Dancer (19 page)

The lights were dimmed. When Rudi entered, exploding from the wings to a round of applause, he tore the role open, not so much by how he danced, but by the manner in which he presented himself, a sort of hunger turned human. I wanted to let myself slip away into the performance, but after the first variation I began to realize how terribly hot I felt. Without drawing attention to myself, I tried to fan air to my body. I grew hotter and hotter, and yet I didn't want to disturb my neighbors by wriggling around in my seat, or pulling the sweater over my head. The shrill alarm of Rudi's dancing was saying,
Look at me! Look at me!
but I was obsessed by my sweater and how hot I was becoming. The air was packed with intensity. My face flushed and sweat collected at my brow.

When the intermission finally came, I stood up quickly, only for my knees to buckle and my legs to fold beneath me. I came to almost immediately, but already I'd created a fuss—people were pointing at me, whispering, and I had an immediate vision of the next day's newspapers writing about the lone woman who had fainted during Rudi's performance.

With the help of a gentleman behind me I got back into my seat and removed my sweater. I desperately wanted to explain what had happened, but I could tell he thought I was simply overcome.

He's wonderful, isn't he?

I was just hot, I said.

He has quite an effect, said the gentleman over my shoulder.

I thought I would faint a second time, but I managed a deep breath, rose, and stumbled out along the aisle, down the staircase under the light of the chandeliers. In the bathroom someone held my shoulders as I vomited. I was horrified when I heard her suggest that I might be pregnant, an impossibility. I cleaned up and splashed water on my face. The mirror was smudged with fingerprints, and I had the strange feeling that someone else's ghostly hand was on my face. At thirty-six, I had acquired crow's-feet, and there were the beginnings of dark bags beneath my eyes.

In the bathroom I could hear women exclaiming over the extraordinary performance. A couple of girls were smoking at a corner sink, rolling Rudi's name around on their tongues.

On the second floor I bought an ice cream, and by the time the bell sounded for the second act I felt I had recovered sufficiently to take my seat.

I leaned forward and squinted at the distant stage, until the woman in front of me, annoyed that my hair was, touching her, handed me a pair of opera glasses.

Rudi's body was a thing of the most captivating beauty—hard lines at his shoulders, his neck striated with muscle, enormous thighs, his calf muscles twitching. He took his partner in the air and spun her with remarkable lightness. I couldn't help thinking about the day he had first arrived, at seventeen, when I had seen him undressing in my room, the pale promise of his body slipping beneath the blanket on my sofa. I returned the glasses and tried to quell whatever emotion was overcoming me. I was holding the edge of the chair far too tightly, nails gripping the wood.

When the ballet finished Rudi extended his arm in the air and slowly turned his head from one side of the theater to the other. The ovation rang in my ears.

I ran outside and hurried along the Fontanka, then ascended the stairwell. When I entered the room Iosif was still sitting at the table, drunk. I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him. Shocked, Iosif pushed me aside, filled his glass, downed it quickly, then stumbled across the room and kissed me back. I tried to guide him into making love to me against the wall, but he was hardly able to hold me, drunk as he was. Instead he pulled me to the floor and yet I didn't care, why should I care, the dancing still spun in me—Rudi had stood upon that stage like an exhausted explorer who had arrived in some unimagined country and, despite the joy of the discovery, was immediately looking for another unimagined place, and I felt perhaps that place was me.

I opened my eyes as Iosif was wiping the sweat from his neck. He went back to the table and said: Don't forget, you have to pack.

If I could stack the foolishness of my life in cardboard boxes I could make a monument of it—I packed.

The following week I was out in the sleeping quarters of Leningrad, having left my beloved Fontanka behind. The new apartment was large and dark. It had hot water, a telephone, a stove, a small fridge. The elevator squeaked outside the door. I listened to the high whistle of the kettle. I promised myself that I would leave soon, get enough money together, pay the taxes, negotiate a divorce, take on the enormity of finding another place to live. But in truth I knew I had caved in to Iosif, that allowing him to make love to me had only cemented his dispassion.

