Sight Reading

by Daphne Kalotay

  Nina has heard this before—not about Vera’s parents but other people in the building, who now are gone. Whispers in the courtyard, something odd . . .

  Vera turns and runs to the other side of the courtyard, where her grandmother has appeared.

  Nina’s grandmother, too, has arrived, her kerchief loosely knotted beneath her chin. “Come here, Nina!” But Nina continues to listen. “What did they do?” the young couple is asking, as the janitoress splashes a bucket of dirty water around the entryway. At the other side of the courtyard, Vera’s grandmother is taking Vera back inside, without even letting her say good-bye.

  “Ninochka! Come!” Her grandmother’s voice is shrill instead of warm and slightly annoyed, as it usually is. The old janitoress repeats herself: “I always knew something wasn’t right about them.” Nina looks up, past the crooked little balconies, to the window of the room where Vera’s family lives. Pale morning glories tremble in the breeze. Nina turns and runs, straight into her grandmother’s arms, to lean against her chest and feel the warmth of her body.

  BY THE TIME the girl from Beller had left, the sky was black, the salon gloomy. In her wheelchair, Nina went about tugging the cords of various lamps, shedding weak saffron rays down upon themselves and little else. Instead of relief at having taken care of things, she felt the same wariness, the same anxiety she had for a fortnight now.

  She rolled the wheelchair up to her desk. With the little key she kept in her pocket, she opened the top drawer. She hadn’t looked back at the letter since first receiving it two weeks ago. Even then she had read it just once, hastily. She had always been one to make rash decisions; it was her nature. Now, though, she unfolded the typed page slowly, trying not to look at the photograph it enclosed.

  I am sending you this letter and the accompanying photograph after much contemplation. Perhaps you have already recognized my name on the return address, recalled even the very first letter I sent you, after our brief meeting three decades ago, back when I—

  There was the click of the lock on the front door, the sound of the heavy door swinging open. “Hello, you!” came the voice of Cynthia, the wiry West Indian woman who came each evening to cook Nina’s dinner and ask embarrassing questions about her bodily functions; days she worked as a registered nurse at Mass General. Nina slid the letter and photograph back inside the envelope as Cynthia called out, in a voice still tinged with the genially arrogant accent of her native country, “Where you at, sugar?” She often called Nina “sugar.” Nina supposed it was some sort of private joke.

  “I am here, Cynthia, I am fine.” Nina returned the envelope to the drawer. To think that there had been a time when she was left to do things for herself, unattended, without the worried ministration of others . . . For over a year now Cynthia had been necessary, the last person Nina saw each night after being helped from her wheelchair to her bath and back out again. Of some indeterminate early-middle age, Cynthia had a boyfriend named Billy whose schedule and availability directly dictated which meals she prepared. On nights when she was to see him, Cynthia would not cook with onions, garlic, broccoli, or Brussels sprouts, lest the smell cling to her hair. Other days she had no ban on any particular vegetables.

  Nina could hear Cynthia hanging her coat, taking her little sack of groceries to the kitchen. The situation was appalling, really. Especially for someone like Nina, who had once been so strong, and was not yet even truly old. All the time now, it seemed, octogenarians went traipsing around the globe on cruises and walking tours. But Nina’s once-supple body, now eerily stiff, allowed no such diversions. Even this afternoon, the auction house girl had been unable to refrain from saying, at one point, “You must miss dancing,” as she eyed Nina’s swollen knuckles. She had looked horrified, actually, the way young people do when faced with the misfortunes of the elderly.

  “I do miss it,” Nina had said. “Every day I miss it. I miss the way it felt to dance.”

  Now Cynthia was calling out again, threatening to tell all about her day, brisk steps in her white nurse’s shoes as she approached the study. Nina slid the envelope more deeply into the drawer. Her knuckles ached as she twisted the lock with the tiny key. She felt no better than before, knowing the photograph was still there.

