Dancer

by Colum McCann

  Rudik! she says. Wait!

  They spend the afternoon in his sister Tamara’s room close to Kolomenskoye Park. Tamara shares a room with a family of six. Her corner of the room is small, damp, filled with rubber plants, knickknacks, a fading print of a Tsiolkovsky, intricate rugs hung from nails. In piles on the floor she has arranged her books. The kitchen is dark and cramped. Recently her salary from the kindergarten has been curtailed and the shelves are empty. A heavy iron sits on the stove, beside the teakettle. No samovar. Down the corridor the toilet has overflowed, and the waft of it comes strong through the building.

  Tamara makes tea and a fuss with a plate of biscuits.

  This is like old times, she says.

  She takes Rudi’s shoes and polishes them. Later she fingers his coat and asks him where he gets his clothes made. He shrugs.

  The afternoon grows lengthy as the light slants through the windows.

  I have something, says Rudi.

  He reaches in his suit jacket pocket, leans across, and hands them tickets for the following night’s performance.

  They’re good seats, he says, the best.

  Mother and daughter scan the tickets.

  More tea, he says to Tamara, and she immediately climbs to her feet.

  The next evening, in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Farida and Tamara sit nervously as the seats fill up around and behind them. They gaze at the tiered chandeliers, the ornate cornicework, the gold carvings on the stems of the lamps, the magnificent curtain with repeating designs, hammers and sickles. As the dance begins their hands are clenched tight in their laps, but soon the women are gripping each other, amazed to see Rudi, not just the dance, but what he has become, whole and full and fleshed, patrolling the stage, devouring space, graceful, angry.

  His mother leans forward in her plush velvet seat, awed and slightly frightened. This is my flesh and blood, she thinks. This is what I have made.

  * * *

  Yes! Chistyakova review from Theater Moscow, volume 42, 1959. “A dancer with excellent natural gifts.” “Captivating us with the swiftness of his dance tempi.” Sasha: When at first you do succeed try not to look astonished. Ha! Yes! Advice on how to handle the crowd—stand tall, fill out all the space with one huge sweep of the arm. Like a farmer in the field, he says, with his very last swipe at the hay. Or, more to the point, an executioner at the neck! See film shot by Lenikowski(?) Labrakowski(?) Photographs for mother. New shoes. Wigs to get washed. Tailor the coat so it is short, up around the hips, give further length to me, oh shit I wish legs could grow! Access to special stores. Get leather bag with good strap if possible. Maybe sponge-soled shoes and narrow trousers, if possible. Tobacco for Father, heater that mother mentioned. Something for RosaMaria, jewelry box perhaps.

  * * *

  He is told to hold position as if position is a thing that can ever be held on a floor like this, a sheet at his feet. He is in fifth, arms above his head. Earlier in the morning he landed hard on his ankle and can feel the throb of it now. The studio is bright and airy, light drifting in confident packets through the small windows. The photographer has a cigarette which seems to cling to his lower lip. He smells of smoke and bromide. Also, the acrid whiff of the flashbulbs as they break with each emission of light. He has to change each bulb when it breaks, unscrewing it from beneath the white umbrella, using a padded glove. Rudi has already asked the photographer why he is bouncing flash light into the natural light—it seems to him to have no logic—but the photographer said: You do your trade, comrade, I do mine.

  Rudi remains in position, his ankle pounding with pain, thinking that if he did his trade, if he really did his trade, the camera itself would not be able to catch him. There are other photographs on the back of the wall, ranged in careful order, dated and tagged. Dancers all, captured benignly and formlessly, even the great ones, Chaboukiani, Ulanova, Dudinskaya. The photographer has brought his ignorance to the job and there is nothing more Rudi would like than to break the air with movement in the second before the flash erupts, create a blur on the film. The photographer is using a Lomo which, because of its black weight, is propped on a tripod and what stupidity to smoke while taking a photograph, but Rudi needs the photo for the Kirov, so he breathes in the pain. He is surprised by the ache, that by remaining still his body is more violently active, so he concentrates his rage on the photographer, more precisely on the series of fat rolls at his neck. The flash causes Rudi to blink, leaving a single bright image on his retina.

  And again! says the photographer as he unscrews the bulb, pauses a moment to put a lighter to the end of the cigarette which has extinguished itself.

