Dancer (14 page)

*   *   *

After four days of traveling, his mother arrives at the hotel where he is staying before his first performance in Moscow. Gray coat and headscarf. Exhausted, she goes to tiptoe and kisses him on the cheek. He takes her by the elbow, leads her past the heavy, velvet-colored armchairs; through the gauntlet of antique furniture. Her shoulder brushes lightly against the red drapes, and she recoils slightly. A chandelier casts light on the giant portraits of the Heroes of the Soviet Union. They enter the banquet room where, earlier, Premier Khrushchev gave a speech announcing the opening of the national student showcase.

At one end of the room, the remnants of the banquet are spread out on the table.

I danced at the reception, he says.

Where?

On the wooden platform down there. Nikita Sergeyevich saw me. He applauded. Who could believe it?

Look, she says.

Farida shuffles alongside the table: a splotch of beluga caviar on a starched white cloth; a plate with a touch of duck pâté rimed to it; the smell of sturgeon, herring, beef, truffles, wild mushrooms, cheeses; krendeli biscuits in their broken figures of eight; a single Black Sea oyster on a glistening tray. She lifts a slice of salted meat to her mouth, decides against it, moves on, noticing empty silver ice-buckets for champagne, crumbs on the floor, cigar ashes on the windowsill, cigarette butts, lemon wedges in empty glasses, bent and broken toothpicks, a display of red chrysanthemums in the center of the room.

Rudik? she says.

Yes?

She goes to the window, looks down at her boots, worn and salt-stained: Your father says he's sorry he couldn't be here.

Yes.

He wanted to be.

Yes.

That is all, she says.

Yes, Mother.

At the hotel exit a guard makes way for them as they step into the cold. He begins to skip down the street, the lining of his coat flapping. Farida smiles, quickens her step, feels a momentary lightness. Things spinning: snowflakes, boots, the chime of a distant clock. Watching people nearby, watching him, being watched.

Rudik! she says. Wait!

They spend the afternoon in his sister Tamara's room close to Kolomenskoye Park. Tamara shares a room with a family of six. Her corner of the room is small, damp, filled with rubber plants, knickknacks, a fading print of a Tsiolkovsky, intricate rugs hung from nails. In piles on the floor she has arranged her books. The kitchen is dark and cramped. Recently her salary from the kindergarten has been curtailed and the shelves are empty. A heavy iron sits on the stove, beside the teakettle. No samovar. Down the corridor the toilet has overflowed, and the waft of it comes strong through the building.

Tamara makes tea and a fuss with a plate of biscuits.

This is like old times, she says.

She takes Rudi's shoes and polishes them. Later she fingers his coat and asks him where he gets his clothes made. He shrugs.

The afternoon grows lengthy as the light slants through the windows.

I have something, says Rudi.

He reaches in his suit jacket pocket, leans across, and hands them tickets for the following night's performance.

They're good seats, he says, the best.

Mother and daughter scan the tickets.

More tea, he says to Tamara, and she immediately climbs to her feet.

The next evening, in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Farida and Tamara sit nervously as the seats fill up around and behind them. They gaze at the tiered chandeliers, the ornate cornicework, the gold carvings on the stems of the lamps, the magnificent curtain with repeating designs, hammers and sickles. As the dance begins their hands are clenched tight in their laps, but soon the women are gripping each other, amazed to see Rudi, not just the dance, but what he has become, whole and full and fleshed, patrolling the stage, devouring space, graceful, angry.

His mother leans forward in her plush velvet seat, awed and slightly frightened. This is my flesh and blood, she thinks. This is what I have made.

*   *   *

Yes! Chistyakova review from
Theater Moscow,
volume 42, 1959. “A dancer with excellent natural gifts.” “Captivating us with the swiftness of his dance tempi.” Sasha:
When at first you do succeed try not to look astonished.
Ha! Yes! Advice on how to handle the crowd—stand tall, fill out all the space with one huge sweep of the arm. Like a farmer in the field, he says, with his very last swipe at the hay. Or, more to the point, an executioner at the neck! See film shot by Lenikowski(?) Labrakowski(?) Photographs for mother. New shoes. Wigs to get washed. Tailor the coat so it is short, up around the hips, give further length to me, oh shit I wish legs could grow! Access to special stores. Get leather bag with good strap if possible. Maybe sponge-soled shoes and narrow trousers, if possible. Tobacco for Father, heater that mother mentioned. Something for RosaMaria, jewelry box perhaps.

