Russian Winter

by Daphne Kalotay

  To her surprise she found these poems—the early ones, at least—simple and delightful. Some were like songs, little ditties, sweet and joyous. Others were longer, their tone sometimes mysterious, sometimes romantic—yet their meaning, it seemed to Drew, was fairly straightforward. One later poem she liked so much she copied it into her notebook:

  SUNDAY

  This autumn is our first together,

  Like good bread shared, the warm crusts passed

  Across a table, or our shadows cast

  As one, pulsing, by the lantern’s flicker.

  Sunshine slides down from the hills,

  Over your hair. The light around you dances

  In air, illuminating the yellow branches—

  But we two revel in our stillness.

  Let us lie down by the river,

  The wind dress us in scattered leaves

  And sing of its travels, its former lives,

  And make the skin of the water quiver.

  Drew liked its physicality, its sensuality, the natural world and the two lovers within it, the purity of the images despite, or perhaps because of, their innuendo: this couple conjoined, a pair, a true pairing. It was the way Drew still, perhaps stubbornly, allowed herself to view love—though really she knew better. Her mistaken marriage was itself a product of romanticized notions, the excitement of those first two years, of being “in love”: the late nights and long mornings together, love notes tucked into books and slipped under doors, that one tortured telephone call and fevered reconciliation, and, finally, after their engagement, the appealing idea that now Drew too had a love story to tell and, like so many people around her, could be loved in this universal, public way, with a shiny diamond on her finger.

  The very recollection made Drew blush with shame, recalling what it had felt like to be “engaged,” the way the diamond caused people to reassess her—their palpable appreciation that Drew was loved by someone, was someone worth loving. It was the sort of approval she had never felt from her parents at any of her other decisions (to major in art history instead of something practical, or to take a job at an art gallery no one had ever heard of). How thoroughly good she had felt at the engagement party, in her neat blue skirt and matching top with the sailor’s collar, like a young betrothed out of an old movie, happy and hopeful and smartly dressed, her hair in a neat bob. At last she had done something right.

  Drew tried to stop the inevitable momentum of these thoughts, that same old loop, back to what it could have meant to have remained in that other life. She might have had a baby by now—had always thought she would, had planned on it, two children, she had hoped, so that they would always have each other and not be odd and introspective the way she herself had turned out. Now, though, who knew. At her age, it wouldn’t be much longer, just a few years’ time, probably, before the possibility would have fully receded.

  But that was the price she would pay, Drew supposed, for attaching such dreams—of children, of a family—to the fantasy of romantic love, to that distracting vision of what true love might be: couplehood based on a connection Drew had yet to feel with anyone, really. Sometimes, when she thought about it too much, she became nearly panicked, at the fact that as much as she would have liked a family of her own, she had already, in a way, made a decision. By not actively seeking remarriage, by not prioritizing that search, by resigning herself to the impossibility of such luck, she was in fact giving up that other dream.

  Poor Jen hadn’t had a chance when she signed Drew up for that dating Web site. As if Drew could have abided more than those few dates, the protracted meals at sushi bars and Irish pubs and “Asian fusion” restaurants, with men who laughed, surprised and slightly uncomfortable, when Drew spoke with excitement about her favorite paintings in the MFA or a movie at the Harvard Film Archive, men who chewed gum and jiggled their legs and spent spare moments playing with their cell phones….

  Stop it, Drew told herself, as she always did when her thoughts looped this way. She focused again on the book on her lap, even read a few of the poems aloud. They were arranged chronologically, and as the book progressed Drew found they changed slightly, remained sweet but with a nostalgic tone, sometimes wistful, sometimes closer to melancholy. She knew that these were approximations, that they would sound different in their original Russian; it was Grigori Solodin who had turned them into something Drew could understand. She found herself moved by the thought—that he had brought these poems to her, by finding the right words.

  She imagined translation to be a solitary task, as solitary as the reading she herself did at home each night, and the research she did in the library and online at Beller. Or did Grigori Solodin show other people his work in progress, discuss the poems, and his translations, with them? Well, even if he did, a project like this—meticulous and sincere—came from the core, no matter how many people you discussed it with. Drew knew this from her own work. In the end there was just you and your heart.

  In that way, it occurred to her, she and Grigori Solodin had their work in common: behind-the-scenes, unglamorous but necessary, and best undetected. All that effort, to deliver something beautiful to the public. Of course Grigori Solodin’s work took real talent, while Drew’s mainly took patience. But both were painstaking, and both required great care and the sort of focused attention that, if you allowed yourself to give in to it, and gave in to the great reward of it, became itself a form of devotion.

  The thought made Drew feel less alone, or perhaps more happily alone, sitting there cross-legged on the sofa. It was the comfort of knowing that she was not quite so strange, that there were other people who found delight in private challenges and quiet lives. People who lived in their thoughts as much as in the real, physical world. It was a reminder that true dedication to one’s work, to one’s art, was in fact—no matter how quiet or minor it might seem—a show of faith, a commitment to life. As for what Jen and Stephen and Kate said, that Drew spent too much time in books and in her mind, well, it was probably true. But it was also true that the internal world was an expansive one, always growing, full of possibilities that the real one did not necessarily offer.

