“I miss dancing,” the woman was saying. “For a dancer, the body’s betrayal is the supreme cruelty of growing older.” She shook her head. “When I was young, I challenged my body to its limits. Now, my body challenges me. My feet used to feel the floor. Now, the first steps of each morning are…” she winced, looking down at her slippered feet, “sometimes impossible.”
“Please, tell me what you remember.”
Madame Danilova closed her papery lids and allowed the memories to come. “Ballet is the most improbable art,” she murmured. “It is about being high, taking flight, soaring, ascending!” She raised her arm gracefully toward the sky. “It began as the dance of kings, in the royal French court in the 16th century, although women did not dance for another 200 years.”
Her eyes glistened, remembering. “When I joined the Kirov, I used four, perhaps five pairs of toe shoes every day. I had three hour lessons that included 128 grand battements, if you please, 128 ronds de jambes en L’air. Firebird needed 1,000 feet of tulle, 70 jeweled head dresses and animal masks.”
She shook her head. “Forgive me, my dear. Sometimes those memories are more real than this courtyard.”
“Please, go on,” whispered Alexandra.
“I had the long legs, the strong back, the light bones. Like a heron, my partner said!”
The prima ballerina sat forward in the chair, and, with excruciating slowness, began to lift her right leg. A narrow ballet-slippered foot appeared, followed by a thin, impossibly twisted calf.
“Every dancer knows pain, Dr. Marik. My partner Sergei used to say, “If boy not there, girl fall down.” She laughed softly. “Ah, we had our share of falls, of sprains and tears, twisted tendons and jammed joints. I was sore every moment from dancing. It was my natural state. And my heart’s passion.”
“Can you tell me what happened to you, Madame Danilova?”
The woman stared at Alexandra as if she had forgotten her presence. “An accident,” she said, closing her eyes in pain. “In the beginning, when I was first confined to this chair, I would dream of going to the theater and discovering I’d forgotten my toe shoes. Terrible, horrible nightmares of not being able to dance.”
She shook her crowned head. “Pavlova so identified with her role as the Dying Swan that when she was stricken with pleurisy she asked her maid to get her swan costume ready, and died moments later.”
Alexandra reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder. “But not you.”
A shrug of narrow shoulders. “There is a dance troupe called Axis. It is for performers with and without disabilities. I coach them every week.” She smiled. “But sometimes I wish…”
Alexandra waited.
Madame Danilova glanced across the courtyard toward the wall of glittering windows. “In our Russian legend, the Firebird is trapped in a Palace of glass. Perhaps I have built my own glass palace here…”
“Excuse me, Madame.” The bartender stood at the French doors.
“Ah, Nicky. Time to close already? All of our guests have departed?”
“Yes, Madame. Would you like me to – ”
Madame Danilova waved an expressive hand. “Go home, Nicky. You’ve been working for hours. My guest will stay and visit awhile longer, if she is willing.” She looked up at Alexandra, who nodded and returned the smile. “She can let herself out.”
“But, Madame…”
“That will be all, Nicky. I’ll be fine. Thank you for everything, my friend.”
“As you wish, Madame. I will leave a small light in the foyer for Dr. Marik.” The bartender bowed from the waist and disappeared into the shadowed restaurant.
“I never told you what happens in Act III of the Firebird,” said the woman suddenly. “But perhaps you should see it for yourself. You must come to the ballet this week as my guest. I have a box at Lincoln Center. Stravinsky’s Firebird is being performed.”
Shivers danced across Alexandra’s spine. “The Firebird? I would love to see it.”
The old ballerina raised her head to the sky, frosted now with tracings of ice. “The snow is coming,” she murmured. “Early this year. I can feel it in the air. My partner Sergei loved the mountains, especially when the forests were hushed with snow.” She closed her eyes, lost in memory.
