Baila says, “Aren’t you about to be a Jewish wife, when you marry Mâitre Blum?”

  “As rumor has it,” Jeannette murmurs, glancing at the engagement ring René gave her more than a year ago now.

  Olga beams. “Colette, the writer? How extraordinary that she has chosen to marry!”

  “You are so naïve. He is a baron. And she is a music hall performer.”

  “‘To receive happiness from someone,’” Olga quotes Colette from memory. “‘Is it not to choose the sauce in which we want to be eaten?’”

  “Well, the future baroness has chosen a very rich sauce.”

  “As well as a situation filled with opportunity,” muses Olga. “I wonder if she’ll write for the paper now. She could have her own column.”

  “And good luck with that, with a little vampire at her breast.” Sighing, Jeannette stares out the window.

  “Why is it,” Baila asks faintly, “that she hates babies?”

  “She hates herself,” says Olga.

  “Oh, you think you’re so smart!” says Jeannette, turning to face them again.

  Olga shrugs. “You’ve made yourself very popular with me just now—”

  “As if I cared!”

  “I’ll go to the offices of Le Matin today—and apply for the job. I hope you’ll convey my thanks—to your boyfriend.” Olga ducks her head just on time to avoid the wet dishrag Jeannette throws at her. It hits the wall behind her head with a splat.

  Naomi holds her face in her hands. “I’m so tired of this.” Getting up from the table, she fixes her aunt in her gaze. “You won’t make her leave school, I hope.”

  “I am sure Maître Blum wouldn’t hear of it.” Jeannette still hasn’t figured out how to convince Sonya that Baila would be better off living with her and René, when he finally gets around to marrying her. “Olga, you are to tell the Baron de Jouvenel that you will only be available after school—and during evenings and weekends, of course. The more hours, the better, as far as I’m concerned. That is, if he and the baroness find you fit for the job.”

  

  Olga stands as straight and tall as possible. She’s conscious of her short stature and how very little of her must be showing above the vast expanse of desk where the Baron du Jouvenal’s secretary sits writing notes and ignoring her.

  “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur,” she says for a second time, making an effort to speak in a lower, more commanding tone of voice.

  Sighing, the secretary lays his pen and glasses down and then looks at Olga. He laughs sweetly, as one might laugh at the sight of a baby in a pram. “What can I do for you, little lady?” He uses tu with Olga, which she finds infuriating.

  When she starts to speak, he cuts her short, lowering his head and winking. “Did your papa perhaps forget his lunch today? What’s his name, chérie? You have very pretty curls, you know.”

  “I have an appointment with Madame Colette,” she says, “for a job interview.”

  “Indeed.” He puts on a different pair of glasses and looks so closely at her that she wonders exactly what he’s trying to discern. Olga doesn’t smile. “Well then, mademoiselle, you’d better come with me.”

  She follows him through a large room filled with reporters, all of them men, banging away on their typewriters—then opens the door to a little office with Colette’s name and her new title on the door.

  “Another applicant for the job, madame.”

  Colette is far from what Olga expects, given Jeannette’s characterization of her as a music hall dancer. Perched on a straight-backed chair behind her desk, she is dressed in what appears to be a man’s suit, white waistcoat, and tie. Her pretty face—with her large, heavily made-up eyes, pointy chin, and mop of curly dark hair—gives her the look of a beautiful and rather dangerous cat. She’s so lithe and lean that it seems impossible that she could have given birth only a short time ago.

  She cocks her head at Olga, dismissing the secretary with a wave of her hand. “Oh, what a shame. Henri was to tell all the applicants that we’ve sent little Belle-Gazou away to live with her nurse in the countryside.”

  Olga wonders if it’s common practice for women of a certain class to send their infants away to be raised by a stranger. She can’t decide whether the idea seems imminently practical or rather ghastly. She’s sure her own mother would never have done such a thing. She thinks the idea would probably appeal to Jeannette, if she were ever to give birth to a child. And it suddenly strikes her that, although both her mother and Jeannette are old, they’re younger than Colette—and therefore not too old to have a baby. Could that be, she wonders, what Mâitre Blum has in mind? She wonders if Jeannette has thought of this!