  No, says Rudi.

  Pardon me?

  No more, he says.

  The photographer smiles nervously. One more, he says.

  No. You’re an imbecile.

  The photographer watches as Rudi descends the stairs, his black hat at an angle, shading one side of his face. At the bottom of the stairs Rudi bends, checks the swelling on his ankle and loosens the bandage minutely. Without looking back he waves at the photographer who is leaning over the banister, incredulous.

  Send them to me, shouts Rudi. If they’re no good I’ll eat them and shit them and return them to you in an envelope.

  He walks to the studios of the Kirov, where he rehearses through the pain with the master class. An older dancer tries to edge him out from the mirror. Rudi fakes a fall and slams his shoulder into the dancer’s knee, half-whispers an apology, climbs back into his dance. There is a muttering in the room, but Rudi aligns himself in the mirror, hair down to his eyebrows, his shoulders muscled. In the middle of the floor he pirouettes beautifully. His partner, Sizova, gives a calm nod of her head, comes across and says: You’re injured, don’t show off.

  Rudi nods and does the move again. At the window he sees Xenia, elegant in a beautiful coat and headscarf. He whisks his hand in the air, waving at her to go away. When she doesn’t he turns to the front of the studio where she can no longer see him.

  Later, with Sizova he works on the finishing touches for a duet from Les Sylphides. His ankle swells further but he dances through the pain, plunging it in a bucket of cold water at the end of the three hours. Then he rises again and puts in an extra half hour. Sizova watches the mating ritual in the mirror, not so much with himself as with the dance. Too exhausted to practice any more, she tells him she must leave to get a few hours’ sleep.

  As she goes down the corridor she passes Xenia smoking on the steps, her long blond hair covering her face, her eyes red and swollen.

  Far behind, in the rehearsal room, she can still hear Rudi cursing to himself: Your legs are still not long enough, asshole.

  * * *

  When I was a young girl in Santiago, there were games my brothers and I played when the day of the dead came around. My mother would fix up a basket of bread and corn fritters. We’d walk, with my father and brothers, to the cemetery, where other families had already lit up candles in the darkness. Hundreds of people crowded the graveyard. We had a humble family tomb under the oaks. The adults drank cheap rum and told stories. My parents talked of dead grandmothers who had baked wedding rings into bread, grandfathers who had held their breath in underwater caves, uncles who had received signs in their dreams. We, the children, played at the vaults. I put my favorite dolls on tombs and my brothers rode around on stick horses. Later we lay down on the cool stones and played at being dead. Even then, at the age of seven, I wanted to dance. On the tombs I sometimes thought I could feel the satin against my feet. It was the only night of the year we were allowed in the cemetery—our parents watched and made hot chocolate for us, and later we fell asleep in their arms.

  It all returned to me like a dream on my last night in Leningrad.

  A small farewell party had been held at a function room in the Kirov, hors d’oeuvres and Russian wine that tasted vaguely like hand lotion. My room was three kilometers from the Kirov but, instead of getting the tram, I walked, taking it
all in, following the curve of the canals, a final gesture to the city. It was a warm white evening. Three years in skirts. I wore my orange pants. Girls giggled and waved. The wine had made my head a little woozy. The straight lines of the architecture were gone, the palaces were blurry, the wide streets narrowed, and the bronze statues of the Anichkov bridge seemed to sway. I hardly cared. My spirit was already home in Chile.

  When I got to the apartment block I ran up the stairs. Inside, Rudi was sitting on my bed, cross-legged.

  “You left the door open,” he said.

  He had been at the party earlier and had already said a theatrical good-bye, but I wasn’t surprised to see him. My bags were packed but he had opened them, removed the copies of Dance magazine that had beaten the censors, and they were spread out on the bed, open to pictures of London, New York, Spoleto, Paris.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said.

  He grinned and asked me to take out my guitar. He sat, then, on the floor with his head against the bed, his eyes closed, listening. I thought of Mama, the way she, had sung to me at night beneath the murraya branches. She said to me once that a bad voice came from a good life, a good voice came from a bad life, but that a great voice came from a confusion of both.

  After his favorite song Rudi stepped across to me. My head was still spinning from the wine and he put his finger to my lips, took the guitar from me, laid it against the wall.

  I said, “Rudi, no.”