“I would enjoy going to the ballet with you,” said Alexandra softly. She leaned forward to kiss the rough, disfigured cheek. “Thank you, Madame Danilova. If the brooch given to my sister is yours, it will be returned immediately.”
“Thank you. And, Dr. Marik?”
Alexandra looked down at the scarred face.
“Go and see an Axis performance. A person incapable of walking can still create great beauty. Dance comes from within, my dear. The plie of bent leg can become the curved lift of arm.” She gazed toward the moonlit garden. “In Swan Lake, for a few hours each night, the captured swan is allowed to be alive again. To dance, to be real once more, before she must die.”
The Prima Ballerina lifted her arm with slow, dramatic grace. “No, I am not ready to don my swan costume and die just yet. When I dream now, my dear, I’m never wheeling. I’m still dancing.”
* * * *
It was after midnight. The Palace of the Firebird was dark except for the single lamp near the entrance. The bartender and doorman were long gone. Alexandra sat on a barstool, alone in the darkness, waiting.
Soon, Madame Danilova would drive her electric chair to the small elevator near the kitchen, and return to her private rooms on the top floor of the brownstone. And then she could take a closer look at those old photographs on the dining room wall before letting herself out.
Madame Danilova would have danced - when? In the mid sixties? She would have known Ivan, danced with him. What would those photographs show?
Then she heard the music.
Making her way quietly back through the shadowed dining room, Alexandra stopped at the French doors and caught her breath. In the dark courtyard, classical music – Stravinsky? - spilled from a small radio. And there, a sudden flash of red.
The electric chair moved into the center of the terrace, spinning slowly in time to the music. Suddenly, with an imperious gesture, the woman locked the brakes. Then, with the help of her ivory cane, the aging, injured Prima Ballerina rose haltingly to her feet.
She spread her thin arms like a bird’s wings and flung her long scarf so that it drifted like a red feather against the night sky.
Alexandra watched, entranced, as the ballerina began to repeat, with excruciating slowness, steps learned so long ago. A pointed toe, a lifted calf, the graceful curve of arm just so - every movement exquisitely beautiful but in agonizing slow motion, as the scarred ballerina danced one last time in her ghostly lover’s arms.
Alexandra felt as if her own heart were breaking. Aware that she was an intruder on an intensely private moment, she forced herself to turn away.
Her eyes sought the old black and white photographs strung along the dining room’s far wall, and her sister’s words spun suddenly into the deserted shadows.
Look for the truth in the photographs.
As Stravinsky’s music flowed around her, Alexandra slipped on her glasses, lit a candle from one of the tiny tables, and, shielding the light with her body, examined the row of grainy photographs. The city now called St. Petersburg, she realized, before the Revolution. And there, the early days of World War II and the Cold War. Her finger touched, passed over the faces. Personal photographs, some signed, from another country, another time.
A well-dressed mother and her children outside a large frame house. A heavy-set man in front of a sleek black touring car. A gowned, be-jeweled woman in a palace room.
When she came to a series of ballet photographs, her heart skipped and she examined them carefully. These were in color, softened by time. Beautiful young swans folded in white-winged tutus, handsome bayadieres on a spot-lit stage. Her finger passed over, moved on. Wait.
A deep stage, framed by a forest of dark, twisted trees. A man in an emerald hunt
er’s costume, bowing to a ballerina dressed in feathers of fire. Writing in black ink scrawled across the bottom. Alexandra leaned closer, squinting to decipher the faded script. The words swam into view.
Prince Ivan & Tatyana. London. September, 1966.
Tatyana! September, 1966...
“Oh, dear God,” murmured Alexandra. The answer was thirty feet from her, dancing in the garden. She’d felt it from the moment they’d met. And here was the proof.
Madame Danilova was the Firebird.
Tatyana Danilova, her beautiful face youthful and unmarred in the old photograph. The prima ballerina who had danced the Firebird role with Ivan during the Kirov’s tour in 1966.
The tour that had ended in a terrible fire.
