The Model Read online

  “You are quite right to do so, Elena,” said Frau von Meyrendorff, but still looking about her, as if the book might stalk on legs from the wainscot, as in the familiar tale. “The theme is somewhat complex for a young girl, but I take the view that you will not be a young girl always, and Amadeus, my husband, agreed when I said that.”

  “Indeed, no,” said Elena. “I expect to be married and to have at least as many children as you, Frau von Meyrendorff.”

  “I am not sure the book will help in that direction,” said Frau von Meyrendorff, chuckling lightly.

  “Bábaba says that everything helps in that direction, and that things should be shunned that do not.”

  Elena was combing her hair, once more so tangled.

  “Bábaba is herself an unmarried woman, Elena. It is necessary for me to point that out.”

  “But she is so wise and kind, Frau von Meyrendorff. I depend upon her entirely, and Mamma does also. Bábaba knows all that it is needful for me to know. She always tells me that, and Mamma tells me so too.”

  “Your Mother and I were at school together, you know, Elena. It was in Paris, the capital of France.”

  “Yes, I know, Frau von Meyrendorff, though Mamma does not speak of it.”

  “There were English girls and Spanish girls, as well as French, German, and Russian girls. There was even a girl from India. She counted as English, of course. How we all loved her!”

  “I love Mikhail, Frau von Meyrendorff, though he’s much, much older than I am.”

  “A very good choice, I’m sure, Elena, and one that I am certain you have kept to yourself until this moment.”

  “Yes,” said Elena, quite simply.

  “Let me help you with that comb, my child. Your hair is so very pale and abundant. It is like flax.”

  Elena sank her face into Frau von Meyrendorff’s tight white blouse, while that lady combed away in short strokes over the top of Elena’s head.

  “Mikhail says my hair is like the hair of an angel in an Italian picture,” muttered Elena, hardly able to make the words audible.

  “That is true, Elena,” replied Frau von Meyrendorff, disentangling ever more vigorously. “Though we must never forget modesty. I wonder if that lamp contains the right kerosene? In one’s own home and homeland one can feel assured of such things. Elsewhere one cannot. If it will light us down all those flights of stairs, you may watch me change my clothes for the repast ahead of us.”

  “I shall not be at the repast, Frau von Meyrendorff. Bábaba will bring me korchina up here.”

  “And later,” promised Frau von Meyrendorff, “I shall reascend the Jungfrau and bring you some delicacies from the table.”

  Elena curtsied. In the lamplight the curtsy looked almost dashing.

  “Come, child,” cried Frau von Meyrendorff, lifting her skirt in her free hand, “come away now. Time is short.”

  But Frau von Meyrendorff did not reappear that night, though Elena remained sleepless for hours.

  She was perfectly accustomed to grown-ups behaving like that, but was disappointed all the same, by Frau von Meyrendorff, whom she had last seen in the loveliest pink dress, sprinkled with scores of even pinker camellias, all handmade.

  Still, in the end, the first faint light of dawn crept in, and the heavy autumn rain seeped in, harbinger of snow, endless snow, of floods, of agues, of a new year. Elena stole from her dimly painted bed and tiptoed across the room, even though, to the best of her belief, there was no one near her, either to the left or to the right, below her, or (most certainly not) above her. Her nightdress had been made for her by Tatiana, who had given it her on her day. Later Bábaba had made a great fuss about the colored strips and stripes that adorned it, and had never since ceased alluding to them. Elena took her new book from its little grotto behind the icon and flitted back to the warm blankets. From the bed the tiny light of devotion was always invisible for a certain period of the dawn.

  The book described a group of young girls who dwelt together in what was virtually a cellar, near the Cimetière du Nord, and worked together in the ballet of the opera, though in the lowest grade. To a few came promotion into a higher grade and departure from the cellar. Certain girls, upon promotion failing to come, or true love either, hurled or lowered themselves into the Seine, beautiful though they were. Most found neither promotion nor release, but rather dressmaking jobs, little shops, husbands, elderly relatives to care for and tend, lives very like the lives of others who had never received their long training or suffered their deep dedication. The last chapters of the book considered these ultimate destinies of the girls, lined up as if for a roll call.

