Granny Dan (13 page)

And when she left the next day, he promised to come to her next performance.

“We have to rehearse first,” she reminded him as she kissed him good-bye at the train.

“I'll come to see you in a few days.”

“I'll be waiting for you,” she promised. It was one of the happiest times they had ever spent, and she was going to ask Madame Markova if she could have another week away with him in the spring. She was sure that Madame Markova would be furious over it, but if Danina danced well enough in the next three months, she might just agree to it. She was pleased, thus far, that Danina hadn't done anything drastic or foolish, and she was virtually certain now she never would.

The time for that seemed to have gone past them, and Madame Markova was just as sure that eventually they would tire of each other. Letting Danina see him now and then seemed to satisfy them, and in time they would grow bored of an affair that could go nowhere. Madame Markova knew that in Danina's heart, the ballet would win in the end. She was certain of it.

Danina began exercising that afternoon as soon as she got back, and again at four o'clock the next morning, before rehearsal began at seven. She was well warmed up by then, and in good form, and she knew the role well that she was going to rehearse, so much so that she seemed not to pay much attention. In fact, she allowed herself to play a little bit with some of the other dancers, and they clowned around behind the teacher's back, and did some funny kicks and new steps. She did a leap that took their breath away, and then a very pretty pas de deux with one of her partners. And it was late afternoon before they stopped for something to eat. They had been dancing for nearly ten hours by then, which wasn't unusual for them, and Danina was tired, but not excessively. She gave a last leap on her way out, and someone gasped as she slipped and sailed across the floor with one foot at a shocking angle. There was a long silence in the room as everyone waited to see her get up, but she was very white and very still, as she simply lay there and held her ankle in silence. And then everyone ran to her, and the teacher came briskly across the floor to see what had happened. She was hoping to see a bad sprain, or a ballerina who would be very sore the next morning at rehearsal.

But what she saw instead was Danina's foot almost at an impossible angle to her leg, and Danina clearly in shock and barely conscious.

“Carry her to her bed at once,” the woman said sharply. Danina's teeth were clenched, her face deadly white, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind what had happened. She had broken, not sprained, her ankle. A death knell, if it were true, for a prima, or virtually any dancer. There was not a sound, not a word, only the occasional gasp from Danina, as they moved her, and a moment later she lay on her bed, in her leotard and the warm sweater and leg warmers she had been wearing. Without a word, the teacher cut her leotard off, using a small sharp knife she carried for purposes such as that, and the ankle was already swelling to the size of a balloon, the foot still at the same hideous angle, as Danina stared at it in silent horror, the reality too terrible to imagine.

“Get a doctor. At once,” a voice said from the doorway. It was Madame Markova. There was a man they used for such things. He was extremely good with feet and legs and bones and he had helped them before, with good results. But what Madame Markova saw as she entered the room nearly broke her heart. In a single instant, with one swift leap, it was over for Danina.

The doctor came within the hour, and confirmed the worst to them. The ankle was badly broken, and she had to be taken to the hospital. They would have to operate in order to set it. There was no argument, nothing anyone could say. A dozen hands touched hers as they carried her away. Everyone cried, but no one harder than Danina. She had seen it happen too often before. She knew exactly what had just occurred. After fifteen years in these sacred halls, for her, at twenty-two, it was over.

They operated on her that night, and the entire leg was set in a huge cast. For anyone else, it would have been considered a success. The leg would be straight again, and if she had a limp from it, it would only be a small one. In her case, that was not good enough. The ankle had been shattered, and even if she walked normally, she would never be able to dance as she had before. It would not carry her weight sufficiently to do what she would have to do. There was simply no way of repairing it to give her the flexibility or the strength she needed. And there were no words to console her. Her career had ended with that one small, foolish leap. Not only her ankle, but her life shattered in a single instant.

She lay in her bed and cried that night, almost as hard as she had when she lost Nikolai's baby. The life she had lost this time was her own. It was the death of a dream, a tragic finish in counterpoint to a brilliant beginning. And this time Madame Markova sat beside her, holding back her own tears. Danina had made the sacrifices, the vow, the commitment, but the fates had not been kind to her. Her life as a ballerina, the life she had lived and breathed and been willing to die for, for fifteen years, was gone.

