Pilgrim by Timothy Findley Page B

be taken to his rooms.
    As Kessler kicked the brake and began to move the chair, Pilgrim cried aloud—or thought he did: NO, DON’T ! and pointed at the sun. H E HAS NOT DIED YET !
    But all was silent; not a sound, excepting the mouselike whispers of the turning wheels as Kessler pushed his patient back towards the dark.

16
    The Countess Blavinskeya lay back in her bath. Her feet, gnarled and ruined by dance, were floating way, way off in the mist. Once such tiny, perfect feet. Her mother had always said so. And her father. And her brother.
    Alexei.
    He put his hands beneath the covers and held my feet in his icy fingers, pressing his thumbs into my soles and whispering: round and round and round we go and where we will stop, no one can know.
    A long, long while ago.
    Was it?
    Yes. A long, long while.
    It doesn’t seem so. I can still feel the cold of his fingers.
    You were just twelve years old.
    Twelve? I don’t remember. I do remember I was a dancer. That I know.
    Yes. And a good one. Even when you were ten, everyone said you would become a great ballerina.
    Yes—and I did.
    Tatiana could feel the aureole of her hair spreading out around her shoulders, stranding down to her breasts, her nipples rising to its touch. Dora Henkel had told her not to untie the ribbons, but Tatiana had turned away and floated out of reach.
    There was salt in the water. A healing agent, according to the therapist, and a relaxant —a word that Dora had not encountered before. It simulates weightlessness, the therapist had said. This in itself encourages relaxation.
    Certainly, the Countess looked less tense than she had—sleepy and pendent in her Sargasso Sea of hair. Dora sat back and smiled.
    According to Doctor Furtwängler, Blavinskeya had been a dancer at first in St. Petersburg, and after with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But something had happened—the Doctor would not say what—and her career had been ended some months after her marriage to the Count Blavinsky. That same year, she had been elevated to the rank of ballerina. Choreography for a new ballet had been created for her by Fokine. Music had been composed by Stravinsky. Work had even begun on sets and costume designs, but something…
    Something had happened.
    Something had happened and Tatiana Blavinskeya had gone to live on the Moon. She had gone, she said, to seek her mother there. My mother—Selene, Goddess of the Moon.
    The gods themselves were in love with Selene. All the gods. But she fell in love with a man—a mortal—and was banished from her kingdom. She and her mortal lover were married in the presence of the Tzar of Russia! So the Countess said. And in time, they had two children: Alexei Sergeyevitch and Tatiana Sergeyevna.
    At first, all was well. To hear the doctors tell it, since both Doctor Jung and Doctor Furtwängler knew her story so well, it seemed that Selene and Sergei Ivanovitch, her husband, had lived in a fairy tale.
    But something—something had happened.
    Something, but no one knew what.
    Doctor Jung insisted that the Countess knew, but would not or could not tell it. Not so, Doctor Furt-wängler. Doctor Furtwängler’s version of the story was that nothing had happened. She had been ill and could—and would—be cured. There is nothing wrong with Tatiana Blavinskeya that time and patience cannot put right. No one lives on the Moon. It is impossible.
    On the Moon, Blavinskeya had told Dora Henkel, we are weightless. That is why I love the water so. It is like going home—as if I could float all the way from here to there.
    As for her husband…
    No.
    She would not discuss the subject of her marriage. There were no children. How could there have been? she had said enigmatically.
    Count Nicolas Blavinsky was dead. Someone had killed him—perhaps, it was rumoured, her father.
    Tatiana parted her lips and drew a strand of her hair between them. She stared out vacantly into the steam, but there was no one there she wanted. Everyone she wanted