Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [501]
Thanks to this knowledge and Vladimir’s good opinion of him, Alexander found that Nadezhda treated him with a respect that was pleasing to him. She would be content to leave the high-spirited Dimitri and Karpenko extemporizing at the piano, and walk through her father’s galleries with him for a few quiet minutes while he outlined some new and interesting discovery he had made. ‘You do know a lot,’ she would say, and look at him with large, serious eyes.
She was fifteen now and, he often noted with approval, filling out nicely. Soon she would be a young woman. Alexander was very careful, therefore, in his relationship with her, keeping a friendly distance, quietly impressing her with his store of knowledge, and waiting for her to come to him.
There was only one problem to overcome at present. He hoped it would pass before too long.
Nadezhda was in love with Karpenko.
To Dimitri Suvorin, the year 1913 was not just a time of promise, but of wild excitement.
For never before had Russian culture risen to such dizzy heights. It was as if all the extraordinary developments of the last century had suddenly come together and burst forth upon the world.
‘This isn’t a flowering,’ Karpenko liked to say, ‘it’s an explosion.’
Europe had already thrilled to Russian music, to her opera and the bass voice of the legendary Chaliapin. Now Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe had taken London, Paris and Monte Carlo by storm. Two years ago the astounding Nijinsky had danced Stravinsky’s Petrouchka; last year, he had danced the extraordinary, pagan and erotic L’Après-midi d’un Faune; and in May 1913, in Paris, he had choreographed the event which was to change the history of music: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Vladimir Suvorin, by good luck, had happened to be visiting Paris at the time.
‘It was amazing,’ he told Dimitri. ‘And frightening. The audience were scandalized and went berserk. I saw poor Diaghilev afterwards. He doesn’t know what to do with Nijinsky: he’s terrified he’s gone too far. Yet it was brilliant, I tell you. The most exciting thing I ever saw in my life.’
He had also brought Dimitri a copy of Stravinsky’s score and the young man went over it for days, fascinated by its titanic, primitive energy, its dissonances – never heard before – and its jarring rhythms, finally declaring: ‘It’s like seeing a new galaxy being created by God’s hand. It’s a new music with new rules.’
‘Russia is no longer behind Europe,’ Karpenko had declared on this occasion. ‘We’re ahead.’ And few could have denied that in this thrilling ferment of all the arts, Russia had become the avant-garde.
If Dimitri was excited by his musical discoveries, the life of his friend Karpenko was now a perpetual whirl. Since Rosa’s death, they had rearranged the apartment so that Peter, Dimitri and Karpenko each had a separate room, and these shared bachelor quarters suited them all very well. Thanks to Vladimir’s kindness, Karpenko had enough money to continue his studies and rent a small studio besides; and since he was now in the thick of the avant-garde, one never knew when he would show up at home.
The avant-garde – remarkable in Russia for being led by both men and women – was seething with ideas, and whenever he appeared Karpenko would inform Dimitri and his father about some latest wonder: a riotous abstract canvas by Kandinsky; a brilliant stage-set by Benois or Chagall; and invariably some new -ism, so that Peter would quietly enquire: ‘Well, Karpenko, what’s the -ism today?’
In 1913, it was Futurism.
It was certainly a remarkable movement. Led by such brilliant