  “Holy Seraphina!” thought Elena, as she read. “How necessary it is to be young!” She reflected for a moment, then added to herself, “Even with Mikhail!”

  Two of the girls in the book died of wasting disease, one in a grim sanatorium. Many of them bore children, within wedlock or without, but the children were considered mainly in their financial or economic aspect, as was so much else. There were unnumbered affairs of the heart, a few true and tender, and, of course, close friendships sometimes between the girls themselves. One of the girls, one only, had become a ballerina, but by then none of the others seemed to envy her. Not once did any girl say she did.

  Elena, however, envied her very much.

  There was a whole short chapter given to a detailed account of her day, and of her night. The other dancers standing aside as she entered the practice room and, later, falling back in awe as she practiced; the manager of the opera pampering and humoring her; the storms of applause when she swept onto the stage, the greater storms when she swept off it, the tornado at her curtain calls; the night of champagne (French champagne), slavery, and passion, all in the company of a Grand Duke, actually a real Grand Duke, who seemed, in the main, a larger and, naturally, grander version of Mikhail himself, poetry, singing, love, and all the rest. Taller, larger, more muscular, and very, very much richer, but basically the same.

  The Grand Duke, visiting Paris on undefined state business, fell in love for life with the ballerina when first he beheld her at the center of the vast stage in a ballet named “La Belle Ensorceleuse,” incident to an opera of some kind. Unfortunately, the book did not make clear whether there really was such an opera, as seemed very likely, or whether it had been invented but not composed by the guileful author. Who was the author? Elena turned back to look. He was himself a member of the nobility: Baron de la Touque; though there was provided no likeness of him. At the time the Grand Duke fell in love with her for life the ballerina had had a lover already, a French Marquis, named Raoul, but the Grand Duke slew him the very next day in a duel, indeed at dawn, much the hour at which Elena was reading about it. Heavy autumn rainfall was not mentioned as an accompaniment of the duel.

  Elena, who, as has been stated, had had much time for thinking, understood quite clearly that the author’s intention was to contrast the glittering fruits of fame with the quieter rewards of ordinary, normal life.

  Frau von Meyrendorff had indicated that the lessons of the book were of an advanced and difficult kind for one who was still a young girl. Perhaps, moreover, Frau von Meyrendorff had not herself read every word of the book, as often proved to be the case with grown-ups and the books they gave away.

  It was amazing how wide a knowledge of life in every single aspect was displayed by the noble author! Elena felt that his understanding of the female soul in all its varied possibilities was particularly extraordinary. Mamma had always said there were no people like French people. Here was an example of it: the first, as it happened, that Elena had actually encountered for herself, instead of merely being told about, often rather boringly. On the other hand, the Frenchman in the book had been instantly shot dead by a Russian. That had to be borne in mind also. And doubtless it would have been the same with épées, had the épées been removed from their cases.

  Bábaba always said that if Elena did not wish to appear for her morning guine
a fowl egg, then she needn’t. She, Bábaba, had enough to do without looking after people who could very well look after themselves but wouldn’t be bothered.

  That morning, Elena did not wish.

  Not even when she had finished the book, and then reread the first chapter of it. There was further thinking to be done first.

  The first chapter described the training needed before a girl could even hope to dance in ballet at the opera. In the rest of the book Elena had noted for herself that, though some of the girls killed themselves from disappointment, none seemed even to think of applying to dance elsewhere. She had also noted that the occasional men, men rather than boys, the “partners,” seemed to dance without training. They certainly did not train with the girls, who lived like novices, or were supposed to; and there was no reference to their training anywhere else: their partnership seemed simply to be a fact of life, as so often with men. Men were given to one, already perfect, or as accomplished as could be expected. Not one of the girls married her partner, in any case. If they married at all, they married clerks, soldiers, or kind and gentle watchmakers in later middle age. Ballerinas married devoted men who helped with their careers. Grand Dukes were not for marrying because they already had wives at home in Russia. With them romance had to suffice. But whatever else matters, speculated Elena; at least to a female? She could think of nothing.

