Читать книгу Behind the Curtain - Philip Gibbs - Страница 15

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Under Lenin’s New Economic Policy several little shops had opened in Moscow. They were restaurants and coffee shops where light meals were served, mostly to government officials who paid to go there. Lucy made a habit of slipping into one of these, as afterwards she told Vladimir. It had been opened by a member of the old Imperial ballet who had given up dancing because of rheumatism in his leg. He was an attractive-looking man but frightened of his own temerity in opening the coffee shop.

“It is very dangerous,” he said several times to Lucy. “Of course I am watched by the police. They are always keeping a note of those who come here. It may cost me my life one day.”

He was helped in the shop by his wife and daughters and his old mother remained in the background with two of his aunts who made the coffee and cooked some biscuits and buns. They surrounded Lucy when there was nobody else in the shop and chattered about their fears and hardships and terrible experiences during the Revolution and Civil War. Because Lucy was English they had an idea that she might help them to escape.

“Now that there’s an English Mission in Moscow,” said the former ballet dancer, Leonid Ivanovich Dmitiriev, “it might be possible for you to obtain some English pound notes. That would give us a chance of escape. English pound notes or American dollars can work miracles.”

Lucy smiled at this dream.

“How am I to get English pound notes? Do you imagine that any Englishman will hand them to me for the sake of my beautiful eyes?”

“Hush!” said Leonid dramatically. “If you will go to them with some diamonds, they might buy them for English pound notes—diamond necklaces, diamond rings, precious stones belonging to my wife’s family. I will show you. But we must keep an eye on the door. It’s very dangerous. It’s terribly dangerous.”

There was no one in the shop. At this hour in the afternoon no one was likely to come.

Leonid whispered something to his wife. She went to the room behind the shop. The two aunts came out with her. They were carrying little boxes.

“We will show you,” said Leonid. “They will draw the eyes out of your head. Come here to this table. Bend over them.”

The three women opened little boxes and the table was strewn with jewels—diamonds, pearls, emeralds and rubies.

“Aren’t they wonderful, my dear?” whispered one of the aunts.

“Your English friends can have them all for a few banknotes,” said Leonid in a low voice.

Lucy bent over the table and drew her breath, as afterwards when he was older she told her son Vladimir.

“It was like going into Aladdin’s cave,” she said. “The diamonds seemed alive. Light came out of them like flowing water all shining. They were like little stars on the tablecloth. They took my breath away.”

The people in the coffee shop were all absorbed in the jewels on the table when the door swung open and a man in a black jacket and high black boots came in kicking the snow off his shoes on the doormat. They had seen him before. He was an officer of the police.

Leonid turned deadly white and seemed to lose the power of movement. It was one of the aunts who was quick-witted and rapid in action. She gathered up the tablecloth with all the jewels inside.

“This cloth is filthy!” she exclaimed. “It’s really a disgrace!”

She carried it into the back kitchen.

The man in black stared at them suspiciously, but was tricked by this sleight-of-hand.

“It was an awful moment,” said Lucy when she told this story to Vladimir.

“You were taking terrible risks, Little Mother!” exclaimed Vladimir, thrilled by this tale but shocked by his mother’s carelessness.

It was in this little restaurant that she met Zabotin, the greatest dancer since Nijinsky, and the beautiful Kusanova who had come starving to the house in Kazan. They were now back in Moscow rehearsing a new ballet and getting better food—though not enough for Zabotin—than they had in Kazan.

“Zabotin is like a child!” said Lucy laughing at the memory of her meeting with him. “He flung his arms round my neck and kissed me as though I were his long-lost love. It was quite embarrassing.”

“Cheek!” said Vladimir who knew that English word.

“Kusanova was as beautiful as ever,” said Lucy. “She wore a little fur coat and fur-lined boots like a fairy princess.”

“It doesn’t seem right to me,” said Vladimir. “I see the peasants going about with rags tied on their feet or straw in wooden shoes. Why should these dancers be spoilt like that?”

“Little Bolshevik!” cried his mother, vexed again. “How could Kusanova dance if her feet were tied up in rags?”

That seemed an unanswerable argument and Vladimir forgot his grudge against dancers when Zabotin and Kusanova came to tea one day and stayed to supper and then half-way through the night, talking, talking, talking. Kusanova had come in the little fur jacket and fur-lined boots, and she had the grace of a kitten so that every movement she made was exquisite. Because of the heat of the room from the big porcelain stove she kicked off her boots and remained with bare feet, and Vladimir stared at her pretty toes. Zabotin did most of the talking, about the new ballet now in rehearsal and the terrific quarrels he had with the director whom he described as a torturer of souls and, what was worse, a man without taste.

Later in the evening, he became filled with self-pity and, as in Kakan one night, clasped his hands above his head and flung himself against the wall groaning and weeping.

“This life!” he cried. “It’s terrible! There is no beauty in Russia and I cannot live without beauty. I live like a caged animal. I’m a dancing slave, led through the bars of this prison house. I suffocate, I cannot breathe, I die by inches, because I’m starved of liberty and starved of beauty.”

“Hush, dear Zabotin!” said Kusanova. “You always speak so wildly and there are listening ears, everywhere.”

She glanced toward Vladimir who was reading a book in his corner of the room. In Kazan they had been startled and frightened when this small boy had jumped down from the stove and denounced them.

“I’m not listening,” said Vladimir, though he had heard every word. “At least I don’t want to listen.”

Zabotin came over from the wall and looked over the boy’s shoulder.

“The Glory of Lenin,” he read. “The Father of the Revolution.”

He cried out in horror.

“O God! O God!”

“It’s a good book,” said Vladimir. “It gives some of Lenin’s speeches. We have to learn them by heart.”

“Jesu! Jesu!” cried Zabotin.

Kusanova spoke to him again.

“Be careful, Zabotin! Dance with me. Dancing is less dangerous. It’s the one art in which there are no politics.”

It took some persuasion to make Zabotin dance. He vowed that he had lead on his feet and in his heart.

“Dance, Zabotin!” pleaded Lucy. “When you dance life seems happy again.”

Vladimir pushed his book away and watched them. Zabotin and Kusanova danced in an old-fashioned way—a minuet very stately and graceful, touching each other with the tips of their fingers. Then Zabotin went mad and danced like a faun, leaping up high with his head nearly touching the ceiling. He seized Kusanova by the waist and lifted her up in spite of her pretended struggles. He had the strength of a young tiger and its grace, and in his eyes was a mad, wild look.

Lucy clapped her hands.

“That’s grand! You’re a genius, Zabotin!”

After that he did some conjuring tricks and juggling with the teacups and saucers to amuse Vladimir and Olga who had now come into the room after her afternoon sleep, looking like Alice in Wonderland with her hair in plaits.

Then they danced again and Olga was enraptured.

“I wish I could go into the ballet,” she cried.

Kusanova embraced the little girl.

“I will teach you your first steps. Later you will go on to the ballet school. That will be perfect. Now let us begin at once. Point your toes. Hold your arms up like this. Oh, that is adorable!”

They were all laughing at Olga’s first lesson when Michael came in. He smiled at them all good-naturedly.

“And yet people say there’s no happiness in Russia!” he remarked.