Russian Winter

by Daphne Kalotay

  All week whispers hiss through the corridors of the Bolshoi. Dumped by her man, don’t you know, dropped her like a hot potato.…But how could she kill herself, Polina of all people, in that most unpatriotic, un-Soviet of acts? You know Polina, there was nothing more for her, no will to live…. But why here, the Bolshoi, of all places? She thought it was Vera, don’t you know, thought Vera was the reason….

  Vera, meanwhile, has not been here even once. Barely gave him the time of day, but you know how men are, they like the chase, and after all, persistence pays off…. She is absent the following week as well. Her Achilles, you know, but really some people think, well, I won’t say anything, that’s how rumors get started.

  And of course there is that most obvious of facts—that it wasn’t Nina, but Vera, who was supposed to be the one to discover Polina.

  IN THE DINING room, sitting at the table set with woven place mats and linen napkins and the good heavy dishes he rarely used for himself, Grigori smiled, pleased, as Zoltan declared the meal excellent. “You never told me you were a chef, Grigori. I hate to admit that I hadn’t thought it possible.”

  “Christine taught me a few tricks.” Grigori had seared two big salmon filets he then sprinkled with dill and garnished with a slice of lemon. Steamed rice and stir-fried broccoli were the accompaniments. “But I don’t often cook for just myself.” He did not add his next thought, which was that only in these past days had he found himself, suddenly, very hungry.

  As he took another bite of the salmon, he fought the unfamiliar urge that kept creeping up. To mention Drew, to simply say her name. But of course he stopped himself; at the very word, it might all dissolve. Not to mention that he and Zoltan never spoke of such things.

  “I realized something today,” Zoltan said, munching. “It’s a funny thing, how working on this memoir, and reading through my old diaries, has crystallized some of the ideas I’ve had over the years. Or perhaps that’s not quite it. Perhaps it’s that I’m seeing my own thoughts from a distance, across a bridge of time. Their repetitions and choruses. Page after page of this odd young man’s thoughts. And that odd young man was me. I see the things I wrote about, and whom I wrote about, and you know what has become absolutely clear to me, Grigori? Though I suppose I’ve thought it, or known it, innately, all along. That there are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love.”

  Grigori grinned. “I might have to agree with you.” After all, he felt like a new person ever since Drew had reached out to him. And friendships like his with Zoltan at times seemed all he could really count on. The same way that he could always count on Chekhov, Eliot, Musil. There was one horrible day, toward the very end of Christine’s illness, when, suddenly and utterly aware that she was on a terrible lonely journey where he could no longer reach her, Grigori had sat down to reread The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and afterward had felt—not comforted, not at all, it was such a sad story, but that he understood something, understood in another way what Christine was going through. And so he hadn’t felt quite so alone.

  “I remember before I left Hungary,” Zoltan said, “understanding so completely that literature could save me as much as it could get me killed. Of course it’s not like that here. But isn’t it funny, that in some ways the price one pays for freedom of speech is…a kind of indifference.”

  Grigori nearly told him his latest news: that it looked as though he might already have found the perfect translator for Zoltan’s poems, a Hungarian American who had expressed interest in Zoltan’s work years ago, at a conference Grigori had attended. He was proud of remembering her, a professor in Syracuse. But he kept quiet, since he had yet to secure a publisher, and that could take some time.

  “Of course,” Zoltan was saying, “you can’t be wary in poetry. In any art. Just like with love. It’s all or nothing.” He chewed on his broccoli. “That’s why love too is dangerous. We stand up for love. We take risks. Well, you of all people know about that—your own Soviet Russia, an entire nation rearranged to discourage love for anything other than one’s country.”

  Because love caused people to think for themselves, to look out for themselves and their loved ones. Nodding, Grigori said, “Love makes people strong, we do all kinds of crazy things for love.” In his mind he saw Drew stepping up to him in his office, reaching her arms around him as he pulled her to his chest…and the Department of Foreign Languages right on the other side of the door.