  GRIGORI SOLODIN SAW the announcement on the third day of the new semester. He liked to be at his desk before eight, while the Department of Foreign Languages was still quiet and the secretaries hadn’t yet arrived to unlock the main office. For a half hour or so the wooden hallways—cold from the heat having been off all night—remained peaceful, no trampling up and down the narrow stairway whose marble steps were worn like slings in the center. Much better than being home, that still somehow unfamiliar silence. Here Grigori could read the newspaper in peace and smoke his cigarettes without his colleague Evelyn berating him about his lungs or Carla, the secretary, wrinkling her nose exaggeratedly and reminding him that the campus was now officially “Smoke-Free.” Then at eight thirty Carla and her assistant Dave would arrive to flick on all the photocopiers and printers and anything else that hummed.

  Grigori reached for his lighter, the cartridge small in his hand. First it had simply been for support, something to soothe him while Christine was ill. Now it was one of his few daily pleasures. And yet he hadn’t allowed himself to bring the habit into his home, too aware of what Christine would have said, how she would have felt about it. Anyway, he didn’t plan to keep it up much longer (though it had been, now, two years). Installed behind his desk, he breathed the comforting aroma of that first light. He wore a tailored suit, clean if lightly rumpled, with a handkerchief poking up optimistically from his breast pocket. This costume he had adopted twenty-five years earlier, during his very first semester teaching here, when he had also tried growing a beard and smoking a pipe—anything to appear even a year or so older than his actual age. Even now, at fifty, his face had few lines, and his hair, thick in a way that seemed to ask to be mussed, remained dark and full. Tall, trim, he still possessed something of his youthful lankiness. Yet just yesterday he had been interviewed for the university newspaper by a spotty-faced sophomore who asked, in all seriousness, “How does it feel to be inaugurated into the Quarter Century Club?” For his twenty-five years of service Grigori had received a heavy maroon ballpoint pen and a handwritten note of gratitude from the provost; to the sophomore with the stenography pad and the serious question, Grigori answered, with the merest glint in his eye, “Horrifying.”

  He often adopted this tone (dry, poker-faced, with a slight and enigmatic accent) in his communications with the student population—yet they liked his deadpan delivery, his faux-curmudgeonly jokes, indeed seemed even to like Grigori himself. And he liked his students, or at least did not dislike them, tried not to show dismay at their sometimes shocking lack of knowledge, of curiosity, as they sat there in their Red Sox caps and zippered fleece jackets like members of some prosperous gang. In the warmer months they wore flip-flops, which they kicked off during class as if lounging on a gigantic beach towel. It was just one of the many signs that the world was plunging toward ruin. Grigori, meanwhile, continued to dress for class in handsome suits, because he had not yet abandoned the notion that what he did for a living was honorable—and because he retained the same worry he had first developed as a young teaching fellow studying for long hours in the privacy of his rented room: that he might one day mistakenly show up for class still wearing his slippers.

  Now he took a puff on his cigarette and unfolded his copy of the Globe. The usual depressing stuff—the president intent on starting his second war in two years. But in the Arts section a headline took Grigori by surprise: “Ballerina Revskaya to Auction Jewels.”

  A noise issued from him, a low “Huh.” And then came the sinking feeling, the awful deflation.

  Though a month had passed, he had not given up hope—not really, not until now. He had believed, or tried to believe, that there might be some sort of movement toward one another.

  Inst
ead, this.

  Well, why should he have expected otherwise? It was what he had been purposely avoiding, really. For two years the idea had gnawed at him. But grief had paralyzed him, and then only as it lifted did he find he could imagine trying again. And yet it hadn’t worked. There would always be this distance. He would never get any closer.

  He tried to read the article but found he wasn’t taking in the sentences. His heart rushed as it had the last time he had seen Nina Revskaya, a good ten years ago, at a benefit for the Boston Ballet. From the grand lobby of the Wang Theatre, he had watched her stand on the great marble stairway and make a brief, perfectly worded speech about the importance of benefactors to the arts. She held her head high, if somewhat stiffly, her hair still dark—nearly black—despite her age and in a bun so tight it pulled her wrinkles smooth. Next to him, at their spot at the back of the crowd, Christine held lightly on to his arm, her other hand holding a champagne flute. Nina Revskaya seemed to wince as she spoke; it was clear that every movement pained her. When the ballet director led her slowly down the magnificent staircase and through the lobby, Grigori had thought, What if? What if I approached her? But of course he didn’t dare. And then Christine was leading him in the other direction, toward the company’s newest star, a young Cuban dancer known for his jumps.