  Elena could not indite poems, could not limn flowers or peasants, could not strum or warble, but yet she was an artist. Herr Amadeus Barger von Meyrendorff had said so very specifically, only yesterday. Elena, as it happened, had needed no telling, but she had been grateful for the confirmation; so grateful that she had instantly fainted away, though only for a split second. Herr von Meyrendorff had cited her wrists and hands. What could he know of her ankles and feet?

  Aflame, despite the weather, with conviction, Elena sped down for her guinea fowl egg, after all; and kind Bábaba, conspicuously padded and coiffed, cooked it for her, commenting continuously. It was always Bábaba, and not Cook, who prepared Elena’s egg. Cook at that hour (as at most hours) had other, far more important things to do.

  “And why are you not wearing your warm tunic and skirt, Elena Andreievna?”

  “I forgot, Bábaba.”

  “Have you not felt the cold rain?”

  “Not yet, Bábaba.”

  “The stove does not suffice for your Mother, Elisavetta Pavlovna. She has also called for two kerosene heaters as well. Soon she will demand more.”

  “I hope it’s the right kerosene.”

  “That is the concern of Stefan Triforovitch. It is he who works in the woodhouse, the oilhouse, the coalhouse. I cannot do everything outside and inside, especially now that winter is here.”

  “It is not winter yet, Bábaba.”

  “The guinea fowl have already stopped laying, Elena Andreievna. That means it is winter.”

  “Where is Frau von Meyrendorff?”

  Elena really asked because the whole house had seemed so quiet as she descended, and seemed so quiet now. There was only Stefan chopping, against the winter; and Cook macerating old walnuts, grunting whenever she macerated a thumb also.

  “Herr and Frau von Meyrendorff have left us.”

  “But they were to have stayed three weeks!”

  “Their plans have changed.”

  “But why, Bábaba?”

  “How should I know?”

  Elena was certain that Bábaba did know, if only because Bábaba knew everything that was needful.

  “Was there a quarrel, Bábaba?”

  “Eat your radishes, Elena Andreievna.”

  “Is Mamma prostrate?”

  “Your poor Mother is in the arms of Our Redeemer, Elena Andreievna. As always.”

  Bábaba crossed herself not once but twice. Elena knew it to be an obscure quittance for whatever had happened.

  Elena stole upstairs, not to her bedroom, but higher still. Elena did not consider that it was particularly cold. She suspected, indeed, that the rain implied a certain extra warmth or mugginess, perhaps not very wholesome. She looked for a moment through one of the dirty windows. From this altitude she could distinctly see the marshes steaming. Her father owed it to his position to occupy one of the tallest houses in the small town, combining dignity with the possibility of wide circumspection.

  Elena set herself to making a model.

  Gregori and Boris had left up here their many boxes of tools, over which they had fought one another so regularly and bitterly. Distant relative after distant relative, accepted family friend after accepted family friend, elderly foreign visitor after elderly foreign visitor, all had given the boys boxes of tools; far too often with the smiling hope that the two of them would share the gift. Even when a gift was bestowed upon one lad individually, the other preferred the component parts of it to those of his own. Elena’s Mother had always needed foreign visitors, even elderly visitors. Whenever she had the strength, she wrote long letters to far places, mostly in France; illegible letters, because written in bed. The tools brought from the other side of the European land mass amazed everybody, but inevitably led to worse than ever fraternal strife, to dust stirred up and shaken down everywhere in the house, and in the attic turmoil inconceivable.

  When the boys were out all day shooting and trapping, Elena had managed to teach herself more about the use of tools than would be found in any rulebook. Of course Silke had helped greatly, even though a cripple and almost unbelievably slow of speech. Silke was supposed to be a direct descendant of a Prussian who had invaded the country with Napoleon and somehow been left behind. Silke couldn’t do much for himself but there was no limit to what he would do for Elena.

  “You ought to have been a great strong boy, Elena Andreievna,” Silke would say, taking half a minute to complete the sentence.

