by Colum McCann
October 29
Ilya came over again to fix the armchair. We had tea and bread. When he’s not at school he says that he adores skating. After a while he got to work. He cut the back of the seat open, reached in, and was able to get the spring and pull it back. He heard it had been my birthday and he asked me to meet him to walk by the lake some evening. He has thinning hair and very dark eyes. I am nervous but why live life at the bottom of an ocean floor?
October 31
We went past the Opera House, where washerwomen were busy scrubbing down the stairs with soap and water. By the bandstand men were singing bawdy songs and people were folk dancing. I laughed a lot. Later I boiled Father’s undershirts.
November 1
The children threw paint on the schoolhouse steps. What have they become? Ilya cleaned it up immediately—he said he did not want the young children to get into trouble. They flock around him and ride on his shoulders.
November 2
Preparation for celebrations of the Revolution. Ilya is very busy in school but he had time to take me to the park. The lake is his second home he says. He skated beautifully. Later he presented me with a small silver chain and a locket with the design of a fish. It is not my birth sign, but who cares. How handsome he looked as he waved good-bye. He says they play hockey late at night—they light fires on the ice and sometimes they carry burning bushels so they can see in the dark.
November 3
Father seems to fall further and further down into his overcoat. Rudik’s trial in Moscow, in absentia, will begin soon. Father has sent messages to Sergei through the young Turkish boy three houses down, asking him not to come over to the house, since he doesn’t want things to be jeopardized or influenced in any way. Father sits and stares. I fear for him.
November 4
Such beautiful drawings the children did for the Celebrations, we hung them along the corridor.
November 8
Revolution Day, yesterday. I dreamt I was at a kiosk selling summer apples with Ilya.
November 10
They have given Rudik seven years hard labor. We have no strength for this. Mother fell on the bed and put her face to the pillow and wept. A death sentence had been quite possible, so in truth she should have been relieved. But she wept. Father told me a story from Berlin about a soldier who got his foot caught in the tram tracks. A tram was approaching fast. Another soldier was walking down the street when suddenly he heard the screaming. The second soldier tried to pull the first soldier’s foot from the track. He couldn’t, so he tore off his overcoat and threw it over the soldier’s head so he would not have to watch the tram bearing down, to spare him the agony. I have heard this story before somewhere.
November 11
Am I the one who must throw the coat over Father’s eyes?
November 12
Mother worries about Father, and yet perhaps it is her we should worry about. Her neck is red and scratched raw, perhaps a recurrence of the shingles. Father says nothing, and I have no idea where I can get tomatoes, which seemed to work last time. Even if it was possible to get them, they would be far too expensive this time of year.
November 13
Father sits, still unmoving. He must now choose whether to denounce Rudik to the Committee, not really a choice, since they will surely denounce him anyway. Mother spent the night counting the money she has kept over the years in the porcelain elephant. Her outbreak of shingles seems to have calmed even without the tomato cure. She recalled for me her first ever meeting with Father. She seemed briefly happy, as if the memory propped her up. It was in the Central House of Culture of Railroad Workers, when he put a pinch of snuff up his nose. He had been talking of Mayakovski, quoting “Glory be to our beloved Motherland.” Then of course he sneezed in the middle, which embarrassed him terribly. She recalled how Father bought her the porcelain elephant the next day. I tried to ask him about it but he didn’t remember. He shooed me away like a fly. I cannot wait to tell Ilya these stories tomorrow. He says he doesn’t care about Rudik, that I am the only one who interests him. Happiness!
November 14
They have once again delayed the committee meeting. We went to the Big House again. Rudik, in London, was weeping, and I felt momentarily sorry for him. He is convinced he has made a mistake. They put pressure on him, and every day he appears in the newspapers. He says he cannot walk down the street without a photographer jumping from the bushes. He kept mentioning a dancer’s name—I believe he was trying to hint at something—but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The stenographer gave me a rude look.
