Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  “Well,” said Jack, a wary look crossing his cherubic face, “have you ever been involved with a Russian before?”

  There it was again.

  “I see,” I said. Somehow this question was always supposed to be the answer. “And how about promises? Do Russian men keep their promises?”

  Jack laughed out loud.

  “There is no such thing,” he replied, amused at my naïveté. “There is no such thing as a deal. They are too emotional for that, too much of the moment. In passion they’ll promise anything. Then later their feelings might change, the passion shifts. And then they accuse you of being stupid when it comes to honoring their promise.”

  I tried to absorb what Jack was saying with a quiet stomach. But none of what he said was reassuring. And I knew, in my mind, that my relationship with Vassy was in big trouble.

  Not too long after that Vassy and I were back in California and on one of our walks. The sun was hot. It was about one and a half years after we had met. We had succeeded in adjusting reasonably well to one another. We were deep in the throes of developing a picture which he would direct me in. He had worked with several writers and found that none of them had touched what he really wanted to say in the picture.

  He knew what he wanted. Such definitive certainty was commonplace and admired in really good directors. After overhearing some of his creative sessions, though, I began to wonder whether Vassy might not be erecting obstacle courses which weren’t necessary. Whenever I mentioned it, he again explained that only through the pain of the creative process could wonderful art be born. It was a theory he knew I didn’t subscribe to. Whenever his anguish in collaboration became severe, I knew he was either getting close to what he wanted, or the relationship with the writer would fall apart. Lately, the latter seemed to be happening. He tossed and turned during the night and seemed to be stretching the possibility of success too thin. I almost had the feeling that at the core there was a self-destruct mechanism at work in him. But maybe not. Maybe it was just his way of working.

  The sun was hot on our faces as we climbed the fire trail. I had smoked a lot the night before, but not enough to interfere with my breathing. In fact, I never inhaled anyway and told myself the smoke never reached my lungs. But Vassy zeroed in on my smoking as we walked. He walked faster and faster. When I asked him to slow down, he said, “If you would stop the cigarettes, perhaps you could keep up.” I felt a flash of irritation. Why was he ruining a beautiful walk, focusing on something that was my business to stop. We began to argue. The argument escalated until smoking became an irrelevant issue. In a swift fifteen minutes, we were discussing the defects of our relationship in detail, with Vassy entrenched in his point of view and I in mine. We both became so angry that again I felt like striking him. I controlled myself and said, “Let’s call a moratorium for fifteen minutes, okay?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Agreed.”

  We continued to walk in silence. After about five minutes, a particularly cogent point came to my mind, but I resisted the urge to make it, remembering our agreement. We walked on. I was proud of my control. Suddenly Vassy blurted out a stream of intelligent points of his own. I pointed to his watch. “The fifteen minutes is not up yet,” I said.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he answered. “So what? I have something to say.”

  I stopped and glared at him, “But we made a deal,” I reminded him strongly.

  “A deal? What deal?” he asked.

  I said slowly and very, very distinctly, “We made an agreement five minutes ago. An agreement not to continue our argument until fifteen minutes had passed.”

  Vassy actually chuckled. “You are stupid to believe that I considered that an agreement. You are naïve.”

  I saw red. I wound up my arm and with full preparation I hauled off and swung at him. I didn’t connect. He blocked my arm and I missed. He laughed at me. I was thoroughly humiliated, outraged … all those familiar feelings that he was capable of provoking in me. I turned and bolted down the mountain.

  “But Nif-Nif,” he called after me, adding insult to outrage, “I love you.”

  I ran and ran down the mountain. He sauntered after me. I didn’t know what I was thinking. It was dreadful. All my emotional horizons were blurred. I felt completely out of touch with my own positive instincts. For the second time, I felt danger.

  When I reached the bottom of the mountain, I lurched toward our car. I could have turned the key, stepped on the accelerator, and left Vassy with no transportation home. But I didn’t. I sat fuming and helpless until he arrived.

  Casually Vassy climbed into the car and said, “Nif-Nif, why were you so upset?”

  I wanted to slug him again.

  “Why?” I pounded the steering wheel. “Dammit, we made an agreement not to argue and you violated it. But then you called me stupid for believing you. What the hell kind of shit-assed attitude do you think that is? Do you want me not to believe you?”

  “You were stupid,” he answered simply. “That’s all. I needed to talk sooner. That’s all.”

  “But so did I,” I answered. “And I controlled it because of our agreement.”

  Vassy thought a moment. “I see,” he said. “Well, there is no harm done. So let’s forget about it. Look at this beautiful sunshine. Look at the bluebirds. Smell this sweet day.”

  I was flummoxed … paralyzed with helplessness at the reality of his truth—his point of view—his way of relating to life—and my inability to penetrate his reality in any way.

  We drove home in silence. I knew I wasn’t going to let it go.

  I didn’t know it until sometime later, but Vassy was as disturbed at my behavior on the mountain as I was at his. He wrote a long letter to his brother in Moscow relating the incident, asking what it was he had done wrong. When I asked him why he had solicited help from another Russian rather than an American, he said it was because his brother knew him better.

  I saw Jack again sometime later and told him what had happened.

