Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  “She knows me,” he said by way of a warning. “You will enjoy. I leave you there while I make business.”

  That seemed fair enough. I could ask her lots of questions about him.

  He jogged his five miles while I stretched on a park bench for three of them. Like a brass ring, Vassy grabbed me up at the end of his last mile and we jogged back to the cell, his liver, headache, and lungs either cleared up or shoved under, I couldn’t decide which.

  We gobbled some garlic cheese and crackers and then splashed around with the Water Pik in the shower. He nuzzled the rabbits while I took another Polaroid picture of him. We dressed and left the cell looking as though Napoleon had just ransacked it.

  Vassy ushered me into the spacious apartment of his friend Milanka. She had a glint in her eye which meant our relationship was the most colorful subject of Slavic gossip she had had to talk about in a long time.

  “I am not surprised at all,” she said in her deep, well-used voice. “You two are combustible combination. Much fire, much trouble. You are nice with her?” she demanded of Vassy in an accusatory manner, indicating that she had watched his behavior through many women.

  Vassy stretched out on her couch, the daylight playing across his face. “Milanka,” he announced, “I have finally met the woman of my life. I do not know anything else. I will be myself.”

  “And you?” said Milanka, not wasting a moment with small talk or tea before getting right to the point. “You love this man knowing what he is?”

  Oh, my God, I thought. His checkered past has certainly been no secret. “Is he that bad, Milanka?” I asked.

  “He is Russian,” she answered.

  There it was again. Not because he was Vassy with his past trailing him like a grade-Z movie, but simply because he was Russian. What were all these people trying to tell me?

  “You have been involved with a Russian before?” she demanded to know, with her hands squarely on her hips. “In love have you been involved with a Russian?”

  “No,” I answered meekly, as though she had a right to know. “But I did have a short affair with a Yugoslav like you. It was fine, but he was too rough in bed.”

  Milanka threw back her head and laughed. “She is good,” she said to Vassy. “She is good for you. No bullshit. She will not be one of your slaves. That will be your problem.” She turned to me. “All of his women have been slaves. He insists. You will see.”

  I sat down beside Vassy. “Is that true?” I asked like Alice in Wonderland.

  “That is correct,” he answered with no hesitation. “I like slaves. Women are slaves because they want to be. You are my equal. You will not be slave.”

  “And you,” said Milanka to Vassy, “will have big trouble this time … big trouble … I am very happy. Now you would like a coffee?”

  I nodded. Vassy nodded. A small boy of about two years toddled into the living room. He walked directly over to me and looked into my face. With no shyness or reluctance he climbed directly onto my lap, stood up, and laid his head on my shoulder. Milanka stared at him.

  “This is my son,” she said in astonishment. “My smallest son. He doesn’t like strangers. He never is friendly. I don’t understand what he has just done.” She stopped a moment, looking at him closely.

  “Dimitri,” she said, addressing him gently in Serbian, “what are you doing?”

  I felt Dimitri lift his head and look at his mother. She smiled. He replaced his head on my shoulder and put one of his arms around my neck.

  “I don’t understand,” said Milanka.

  Vassy sat up on the couch, having witnessed the young toddler too. “It is clear,” he said. “Dimitri knows Sheerlee from a previous life. That is all.”

  I looked over at Milanka.

  “Is true,” she said. “Is the only explanation. He is speaking to you from deep memory.”

  I lifted Dimitri’s head gently from my shoulder, turned his face toward me, and looked deep into his round open eyes. They were blue-green and trusting and wise. He gazed into my eyes with that unnerving, unblinking stare that babies bestow on objects of curiosity. Then he smiled as though he understood something I did not. But I felt as if I were looking into the eyes of a small human thousands of years old, and with each passing minute in his life he would forget where he came from and become as unknowing as I was.

  He blinked at last, his eyelids screening off that moment of knowingness in order to cope with the world of now. He returned his head to my shoulder and refused to move.

  Milanka sat openmouthed. Vassy just smiled.

  “We must respect the young,” he said. “They remember more than we do. We are corrupted with age. They are pure truth.”

