Russian Winter

by Daphne Kalotay

  A sign. A secret message. As though the necklace had been hiding there. It had waited for just the right time—when the only father Grigori had ever known had unknowingly abandoned him, when there was only this other story to continue. The amber possessed its own secret. Inside was a spider paralyzed in mid-action, with something else, a large pale bulge—like a parachute, or a balloon—attached below it. Grigori stared at it for a long while, wondering.

  He decided, without any real deliberation, not to tell his mother. She was still lost in her own profound grief; it could only hurt her to see Grigori focused on these other parents. And anyway, what was she to make of the necklace? Only that it must have cost quite a bit of money. Perhaps the ballerina who died was someone—someone famous, wealthy. Or perhaps the necklace was the only expensive thing she had owned. Quickly, with disappointment, Grigori realized that, as much as it felt like a sign, the necklace really could not tell him much at all.

  Back at the university that same year, another sign, even more meaningful in its randomness, confronted him.

  In the campus library, reading a book called Socialist Realism and the Russian Writer, Grigori came across a photograph. “Plenum of the Writers Union, 1949” was the heading. Rows of men facing the camera, looking very serious in their dark suits. In the front row, so that his features were very clear, was the man from the photographs—Grigori’s photographs, his mother’s photographs, from the vinyl pocketbook.

  Grigori’s heart gave a kick, then began pounding wildly. He brought the page close to his eyes, more certain with every passing second that it was the same man. But who was this man? Grigori began flipping through the book, nearly recklessly, pausing at every photograph in case the man should appear again. Just when he was certain that he would have no such luck, he found him. This time the man stood with two others. According to the photograph, they were editors and writers at the Literaturnaya gazeta, their names listed below. Grigori quickly wrote out the one of the man at the right, the tall one with the almond-shaped eyes. Viktor Elsin. The name was vaguely familiar; Grigori seemed to have heard it before. Only later did he realize where he had seen it, in two of the poetry anthologies he had perused for a paper the previous semester. For now, he did what research he could, spent hours in the dark basement of the library snapping cartridge after cartridge into a microfiche machine, sliding the flat tips of roll after roll of shiny brown film through the wheel, so that the illuminated screen filled with decades-old newspaper and magazine articles. There he learned what little he could of Viktor Elsin’s fate, as well as surprising information he could not have even hoped for, would not have dared dream up on his own: that Elsin had been married to the ballerina Nina Revskaya, who—he discovered after more frenzied searching of microfilm—currently resided in Boston, Massachusetts.

  “SHE’S REARRANGED THE furniture,” Vera reports, a few weeks after Gersh’s marriage to Zoya. Vera, Nina, and Polina are with a small Bolshoi group in Berlin, Nina’s first time in this ruined city, streets not yet rebuilt, darkened buildings and bombed-out plazas still piled with rubble. At their hotel (an underheated structure on an oddly empty boulevard) the three of them are finishing an afternoon meal. Not in the dining room—no money for that. Even with her promotion Nina has only a meager travel salary. Like the others she has stuffed her suitcase with food from home, biscuits and canned beans and sauerkraut, a few hard dry sausages. Anything to save a few kopecks. In Vera and Polina’s room, she has warmed the beans on a portable burner, so that the place smells like a campsite. And though her own room, shared with the other young premiere danseuse, is larger and on a quieter floor, for a moment, eating the beans and biscuits here with Vera and Polina, it feels like the old days (only less than a year ago, really) when they were all three of them eager first soloists, sharing the stark little dressing room.

  “Zoya’s clothes all lined up on a rack,” Vera continues, calmly, almost passively. “The apartment is basically hers now. Oh, and did you know she collects recordings of Stalin’s speeches? Apparently she’s been playing them over and over on Gersh’s phonograph.”

  Nina laughs. “I suppose that’s his punishment.”

  “I don’t know how you can forgive him,” Polina says. Something really is wrong with her skin; though the welts are gone, there are small dark patches on her cheekbones. Not bruises, exactly, more like hives, but a gray-black color instead of red.

  “It’s because I feel sorry for him,” Vera says. “It’s clear Zoya has had her eye on his apartment from the start. She’s just using him, so that she doesn’t have to live with her family anymore.”

  So that’s what Vera has decided to tell herself, or what Gersh has convinced her—and perhaps himself—to believe. Well, probably it is one facet of the truth. As Nina contemplates this, Polina looks at the clock and says, “We should get going.” This afternoon is their one chance to sightsee; in other words, to shop. Though they are confined to the Soviet sector, there is a good chance that with the American, French, and British sectors so close they might find goods unavailable back home. “I’ll go check in with Arvo”—the Komsomol representative traveling with the troupe. They are supposed to keep him informed of their every coming and going.

  “Oh, let him figure it out,” Nina says. After all, chances are that one of the small contingent of East German chaperones, whom they met at the welcoming dinner yesterday and who seem always to be hovering about, will be waiting for them in the lobby.

