Russian Winter

by Daphne Kalotay

“According to official records, yes.”

  “Terrible, just terrible.” June Hennessey shook her head, the waves of her carefully set hair moving stiffly side to side. “And when you defected, these absolutely gorgeous jewels came with you.”

  “They came with me from Russia, in a situation of great danger and hardship.” Nina could hear the light hum of the first cameraman’s lens moving in for a close-up.

  “In a way they’re mementos, aren’t they?” June Hennesey’s brow rose into a hopeful expression. “Not only are they incredibly rare, and completely gorgeous, not to mention extremely valuable. But for you they have an emotional value, too. They were from your husband’s family, and when you lost your husband, the amber that he had passed down to you was all you had left of him.”

  June Hennessey seemed thrilled with her own insight. In a small voice Nina said, “Yes. All I had left of my husband.”

  IN 1947 SHE is twenty-one, and has been in the company three years. Five counting wartime, when she was one of the group that stayed to dance at the Filial; the rest of the Bolshoi had been evacuated to a town by the Volga. Back then Nina was one of just two new graduates hired for the corps—a dream come true, if not, perhaps, a surprise.

  After all, Nina excelled from the moment she entered the ballet school, never questioned the grueling repetition, ten years of pliés and relevés and holding her buttocks tight. (“Imagine you’re gripping a tram ticket there,” the teacher said in the very first class, “and don’t ever let it drop!”) Ten years of chassés across a raked wooden floor dark with wet spots from the watering can, ten years of studio windows steamed with sweat. Always some ache or pain. From that first year with the other little girls dressed all in white, having to curtsy each time an adult passed in the corridor, to the years of black leotards and pale tights (to reveal every shadow and line of the leg muscles), Nina has withstood the exacting comments of her ballet instructors, their constant minute corrections, the light, uncompromising touch of a fingertip here, there—shoulder back a bit more, chin tilted just so—and been buoyed by their approval, the glimpsed delight in their faces at her quick turns and jumps, asking her to demonstrate a saut de basque: “Nina, please show the class what I mean.” The very fact that they always remembered her name revealed that she had impressed them. Even as a small girl, with no family connections to pull strings for her, she was always selected for dance scenes in the Opera, or for the ballets with children’s roles—a mouse or a flower or a page. Meanwhile her muscles strengthened, tendons elongated, she grew lean, her spine supple, every movement imbued with poise and sense of space. But it was her devotion, her ambition, her strict self-discipline that set Nina apart. An intensity of concentration that could draw rivulets of sweat down her face, neck, arms, chest, no matter how seemingly simple an exercise. The tyranny of her own perfection, of wanting, always, more, of knowing the limits of her body even as she sought to push beyond them, her limbs trembling with fatigue. Always dancing full-out, her diagonals across the floor nearly sending her into the wall. Staying on after class until she learned to land her tours jetés without a sound, practicing triple pirouettes until her face turned a purplish red. Practicing her autograph, even—as if that too might ensure her future. By the war’s end she was a soloist.

  Yet when she thinks of all the hurdles she has cleared, the sometimes humiliating classes, the sternly judged exams, the frustration of injuries (tender right kneecap, and a recurring corn between her fourth and little toes), it seems nothing short of miraculous that, from the dusty courtyard of the building where she still lives with Mother, she has somehow, finally, arrived here: not just onstage but in this new life, a dancer, permitted—by her own doggedness and exacting training as much as by luck and the various whims of the universe—to do for a living the thing she loves most in the world.

  Now it is December. Winter darkness, like a candle blown out. All month a flu has stalked its way through the company, as always, just in time for the endless Shchelkunchik performances, half the corps shivering with fever, mucus flung from noses with each pirouette. Tonight all three principals are ill, and Nina at the last minute finds herself dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, holding forth well enough in the big adagio but still worrying the audience might begrudge this eleventh-hour switch.

  Her pulse continues to rush after the heavy curtains have swung shut, and then she is back in the chilly dressing room she shares with Polina now that they have both been promoted to first soloist. Polina is Nina’s age, with freckled skin, spidery eyelashes, and a long, thin neck. Tonight she danced the part of the Snow Queen and has glitter all through her hair. Peeling off sweaty tights with trembling hands, trying to hurry, hoping the silk doesn’t snag. An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has requested two dancers for a reception tonight, and in the absence of any principals, Nina and Polina are to perform.

