Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  Vassy went around joyously greeting people at the party, not bothering one way or the other with how I was getting along. Fortunately, everyone knew who I was and what I did, so conversation was not difficult, but I could see them eyeing me with a kind of jaundiced curiosity about why I was in Paris with Vassily Okhlopkhov-Medvedjatnikov.

  Apparently Sasha and Mouza had been born in France, therefore were not subjected to the restrictions of the Russian-born. But I was learning that regardless of where a Russian finds himself a citizen, he still feels he is Russian. As I wandered around looking at the icon-laden apartment, I noticed a Frenchwoman eyeing me with more than usual intensity.

  At the first opportunity I mentioned it to Vassy and asked why that would be.

  “She is my French woman’s sister,” he said. “She knows I broke the relationship with her for you.”

  I felt that sort of paranoid stab you feel sometimes when you know everyone in the room knows more about what you’re really involved with than you do.

  “Oh,” I said quietly, “I see. For some reason I felt she was involved with you.”

  “She was,” he admitted, stunning me right up against the wall. “When I was very jealous of her sister, I slept with her out of spite.”

  I suddenly couldn’t keep all his women straight—my heart was thudding away in response to his stupifying directness.

  “You mean, you slept with both sisters?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “I was angry and jealous because Monique was sleeping with her husband.”

  “Oh my,” I said rather helplessly. Then, piqued by curiosity, “What did you expect her to do?”

  “Sleep with me,” he answered simply.

  “I see. So you balled her sister for spite.”

  “Of course.”

  Mouza came in with a plate of piroshkis, a Russian pastry filled with ground meat. Vassy took one and swallowed it whole.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, recovering myself. “Did your Monique know what you were doing?”

  “Of course. I am always honest. I never lie.”

  “No,” I said. “I can see that.”

  “You are having a nice time?” he asked, as though the weather were beautiful.

  “Oh yes,” I answered. “Wonders never cease. All kinds of wonders.”

  “This is wonder—ful?”

  “Sure.”

  Vassy pranced like a playful puppy-man into the living room with the camera he had acquired somewhere on his shoulder.

  Mouza sidled up to me at the doorjamb. “Have you ever been involved with a Russian man before?” she asked simply.

  “No, Mouza, I haven’t. Why?”

  “I just wondered, that’s all.” Then she quickly remembered that she had forgotten to fetch more vodka. I wandered back into the living room, caught somewhere between jet lag and naïveté.

  Vassy handed me a glass of vodka and raised it to my eyes. “I am very fidèle,” he said. “When I am in love, I am fidèle.”

  The roller-coaster ride was well into its first turn.

  A few hours later, I needed to sleep. Vassy tenderly took us back to our cell. I undressed as though already asleep, but I was aware enough to notice that he took off his gold cross and placed it carefully beside two small framed pictures. One was a picture of his mother. The other, an icon of the Virgin Mary and Christ. We fell onto the floor mattress and melded into love and sleep.

  When I woke in the morning I opened my eyes to find Vassy watching me with an expression of glowing love on his face. He didn’t move. His expression didn’t waver. He just smiled and smiled and then sighed and touched my nose.

  “You are my Nif-Nif,” he said playfully.

  “I am? What’s a Nif-Nif?”

  “You know, in Russia we have a children’s story about small pigs. You have the same, I think. My favorite small pig was Nif-Nif. You are my small Nif-Nif because you have a face adorable as a small Nif-Nif.”

  I was overcome with his tenderness.

  “Nif-Nif,” he said, “I love you. I will always be honest with you. You know that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve had some slight experience with that already.”

  “Do you think,” he said, “that we have known each other before?”

  I sat up on my arm. He never led up to anything. He just blurted out what he was thinking without hesitation. And he seemed to be asking me something that touched a trigger in me, but I had considered the relationship too fragile—or perhaps too important—to bring the question up myself.

  “Do you mean in another lifetime?”

  “Yes.” He waited for my reaction. Well, I thought, why not? But still I hedged a little.

  “I think maybe yes. I don’t know what I believe about all that stuff.”

  “I feel,” he went on, “that I have known you all my life. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. I feel you are very familiar, too, and yet I don’t understand one thing about how you really are.”

  “We are very different, yes?”

  “Very.”

  “American and Russian. Why have we found each other?”

  “You found me, Vassy. You made the initial search. I’m still not sure what’s going on. It’s crazy.”

  “You know,” he said, “I used to stop women with red hair and faces like yours on the street. I honestly thought I saw you everywhere. It is true. You have seen my film. I lived with that actress for three years because she looked like you. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She knew it too. She had pictures of you on her wall because of it. She loves you very much too. She wants autograph from you.”

  “Okay. Sure,” I said, beginning slowly to comprehend some of the complicated dimensions of his honesty.

  “You will come with me to Russian church for Easter service while you are here?”

  I glanced at his cross on the bedside table beside the icon. “Sure,” I said. “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

  “I am Christian. Every Russian is religious whether Communist or not. Maybe these men in Kremlin secretly wear cross themselves when no one around.”

  Vassy put his arm behind his head. “Russia is very spiritual place,” he said. “With system we have, it’s necessary. Maybe communist system makes spiritual feeling even deeper. So we don’t object.”