  “And, really,” Colette continues in a pleasingly confiding voice, “do I look like someone meant to stay at home with a baby?”

  “I don’t know, madame. I think we’re only used to seeing women in certain prescribed roles, rather than others.”

  “Come closer, please. Aren’t you delicious!”

  Olga steps closer. She hesitates, but only for a moment, before speaking. “It seems rather odd to me that the room out there is filled exclusively with men.”

  Colette smiles. It seems that Olga has said precisely the right thing. “It seems quite odd to me too. Maybe most women are too stupid to do what those men do.”

  “Surely you can’t believe that, Madame Colette.”

  “Not in the slightest. But since being named the fiction editor of Le Matin, I haven’t had a single story submitted by a female.”

  “And yet you’ve published several!”

  “Pseudonyms. Do you like to write, my child?”

  “I believe I am, by nature, a writer.” Olga’s eyes steal upward, toward the ceiling. She feels half afraid that the wrath of God will come down on her head for what she’s dared to say—and in this place, to this person.

  Colette raises a single eyebrow at her. “And do you have some stories to tell?”

  Does she? Doesn’t everyone? Olga remembers reading that exile is one of the best routes to becoming a writer. “I might,” she says. “I was born in another land, speaking another language. My father was murdered by a mob. My mother—” She hesitates. “My mother is a woman of deep mystery.”

  Has she said too much? Has she spoken out of turn? Does she seem, as her aunt so frequently says, like an arrogant freak?

  Pushing back her chair, Colette heaves a deep and contented sigh. “That all sounds quite promising.” She’s smiling at Olga. Her smile is—Olga can’t think of another word for it—hypnotic. “Your French is certainly good—too good, perhaps.”

  She crooks her pretty finger at Olga, beckoning her closer. “We could give you a try. But we’ll have to keep your name and age a secret. How old are you? Twelve?”

  “Precisely, madame.”

  “Maybe we’ll write some stories together, you and I. Would you like to kiss me?”

  Much to Olga’s relief, there’s a sharp rap just then on the door. Henri du Jouvenal himself walks in. “Letty,” he says.

  Colette inclines her head at Olga. The editor glances at her, nods, then goes on with what he was about to say. “Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece have declared war on the Empire!”

  “Oh, how exciting! May I go, Henri?”

  “Over my dead body, dear. I expect you to come up with some timely stories, though. Readers will be hungry to know more about everything Turkish—and everything about the Balkan League. I’m sending that chap Gustave Cirilli to Adrianople, Stéphane Lauzanne to Constantinople, Hubert Vallier to Bulgarian Army Headquarters, and Roger Mathieu to the Serbia side. Alphonse Cuinet will report on the Turkish army. Gabriel Bronnaire will leave tomorrow for Greece. And Zerbitz is heading to Montenegro.”

  “Oh, what fun for them! Shall we give them a going-away party tonight, Henri?”

  

  Suddenly the lights are on and Jeannette is awake—or, at least, her eyes are open.

  They are all standing over her bed—Sonya, Naomi, Olga, and Baila. All in their night-clothes. Jeannette’s heart is racing. Her breathing is ragged, as if she’d just been dancing.

  “You were crying out,” says Sonya, laying a hand on her sister’s shoulder.

  “We thought you were being murdered!” Baila says, her eyes wide.

  And then Jeannette remembers—the final scene of The Rite of Spring, Nijinsky’s new ballet for which she and the other dancers have been working so hard and so thanklessly. Punishing their bodies at every rehearsal, every rehearsal longer and longer now, as the date for the opening approaches. Being screamed at by Nijinsky and Stravinsky, whose quarrels are so loud, and sound so nasty, that the subject of their ballet—a ritual murder in Russia’s prehistoric past—seems like it’s about to take place right there in the rehearsal room.

  Stravinsky bangs on the piano, counting out his crazy rhythms as Nijinsky, dripping sweat and rage, shouts at the composer that he must slow the music down. One doesn’t need to speak Russian to understand what he’s saying: it’s simply impossible for his dancers to execute the choreography at those insanely fast tempi.