  “Exactly,” Zoltan said, triumphantly. “That’s what makes it more important than anything else.” He chewed a bit and added, “Except literature, of course.”

  Thinking aloud, Grigori said, “Sometimes I think that’s what keeps me in academe. It’s one of the few places in this country where you don’t have to always fight to convince other people that literature and art matter.” With a sigh he added, “Zoltan, what am I going to do without you here next year?”

  “Exactly what you always do,” Zoltan said. “Sneak cigarettes in your office and hold too few department meetings.”

  Grigori laughed. But he was serious when he said, “The truth is, I feel less and less connected, somehow, to the university these days. Less engaged.” He wondered if it had to do with Drew, with the way he felt in her presence, and how meaningless so much else of his life now seemed. Drew’s arms around him…Still, he ought to be wary. It might be too much, he might scare her away. Or weigh her down. Why burden her with my secrets? Really I don’t see how she could love me, she hardly knows me. I barely know her. She’s still young. And me, fifty years old!

  All day his thoughts had followed this path; he thought with faint guilt of Evelyn, and of the expectations of Christine’s friends, and of everyone in the department, that it would simply be too strange, how could it ever work, so improbable, and people would talk. But then he would ask himself, what did he care about people talking, people with nothing better to do than talk about other people….

  And yet when he thought of what it would take to get to know someone again the way he knew Christine—such a steep road to climb, to get that close to someone again. It really was all or nothing, Zoltan was right. But to get from here to all, to knowing and loving someone completely…It seemed impossible, how did people do that, share everything of themselves, all over again?

  And yet, now Grigori wanted to, wanted at least to try.

  THE SEASON IS busy as usual, Nina dancing at her peak. Dance itself is her kindest partner, now that her friendships have fallen away and her marriage tensed. She has avoided Vera all winter, eyes quickly averted the few times she has passed her in the hall or backstage. And then for a long while Vera was out on medical leave, her Achilles again, this time for surgery, with a requisite six weeks of recovery. But her Achilles must not have healed well; Vera still isn’t back.

  Meanwhile Nina has been on a number of brief tours, to Riga and Kiev and Minsk. Now it is May, the air sweet, leaves a bright yellowy green. Viktor has gone out to the dacha. He says it is because he needs to get out of the city, but Nina knows it is their life together, their cramped quarters, that he needs escape from. He has even timed his return so that he won’t be back until after Nina has left—tomorrow, on another mini-Bolshoi tour, just the “stars.” It is what they call a “quickie” tour, three theaters in three days.

  And so, when the wife from the apartment next door raps on the door and says there is someone on the telephone for Viktor—someone from the hospital—Nina at first thinks that something has happened to him. It takes her a moment to understand the question, to tell the voice on the clunky black telephone, “I’m sorry, he isn’t here. He won’t be back until next week.”

  “I’m calling because his name is listed as the emergency contact on Vera Borodina’s file. She isn’t doing well. If he could come in—”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Vera Borodina is here, and we are…fearful for her recovery. If Mr. Elsin is able to come in—”

  “I’ll come.” Nina’s
heart is racing. “Just please tell me where to go.”

  At the hospital she is sent up to a room full of many occupied beds. Vera’s is in the front corner of the room, tucked behind a tall screen. Vera is pale, her eyes closed. In a daze, Nina wonders how long she has been seriously ill. “What’s wrong with her?” Nina asks the orderly who has brought her here.

  The orderly shushes her, and pulls her more fully behind the screen, to hide her. They are not to have visitors here; Nina has paid to be allowed up. Before she can repeat her question, the orderly has hurried off.

  With her skin so pale, Vera looks nearly angelic, her hair shiny and only slightly matted. Nina takes her hand and is relieved to feel a pulse.

  “Verochka, I’m here.”

  A twitch of her face.

  “You can hear me? Vera, what happened?”

  No reaction. Still holding her hand, Nina tells herself that the strength in her own body will carry over into Vera’s. If she doesn’t let go, she can make her healthy again.

  But now the doctor, a short, stern-looking woman, has come to check on her.

  “But what’s wrong with her?” Nina asks.