  Only after company class this morning did the director explain: a foreign delegation; a Party official’s private residence; a car and escort to be sent for them…

  “You of course understand what an honor this is, to entertain our leaders.”

  Of course she is honored. While the top-tier dancers (and actors, writers, singers) often perform at government functions, not until this year has Nina been included in the lowest reaches of this category. Yet even now, as she quickly washes and powders herself, she hears the implication in the director’s words: that it is her duty to perform, that both she and Polina are at the service of the state. If only she weren’t so tired, if only the hour weren’t so late. Already this week she has performed double her usual bill. Her pointe shoes, crusted with rosin, are starting to wear through.

  “I’m so excited,” Polina is saying, stuffing pink tights and leg warmers into her drawstring bag. “I just wish I had something better to wear.”

  “They’ll only see our costumes, anyway.” Changing into her one good dress, though, Nina too feels plain. Just last week her mother fixed her coat up for her—sewed a yard of braid to the cuffs and hem—yet the elbows are so worn, they shine. At the last minute, though, she has an idea.

  “Well now, where did that come from?” Waiting in her own shiny-elbowed coat, Polina raises her overplucked eyebrows.

  “Where do you think?” Across Nina’s shoulders is a fur, white and lush, taken from the costume stash. “I’m just borrowing it.” She rubs her chin against the animal’s small head as she and Polina, carrying the hangers with their costumes, and the drawstring bags with their shoehorns and leg warmers and rubbing alcohol, and the clutch purses with their perfume and lipstick, make their way outside, where their escort—a shivering, glum-looking man in a thick-shouldered coat—waits.

  The snow has been coming down since afternoon, wet flakes beginning to turn icy. Polina keeps exclaiming about the weather as she and Nina are driven along in a long black ZiS limousine. This is the first time either of them has ridden in one. Only once has Nina been inside a private automobile—back before the war, when a friend’s cousin was visiting and took them for a drive in an old German Opel. Now Nina supposes the cousin must have gone off to the war, wonders, with that familiar, vaguely sick feeling in her chest, if he made it home or ended up in a steel box. Or maybe he is like the beggars she sees on the streets, with stumps for limbs. Nina always stops to give them a few kopecks. In her mind she still hears the line—it comes from a poem—everyone knows: better to return with an empty sleeve / than with an empty soul.

  They arrive at a handsome gray stone building (none of the usual peeling paint or sagging roofs) and soon are in a changing room yet again, pulling on silk tights and stiff tutus, stuffing thick butcher paper down into the toes of their pointe shoes, where the fabric is worn out. They will be performing variations from Swan Lake. Just a year ago Nina’s top roles were the dance of the six swans or of the four cygnets—but already this year she has danced one of the lead swans, and the act 1 pas de trois, and the Hungarian Bride in the third act. Still, she dream
s of no longer being among the crush of girls in feathered headbands, the cramped queue starting at the front stage right corner and curling all the way backstage….

  Tonight’s stage is a vast, twinkling ballroom, the rough wooden dance floor laid atop a marble one shiny as ice. Nina’s heart pounds so intensely surely everyone, seated at tables all around, can hear it. Her mouth has gone dry, her hands cold and clammy. She glimpses plates heaped with food, and circles of men in dark suits: people with official posts, executive powers. Her heart seems to be right between her ears. There are even a few women here, wives in long gowns. But now the pianist has begun to play, and the guests become a blur as Nina, her body moving as of its own will, begins to dance.

  Not until Polina’s variation, while Nina catches her breath, does she note the ballroom’s high vaulted ceilings, the vast buffet, the many candles, lanterns, and flowers. As if the barrenness of these past years, the fatigue, the hunger, no longer exists. And to think that this is someone’s home. Clatter of cutlery, of dishes being refilled, even as Polina dances. Watching, the guests smoke cigarettes, and fill their mouths, and chew and swallow, and clink their glasses.