She was sent back to the ballet the next day, to lie in the room she shared with the others, and they came to visit her, alone and in pairs, with flowers, with words, with kindness, with sorrow, almost as though to mourn her. She felt as though she had died, and in a way she had. The life she had known, and been an integral part of, had died for her. She already felt as though she didn't belong here. And it was only a matter of time before she had to gather up her things and leave them. She was even too young to teach, and she knew she couldn't anyway. It was not in her. For her, it was simply over. The death of a dream.

It took her two days to write to Nikolai, and when her letter reached him, he came at once, unable to believe what had happened, although everyone explained it to him in detail once he arrived. All the other dancers knew him and liked him. And they told him again and again how she had fallen and how she looked as she lay on the floor.

But seeing her, lying there, with her huge cast, and the look of sorrow in her eyes, said it all to him when he first saw her. But to Nikolai, as ghastly as it was for her, it seemed almost like a ray of hope. It was her only chance for a new life. Without this, she would never have left. But he knew he could say none of that to her. She was in deep mourning over her career.

And this time, when he insisted on taking her away with him, Madame Markova offered no objections. She knew it would be kinder for her not to be at the ballet, for a while at least, listening to the familiar bells and sounds and voices going to class or rehearsals. Danina no longer belonged here. She could return eventually, in some other way, but for now, it was more compassionate not to have her there at all. As quickly as possible for her sake, the past had to be buried. Two thirds of her life, and the only part she had ever cared about until Nikolai, had just ended. Her life as a ballerina was over and gone.

Chapter 9

D
anina was immensely relieved to return to their cottage to recuperate, and the Czarina was pleased to see her. Danina's recuperation was slow this time, and painful. And when they finally took off the cast after more than a month, the ankle looked weak and shrunken. She could barely stand on her left leg, and she cried the first time she walked across the room to Nikolai. Her limp was so severe, her entire body seemed distorted. The graceful bird she had once been seemed completely broken.

“It will get better, Danina, I promise,” Nikolai tried to reassure her. “You must believe me. You will have to work hard on it.” He measured both her legs and found that they were still the same length, the limp was due only to weakness. She would never dance again, but she would walk normally. And no one was more solicitous than the Czarina and her children.

It was several weeks before Danina could walk across the room without a cane, and she was still limping when she received a letter at the end of February that Madame Markova was ill. She had a mild case of pneumonia, but she had had it before, and Danina knew full well how dangerous it could be. In spite of still being unsteady on her legs, she insisted that she had to go to her. She still used the cane to cover distances, and could not walk far, but she felt that she should go back to stay at the ballet, at least until Madame Markova regained her health after the pneumonia. The older woman was frailer than she looked, and Danina feared for her life.

“It's the least I can do,” she insisted to Nikolai, but although he sympathized, he still objected. There had been riots in St. Petersburg, and in Moscow, and he was uneasy having her go back alone. And Alexei hadn't been well, so he didn't feel able to go to St. Petersburg with her. “Don't be silly, I'll be fine,” she insisted, and after a day of arguing back and forth, he finally agreed to let her go without him. “I'll come back in a week or two,” she promised him, “as soon as I see she's better. She would do, and has done, as much for me.” He understood all too well the power of the relationship between them, and he knew that Danina would have been agonized over not going to her.

He took her to the train the next day, warned her to be careful and not overtax herself, handed her her cane with a kiss, and put his arms around her. He hated to see her go but understood it, and made her promise to take a taxi directly to the ballet from the station. He was sorry not to go with her. And after all their time together recently, it felt odd to him not to do so. But Danina had promised him she would be fine alone.

But much to her surprise, when she reached St. Petersburg, she saw people milling about in the streets, shouting and demonstrating against the Czar, and there were soldiers everywhere around them. She had heard nothing of it in Tsarskoe Selo, and was amazed to find the atmosphere in the city unusually tense. But she forced it from her mind as she made her way to the ballet. Her thoughts were on Madame Markova, and she hoped her mentor and old friend was not desperately ill. And she was dismayed to find that in fact she had been, and as had happened once before, she had grown very weak and very frail from her illness.

Danina sat beside her every day, fed her soup and gruel, and begged her to eat it. And within a week, she was relieved to see some slight improvement, but the older woman seemed to have aged years in a few brief weeks, and she looked intolerably fragile as Danina looked at her lovingly and held her hand.

