Colum McCann - Dancer

I love it, he said.

What?

This city. I love it.

Why’s that?

Oh don’t trust that Nevsky Prospect, it’s all lies and dreams, it’s not what it all seems! he said, quoting Gogol, surprising me.

Then he lay back with his arms behind his head and exhaled, long and happily. I drank my wine quickly, then stupidly burst into tears for no reason at all, which embarrassed him, so he turned away.

I watched him sleep.

I thought then of my parents, the few times I had met them. They had been comical together, my father just a little taller than my mother and almost as narrow in the shoulders. He had a gray mustache, wore old-time shirts with cuff links, and his trousers always hovered above his ankles. His body had been ruined from all the years in the camps — in Siberia he had chopped off his toe with an ax to prevent gangrene, so he walked with a limp. Losing his toe had in fact saved my father — in the camp infirmary he met a doctor who was also a poet. They secretly shared lines from the old masters and, in return, the doctor made sure my father was kept alive. My father was well-known in the camps for his ability to hear a line of poetry and never forget it and, even after he was released, he could recall things that ordinarily would have whittled away. But his heart was weak from all the punishment, and his foot gave him tremendous trouble. Although a dreadful insomniac, he maintained a defiant cheerfulness, as if to say, You have not broken me. My mother, too, had retained her beauty through the years, her body still taut from years of ballet, her hair in a tight bun, eyes bright and lively. They had a remarkable regard for each other, my parents — even at their age they still held hands.

I looked at Rudi tossing on my couch, thinking that he was the secret now joining them together. And yet I didn’t feel jealous. I suppose one finally learns, after much searching, that we really only belong to ourselves.

I was still awake when the white night integrated itself into the morning. My deadlines for the Institute of Translation still gnawed at me, three Spanish sestinas so complicated that I doubted I could arbitrate their elegance. After breakfast I took a tram and carted my self-pity to the countryside, to a place I had gone since I was a child. There was a peculiar spot where the river seemed to bend itself against the land — it was a trick of the eye but the water seemed to go uphill. A grassy bank was filled with wildflowers and a trio of willow trees bent down to the river. I have always liked the tactile feel of standing, fully clothed, in running water. I went in up to my thighs, then lay on the riverbank and let the sun dry me off. I shaped one of the poems and set it in order, the six incanted words working haphazardly for me: faithful, dead, candle, silence, nighthawk, and radiance. When I had achieved a modicum of success, I closed my notebooks and swam in my underwear.

In truth I was still attractive then, having taken on my mother’s body, her dark hair, her fair skin, my father’s pale eyes.

I stayed by the river until late and when I arrived home my friends were already gathered around the table by the window, chatting seriously in the guarded language we shared. This was the normal routine — Monday nights were generally spent in the company of scientists and linguists I’d been friendly with since university. The evenings weren’t so much a salon —the word disturbs me, reeking as it does of the unmistakeably bourgeois — more a simple relief, all cigarettes and vodka, philosophy, invective and half words. Larissa was a professor of French. Sergei, a botanist. Nadia, a translator. Petr dabbled in the philosophy of science, ranting about Heisenberg and the inherent uncertainty of our lives — he was the sort of red-faced bore who could sometimes shore up an evening. I was vaguely in love with another Iosif, a tall blond-haired linguist who, when he got drunk, would switch to Greek. My husband didn’t participate at all, staying late most nights at his university office.

I entered the room quietly and watched a small drama unfolding at the table. Rudi was listening to the conversation, chin on his hand, somewhat taken aback, as if he’d just been presented with a great amount of words to swallow. The discussion centered on a new play reviewed in Pravda to great acclaim for its portrayal of striking workers in pre-Revolutionary Hungary. The talk spun on the phrase “linguistic dualism,” a term that had occurred quite often in recent reviews, though its meaning seemed nebulous to everyone but Petr. I pulled up a chair and joined the group. Rudi had opened a bottle of my husband’s vodka and had poured for everyone at the table, including a glass for himself. He looked close to being drunk. At one stage he leaned and touched my hand and said: Great!

When the evening finished he spilled out into the night with my friends and came home three hours later — Iosif had already returned and gone to sleep — saying, Leningrad Leningrad Leningrad!

He started dancing and looked as if he was checking the span of his wings. I let him be, moving around him to clean the dishes. Before I went to bed he shouted at the top of his voice: Thank you, Yulia Sergeevna!

It was the first time I ever remembered being called after my father, since I had always used the patronymic of my grandfather. I climbed beneath the covers and turned away from Iosif, my heart beating. My father’s visage swam in front of my eyes and, in my fitful sleep, an idea for the last line of the sestina resurfaced. The next morning the other two sestinas came to life so effortlessly that their underlying politics — the poet was a Marxist from Bilbao — seemed a significant accident. I put them in an envelope and brought them to the institute, where money was awaiting me. I bought some Turkish coffee and returned home, where Rudi was waiting, despondent. His first day of dancing had not gone well. He drank three coffees and went outside to the courtyard — from above, looking down, I watched him practice around the ironwork fencing.

All that week Rudi auditioned at the school and at night he wandered the city, sometimes coming back as late as three in the morning — it was white nights after all, nobody slept — talking about the beautiful palaces, or a vendor he had met outside the Kirov, or a guard who had swung a suspicious eye on him on Liteiny Prospect. I tried to warn him, but he shrugged me off.

I’m a country bumpkin, he said. They’re not interested in me.

There was something unusual in the clipped way he talked, a curious cocktail of rural arrogance and sophisticated doubt.

At the very end of the week I was hanging laundry in the communal kitchen when I heard my name being called from below. Yulia! I looked out the small window to see him in the rear courtyard, perched high on the ironwork fence, balanced precariously.

I got it! he shouted. I’m in! I’m in!

He jumped from the fence and landed in a puddle and ran towards the stairwell.

Clean your shoes! I shouted down.

He grinned and wiped his shoes with the cuff of his shirt, ran up the stairs to hug me.

I found out later that he had talked his way into the Leningrad Choreographic as much as he had danced. His level was still just high average, but they liked his fire and intuition. He was much older than most students, but the birth rate had dropped so significantly during the war that they were willing to audition dancers his age, even give them scholarships. He was to stay in a dorm with mostly eleven- and twelve-year-olds, which horrified him, and he pleaded with me to let him come along to my Monday evening gatherings. When I said yes, he took my hand and kissed it — he was, it seemed, already learning Leningrad.