Six months later I was sitting on the eighth floor of the new apartment building—trying in vain to translate a Cuban poem about mystery and shadow—when my friend Larissa knocked on the door. She had taken a tram all the way out to the tower block. Her face was ashen. She took me by the arm and escorted me out to the soccer field beyond the towers.

There's a rumor, she whispered.

Pardon me?

Rudi has left, she said.

What?

People are saying that he defected to Paris.

We walked under the goalposts and looked at each other in silence. I began to remember moments that seemed like clues. How, during that first week, I had often caught a glimpse of him looking in the mirror, as if he was willing himself into someone else's body. How he had talked about foreign dancers, listened to RosaMaria's songs, rifled through my books. How, whenever he went to the Hermitage, he was drawn to the Italian Renaissance painters and the Dutch masters. How, when we sat around my table with my friends, he had always looked hungry, as if he were ready to pounce on a word or an idea. I felt a terrible guilt and a dread.

Paris? I asked.

We must keep this quiet, said Larissa.

That evening I sat with Iosif and heard the elevator's pulleys screeching in the hallway. When it stopped on our floor I could hardly shuck the thought that they were coming to knock at the door. I packed a bag with what I imagined I would need. It included a Gorky novel with money pasted beneath the cloth cover. I put the bag under my bed, had nightmares of being chained to a table.

Iosif said: The little bastard, how did he dare?

He rose and paced the room, whispering: How did he dare?

He looked me in the eye: How did he fucking dare?

The next day Iosif surprised me by saying I had nothing to worry about, that I had done nothing wrong, that through his connections he could make sure I would be left alone. I ironed his shirt for a conference and as he prepared his briefcase he assured me that everything would be all right. He kissed me brusquely on the cheek and set out for the university.

They came anyway, the following Monday morning.

I was alone when I heard the rapping on the door. I stuffed money beneath the insoles of my shoes, even took a slice of bread and put it in the pocket of my housedress. Trembling, I went to answer. The man was the traditional sort, beady, in a gray overcoat, but the woman was young and beautiful, blond hair, green eyes.

They drifted in without introducing themselves and went to sit at the table. I had the sneaking feeling that Iosif had maybe gone to see them in order to protect himself, that he had finally betrayed me in a tangible way, after all our tiny intimate betrayals over the years.

Am I being arrested? I asked.

They said nothing. I felt sure they were going to march me out of the room. Each lit a cigarette—taken from my pack—and blew smoke at the ceiling. They had perfected their drama. They asked me how long I had known him, if he had ever mentioned the West, who he talked about, why had he betrayed his people.

You know he's failing, don't you, Citizen?

I haven't heard anything.

Miserably.

Really?

They threw glass at him in Paris.

Glass? I said.

They wanted to rip his feet open.

Why?

Because he was terrible of course.

Of course.

I began to wonder how he had performed in Paris, since it was indeed possible that he had been booed or relegated to the corps. Perhaps Rudi's style of dancing was anathema to the French, and it was conceivable that he really had failed. After all he was young, just twenty-three; he had been dancing only a few years.

They kept examining my features, but I held my face tight. Eventually the talk got around to the gatherings in my old room.

Your salon, said the woman.

There was no point in arguing.

She closed one eye: We need the name, address, occupation of everyone who came.

I wrote the names down. It was a pointless exercise since they knew them all anyway—when I was finished they looked the list over and told me, with wry smiles, whom I had forgotten. They had been watching me, it seemed, for quite a long time.

Write it again, they said.

Pardon me?

Your list.