  Milanka looked at Vassy as though she were seeing him for the first time. Vassy stood up.

  “This,” he said, “is why Sheerlee is the woman of my life. She recognizes me. And her face and soul is the reason I came to the West. I have been looking for her all my life. Now I have found her and we shall see.”

  Milanka stood still. She had apparently not heard Vassy speak in such terms before. I had never heard a man I was involved with speak in such terms either. He was touching on dimensions I had only speculated upon and never experienced with love in another human being. Friendship, yes. Love, not until now.

  The level of the conversation obviously curtailed Milanka’s intended interrogation. Nothing she had planned to ask made sense. Instead she talked about herself.

  “As for me,” she began, “I have three sons. Each son has different father. I don’t agree with marriage, only children. I have son twenty-one years. You will meet him. He can be father for middle son, eleven, and Dimitri, two years. Men are nuisance to have around. I will never marry unless I meet millionaire to start new business. You know nice millionaire?”

  She was perfectly serious. If I thought my life was unconventional, it was archaic compared to Milanka’s.

  Vassy took his leave, smiling at Dimitri, who still rested on my shoulder. He said he would come for me in a few hours, then we would have dinner at La Coupole.

  Milanka made coffee while her housekeeper collected Dimitri to dress him for a ride in his pram. I told him I would be there when he returned, not to worry. He seemed to understand my emotional meaning even though he spoke no English, and willingly went with the buxom housekeeper.

  Milanka served coffee, lit a cigarette, and delved more into the saga of Vassily Okhlopkhov-Medved-jatnikov’s life. She mentioned a few other actresses he had been with, particularly one who was extremely accomplished and famous, but who had had a difficult time letting herself go sexually unless she was plied with booze. Milanka didn’t mince words when gossiping or at any other time. She got right to the nitty-gritty. She said Vassy and the actress had had screaming shouting matches which left both of them exhausted and unhappy, and she, Milanka, couldn’t understand what either one of them was doing with the other. The actress had obvious intelligence and fine judgment. She was not Russian and according to Milanka had the same trouble with Vassy’s “Russiartness” that I would soon encounter. I asked her exactly what she meant.

  “Is difficult to explain,” she said. “Being Russian is a state of mind. Is different than any other Slavic person.”

  “Well, is it because of the repression of the society, or what?” I asked.

  “No, not what you think. Russians as individuals are free in the degree of their anarchy, that’s why they needed to be restricted by the state. They are crazy, cruel, wonderful, passionate, impossible. What can I say? You will see. You are not a slave. You will survive it. For that reason I don’t understand why he wants you. He loves your talent. That is clear. But he really loves you. He has never had experience of equal woman before. Will be interesting. He has instructed you how to eat yet?”

  So, I wasn’t the only one. “Yes,” I answered, wondering what else in the way of duplicate behavior patterns I was experiencing with Vassy.

  “And your smoking?”


  “He doesn’t approve.”

  “Of course. He is crazy when he has something in his mind. He nags and nags because he cares. I think he nags because he likes to give orders. You have met his mother?”

  His mother? How would I meet his mother? I had only heard him scream inconsequentialities to her during a casual international telephone tête-à-tête.

  “No,” I said to Milanka. “Isn’t she in Moscow?”

  “Correct. You will meet her soon. He will insist. Take care with the mother. Wants her son for herself. You have met brother?”

  “No, what’s he like?”

  “They are same. Impossible with women, but talented as men.”

  I sipped my coffee, wanting to know more, but not wanting to invade Vassy’s privacy, although privacy did not seem to be a matter of consideration among the Slavs. On the contrary, everyone’s business cheerfully belonged to everyone else. The Westerners were the ones obsessed with privacy.

  The doorbell rang.

  “It is my gypsy singer friend,” said Milanka. “She will play for us and sing. She will sing with her heart. You are feeling with your heart now, my dear. Never forget to feel with your brain also.”