  Grigori tossed the newspaper down on his desk. That she could want to be rid of him so badly—so badly as to rid herself of her beloved jewels.

  He pushed his chair back, stood up. A slap in the face, that’s what this was. And really she doesn’t even know me. . . .

  The cocoon of his office was no comfort to him now. Grigori realized that he was pacing, and forced himself to stop. Then he grabbed his coat and gloves and ducked out the door to make his way down the narrow stairs and out of the building.

  IN THE CAMPUS CAFÉ, the morning shift was already in place. Behind the counter a skinny girl with dyed-black hair served coffee and enormous bagels, while the stoned assistant manager, singing happily along with the stereo, took too long to steam the milk. A few conscientious undergraduates huddled around one of the round tables, and at the back of the room a knot of visiting professors argued amicably. Placing his order, Grigori viewed the scene with a sense of defeat.

  The girl at the counter batted her eyelashes artfully as she handed him a thick wedge of coffee cake. Grigori took it up from its little flap of waxed paper and felt immediately guilty; as with his smoking, Christine would not have approved. He thought of her, of what he would give to have her with him at this moment.

  “Grigori!”

  Zoltan Romhanyi sat at a table by the window, plastic bags full of books and papers all around him. “Come, come!” he called, gesturing, and then hunched down to scribble something in his notebook with great speed despite his shaky, aged hand. For the past year he had been composing a memoir about his escape from Hungary following the ’56 uprising and his subsequent years as a key figure—if somewhat on the sidelines—in the London arts scene.

  “Zoltan, happy New Year.”

  “Are you sure, Grigori?”

  “Does it show on my face, then?”

  “You look dashing as always—but tired.”

  Grigori had to laugh, being told he looked tired by a man twenty years his senior—a man of delicate health, who had spent much of Christmas break in the hospital, recovering from undiagnosed pneumonia, and who the previous winter had slipped on the ice and broken his shoulder for a second time. “You put me in my place, Zoltan. I have no right to be tired. I’m frustrated this morning, that’s all. But I’m glad to see you. You’re looking much better.”

  Perhaps it was odd, that Grigori’s favorite colleague and friend was nearly a generation older than himself—but he preferred that to the opposite phenomenon, professors who mingled with their students in the pub. Zoltan’s deeply lined face, the sags of skin beneath his eyes, the tremor in his hands, the small cloud of grizzled hair resting lightly atop his scalp . . . none of this spoke of the man Zoltan had once, briefly, been: the pride and dismay of literary Eastern Europe, symbolic hero to the enlightened West, a young, skinny émigré poet in borrowed clothes. “I’m feeling much better,” he said now. “I love this time of morning, don’t you?” His anomalous accent (hard Magyar rhythms tamed by a British lilt) made him sound almost fey. “You can practically feel the sun rising. Here, sit down.” He pushed ineffectually at some of the papers atop the table.

  Grigori took a seat. “I can’t stay long. I have a tutorial at eight thirty.”

  “And I have mine at one.”

  “Do you?” Grigori tried not to show disbelief. He had heard whispered in the department that Zoltan’s only class for the semester had been canceled; just two students had registered, insufficient for a course to go ahead.

  “Poetry and the Surrealists,” Zoltan said. “Two young students of truly interesting minds. There was some talk of the course not running, you know, but when I proposed to the youngsters last week that we continue to meet either way, they agreed. Who needs official credit? I admire their enthusiasm.”

  “They know what’s good for them.” They knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, to study with a man who had known in person some of the very poets whose work he taught, and whose most off-the-cuff remarks contained not just nuggets of wisdom but often a morsel or two of world-class gossip. Zoltan’s first book of poetry had been translated by a popular British poet shortly after his arrival in London, briefly turning Zoltan into Europe’s—well, certain circles of it—new enfant terrible. Zoltan had been something of a dandy then, with his sleepy eyelids and a confident smile; Grigori had seen photographs in subsequent translated editions (all of them now out of print). And though Zoltan wasn’t one to name-drop, his own name turned up in more than a few memoirs of painters and playwrights, art collectors and choreographers, muses and stars of the stage. Just a line here or a paragraph there, but Zoltan had clearly made his mark. Subtle probing of his memories teased out reminiscences of Mary Quant and Salvador Dalí, and sighing, surprising asides (“Ah, Ringo . . . He had those long eyelashes, you know”).