An accident, the prima ballerina had said. She’d been burned in a fire…
And now, after all these weeks of searching, Ivan’s photograph was waiting for her on the wall of a small Russian restaurant on West 46th Street.
Her sister’s killer was in one of these photographs.
As Alexandra adjusted her glasses and prepared to look into the eyes of the young hunter, she pictured, one by one, the famous figures and faces she had scrutinized so carefully at the Foxwood reception. She knew in her heart that the hunter in the photograph would be Zee Zacarias, Rens Karpasian or David Rossinski.
But would she be able to recognize him? The fire, or plastic surgery, or simply age, could have altered his face completely.
Holding her breath, she leaned closer. The hunter’s young face was small, shadowed, difficult to see clearly. But the Russian Prince’s eyes in the old photograph stared back at her, piercing and familiar. In spite of the differences wrought by so many years and, quite possibly, by medical procedures, she was almost certain that she recognized the man called Ivan.
She held up her phone and snapped three quick close-up photographs. As she blew out the small candle and moved with quick silent steps through the darkness, all she could think of was her sister.
I’ve found him, Eve. I know who Ivan is.
ACT III
THE COURT OF PRINCE IVAN
“the Firebird escapes, to dance alone...”
CHAPTER 46
“Flee as a bird to your mountain.”
Psalms, 11:1
BRIGHTON BEACH
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30
He was holding his beautiful Firebird in his arms.
As he bent to kiss her, there was a bright flash of light from the left.
Suddenly, as if from a great distance, he heard the ominous warning of the orchestra’s horns. He raised his head.
Over her feathered shoulder, the painted jade leaves of the Czar’s forest trembled. When he saw the spark of the flames against the dark foliage, he thought at first it was the fierce shine of the Firebird brooch. Then the lights went out.
It all happened at once. Shouts in Russian and English, choking smoke and darkness, hot searing flames. The painted forest behind him burst suddenly into orange fire.
There was a roaring noise in his ears, and a great flash of red light.
“Tatyana!” he shouted desperately. He heard her scream his name. Then he saw the bright red feathers erupt with fire, and she was engulfed in flames.
“Tatyana!”
He couldn’t breathe. He was being smothered. He fought the thick smoke and struggled to sit up.
“Where are you?” he gasped into the darkness.
Ivan flung out his arms, clawing at the blankets tangled around his face. He blinked into the gloom, saw the thin curtains lit with light, and groaned. He was in the apartment he kept in Brighten Beach, rented under another name. It was – what? – Saturday. The end of October. Not September… There was no London stage, no fire. No Tatyana.
Cursing in Russian, he pushed the blanket away from his sweating body. After all these years, he still could taste the choking black smoke that had seared his lungs, feel the flames scorch his body, hear the terrified screams as he dragged himself across the burning stage.
He could still see his beloved Firebird burst into flames.
He let out his breath and reached for the glass he’d left on the nightstand in the hours before dawn. He gulped down the last inch of vodka and blinked at his watch. After nine. He was supposed to meet Panov at the boathouse. But the dream was still with him. As real as yesterday. He leaned back against the pillows and stared at the high ceiling.
So many unanswered questions. What was Tatyana about to whisper in his ear that night? And what had happened to the Firebird brooch he’d given her, just moments before the flames engulfed her?
He closed his eyes. More than forty years since that night in London, and still he dreamed of fire...
Flames were the last thing he remembered before swimming back to consciousness. Plane engines throbbed beneath him, sending lightening bolts of agony through his burning body.
He’d cried out Tatyana’s name, then felt the sting of the hypodermic and blessed darkness.
When he’d regained consciousness, he was in a hospital room. Everything white. They wouldn’t tell him where he was, only that he was safe, in Canada. All he could see out the window were pines and sky and mountains in the distance brushed by frost and early winter light. Not September.
“Where is Tatyana?” he’d begged over and over. “What happened to us?”