*   *   *

He is told to hold position as if position is a thing that can ever be held on a floor like this, a sheet at his feet. He is in fifth, arms above his head. Earlier in the morning he landed hard on his ankle and can feel the throb of it now. The studio is bright and airy, light drifting in confident packets through the small windows. The photographer has a cigarette which seems to cling to his lower lip. He smells of smoke and bromide. Also, the acrid whiff of the flashbulbs as they break with each emission of light. He has to change each bulb when it breaks, unscrewing it from beneath the white umbrella, using a padded glove. Rudi has already asked the photographer why he is bouncing flash light into the natural light—it seems to him to have no logic—but the photographer said: You do your trade, comrade, I do mine.

Rudi remains in position, his ankle pounding with pain, thinking that if he did his trade, if he really did his trade, the camera itself would not be able to catch him. There are other photographs on the back of the wall, ranged in careful order, dated and tagged. Dancers all, captured benignly and formlessly, even the great ones, Chaboukiani, Ulanova, Dudinskaya. The photographer has brought his ignorance to the job and there is nothing more Rudi would like than to break the air with movement in the second before the flash erupts, create a blur on the film. The photographer is using a Lomo which, because of its black weight, is propped on a tripod and what stupidity to smoke while taking a photograph, but Rudi needs the photo for the Kirov, so he breathes in the pain. He is surprised by the ache, that by remaining still his body is more violently active, so he concentrates his rage on the photographer, more precisely on the series of fat rolls at his neck. The flash causes Rudi to blink, leaving a single bright image on his retina.

And again! says the photographer as he unscrews the bulb, pauses a moment to put a lighter to the end of the cigarette which has extinguished itself.

No, says Rudi.

Pardon me?

No more, he says.

The photographer smiles nervously. One more, he says.

No. You're an imbecile.

The photographer watches as Rudi descends the stairs, his black hat at an angle, shading one side of his face. At the bottom of the stairs Rudi bends, checks the swelling on his ankle and loosens the bandage minutely. Without looking back he waves at the photographer who is leaning over the banister, incredulous.

Send them to me, shouts Rudi. If they're no good I'll eat them and shit them and return them to you in an envelope.

He walks to the studios of the Kirov, where he rehearses through the pain with the master class. An older dancer tries to edge him out from the mirror. Rudi fakes a fall and slams his shoulder into the dancer's knee, half-whispers an apology, climbs back into his dance. There is a muttering in the room, but Rudi aligns himself in the mirror, hair down to his eyebrows, his shoulders muscled. In the middle of the floor he pirouettes beautifully. His partner, Sizova, gives a calm nod of her head, comes across and says: You're injured, don't show off.

Rudi nods and does the move again. At the window he sees Xenia, elegant in a beautiful coat and headscarf. He whisks his hand in the air, waving at her to go away. When she doesn't he turns to the front of the studio where she can no longer see him.

Later, with Sizova he works on the finishing touches for a duet from
Les Sylphides.
His ankle swells further but he dances through the pain, plunging it in a bucket of cold water at the end of the three hours. Then he rises again and puts in an extra half hour. Sizova watches the mating ritual in the mirror, not so much with himself as with the dance. Too exhausted to practice any more, she tells him she must leave to get a few hours' sleep.

As she goes down the corridor she passes Xenia smoking on the steps, her long blond hair covering her face, her eyes red and swollen.

Far behind, in the rehearsal room, she can still hear Rudi cursing to himself: Your legs are still not long enough, asshole.

