“MY TWO BEAUTIES,” Viktor says when Nina and Vera meet up with him and Gersh afterward, their cheeks rosy with success. The performance has gone splendidly—though Vera, always self-critical, insists she nearly tripped in a bourrée as she made her exit at the end of act 2. Yet Nina can see from her eyes that Vera feels the same pride and immense relief that she does. Their dressing room could barely contain all the bouquets they received. Nina gave the largest and brightest, full of zinnias and calendula, to Mother when she came backstage afterward—looking, in her maternal way, even more proud than usual, not just of Nina but of Vera, too.
Vera, meanwhile, cut a blossom from one of her own bouquets to pin to Mother’s coat collar and, when Mother had gone home for the night and Vera and Nina were washed and dressed, did the same for Nina, pinning a gladiolus to her left lapel—the one over her heart—so that the petals, white edged with pink, faced down. “To show that your heart is already taken.” For herself, Vera has chosen a snapdragon, its many small petals pale white, and pinned it facing upward.
Now they are at Kiev, a new restaurant operated by the Ukraine Ministry of Trade, eating pork swimming in a sauce of carrots and onions. A small band shoved into the corner of the room serenades them boisterously.
“The way you moved your arms, Verusha,” Viktor says, “honestly, I heard feathers rustling.” He is always at his best in the presence of a beautiful woman. Though he has met Vera just a few times, he already treats her like an old acquaintance; Nina has told him about their childhood years, and about auditioning together for the Bolshoi school—but she has not mentioned Vera’s parents being taken away. When Viktor commented, the first time he met Vera, on the deep sadness in her eyes, Nina simply explained that although Vera managed to escape Leningrad during the war, she lost her entire family in the Siege. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Gersh, who has met Vera just once before, says, “I realized at a certain point that I’d forgotten it was you. I mean, that you had become Odette.” Vera really did transform herself, became half woman, half swan; at moments as she moved a feather would float from her costume and drift to the ground, as if to expose her fragility. When she dance-mimed the story of how she and the other swan maidens first became spellbound, her sad pleading seemed genuine, not corny at all. It took no leap of the imagination to understand Siegfried’s obsession. Stroking invisible feathers with her cheek, plucking at her invisible wings, Vera seemed truly birdlike, enchanted, and even managed to make her spine quiver, that ripple across her back, from one arm to the other, as on tremulous feet she bourréed across the stage.
“And you,” Viktor says to Nina, “I have to say it again, you took everyone’s breath away.”
It’s true that the audience gasped when Nina did her thirty-two fouettées. They began applauding when she was just halfway through, so loudly that she couldn’t hear the music and had to hope the conductor would simply follow her. With each whip of her leg she spun faster, beads of sweat flying, stinging her eyes—and yet she finished cleanly, precisely, and counted calmly to five before releasing the pose. Secretly, though, Nina finds it cheap, these technical feats. A cheap way to impress, nothing subtle or artful—just virtuosic display, demanding of applause and dropped jaws. Nina wants to do more than fancy tricks; she wants her body to sing, her eyes and her hands and the very angle of her head to convey every nuance of the music, and each facet of whichever character she is called upon to play.
Still, it was a good night. Even as she took her first step she sensed that it would be so, that her body would not let her down, that already she had the audience at her command.
“Well, then, we have multiple reasons to celebrate,” she says, and explains to Vera, “Viktor’s new book has got glowing notices.” Gosizdat, the State Publishing House, has just published a new collection of his poems, which both Izvestia and Pravda have heralded with ecstatic reviews.
“Yes, a toast!” Gersh says, lifting his glass of Ukraine vodka. “To our two Pavlovas,” looking to Vera and Nina with his healthy eye, “and of course,” now toward Viktor, “our next Annabelle Bucar!” They laugh; it’s the name of the author of the big best-seller The Truth about American Diplomats.