November 16
I have been working on a cardigan for the newborn next door. It is almost finished but not quite as good as I wanted it to be. It has four buttons but needs a fifth. A walk in the snow with Ilya. He mentioned how he would someday like to have children. I wondered what I would call a child. Not Rudolf certainly. Maybe after Father. And what if it was a girl? For school; prepare letters to be sent to Brezhnev for his birthday.
November 20
A knock on the door and it scared us so! Suffering birds! The woman was nervous. Blond hair. Finnish. She said she was a dancer. I believed it from her body. She did not give her name. She said she was a friend of a friend who had come in through Oslo, she didn’t explain how. She asked to be let in but Father refused. Then she got desperate. She had driven all the way from Moscow! Two full days! She said that Rudik had made friends with ambassadors in different countries and they had been able to bring things back. She had some items for us. We were convinced at first it was a ruse. Father told her it was against the law of the land. She flushed bright red. Then Mother asked her to leave. We kept looking up and down the street for the Driving School car, but it was not there. The woman pleaded but still Father said no. Finally the woman left the large package on the doorstep. She was crying with fear. It was terribly dangerous. We left the package there but before dawn Mother got up in her nightgown and brought it in, a light coating of snow upon it.
November 21
The package lay on the table. We could not bear to leave it unopened any longer.
November 22
Father drank a thimble measure from the bottle of brandy. Mother wore her new fur-lined coat, though only in the dark since she did not want the neighbors to see. When she put her hands in her pockets she found a note which said, How I miss you. Your loving son. I pondered what to do with the dress he sent me. It was far too tight at the hips. At first I thought I might burn it, but why? I decided instead to let the waistband out and wear it to the Motherland cinema next week with Ilya.
November 23
Father remembered that the dancer had said we are due another parcel, perhaps in the New Year. Next time I am sure we will open the door to her. Unless it is a ruse. We will find out soon enough. Father felt a certain measure of guilt, but he knows returning the parcel would mean even more trouble. Mother said, Yes, it is wondrous, but a new coat does not replace him. She was sitting in the armchair rubbing the fur collar.
November 26
Father was nostalgic and raised a glass to Rudik, and for the first time I heard him say, My dear son.
* * *
Hereby we report that on June 16, 1961, NUREYEV Rudolf Hametovich, born 1938, single, Tatar, non-Party member, formerly of Ufa, artist of the Leningrad Kirov Theater, who was a member of the touring company in France, betrayed his Motherland in Paris. NUREYEV violated the rules of behavior of Soviet citizens abroad, went out to town, and came back to the hotel late at night. He established close relations with French artists among whom there were known homosexuals. Despite talks of a cautionary character conducted with him, NUREYEV did not change his behavior. In absentia he was sentenced in November 1961 to seven years hard labor. Furthermore, it has been decreed that, following the January 21, 1962, public disavowal by Hamit Fasliyevich NUREYEV, vehemently denouncing the actions of his son, he will be allowed to remain a standing member of the Party.
—UFA COMMITTEE ON
STATE SECURITY
FEBRUARY 1962
* * *
Six months before Rudi defected, Iosif came home to our room along the Fontanka, carrying a bottle of cheap champagne. At the doorway he kissed me.
Yulia, he said, I have wonderful news.
He removed his spectacles, rubbed the black semicircles beneath his eyes, and guided me to the table in the corner of the room. He opened the bottle, poured two cups, drank one immediately.
Tell me, I said.
His eyes drooped, and he quickly drank a second glass of champagne, pursed his lips and said: We have a new apartment.
For years I had cultivated our communal home along the river. The kitchen and toilet were down the hallway and our room tiny, old, ruined, but it felt majestic: an ornate fireplace, an intricate medallion in the center of the ceiling from which a yellow lampshade hung as a reminder of other days. Imagining the history of the chandelier that once hung there wasn’t so much bourgeois sentiment as a quiet nod to my father’s life. I had fixed all the window sashes and arranged the curtains so they didn’t obscure the view to the Fontanka. Most of all it was the sound of the water I adored. In summer it gently lapped against its walls as the canal boats passed with their wares and in winter the ice crackled.
