"They're on the way, the words of love and freedom,
They're flying faster than the moment flies
And I am in stage fright before singing —
My lips have grown colder than ice.
But soon that place, where, leaning to the windows
The tender birches make dry rustling sound,
The voices will be ringing of the shadows
And roses will in blackened wreaths be wound."
Akhmatova, 1916.
After my performace, everything and everyone around me shone like through a shimmering curtain, I was only able to distinguish certain details that remained clear.
Anne actually performed in the salon, few hours after my own performance, she had a brief chat with Nathalie, browsed through her bookshelf and took a volume from there. As the clock struck half past one at night, Anne appeared to us, her long red hair flowing, freely, barefoot, like a fairy. She uttered to Emily Dickinson's famous poems in a clear silvery voice: "Wild nights"and for encore "Because I could not stop for Death." The room was in complete silence, the candles smoked gently, and the high mirrors reflected Anne's ghostly, slender figure distorted, crooked. Renee's face had brightened during Anne's performance, as if she had experienced some supernatural experience, and when the furious applause was over.
Renee sat down in the corner, took a notebook and a pen from her pocket and started writing at a feverish pace. The pages turning in a quiet rattle as Renee's slender fingers seemed to almost dance. Ellen Thesleff also sat in her corner next to a glass of red wine and drew, I don't know if she had done so all night, or had just started during Anne's performance.
Nathalie radiated contentment and she seemed to have a passionate conversation with Katherine Brooke, but where was the lily girl, Virginie? So I decided to look for her as my russian needed practice..
I found her outside on the patio, she was sitting in the bitter moonlight, bluish shadows under her dark eyes, pale, like a mangolia flower. The most intoxicating scent came from her hair, it was a mixture of powder, orange, bergamot, herbs, and a touch of jasmine. She looked at me from the corner of her eye and said in a low, harmonious voice, "remind me where we are that I do not to confuse the boulevards of Paris, to the Mediterranean."In the dim moonlight our eyes met and we smiled at each other. I felt like I had always known her, this delicate lily flower of a girl, even though I first met her only tonight. Maybe there was some truth of that kindred spirit talk, in Anne's speeches after all, or else performing together had broken down the inner social barriers that would normally isolate me from all the girls of my approximate age. It turned out that Virginie was only temporarily in Paris. So we sat in silence.
Later years, I found out that she was one of those people under whom no light came on at all when stepped into the elevator, because she was so light. She looked then, like the image of Albertine from Proust. She had a fever, every day, her palms were hot and dry, and hectic color bloomed her cheeks. Two moods were essential to her nature, a quiet gravity, and a sparkling joy that suddenly emerged, like a cold mountain stream in the Alps. She preferably sat indoors on a divan wrapped in a sunbrust of a Japanese kimono, her thick, fragrant hair flowing down on her back in braids, as hairpins did make her tempels throb, sometimes. Reading everything she got her hands on, or sitting in front of a piano or a harpsichord and playing Russian romances, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, and sometimes also Rimsky-Korsakov, Skrjabin and French Offenbach, Berlioz, and of course Chopin. Her dark lashes half closed, tears pouring down on slim fingers caressing the keys, again, and again, the same songs...
Suddenly Katherine rushed out the door as if the little devils were behind her. I heard her voice, it was dark, and forced coldly calm, like frozen ice. A few individual words echoed to our bench, and most of that content was truly unpublishable, she turned on her heels like a lost soul in search of the gates of paradise and uttered her voice rising to the heavens: " Does she really think that after Japan, she has a moral backbone to come and suggest anything to me, not even tea, let alone anything more private, that too charming, immoral, flibbertigibbet."
Ah, I thought to myself, secrets are being revealed, Katherine and Renee, apparently, have encountered each other in Japan, and something went wrong there, but that's not surprising, as Renee always seems to create drama, one way or another, or so Nathalie had told to me. Renee has that fortunate tendency to drew different women to her like moths to lamplight, so Katherine seemed to be one more casuality, of her vivid, living, but gloomy charm. Katherine had left the patio, with rustling skirts, and trembling hands, without noticing us, so we, Virginie and I got up slowly, stiffly and went inside to shadowy house.
Inside crystal glasses glittered, on the table, there was Renee´s hat, Annes gloves, and a few lines of writing on a pargment. First shafts of the rising dawn hit the mirrors, folding, twisting the image of us, into a sea of flames.
Reverly was at end.
A/N:
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Peaceful and safe Holidays for all!