Colum McCann - Dancer

We’re not in love, she told me one afternoon.

You’re not?

She raised her eyebrows, making me feel like I was twenty years old, not her.

Of course not, she said.

With RosaMaria I began to feel that I had once again opened myself to the world. We brewed coffee late into the night. She tutored me in Chilean dialects and wrote out old ballads, which I translated — she knew more love songs than anyone I’d ever met. Through her connections I managed to get my hands on a new gramophone. I read whatever I could find, Gorky, Pushkin, Lermentov, Mayakovsky, Mao, a Theodore Dreiser novel, Mitchel Wilson, Dante’s Inferno, Chekhov, even reread Marx, of whom I was very fond. I took on some more work with the institute and went on long walks with RosaMaria.

Every few months I sent my traditional package to my parents, including a letter to tell them that Rudi was doing just fine, progressing in his classes, that he had found a teacher who understood him.

My father replied, in the simple code we used, that the fruitcake hadn’t nearly as many raisins as usual, meaning of course that the letter was scant. He said that Ufa was gray under gray under yet more gray, and that he and my mother would desperately like to make a trip away from the city.

He wondered if I could pull any strings — Saint Petersburg, he wrote, had always been famous for its puppetry.

You see him on Rossi Street with his boots high on his calves and his long red scarf trailing the ground behind him; you see him with his collar turned up, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoes tipped with metal so that they raise a spark; you see how he stands in the canteen line with his head slightly angled as if he is dealing with a wound; you see him receive an extra ladle of soup from the canteen woman with the black hairnet; you see him lean over the counter and touch her hand, whispering, making her laugh; you see, when he lifts the flap of his shirt to clean his spoon, that his stomach has flattened and tightened; you see him eat quickly and wipe a rough hand across his mouth; you see the canteen woman watching him as if she has found her own long-lost son.

You see him in the attic studio, in the morning light, earlier than anyone else, intuiting a move that has taken you three days to learn; you see him jostling in the corridors wearing your brand-new leggings and when you confront him he says, Screw a horse; you see him without his modesty shorts; you see him preening; you see him elbowing forward to front and center, where he can properly look in the mirror; you see him counting impatiently as he watches others moving through their combinations; you see him drop a partner because she is a shade too slow and he doesn’t help her up, though she is crying and her wrist might be sprained, and he goes to the high window to yell Fuck! out over Theater Street; you see him through the winter and the summer and each time he appears larger to you and you are at a loss to explain what is happening.

You see him dye his white slippers black and sew on buttons so that they look different to everybody else’s; you see him take your dance belt, but you don’t say a word until he returns it filthy, and you ask him to wash it but he tells you to go take a shit and put your face in it; you see him the next day and tell him you want the belt washed and he says, You miserable Jewboy; you see him walk away chuckling; you see him when he passes you on the street without even moving his eyes in your direction and you think maybe he is a little mad or lonely or lost, and then suddenly he is dashing across the avenue towards the Chilean girl, who has opened her arms to him, and within seconds they are running along the street together; you see them go, you feel empty, foiled, until you decide you will open up to him, you will become his friend, and so you join him in the canteen but he says he is busy, he has something important to do, and immediately goes to the woman behind the counter; you see him chat and laugh with her and you sit there glaring, wanting to ask him if he ever met anyone he likes better than himself, but you already know the answer so you do not ask.

You see him taken under Aleksandr Pushkin’s wing; you see him reading constantly because Pushkin has told him that to be a great dancer he must know the great stories and so, in the courtyard, he bends over Gogol, Joyce, Dostoyevsky; you see him curl into the pages and you think that he has somehow become part of the book, and you think that whenever you read that book in the future you will be reading him.

You see him and ignore him but somehow begin to think of him even more; you see him tear a ligament and you delight in the news but then you watch him dance and you wonder if your hatred helped heal his ankle; you see him before class practice Kitri’s variation, his feet in half high-pointe, everyone staring in amazement, he is dancing a woman’s role and even the girls wait around to watch; you see him studying the original Petipas, getting to know them inside out so he can show you any combination with his hands, the hands themselves a complicated ballet, tough and fluid; you see him respond to Pushkin with silence and respect, you even hear him call Pushkin by the familiar name of Sasha; you see him haul the other students short when they miss a step and you see the way he accepts their stares, their shouts, their small hatreds; you see him stride into the office and call the director a fool and you see him step away from the outrage smiling; later you see him weeping uncontrollably for he is sure he will be sent home and later again you see him doing a handstand outside the director’s office, an upside-down grin on his face, until Pushkin emerges, having saved him once again from expulsion.

You see him refuse the Komsomol because it interferes with his training, something nobody has ever done before, and he is brought before the committee, where he leans across the table to say, Excuse me, comrades, but what exactly is political naïveté?; you see him nod and apologize, move away down the corridor, cackling to himself, never to attend the meetings anyway; you see him in the library copying the musical scores, the dance notations, his shirt splattered with ink; you see him rushing to the master’s rehearsal simply to watch and afterwards he moves his body to the memory of the dance; you see him doing what you used to do; you see him doing it better than yourself and then you see that he does not need to do it at all because it has become him; you see him lurking in the wings at the Kirov; you see the older dancers beckon to him; you see him feigning no emotion at the bulletin board when he is given the role you always wanted.

You see him everywhere, on the footbridge over the canal, on the benches in the Conservatory park, on the embankment down by the Winter Palace, in the sun outside the old Kazan Cathedral, on the grass of the Summer Gardens; you see his black beret, his dark suit, his white shirt, no tie, and he haunts you, you cannot shake him; you see him walking with Pushkin’s wife, Xenia; you see the way she looks at him, you are sure she is in love with him, you have heard rumors, but you’re convinced that it’s impossible; you see Pushkin himself say he might one day go straight to the Kirov as a soloist, even though you know — you know! — you are a better dancer, and you wonder where you went wrong, when it was that you slipped, because your technique is better, you are more accomplished, more sophisticated, you have a better line, your dance is cleaner, you know there’s something missing, you’re not sure what it is, you are scared and ashamed and you hate when people say his name; and then one day you see him — in class, in the hallway, in the canteen, in the fifth-floor rehearsal rooms, it doesn’t matter — and you believe you are seeing yourself, you want to move but you can’t, your feet are nailed to the floor, the heat of the day rises through you, it will not stop, and you think you have stepped into an acid bath, the liquid is above you, below you, around you, inside you, burning, until he moves away and the acid is gone, you stand alone and you look down and realize how much of yourself has disappeared.