Already she is feeling doubtful. And guilty, at having bribed that poor German girl into her scheme. What is the worth of a diamond, no matter how big, if the girl is caught, if anyone finds out that she has helped Nina? Nina’s heart sinks with worry for the girl as much as for herself.
She mustn’t lose her nerve. Affecting great attention, she leans over her legs, massages her calves, while all around her dancers preen. For the first time in her life she appreciates the great narcissism of ballerinas, each girl in this room interested solely in herself, her costume, her hair, her makeup, barely noticing the others. Whenever it seems someone might be looking her way, Nina fiddles with her feathered headband, with the bun of her hair, always something up around her face, even as she and the rest of the swan maidens are herded out toward the backstage door.
Then there is some kind of commotion at the other end of the corridor. Nina recognizes the Bolshoi manager’s voice. “What’s that? Are you certain?”
“She left,” a man’s voice, thickly accented, replies. “Franz just told me. A woman with the exact same coat you described.”
A third man’s voice protests something in German. “He didn’t know,” the second translates, as his fellow German continues. “He says…he could have sworn it was a dancer he sees all the time. She looked like she was going home for the night.”
The Bolshoi manager’s voice says, “Quick, let’s go.”
Nina feels something inside her release, though surely the building is still teeming with patrols. Not to mention that she is now trapped in the pack of girls backstage, a crowd of swans awaiting their entrance—and that as much as she might try to hide among them before slipping away, she must still be recognizable, should anyone take the time to look at her. But no one here has ever seen Nina close up, and surely everyone’s focus will be on the two principal dancers (first Siegfried, then Odette in her grand entrance) rather than on the many swans surrounding them; the love duet is a main highlight, and true stars never lose an audience’s attention. Even if some balletomanes in the audience might notice Nina, the theater guards most probably don’t know what she looks like. And with the manager and his assistant gone, there will be fewer people here who have ever seen her in person. If only she can find some way to slip out.
The Berlin girl, her savior, has told Nina her number in the lineup—by stroke of luck toward the rear of the corps, no “Dance of the Little Swans” for her. The girl must indeed be a novice. Nina takes her place as if stepping back in time, back to her early days, giddy and nervous, the mass rustling of crinoline and tulle. But tonight the fearful trembling that the swans must enact is, for Nina, real—not simply nerves but true fright. She is, she realizes, petrified.
For the first time in years she will have to dance in unison, the carefully coordinated positioning of arms and legs, even the tilt of her head, her every movement matching those of her fellow swans—no standing out, no personality or flair, the very opposite of a prima ballerina. In a way, tonight’s role is the greatest challenge of her career: how to unlearn all of her training, to conceal the very qualities that have made her a star, to be good enough but not too good. She prays that her body will know what to do, will submerge itself, suppress its expertise—and that no one looks too closely at the new swan there in the back. For the moment, it seems possible. Even right here, crushed close to one another in the back wing, the other swan-girls are too preoccupied with shoe ribbons and hairpins to notice an unfamiliar face among them. The stagehands, too, are so busy with their work, negotiating props and lights and curtains, that not one of them pays attention to the dancers.
Nina keeps her head down, pretends to be adjusting her feathers. If any of the other girls should notice her, she tells herself, she will give a confident wink, as if it has all been planned, nothing but a little prank. But there is no need: here is their cue, and with the rest of the swans, Nina drifts onto the stage.
THE FAMILIAR BLOCK of sunlight stretched across the faded purple blanket. Hurrying past, grabbing her purse, Drew said, “It’s going to be crazy all day, you know.” Though the auction was not until four o’clock, she had much to take care of before then.
Grigori nodded, taking his coat from the lumpy sofa. “A friend and I were planning to stop by the auction. But don’t worry, I know you’ll be working.”
Drew had to smile, seeing him there. “Come find me afterward. I’ll just need another hour or so to finish things up.”
As natural as it felt to say this, she felt a ruffle of something else, something between fear and excitement, and a kind of disbelief, that this was her, Drew, that she had taken this step toward a new person. Even to be with him now, here in her home, brought her a feeling not just of warmth but of exposure—her self, exposed and vulnerable. Scraped clean, that was how she felt: her old skin peeled off, and new, tender skin exposed. As much potential for pain as for tenderness and love.
Grigori helped her into her coat, pausing to look at her with a small smile. They were about to step out the door when he stopped. “You wanted to show me something. Your grandfather’s journal.”
“Oh, that’s right!” The package had arrived just yesterday, a small padded envelope posted by her mother. It seemed ages ago that she had mentioned it. Today itself seemed miles and miles away from yesterday.
The journal was a small, square booklet slim enough to fit in a coat pocket. Showing it to Grigori, Drew felt moved just fanning through the many blank pages at the end. “He died not long after he started it. I remember my grandmother showing it to me.”
Grigori held it gingerly, looking at the first written page, and nodded as if to say that he could do this. “May I take it with me?”