“There was a fire,” said the doctor, finally, in a distant voice. “An accident.”
“Tatyana?”
“I’m sorry. They brought her body back to Russia for burial.”
“Nyet, nyet,” he whispered, his heart twisted by grief. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way...”
“Three dancers lost their lives.” The doctor laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You were the lucky one, my friend.”
No! No! Again, the sting of welcome darkness. That night, the nightmares of fire began.
The third time he’d awakened, he’d refused the pain killer. In those long, dark hours he’d become aware of a terrible throbbing agony, and understood that he would never dance the role of Prince Ivan again.
Or any role at all. Yet they said he was the lucky one.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
And so began the long agonizing struggle back to health - and his new life. Doctors, drugs and operations, wrenching physical therapy, then books and memorizing, photographs and documents and endless language practice. To his great surprise he found that he was intrigued by the politics and democracy of the West, and discovered that he had an impressive aptitude for languages and history.
And there was, afterall, no one waiting for him.
He was moved to a small apartment near the hospital. The trees were turning green with buds, the days growing warmer. Then one day he’d looked out the window and been surprised by an early april snow. Huge fat flakes that brought memories rushing back of the small house in the forests north of Leningrad. He’d pressed his face to the window like a child - and seen a stranger staring back at him. His face had escaped most of the flames, it was true, but he was much thinner and harder now, with prematurely white hair and a dark, remote look in his sunken eyes. The constant pain from the injuries showed in the lines on his face.
He’d heard the door open, and turned to see a man standing just behind him, holding out a thick briefcase.
“Your new identity,” said the Russian. “I am your Control, Prince Ivan.”
“My name is Sergei. Not Ivan.”
“Sergei no longer exists. He died in a fire in London eight months ago. Your code name now is Prince Ivan. You will leave for the United States next month, with your new identity and background. You will complete your education. A wife has been chosen for you.”
A wife...
How could he love anyone else? There was only Tatyana.
Now, in a shadowed bedroom in Brooklyn so many years later, the man who had become Prince Ivan made a sound deep in his throat.
He’d been a boy in Russia, an artis
t and a patriot, who’d readily agreed to the adventure of an arranged defection to New York. An idealist who dreamed of starting over in the West with his beautiful Tatyana, of dancing one day with the great Balanchine. It would be an honor, he’d vowed, to work secretly for his beloved Mother Russia - and to give his own struggling mother and baby sister the two-bedroom apartment in Leningrad they’d always longed for, far away from the howl of the wolves.
His father would be so proud.
But the boy and his dreams had disappeared into the raging flames. And the man who woke up in the Canadian forests, rising like the legendary Firebird from the ashes, would never dance again, nevermore feel the gentle touch of his lover.
It was why he’d needed the forests, why he’d found the lodge in the mountains and disappeared as often as he could, to be alone, to remember, to hold onto that one secret part of himself.
And yet - he’d followed his instructions and honored his commitment. He’d crossed the Canadian border in darkness, on a cold spring night, and never looked back. An ivy-league education, where he’d “met” his wealthy future wife and was accepted without question as an American-born student with Eastern European parents, was only the beginning. He studied law and foreign policy, traveled, was introduced to New England’s high society. His Soviet handlers had supported him every step of the way, with faultless birth, education and work documents.
Finally he was ready, settling in Washington in the mid-seventies during Gerald Ford’s presidency - all according to plan, except for his wife’s untimely death. Suddenly a millionaire, he was now a brilliant and charming widower with a romantic Eastern European accent, well-versed in international politics and the arts and a major contributor to the Republican Party, and he’d had no trouble being accepted into the Washington social and political scene.
He’d never mourned, never asked if his wife’s death was planned as well.
And the years had passed in a blur of fundraising, dinners, and higher-and-higher-level meetings. By 1989, he was so well-known and respected in powerful Republican circles that his friendship with George Bush, Sr., and the eventual Presidential appointments, were inevitable.
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