  He touched the buttons on my cardigan, circled them with his finger, his fringe of hair against my forehead. He ran his hands across my waist, moved his fingers up my arms and on to my shoulders, his touch uneasy yet precise. I laughed and slapped his hands away.

  “You’re leaving,” he whispered.

  My buttons were open. His hands rested on my back and his legs trembled against mine. I had not slept with anyone since my arrival in Russia. I bit my tongue, pushed him away. Rudi gasped and lifted me, put his mouth to the ridge of my collarbone, thrust me against the wall. I slipped against his shoulder, caught the scent of him, said: “Rudi, no.”

  I turned my face to his. “We’re friends.”

  His mouth touched my earlobe. “I have no friends.”

  “Xenia,” I whispered.

  He drew back sharply from me. I hadn’t meant to invoke her, the name had slipped off my tongue. I immediately felt sober. He had been sleeping with Pushkin’s wife for a while but the affair had ended abruptly. Although Rudi had dismissed her, she still watched him rehearse, cooked for him, cleaned his clothes, attended to his whims.

  He went to the window, his hands cupped low, embarrassed by his arousal.

  I laughed nervously, not meaning to shame him, but he stepped backwards and slammed his fist into the wall.

  “For this I missed rehearsal,” he said.

  “For this?”

  “For this.”

  He was so close to the window his breath steamed the glass.

  At the bathroom sink I poured cold water on my face. He was still at the window when I returned. I told him to leave and come back when he was Rudi once more, his ordinary self. He had his own apartment now, eight streets away. But he didn’t budge. The child in him seemed to reflect off the glass while he watched me in his own reflection. He had often told me that he loved me, that he’d marry me, that we’d dance together around the world—it had become our joke in the few moments when we found ourselves with little to say, but now the silence parted us.

  He pouted in a charming way and I thought about the days we had spent together: massaging each other’s feet, skating, sunbathing by the canals, the evenings with Yulia. Perhaps the wine was still in me, I don’t know, but finally I said to him, “Rudi, come here.”

  He turned on his toes, brushing his feet as if in ronde de jambe. “What?”

  “Come, please.”

  “Why?”

  “Unbind my hair.”

  He waited, fidgeted, then came across to remove the clips, fumbling and tentative. He held the weight of my hair and let it drop. I pressed against him, kissed him, my mouth filled suddenly with his breath. I whispered that he could stay with me until morning, or until 9.30 A.M. exactly, before I left for Pulkovo Airport, to which he smiled and said that his head had run rudderless thinking of me and we should sleep together, yes, make love, since we would never see each other again, spoken like hard fact or the first piano note of the morning.

  His eyes were intense and narrow as if a phonograph needle had stopped just at the point of a trumpet blast.

  His hands slipped down my spine, drew me against him, his fingers then at the small of my back, my hips, my thighs, moving slowly. I arched and closed my eyes. He yanked hard at the back of my hair, pulled me closer, but then all of a sudden he turned his face to the pillow and remained motionless.

  “Sasha,” he said into the pillow.

  He began to say Pushkin’s name over and over again. I knew then that we would not make love. I stroked his hair and the night thickened, we pulled a blanket over us, the sensation of our toes touching. He fell asleep with his eyelashes fluttering and I wondered, What dreams?

  I awoke during the night, disoriented. Rudi was sitting on the floor, naked, his feet curled into his stomach, staring at photographs, finally noticing me, gazing up, pointing at a picture of Covent Garden, saying: “Look at this.”

  He was studying a picture of Margot Fonteyn in her dressing room, her hair pinned back, her face serious, her eyes deliberate. “Look at her! Look at her!”

  I propped myself up and asked if he had thought about the Pushkins during the night, if they’d appeared in his dreams, but he dismissed me with a wave, said he didn’t want to talk of trivialities. He immersed himself in the pictures once more. Feeling useless, I patted the bed. He climbed in beside me and began crying, kissing my hair, saying, “I’ll never see you again, RosaMaria, I’ll never see you, I’ll never see you, I’ll never see you.”

  For the rest of the night we slept beside each other, arms entwined.

  In the morning we left the room, carrying my suitcases. Outside a man in a dark suit was sitting on the low wall, smoking. When he saw us he stood up nervously. Rudi went over to him, whispered something in his ear. The man stuttered and swallowed, eyes wide.