  The problem was, with the new Web sites that students used to publicly evaluate professors, word had spread that Zoltan’s classes were demanding and odd, more like prolonged conversations, for which students had to be impeccably prepared. He expected them to have not simply read but pondered, analyzed, even dreamed about the assigned works. And so students warned each other to stay away from Zoltan’s courses.

  Grigori had resisted the temptation to look up what his own students said about him. At any rate, he tried to stay away from the Internet. His most daring online escapade had taken place four years ago, when he made his first and only eBay purchase: a 1959 Hello magazine containing an article all about Nina Revskaya’s jewels. A four-page photo spread of earrings and watches, necklaces and bracelets, the majority of them gifts: from admirers and international diplomats and self-promoting jewelers. A photograph on page three of an amber bracelet and matching earrings had confirmed—in its way—what Grigori had long suspected. He kept the magazine in his office, in the top drawer of the filing cabinets reserved for his Russian Literature notes, behind a folder labeled “Short Fiction, 19th C.”

  Now, though, the jewels were to be auctioned. So much for proof. So much for confirmation. Grigori must have sighed, because Zoltan’s voice shifted to concern and asked, “How are you, really, Grigori?”

  “Oh, fine, please don’t worry.” The sad widower role was fine for a year or so, but after that it became tiresome. As for the news item about Nina Revskaya, he was not about to add today’s disappointment to his list of grievances. For some time now the adamant chatter of Carla and Dave and his friend Evelyn (who always made a point of inviting him out and taking him with her to movies and other cultural diversions) had made it clear that Grigori was expected to behave as so many men did after six or twelve or eighteen months alone—find a new woman and settle down and stop looking so glum all th
e time. Accordingly, Grigori had over a year ago stopped wearing the little pink ribbon pin from the hospital. Now that the second anniversary of Christine’s death had passed, he had even removed his wedding ring. The gold band lay in a small covered tray with a few tie clips he never wore. It was time to buck up and stop being tedious. To Zoltan he added, “No new complaints.”

  “Who needs new complaints if you have a good old one?” Zoltan’s eyes were smiling, but his mouth frowned. “Odd, sometimes, what the whims of the universe cast at us.”

  “And you?” Grigori asked.

  “Go on and eat that cake,” Zoltan said. “You nibble, as if it’s on someone else’s plate.”

  Grigori smiled. It was true. Just give in, give up.

  Give up. Give it up.

  Grigori realized that he was nodding to himself, as much as he disliked the thought that came to him next.

  But it was the only way. If nothing else, it might prove . . . what? That he was done with it. That he respected Nina Revskaya, and that she need not be afraid of him. That he had surrendered.

  Yes, he knew what to do. Feeling much lighter, he finished the cake, while Zoltan immersed himself in another fit of scribbling. Then Zoltan looked up, and his voice became suddenly serious. “We must talk—at your earliest convenience.”

  Grigori paused. “I’m sorry, I thought that was what we were doing.”

  Zoltan shook his head angrily, whispered, “Not here.”

  “Oh.” Grigori looked around, but there was no one listening. He wiped the crumbs of cake up with the waxed paper. “Then shall I call you at home?”

  “No, no, in person.”

  Grigori shrugged, perplexed. “Well then, you let me know when. I’d best get going.” He stood and pulled on his gloves, as Zoltan nodded furtively. Two more café patrons took a seat at the next table, but now they murmured something and moved to another one, farther away. Grigori realized that this was due to Zoltan, that they thought him a vagrant, with his dirty plastic bags and stained, if perfectly tailored, gabardine pants, and his silk cravat with its many escaping threads. Well, that was America, the great equalizer—where revered poets were mistaken for homeless men. Grigori said, “All right, Zoltan. Until then.”