Russian Winter (26 page)

Serge has taken the seat beside Vera, asking, “And how is your Achilles?” in a concerned, somehow intimate tone. “Better, I hope?” Vera injured herself last week, not long after the article mentioning Gersh was published. Viktor teasingly calls it a “sympathizer’s injury.” But Nina doesn’t find it funny; there are few things more frustrating to a ballerina than not being able to dance.

“If all goes well,” Vera says calmly, that slight distance in her tone, “I should be back by the end of next week.” She brushes her hair back with a little fluttery movement, her fingers long and thin.

“Good, good.” Though Serge barely smiles, there is something fawning in his manner; it is the effect Vera has on all men, really—something wounded about her, with her great dark eyes and thin, pale frame. Even Viktor at times seems undone by her. In that same concerned voice, as if Gersh were not even present, Serge tells Vera, “I know Polina misses you on the nights you’re not in the dressing room with her.”

“I told him about our tongue-twister contest,” Polina puts in brightly, laughing, her tangerine lips wide; she must not see anything lecherous in Serge’s allusion to the dressing room. Vera too laughs, and as Polina begins to explain to the rest of them, Nina realizes, with something like shock, that Polina and Vera have somehow, without Nina even noticing, become friends.

The feeling that takes hold of her is much like the jolt she felt just a few weeks ago, when, on her night off, she went to visit Mother,
only to find that she was not home. Worried, Nina waited, went out for a bit, then returned, quite late. Still in her coat, Mother had just gotten back, her cheeks rosy and cold from the night air, smiling proudly as she explained—as if it were the most natural thing in the world—that she had been at the Bolshoi; Vera had a new solo, which she had of course wanted to see.

Serge has caught the waiter’s eye, raises his hand to command two more glasses and vodka for the table. Nina finds herself thinking that finally Polina has found someone who isn’t quite such a lummox. She has moved up, if one can call it that, from jowly hangers-on to a more senior bureaucrat. At least, that’s how it looks. Though younger than the others, this man appears to have some real power. But does Polina really want to be like those fat Nomenklatura wives? All the time Nina hears about the fall from grace of this or that government official.

With surprising speed, the waiter delivers Serge’s order. They raise their glasses as Serge proposes a toast: “To tomorrow, bright budding flower.”

It’s a line from one of Viktor’s poems—and something of a catchphrase these days. Another reminder of how popular his latest volume has become, though it still surprises Nina to hear Viktor’s words on someone else’s lips. His career, like Nina’s, has fully taken flight, not to mention that his income has doubled. Just last month he was appointed editor of a new arts magazine, as well as writing his usual column for
Literaturnaya gazeta
. And this coming year, as a reward of sorts, he is being dispatched along with two journalists to Paris, on a “goodwill” mission.

The vodka slides down Nina’s throat. Polina says, “Oh, they’re waiting for us, we had better go join them.” She and Serge take their leave, and the way Serge’s eyes linger on Vera, Nina understands why he agreed to stop at their table.

When they have gone, Gersh grumbles, “That man looks like a trout.”

“Don’t be jealous, now,” Vera says, though with his slightly crossed eye and lowered reputation Gersh can hardly be blamed for feeling that way. Quietly, Vera adds, “He’s the sort you want on your side, you know. We ought to thank Polina.”

Nina cannot help but glance toward their table, with the other men like Serge (who really doesn’t look anything like a trout) and the women in their bright orange lipstick. Viktor, with a brief, dismissive sigh, as if having reached the end of some sad story, simply says, “Poor Polina.”

M
ounting the steep steps of the Department of Foreign Languages, Drew could hear voices, faint, growing louder. The secretary’s desk was empty, but there were more voices now, coming from down the hall, English being spoken with a Spanish accent…. Here was his office, “Grigori Solodin” engraved in a plastic nameplate on the door. Below the nameplate, scrawled on a big yellow Post-it, was a message:

Her heart, absurdly, fell. She couldn’t have said why; the book was right here, propped up on the carpet against his office door. She picked it up and placed it in her leather satchel, removing the list she had typed out for Grigori Solodin. Sliding the page into his mailbox, she told herself that it was better he was not here. This way she could go straight home and have an early night, for once.
She needed a quiet evening, a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow she would be up late again, flying out of Logan straight from work; Kate had found a last-minute deal and convinced her to come along, the Caicos Islands, four days, five nights, airfare and hotel included. All week Drew had been throwing things into the travel bag that sat unzipped in the corner of her bedroom, growing a messy heap.

From the other end of the hallway, she could hear voices. Now it was a French accent, and someone else cutting in, the words muted behind the door. Perhaps that was where Grigori Solodin was right now, at that meeting.