She told him yes, and they left the building, stepped out onto Myrtle Street to find the air almost warm, full of a sweet spring humidity. Parents were walking their children to the playground, their coats open to the breeze. You would never have thought that it had snowed just two days before, one of those last-minute March dumpings, thick wet heavy flakes that create a big mess before quickly melting away.
Feeling his warm hand in hers, Drew turned with Grigori down Joy Street toward the Common, so that he could take the Green Line home. And though Drew would have liked to ride the train with him for the brief two stops to Beller, simply to remain in his company a bit longer, she decided to walk. With the bright sunlight and the air nearly warm, she wanted to savor—without a crowd of strangers and rush-hour noise around her—this new, oddly calm elation, the bewildering sense that she had somehow, at last, landed where she was meant to be.
THE BODY REMEMBERS.
Like a cat remembers the way home, instinctively, Nina thinks afterward, back in the dressing room, hastily slipping her tutu down from her hips. Each movement came to her like breathing, like drinking water, perfectly naturally. Never has she felt so grateful to her body, to the familiar heat of the stage lights, to the haunting music that her muscles know by heart.
Now, though, her hands fumble as she rushes to pull on her skirt and shoes and cardigan sweater. The other swan-girls have only brief minutes longer onstage; Nina simply could not risk staying on any longer, with the curtain call so soon to come. She can hear her own breathing, quick and anxious, as she slips her arms into her new coat—the corps girl’s coat, not at all as nice as hers, but of course that is the point. She needs to vanish yet again. At least there is no sign of the company manager or anyone from Komsomol; they must not have returned since leaving to search for her.
Seeing an exit arrow at the end of the hallway, Nina takes up her makeup case and ventures into the corridor. She hurries to the first intersecting hallway, a smaller, narrower, darker one, and steps into it, waiting. Soon she hears voices, a small group coming along the other corridor. When they have passed, she peeks out, watching as they leave the building. Indeed there is a guard there, although he does not stop anyone in the group, seems to know them, or at least knows that they are not Nina.
Now th
e corridor has filled with the bright girlish voices of the corps. Finished for the night, they bustle back to the dressing room. Just a few more minutes pass before they emerge yet again and begin to leave the building, clusters of them giggling and chatting as they head down the hallway and out the door. Perhaps none of them noticed Nina after all. No, there’s sure to have been someone…. Her thoughts skip back and forth, her pulse racing, as she waits. When a larger group of dancers comes along, she decides, as they pass her, to try.
Quickly she steps out and bustles along behind them, just another faceless dancer eager to leave for the night. Now they have reached the door, where the armed guard awaits. Act natural, don’t hurry, you’re a ballerina leaving work, with your little case of necessities…. When the girls directly in front of her laugh at something, she smiles broadly, as if she too finds it funny. And like a dream she drifts right past the tired guard, who does not stop to question a single one of them.
LOT 108
Sapphire and Diamond Dinner Ring. Square-cut sapphire encircled by 10 small diamonds (total weight 1/3 ct., color grade I, clarity VSI) and 20 sapphire baguettes (total weight 2/3 ct.), solid yellow 18kt gold band, size 6¼. $960–1,090
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It wasn’t until she arrived at work that she realized she had forgotten her garnet ring.
For a moment Drew felt suddenly, utterly naked. It was the first time that she hadn’t noticed at the last minute and gone back for it. To forget it completely, today of all days…Drew knew better than to be superstitious, yet even as she shrugged off this small lapse—and sat down to turn on her computer, bracing herself for the latest onslaught of e-mail—she felt somehow unarmed, not to have the ring with her.
At the top of her in-box was another forwarded message from her mother. This time it was a fund-raising message from her mother’s friend Laurie, whose son would be running the Boston Marathon to raise money for AIDS orphans in Uganda; there was a link to a site where you could donate to his fund. Though the message itself was innocent enough, Drew found herself recalling the most recent tidbit that had slipped from her mother’s lips: that Eric and Karen, who was apparently a long-distance runner, had started training for the Dublin Marathon next fall. Annoyed all over again, Drew for a moment considered writing her mother yet another brief, brisk reminder that, if she must send such e-mails, they ought to go to Drew’s private account.
Yet something prevented her—stopped the impulse itself. It had to do with Grigori. Not just her happiness at the thought of him, but also what he had told her yesterday, about his parents, his adoption, about his longing and confusion, and that long, ultimately ungratifying search. How lucky Drew was to have this mother of hers, this constant, reliable, if at times irritating presence in her life—this mother, like so many mothers, beloved and blamed. Lucky she was to have experienced, through her mother, the twisted intricacies of deep, and deeply complex, love.
After all, her mother had probably suffered these feelings too. Drew thought of Grandma Riitta, that even she—with her strong will, her inescapable straightforwardness, her permanent cache of intimate stories—must have at times exasperated her daughter. Wasn’t that partly why Drew’s mother had so stubbornly ignored much of her past? Had turned away from her native language, away from her own history. Had erased any last residue of foreignness, and named her daughter “Drew.”