  But no one is there when they hand their keys to the sharp-faced sentrywoman stationed at the elevator, nor when they leave the building and step out into the cloudy gray day. Vera simply shrugs her shoulders, and Polina seems to relax, as they make their way along the run-down streets. Nina notices the way people look at them as they walk by, wonders if it is their clothes that make them stand out, though their clothes aren’t all that different, really. But no, it isn’t their clothes, nor is it their being Russians; it is that they are so clearly dancers, with their poised, open-stance ballerina walk, and their hair pulled into high chignons. Polina especially has the exaggerated, ducklike stride of a dancer, when really there is no reason to walk that way—except that that walk, too, is part of Polina’s very identity. It occurs to Nina that each of them has a signature gait: Polina’s is self-conscious and somewhat forced, her turnout coming from the ankle rather than the hips, while Vera is blessed with natural turnout, her steps easy and light on high-arched feet. Nina knows she too has her physical quirks—the long neck and proudly held head and relaxed yet perfectly erect posture, shoulder blades pulled back instinctively so that her spine forms a strong vertical line. Quite a contrast to the marketgoers shuffling around them, hunched forward as if to burrow their way through their errands, or to duck from the cold.

  With little difficulty, the three of them find the stage apparel shop they have been told of. What they most want are nylon tights, which won’t sag at the knees like the silk ones from home. But this shop is sold out. After they have stocked up on grease sticks and face powder, the shop’s owner writes down another address where they can find what they want, he explains with a shrewd look, eyes narrowed, pointing out the U-Bahn stop and describing, through gestures and broken Russian and little knowing nods, how to get there.

  They board the subway feeling adventurous, the car so crowded they have to stand. Two stops later, though, nearly everyone in the car shuffles off. Nina looks out at the sign on the wall of the tunnel, big black letters with the name of the subway stop. Below, something longer is written, the words too long and foreign for Nina to make sense of. “Why do you think so many people are getting off?” Polina asks nervously—and the door slides shut.

  Only as the car lurches forward again does Nina allow what the reason might be. Her heart speeds at the thought; she doesn’t dare speak. The next stop is the one the shop owner told them, and they are there soon enough. With Vera and Polina, Nina steps out to the platform.

  They emerge from the subway to
a bustling street, oddly bright though the sky is as gray and cold as before. Shop windows glow with neon signs, and above them, big and clean, are billboards such as Nina has never seen, colorful and spotlit even though it is daytime. People everywhere; even their coats and hats look brighter, somehow. “That’s why everyone had to get off.” Nina says it even though it is clear from Polina’s and Vera’s faces that they too understand.

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Polina says.

  “We didn’t know,” Vera whispers, eyes wide as she takes in the scene before them, the people walking at an easy clip, unworried, and the buildings that, while still somewhat derelict, are cleaner and free of rubble, with lights illuminating their windows.

  “Well, we’re here now, we might as well find what we came for.” Nina tries to sound confident, though in her mind she hears the repeated warnings of Arvo and their East German hosts, that they are not to leave the democratic sector, that evil Western capitalists might kidnap them at any turn. In a voice of forced calm, Nina reads out the shop address while Vera searches the map. “It’s this way,” Vera says, finding the street sign. Nina and Polina follow her. At the corner, though, they come to a stop.

  In front of them is a vegetable kiosk. And there, heaped at the end, like something out of a fairy tale, is a stack of bright yellow bananas.

  Polina and Vera too stare, as Nina allows herself to fully take in the scene around her, people walking calmly without the least sign of wonderment at the bright shop windows, the billboards, the bananas. Their easy chatter and relaxed faces, the quick, optimistic clicks of shoes on the sidewalk…

  “We’re just following directions,” Polina says defensively, turning away from the bananas. Nina fights the urge she has—to spend her money not on tights but on this gorgeous, exotic fruit. But Vera is pointing at a narrow side street. “That’s it. We might as well go in.” After all, they simply want to buy dance supplies.

  The address the shop owner has written down is a tiny place, something of a junk shop, no sign out front. Inside are all kinds of wigs and tights and costume materials and fabrics they never see back home. Not just costume jewelry but also real jewels and perfumes and coffee beans and English cigarettes. The owner is an older woman with her hair in a very long gray braid. No one else is with her. Nina and the others lose themselves for a long while, calculating dreamily, deciding what to splurge on. Nina purchases fabric for her mother, cigarettes for Viktor, and tights for herself, while Vera and Polina continue sorting through the fabric. When the woman hands over Nina’s change, she presses something into her hand.

  “In case you need it.” The woman’s voice is so soft, her German-accented Russian so quiet, Nina might have dreamed it. But the woman’s hand is adamant, insistent in its pressure, forcing something into Nina’s palm. A little slip of paper. Nina is so taken aback she doesn’t dare look at it. She just nods thank you and slips the tiny note, with the money, into her pocket.

  “Look,” Polina calls from the other end of the room. She is holding up a pocket watch. “For Serge!”

  Nina’s heart thumps anxiously, the slip of paper in her pocket like a lit match. She tries to distract herself by going over to see the watch. “You two are serious, then?” she asks as calmly as she can.

  “He’s such a wonderful man, Nina, I feel so lucky.” Polina turns to call to the old woman, to ask how much for the pocket watch.