  “No, thank you, Silke,” Elena would regularly, and more readily, reply.

  Now, in the course of half one single rainy morning and part of an afternoon, Elena, using saws, hammers, nails, and dubious glue, completed the outer framework of an entire opera house, and also installed nearly half the stage.

  Meals were irregular in the Timorasiev house, perhaps because the master simply lacked time for them. Vodka and cold cabbage alone sustained him as the proceedings he was always having to take against his different clients came to court or to some less formal assize.

  The opera house was complete in less than four days, even though a Sunday had intervened. Nor was Elena’s more prosaic education delayed or impaired: which took place on several afternoons a week, in company with Tatiana, Ismene, and Clémence, under the direction of a pretty governess, Mademoiselle Olivier-Page. The lessons were at the villa of Tatiana’s Mamma, a widow. It was less than a verst away, and Tatiana’s Mamma gave all the little girls tea and rich cakes every time they were there. Clémence was Mademoiselle Olivier-Page’s niece, the brightest of the class at book learning. All the girls loved their lessons and were eager for more, provided the lessons would not interfere with the serious purposes of life, such as that upon which Elena was now embarked. Happily, they seldom did.

  Not only the illustrations in her new book (or some of them) told Elena what a place of public entertainment looked like. There was a theater in the town itself, built when a bygone Tsar or Tsarina was supposed to be paying the place a visit. Possibly it had been used then; certainly it had never been used since. One reason was that the town itself was plainly too small to provide an audience for so huge an establishment, and there was no other community of size nearer than Smorevsk, seventy-two versts distant. The enlistment in sufficient number of actors, actresses, singers, dancers, and musicians would have been another difficult matter. Mikhail could have essayed most of these professions, but there were simply not enough like him. The theater was used mainly for the storage of casks of vodka and of a reed beer brewed exclusively in the locality. Tatiana used to make eyes at the porters, who were all aged and sodden, so that she and Elena knew by now every corn
er of the place. Often Ismene came too, who mainly liked hanging from the flies, as from a trapeze, and waving herself about: something she could not do at home, nor would have been permitted to do. Ismene’s father was the head both of the police and of the secret police, and Ismene was an only child. The girls used even to run the big curtain up and down, straining, all three of them, on the winch, and filling the place with dust, though the old porters coughed so much anyway that the extra dust made little difference. That, of course, was if they were not asleep at the time, and loudly snoring. When the curtain was more or less up, and the winch chocked, the girls used to take it in turns to stand stage center and drop most graceful curtsies, nor did they dispute as to who should curtsy first or last.

  Elena could hardly be unaware, therefore, of the need for a curtain in her own opera house. She gazed at her green velvet cloak, scissors in hand (one of the toolboxes had actually contained these scissors, which were almost as long as Elena’s shin); her green cloak, lined with pure, pink satin, as it hung in its cupboard. She then stole down three flights of stairs to her Mother’s bedroom. She tapped.

  “Mamma!”

  She tapped again.

  “Mamma! Mamma!”

  The note of anguish was necessary if the test of Mamma’s current wakefulness was to be dependable.

  Elena softly opened the door and more softly still opened the huge wardrobe filled with outdoor things no longer used. The room contained a third kerosene heater, and eight somber icons, and a clockwork machine that clicked and threw different colors on the mottled ceiling. Mamma was simply shapeless, scarcely stirring.

  Upstairs once more, Elena mopped her brow and neck and applied herself to her own small scissors, curvaceous and silvery, and her needle. She was less adroit with these implements than with certain others, but within twenty-five minutes the curtain was ready for hanging and trimming.

  The color, a deepish blue, appealed less to Elena than the green of her own cloak, and the paler blue lining was positively obvious, but the signs of wear upon the velvet made the opera house look long established instead of merely childish and imitative, and of that Elena could only approve. In any case, her book had spoken of blue hangings garnishing a ballet named “The Queen of the Night,” part of an opera by Mozart, though Elena would have liked a colored illustration to indicate the exact hue. Imperfection, always imperfection: there was not a single colored illustration in the book, not even of the Café des Hirondelles.