Vera’s face collapsed. I was afraid she was going to cry. I knew how much remaining in Paris meant to her. I thought of all the months she and I had dreamed of a future away from Russia, and now I was making it impossible for her. Her parents were deserting Russia. She had no one to return to there. With all my heart I wanted to go back to St. Petersburg, but how could I desert her when she needed me most? “Can you just give me until tomorrow to consider your offer?” Maybe I would think of a way for Vera to stay without me.
The man shrugged. “Yes, yes, of course. In the meantime I’ll put together a proper contract, and we will meet here tomorrow at the same time.”
On the way back to the hotel, Vera listed all the reasons for me to stay. “You would never be sorry,” she said. But I knew I would be sorry—more than sorry, I would be miserable if I stayed in Paris.
Marina danced Juliet in the second performance, so in a secondary role I felt less pressure and was able to look about me at the tier upon tier of the opera house and at all those unknown faces watching us dance. There was an excitement in the audience that made me want to respond, made me want to be better than I had ever been. As we took our bows at the performance’s end, I heard loud shouts of “Vera! Vera!” from the front row. There, waving wildly and blowing kisses toward the stage, were Mr. and Mrs. Chikov. They appeared backstage hugging Vera, filling her arms with flowers, and then carrying her off. As they left, they greeted me, but their greeting was cold. They knew it was Grandfather’s man, Boris Yeltsin, who was closing down the black markets and chasing them out of Russia.
When Vera returned to our room in the hotel that evening, she said, “Tanya, I have wonderful news for you. I know you want to go back to Russia. Now if you want to return, you can. I’m not staying in Paris.”
“Vera! I’m so happy you’re coming back.”
“No, don’t misunderstand me, Tanya. I wouldn’t think of going back to Russia, even if I could. My parents are going to South America. Papa is going to work with some men down there. They’ve promised him a lot of money because of his connections with the Russian army. It’s useless for me to stay here. You heard the man this afternoon. He wanted you and not me. I’ll never be a great dancer. With my parents far away, if I stayed here, I’d end up sharing a room with some other dancers from the ballet, and when I grew old, who would take care of me? Dancing isn’t my life like it’s yours. It was just a way to get out of Russia. Papa says we will live like kings in South America.”
All this was too much for me. I didn’t have to oblige Vera by staying in Paris. I could go home with a clear conscience. But what about Vera? How could I let her go on to South America, where her father would be selling Russian arms to whoever could pay for them?
The day the tour ended, I pleaded with her. “Vera, listen to me. Don’t go with your father. You have years ahead of you to be a fine dancer. I know you can do well. Don’t give it up, and especially don’t be a part of what your father is doing. Come back to St. Petersburg with me. You can live with us, and I promise my grandfather will protect you.”
For a moment Vera was silent, and I hoped she had changed her mind, but she only said, “Tanya, you are a romantic. You think now everything will be perfect in Russia. Let me tell you there are still plenty of men left in Russia ready to buy and sell the country. Don’t think for a minute that the KGB will just give up their power and welcome democracy. How long will it be before one of them comes to power and the repression starts all over again? And Tanya, what will you have when you go back to Russia? You’ll have the same old dowdy clothes to wear and the same old beet soup for dinner. I’m not proud of what Papa does, but he’s still my father and lots of people do what he is doing. If people mean to buy arms, why shouldn’t he be the one to sell them? Why shouldn’t I go with him and enjoy my life?” She put her arms around me and kissed me. A minute later I watched as she carried her small suitcase down the hall of the hotel.
It seemed like years since we had begun to dream of living in Paris. How could we have guessed that our world would change and we would change with it? I was sorry for Vera. I believed she was a good person, generous and brave, but she would have to tell herself lies to live with what her father did. Someday she would wake up and see how evil it was. By then it might be too late for her.
Vera said democracy would be impossible in Russia. Why should that be? All those years ago, when I was a child and dreamed of being a ballerina, I had thought only of how elegant I would look in my tutu and toe slippers, how I would dance across the stage, hardly touching the floor, how people would applaud my performance. What if I had known that ahead of me lay hours of exercises, aching limbs, tortured toes, Madame’s cries of “You are hopeless,” and everything else in my life—even Sasha whom I loved—pushed aside? I had started on the path, and no hour or day had been so difficult that I could not get through it, but taken all together, I don’t know how I did it. Why shouldn’t it be the same for Russia? Difficulties, troubles, and failures, and always the threat of corrupt leaders who would long for power, but after two thousand years, Russia had set out on a path to democracy. Even if there were bad times, why shouldn’t it succeed? How could I not be there to see it happening?
Before our return to St. Petersburg, we were all taken as a reward to the Eiffel Tower. Up we went in the elevator, except for Vitaly, who took the 1,652 steps two at a time. Below us were the treetops of Paris. We were so high that when I looked north and east, I almost thought I could see St. Petersburg in the distance, the city of Peter the Great, let down from the sky, new and shining.
GLOSSARY
Russian words
besprizorniki: neglected ones
devochka: a young girl
kefir: sour yogurt drink
pelmeny. dumplings filled with cabbage, meat, or cheese
perestroika: a new beginning, new thought
pirozhkovye: restaurant that sells pelmeny
pyshechnayas: doughnut shop
French ballet terms
arabesque: a pose in which a dancer stands on one leg with one arm extended in front and the other arm and leg extended behind
arqué: bowlegged
barre: a wooden bar attached horizontally to the wall of a rehearsal room and used by dancers for support
battement: a beating movement of the leg
brisé volé en avant: a beating movement that is broken off
chassé: a gliding movement
corps de ballet: all the dancers in a ballet troupe apart from the principal dancers
échappé: a movement from a closed position to an open one
en pointe: dancing on one’s toes
enlèvement: lifting of a ballerina into the air by a male dancer
entrechat: a step in which the dancer jumps into the air and crosses her legs in front and then behind
extension: the extension of a raised leg
fouetté: a whipping around, either in a rapid turn or with one foot rapidly whipping in front and then in back of the other foot
jarreté: knock-kneed
jeté: a leap with the legs extended
pas de deux: a dance done by two people
pirouette: a spin
plié: a bending of the knees with the back held straight
relevé: a rising on the toes
sur les pointes: up on one’s toes
tour en l’air: a turn in the air
About the Author
Gloria Whelan is a poet, short story writer, and novelist best known for her children’s and young adult fiction. Whelan has been writing since childhood and was the editor of her high school newspaper. Many of her books are set in Michigan, but she also writes about faraway places based on her travels abroad. In 2000 she won the National Book Award for her young adult novel Homeless Bird. Her other works have earned places among the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, the International Reading Association’s Teachers’ Choices and Children’s Choices, Notable Social
Studies Trade Books for Young People, and Los Angeles’ 100 Best Books. Whelan has also received the Mark Twain Award and the O. Henry Award. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Gloria Whelan
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7385-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Turning Page 11
