Dancing in the Light (23 page)

To make a long story short, he spent the night, thereby establishing that he hadn’t been out of line by bringing his jogging shoes. He was a joy to be with and not for a moment did I regret my own impulsiveness.

When he got undressed, I noticed he was wearing a gold cross around his neck.

I didn’t have a call the next day, which was Friday, and then came the weekend. Vassy spent the next four days with me in Malibu (he “changed his mind” about his Paris weekend). We jogged along the beach, took walks in the mountains, and talked and made love and talked and made love.

He said he was overwhelmed with happiness, and gratefulness too, because he had finally found me and I was, as he put it, “simply the woman of my life.”

For me? I wasn’t really sure. I would see. There were so many unanswered questions, but they didn’t seem to matter. We were having a glorious time together and apparently we both needed it.

Vassy told me about filmmaking in Russia and how comfortable and supportive his surroundings were at his studio, Mosfilm, where he served as head of the unit for young filmmakers. He spoke of his fellow workers with love and affection and of how they wondered whether he would be successful in the West. He asked me if I would do a film with him in Russia and said how much I would love the Russian people and their sense of passion and joy. He said ne wanted me to see the rest of his films someday, and that his final dream would be to work with me. I took some of it with a grain of salt, but a lot of it I felt was genuine.

He told me about his three wives and how marriage was so necessary in Russia because of their conventional attitudes. Divorces were commonplace for the same reason. He loved all of his wives and, for that matter, all of his women. And his lovers apparently had not been insignificant in number. Why not, I thought. One coula say the same about me; nor had I married them all.

“I once visited a great psychic in Bulgaria,” he said. “I told her nothing about me. She correctly outlined my family’s tree and then said to me, ‘Why
America?’ I said nothing. No one knew I was thinking about America. No one. And then she said, ‘You are very dirty with women.’ Perhaps I am using wrong wordage here, but she explained to me that I was not fair with women.”

I looked at him open-eyed. Vassy visited psychics? And put stock in what they said, and on top of that was totally honest about it? This was an interesting man—a man who seemed to be confessing something to me which he desired to change.

“Well,
are
you dirty with women?” I asked in my subtle way.

“Yes. I think that is true. Yes. But then, I had never met the woman of my life before. Now I have.”

“What else did she tell you?” I asked. He laughed.

“She said, ‘Don’t entangle with politics. Dangerous for you!’ ”

I tried to say something that made sense. “Well, you don’t necessarily believe everything psychics say, do you?”

“No, but I would say they are to be seriously considered,” he answered. “She was correct about my family and everyone in it. She knew I had America in my mind before I told anyone. This same Bulgarian woman was consulted by high rank officers. She is guarded by police because she is national treasure. I say she is reliable, but I don’t know what she meant in regard to me.”

He jumped up and stretched. “I don’t know. I will show you now how to make a carrot and apple and beet salad with garlic—Russian style.”

Vassy in the kitchen was a culinary expert. He shredded the beets and carrots with sophisticated flurry and whipped up the strange musky concoction, which included apples that he chopped in the blender, before dishing it up on my wooden plates like a lumberjack … or peasant, to be more accurate.

Then he began to eat standing up.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You have time. What’s the hurry? Let’s go outside on the balcony and eat like real people.”

Vassy stopped chewing in mid-crunch as though I had just pointed out a basic vulgarity of which he was not aware.

“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “That would be nice.”

As we sat on the balcony I silently marveled at the strange contradiction of sophisticate and peasant that he seemed to be. He launched into a detailed and knowledgeable discussion of dietary principles and food-combining laced with understanding of what each food did for the human body. Yet, he shoveled the food down indiscriminately as he talked, apparently ignoring the contradiction between what he was saying and what he was doing. He certainly enjoyed himself, savoring the food with total commitment. He was clearly not a man who did things by halves. The food on his plate seemed symbolic of life to him, and if life, or food, or love, presented itself—he partook wholeheartedly. It was a quality I could revel in, because I was that way myself, even if it had drawbacks.

