Russian Winter

by Daphne Kalotay

  If Vera really did visit Gersh in the psychiatric camp, and Viktor really did take her there, then Viktor had not, after all, been having an affair with Vera or anyone else. No, Gersh had asked him to hold the jewels so that Zoya would not take them, so that he could pass them along to Vera. And Madame—why, she thought she was simply spoiling Nina’s surprise. Just her usual mother-in-law antics. Probably she had not known at all how much confusion she would cause.

  “Your pulse is low. But not in the danger zone.” Now Cynthia was looking through her nurse’s bag, and plucked out a thermometer, removed the tip from its sterilizing wrapper. “When did you start feeling sick?”

  When she did not bother to answer, Cynthia stuck the thermometer in Nina’s mouth.

  “We might have to go in,” Cynthia said. “To the hospital. I’m not taking any chances with you.” She continued to say such things, about doctors and tests and the pallor of Nina’s skin, but Nina stopped listening. She was thinking about Viktor, how she had hated him, so much, in those hours following Vera’s death. How she had loved Vera too, and how she should have known, must have known, in fact, deep down, all along. Was that why I ran away from that young man, Grigori Solodin, so eager there at my doorstep, those years ago? I must have known that, too—known that he could do this to me, reveal to me this truth.

  As long as she had not known for certain, it had not felt quite so awful when she found herself, reluctantly, unwillingly, thinking of what Viktor must have gone through because of her. If I hadn’t left that night, things would not have looked at all suspicious. There would have been nothing to prove, nothing to make him look guilty. I gave them a reason, nothing Serge needed to make up. When really there was no reason for me to leave, no reason at all. Because I knew perfectly well how much Vera loved Gersh, I knew what she was willing to do for him. But then there was Serge, horrible Serge, right there on the sidewalk…Vera saying, He said he can pull some strings. The chance, the randomness of it—that he should be there at that very moment.

  If only I had never seen him, our lives might have been different. The look in his eyes: anger and grief and retribution. And Polina, like a ghost floating in the doorway…

  Nina was aware of something desperate happening within her, a frantic searching for a way out—some way to convince herself that none of this was quite so awful. Thoughts flew, glimpses of what might have been, and of what had happened instead. Well, there was Inge, she told herself, feeling only the slightest relief. If Nina had never left, she would not have been able, after all was said and done, to secure Inge the position in Bonn. That at least was something.

  Cynthia had reached over, was wiping Nina’s tears, trying not to knock the thermometer from her lips. Nina did not mind; the pain of movement had become too much for her, each time she used even the smallest muscle.

  When she had removed the thermometer and was certain Nina was not about to keel over, Cynthia pulled up a chair beside her and took a seat. Then she simply reached over and took one of Nina’s cold hands in her hers. The look on her face was very still, and Nina thought to herself, with surprise, This is what compassion is.

  “You are very kind to me, Cynthia. I do not deserve it.”

  “Are you going to go on about that again? About deserving and not deserving?”

  “I made a horrible mistake.”

  “And I said to you the other day what I know about mistakes. That it’s never too late to try to fix them.”

  “Of course it is too late. These people are dead.” All of them, from mistakes, not just Viktor, and Vera, but even Vera’s parents, The neighbor told me…Even Nina’s own uncle. A trail of bodies. Of course it was too late. These people were gone, every one of them, for no good reason, and all that was left of them were memories—in the mind of a woman so frail she could not survive a day without the help of Cynthia. “I cannot wipe my own tears, how am I to fix my mistakes?”

  Cynthia just squeezed her hand.

  Vera’s hand in hers, at the Bolshoi School audition…

  Nina closed her eyes. “Who else, after I die, will even remember these people? They were real people.” It sounded silly to say it that way, not what she meant at all. What she meant was that it seemed a crime that their thoughts, their lives—the very fact of their lives, the truth of their lives—were lost along with them. No one to preserve the truth of who they were. Who they had been. Thinking this, Nina felt a sudden jolt.

  “Cynthia,” she said, eyes opening wide, her body filling with energy. “Please bring me to my writing desk.” Some thoughts arrive so clearly, it is as if the answer has always been right there inside you.