  WINTER 1951. MOONLIGHT stretches the warped shadows of buildings, enormous and looming, over the square. Nina feels their presence like a weight above her as she crosses, shivering, toward the Bolshoi. Already the building is swarming with security guards. The ones at the entrance hold bayoneted rifles across their chests and, though Nina has become a recognizable face, make her show a special pass with her photograph on it, which they scrutinize coldly before allowing her in. For the rest of the night she will be made to show this pass, again and again, to enter her dressing room, the makeup room, the bathroom…even before stepping onstage (when she will have to tuck the stiff little card somewhere under her costume and pray it doesn’t slip out).

  Inside, theater people scurry around terrified, as always on such nights. Before, Nina might have felt this way too, nervous and anxious to please. After all, Stalin appears in public just twice a year, at Red Square for the May Day parade and at the air show every July; these theater visits are therefore all the more portentous. Nina wouldn’t have thought anything could distract her from the knowledge of Iosef Vassarionovich himself being among her audience. But now, even as she applies her makeup and secures her bun with a squadron of hairpins, Nina can’t stop thinking about Vera, about what Gersh has gone and done…. She tries to prevent her thoughts from continuing. Concentrate. Think only of the dance.

  Tonight’s ballet is Don Quixote, and she is wearing Kitri’s flirtatious Spanish costume, the skirt layered with red frills that flip back and forth as Nina hurries to the practice room. She runs through her warm-up routine, hand resting lightly on the barre, swinging her legs forward and back to loosen her hips. Take deep breaths…. This is the first time the Great Leader will be watching Nina dance, and in the lead role—a technically demanding one, at that.

  The door opens and Polina enters in her street danc
er outfit, official pass in hand, leg warmers scrunched up around her knees (where she often complains of tendonitis). “Ugh, they’re everywhere.” Through the little square window in the door, Nina can see the top of a security guard’s frowning forehead. By now these men are thoroughly dispersed throughout the concert hall, dressed as ushers, or in civilian clothes, even seated in the orchestra pit with the musicians.

  “I didn’t realize you were dancing tonight.”

  “I’m Vera’s replacement. Her Achilles is bad again. I’m so nervous!” The room fills with the heavy scent of Polina’s perfume as she stretches her legs, points her toes, one foot and then the other, and then up onto the balls of her feet for some relevés. Her voice tense, she adds what she has come here to say: “I suppose you heard what her so-called love has gone and done.”

  “He must have had no other choice,” Nina says, rolling her head left and right to warm up the neck. “That’s all I can think.” What he has done, as Nina has just learned from Viktor, is to go off and marry Zoya.

  “Clearly he doesn’t love her,” Nina adds. “Zoya, I mean. He just needs her as…you know. A front.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a Party member, well respected. She told him that maybe she could help him. With the way the tide has turned.”

  “She said that?”

  “According to Gersh. He told Viktor that Zoya came to him with the idea—that it was her suggestion they marry.”

  “Her suggestion?” Polina’s eyes open wide. “That woman stops at nothing!” As if she herself knows Zoya, and it is only natural…. A tsk sound, and a shake of her head. “She really will do anything to win Gersh back.”

  And yet why would she want to, Nina wonders, if things are really so bad for him? Perhaps Zoya’s position in the Party protects her—as Vera wouldn’t be protected, if Gersh married her instead. Thinking this, Nina says, “After all, he’s protecting Vera, in a way.”

  That too Viktor told her—that Gersh couldn’t bear to put Vera through this latest wave of darkness. Not after what she has already been through.

  And anyway, Viktor added, all this would be short-lived, surely, you know politics, this sort of thing never lasts all that long…. Even a year or two ago, Nina might not have been able to see the situation quite so clearly.

  “Well, I hate him.” But Polina says it without venom. In fact she looks exhausted, deep wells of gray under her eyes despite the thick layer of stage makeup.

  “Are you all right?” Nina asks. Perhaps it is just nerves.

  Polina looks away. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

  “Maybe Uncle Feliks can give you something.” It’s the pet name they have for the main Bolshoi doctor, whom every one of them has had to see at some point or other.

  “Oh, I imagine it will go away on its own.” Then, as if to change the subject, “I can’t believe Gersh.”

  “For all we know it doesn’t even mean much of anything,” Nina says. “Maybe it’s just a matter of signed papers. Maybe nothing much will change.”

  “I suppose.” Polina is scratching her neck, and only now does Nina note the faint red splotches there. Her chest, too, Nina sees, is covered with pale red welts.

  “I think you have some kind of rash.” She really must be nervous; Nina has seen this sometimes, during previous visits by the Great Leader—people so excited they break into hives.

  “I don’t know what it is. I’ve had them for days. They go away, and then they come back. I thought my makeup would cover them up.”

  “You really should see Uncle Feliks.”

  “I did. He thought it was an allergy. That I ate a bad egg.”

  “Well, try not to scratch.”

  “I’m trying, believe me, I have such sensitive skin, you know.”