Thinking this, Drew felt something other than her usual resigned understanding. She picked up the telephone and dialed her parents’ number.
When her mother answered, the first thing Drew did was to thank her for having sent the journal. “I’ve already given it to someone to translate.”
In a brisk, light way, as if it didn’t really matter one way or the other, her mother said, “Well, you’ll have to tell me what you find out.”
Drew said what she had been considering. “I thought we could read it together.”
Her mother’s surprise was audible.
“I thought I’d bring the transcript when I come visit,” Drew continued.
“Oh! Are you coming here, then?”
“I could come for Dad’s birthday.” The idea had just now crystallized. “Since it’s on a Sunday, and I have that Monday off, for Patriots’ Day.”
“Patriots’ Day…”
“And for his birthday present I was thinking—”
“He’ll be delighted you’re coming!”
Drew waited for her mother to say that she too was delighted. And even though, as the conversation continued, she did not say those exact words, the tone of her voice seemed to reveal that she did, in fact, feel that way.
GRIGORI DRIFTED THROUGH the morning as in a dream. Funny how one thing, one wonderful thing, could alter everything, make it seem that nothing in the world, no goodness or luck, was too much to wish for. After all, if this could happen to him—if love could happen, again, for him, Grigori Solodin, widower aged fifty—then why not other good things, for other people, too?
As if to confirm this, his voice mail contained a message from an editor interested in Zoltan’s poetry. He had started a new translation series under his own imprint, at a reputable press. “I’ve long been a fan of Zoltan Romhanyi’s work and am really thrilled at the prospect of publishing his new poems,” his message said. “Let’s make it happen.”
Full of a lightness he could not quite recall feeling before, Grigori was aware of something else in his heart, another kind of letting go. It had to do with the letters, with the poems, with the way those images matched up. If indeed the letters were not Viktor Elsin’s, Grigori still might never know whether Elsin had ever seen them, or had perhaps even borrowed images from them. But what mattered more, he felt now, was the fact of the letters themselves—that they were real, someone’s real life, someone’s real words. Whose life, whose words, was not something he might ever solve with any concreteness, as much as he still desired some kind of certainty. But that desire had been eclipsed by a greater one, and by an understanding that Grigori must have already possessed all along. An understanding that such uncertainties were part of the mystery of this life, and would always coexist with those things that are certain: his love for Christine, and now Drew, and his friendships, his passions. Of course Grigori could return to the poems yet again, make an even more obsessive study of them, try to answer the question for himself, if no one else. But the question, though still a teasing, perplexing one, no longer nagged at him. His body itself felt lighter, unburdened.
Turning to his desk, he took up the little journal Drew had given him. He had only a few minutes before his lunch meeting, but he could at least take a cursory look, to see if the handwriting would be discernible, how difficult a task it might be.
Between the covers was that typical penmanship of Soviet schooling, small, no margins at all, using every inch and both sides of each page.
I write this Diary for Elli my daughter two days old.
I was born in 1910 in a village just north of Ukraine not far from Sumy. Not a bad size village tho believe me any stranger who ever set foot there was news. You see we was real far from any city or even a town and not easy to find if you wasnt looking. A real pretty place tho with big old trees bowing their heads at you when you rode along the brown dirt road. Winters was sometimes rough but come March youd see little green points poking up out of the ground so hopeful and know you made it like a miracle to another Spring.
Didnt get much schooling past grade 6 on account of Papa died and Mama needed me and my brothers to take his place. Thats too bad cause I liked school specially reading and writing even tho there was barely any books and just one teacher to teach us anything worth knowing. But we was good at farming and had good luck. Time I was 15 we was able to lease more land and even hire help at harvest. We done pretty well meaning we had plenty to eat even if we never did have any money left. Me being oldest I was the manager so to speak. Buildt some barracks and hired farmhands and run the place pretty good if I do say so. But I never
liked ordering folks around so when there was problems I wrote joking messages and little rhymes and left them around like they was love notes.
Grigori realized that he was smiling. This man, too, was a writer. Amazing, really, that he—Grigori—was able to hear that man’s voice now, and so clearly, so many years later. The voice of the man without whom there would be no Drew.
Then we started hearing things just a little and then more about people having to give up their farms and tractors and even their homes and work together on kolkhozes. Heard about it but didnt see it. Then one spring when I was 21 some men they come to the village and next thing you know the richest peasants the Shevchenkos and the Ilyichovs was gone on account of they was Kulaks. Kicked out and most of what they owned took from them. The rest of us well we was scared but also angry and I got some meetings going to plan what to do if those men come again.
It took two more years but they did come back and that time we was ordered to give up all our grain and then our animals and machines. We put up a fight let me tell you but in the end they just comfuscated our land and packed us away to way up north. Mama and my brothers and their families was allowed to travel together but me I was arrested for being Head of Household not to mention a Dangerous Counterrevolutionary Activist.
Russian Winter Page 40