  Nina feels her legs already beginning to cool down; there is a bad draft from somewhere. But now it is her turn again, adrenaline rushing as she tries not to stumble on the seams of the gritty makeshift floor. Chink-chink of dishes, the chewing mouths. Already it is over, Nina and Polina taking their carefully choreographed curtsies before being shooed back to the changing room.

  “Did you see the food?” Polina whispers, already untying her shoe ribbons, her tights smudged with dirt from the dance floor.

  Nina nods, and her stomach gives a twinge; she hasn’t eaten for hours. Now that she acknowledges it, she feels immediately famished.

  “I recognized some of them,” Polina adds, stepping out of her costume. Her legs and arms are splotched pink with cold.

  Nina too recognized some faces: the deputy foreign minister with his winged white hair, and the chairman of the Arts Commission. But they were eating, some of them barely looking, gulping and masticating while she danced….

  “They’ve seen both of us now, up close,” Polina says excitedly, and Nina wonders why she herself doesn’t feel that way. She has never been interested in politics, her enthusiasm for such matters limited to the watching of parades and air shows. She attends as few Komsomol meetings as possible; as a young girl her only interest in the Pioneers was for the folk dancing and the neat red scarves. Even now she has to force herself to sit through the mandatory Marxist lectures, and rarely sings along to the Party songs with the rest of the troupe on the touring bus. Because what does any of that have to do with dance?

  She has just finished dressing when a servant taps on their door: Nina and Polina have been invited to the table of the deputy minister of foreign affairs.

  Polina’s eyes open wide, while Nina quickly takes up her small pocketbook and drapes the white fur around her neck. Her heart gallops all over again as they are led back out to the great ballroom. The twinkling lights of the chandelier make the room seem warmer than it is, softening everyone’s skin, so that no one looks quite so sallow. At a table with a small group of others, the deputy foreign minister, red-faced and jolly, introduces Nina and Polina to the guests of honor. They are from Holland, the wife in a dress of a style Nina has never seen before. Its fabric, when the woman stands to shake her hand, rustles like aspen leaves. “This is Nina Timofeyevna Revskaya. Our Butterfly.”

  He must have read the newspaper article—the review that called her that, just last week. “N. Revskaya’s buoyancy, her seeming weightlessness, the boundlessness of her leaps, make her look, at times, caught in the air. Her every movement contains a wholeness that is not simply physical but also emotional, of the mind as well as the body.”

  The guests say something that the translator, a flustered-looking gray-haired woman, turns into a compliment about Nina’s dancing. The very sounds of this strange language make Nina anxious; normally even the briefest chat with foreigners could mean a trip to the secret police. At the same time, Nina cannot stop staring. These are the first Westerners she has seen close up. The only foreign cities she has been to—with the ballet—are Budapest, Warsaw, and Prague.

  “For you,” the deputy foreign minister says boisterously, as he offers them goblets of red champagne. His wife, a stocky woman with a fox fur around her neck, emits a smell—something unpleasant yet familiar. Could it be perfume? Nina’s own scent, Crimean Violet, always evaporates as soon as she puts it on.

  Now everyone at the table is raising their glasses: “To peace.” Nina clinks her glass with the others, but there is no food in her stomach to soak up the red champagne. It is with relief that she and Polina are ushered over to the buffet. Polina exclaims at the cold meats and salads, and smoked sturgeon, and black and white bread, and blinis with caviar and sour cream…Baked apples, too, and in the middle of it all, an enormous half-eaten salmon. Nina’s stomach growls, though she is used to hunger. Only this month was the complicated rationing system terminated. Mother still stretches milk with water and brews carrot peels in place of tea, and returns from the markets having struggled over a few rotting potatoes and a wizened parsnip or two. Yet now, here, all this…Their escort has stepped away, no one is watching as they fill their plates. Breathing the distinct aroma of coffee, Nina arranges the delicate chain strap of her purse over her shoulder so that she can help herself to bread that she spreads with real butter. Even the cutlery—gleaming forks and knives and serving spoons—is stunning. Nina spreads the butter thickly, eagerly, so hungry, her hands shake. The knife slips from her grasp.

  “Lucky you,” Polina says when it lands on the floor. “A man is coming to call.” She ascribes to numerous superstitions. “And I’m going to meet my Prince Charming tonight. I feel it in my bones.”

