Still, my hat is pretty, Marusya thought, brightening up—and then brought herself up short. What idiotic vulgarity! So the hat suits me. What does that matter? What significance does that have? What truly mattered was that Mikhail now talked to her about serious and weighty questions, as an equal, and not as if she were an empty-headed young lady.
Their house was filled with Mikhail’s friends every evening. All of them admired Marusya’s beauty: her gray eyes fringed with thick lashes so dark they looked tinted—never! how trivial and coquettish it would be to paint them!—and her delicate, graceful hands. Her coat may have been old and ugly, but a new dress had just been made for her out of wonderful woolen cloth bought at the manufactory of Isaac Schwartzman. It was purchased at a reduced price because the cut was undersized—only enough for a girl. But it was just enough to make something for Marusya, and Mama accompanied her, not forgetting to bring the tape measure. They figured out how to lay the pattern just so, to use the least amount of fabric, and she said she would manage to cut it. Mother deliberated for a long time, afraid to cut into the expensive material, pinning it on Marusya this way and that, but at last it became a dress that was both elegant and modest, and not at all coquettish—with a tie! Marusya now lacked only one thing—her own ample bosom that would fill out the bodice a bit and be somewhat visible from above. Her solicitous mother, who was endowed with her own impressive bosom, suppressing a smile, made some gathers here, and some tucks there, concealing the faults and enhancing the virtues (a small, neat waist) of her figure.
The month of January was like one long celebration. Marusya’s birthday was glorious; everyone came to congratulate her on her special day, even Jacqueline Osipovna. It was the first time in her life that Marusya had enjoyed such popularity. Every evening, someone invited her to the theater, or to a party, and—the crowning event—Jacqueline Osipovna invited her to a Rachmaninoff concert. Marusya had never attended such a momentous concert, and didn’t realize she would remember it to the end of her days, because such an event happens only once in a lifetime.
One more event took place—and again fate took a decisive turn with the help of Madame Leroux—in the middle of February. On the invitation of Jacqueline Osipovna, the legendary Ella Ivanovna Rabenek came to lecture at the Courses. A graduate of the Grunewald School established by Isadora Duncan, favorite of the great barefoot dancer and founder of one of the first schools of movement in Moscow, an actress who went onstage without shoes or stockings, scantily clad, a teacher of movement and rhythm in the Stanislavsky Art Theatre, she made her first appearance at the Froebel Courses in a formal man’s suit devoid of any feminine baubles or details, and wearing a flowery silk scarf, more suitable as upholstery fabric than as a lady’s garment. The audience was breathless with expectation. Marusya, who by this time had become a teacher in her own right and no longer rushed to meet the kindergarten children at seven in the morning but arrived at nine o’clock to lead her group in simple, unpretentious music lessons, had a revelation, as early as the first lecture, about why she was studying all this history and literature, anatomy and botany, why she listened to semi-incomprehensible discussions among adults and clever people, and why she went to theaters and concerts—it was to be able to study with the marvelous Mrs. Rabenek as soon as possible.
The lecture inspired her with awe. The names alone—Nietzsche, Isadora Duncan, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze—the rhythms of the world, the rhythms of the body … All these rhythms were encoded in music, which itself is the expression of the pulse of the universe. Marusya had not yet had time to learn about the creation of the “new human being” by listening to and perceiving these cosmic rhythms, but soon … soon … Of course, this was what Marusya dreamed about—becoming a new, free-thinking and -feeling human being, the New Woman, and helping others along this path. Oh, the presentiment of marvelous changes to come!
Still, what would become, perhaps, the most important event in her life occurred on the day Ella Ivanovna read her final lecture and gave a demonstration, with music. She changed her menswear suit for a short white tunic. There was nothing in her movements reminiscent of ballet. They were charged with freedom and energy, authenticity and daring. “This is me! This is utterly me!” Marusya felt with her whole body. After the lecture, she flew home as if on wings. Her posture and gait changed within a single hour—her back straightened out, her shoulders relaxed, her long, graceful neck seemed to grow even longer, and her feet seemed to glide over the ground as though on ice.
Mama was already asleep, and her father was sitting by the kerosene lamp in his nightcap, reading an old book in French. She had no one to whom she could communicate her newfound joy, her delight, her sense of light intoxication. She lay down in her angular room, a former pantry, and thought it would be impossible to fall asleep; but she fell asleep instantaneously. She rose early, easily, made her Swiss ablutions, adding a few drops of the Brocard eau de cologne that Mikhail had given her as a present, and put on her new pantaloons. She held her corset in her hands, then cast it away, determined never again to squeeze her body into the disgusting thing, the outmoded, disgusting thing, because since yesterday her body had wanted to be free—not constricted, bound up, but supple and lissome, Grecian …
She put on her old walnut-colored dress. Then, instead of the abhorrent overcoat, she put on a worn-out man’s double-breasted jacket, and a round fur hat with a shawl tied over it. When she looked into the mirror, liking very much what she saw, she thought, How charming that Marusya is! She laughed, because she remembered perfectly well which of Tolstoy’s marvelous heroines had said these words, delighted with the springtime and with her own youth.
It was after nine o’clock when she left home. The weather was sunny, but fairly cold. The air was clear and pure, and the feeling of lightness and freedom from yesterday returned to her; she smiled thinking about it. It turned out, however, that she was not smiling at her recollections from yesterday, but at a young man who was standing in front of the window of the watchmaker’s shop. He had curly reddish-brown hair and was wearing a student’s cap and overcoat. His face, not quite familiar to her, beamed with the same joy that filled Marusya.
“Maria! I despaired of ever seeing you again! Remember me? We met at the Rachmaninoff concert.”
Although nearly a month had passed, Marusya remembered. She immediately remembered the student who had given her his seat in the orchestra, and then walked her home. He had impressed her then as a very well-brought-up young man, and now, too, he behaved with deferential respect toward her.
“Will you allow me to accompany you?” he said, offering her his arm for her to lean on. The sleeve of his coat was made of delicate, expensive fabric.
“Where are you going?” Marusya herself didn’t know where she intended to go. She had no lessons today with the children, and there were still two hours before her lectures at the Courses began.
So they walked in the direction their feet carried them. Mariinsko-Blagoveshchenskaya Street, long and hilly, meandering up and down. Life still unfolded serenely, at a measured pace, on that street; but the peaceful days of the street, and indeed of the whole city, graced with its intricate, fanciful architecture, were numbered. Underground, the Revolution was already brewing, to be followed by civil war; and the near future—some weeks, at most—would bring with it the murder of the boy Andryusha, a murder committed “from personal motives” by who-knew-whom. If only he could have lived; but he was murdered, and the Beilis Affair was about to cover the local world in a poisonous, stinking fog. Nor had the assassination yet taken place of Prime Minister Stolypin by the terrorist Bogrov, who lived not far from here, on Bibikovsky Boulevard, though it was already being plotted. Lukyanovskaya Prison was expanding in all directions; the new buildings were all full, and countless people were incarcerated there, people still unknown to Jacob and Marusya: the Ulyanov sisters, and their brother Dmitry, and Dzerzhinsky, and Lunacharsky, and Fanny Kaplan. Very soon, through a little caprice of life, they would learn all these names, and many other names, and they would read books and play music together—for four hands, in unison—and all the novelties and discoveries in science and art they would breathe together, and this would fortify and deepen their impressions and sensations many times over.