  “Hemorrhaging. It seems to have stopped for now. But we can’t be sure. Some people are predisposed to it.” She makes a quick pen mark on the piece of paper on her clipboard.

  “Predisposed?” Nina looks at Vera, whose hair curls slightly from sweat. “I don’t understand.”

  But the doctor has already gone on to another bed, the one right across from Vera’s—no screen to separate it—flipping to another page on her clipboard. Nina would like to sit somewhere, but when she steps out to look for a chair, there are none, just bed after bed, and a stocky, wide-hipped nurse bustling forth. She has with her an infant—a crying infant, as if there is not enough noise and discomfort in this room already.

  “He’s a hungry one,” the nurse says, handing the little thing to the woman in the bed across from Vera’s. Nina watches her help bring the child to the mother’s breast. “No, no,” the nurse is saying. “You’re doing it wrong, he can’t latch on at that angle.” The new mother readjusts the infant. “I can’t do it.”

  The nurse gives a huff. “Oh, so you’re going to let him starve?”

  Nina looks up at the nurse, and at the overwhelmed mother, and only then does it all make sense. She peeks around the cloth barrier, looks quickly at the bed next to Vera’s, and the next, and the next. “Oh, look, he’s staying on now,” the new mother is saying, relief and joy in her voice. “Look, there’s the milk!”

  The big-hipped nurse says, “There, you see? He knows just what to do.”

  “Excuse me,” Nina asks anxiously, as the young mother suckles her infant. The nurse turns toward her briskly. “My friend here. Did she have a baby?”

  “Of course she had a baby. This is the maternity ward, isn’t it?”

  “But…I don’t understand. Where’s the child?”

  “In the nursery.” And then, almost mischievously, “You can see him if you like.”

  Him. A boy. In a stunned voice, Nina says, “Yes, please.”

  When the nurse returns, she holds a tiny baby wrapped snugly in white cloth. Nina peers warily at the infant, expecting a walnut-faced creature like the one across from her. But as the nurse, with something like reluctance, hands over the small bundle, Nina sees that this baby is beautiful. Instead of closed puffed slits of skin where eyes should be, this baby’s eyes are open, searching, a bewildered blue. This tiny being is clearly a person, fully human, his nose and chin surprisingly defined. “Why, he’s perfect.”

  “Yes, he’s a handsome one. I did his hair.” Though the child has only the finest—nearly invisible—whisper of hair, the nurse has given him a crisp, minuscule part.

  Yes, he is a real being, a living person. Nina searches his face to find Vera somewhere in it. Vera and…who? Whose child is this?

  Nina asks the nurse.

  “Just a big line where the father’s name is supposed to be.” Clearly the nurse does not approve.

  Vera in the banya, saying, “So many men have wanted to marry me….” And how she was willing to put up with that awful Serge. As if he would ever help Gersh. Serge, who dropped Polina like a hot potato…But no, surely Vera wouldn’t do…that. The apartment all to herself as soon as Mother moved out…The truth is, it’s been so long since Vera and Nina have spoken, the father could be anyone, really. Nina shakes her head.

  “That’s right,” says the nurse. “So much for this little guy, no father’s name on his certificate.” A new law has reclassified illegitimacy, making such children second-class citizens.

  Nina watches the child, bewildered. Turning to the nurse, she asks, “What’s your name?”

  “Maria. Three more, and I’ll have seen my one-thousandth baby here.”

  “Mmm.” Nina nods, but she cannot keep her eyes away from the child, how sweet and helpless he is. The swaddling cloth comes up over his chin. She tugs the cloth down a bit, revealing the top of the baby’s tiny muslin shirt. Yes, his mouth is Vera’s, exactly—but minuscule and moist and perfect, the same way his nose is perfect, the same way his eyes are perfect. Nina touches the baby’s cheek. “Why, he even has a tiny dimple!”

  The nurse, Maria, says, “Just like a movie star.”

  He squirms then, and lets out a cry. “I’ll need to take him back, now.”