  The door swings open, the assistant stage manager calling, “Five minutes.”

  “No down, no feathers,” they tell each other, as Nina turns to leave. Her entrance is in the first scene following the prologue. “And don’t scratch!” she adds, before heading downstairs.

  WAITING BACKSTAGE, IN the downstage wing, Nina looks out anxiously, across the tops of the heads of the musicians, over to the front of the opposite side of the stage. There, above the orchestra, draped with long red curtains forming a shield from the rest of the audience, is an armored side loge: Box A, where a cluster of bodyguards surrounds the Generalissimo himself. Nina sees them there and, searching, just barely glimpses him, seated behind a table. Broad shoulders, heavy cheeks, thick sweep of grayed hair. He really is here, really will be watching her perform Kitri’s twirls and arch-backed leaps.

  The fact is, he has his favorites. Marina Semyonova, for one. And fearless, flirty Olga Lepeshinskaya, a delegate to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, no less, who despite her compact build and less classical line Stalin has nicknamed “Dragonfly.” Well, it doesn’t matter, Nina tells herself, as she dips her pointe shoes in the rosin box and makes sure the little drawstrings on top aren’t sticking up. Already, now that the prologue has ended, she feels that combination of sweat and chill that sometimes overtakes her before a first entrance. Focus, she tells herself, take a deep breath and stay focused.

  But thoughts slip in, about Gersh, and Vera…. A flash of recollection, Gersh on Nina’s own wedding day, grinning beside her and Viktor at the registry office, in his baggy suit with its faint smell of damp laundry…

  Focus, concentrate. You are Kitri, Lorenzo’s strong-willed daughter; no one tells you what to do. You are fierce and flirtatious and in love. Let everything else fall away.

  She knows it will, that as soon as she steps onstage little else will matter—that in the midst of dancing, any misery, no matter how grave, becomes instantly somehow less, lessened. Even during the war, when each day brought news of devastation, and hunger sat like a sharp stone inside her, Nina’s anemic body always awoke to dance, always found some reserve of strength that she hadn’t known she possessed. Sometimes she even feels rapture, becoming one with the music, no longer a person but simply movement, euphoric, a complete obliteration of the crises of the world. The physical sensation of dancing—despite the constantly sore feet and bruised legs and sweaty tights stained yellow from rosin—has always managed to erase other hardships.

  Now the dressers are making one last check of her costume and hair, and the prop man hands her her frilly black fan. For act 1 the stage has been converted into a bustling town square, and the moment Nina runs confidently out from the wings and with a flourish of her hand whips out her fan, the audience begins applauding. Nina is smiling broadly, proudly; this opening sequence is what establishes Kitri’s personality, her bright self-assurance. She is a flirt and a free spirit, but she knows what she wants.

  Following Minkus’s spirited waltz, Nina revels in the leaps and kicks and high jumps her body loves. She feels strong and light, sure of her fast chaîné turns. She greets her Spanish girlfriends in mime and flirts with some of the young men, all the while aware that Stalin is watching—yet even as she makes her sequence of leaps around the square, slapping the ground firmly with her fan, Nina feels fully in control. When she dances her first variation, clicking her castanets defiantly, her sissonnes are fully split, so that as she arches her back in midair, her head points back parallel to her leg and her arm behind her almost touches her outstretched back foot. Petr, her Basilio for the night, hasn’t let his nerves get the best of him; he supports Nina’s pirouettes smoothly and for the one-handed lifts overhead is as brazen as he is secure, pressing Nina high up into the air as if such a thing is easy and utterly natural.

  Between acts, she and Petr head to the backstage corridor, to wait in the side hall at the principals’ table. From there they have a clear view of the door to Box A, right there at the side, and Nina can’t help glancing at it every few minutes. She wonders what might happen if that door were to open, how it would feel to be spoken to by—or even to speak to—him. She has fantasized about it often enough,
always with a little skip of the heart. She has imagined how gracious she would be, what a good impression she might make, if only she could keep from fainting. Now, though, another thought comes to her: that if only he knew what was happening to Gersh, surely Stalin could do something to help him.

  Or perhaps he does know. How could he not? The most powerful man in the nation…

  And yet, if that door were to open, would she really be able to speak out, to ask him for help? The thought overwhelms her. She tries not to think too much, tries to focus on the ballet. If only she herself possessed, offstage, Kitri’s strength of nerve…. Petr too is quiet. He too must be wondering about Box A, perhaps thinking about Yuri’s story, about being called in to speak to Stalin, imagining what that might be like.

  Then their break has ended, they are back on the stage Nina knows so well, her fears falling away, and there is only the feeling of her body, dancing.

  When the ballet has finished and she takes her curtain call, bowing first to the side loges as always, Nina pauses at that most important one, acknowledging that he is there. Then she continues as usual, to the center and then the back of the house before smiling up at the balconies. After she has acknowledged the conductor and the orchestra members, a surge of applause for their work, Nina departs from routine, turning once more to Stalin’s box, performing a deep révérence. Only after the curtains have rushed together before her, muffling the applause on the other side, does Nina realize that she has been pleading, with her body, for him to help her.