Nina says, “I’m going to be serious now,” and turns to Viktor. “I love your poems. I know I’ve told you before, but I don’t know how else to say it.” She finds his work beautiful and unpretentious, loves the unabashed joy in his language, the purity of his phrasing. Short lyrics, vivid imagery. “I’m proud of you.”
Gersh says, “Ninulya, we’re supposed to be celebrating you and Vera!”
“Please, Gersh, why stop them?” Viktor says. Vera is refilling their glasses with vodka. Lifting hers, she says, “To poetry!”
Viktor, putting on a mock expression of competition, says, “To dance!”
Nina, looking at Gersh with a laugh, says, “To music!”
Gersh, raising his eyebrows for suspense, waits a beat before saying, “To love!”
As they swallow their vodka, the music suddenly becomes confused; the band falls out of tempo, then loses the tune altogether. Within a few beats the melody has changed, become an American song everyone knows. Nina and the others glance toward the door. The song means that foreigners are present.
Indeed at the entrance are two foreign couples, the women in camel-hair coats, the men in long coats but no hats. The maître d’ leads them in and seats them not far from Nina and Viktor’s party, close enough that Nina can hear their voices. French, but not the familiar vocabulary of ballet, and nothing Nina can understand despite her mandatory language lessons at the Bolshoi School. Nina feels a tug of yearning, and an unaccountable shame—of not understanding, and of wanting to understand. “I wish I spoke another language,” she says, very softly.
“You do,” Viktor says. “The language of dance.”
But all Nina feels is the rare, acute urge to know more than her own country, to see places she can only imagine, to hear the sounds of truly foreign tongues—not just the usual Georgian and Kalmyk, Latvian and Uzbek. She can’t help being slightly jealous of Viktor, who has traveled more than she has, has even been to England; that was just last year, on a public relations assignment of sorts. He and two other writers (and their MVD escorts) were sent to visit a Russian poet who has been living there for thirty years. Woo him back, was the unstated goal—though Viktor and the others, despite their best efforts, were unable to change his mind. What they did accomplish was no less exciting: purchased suits of fine gabardine, turtleneck sweaters, gleaming ties of Liberty silk—and, more important, English penicillin, much better than the stuff at home. For Nina and the other wives, there were nylon stockings and Western cosmetics.
Nina’s own travel, with the Bolshoi, has been limited to more familiar borders. The presence of these Westerners so close to her tonight reminds her that the world is large and full of mysteries. She recalls, as she often has since her girlhood, the woman stepping out from the grand hotel, with her jaunty hat and the tiny diamonds in her earlobes. That same feeling returns, a yearning, the understanding that Nina’s own country, this majestic nation, despite its vastness, is but one piece in the great mosaic of the world.
The nightclub has become less lively now, the other patrons cautious—their conversation muted, their toasts brief. Only a young couple toward the back, inebriated, allows their voices to rise. As they begin to sing an old Gypsy song, loudly slurring the words, Nina feels, again, that odd shame; she wishes she were elsewhere.
Viktor and the others, too, are ready to leave, yet reluctant to say good night. They decide to stop at Gersh’s. Nina much prefers to spend time in that room—smelling of cigarette smoke and reheated tea and Gersh’s fusty shirts and old curtains—than in theirs in the opposite corner of the building, with Madame behind the plywood door feeling “flu-ish,” or at the wooden table counting the cutlery, aloof and disapproving, demanding grandchildren, thrusting out her wrist for Viktor to palpate. Viktor nearly missed tonight
’s performance, thanks to Madame’s own little drama, a long coughing fit Nina is sure she worked up on purpose. Sometimes the way Madame looks at her makes everything painfully clear: that Nina is no different from the other boors along the hallway, an average girl claiming what ought not to be hers—Viktor, and even the physical space itself, the very proximity to “Her Excellency” and her noble blood. You’re not Lilya.