At home she found she had no appetite for dinner. She twisted open a jar of olives and poured herself a glass of wine, then curled up in the corner of the big lumpy sofa. Opening the book of Viktor Elsin’s poems, she read Grigori Solodin’s brief foreword, in which he explained the many difficult editorial decisions he had had to make—that as much as sound itself was important to these poems, in general he had chosen to forgo Elsin’s more rigid rhyme and metrical schemes in favor of closer approximation of his imagery and phrasing. As Drew turned the page, though, she was seized by an old, familiar fear, one that had begun all the way back in elementary school and that, perhaps thanks to Eric, she had never quite overcome: that the poems might be beyond her, that she might not quite understand. Even in college she had worried she might misread a poem and say something embarrassing in class.

To her surprise she found these poems—the early ones, at least—simple and delightful. Some were like songs, little ditties, sweet and joyous. Others were longer, their tone sometimes mysterious, sometimes romantic—yet their meaning, it seemed to Drew, was fairly straightforward. One later poem she liked so much she copied it into her notebook:

Drew liked its physicality, its sensuality, the natural world and the two lovers within it, the purity of the images despite, or perhaps because of, their innuendo: this couple conjoined, a pair, a true pairing. It was the way Drew still, perhaps stubbornly, allowed herself to view love—though really she knew better. Her mistaken marriage was itself a product of romanticized notions, the excitement of those first two years, of being “in love”: the late nights and long mornings together, love notes tucked into books and slipped under doors, that one tortured telephone call and fevered reconciliation, and, finally, after their engagement, the appealing idea that now Drew too had a love story to tell and, like so many people around her, could be loved in this universal, public way, with a shiny diamond on her finger.

The very recollection made Drew blush with shame, recalling what it had felt like to be “engaged,” the way the diamond caused
people to reassess her—their palpable appreciation that Drew was loved by someone, was someone worth loving. It was the sort of approval she had never felt from her parents at any of her other decisions (to major in art history instead of something practical, or to take a job at an art gallery no one had ever heard of). How thoroughly
good
she had felt at the engagement party, in her neat blue skirt and matching top with the sailor’s collar, like a young betrothed out of an old movie, happy and hopeful and smartly dressed, her hair in a neat bob. At last she had done something right.

Drew tried to stop the inevitable momentum of these thoughts, that same old loop, back to what it could have meant to have remained in that other life. She might have had a baby by now—had always thought she would, had planned on it, two children, she had hoped, so that they would always have each other and not be odd and introspective the way she herself had turned out. Now, though, who knew. At her age, it wouldn’t be much longer, just a few years’ time, probably, before the possibility would have fully receded.

But that was the price she would pay, Drew supposed, for attaching such dreams—of children, of a family—to the fantasy of romantic love, to that distracting vision of what true love might be: couplehood based on a connection Drew had yet to feel with anyone, really. Sometimes, when she thought about it too much, she became nearly panicked, at the fact that as much as she would have liked a family of her own, she had already, in a way, made a decision. By not actively seeking remarriage, by not prioritizing that search, by resigning herself to the impossibility of such luck, she was in fact giving up that other dream.

Poor Jen hadn’t had a chance when she signed Drew up for that dating Web site. As if Drew could have abided more than those few dates, the protracted meals at sushi bars and Irish pubs and “Asian fusion” restaurants, with men who laughed, surprised and slightly uncomfortable, when Drew spoke with excitement about her favorite
paintings in the MFA or a movie at the Harvard Film Archive, men who chewed gum and jiggled their legs and spent spare moments playing with their cell phones….

Stop it, Drew told herself, as she always did when her thoughts looped this way. She focused again on the book on her lap, even read a few of the poems aloud. They were arranged chronologically, and as the book progressed Drew found they changed slightly, remained sweet but with a nostalgic tone, sometimes wistful, sometimes closer to melancholy. She knew that these were approximations, that they would sound different in their original Russian; it was Grigori Solodin who had turned them into something Drew could understand. She found herself moved by the thought—that he had brought these poems to her, by finding the right words.

She imagined translation to be a solitary task, as solitary as the reading she herself did at home each night, and the research she did in the library and online at Beller. Or did Grigori Solodin show other people his work in progress, discuss the poems, and his translations, with them? Well, even if he did, a project like this—meticulous and sincere—came from the core, no matter how many people you discussed it with. Drew knew this from her own work. In the end there was just you and your heart.

In that way, it occurred to her, she and Grigori Solodin had their work in common: behind-the-scenes, unglamorous but necessary, and best undetected. All that effort, to deliver something beautiful to the public. Of course Grigori Solodin’s work took real talent, while Drew’s mainly took patience. But both were painstaking, and both required great care and the sort of focused attention that, if you allowed yourself to give in to it, and gave in to the great reward of it, became itself a form of devotion.

The thought made Drew feel less alone, or perhaps more happily alone, sitting there cross-legged on the sofa. It was the comfort of knowing that she was not quite so strange, that there were other
people who found delight in private challenges and quiet lives. People who lived in their thoughts as much as in the real, physical world. It was a reminder that true dedication to one’s work, to one’s art, was in fact—no matter how quiet or minor it might seem—a show of faith, a commitment to life. As for what Jen and Stephen and Kate said, that Drew spent too much time in books and in her mind, well, it was probably true. But it was also true that the internal world was an expansive one, always growing, full of possibilities that the real one did not necessarily offer.