  “Is this good?” Cynthia asked as she rolled Nina’s wheelchair into the study. “You sure you’re feeling better?”

  “Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. I am going to need your help with some things.” She thought for a moment, and uncapped her pen. She had a letter to write, along with an official note, and telephone calls to make, and for a brief moment she wondered where to begin. There was so much to say. More than she would be able to say, surely, in just one communication. But one had to start somewhere. Nina leaned forward and brought her pen nib to the paper.

  Dear Grigori, she began. I want to tell you about your beautiful mother.

  THEIR FIRST STOP is Berlin, where Nina and Yuri are to dance highlights of Sleeping Beauty. They will not even have time to watch the performances following theirs; they are to leave immediately following their slot, straight from the theater, in order to be in Warsaw by tomorrow morning.

  Nina wishes she had had time to plan. Time to think things out. The malachite box she has transferred to the very bottom of her theater case, where the little pill of rolled paper from the old woman in West Berlin with its bit of information (old now, maybe even too old) still hides, along with her good-luck charms and needle and thread and hairpins and tape and tubes of greasepaint—and the pot of cold cream, to which she has added Madame’s gemstones. The tortoiseshell hair comb is there, too, along with some old, plain, diamond-less ones. The amber Nina has stitched into the seams of her thick cardigan sweater. Should anyone need some urging, she is prepared.

  “You’re daydreaming again.” Yuri gives her a friendly tap on the top of her head. They are in the warm-up room, Yuri in his princely outfit, Nina sparkling in her tutu and tiara, her neck and back powdered, leg warmers pulled up over her thighs to keep her muscles from tightening up.

  “Sorry. Don’t worry, I’m ready.”

  She repeats these words to herself even after they have finished their pas de deux and variations, even after the audience, on its feet, has thrown bouquets and bravos at the footlights, even after she has hurried backstage to the “star” dressing room she has been assigned for the evening. Right next to the big communal one where the corps dancers dress; Nina can hear them through the door that separates their room from this one.

  A quick rap on the door to the hallway. The company manager, calling out, “No dawdling! We leave in twenty minutes!”

  Nina closes her eyes, tries to think. If she leaves this city, with its less stringent patrols, its proximity to freedom, already her chances will have diminished. She has the little scrap of paper, and knows where she might find that woman, the shopkeeper. No, she must not go on with the others. She must figure out some way.

  If she leaves this room, she will be seen. Nor is there anywhere in here to hide, except of course the adjoining shower stall—the first place anyone would look. And if Nina goes through the other door, to the corps dressing room, well, for one thing it is teeming with dancers, and will be occupied by someone or other for much of the time.

  “Twenty minutes!”

  The door between that room and Nina’s is of cheap wood that does not fit correctly into the door frame; light shines through the gap in between, the bustling sounds from next door seeping through the crack. Nina can hear one girl’s voice as if next to her, saying something excitedly in German, and then another girl la
ughing. They must have the very last dressing tables, at the end of the row.

  She brings her eye to the gap. The view is clear, if somewhat dimly lit: a cramped, busy room with a large circular costume rack in the center, and all along the walls dressing tables framed by bare lightbulbs. A mess of clothing and costumes all around. Twenty or thirty girls pulling on stiff flat white tutus, placing little feathered wreaths on their heads, the feathers reaching down toward their cheeks. Swan Lake. That’s right: one of the Bolshoi’s ballet masters is the resident régisseur here this year, and set the show for the Berlin company earlier this season. Tonight they will be performing act 2.

  To think that only five years ago Nina was one of those girls. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday, eagerly searching out her name on the call sheet, the glee at each small advancement, from swan-girl to cygnet, from understudy to alternate cast. And yet nothing is the same now as it was then—though five years is not long at all, really.

  Not long at all.

  Like yesterday.

  And so the thought comes to her. She puts her eye to the door, where the crack is, where she can glimpse the two nearby girls talking and laughing. Young, most of them, probably new recruits, recent graduates. Not much else to guess about them from their faces.