But Viktor is devoted to his mother. There was a day, a few months ago, when he filled a big basin with hot water for her to soak her feet in. Nina peeked through the crack in the door, as if it might help her understand something, to see Lola on Madame’s shoulder, avidly pecking at her earring, while Viktor lovingly (it is the only way to describe it) placed the heavy sloshing bucket at his mother’s feet.
Since then, Nina hasn’t dared spy on them together, hating how it made her feel.
She wonders if Vera ever feels a similar reluctance to return home, to enter the slightly sad (Nina always feels) room of Nina’s own mother.
At Gersh’s, Vera drops wearily onto the hard, dark sofa facing the piano. “You’ll have to have more success like this,” she tells Viktor. “So that we can always have a reason to celebrate.”
Though visibly delighted by her praise, Viktor manages to remain nonchalant, asks, “Well, now, where did these come from?” seeing an array of chocolates wrapped in fancy tinfoil.
“They’re from Zoya, actually,” Gersh says. “Help yourself.”
Viktor peels the colorful foil from a chocolate, while Nina recalls that bright-eyed, curly-haired woman and the adoring way she looked at Gersh. Such an improbable couple. Nina has asked Viktor about her connection to Gersh, wonders where she is tonight. As Gersh heats water for tea, Vera slips off her shoes and folds her legs so that her feet are tucked underneath her. Nina and Viktor, after distributing the bonbons, take the love seat next to Vera, who asks, “Ninochka, do you remember our kicking contest?”
It was something they used to do, that last summer together, after they had been admitted to the Bolshoi School. “We would see who could kick her leg higher,” Nina tells the men. “We didn’t even know the term for grand battement.”
“And then one day,” Vera says, “I was sure I would win, and I kicked my leg so high, it lifted me right up into the air, and I landed flat on my behind!” She laughs, and rearranges herself just slightly on the sofa, her knees visible below the hem of her skirt. That she can be so comfortable here, so at ease, her feet tucked up under her like that, Nina takes as a compliment of sorts; that it is Nina’s own presence, the fact that these men are of her, in a way, that allows Vera to be her full self, rather than the cool, composed version she usually presents. “Plunk, there I was, lying on the ground. Little did I know how many times that sort of thing would happen in my professional life!”
Nina remembers the episode another way. After she hit the ground, Vera had immediately begun laughing, and though Nina laughed too, even at that young age she knew that if she had been the one to fall, she would not have been able to laugh at herself. She wanted to win the contest, to be the best; she didn’t want anyone to see her landing on her behind, ever. Already she felt—if in an inarticulate, unformulated way—the ferocity of her ambition, and the downside of pride.
“I wish I could have known you then,” Gersh says, taking a seat, looking at Vera, his eyes dreamy behind the little round glasses, the lazy one veering off slightly.
Viktor has moved to the piano bench, and plays a few chords before attempting to bang out a tune. Gersh is asking Vera questions about her life in Leningrad. To Nina’s surprise, Vera answers them openly. Closing her eyes, Nina listens to Viktor’s enthusiastic, if amateur, playing, and to the growing conversation between Vera and Gersh. “Students and teachers were evacuated, too, not just the stars,” she hears Vera say, of being sent to Perm during the war. “I suppose I got to dance more roles there than if we’d all stayed in the full company back at home. Still, we were so far away. And then when we came back, it was as if everything was just…finished. I remember seeing the theater. It was the feeling of my own home, my only home, having been ruined.”
Nina’s heart aches at the thought of Vera there, of what she might have suffered had she not escaped. She has heard the stories—of starvation, of children whose hair turned white, of bodies lying frozen in the streets.
Almost forcefully, Vera adds, “Well, it was my home. I’d lived there since the age of ten. Because the Kirov school takes boarders, and I’d already been accepted to the Bolshoi when I left Moscow—so it made sense for me to apply there. Since my aunt and uncle had no interest, really, in taking care of me.”
“Your aunt and uncle…” Gersh says it in a wondering way.