W
INTER
1951. M
OONLIGHT
stretches the warped shadows of buildings, enormous and looming, over the square. Nina feels their presence like a weight above her as she crosses, shivering, toward the Bolshoi. Already the building is swarming with security guards. The ones at the entrance hold bayoneted rifles across their chests and, though Nina has become a recognizable face, make her show a special pass with her photograph on it, which they scrutinize coldly before allowing her in. For the rest of the night she will be made to show this pass, again and again, to enter her dressing room, the makeup room, the bathroom…even before stepping onstage (when she will have to tuck the stiff little card somewhere under her costume and pray it doesn’t slip out).

Inside, theater people scurry around terrified, as always on such nights. Before, Nina might have felt this way too, nervous and anxious to please. After all, Stalin appears in public just twice a year, at Red Square for the May Day parade and at the air show every July; these theater visits are therefore all the more portentous. Nina wouldn’t have thought anything could distract her from the knowledge of Iosef Vassarionovich himself being among her audience. But now, even as she applies her makeup and secures her bun with a
squadron of hairpins, Nina can’t stop thinking about Vera, about what Gersh has gone and done…. She tries to prevent her thoughts from continuing. Concentrate. Think only of the dance.

Tonight’s ballet is
Don Quixote
, and she is wearing Kitri’s flirtatious Spanish costume, the skirt layered with red frills that flip back and forth as Nina hurries to the practice room. She runs through her warm-up routine, hand resting lightly on the barre, swinging her legs forward and back to loosen her hips. Take deep breaths…. This is the first time the Great Leader will be watching Nina dance, and in the lead role—a technically demanding one, at that.

The door opens and Polina enters in her street dancer outfit, official pass in hand, leg warmers scrunched up around her knees (where she often complains of tendonitis). “Ugh, they’re everywhere.” Through the little square window in the door, Nina can see the top of a security guard’s frowning forehead. By now these men are thoroughly dispersed throughout the concert hall, dressed as ushers, or in civilian clothes, even seated in the orchestra pit with the musicians.

“I didn’t realize you were dancing tonight.”

“I’m Vera’s replacement. Her Achilles is bad again. I’m so nervous!” The room fills with the heavy scent of Polina’s perfume as she stretches her legs, points her toes, one foot and then the other, and then up onto the balls of her feet for some
relevés
. Her voice tense, she adds what she has come here to say: “I suppose you heard what her so-called love has gone and done.”

“He must have had no other choice,” Nina says, rolling her head left and right to warm up the neck. “That’s all I can think.” What he has done, as Nina has just learned from Viktor, is to go off and marry Zoya.

“Clearly he doesn’t love her,” Nina adds. “Zoya, I mean. He just needs her as…you know. A front.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a Party member, well respected. She told him that maybe she could help him. With the way the tide has turned.”

“She said that?”

“According to Gersh. He told Viktor that Zoya came to him with the idea—that it was her suggestion they marry.”

“
Her
suggestion?” Polina’s eyes open wide. “That woman stops at nothing!” As if she herself knows Zoya, and it is only natural…. A
tsk
sound, and a shake of her head. “She really will do anything to win Gersh back.”

And yet why would she want to, Nina wonders, if things are really so bad for him? Perhaps Zoya’s position in the Party protects her—as Vera wouldn’t be protected, if Gersh married her instead. Thinking this, Nina says, “After all, he’s protecting Vera, in a way.”

That too Viktor told her—that Gersh couldn’t bear to put Vera through this latest wave of darkness. Not after what she has already been through.

And anyway, Viktor added, all this would be short-lived, surely, you know politics, this sort of thing never lasts all that long…. Even a year or two ago, Nina might not have been able to see the situation quite so clearly.

“Well, I hate him.” But Polina says it without venom. In fact she looks exhausted, deep wells of gray under her eyes despite the thick layer of stage makeup.

“Are you all right?” Nina asks. Perhaps it is just nerves.

Polina looks away. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

“Maybe Uncle Feliks can give you something.” It’s the pet name they have for the main Bolshoi doctor, whom every one of them has had to see at some point or other.

“Oh, I imagine it will go away on its own.” Then, as if to change the subject, “I can’t believe Gersh.”

“For all we know it doesn’t even mean much of anything,” Nina
says. “Maybe it’s just a matter of signed papers. Maybe nothing much will change.”

“I suppose.” Polina is scratching her neck, and only now does Nina note the faint red splotches there. Her chest, too, Nina sees, is covered with pale red welts.

“I think you have some kind of rash.” She really must be nervous; Nina has seen this sometimes, during previous visits by the Great Leader—people so excited they break into hives.