  Milanka walked to the door, clad in her white overalls, and ushered in a raven-haired woman who entered and went immediately to the piano as though music was fresh air in a clogged, polluted world. She nodded to me with a smile of greeting and began to play, singing in a voice that rose from her toes. I felt I was watching a three-dimensional performer in a movie that I could reach out and touch. The rhythm and passion of her song took hold of me immediately, arresting my coffee cup in midair. I didn’t know what she was singing about but it was all so dramatic, so intense, so urgent, a self-expression of such immediacy that it held me entranced.

  The intensity of her rhythm and emotion began to grow. I put my cup down carefully, afraid that it might clatter. The gypsy woman smiled, realizing that she had me now. Her voice was whiskey-velvet and her huge right foot began pounding the floor as the theatrical Slav in her came pouring out across the piano, spilling into Milanka’s living room.

  I found myself rising from the couch and beginning to move involuntarily with the urgency of her escalating rhythm. My feet dug into the wooden floor one foot at a time like a challenged Flamenco dancer. I stamped in time with the compelling music and before I knew it, I was whirling and bending with gyrations that accompanied the feeling that surged through me. I felt Slavic myself, like the music. I remembered my mother telling me, thirty-five years before, that one’s origins didn’t prevent one from experiencing the emotions of another culture. Emotions, she said, were everything. Understand the emotions and you can become whomever you wish. But how was it possible to understand the emotional depth of a passionate Russian Slav when you were a white-bread American Protestant?

  Then again it flashed in my mind … something that was to occur to me many times for the duration of my relationship with Vassy. Had we both experienced a previous life together in Russia? Had I once been Russian myself and was that why I had felt so familiar with him from the first moment I laid eyes on him? I stamped and shouted words that I didn’t understand. Maybe they were just conglomerated sounds, I don’t know. Maybe that’s all words were anyway. My arms rose into positions I felt best depicted what I was feeling from the music. I crossed them in peasant fashion and made up steps that jarred through the rest of my body. I felt I had danced those steps many times before. Perhaps every role I had played was a role I had somehow lived before. Maybe acting was the art form of remembered identities.

  We sang and shouted and danced together throughout the afternoon, until Vassy returned to pick me up. When he walked in on our multicultural Russian spectacle, he sat watching and smiling for a while.

  “My Nif-Nif,” he said finally, “you will do that in the film we will make together, and Milanka will be a character. You will find a Russian community in Paris during the scenes of your second honeymoon and we will show how your leading character responds to cultures that are buried in her past. I think we will call the film Dancing in the Dark and we will have Cole Porter’s song as the theme song.”

  As Vassy outlined his creative plans he seemed to be watching me as though he were looking through a camera, slightly detached. I felt like a piece of putty which he intended to mold according to his theatrical desires. And if my emotional desires were different, would I say so, or would I accept his written and directorial concepts as an actress responding professionally to her director’s wishes? Simply put, could I work with him in good faith when I knew that I was being manipulated by his intimate knowledge of me? Would I feel that he was forcing the character I would play into a mold that was familiar to him rather than familiar to her?

  We said good-bye to our gypsy afternoon. Milanka poked Vassy in the chest and warned him she would be monitoring his behavior and he had better not insist on being too Russian.

  When we returned to dress for dinner, I cleaned up the cell, removing the wilted lettuce and the hard-crusted garlic cheese, the smell of which now permeated the room. I hoped it would all blow out before we got back from dinner.

  It didn’t.

  Before we went to bed Vassy began to pack his bags for America. Sasha would be renting the place to someone else and Vassy would store his remaining belongings in a box which Sasha would keep for him. He put the rabbits on top of the box, saying they would take care of everything until we returned someday. Then he went to his big table on which lay a huge and ancient Russian Bible.

  “Nif-Nif,” he said, “I want you to have this Bible. It has belonged in my family for hundreds of years. It is for you now with my love. I love you and want you to carry it with us always. It will return with us to California.”

  I lifted the Bible. It weighed about twenty pounds. I opened it. It was extraordinary. In ancient Russian script was the story of mankind from the Russian Orthodox point of view. It was illustrated with colored drawings and the thick leather-bound covering was worn with age. It was clearly a museum piece. It was obviously very valuable and meant as much to Vassy as anything he owned.