  “You don’t object. Why?”

  “It’s as our strawberries. Because strawberries are buried under the deep Russian snow for six months, they taste so beautiful in the springtime.”

  “You mean, only strawberries that suffer are sweet to eat?”

  “Of course. The same with life and people. Suffering is necessary to art and happiness.”

  He continued speaking with deep conviction. “Our Russian love of God and spiritual understanding is most important to all Russians. Do you understand?”

  “You mean, you’re telling me that the group in the Kremlin Marxist government are not atheists and are secret Christians?”

  “Not Christian-religious. Even atheists have atheism with passion. Russian peoples have convictions. Doubt comes from the West.”

  I sat up from the mattress and crossed my legs and faced him.

  “And you, Vassy? Is that how you feel?”

  “I am Russian Orthodox Christian,” he stated clearly.

  I wondered if any of his answers would ever be qualified. He seemed so full of conviction about everything.

  He went on. “We must fight against satanic forces,” he said. “Evil forces will destroy us if we don’t recognize God.”

  “You believe there is such a thing as a satanic force?”

  “Of course. And each time we feel it within ourselves, we must look for God.”

  “Is that why you wear your cross … for protection?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course, but you must also understand that we Russians are also Moslem, not in a religious way, but mentally. We are combination of Christian spirituality and Asian M
oslem mentality. We are unable to control ourselves and obey order, therefore a big fist government is necessary for us.”

  I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was a contradiction or not. Then I remembered reading what Dostoyevsky wrote: “Russians can be sentimental, but cold and cruel at the same time. A Russian can weep at a piece of poetry one minute, and kill an enemy on that same spot a few minutes later. A Russian is half saint, half savage.”

  “My Nif-Nif,” Vassy went on. “We Russians have no sense of respect to personality, it’s more emotional—love and hate. Since the time of the czars, and now too. Russians respect only mightiness, power. This respect is mixed with fear and sometime admiration. That’s why Russians admire Stalin. He was the real iron fist. See, therefore we don’t expect to be respected unless we have power, muscles.”

  I was distressed by what he said. How was it possible to carry on a relationship either personally or on an international level, if, in fact, such a chasm of mistrust and human values separated us? What would happen with the SALT talks or nuclear disarmament or even the exploration of space if what he was saying was true?

  He went on to speak of the dichotomy in the Russian character, a kind of duality in their temperament and approach to life, formed by their climate and geography as well as their history.

  “Can you imagine,” he said, “what it is like to live in small village for seven months under twenty feet of snow, with five days of travel to nearest railroad or neighbor? That, for centuries, was life of a Russian. Sometimes the news they got, if they got it at all, was a year old.”

  He went on to say that a Russian could be scientifically disciplined for a period, and then fall apart with self-indulgence. He could be privately unassuming and publicly pompous. He could be kind and compassionate and uncaring and cruel.

  I remembered Hedrick Smith had said the same thing in The Russians, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Half savage, half saint, as Dostoyevsky had said.

  I had to admit, my Vassy fit the description to a T. Oh, my God, now I understood why Mouza had asked me if I’d ever been involved with a Russian before. Again, I felt that same haunting tap of familiarity somewhere deep in my mind, as though I had known this man from hundreds of years ago.

  Vassy took my hand in his. “You are my sunshine,” he said. I felt myself blush. “You have beautiful fingers,” he said. “So sweet and graceful.” He gently squeezed the tips of them. “I love your soft finger pillows here,” he said. “My padded pillows. You must cut your nails so I can see them more.”

  He startled me back to reality with yet another personal directive. I kept my nails long because if I didn’t, I unconsciously picked at my cuticles, sometimes even until they bled. Someone had told me once that I did that because I was attempting to peel away the outer layers of myself in a desperate unconscious attempt to reach the core of myself. Pop psychology maybe, but probably some truth to it.

  “Will you jog with me, Nif-Nif?” he asked like a small child requesting a big personal favor from his mother. “I never knew a woman who would jog with me before.”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling jostled between his childlike charm and his adult assertiveness.

  “But first Water Pik,” he directed. “You must make Water Pik. You were too tired last night. Now you must make Water Pik properly.”

  I got up, cursing, because I knew he was right.

  In jogging togs we bounded into the crisp Parisian sunshine and headed for the Luxembourg Gardens. We talked of where we would eat brunch as we jogged.

  Vassy jogged with a straight-backed stride, his head proudly peering straight ahead, his brown hair bouncing over his ears as we moved. Vassy’s face took on a gleam of determination.

  “I will now jog five miles,” he announced.

  “Of course,” I agreed. I knew he meant it. I wasn’t about to do that. Two or three miles, okay, but while he was doing the remainder, I would do some stretching exercises.

  Vassy did not jog correctly. He used the outside of his heels too much and pounded his monstrous size eleven feet severely into the ground, causing much too much trauma to his back.

  “You know, Vassy,” I began hesitantly, “you are planting your feet wrong with your stride. It’s too hard on your back that way.”

  He looked over at me with disdain. “For me it is fine,” was his answer. No more discussion.