Nursing her, the days seemed to fly past her, and Danina fell into bed at night feeling utterly exhausted. And moving around as much as she had, had caused her ankle to swell painfully again. She was sleeping on a cot in Madame Mar-kova's office, her old bed having long since been assigned to another dancer. She was fast asleep on the morning of March eleventh, when crowds gathered in the street not far from the ballet. The shouting and the first gunshots woke her, and she rose quickly and went downstairs to see what had happened. Dancers in the long hallway had already left the classrooms where they'd been warming up, and a few of the bravest ones were peeking from the windows, but they could see nothing but a few soldiers galloping past on horseback. No one had any idea what had happened until later that day when they learned that the Czar had finally ordered the army to quell the revolution, and more than two hundred people had been killed in the city. The law courts, the arsenal, the Ministry of the Interior, and a score of police stations had been burned, and the prisons had been forced open by the people.

The gunshots had stopped by late afternoon, and in spite of the alarming news of the day, that night seemed relatively peaceful. But in the morning, they heard that the soldiers had refused to follow orders and shoot into the crowds. They had retreated, in fact, and returned to their barracks. The Revolution had started in earnest.

A few of the male dancers ventured out into the street later that afternoon, but they returned very quickly, and barricaded the doors of the ballet. They were safe there, but there was shocking news from beyond their little world, and it grew more horrifying day by day. On March fifteenth, they learned that the Czar had abdicated on behalf of himself and the Czarevitch, in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael, and was on his way back to Tsarskoe Selo, from the front, by train, to be arrested. It was impossible to understand, much less absorb, what was happening all around them. Like the others, Danina was unable to understand all that they heard. The information was conflicting and confusing.

It was fully a week later, on March twenty-second, when Danina finally got a hastily scribbled note from Nikolai, brought to her in the hands of one of the guards who had been allowed to leave Tsarskoe Selo. “We are under house arrest,” it said simply. “I am able to come and go, but cannot leave them. All of the Grand Duchesses have the measles, and the Czarina is desperately worried about them, and Alexei. Stay where you are, stay safe, my darling, I will come to you when I can. And I pray that we will be together very soon again. Know always that I love you, more than life itself. Don't venture out in the midst of this danger. Above all, stay safe until I come. With all my love, N.”

She read the letter again and again, and held it in trembling hands. It was beyond belief. The Czar had abdicated, and they were under house arrest. It was impossible to believe it. And she was desperately sorry she had left them. If they were to be in any danger, she would have preferred to be with him. To die with him, if need be.

It was late March when Nikolai finally came to her, looking exhausted and disheveled. He had come on horseback all the way from Tsarskoe Selo, but it had been the only way he could travel. The soldiers guarding the Imperial family had allowed him to leave, and promised he could return. But he had a look of desperation as he sat with her in the corridor outside Madame Markova's office, and told her in no uncertain terms that, as soon as they could arrange it, they would have to leave Russia.

“Terrible times are coming. We have no idea what will happen here now. I have convinced Marie she must take the boys and go home. They will leave next week. She is still English, and they will allow her safe passage, but they may not be as kind to us, if we stay here. I want to wait until the girls are well over the measles, and make sure that the family is safe. And then we'll arrange to go to America, to my cousin Viktor.”

“I can't believe this.” Danina was horrified as she listened. It seemed as though in a matter of weeks, their whole world had come to an end. “How are they? Are they very frightened?” She was so worried about them. They had been through so much in the past month, and Nikolai said, with a look of concern, “No, they are all remarkably brave. And once the Czar returned, everyone became very calm. The guards are quite reasonable, but the family cannot leave the grounds now.”

“What will they do to them?” Her eyes were full of fear for her friends.

“Nothing, certainly. But it has been a great shock, and a sad end. There is talk of their going to England, to their cousins there, but there is a great deal of negotiation to do before that. They may go to Livadia, while they wait. If so, I will accompany them, and then come back to you. I will arrange passage to America as soon as possible. You must prepare yourself, Danina.” This time there was no argument, no discussion, no weighing the decision. Danina knew with utter certainty now that she would go with him. Before he left her that night, he pressed a roll of bills into her hand. He told her to pay for their passage, and arrange it in the next few weeks. He was sure that by then, the Imperial family would be comfortably settled, and he would be able to leave them and go with her.

