at 16, and was admitted to Barnard College of Columbia University as a foreign student. She graduated with a double major in Renaissance Studies and English literature.
Monique taught writing at UCLA in the 1990s, and was such a popular teacher that her students asked her to take them beyond what was available at the university. She formed her own workshops and seminars, entitled WriteHigh, which eventually turned into a literary agency in the early 2000s with offices in Beverly Hills, New York, Paris and London. She discovered a number of writers who have since become well-known, such as Jill Smolinski and Janis Thomas, and nonfiction authors Candy Deemer and Nancy Fredericks. Monique's writing methods involved pairing authors to write scenes involving characters from both their books, having group therapy with a licensed therapist for the book characters, and outlining detailed plot lines and the emotional development of each book character on elaborate, colored charts.
She is now hard at work on a totally different kind of novel, a tribute to her late husband, the litigator and courtroom orator. Irrevocable Trust is a legal thriller as well as an emotional journey of self-discovery, flashing back to Nazi-Occupied France and set in Los Angeles in 1985, before the use of DNA and the enactment of sexual harassment laws.
Monique lives in Los Angeles, California, with her Persian chinchilla cat, Sebastian. She has served on the Board of the L.A. Commission on Assaults Against Women, and was President of her class at Barnard from 2009-2014. She has been a member of the Alliance Française and returns frequently to France and Europe.
Monique's fans range from India to Russia, with a heavy concentration in Central and Latin America.
