Adrienne Sharp - The True Memoirs of Little K

It was a great night, for I knew I still held some power, however small, over his majesty the emperor. What would I do with it?

So when the dowager empress struck my name from the special list of imperial artists scheduled to perform at the coronation gala later that spring of 1896, saying, It would be an insult for her to dance before the young empress , and when Niki stood there silently while she did so, I acted. Surely Niki would want me in Moscow to witness the moment when he placed the majestic nine-pound state crown of Catherine the Great on his own head. Why had he not said so when his mother uncapped her pen and drew a line through my name? Because to contradict anyone was considered by the tsar to be impolite. His ministers never understood this about him, were perpetually astonished when the seemingly agreeable tsar did not do what he had been advised to do, when the tsar smiled at them one hour and asked for their resignations the next. Why, this happened to Prince Volkonsky, who succeeded Vzevolozhsky as director of the theaters, and who, after a contretemps with me, offered Niki his resignation. Niki asked him to reconsider, but when Volkonsky arrived home he found sitting on his desk a letter from the tsar accepting his resignation! But I will tell you more of this later. Niki always knew his own mind, though his ministers did not know it. I did.

This time I did not go to Sergei for help, but to Grand Duke Vladimir, who as head of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts was the ultimate arbiter of all things theatrical and who as blustering uncle of Niki held his young nephew in his palm. It was Vladimir and his brothers who decreed that Niki could not marry Alix quietly in the Crimea as he had wished but must wait and have a formal state ceremony at the Winter Palace in the capital. It was Vladimir who choreographed the funeral of Alexander III. And it was he who planned this coronation. And so I knew already that Vladimir loved to exercise his power and with his older brother the tsar dead and his young nephew the new tsar so raw, this was Vladimir’s best opportunity to play the tsar himself for a while. Why, Niki had already had to reprimand him for using the imperial box at the Maryinsky without Niki’s express permission. I could have gone to Sergei about this matter, but this was not the matter of a Sunday-night performance but a matter of state, and I was afraid the dowager empress would not listen to her great-nephew. No, Emperor Vladimir was the better choice, and anyway it is always better to have two allies than one, and I was certain Vladimir would help me countermand the dowager empress’s order because he hated her and because Alix had insulted his wife. When Alix first arrived in Petersburg, Miechen tried to take her under her wing. After all, they were both brides brought to Russia from small German principalities, both women quiet and bookish and unprepared for the spectacle of the Russian court. When Miechen looked at Alix, she saw her long-ago self, modest of dowry and social graces, though Alix was a fairy-tale beauty with her red-gold hair and Miechen looked like a bulldog. But like Miechen before her, Alix had no one to guide her through the intricacies of the elaborate Russian court. The dowager empress was busy helping her son choose ministers and hold on to the crown. So the wily Miechen saw an opportunity to slip her hand into the pocket of the new empress. But Alix slapped it out. The puritanical Alix found Miechen far too sophisticated, far too comfortable with the luxury-loving, sexually amoral Russian aristocracy, and so Alix made the first of many enemies in Peter. No, I was the first. And I was also Vladimir’s obedient dushka who had shut her mouth like she was told and who was still being punished. And so on my behalf Vladimir spoke to Niki, who agreed that, yes, my name should be put back. He did want me there! I knew it! Unfortunately, Petipa had already created a ballet called La Perle in honor of the occasion.

The pearl was the empress’s favorite gem. She had the first pick of any pearls obtained from the icy waters of Siberia by Fabergé, Bolin, and Hahn, Russia’s greatest jewelers. And so, it was specifically to flatter Alix that Petipa designed this ballet to be performed at a gala at the Bolshoi Theater, one of many entertainments planned for the new tsar and tsaritsa. That was Petipa’s job as imperial choreographer—to stage occasional pieces for coronations, state visits, royal weddings, and if he could at the same time flatter the court, why, so much the better. His detractors used to say the old man always had one eye on the stage and the other on the imperial box. But who did not? Most men had both eyes on the tsar, so at least Petipa saved one of his for me. Already Petipa had devised divertissements for pink, white, and black pearls, and suddenly he was forced to create new steps for a new rare pearl, a yellow pearl, and new music had to be composed for me immédiatement by M. Drigo. A yellow tutu had to be hastily confected for me by Mme. Ofitserova. These preparations for me, no more than the preparations made for the others, but done so long after their own, drew special attention. Drew ire, one might say. Such a fuss over Kschessinska, the tsar’s ex-concubine. Why is it so important to the tsar that she be included?—for, of course, everyone knew the theater would not go to this trouble were it not a direct order from the tsar. And so the rumors began then that despite the attentions paid to me by Sergei Mikhailovich, Nicholas came still to my bed, rumors I did nothing to dampen. There were even rumors that I had given the tsar a son and that this son was hidden, disguised in our midst, no, secreted away in Paris, but there was a son, maybe two, and this was the mystery of the tsar’s loyalty to me. How else to explain Kschessinska still sitting in the pocket of the tsar? If only that were so, but as it was, the only explanation I could find was that the tsar still loved me. I was rich with happiness during those weeks when everyone hated me. Was not a pearl formed when a grain of sand irritated an oyster?

And so I prepared to dance La Perle at the coronation gala of Nicholas II at the Bolshoi Theater, which had been renovated at great expense for the occasion—fifty thousand rubles to hang new red velvet drapes at the boxes and to reupholster the chairs, sixty thousand rubles to regild all that shone like gold and to freshen the ceiling’s mural, fifty thousand rubles to refit the crystal chandeliers and to replace the sumptuous red carpeting. More rubles than Niki had settled on me! More by half. Of course, he had access to many more rubles now. I didn’t know this yet, but the ballet would find itself crushed between the first and last acts of A Life for the Tsar , a minor divertissement, and as such, it would not command the undivided attention of the audience or of Niki. While his Yellow Pearl danced for him, he would greet dignitaries in his box, Alix beside him in a silver brocade dress. As it turned out, they were not vexed or irritated. Why, they never looked down at the stage at all, no matter how furiously I spun. Not once while I danced the steps Petipa made for me to the music Drigo had made for me in the costume Ofitserova had made for me did either of them take note of Little K. Tiny K. Grain of sand.

Nicholas wrote in his journal that night that The Pearl was a beautiful new ballet . Reading that line even seventy-five years later—for I read his journals over and over—still infuriates me. For, really, how would he know?

The coronation of a tsar always takes place in Moscow, no matter where circumstances dictate his initial oath of allegiance is pledged. Moscow is the site of our Slavic origins as tribute payers to the Mongols before we wrested our destiny from them—and before Peter the Great wrested the court from the heart of the country and spun it around to face the west, and Moscow is where the new tsars must formally pledge themselves to the Russian people. So Niki went to Moscow to be crowned on May 9, 1896, after the official twelve months of mourning for his father were well over. The planning for the coronation had begun in March of the previous year. Scale models were built so the three-hundred-year-old Cathedral of the Assumption and the processional routes to it could be studied by Niki’s uncles Vladimir, Pavel, Sergei, and Alexei, who served on the Coronation Commission, so that every step taken by every person involved in the three weeks’ events could be measured. Every hotel, palace, and lodge was rented—the imperial artists were housed at the Dresden Hotel—and any doorway, window, and roof top with a view of the processional route was rented for the day for a fortune! Almost a million rubles were spent to refurbish the city streets the processional would traverse. The only element not under the jurisdiction of the Coronation Commission was the weather, and so, of course, it did not behave. The week before the ceremony, it rained each day, the storm cold, windy, grim; only on the day of Niki’s entrance into Moscow did the sun make its entrance. Good omen.