  Shit. Fine. What do I care? It’s not my back.

  His loping turned-in feet continued to punish him. After a while I peeled off from our stride, stopped, and put one leg after the other up on the back of a park bench and stretched. After the plane flight, I needed it. Vassy didn’t even acknowledge that I was gone.

  For another hour I did some standing yoga positions and deep breathing. The thought crossed my mind then that perhaps Vassy thought physical pain was necessary to good health. If it didn’t hurt, it wasn’t doing any good, that sort of thing. I knew that feeling myself and was beginning to realize its folly.

  Rounding his last turn of the gardens, Vassy gestured that he would now jog home without breaking his stride. Jesus, I thought, this man is a glutton for discipline. He’ll probably pig out at lunch.

  That’s just what happened. We showered, changed, and charged to a small bistro he knew close by. True to form, he ordered several hors d’œuvres, a bottle of red wine, lots of bread spread thick with butter, and a few desserts. I went along with him. Who needed a heavy, ponderous entrée when you could get the same effect with variety? Privately I prepared to allow myself to gain ten pounds on this trip.

  Over the meal Vassy brought up the project he was interested in for the two of us—a book called The Doctor’s Wife by Brian Moore.

  “Isn’t that funny?” I said. “That very book was suggested to me sometime back by a writer friend of mine.”

  We discussed it at length. He spoke with great passion about each character. He understood their conflicts, their sorrows, their compulsions. He became each character as he spoke. He was larger than life, broadly stroked and impossible to take casually as he outlined in his passionate, husky voice, what he would do with the film.

  I wondered how it would affect our relationship to work together. I knew he was watching me closely, editing in his head which of my habits and mannerisms he would use and which he would discard. I didn’t feel in the least invaded because I was doing the same thing with him.

  We were adoringly fascinated with observing each other. Two professionals using life as grist for the creative mill.

  “Vassy,” I said, “how would you feel if you ended up in one of my books?”

  He smiled proudly. “I have been in several books,” he announced. “We are all in each other’s lives for many reasons,” he said. “Creativity is everything. And creativity comes from experience. I love all of my characters. I know you will love all of yours.”

  Back at the cell, when I came out of the bathroom, thoroughly waterpiked, Vassy was sitting on the mattress, munching on a carrot, smiling up at me like a floppy bear.

  I remembered a present I had forgotten to give him and, rummaging through my suitcase, I pulled out two adorable pink rabbits with their arms entwined around each other. I dumped them on his flat tummy. Immediately he placed the rabbits on the pillow and talked to them, scolding them in rabbit language. He stood them on their heads and spanked them in Russian. He covered them up and purred a little children’s song to them. He teased them for sleeping too long with their arms around each other. With his long arms he retrieved them from under the covers and rocked them against his shoulder. Then he bounced them over to me. I lofted them back carefully, half convinced they were real. He patted their heads and got up to sit with them in his lap on the one kitchen stool the cell boasted, cradling them in his arms while I took a picture of him with my Polaroid.

  I was entranced by his ability to have such childish fun. He said he loved my enchantment, that I could make a game out of anything. He said he had learned a new meaning to the word “fu
n.” Then we fell on the bed and made love, the pink rabbits tumbling to the floor.

  Lovemaking with Vassy was one of the most pleasant shared experiences of my life. We laughed, cried, shouted, and nibbled at each other. Every now and then when abandonment seized him completely, a surging rush of Russian passion flowed forth. He was never rough, but he wasn’t delicately gentle either. He certainly knew what he was doing, but I sensed a deep-seated conventional Christian morality in him.

  I asked him if he got involved with his actresses during filming. He said during filming he was never interested in sex. His work was his life. He had no time to concentrate on anything else. But yes, his actresses usually fell in love with him. Humility was not his strong suit.

  Our days in Paris revolved around the small “cell”—sharing stories of life experiences, laughing until our sides ached, making a mess of cooking in the Pullman kitchenette, sleeping with garlic and onions lying unattended next to the floor mattress, and fantasizing about working together. He directed me to use the Water Pik every night until, not to my surprise, my gums were fine. I asked him when he expected to get his medical degree.

  He never laughed when I teased him. He took himself extremely seriously, which, of course, was grounds for my teasing him even more.

  Sometimes he’d pout when he saw that he couldn’t really dominate me, but our childlike play and kidding saved us every time. I had never before encountered a man who could joyously throw himself into such wondrous and magical games. Maybe it was because he was Russian or maybe it was just Vassy. It doesn’t matter. His capacity to give himself totally to zany make-believe was the source of much tenderness and loving laughter between us.

  He told me a story from his childhood, of how he had overturned a beehive and gotten plastered with honey.

  “My honeybear,” I said, laughing as he finished his story. “You are my Russian honeybear.”

  “And you are my sunshine Nif-Nif.”

  We rolled over in each other’s arms. I couldn’t remember when I had been so happy.

  We played at everything. I lived delightedly from day to day, reveling in my Honeybear’s capacity for laughter. We made the ancient city our playground, the pink rabbits going everywhere with us. The world looked on, smiling. But we were oblivious. Eventually, Honeybear took me away to a small island in Bretagne.