“No one says things are perfect,” Mama said, trying to calm things down by being on both sides at once. “but maybe the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. Of course, Yeltsin has some good ideas.”
“We must do something now,” Grandfather said. “Things could not get worse than they have under Gorbachev. I mean to give Yeltsin a chance.” For months Grandfather had been working on Yeltsin’s election campaign in Leningrad.
“Just be careful, Georgi,” Papa warned Grandfather. “Gorbachev is determined to silence Yeltsin. If you stick your neck out for Yeltsin, you may find a noose around it.”
“Being careful is not in Georgi’s nature.” Grandmother sighed. “He has been fighting for freedom in this country as long as I have known him.”
Papa said, “Anyhow, what good is an election when there is only one party, the Communist party, to vote for?”
“We mean to change that,” Grandfather said. “People are resigning the party by the thousands. Unfortunately that only makes the party leaders more desperate. I’m afraid they are willing to do anything to hold on to their power.”
All the discussion seemed foolish. What did it have to do with me? I had heard these arguments a thousand times. Nothing would change in Russia. Russia would never be a democracy. In Russia there seemed to be no future; in the outside world, anything seemed possible. Escape was the answer. If I decided to go with Vera, I would never have to listen again to the same old arguments.
I busied myself sewing ribbons on my ballet shoes. The shoes were terribly expensive, and you were lucky if you could get through a performance with only one pair worn out. I wore out nearly two hundred pairs a year, and each new pair had to be broken in before it could be worn. First, the sole had to be grated on Mama’s potato grater so that I didn’t slip. The box of the toe, the part that supports you when you are en pointe, had to be mercilessly hammered so that the box seemed a part of your foot. Finally, because I had the misfortune to have a second toe longer than the first toe, I had to stuff cotton in the shoe so all the toes were equal.
While the arguments continued, the door to the apartment opened, and there was Aunt Marya stamping her boots to get rid of the snow. She is really my great-aunt, but we are so close that I call her aunt. She has had great tragedy in her life. The man she was in love with, a soldier, Andrei, was killed in the last days of the Great Patriotic War. She never married but devoted her life to the Hermitage, Leningrad’s great art museum.
It was difficult to find stylish clothes in the Soviet Union, but Aunt Marya was always stylish. It was as if the ravishing pictures she lived with all day in the museum lent her some of their elegance. She was wearing a wool cloak embroidered with flowers and a long matching skirt. Over this was thrown a wool shawl in a brilliant blue.
I longed to tell Aunt Marya that I was thinking of running away from the Soviet Union. I was sure she would be sympathetic, for she had once told me, “Tanya, many years ago I was invited to go to Paris when some of the paintings from the Hermitage were being displayed there. What a city! The boulevards, the Seine, the fashionable women, and Tanya, there are restaurants where you can order whatever you like. How I longed to stay, to escape all this dreariness. I could not. I couldn’t leave all my lovely pictures in the Hermitage. It was during the days of Stalin. To get money for a bigger army, Stalin was selling some of our finest paintings to a rich man who had a museum in America. Though I knew I could do little about it, still, I had to be in Russia standing guard over the pictures. But Tanya, I have never forgotten Paris.”
After she took off her boots, Aunt Marya kissed everyone and exclaimed over the article in the magazine. “I can tell from this article that the editor of the magazine has his eye on you, Tanya. You are sure to be picked to go on the tour to Paris, and how I envy you. You must visit all my favorite places for me.”
Mama gave Aunt Marya a cup of hot tea and some bread and jam. “You are just in time to take sides,” Mama said. “We are shouting at one another as to who is to lead the Soviet Union, Gorbachev or Yeltsin.”
“We will be very lucky if that is our choice,” Aunt Marya said.
“What do you mean, Marya?” Mama asked.
We all listened, for as second in command of the Hermitage, Aunt Marya overheard political gossip while showing groups of important politicians around the museum or attending receptions at which members of the government were present. The officials spoke more freely than they might have if they could have seen through Aunt Marya’s charm to her sharp mind.
