Natasha's Dance полностью

symbolic meanings in various rituals. The twisting threaded pattern, for example, symbolized the creation of the world ('the earth began to twist and it appeared', the peasants said).⁵³ The colour red had a special magic power: it was reserved for belts and towels that were used in sacred rituals. In Russian the word for 'red' (krasnyi) is connected with the word for 'beautiful' (krasivyi) - which explains, among many other things, the naming of Red Square. It was equally the colour of fertility - which was regarded as a sacred gift. There were different belts for every stage of life. Newborn babies were tied up with a belt. Boys were given a red 'virgin belt'. Bridal couples girded themselves with embroidered linen towels. And by custom a pregnant woman stepped on a red belt before giving birth.⁵⁴ It was important for a dead man to be buried with a belt, ideally the one that he was given at his birth, to symbolize the end of the life cycle and the return of his soul to the spirit world.⁵⁵ According to folklore, the Devil was afraid of a man with a belt; not to wear a belt was regarded as a sign of belonging to the underworld. Hence Russian demons and mermaids were always portrayed beltless. A sorcerer would remove his belt when he entered into conversation with the spirit world.

These old pagan rituals were by no means confined to the peasantry. Many of them had become a part of national custom and were even found among the upper classes, who prided themselves on their modern attitudes. The Larin family in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin were typical in this respect:

Amid this peaceful life they cherished, They held all ancient customs dear; At Shrovetide feasts their table flourished With Russian pancakes, Russian cheer; Twice yearly too they did their fasting; Were fond of songs for fortune-casting, Of choral dances, garden swings. At Trinity, when service brings The people, yawning, in for prayer, They'd shed a tender tear or two Upon their buttercups of rue.⁵⁶

It was not unusual for a gentry family to observe all the strictest rituals of the Church and, without any sense of contradiction, to hold simultaneously to pagan superstitions and beliefs that any European would have dismissed as the nonsense of serfs. Fortune-telling games and rituals were almost universal among the aristocracy. Some families would employ a sorcerer to divine the future by interpreting their dreams. Others relied on their maids to read the signs from the tea-leaves.⁵⁷ Yuletide fortune-telling was a serious affair and, as Anna Lelong remembered, its rituals were a part of the all-night vigil on New Year's Eve:

There was always an all-night vigil and prayers on New Year's Eve. Dinner was at nine, and afterwards there would be fortune-telling in the dining room, twelve cups would be made by hollowing out onions - one for every month - and salt would be sprinkled in them. Then they would be put in a circle on the table marking a different month on each. We children would be given two glasses - we would pour water into them and then drop egg white into them. We would then get up on New Year's morning very early and go into the dining-room, which stank of onion. We would look into our glasses and see fantastic shapes that had been made by the egg-white - churches, towers or castles. Then we would try to create some kind of pleasant meaning out of them. The grown-ups looked at the onion cups and worked out which month would be particularly rainy or snowy depending on whether the salt in the onion was dry or not. People took all this very seriously and we would make a note of what resulted. We also predicted whether the harvesting of grain would be wet or not. There was an order then to clear everything away and the stoves were heated, all the windows opened, and some kind of powder burned which gave off a nice smell. We were not taken to church that morning. We would spend it playing with our puppets, with bits of food for their banquet given to us by the servants in the kitchen.⁵⁸

Peasant superstitions were also widely found among the aristocracy, even among those who would shudder at the thought of sharing any other customs with the peasantry. Stravinsky, for example, who was the perfect European gentleman, always kept a talisman that had been given to him at his birth. Diaghilev was full of superstitions which he had inherited from his peasant nanny. He did not like being

photographed; he would become alarmed if someone placed his hat on the table (which meant that he would lose money) or on the bed (which meant that he would become ill); the sight of a black cat, even on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, filled him with horror.⁵⁹