  Nina bends down for the knife. “How do you know it’s not the flu?”

  “Ha! I have a good sense for these things. I can smell it in the air.” Polina is always falling in love; for it not to be in the air, she would have to not breathe. “You might meet yours, too,” she adds, in a tone that makes it clear she doesn’t really think so. She knows that the only kissing Nina has ever done has been in ballets, her brightly painted lips pressed dryly against her partner’s. And although as a dancer Nina is used to being touched by men, guided, lifted, tossed high in the air, she has rarely felt physical attraction toward them, with their wrestlers’ bodies—thick thighs from so many squats for the prisiadka, bulging pectorals from all the acrobatic lifts. Andrei, her adagio partner, has legs like mutton drumsticks. He sometimes flexes the muscles of his buttocks just to make her laugh.

  “Do you see anyone?” Nina asks, though of course the question is moot. Any men close to their age would have been eaten up years ago by the war. The only healthy young men Nina ever sees are danseurs in the ballet, and even some of them have lost their teeth to scurvy. The rest were killed in action, or exiled if they happened to have a German name. Nina’s romantic fantasies are just that, fantasies, childish ones, of brave parachutists, aeronauts, deep-sea divers—no one she’s ever met. She looks out at the clusters of military men and Party officials, members of the Secretariat, all of them twice her age. Dessert has officially begun, petits fours and scoops of ice cream. Nina spots the foreign diplomats, visibly alien in their fitted suits and neat haircuts, eating contentedly. No chance, of course, for any one of them to be a Prince Charming. A new law has made it illegal to marry non-Soviets.

  Her own countrymen look comparably scruffy, their suits rumpled the way only men are allowed to be, their cuffed trousers pooling at their ankles. Nina watches the Dutch wife, who with her clean new shoes and prim dress looks so different from the Russian wives in their furs and long gowns of panne velvet. “Do you know anyone?” Polina asks, her chin high.

  “No. Oh, well, there’s Arkady Lowny.” Aide to the culture minister. A face like the fat pink boiled hams at the Gast
ronom. He goes around with a broad, inexplicable smile, as if he has just been told good news—but his hands, Nina has noticed, are always trembling. Now he is approaching them, grinning.

  “Good evening, ladies.” Brushing his hair to the side with a shaky hand. Polina says a bright, “There you are!” clearly relieved to know someone. Soon she and Arkady are deep in a back-and-forth of meaningless chatter, Polina’s freckles disappearing as she blushes. “Oh, but you do!” “No, I don’t!” “I’d say you do!”

  Just a step away from Nina are two other couples in conversation, one of the women slightly familiar. It is Ida Chernenko, the famous wild-animal trainer, older than in the posters. The other woman is younger, with a shapely bust and a long wave of golden hair, her hand resting just above her hip in a way that makes her waist look slender. Like many of the women she wears a big flashy oval ring on her index finger, and a string of amber beads. The man next to her is different from the others, younger, and tall rather than stocky, somehow elongated, not a Muscovite at all. He is telling a joke; Nina can tell because of the way Ida and the other man are listening, the corners of their mouths already upturned, their eyes crinkling, certain of a punch line. On her bosom Ida wears an enormous brooch, and when the man finishes his joke, she laughs so hard, the brooch flops back and forth like a small, severed head.

  “Please, no more,” the other man is saying, cheeks red from drink or from laughter. “Your jokes are a strain on my liver.”

  The younger woman just smiles in an elegant, amused way. The handsome man must be her husband. Square jaw, aquiline nose, thick gleaming brown hair. Long-limbed, so that his baggy suit drapes him in a way that seems refined rather than poorly constructed. He must not have served in the war. He looks too healthy and content.

  He has noticed Nina staring and glances up, a pleased look spreading across his face. Opening his mouth to speak—

  “Oh, good, you’re still here!” Lida Markova, who runs the State Archive for Literature and Art, beams at Nina. A thick wall of a woman, with coarse hair and a booming voice, and glass beads hanging from her earlobes. Lida loves the ballet, always seeks out the company of the newer dancers, who are not as aloof as the more senior stars. “So wonderful to see you dance tonight.”