“We had a little contingent from the politburo yesterday,” she said. “They came to see if they had received their money’s worth for the fortune it had cost to clean the Leonardo da Vinci. I trailed along, smiling and smiling at them as they talked away. There seems to be a feeling that both Gorbachev and Yeltsin are embracing too much freedom to suit the old-line Communists. I believe they would like to get rid of both men. If the country is not careful, we will have another Stalin on our hands.”
Grandfather’s face was very red. “I hear the same thing. Nothing could be worse, but how could they fix the election? I don’t see that it is possible.”
Aunt Marya shrugged. “Georgi, you above all should know that in this country everything is possible.”
After Aunt Marya left, I slipped away to my little closet and emptied out my purse to see how many rubles I had. As soon as I had enough, I was going to buy a CD of French love songs sung by Jean Sablon and Charles Trenet. Their voices were so sexy. My aunt Marya had a CD player she let me use. I forgot all about politics and what might or might not happen to my country. What could that have to do with me? Instead, I imagined myself strolling along the Seine on a spring day with a debonair Frenchman. When a little voice inside me said, “What about Sasha?” I silenced it.
CHAPTER 3
SASHA
The next afternoon, on my way to the children’s shelter where I volunteered as a ballet teacher, I stopped by to see Sasha. Home for Sasha and his grandmother was a walk-up apartment on a side street where even fifty years later you could still see bullet holes from the war. Sasha’s grandmother, Nadya Petrovna, was sitting up in bed. She was like a bird with tiny sharp features and hair like feathers sticking up around her small head. Even her voice had a chirping sound. “Sasha, love, here is Tanya to see us. Just what I needed to cheer me. Come, sit on the bed, Tanya, and tell me about your dear family. Sasha, put on the kettle and give Tanya some of those American cookies you brought me.” She shook her head. “My Sasha spoils me. Every day he brings me a present.”
His generosity was one of the reasons I cared so much for Sasha. He never spent money on himself; any money that did not go for his art supplies went for his grandmother. Besides her medicines, he bought little treats to make her happy. I settled down beside Nadya Petrovna, and she grasped my hand in her hot, thin fingers. Her wasted body was wrapped in a brightly colored silk kimono. Sasha had traded one of his paintings for it. Nadya Petrovna looked like a creature from a fable, a fairy godmother or a kindly witch. The apartment was only one small room with a portion curtained off for Sasha, but it was magical. The tables and dresser tops were covered with bright scarves; even the lamps were draped with scarves, so the room was faintly lit in different colors. On the walls were Sasha’s ballet sketches and paintings.
Along with Sasha’s work, Nadya Petrovna had several icons on the wall, all but one of them of little value except to her. Nadya Petrovna’s icon of St. Vladimir had a place of honor. St. Vladimir lived more than a thousand years ago. He started out very badly, what with killing Christians right and left and having lots of wives and eight hundred girlfriends. Later in his life he repented, became a Christian, and said goodbye to the eight hundred girlfriends. A candle burned in front of the icon, which was old and very valuable. Nadya Petrovna once told me the ancient icon had come to her family in a mysterious way that was never spoken of aloud, but that had something to do with the Empress Alexandra hersel
f. “We clung to it through revolution and war,” she said.
The icons Sasha was working on were scattered on a table. He had once explained to me how he mixed his tempera paints in order to copy the soft blues, reds, and golds of the old icons. “Sasha, you are so clever,” I said. “These look like they are hundreds of years old. I could never tell them from the real thing.” Sasha merely shrugged. For all of his cleverness I knew he resented painting the icons and longed to have more time to spend on his own original work.
While Sasha put on the kettle, I turned to Nadya Petrovna. “Tell me how you are feeling,” I said.
Though she was nothing more than skin and bones, and looked as if she would disappear in a puff of smoke at any moment, she answered, “Very well, my dear. My Sasha is a miracle worker. Somehow he finds me medicine.” Papa often complained about a lack of medicine for his patients, and I knew Sasha had to buy the medicine on the black market and pay dearly for it.