But she watched him go that night with a feeling of terror. What if something happened to him? As he mounted his horse, he turned and smiled at her, and told her not to worry, and assured her that, staying with the Imperial family, he would be even safer than she was. He rode off again at a gallop, and clutching the money he had left her, she hurried back into the safety of the ballet.

It was a long, anxious month waiting to hear from him again, and trying to glean what they could from the rumors they all heard in the streets, from citizens and soldiers. The Czar's fate still seemed unsure, and there was talk of their staying at Tsarskoe Selo, going to Livadia or going to England to stay with their royal cousins. There were constant rumors, and the two letters she had from Nikolai told her nothing more than she already knew. Even in Tsarskoe Selo nothing was definite or certain. No one knew where or how it would all end.

Danina was careful with her funds while she waited to hear further from Nikolai, and with a terrible pang of guilt she sold the little nephrite frog Alexei had given her, knowing that once they were in Vermont, they would need the money.

She managed to contact her father through his regiment, and in a brief letter, told him what she planned to do. But once again the letter she received from him held bitter news. The third of her four brothers had been killed. And he urged her to do as Nikolai suggested. He remembered meeting him, though he still had no idea that he was married, and told her to go to Vermont, and he would contact her there. She and Nikolai could come back to Russia again when the war was over. And in the meantime, he told her to pray for Russia, wished her godspeed, and told her he loved her.

She was in shock as she read his letter, unable to believe that yet another of her brothers had been lost. And suddenly she began to feel that she would never see any of them again. Every day was an agony, worrying about her family, and Nikolai. She bought their tickets on a ship due to sail at the end of May, but it was the first of May before she heard from Nikolai again. And his letter was once more painfully brief, as he hastened to send it as quickly as he could.

“All is well here,” he wrote reassuringly, and she prayed that he was telling her the truth. “We continue to wait for news. Every day they tell us something different, and there is still no definite word from England. It's rather awkward for all of them. But everyone is in good spirits. It looks as though they will be leaving for Livadia in June. I must stay with them until then. I cannot desert them now, as I'm sure you understand. Marie and the boys left last week. I will join you in St. Petersburg, I promise, by the end of June. And until then, my darling, stay safe in our love, and think only of Vermont, and our future there. I will come to see you for a few hours, if I can.”

Her hand trembled as she read the letter, and as she thought of him, the tears coursed down her cheeks. For him, for them, for her lost brothers, for all the men who had been lost, and all of their lost dreams. So much had happened, an entire world had ended all around them. It was impossible to think of anything but that.

She exchanged their tickets the next day, for a ship sailing for New York at the end of June. And she explained to Madame Markova what she was doing. Her teacher had regained her strength by then, and like everyone else now, she was deeply concerned about the future. And she no longer objected to Danina's plans to leave with Nikolai. She could not dance with them anymore, and the danger in St. Petersburg, and everywhere in Russia, was considerable these days. Madame Markova was relieved for her, and she finally admitted that she believed Nikolai would be good to her, whether or not they were married, although she hoped that one day they would be.

But even in the comfort of knowing she was leaving with him for safety in a month, Danina was constantly haunted by all that she was leaving behind. Her family, her friends, her homeland, and the only world she knew at the ballet.

Nikolai had already told her that his cousin had offered him a job in his bank. They were going to live with him in his house, for as long as they had to, until they could afford to live somewhere else. It was at least comforting to know that. And Nikolai was planning to take the classes he had to, so that eventually he could practice medicine in Vermont. It all seemed carefully planned, although Danina knew that it would take a long time to achieve their goals. But just then, getting out of Russia was the only thought occupying her mind. Vermont itself seemed so distant, it might as well have been on another planet, it was so far removed from their world.

It was a week before they were due to sail, when Nikolai came to see her again, once again with bad news. The Czarina had fallen ill a few days before, she was exhausted, and under a great deal of strain. And although Dr. Botkin was still with them, Nikolai didn't feel able to leave, as planned. Their trip to Livadia had once again been delayed. It was scheduled now for July, as they continued to wait for their English cousins to agree to let them go to England. But thus far, their English cousins had made no commitment at all.

“I just want to get them settled,” Nikolai explained, and it sounded reasonable to her. They sat together for an hour, embracing each other, and kissing, and just feeling the comfort of being close. And while Danina sat with him, Madame Markova made him something to eat, which he gratefully devoured. It had been a long, dusty ride from Tsarskoe Selo.