  Nina’s mind works fast, wondering, planning. When the other girl steps away, Nina tries to read the face of the girl who remains near the door, as if in one glimpse she might know whether or not to take this chance. Something about the girl’s eyes, her expression, suggests to Nina that her idea might work. No time to consider if she is right or not; the other girl could return at any moment. Nina puts her mouth to the crack. “Psst!”

  The girl doesn’t seem to have heard her.

  Nina stops, thinks again. Impetuous…“Psst!”

  The girl has heard. She stops mid-action, looks toward the door. Nina opens it just the tiniest sliver. “Come!” she whispers, hoping the girl understands. “Quick!” And then, for just a split second, she brings her head to the space in the door, opens it a tiny bit wider, so that the girl might see her, see who she is. “Bitte! Come quick!” Then she steps back and closes the door again, lest someone in the other room notice.

  For a moment nothing happens. Then, from the other side of the door, comes a whisper, very quiet, in German-sounding Russian. “What you want?”

  “Bitte, help me. Bitte, come here.”

  And then she has an idea, and turns to her makeup case, to find one of the loose stones, the biggest diamond of all, pressed into the little jar of cold cream. Nina wipes it off and then opens the door again, just the tiniest bit, so that the girl might see the diamond there in the palm of her hand. In Russian she says, “I’ll give you this.”

  Though the girl does her best to appear to be nonchalantly fiddling with her tights, her eyes, shifting toward the open sliver of door, widen when they see the diamond. Clearly she has never seen such a thing close up.

  “Bitte,” Nina whispers. “Please help me.”

  Silence again, for what seems a full minute. And then, quick as a fly, the girl slips into Nina’s dressing room, the door swiftly shutting behind her.

  DREW’S BUILDING WAS at the summit of Beacon Hill, where, Grigori knew, even expensive apartments had small rooms with low ceilings and ancient plumbing and no laundry facilities. After all, this was the oldest and most historic part of the city, in some ways the very center of Boston—just one T stop over the river to Cambridge, or an easy stroll across the Common to Downtown Crossing, or a quick walk to Back Bay. Standing on the red-brick sidewalk, searching for Drew’s name above the antiquated-looking doorbell, Grigori was aware of himself as part of a continuum that had begun long before this land had been filled, before the first cobblestones were laid, before the first warped windowpanes looked out onto these same narrow streets. How many other confused, lovelorn, perhaps foolish men had stood on this same hilly street, perhaps at this very same corner, or in front of this same old building, even, bracing themselves for disappointment?

  “Hello?”

  Her voice—Drew’s voice.

  “It’s me. Grigori. I came to apologize.”

  An excruciating silence. But then her voice said, “Come upstairs.”

  When he reached the top of the stairs, there she was in the doorway, in the dress he had seen on her once before, a green knit thing, though her boots and stockings were off, just her bare feet on the scuffed floor. Grigori stood back, afraid to approach her. “I’m very sorry to have stormed off like that. It’s not like me.”

  She motioned him in, saying nothing.

  “I had to go look back at those letters,” he explained. “What you were saying about who wrote them, and to whom…It makes sense. Though I still have questions about the poems, I suppose.”

  She nodded, said flatly, “Here, come sit down.”

  He took a seat next to her on the big, somewhat lumpy couch. “But you see, when I told you a relative had given me that handbag with the letters and photographs and the necklace, what I didn’t say was that the person who gave it to me was my mother. My adoptive mother. She told me the bag had belonged to my birth mother.”

  “Oh.” Drew’s face changed. “I see now.”

  “That’s why I feel so foolish. All this time I’ve thought I was…someone else.”

  Drew gave a slow nod.

  “I’d created a mythology around my past. I was always looking back, trying to build on something that it turns out wasn’t even true. And…my parents died when I was young, you see, and as much as I missed them, I was lucky when I met my wife, she became my family—and then I lost her. And now today it’s like losing someone again, in a way. Losing that other family I thought I had.” He thought for a moment, gave a small laugh. “It’s foolish, I know. But I had this other concept of who I was. All because of who I thought my birth parents were.”

  “It isn’t foolish. It’s perfectly natural. But how does it change things, really?”