  “Thank you, Honeybear,” I said. “I will take good care of it and it will be with you anyway.”

  I didn’t want to think of what he would do with this Bible if our relationship didn’t work out.

  Vassy and I left for California. He obtained a multiple visa to travel to the U.S. and was full of ideas and surprises he would delight his Hollywood friends with when he returned. Flying over the ocean, we played games with each other which only new lovers can concoct to make magic out of being with each other. It was a delight. We watched a comedy film about CIA spies in South America that made us laugh so loud the stewardess complained that we were keeping other passengers awake. We ate whatever the economy class offered, which, because we were together, tasted gourmet. Then we fell into a high-altitude sleep and when we landed in L.A., we were both aware that a new and unorthodox life lay ahead of us.

  Chapter 11

  I was glad Vassy had an acquaintance with my place in Malibu. He had already decided which bathroom he would use, where the Water Pik would go, and which side of the bed he would sleep on. He knew just what food he would buy at the health-food store, and tested the blender to ensure that it was in good running order. He stacked his records beside the hi-fi system and unloaded his Russian books into the bookcase across from the bed. He cleared out two of my drawers and made room for his shirts and two sweaters. He hung his trousers (three pair) and his two jackets in an empty closet which he assumed was for him. He placed his two pairs of street shoes and a pair of dress shoes out of the seventeenth century neatly next to his tennis racket. He unpacked his hair tonic, Jaragan cologne, and electric razor and stacked them neatly on the sink. He placed his scripts and note-paper beside the bed and hid his passport in a drawer that didn’t look like a drawer. I was amused by that piece of intrigue because he had left the valuable passport on the airport bus before we left
Paris. I had noticed it was gone and retrieved it in time. Now, as though my house could be broken into at any time, he was insuring the safety of the document that allowed him freedom. He gently placed the heavy Russian Bible on my Bombay chest across from the bed where we would sleep. After he had arranged his new life, he put on his sneakers and went out to jog. I looked around my place at his swift directorial takeover, and laughed at what I had gotten myself into.

  In between writing (I was finishing one of the several drafts of Out on a Limb), I began rehearsals for a new television special. Vassy had meetings with producers. It was as though we had begun a life together respecting immediately that each of us had schedules to keep.

  I had never lived with anyone in my apartment in Malibu. It had always been a place where I went to think and write. Now it came alive with communication between myself and another human being. I loved the feeling. It was a delight.

  When I wasn’t writing or rehearsing, Vassy and I took long walks in the Calabasas Mountains and we found a special fire trail that was painful enough for him to negotiate so that he felt he was really getting some good out of it. He was as strong as a bull and had the stamina to match. I had never been with a man who had as much physical stamina as I did and also liked to test it daily. So we enjoyed testing our stamina against each other. Vassy was just as enthusiastic on our walks as he was on the set or with food or his famous Water Pik. As we trekked he gave me pointers on how to hold my posture, which way to bend my legs, and of course, how to breathe. If he had seen me smoke a cigarette the night before, he scolded me and blamed any slowness I might be exhibiting on the smoking. If I had had only two hours sleep and was exhausted climbing the trails, he blamed it on a cigarette I had had a few days before. Walking with Vassy was not only a loving experience, it was also an athletic event to be endured for one’s own good. It also kept me in shape and opened my eyes to the nature of the mountains around me. Whenever I walked alone, my mind crackled with thoughts and ideas and solutions. When I trekked with Vassy, I was aware of every wild flower and vibrant green bush. He would stop and inhale long breaths of fresh mountain air and was able to isolate and identify every smell of nature that passed through his nose. He was an expert on flora, and fauna too; exclaiming over this or that plant, greeting another like an old friend. He’d crinkle up the eucalyptus leaves and pass them under my nose like smelling salts and watch me for appreciation. If I failed to react with passionate pleasure, he’d quickly draw them away from me as though I had had my chance and chances never lasted long. “Nature is the province of God,” he said. “Mankind doesn’t understand her delicate mysteries.”