My hands shook. They had me write down a second series of names and addresses—all those people who had ever spent time in my house, whether or not they had chatted with Rudi. I ferociously protected the corner of my mind in which my father sat. I had a vision of him at home in Ufa, in the shadow of the refinery, limping to the door to find yet more agents and yet more trouble arching through his life. But they didn't ask about him. It began to dawn on me that they were trying to find out if I could exert any influence on Rudi—to perhaps phone him and convince him to return—but they already saw that it was doubtful.

Finally they asked if I was prepared to publicly denounce Rudi.

Yes, I said, without a moment's hesitation.

They seemed vaguely disappointed and lit themselves another cigarette each. The man tucked a pencil behind his ear.

You will write a letter to him.

Yes.

You will tell him that he has betrayed his Motherland, his people, our history.

Yes.

Do not seal the letter.

I won't.

Your behavior is very precarious, the woman told me.

I replied with a measure of dignity that I would certainly mend my ways.

Do not mention this to anybody, the man warned.

I nodded.

Do you understand me?

He was almost frightened—one foot wrong could have an effect on the rest of his life too, his wife, his children, his apartment.

Yes, I understand.

We'll be back.

The woman turned and said: As for me, I would not have spat on him even if he had been on fire.

She glared, waiting for me to react.

I nodded and said: Certainly.

When they left I stood with my back against the door and waited for the elevator to begin its descent, and then for some reason, rather than cry, I laughed until I was exhausted, laughed as the pulleys clicked through the system of steel and rollers, laughed as I heard the pneumatic hiss, laughed as I heard the final stop, laughed, all the time remembering that night at the Kirov and the notion of sleeping with Rudi, or having slept with him, through Iosif. It struck me that I hated Rudi the way you can hate someone who makes love to you and leaves, in other words, with a certain grudging admiration or envy for the fact of having left.

My friends were terrified to be seen with me ever again. Their political diligence and reliability had been called into question, and they would always, now, have files. They too would listen for the elevators. I thought about how my life had been pared down over the years, peeled away layer by layer.

One night I found Iosif staring at a bottle. He curled his upper lip into a snarl, told me he had six shirts drying on the balcony and they needed ironing.

No, I said.

Iron the fucking shirts! he shouted.

He lifted his fist to my face, and held it centimeters from my eyes.

At the window—when I hauled the shirts in from the line—I could hear him behind me, pouring another glass of wine for himself.

I took the only option I felt might clear my head—the train, to visit my father in Ufa. It was late September by the time I got my visa. The journey took three days because of the connections. Exhausted, I couldn't find a taxi, or even a horse and cart, so I walked through the city, asking people for directions. Tatar and Muslim women were out walking with their children. They glanced at me and looked away. I couldn't help wondering how a city like this could have made a dancer like Rudi.

I finally found my father's street. It was lined with old wooden houses where the bright shutters made an argument against the nearby tower blocks. I negotiated the muddy ruts, pondering how in the world my father managed such a difficult walk with his cane.

He came to the door and almost giggled when he saw me. He was looking remarkably well, although he had let his hair grow past his ears, which gave him a faintly mad look. He wore a suit and a tie with a few food stains. His shirt buttons were done up to the neck, but the tie was open as if it and the shirt had different intentions for the day. One of the earpieces of his spectacles was broken and he had looped a piece of string around his ear to keep them from, falling. Still, the only real evidence of serious aging were the few capillaries that had burst in his face. Yet I thought the burst vessels looked oddly handsome on him.

When we hugged I could smell the mustiness of his hair.

We sat down to Beethoven, and he made tea on the tiny stove. There was a portrait of my mother by the bedside. My father had met a young artist who had copied a photograph of her, using charcoal. How diligent the artist had been to her beauty, I thought, and now it seemed she would remain forever beautiful.

He caught me looking at the portrait and said: It's our function in life to make moments durable.

I nodded, unsure of what he meant. He drank his tea. I hesitated to tell him about Rudi, knowing the news had not yet been made officially public, but finally I blurted it out.

Rudi's in Paris.

Yes, he said, I know.

How do you know?