  And then Nijinsky himself screams at them to stamp their feet harder, forcing them to jam their legs into the stage as they land, hurting their knees. He commands the Chosen Virgin to jump so high and come down so hard that there have already been several serious injuries. In demonstrating what he wants, he almost hit his head on the ceiling. None of them can jump as high as he can. They’re running out of understudies. That’s how Jeannette got her spot in the line of frenetically circling, stamping, expressionless dancers.

  Her legs and feet are sore. Her hips hurt too. It’s painful to turn over onto her side.

  “What were you dreaming?” Sonya asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  When Jeannette blinks her eyes, the scene is vivid again, vivid and loud. She hears the staccato shrieks and percussive chords of the final ritual. “Le Sacre du Printemps,” she says. “I was the Chosen One, the Sacrificial Virgin.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The Old Woman was reaching out to grab Jeannette away from the others. Away from everything that has ever made her feel safe.

  Olga finds the very idea of her aunt as any kind of virgin to be rather amusing—but refrains from saying anything arch or from saying anything at all. Jeannette’s skin looks as white as her linen sheets.

  Jeanette pushes Sonya’s hand away. “I’m fine. Go back to bed, all of you.”

  Baila sits down between her mother and Jeannette, leaning her sleepy head on Sonya’s bosom. “It must have been very frightening, Auntie. Mama also has night terrors sometimes.”

  “You do?”

  “Little ears,” says Sonya.

  Naomi and Olga share a look that says, We’ll get to the bottom of this.

  “Would you like me to stay with you until you fall asleep again?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Jeannette. “I’m not a child.”

  “Auntie,” says Olga, in what she hopes will be received as a kind tone of voice. “Do you think I might come with you to the theater, one of these days before the dress rehearsal? I promise not to get in the way.”

  Jeannette looks at Olga, noticing that she has a pimple on her chin. On the very verge of adulthood, is this child. She could, with her command of Russian, prove useful as a second set of ears, maybe giving Jeannette some insight into what both the composer and choreographer are saying during their shouting matches. “Maybe.” She smiles at Olga, taking pleasure in what she’s about to say. “Maybe if I tell them that we weren’t able to find a babysitter for you.”

  Olga shrugs. “Whatever it takes,” she says. From what she’s heard, this ballet is going to be the most revolutionary cultural event of the season.

  “We already have our tickets,” Sonya reminds her, “and it’s a good thing, too, because I’ve heard they’ve already sold out for the premiere. Isn’t that right, Jeannette?”

  “Please go to bed! I have a hard day in front of me.”

  As she tries to find sleep again, there in the dark, she can still hear Nijinsky’s frantic voice, calling out the counts—and can see the Old Woman’s hands reaching out to grab her. “No!” Jeannette says, with trembling voice, too quietly for anyone to hear.

  

  Everyone who is anyone is there for the opening of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the debut of Diaghilev’s new season. The princesses, duchesses, foreign royalty, and all the other grandes dames of Paris and beyond are sending out a dazzling reflection of the house lights from where they sit at the front row of the boxes. Their bejeweled tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and brooches glow like tropical flowers blooming in a dark jungle of black silk top hats. The ladies in their finery are flanked by mutton-chopped men in royal blue coats with fringed gold epaulettes trembling at their shoulders, their coats and waistcoats serving as a way to display the croix d’honneurs, embroidered emblems of aristocracy and ribbons of honor usually kept behind glass at their ancestral keeps.

  In the ambulatory between the boxes, and in the cheap seats above, are all the black-coated, long-haired painters, poets, journalists, and musicians of the eighteenth arrondissement, all of them friends and champions of the impresario and his artistic collaborators.

  Paul Poiret is wearing colors that harmonize with the theater’s newly upholstered red velvet seats. He’s sitting next to his fashion-plate wife Denise Boulet, for whom he’s designed a special dress for the occasion—a dress he has named Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, an airy confection of ivory brocade and silk tulle, with a lampshade skirt. He is gratified to notice the many sets of opera glasses that are pointed in their direction.

  Above and behind them, he’s already noticed Sonya accompanied by all three of her children, all of them wearing very nice hats he’s never seen before. They will, he imagines, soon be seen all over Paris.