  All the while that Polina is bargaining down the watch for Serge, Nina wonders about the slip of paper in her pocket. What is it, and why has the woman given it to Nina, of all people? As curious as she is, she doesn’t dare peek at the paper yet.

  When they have bought all they can afford, they head straight back to the subway, aware—without daring to speak of it—of their transgression. Nina finds herself trying not to look at the bright shop windows, at the different fabrics of coats and hats; she is ashamed of her own wonderment, and of the way these sights disconcert her, something wrong about it, that the “evil capitalists” she has been told about should look so content, their streets clean, with vendors hawking bananas—and no queue at all, no desperate rush. When she and the others have boarded the train back to their stop near the Lustgarten, Nina feels relief.

  Only after they have emerged from underground, as they make their way along the street to their hotel, does Nina venture to say, under her breath, what she has been noticing—if denying to herself—since leaving the junk shop. “That woman there seems to be following us.”

  Without looking up, Vera says, “The one in the gray hat?”

  “You noticed her too, then.” Nina feels herself begin to tremble. Could it have something to do with the note in her pocket? And what about Vera and Polina—when they paid for their goods, did the woman press something into their palms, too? Or was Nina the chosen one, simply because she was the first to make a purchase? Nina wants badly to ask them but doesn’t dare. “It was an honest mistake,” she says, to calm herself. “If she really is following us, then she must have seen that. She saw that we were just trying to shop.”

  Quietly Vera asks, “You don’t think she thinks we were trying to…leave?”

  “Well, of course not.” Polina says it with affront. “Why would we ever want to do that?” But she still looks frightened. After all, now she knows. She has seen what’s there, on the other side. She too saw the ripe bananas, and people walking past as if it were nothing extraordinary at all.

  Nina thinks of Sofia, the other Bolshoi soloist, who was at the last minute pulled from the trip as a travel risk. Rumor said it was because she had relatives in West Berlin; only now does Nina understand.

  Her voice emphatic, Polina says, “Everyone knows it would be an insane thing to do.” She seems to have turned paler; the odd black spots on her cheekbones stand out even more.

  Nina says, “I’m worried about your skin.”

  Polina shifts her eyes. “Uncle Feliks says just to be patient and it will go away.” Then, as if uncomfortable talking about herself, she says again, “Really, you’d have to be crazy to want to leave.”

  In a low, flat voice, Vera says, “They find you and break your legs.”

  Polina looks frightened.

  “No matter where you go.” Vera’s voice is soft, measured. “They have agents all over the world. It doesn’t matter how far away you get. And then, what would you do, in some country where you don’t know anyone, and you can’t even dance anymore.”

  Nina has heard as much, although it always sounds extreme. Why punish a mere dancer, as if she were some sort of secret agent? Nina has to force herself not to look back and see if the woman in the gray hat is still behind them.

  In a small, terrified voice, Polina says, “I’m worried it’s me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My fault that woman is following us.” Polina’s steps have slowed, and her voice is very quiet. “Why me? I’m just a ballerina. I only have a few close friends, no one really tells me anything personal at all.”

  “Keep walking,” Vera says, while Nina makes what sense she can of Polina’s comment. Under her breath Vera asks, “Did someone ask you to do something?”

  It happens often enough, even in the ballet: people being asked to write things, reports. Nina has heard of this, been warned of a few people in particular, mostly those younger or less accomplished—character dancers, or perpetual coryphées who can’t quite break into the top tier. If informing will help their careers, then they will keep their eyes and ears open—though what could they overhear, really? Nina hasn’t ever considered that it might directly affect her. And after all, she hasn’t done anything wrong.

  Vera is biting her lip, looking almost angry.

  “You know me,” Polina says. “I like everyone, I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am. Do you see why it’s hard for me?”

  Nina dares to look Polina in the eye, understanding, now, the hives, the anxiety, the nervous looks. “Have you…done anything?” Even as she asks
the question, she is wondering what Polina possibly could find to say. How could she know anyone who would do anything truly wrong?

  “I only write very general things,” Polina whispers. “But they keep telling me it’s not enough, I’m not doing a good job.” Tears have started.

  “But if you’re telling the truth,” Nina says, “then what more can they ask of you?” Vera looks steel-eyed, no such question on her face. Maybe, Nina considers, it is only Polina’s perception that she is supposed to be doing more than she already is. Perhaps Polina has misunderstood. She’s always so eager to please.

  And then the thought occurs to Nina: Have I said anything, done anything? Laughing about Stalin’s speeches…Even that comment about Arvo…Nina tries to recall exactly what she said, how it might have sounded to Polina. How it might sound on the page. And that slip of paper from the old shopwoman…

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Sofia!” Polina blurts out, her eyes suddenly wider. “Honestly, I didn’t. There’s no one I could ever bear to hurt. There’s no one I don’t like.”

  Nina’s hands are trembling, while Vera hushes Polina, tells her to keep her voice down. “Can’t Serge help you out? Get you off the hook, so that you don’t have to write anything anymore. It’s his job, after all.”