“I’d been sent to live with them, after what happened to my parents.”
Nina opens her eyes, surprised. She sees Gersh giving just the smallest nod of understanding, not asking what happened; Vera’s eyes say the rest, glancing away to avoid more questions. “The other students were my family. I still remember which of us were the first ones chosen for the Opera—we danced in the ballet scenes, our first chance to perform onstage. My first was Queen of Spades.” Vera has stretched her legs the length of the sofa and now lifts her knees slightly, bending them so that her skirt tents, revealing the long line of muscle where her shinbone meets her calf. With a faraway look, she says, “Fridays we went to the steam baths.” Wrapping her arms around her knees, leaning forward, toward him, she looks straight at Gersh. Nina recalls how she felt with Viktor that first night she met him, the feeling that she could trust him. To Gersh, Vera nods in a final way and says, “The Kirov became my family.”
“And yet you left.”
“The Bolshoi is the best company in the world. How could I not accept?” But Nina wonders if it was that simple, if it felt less like an invitation than a command. Again her heart winces, at how difficult it must have been.
Viktor has finished his piano playing, so that the room is suddenly quiet. Gersh takes up a cigarette, and then his eyes move past everyone, brows rising. As if amused, he points toward the opposite corner of the room. There is a little pile of dust there, like an anthill, on the floor.
Not dust, he explains: “Cement.” Looking up, he points to a small dark spot in the ceiling. Then he lights the cigarette, as if none of this is at all worrisome.
“Is it a hole?” Vera whispers. It might have been painted there, it is so small and black.
“Looks freshly drilled,” Gersh says, exhaling cigarette smoke as if the whole thing is a game.
Nina is horrified. Viktor says, “You’d think they would at least clean up after themselves.” He too lights a cigarette.
“No, that’s the point,” Gersh says quietly. “To let us know they can hear.”
But what could they have heard? Nina thinks quickly to herself. No one here has said anything wrong, let alone done anything, and the piano playing would have covered everything up anyway. Vera looks up at the hole with a mix of concern and reverence.
Viktor turns his head just slightly, to blow a smooth stream of smoke across his shoulder. “Were you planning on sweeping up your little anthill?”
“Maybe more of them will turn up,” Gersh says. “I’ll start a collection.”
Their light banter hides nothing. Clearly Gersh is on some list. There has been more harsh talk—in the papers, in official speeches—about people like him. Every week, it seems, a member of the Jewish intelligentsia is arrested, or some Jewish organization disbanded. Perhaps that is why Zoya is not with him here tonight; surely someone like her would not want to be too closely associated with Gersh now. And yet, those fancy chocolates…
At the piano, Gersh has taken Viktor’s place and starts playing a Glinka mazurka. Nina calms herself, watching him. He is one of those musicians who, when engaged in his music, becomes a more vivid version of himself; his cynicism gives way to pure emotion, so that he seems suddenly stronger and more ardent. Nina has noticed thi
s about him before, his passion suddenly visible, palpable. It is something the two of them have in common, she realizes—this physical, primal, connection to sound and rhythm.
Vera is watching Gersh with big dark eyes, head resting on her hand, and now Viktor leans back to listen. Nina can see in his very posture how badly he wants to believe that drill hole doesn’t matter. After all, if Gersh isn’t doing anything wrong, then what is there for anyone to see or hear that might cause trouble?
Gersh plays for a long time, smoking cigarettes with Viktor until the room is a warm haze. The tips of their cigarettes worm back, the ashes fall to the floor—like the dust from that drill hole. Nina focuses instead on the love she feels around her, not only between her and Viktor, and Viktor and Gersh, but now Gersh and Vera, too. Until very late they stay there, drinking tea from Gersh’s cheap metal samovar. It is as if all four of them are waiting something out, as if none of them wants the night to end. Morning has sprouted, pale and winking, by the time they say good-bye.
LOT 41
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Russian Winter Page 19