  Jeannette, he knows, will be on the stage. But he’s not worried about anyone upsetting his wife. He has confidence in the twins’ discretion, given that both of them, as well as Naomi now, have so many reasons to feel in his debt.

  When he looks up and Naomi catches his eye, he gives her the tiniest salute with two fingers touched to his temple. Denise, who has had her opera glasses trained on a box across the theater, nudges him in the ribs. “There’s Diaghilev!” she whispers. And then, shifting her gaze down to the first few rows, “Isn’t that the composer? He’s not much to look at, is he!”

  “Ah, but he is a genius, my dear.”

  The house lights are extinguished, leaving them all in darkness. Pierre Monteux strides out into the pit. Stepping up to his podium, he bows to acknowledge the packed theater and excited applause—then turns his back to the audience and raises his baton.

  “Isn’t that Nijinsky’s sister, in the front row? Isn’t she dancing?”

  Paul pats his wife’s hand. “She’s in the family way, my dear, just like you. Hush now.”

  Olga has brought a notebook with her. She’s been scribbling in it ever since they arrived—and continues to do so, even in the dark.

  The curtains part to reveal the set by Nicholas Roerich, a painter Olga has heard described as both a mystic and a scholar. How did he find his vision, she wants to know, of what the world must have looked like before there was writing—before there was art? When the baton comes down, the music starts with a lovely and strange solo, played on an instrument whose name Olga can’t identify. Is it a bassoon? The sound is nasal, sweet, and plaintive. Full of yearning. It’s joined by a horn—the type that hunters use. Olga has learned, from plays she’s seen, to recognize this sound. There’s a haunting melody played by flutes, ancient and evocative, echoed by the horn. But then the loveliness is trampled on by the sounds of low strings, massed together. The sounds make Olga think of an army—an army at war. It’s a frightening and relentless sound. She can’t understand how Colette could think of war as anything other than horrifying.

  Snatches of that sweet melody rise up again from the flutes and the horns, only to be drowned out by that insistent, murderous rhythm of the cellos and basses. They pluck and bow in unison, punctuated by frenetic calls from the horns and trumpets. The shrieks of the piccolos make her think of gnomes rising up from the ground.

  What rites of spring are these? Where is the birdsong, the sound of new beginnings and tender light? Where are the beautiful, ethereal ballerinas with their wings and graceful hands and cloudlike skirts of white tulle?

  Something has begun to happen in the audience. A stirring and murmuring—and, yes, a distinct sound of hissing when the dancers first come on. All of them female, they are dressed in primitive-looking, unattractive costumes, with not a single bit of their beautiful bodies showing. They’ve been made as ugly as possible—and are made to move in ways that do nothing to show off their training as ballerinas.

  The dancers look none too happy about their costumes. Olga knows that their blank expressions are part of the choreography. She heard Nijinsky shout at them at rehearsal, “Don’t show me emotions! Don’t make fearful faces! You are a plant, a clod of earth. A calf for the slaughter. Hold your fear inside your body!”

  Two groups of red-clad dancers have entered in succession, walking in time to the lowest notes of the strings, which are being played in a strange syncopated rhythm. It takes Olga a moment to recognize Jeannette among the other dancers. Olga has never seen her look so plain. They circle, pounding the earth in rhythm to the ominous, threatening sounds that signal the worst things that can happen to a living person at the hands of a mob: violence, rape, murder. Facing outward, trembling, the dancers rise up on tip-toe, their arms held up to the sky. Then, dropping their left hands down by their sides with a percussive motion, they all jerk their heads to the right.

  It’s so different from anything that’s ever been seen on the ballet stage before—and Stravinsky’s music is different from anything anyone has ever heard. His score for Petrushka was wonderfully odd. But this music is willfully dissonant, ominous, and weird, an assault, in a way, on the ears. She writes this in her notebook: A willful assault on the ears—a direct path to one’s darkest emotions. It is all, Olga thinks, absolutely fantastic. A revolution for the art world. A notion of spring that hearkens back to the ferocious time before civilization made the idea of human sacrifice abhorrent.