As he finished his salad he looked into his fresh carrot juice and said he had a small problem.

“I was supposed to return to Paris and move in with the woman I’ve been with. She is leaving her husband for me, but you mentioned, perhaps, being in Paris?”

I gulped because indeed I had it in mind to go to Paris immediately after I finished the picture in order to take a vacation with Vassy. Then we would see what would happen. Play it by ear, I thought. I was not prepared for this earful.

“But now I have met the woman of my life in you and I must be fair with my other woman.”

“I see,” said I. “I guess you have a slight personal problem. But what has that to do with me?”

He looked up from his glass. “Well, you want to
come to Paris, yes? You proposed coming with me, yes?”

“Yes,” I said, “I guess that’s what I was driving at, but I don’t want to upset anything else that is important to you.”

“You are important to me,” he said. “You always have been. Although I never expected you to feel this way about me. Therefore I must tell her and explain what has happened.”

“All right,” I said, once again caught up in the dilemma of man-woman logistics. “Go now. Do what you feel you have to do and I’ll be waiting to come when I finish my film, which should be in about ten days.”

“You really will come to me in Paris?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of all the other times I had been there and wondering how different this time would be, because of him.

“Good. It’s settled then. It will be difficult, but I will tell her.”

He stood up, looked out at the sea, and said, “I love very much this Malibu.” And then looking straight into my eyes he said, “And you are my real love.”

I put my arms around his waist and we held each other.

“Now I must go to the Chateau,” he said. “Someone is coming to help me pack and then drive me to the airport. I will call you before I leave.”

With organized directorial precision he arranged himself to leave. Then he reached in his bag and, from next to his passport, drew out a small blue medal with a religious figure on it.

“I want you have this,” he said. “Put on chain. It was given me by my mummy when I left Russia. Is blessed by archbishop of church.”

I held the blue disc in the palm of my hand. In gold mosaic I saw the figures of the Virgin Mary holding Christ, with a halo around each head.

I looked up at Vassy.

“You want me to have this?” I asked.

“Of course,” he answered. “You are my love. It will protect you until we are together again. Now what do you have for me that you have worn?”

I took the gold chain from around my neck and fastened it around his. It hung just above the chain of his gold cross.

“Is beautiful,” he said. “It has your energy. I feel it. I will wear always. You will see.”

We walked through the apartment toward the door. He looked from the window out over the ocean and took one last deep breath. I walked him to his car, his jogging shoes hung over his shoulder. I thought of now sure of himself he was with me.

“Life is a wonderful mystery, yes?” he said.

I nodded.

He drove away down Malibu Road waving at me backward as he went. I wondered what he would be in my life, not realizing then what a marvelously infuriating mystery he really would be.

Chapter 9

S
everal days later I took the night flight to Paris and waited in customs for my luggage with some anxiety over what it would be like to see Vassy again. I looked through an open door leading to the outside. He was there, all right, a commanding figure in an alpaca coat and a Russian wool hat.

I walked out with my luggage.

Very tentatively he came toward me and eyed my single fairly good sized bag.

“My place is a small cell,” he said fearfully. “You will see. A friend of mine, Sasha, and his wife have allowed me to use it because now I have no money for rent.”

I remembered the expensive French restaurant in Hollywood and how he threw monetary realism to the winds.

“I don’t mind small cells,” I said. “I can sleep anywhere.”

He quickly recovered from his concern, lifted my bag, and led me outside with proud confidence.

I assured him again that sleeping arrangements or living conditions, for that matter, couldn’t have mattered less to me. He stopped and looked at me deeply for a moment as though assessing whether I really meant what I said.

I wondered at this point if I should tell him it
was all still a curious adventure to me that I didn’t want to miss because, in some inexplicable way, I felt very familiar with him. I didn’t understand him, no, but I felt that I knew him, maybe even better than he knew himself. I said nothing though.

He led me to a car, a Mercedes, which he said he had driven from Moscow.