  Still squirming, the child cries out again, catlike, painful. Maria takes him from Nina and bustles out of the room.

  Her eyes closed, her breath light, Vera looks even more pale now, as if the nurse has scared the color right out of her cheeks. “Verochka,” Nina says, stroking her forehead, “why didn’t you tell me?” Vera’s eyelids flutter as if to open, then close again. Nina takes her hands in hers. “You didn’t have to do this, you know. Did you want to?”

  Maybe she didn’t notice until it was too late. Or maybe she wanted this child. But how could she, if it is of that horrible Serge…No, surely she would only keep the child if the father was someone she loved. Nina brings her mouth closer to Vera’s ear. “I would have helped you, if I’d known.”

  Now Vera’s lips move. Words too faint to make out. Nina asks her to repeat it, and waits, but Vera says nothing more.

  Now the nurse has returned. Frowning, she puts her hand on Vera’s forehead. “She’s burning up.” Briskly she turns to Nina and says, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to come back later.” She lifts the side of the blanket to glimpse Vera’s body, then turns toward the doorway and calls out another name.

  “But…Is she going to be all right?” Nina is pushed aside, as a doctor and another nurse rush in.

  No one answers her as they hurry to Vera’s rolling bed and whisk her with them out the door.

  BOOK III

  LOT 100

  18kt White Gold and Sapphire Buckle Bracelet. The wide strap prong-set with cabochon sapphires weighing 250 cts., lg. 71 /8 in., Bailey, Banks & Biddle. $5,000–7,000

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  At first Maria thought she was the only one who had noticed the patient’s cream-colored pocketbook. Leather, a buttery color and soft, you could tell just by the way it folded in gentle pleats up at the clasp—two small flat gold knobs that hooked together like tiny hands. Maria had been eying it ever since the woman first started hemorrhaging, when it was already clear her chances of survival were slim. But then there was an awful moment when Maria noticed Lydia, the orderly, eying that same purse. It was just waiting there for someone to take it.

  The moment runs through Maria’s head again as she makes her swift way from the maternity ward out of the building, onto the broad, dusty boulevard. With Lydia, you knew it was simply money she was after. Maria, though, wanted the purse. Beautiful, the leather so fine, who knew where one could find such a thing, let alone afford it. If only she had thought to move it, hide it…Instead, she had noticed Lydia, who turned to see Maria watching her and glanced nervously back at the purse. That was when Maria decided to ap
proach her, and the two of them made their bargain.

  In the privacy of one of the medical closets, they quickly emptied the bag, at first just a few papers and keepsakes the poor woman had been carrying around with her. Much of the stuff wouldn’t fetch any money at all. Photographs, a stained handkerchief, a pink lipstick down almost to the tube. But at the bottom were a fancy hairbrush, a gold makeup compact with mirror, and a matching perfume flask. The wallet was a new one, of matching creamy leather. Gifts, these things must have been, from someone with money and means. Or maybe the woman herself had bought them. Apparently she was a ballerina, one Lydia said she recognized, although Maria had never heard of her. Not a bad amount of money in the wallet, either. Lydia kept rifling through the little slits, in case there might be something more, while Maria did the same with the inside of the purse.

  That was how she found the necklace.

  A big smooth stone. Sliding it out from the slim inner pocket, Maria stopped herself. She could not quite see what the stone was but did not want to risk having Lydia see. The glimmer around it looked like real gold; it could really be worth something. She might make more selling this than any one of those other things. And so she decided: this she would not split with Lydia.

  She was about to slip the thing quickly back into the side pocket, but Lydia said, “Let me see?” and grabbed the purse from her. Quickly Maria shoved the necklace into her own purse, a shiny, poorly constructed thing of black vinyl.

  When Lydia had gone through all the contents of the leather one, she began to gather everything up, promising to split whatever she made, fifty-fifty. A glimmer of doubt, that Lydia would keep her word. Instead, Maria suggested that Lydia take the wallet, the money, and all other valuables (the comb and compact and perfume case), and that she—Maria—would keep what she had originally wanted more than anything: the purse.