Sasha came in bearing a tray with glasses of tea and a plate of dainty cookies. I longed to sample one, but Sasha did not take one and frowned at me, so I excused myself with “I am still full from lunch.” I knew he wanted the treats for his grandmother.
I was startled to hear a chirping noise and thought for a moment it came from Nadya Petrovna. She was laughing at my surprise. “Sasha, take the scarf from the cage. Let Tanya see the little companion you have given me to cheer me up.”
Sasha, looking embarrassed, pulled away one of the scarves, revealing a birdcage. Inside the cage a little finch hopped about, excited at the light.
“That’s Kuzma. My little darling takes a nap when I do,” Nadya Petrovna said. “When Sasha is gone, he keeps me company. We sing to each other.” At this she began a chirping, peeping noise and the bird answered. “There, you see, we speak the same language.” The difference between them was that the bird sang freely and Sasha’s grandmother was soon out of breath.
I saw that Nadya Petrovna’s face was paler than it had been when I first arrived and her eyelids drooped. Hastily I excused myself, promising to return. Sasha took up the glasses and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Come again soon,” she whispered. “I like to have lively young people about.” She held on to my hand. Suddenly all her cheerfulness was gone. It was like seeing a bird dropping from the heavens to the ground. With a quick glance toward the kitchen, she whispered, “Promise me if anything happens to me, you will watch over Sasha.”
I was going to reassure her that nothing would happen to her but I saw from her eyes that she did not want easy comforting. I held more tightly to her hand and nodded, hating myself for my deception, for I might be far away in Paris.
Sasha followed me into the hallway. I knew from his closed, sulky face that he did not want me to see how much he cared for his grandmother. I held his face in my hands and kissed him. “Sasha,” I said, “Nadya Petrovna will be fine. With all your good care, how could she not be?”
As I left, I heard his grandmother say in a small breathless voice, “Sasha, dear, put the scarf over the cage. Kuzma and I will have a little rest.”
I tried to put Sasha’s troubles out of my mind as I hurried along to the children’s shelter, cutting through the Summer Garden where the rows of statues were covered with gray wooden boxes to protect them from the snow. Inside the boxes were Roman emperors and voluptuous women all waiting for the spring to set them free. It was like Russia itself, waiting for some miracle to turn it from a gray, drab country into the great land it had once been. Grandfather Georgi was an optimist, insisting that the people of Russia had survived revolutions and terror, starvation and war, so that one day they might be free. I could not be as optimistic as Grandfather, for the dream of Russia’s freedom kept slipping away.
A few years ago some archaeologists, digging in the Summer Garden just where I was walking, found unexploded artillery shells from the Great Patriotic War. Fearing that the bombs might go off before they could be safely dug up and detonated, people from all over the city brought their old clothes and blankets to protect the elegant statues. I remembered Grandmother setting off for the garden with our only tablecloth. It was like that with Russia. It seemed as if there was always some emergency requiring its people to make sacrifices.
On the Prospekt people walked against the wind, their heads down, brushing past one another without a look. On Ostrovsky Square snow was wrapped about the statue of Catherine the Great like an ermine mantle. I turned into the ugly warehouselike building that housed the shelter. Most of the children were runaways, many of them children who had been abandoned and abused. There was a name for such children, besprizorniki, neglected ones. The name had first been used seventy-five years ago for the orphans of the revolution. After all the years of communism we still had to have shelters for besprizorniki. I admired Grandfather for working so hard for change, but it seemed it would never come.
Uncle Fyodor was in charge of the shelter and had talked me into giving ballet lessons to some of the children. Uncle Fyodor was not really my uncle. During the Siege of Leningrad Aunt Marya had found him abandoned, his parents dead of starvation, a besprizornik himself. She had adopted him. He had never forgotten her kindness and had given his life to the abandoned children of Leningrad.