  “From Vassy’s point of view,” said Jack, “he meant what he said when he said it. But a Russian has a different concept of time than we do. That is the basic difference. The passion of the moment is just that—the passion of the moment. When the moment passes, life is a new ballgame. When he said you were naïve to believe him, he could just as easily have meant you still believed in Santa Claus. The Russian doesn’t live past the moment. That’s why they seem to us to be so passionately self-destructive. Who knows, maybe living in the moment is the most fulfilling way to live. Their expressive arts, after all, speak to the depths of the soul. So who knows?”

  I thought about what Jack said for days after that. Were the differences between Vassy and me based predominantly on how we related to the immediacy of the moment? I had to admit that the intensity of our fun and joy together was a miracle of moments. He never held back or considered the consequences of the future. I did. His happy moments were total when they were happy. Mine were not. Was I in my American way living too much in the future? Was that, in fact, what “deals” were all about? Protecting the future? Vassy seemed to throw the future to the wind. It wasn’t there until it was there. On the face of it, I wished I could do the same. And yet …

  And yet I had the continual gnawing feeling that to Vassy the future meant probable suffering. It was then that I realized that the danger I felt from him was not really about the future, but more about destiny. His destiny.

  He spoke often of destiny. It was a word that heretofore had smacked of melodrama to me. Yet somehow when he used it, it was emotionally viable. He seemed to be feeling that his destiny had been preplanned. He had felt destined to be with me. He had felt destined to leave Russia and travel freely.

  A few weeks later, I began to feel the communication between us break down on many levels. Work on the movie project was becoming discordant. Vassy and his co-writer couldn’t come up with a satisfac
tory script. The more I encouraged him, the more depressed and dissatisfied he became. The more I made suggestions, the more he resented it. Our arguments became intense until one evening our relationship exploded.

  We had been sullen and moody with each other for about three days. Even physical communication was breaking down as our emotional differences expressed themselves in dissatisfaction with each other sexually.

  Two friends of ours (a couple we knew very well) were visiting and staying with us. They were Americans who lived in Paris. They were aware of some of our problems. I was scheduled to make a quick trip to New York, which I casually mentioned to Vassy. He seemed to accept it, but I noticed a dark hostility wipe quickly across his face. We went for a hike and he was uncommunicative. When we returned, he went into his office to write and I brooded about how I could break the mood. I fixed him his favorite tea and cakes and brought the tray in to him. I set the tray on the desk and leaned over and hugged him. He smiled involuntarily and then quickly wiped it away. A flash of dread shot through me.

  “I must tell you, my dear,” he began, “I have been to see a doctor about your problem.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What problem?” I asked.

  “About your sexual problem.”

  “You saw a doctor about me?”

  “Of course I didn’t mention your name,” said Vassy, “I just discussed your sexual problem.”

  I was stunned. “What sexual problem? So things are not as intense as they were. So what? And what do you mean, my problem? It takes two to tango.”

  Vassy got up and walked to the living room. Our friends were sitting there.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, running after him. “Let’s talk about this. And let’s talk about it in front of Judy and Jerry. We’re close enough to them. They’ve been through their own sexual conflicts.”

  “Fine,” said Vassy, sitting down on one of the stools by the kitchen counter.

  “We have problems,” Vassy announced, “but Sheerlee is stubborn with her indifference. So I have seen doctor to discuss it.”

  Judy and Jerry nodded, delicately acknowledging the sensitivity of the subject.

  I could feel myself begin to boil. “Vassy,” I said, “I don’t really think this is about sex. Sex is hardly ever just about sex. Why didn’t you discuss it with me? Why did you go to an outsider? I didn’t even realize it was bothering you this much.”

  “Doctor would know better,” he answered.

  “A stranger, doctor or not, would know more about what I’m feeling than I would?”

  “Correct.”

  “What do you mean, correct?” I said, hearing my voice rise.

  “You don’t listen to what I say. Doctor did,” he answered.

  “But the doctor only heard it from your point of view,” I said, sitting down on the stool next to him to assert myself. “I resent it that you didn’t discuss anything with me. Really I do.”

  “Doctor was informative,” he said.

  “What doctor was it?” I asked. “Someone you knew?”

  “No,” he answered. “I found name in telephone book. Doctor in Santa Monica.”

  “In the telephone book??” I was incredulous. I just couldn’t believe what he was saying. And yet I did, I suppose, because I felt invaded. “Wait a minute,” I said, trying to control my voice, without success. “How the hell could you discuss what goes on between us with a perfect stranger? And without even mentioning it to me? I mean, if you were that bothered, why didn’t you say so? Why not tell me?”

  “I wanted to discuss with doctor.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, it sounds to me like you’re doing a control trip again. You’ve tried to control how I eat, how I hike, how I sing and dance and act, and now, by God, now you’re into controlling what I do with my body in bed. The privacy of my sexuality means as much to me as yours does to you.”

  “No,” said Vassy, “a man’s relationship with his sex is more important than a woman’s is to hers.”