Where? I asked.
In the sleeping quarters, he said.
The sleeping quarters were in the outskirts of Leningrad, where tower blocks met tower blocks, a place where I’d always felt that our country housed whatever was falling apart.
Calmly I took a sip of my drink.
Iosif said: It has an elevator, hot water, two rooms.
My silence made him shift in his seat.
I got the permits through the university, he said. We move next week.
I startled myself by saying nothing, rose slowly from the chair. Iosif grabbed my hair and yanked me across the table. I attempted to pull away, but he slapped my face: You’ll start packing tonight.
I thought about telling him that he slapped like an academic, but that would only have invited his fist. I watched as he poured himself another glass of champagne. As he tipped it back his double chin disappeared, and in a chilling way he looked briefly attractive.
Good night, I said.
I removed a scarf from the drawer and walked out into the corridor.
Patches of sunlight spun on the Fontanka. I thought for a moment that I might tumble over the low wall and get carried through the city, drawbridges rising as I floated on. Such elegant foolishness. I followed the river north and took a sidestreet towards the Conservatory, to the Kirov, palatial in the square. Outside there was a poster announcing Rudi’s performance in Giselle.
When I returned home Iosif was still at the table. He didn’t look up. I had hidden some rubles in an antique samovar next to our bed. I took out enough for a balcony seat, pulled on my cashmere sweater. Descending the stairs once again, I thought I could hear the echo of Iosif’s slap still reverberating around the building. By the time I returned to the Kirov, the lobby was teeming.
It was the rule of the theater that all coats and jackets must be hung in the cloakroom before the performance. I contemplated checking my cashmere sweater, but it felt good around me, its warmth, its delicacy. I wedged in my seat between two rather large women. I wanted to turn to them and say something ridiculous like, Ah ballet, the perfect antidote. I began thinking that perhaps Iosif was playing a crude trick on me, that really we wouldn’t have to move from our room at all, that things would stay the same, that I would still sleep at night to the sounds of the river.
The musicians entered the orchestra pit and began tuning up, a flute here, a cello there, and the notes, initially discordant, started moving in unison towards one another.
My neighbors in the seats were chattering excitedly. Rudi’s name fluttered in the air, and their pleasure at owning him began to disturb me. I wanted to stand and shout, But you don’t know Rudi, I know Rudi, my mother taught him how to dance! Yet I hadn’t seen him in a long time, almost a year. He was twenty-two, he had his own apartment, food privileges, a good salary and in the corridors of fate his portrait hung high.
The lights were dimmed. When Rudi entered, exploding from the wings to a round of applause, he tore the role open, not so much by how he danced, but by the manner in which he presented himself, a sort of hunger turned human. I wanted to let myself slip away into the performance, but after the first variation I began to realize how terribly hot I felt. Without drawing attention to myself, I tried to fan air to my body. I grew hotter and hotter, and yet I didn’t want to disturb my neighbors by wriggling around in my seat, or pulling the sweater over my head. The shrill alarm of Rudi’s dancing was saying, Look at me! Look at me! but I was obsessed by my sweater and how hot I was becoming. The air was packed with intensity. My face flushed and sweat collected at my brow.
When the intermission finally came, I stood up quickly, only for my knees to buckle and my legs to fold beneath me. I came to almost immediately, but already I’d created a fuss—people were pointing at me, whispering, and I had an immediate vision of the next day’s newspapers writing about the lone woman who had fainted during Rudi’s performance.
With the help of a gentleman behind me I got back into my seat and removed my sweater. I desperately wanted to explain what had happened, but I could tell he thought I was simply overcome.
He’s wonderful, isn’t he?
I was just hot, I said.
He has quite an effect, said the gentleman over my shoulder.
