The third act saw a palace depicted on the stage with lots of burning candles and walls hung with pictures of knights with beards. Two people, presumably a king and queen, stood at the front. The king waved his right hand in the air and sang something very badly – it was obviously his nerves – before sitting down on a crimson throne. The girl who had first been in white and then pale blue was now wearing a plain smock, and she had let her hair down. She was standing near the throne, singing something very doleful to the queen. But the king waved his hand harshly, and then some men with bare legs and women with bare legs came on from both sides and they all started dancing. Then the violins struck up with a light and happy tune, at which one of the actresses with thick, bare legs and thin arms detached herself from the rest, walked off the set to straighten her bodice, came back out into the middle of the stage and began to leap in the air, tapping her feet together very quickly. The stalls erupted with applause and shouts of ‘bravo!’ Then one man retreated into a corner of the stage. Louder and louder came the cymbals and horns in the orchestra, and this one man with his bare legs started leaping right up in the air and making fancy movements with his feet. (This was Duport, who took home sixty thousand silver roubles a year for this artistry.) The whole theatre from the stalls to the gods thundered their applause and yelled at the tops of their voices, and the man came to a halt and stood there beaming and bowing to all quarters. Then the bare legs were off again dancing, men and women, the king sounded off in time to the music and they all broke out in song. But suddenly a storm blew up, heralded by chromatic scales and diminished sevenths from the orchestra, and they all scurried away, dragging one of the company off stage, and the curtain fell. Once again the audience erupted with fearsome applause and they all stood there in blissful transports roaring out, ‘Duport! Duport! Duport!’
It no longer seemed at all strange to Natasha. She looked round in delight, grinning with glee.
‘Glorious, isn’t he – Duport?’ said Hélène, turning to her.
‘Oh yes,’ said Natasha in reply.
CHAPTER 10
During the interval there was a cool draught in Hélène’s box as the door opened and in walked Anatole, stooping and trying not to brush against anyone.
‘Allow me to introduce my brother,’ said Hélène, her eyes shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole. Natasha turned her pretty little head towards the handsome adjutant and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was just as handsome close to as he had been from a distance, sat down beside her and said this was a delight he had long been waiting for, ever since the Naryshkins’ ball, where he had had the unforgettable pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more astute and straightforward with women than he ever was in male company. He talked with an easy directness, and Natasha was agreeably surprised to discover that this man, the butt of so much gossip, had nothing formidable about him – quite the reverse, his face wore the most innocent, cheery and open-hearted of smiles.
Kuragin asked what she thought of the opera, and told her that at the last performance Semyonova had fallen down on stage.
‘Oh, by the way, Countess,’ he said, suddenly treating her like a close friend of long standing, ‘we’re getting up a fancy-dress ball. You must come – it’s going to be great fun. They’re all getting together at the Arkharovs’. Please come. You will, won’t you?’ As he spoke he never took his smiling eyes off Natasha, her face, her neck, her exposed arms. Natasha knew for certain he was besotted with her. She liked this, yet she could feel the temperature rising and she was beginning to feel somehow cornered and constrained in his presence. When she wasn’t looking at him she could sense him gazing at her shoulders, and she found herself trying to catch his eye to make him look at her face. But when she looked into his eyes she was shocked to realize that the usual barrier of modesty that existed between her and other men was no longer there between the two of them. It had taken five minutes for her to feel terribly close to this man, and she scarcely knew what was happening to her. Whenever she turned away she bristled at the thought that he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and start kissing her on the neck. They were going on about nothing in particular, yet she felt closer to him than she had ever been to any other man. Natasha kept glancing round at Hélène and her father for help – what did it all mean? – but Hélène was deep in conversation with a general and didn’t respond to her glance, and her father’s eyes conveyed nothing but their usual message, ‘Enjoying yourself? Jolly good. I’m so pleased.’