It might have been Paris in the springtime, but it was also raining. A cold, chilling drizzle.

“The weather all over the world is changing,” said Vassy. “Something wrong. Something peculiar. Too much experimenting with nature, I believe. Nature belongs to God. Mankind doesn’t understand her mysteries. Nature fights back when she is assaulted.”

He opened his window and breathed deeply. Then he sighed. “I love the smells of nature. They are pure and trustworthy.”

His English was improving. He pulled the car into an underground garage over which there rose a pleasant apartment building. He bounded out of the car, retrieved my bag from the trunk, and led me, via an elevator, to the apartment. Rattling his large French keys, he opened the door.

Vassy was right. His place
was
a small cell. I followed him inside. He didn’t look at me, busying himself with making room for my bag instead. There was just enough room for a mattress on the floor, a table beside the mattress, and in the corner a small refrigerator with a hot plate on top. I looked over at a small kitchen cabinet, which I could see housed garlic and a few jars of spices. Did he really cook here? Maybe that would be my job. How could we eat out now if he didn’t even have money for rent? Was I supposed to pay for everything? I could afford it, certainly, but would that embarrass him?

Putting all economic considerations out of my mind, I turned to him and said, “Vassy, I love it. It’s cozy and what more do you need with all the traveling
you do?” I wasn’t just being diplomatic. It was true.

He reached up into a small cluttered closet and began to make room for me. Immediately, I began to unpack to relieve his concern. I took out a few sweaters and slacks and hung them on two hangers. I could feel his relief that I didn’t travel like a movie star. I had learned during my own travels how to conserve space very comfortably.

He made some hot tea with lemon, while I walked around behind the closet and found the bathroom. Thank God, I thought. I was afraid I would have to go down the hall, as was the case in so many European living quarters.

The bathroom was as quaint and charmingly minuscule as the “cell.” There was a toilet with a chain flush, a sink with a mirror over it, and one of those half-tub-half-showers that the French can somehow get clean in. The shower was a hand shower, which I had never learned to manipulate properly. I usually sprayed the entire room.

I shut the door to the bathroom and washed my face, looking around at his toilet articles on the sink. He used an electric razor, which was plugged into the wall. There was a giant-sized bottle of Jaragan aftershave lotion. I wondered if that was French or Russian. I opened the bottle and smelled it. It smelled how I remembered he smelled. Next to the Jaragan was a white plastic box with a wire attached to it. There were four sticks that looked like toothpicks standing up beside the white box and an electric cord attached to the wall. Was this an electric Water Pik? I had never seen one. Was this what he used to achieve that “perfect imperfection” effect with his teeth?

Feeling the urge, I sat down on the toilet. I looked around the small bathroom more carefully. To my amazement, the door opened. There was no warning knock, no “how are you doing?” Nothing. Vassy simply opened the bathroom door on me,
found me sitting on the toilet, and very agreeably inquired, “Are you all right?”

I nodded, attempting to seem undisturbed, and, startled into feeling this was a social occasion, politely asked if the white plastic box was an electric Water Pik.

“Of course,” he said. I could feel a pronouncement coming on. “You must use it. Particularly after such a long flight.”

I nodded, coming to grips with the dynamics of the situation.

“Come,” he said. “Now. We must show you how to use it now.”

Too much.

“Out!” I said. And then, with as much dignity as I could muster, “I’ll call you when I need you.” I was to learn that Vassy had absolutely no sense of privacy—his own or anybody else’s. He was even known to follow people into airplane lavatories to make sure they were not sneaking a cigarette.

Presently he proceeded to educate me about my teeth. As always, in matters of health, he was deadly serious. “You must use this every day,” he announced. “The water pressure is good for gums. You must be careful of gums and teeth for close-ups. Cameras can be cruel, Sheerlee, you know that. You need to pay more attention.”

As he showed me, with insistent determination, how to use the Water Pik, I began to realize I would have to either ignore some of his autocratic dictates, learn to control myself when I felt he got out of line, or just let go and let him have it.