  Suddenly I wasn’t arguing anymore. I really saw red this time. In an outraged flash, I slapped Vassy across the face so hard and so fast that I connected completely. His glasses flew across the room. His face drained of color. He reached up to hit me, but the expression I saw on his face hit me first. It was steel-cold, controlled hatred. I gasped. His arm went down. Judy and Jerry bolted toward us. Judy grabbed my arms and Jerry grabbed Vassy’s.

  Vassy’s implosive hostility made my blood run cold. It was what he wasn’t expressing that chilled me. What was really going on inside of him? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Immediately I disengaged myself from my own emotional violence. I was shocked that I had finally succeeded in hitting him so unexpectedly but I was stunned at the expression of cruel finality on his face.

  Vassy released himself from Jerry. His expression didn’t soften.

  Judy let my arms go.

  “Jesus,” I said, “I’m sorry, Vassy. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. But you had absolutely no right to invade my privacy by going to a doctor without consulting me.”

  Vassy crossed the room, leaned over, and picked up his glasses. He put them on.

  “Is finished,” he announced.

  “What is finished?” I asked.

  “Our relationship,” he said, “is finished. I will now leave.”

  I laughed out loud. If I sounded slightly hysterical he certainly was being ludicrously melodramatic.

  “Oh,” I went on, “I see. Now you are going to just refuse to discuss the responsibility we each have for what just happened.”

  “Correct.”

  “Oh.”

  He straightened his back, put his hands on his hips, and walked to the refrigerator for vodka.

  “You are violent,” he said. “I find your violence too frightening.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I was violent, and I’m sorry. But what about your violence to my feelings? What the hell would you expect a woman to do when you say you as a man are more important than a woman?”

  “Never mind. Is finished,” he answered.

  I stood up. “What do you mean, finished? Are you serious?” I looked over at Judy and Jerry. Judy spoke up.

  “Vassy,” she said, “don’t you think maybe you are afraid of your own violence? I saw the expression on your face. You could have killed Shirley. I think you were afraid you might.”

  Vassy shot a contemptuous look at Judy. “Is finished,” he said. “I am leaving.”

  I no longer felt like laughing at his melodrama. I realized he might mean it.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You are really serious. What about our movie, what about working out our relationship, what about courage?”

  For a long moment Vassy said nothing. Then, looking thoughtfully at his glasses, he said, “I know I will regret this for the rest of my life, but it is my destiny. I am leaving.”

  I felt helpless. His male infantilism I did not even want to cope with anymore and his addiction to suffering was beyond my empathy.

  But Jerry and Judy went over to him.

  “Vassy, try to express what you are feeling,” said Jerry. “Before you make any rash decisions, please explore what’s really going on inside of you.”

  Vassy walked toward the bedroom. “No,” he said with conviction to himself. “Is my destiny.” Vassy slowly disappeared down the hall. I followed.

  Quietly Vassy packed his two pairs of corduroy trousers and his grandfather’s dress shoes. Neatly he placed his six shirts and two sweaters into his suitcase. He gathered his mother’s pictures, the icons of Christ beside his side of the bed, and his English-language tapes. He walked to the bathroom and boxed up his Water Pik and his Russian hair tonic. He stuffed his jogging shoes and hiking shorts into a plastic bag, and his toothbrush and electric shaver into his brown leather kit.

  I looked around our room, paralyzed, watching him spirit himself away. He picked up his suitcase and threw his leather jacket over one shoulder. Then he gla
nced down at the ancient Russian Bible he had brought with him from Moscow.

  “The Bible must stay here,” he said. “My Bible will always belong to you. It belongs here in Malibu with you.”

  Tears of sorrow and futility filled my eyes. I knew he was really leaving. Had he planned all this, or was it happening spontaneously? He seemed unable to exercise any free will over what he considered to be his destiny.

  I followed him to the front door. He leaned into the living room and said good-bye to Judy and Jerry. I held the door open for him. There was nothing to say.

  He began to descend the stairs in silence, then he turned around.

  “Nif-Nif,” he said, his husky plaintive voice cracking. “My sunshine, Nif-Nif. Life with you was like music. And now the music is over. I will come back for my books and records someday later.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. Everything was so unreal. I thought of how life was a poor storyteller.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he looked up again. “I was your Honeybear, and you were my Nif-Nif. But remember, you are also prancing horse. Horse from very good stable.”

  I waved him through the red lacquer gate and he pulled away in his broken-down car.

  The next morning, I went to New York. Vassy called me there a few days later. He cried over the telephone and told me how lonely he was. I said I would be back in a few days and we would talk. But when I returned, he didn’t want to. He had moved into the guest room of an old girlfriend. Within a week, he came down with pleurisy and lay brooding and depressed in his bed. He didn’t want to see me. He didn’t want to see anyone. I tried to cheer him up over the telephone, but it didn’t have any effect.

  Weeks later we had dinner. He was sweet, but formal. He said he wanted a woman who would be his slave, who would love everything he did regardless. He wanted “an artist’s wife who would sit adoringly at my feet and tell me I am wonderful.” I remembered Milanka’s warning in Paris. I laughed. He laughed. He said he knew he was being simplistic, but that was the way he was. I said I understood.

  But it wasn’t Vassy I needed to understand. It was myself.