I thought I would faint a second time, but I managed a deep breath, rose, and stumbled out along the aisle, down the staircase under the light of the chandeliers. In the bathroom someone held my shoulders as I vomited. I was horrified when I heard her suggest that I might be pregnant, an impossibility. I cleaned up and splashed water on my face. The mirror was smudged with fingerprints, and I had the strange feeling that someone else’s ghostly hand was on my face. At thirty-six, I had acquired crow’s-feet, and there were the beginnings of dark bags beneath my eyes.
In the bathroom I could hear women exclaiming over the extraordinary performance. A couple of girls were smoking at a corner sink, rolling Rudi’s name around on their tongues.
On the second floor I bought an ice cream, and by the time the bell sounded for the second act I felt I had recovered sufficiently to take my seat.
I leaned forward and squinted at the distant stage, until the woman in front of me, annoyed that my hair was, touching her, handed me a pair of opera glasses.
Rudi’s body was a thing of the most captivating beauty—hard lines at his shoulders, his neck striated with muscle, enormous thighs, his calf muscles twitching. He took his partner in the air and spun her with remarkable lightness. I couldn’t help thinking about the day he had first arrived, at seventeen, when I had seen him undressing in my room, the pale promise of his body slipping beneath the blanket on my sofa. I returned the glasses and tried to quell whatever emotion was overcoming me. I was holding the edge of the chair far too tightly, nails gripping the wood.
When the ballet finished Rudi extended his arm in the air and slowly turned his head from one side of the theater to the other. The ovation rang in my ears.
I ran outside and hurried along the Fontanka, then ascended the stairwell. When I entered the room Iosif was still sitting at the table, drunk. I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him. Shocked, Iosif pushed me aside, filled his glass, downed it quickly, then stumbled across the room and kissed me back. I tried to guide him into making love to me against the wall, but he was hardly able to hold me, drunk as he was. Instead he pulled me to the floor and yet I didn’t care, why should I care, the dancing still spun in me—Rudi had stood upon that stage like an exhausted explorer who had arrived in some unimagined country and, despite the joy of the discovery, was immediately looking for another unimagined place, and I felt perhaps that place was me.
I opened my eyes as Iosif was wiping the sweat from his neck. He w
ent back to the table and said: Don’t forget, you have to pack.
If I could stack the foolishness of my life in cardboard boxes I could make a monument of it—I packed.
The following week I was out in the sleeping quarters of Leningrad, having left my beloved Fontanka behind. The new apartment was large and dark. It had hot water, a telephone, a stove, a small fridge. The elevator squeaked outside the door. I listened to the high whistle of the kettle. I promised myself that I would leave soon, get enough money together, pay the taxes, negotiate a divorce, take on the enormity of finding another place to live. But in truth I knew I had caved in to Iosif, that allowing him to make love to me had only cemented his dispassion.
Six months later I was sitting on the eighth floor of the new apartment building—trying in vain to translate a Cuban poem about mystery and shadow—when my friend Larissa knocked on the door. She had taken a tram all the way out to the tower block. Her face was ashen. She took me by the arm and escorted me out to the soccer field beyond the towers.
There’s a rumor, she whispered.
Pardon me?
Rudi has left, she said.
What?
People are saying that he defected to Paris.
We walked under the goalposts and looked at each other in silence. I began to remember moments that seemed like clues. How, during that first week, I had often caught a glimpse of him looking in the mirror, as if he was willing himself into someone else’s body. How he had talked about foreign dancers, listened to RosaMaria’s songs, rifled through my books. How, whenever he went to the Hermitage, he was drawn to the Italian Renaissance painters and the Dutch masters. How, when we sat around my table with my friends, he had always looked hungry, as if he were ready to pounce on a word or an idea. I felt a terrible guilt and a dread.
Paris? I asked.
We must keep this quiet, said Larissa.
That evening I sat with Iosif and heard the elevator’s pulleys screeching in the hallway. When it stopped on our floor I could hardly shuck the thought that they were coming to knock at the door. I packed a bag with what I imagined I would need. It included a Gorky novel with money pasted beneath the cloth cover. I put the bag under my bed, had nightmares of being chained to a table.