  “I suppose all it changes is my faith in my own deductive powers.” Grigori gave a small laugh. “I misread so much. Everything, maybe.”

  Drew’s eyes looked up at his. “I’m looking for a likeness. Seeing if I can find the Gershtein and that beautiful ballerina in you.” A small flat smile. “But what I see is you.”

  Such incredible kindness. Grigori felt something almost painful in his chest. “You know what I wish, now?” he asked. “I wish I’d kept that pendant.”

  Her face fell.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  “Well, no, not really. Since then I might never have met you. I just meant that”—he thought for a moment—“Well, what if I did want to…withdraw it from the auction? Is that possible?”

  “Well, yes. With a penalty fee. Thirty-five percent of the midrange estimate. So for the pendant, let’s see—”

  “No, no, don’t worry.” He felt silly for having become sentimental all over again, when the whole point was to rid himself of the thing. Yet he couldn’t help asking, “People do do that, then? Withdraw things.”

  Drew nodded. “And sometimes items are withdrawn because they’re lost, or not lost, necessarily, but if inventory control can’t find it, we’re not going to try to sell it. But, well…” She looked down, her forehead wrinkling, and for a moment Grigori worried she was considering purposely losing the pendant. She would do that for me, he found himself thinking, fantastically, knowing it wasn’t exactly so.

  “Please, Drew, don’t worry. I said I’d donate it, and I want to. I do. I only wondered because, it simply occurred to me that…it would look very nice on you.”

  She smiled broadly, the lines fanning from outside her eyes.

  “Now you know,” he added, “the full scale of confusion when it comes to my family background. Tell me about your family. Do you have siblings? Are you close to your parents?”

  She told him about growing up an only child, and about her fathe
r, a businessman, born and raised in British Columbia, and her mother, born in Finland but raised in New York. In some ways the most powerful bond she had felt, growing up, had been with her maternal grandmother. “I don’t quite know why, but I always felt close to her. And my relatives always say we have the same personality. Although she had a completely different life from me.” Drew told him about her Grandma Riitta’s rural childhood and move to the city, and how following the death of her one great love—Drew’s mother’s father—she had married a second time. A doctor specializing in pulmonary conditions, he was invited to practice at a hospital in New York. “That’s how they ended up in the States.”

  Drew gave a small start. “Which reminds me. The diary I told you about, my mother’s father’s. It arrived today.” She jumped up to fetch it—but sat down again, seemed to be thinking. “You know, in a way it’s kind of wonderful, what you’ve found out today, about who your real parents are. Or who we think they might have been.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Because even though it didn’t work out for them, in the end, it can still work out for you. You have the chance to live out what they didn’t. To create your own life. Your own family.”

  There was a tearing sensation across Grigori’s chest, his heart breaking at the same time that it was refilling with something. He reached for Drew and ran his fingers through her hair. His body remembered, now, what this had felt like, what he had forgotten, the ache of wanting, of needing this other person, running his fingers down her back, touching the small bumps of her spine, becoming lost in time, hours like minutes. At some point, Drew stood and led him into her bedroom, and what amazed him was the ease of it, even as it seemed that what they had begun was something utterly exceptional that no one had ever quite attempted before.

  NOW THAT SHE is in the corps dressing room, she can hear the company manager calling her name, on the other side of the door, slamming in and out of the “star” room. It isn’t long before he, the Komsomol representative, and the theater manager are making their way through the halls, tromping up and down the stairs. They have twice looked into the corps room, to the protest of the dresser and a few half-naked girls. They didn’t explain what they wanted, whom they were looking for—an effort, perhaps, to preserve the illusion of nothing having gone terribly wrong. Both times Nina, already in her swan costume, the feathers of her headwreath reaching down over her ears and cheeks, was bent over her toe shoes, re-stitching the tips of her shoe ribbons into the sides, her shoulders hunched in a way that feels utterly unfamiliar. The big round clothes rack in the middle of the room, full of frilly tutus hanging upside down, helps obscure the view. To Nina’s right, underneath the corps girl’s coat, are her shoes and sweater and makeup case.