  Rudi started leaping down the street.

  “I don’t give a shit!” he said. “Fuck them! All I want to do is dance! I don’t care!”

  “Rudi,” I said. “Don’t be foolish.”

  “Fuck caution,” he said.

  He was going soon to Vienna to perform at the Stadthalle, and I said they would surely withdraw permission for the trip if he kept drawing attention to himself.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “All I care about is you.”

  I looked at him to see if this was just another of his mood swings, but it was hard to tell. I told him I loved him, that I’d never forget him. He took my hand, kissed it.

  We put my bags into a taxi. The driver recognized Rudi from a performance of Les Sylphides the previous week and asked for an autograph. Fame fit Rudi like a curious coat, new but oddly snug. In the taxi he closed his eyes and rattled off the street names as we passed them, each note in the right place. I kissed his eyes. The driver coughed as if in warning. Behind us a car was trailing.

  At the terminal in Pulkovo there was a group to see me off. I felt light-headed, blissful at the thought of returning home—already I was taking the white dustcloths off the mirrors and the furniture. I could taste the dust in the room.

  Yulia was at the airport in all her loveliness. She smiled her subversive smile. Her long dark hair was draped around her shoulders. I had given her some clothes a few days before, and she was wearing a bright purple blouse of mine, which set off her dark skin, her eyes. Her father had written a letter from Ufa and in it had enclosed a small note for me. He said I’d made his wife, Anna, happy with my spirit when we met and that he appreciated my attendance at her funeral. At the very end of the letter there was a
rather oblique reference to the deserts of Chile—he said he had always wanted to see the Atacama, where it had not rained in four hundred years, and if I ever got there I should throw some earth in the air in his honor.

  I kissed Yulia good-bye, shook hands with the others.

  My flight was to Moscow and then onward to Paris and then New York, where I was to make the final leg to Santiago. I wanted to say a final farewell to Rudi but he had disappeared. I pushed through the pockets of people, called his name, but he was nowhere to be seen among the passengers and guards. I called his name again and still he did not show. I turned towards the glass wall that led to passport control.

  Just then I caught a glimpse of the top of his head, distant in the crowd. He was engaged in serious and animated conversation with someone—at first I was sure it was the man who had been spying on us, but then I saw it was another young man, dark-haired, handsome, with an athlete’s body and a pair of denim jeans, a rarity in Leningrad. The young man was touching Rudi gently on the inside of the elbow.

  The call for my flight came through the loudspeakers. Rudi strode across and hugged me, whispered that he loved me, that he could hardly live without me, he would be lost, yes, rudderless, please come back soon, he would miss me terribly, we should have made love, he was sorry, he did not know what he would do without me.

  He looked around over his shoulder. I turned his face back to mine and he smiled, a strange and chilling charm.

  * * *

  Incident Report, Aeroflot, Flight BL 286,

  Vienna-Moscow-Leningrad, March 17, 1959.

  Due to circumstances beyond the airline’s control, there were no meal or beverage carts provided for this flight. Passengers were so advised at the airport. Upon boarding, however, the Subject, a People’s artist, was noticed to be carrying a case of champagne. The Subject at first seemed to exhibit a severe fear of flying but then became rowdy, complaining about the lack of food and beverages. Midway through the flight, unbeknown to flight attendants, he took a bottle, shook it, and sprayed the contents around the cabin. The Subject then walked the aisles, offering champagne to passengers, pouring the alcohol into paper cups. The champagne soaked through the paper cups and leaked. Fellow passengers complained about wet seats and clothes. Others began singing and laughing. The Subject took out additional bottles from the same case. When confronted he used foul language. The Subject remarked that it was his twenty-first birthday and began gesticulating and shouting about being a Tatar. Late in the flight the plane hit turbulence and many of the passengers experienced bouts of violent sickness. The Subject seemed increasingly frightened but continued to shout and sing. When asked to calm down by representatives of the ballet company with whom he was traveling he used another epithet and sprayed the final bottle of champagne around the cabin just prior to landing. After the landing in Moscow a warning was issued and the Subject calmed. On disembarking in Leningrad he made a comment to the Captain of the flight, the nature of which remained undisclosed. Captain Solenorov reported in sick for the return flight.