He was a heavy man with a healthy appetite and a round belly to match. He had large features and a massive shiny bald head. Everything about Uncle Fyodor was big: his gestures, his round eyes, his wide smile, and his heart. It was hard to imagine the shy, skinny child Aunt Marya talked of rescuing.
I was greeted with a hug and nearly disappeared into Uncle Fyodor’s big arms and chest. “Tanya, the children have been counting the hours until your arrival. They live for your visits. Let me take your coat and get rid of your wet boots.”
I had been working with my class for over a year. It was small, only four children ten to twelve years old: Anatoli, Galina, Yulia, and Natalia. Anatoli had no discipline but jumped about as he pleased, thinking ballet was a kind of gymnastic exercise. Galina and Yulia were dear girls who were in love with the idea of becoming ballerinas, but who would be just as happy to be rock singers or movie stars. They only wanted a glamorous life and had no idea of the years of work it takes to learn ballet. It was Natalia who gave me hope. She was like me. If she had to give up dancing, I believed she would die.
When I first saw her, she had a bruise on her pinched face and a patch of her hair was missing. Even with her injuries she had a delicate beauty. She had come to the shelter because her father in one of his drunken rages had beaten her and her mother. The mother had stayed, but Natalia had run away.
She refused to say where she came from or what the rest of her name was. She insisted that she had run away only to be a ballerina. When she told Uncle Fyodor her story, he contacted me and the classes began. “There is very little for them here,” he had said. “They need some occupation.” While the other three children forgot about their dancing the minute the class was over, Uncle Fyodor said, Natalia practiced day and night.
For once Natalia’s somber, pale face was flushed and excited. “Tanya,” she said, “I have done a hundred and twenty sur les pointes on my new shoes. Soon I will have to darn them as you do.” I had coaxed the members of the ballet troupe to save their worn toe slippers for me, and the last time I had come, I had brought four pairs.
I had to smile at how quickly she picked up the French words that are so much a part of the world of ballet. “Natalia, the minute you have new shoes, you want to wear them out!”
“But you are always complaining about darning your shoes.”
“Yes, yes, but give yourself a little time. Now everyone at the barre.” Uncle Fyodor had put a practice barre up against the wall of the little room that served as a cafeteria for the shelter at mealtimes. The shoes seemed to have enchanted the four children, and they worked earnestly at their exercises. To reward them, I told them the story of the famous red dancing slippers and how the little girl who wished for them g
ot them and then couldn’t stop dancing. The story gave me an idea. I would make up my version of a ballet about the shoes, and Natalia would dance the part of the girl. I had wanted to show her off to Madame Pleshakova, hoping that Madame would take her into the ballet school next year. If it was to happen, it must be soon, for Natalia was already old to begin her training.
I assigned parts and calmed Anatoli, who was rejoicing in the grisly part of the woodman who chops off the girl’s feet. It was the first time the class had danced a story. In the beginning everyone was interested, but when Galina, Anatoli, and Yulia saw that each movement would have to be practiced over and over, they soon lost interest, just going through the motions. In Natalia the story ignited a fire. She practiced each step until she could dance it effortlessly. She was the girl who was dancing in enchanted slippers. Although the only training she had was the little I had given her, she was like a force of nature, like a tornado or a typhoon. There were mistakes and awkwardness, and her steps were simple ones, but with a deep sigh I wondered if with all my skill and practice I would ever have Natalia’s fire.
CHAPTER 4
GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION
The February snows melted into late-March fogs and into mists that rose from the rivers and canals and turned the city into an illusion of a city. Leningrad became St. Petersburg again, the city that Peter the Great was said to have built in the sky and then, when he had found just the right place, let down to earth.
Everything in my life was as up in the air as Peter’s city. We had yet to learn who would be in the tour and who would be left behind. A great deal depended upon the ballets that would be danced. If we did the classical ballets such as Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, it might be one group of dancers. It might be another group of dancers if we did the more experimental ballets, like the new version of The Rite of Spring that we were premiering on this evening.