*   *   *

When I was a young girl in Santiago, there were games my brothers and I played when the day of the dead came around. My mother would fix up a basket of bread and corn fritters. We'd walk, with my father and brothers, to the cemetery, where other families had already lit up candles in the darkness. Hundreds of people crowded the graveyard. We had a humble family tomb under the oaks. The adults drank cheap rum and told stories. My parents talked of dead grandmothers who had baked wedding rings into bread, grandfathers who had held their breath in underwater caves, uncles who had received signs in their dreams. We, the children, played at the vaults. I put my favorite dolls on tombs and my brothers rode around on stick horses. Later we lay down on the cool stones and played at being dead. Even then, at the age of seven, I wanted to dance. On the tombs I sometimes thought I could feel the satin against my feet. It was the only night of the year we were allowed in the cemetery—our parents watched and made hot chocolate for us, and later we fell asleep in their arms.

It all returned to me like a dream on my last night in Leningrad.

A small farewell party had been held at a function room in the Kirov, hors d'oeuvres and Russian wine that tasted vaguely like hand lotion. My room was three kilometers from the Kirov but, instead of getting the tram, I walked, taking it all in, following the curve of the canals, a final gesture to the city. It was a warm white evening. Three years in skirts. I wore my orange pants. Girls giggled and waved. The wine had made my head a little woozy. The straight lines of the architecture were gone, the palaces were blurry, the wide streets narrowed, and the bronze statues of the Anichkov bridge seemed to sway. I hardly cared. My spirit was already home in Chile.

When I got to the apartment block I ran up the stairs. Inside, Rudi was sitting on my bed, cross-legged.

“You left the door open,” he said.

He had been at the party earlier and had already said a theatrical good-bye, but I wasn't surprised to see him. My bags were packed but he had opened them, removed the copies of
Dance
magazine that had beaten the censors, and they were spread out on the bed, open to pictures of London, New York, Spoleto, Paris.

“Make yourself at home,” I said.

He grinned and asked me to take out my guitar. He sat, then, on the floor with his head against the bed, his eyes closed, listening. I thought of Mama, the way she, had sung to me at night beneath the murraya branches. She said to me once that a bad voice came from a good life, a good voice came from a bad life, but that a great voice came from a confusion of both.

After his favorite song Rudi stepped across to me. My head was still spinning from the wine and he put his finger to my lips, took the guitar from me, laid it against the wall.

I said, “Rudi, no.”

He touched the buttons on my cardigan, circled them with his finger, his fringe of hair against my forehead. He ran his hands across my waist, moved his fingers up my arms and on to my shoulders, his touch uneasy yet precise. I laughed and slapped his hands away.

“You're leaving,” he whispered.

My buttons were open. His hands rested on my back and his legs trembled against mine. I had not slept with anyone since my arrival in Russia. I bit my tongue, pushed him away. Rudi gasped and lifted me, put his mouth to the ridge of my collarbone, thrust me against the wall. I slipped against his shoulder, caught the scent of him, said: “Rudi, no.”

I turned my face to his. “We're friends.”

His mouth touched my earlobe. “I have no friends.”

“Xenia,” I whispered.

He drew back sharply from me. I hadn't meant to invoke her, the name had slipped off my tongue. I immediately felt sober. He had been sleeping with Pushkin's wife for a while but the affair had ended abruptly. Although Rudi had dismissed her, she still watched him rehearse, cooked for him, cleaned his clothes, attended to his whims.

He went to the window, his hands cupped low, embarrassed by his arousal.

I laughed nervously, not meaning to shame him, but he stepped backwards and slammed his fist into the wall.

“For this I missed rehearsal,” he said.

“For this?”

“For this.”

He was so close to the window his breath steamed the glass.

At the bathroom sink I poured cold water on my face. He was still at the window when I returned. I told him to leave and come back when he was Rudi once more, his ordinary self. He had his own apartment now, eight streets away. But he didn't budge. The child in him seemed to reflect off the glass while he watched me in his own reflection. He had often told me that he loved me, that he'd marry me, that we'd dance together around the world—it had become our joke in the few moments when we found ourselves with little to say, but now the silence parted us.

He pouted in a charming way and I thought about the days we had spent together: massaging each other's feet, skating, sunbathing by the canals, the evenings with Yulia. Perhaps the wine was still in me, I don't know, but finally I said to him, “Rudi, come here.”