Colum McCann - Dancer

Respected Comrade,

In response to your directive of last Thursday it must be said that indeed the behavior of the young man leaves a lot to be desired, but the nature of his talent is such that the rigidity of the program suggested might dampen his abilities, which are clearly prodigious if undisciplined. He hardly knows what he does and yet he strives not only to know but to achieve beyond what he knows. His sporadic nature is still malleable. He is after all only eighteen years old. I hereby formally suggest that he be allowed to switch residencies so that he come live with Xenia and me in the courtyard residence, at least in the short-term, whereupon the discipline he so sorely lacks will become his through a calculated osmosis.

As always, with great respect,

Shortly after getting my father’s letter, I began to go down to the Big House on Liteiny Prospect to see about the feasibility of getting a reprieve for his exile. My mother could have visited Leningrad by herself, but she refused to do so — she would have felt one-footed without him. Yulia, she wrote, I will bide my time. In the past I had tentatively inquired about the process of getting them out of Ufa, but it had been fruitless, yet now with the thaw firmly in place the possibility seemed stronger. I pondered that they wanted to spend time with Rudi more than with me, but it hardly mattered — the notion of a visit from them set my spirit echoing.

At the Big House there were gray faces at the partitions. The wooden counters were scratched and scored where people had leaned too heavily with their pens. The eyes of the guards were glassy as they fingered their rifles. I found out exactly which forms my father should fill in, what he should say, how he should present his case, and sent letters to him with all the exact instructions. Months passed, nothing happened. I knew my actions were dangerous, perhaps more perilous than anything I’d ever done — it felt as if I were hanging my heart outside my body, hardly clever. I wondered if I’d compromised everyone around me, even Iosif who, despite all, had even more to lose than I.

RosaMaria said that her own father, influential in Communist circles in Santiago, might be able to do something, but I thought it would be far wiser for her to remain outside the fray. It was quite possible that the bureaucracy would catch up on my history, carbon copies revealing truths far different from the originals, as in some dark European novel.

But almost nine months later — while I was doing a translation of a Spanish poem for the State Publishing House — I received a telegram:

THURSDAY. FINLANDIA STATION 10:00 A.M.

I cleaned the room from floor to ceiling and bought whatever provisions I could find. Iosif made space by saying nothing.

When I arrived at the station they were sitting on the bench underneath the giant clock, having come in on an earlier train. At their feet was a giant wooden trunk with a crude lacquer pattern. The trunk was covered with labels, though most of the lettering had been scratched out. My father wore his hat, of course. My mother was in an old coat with a fur-lined collar. She was sleeping with her head against his shoulder, her mouth slightly open. My father touched the inside of her wrist, just beneath the sleeve, to waken her. She opened her eyes suddenly, shook her head. I went to hold her, and she felt unusually brittle.

My father rose from the bench, spread his arms wide and said in a loud voice: Look, I have been rehabilitated! Then he lowered his tone as if in conspiracy and added: Well, for three months anyway.

I scanned the station for guards, but it was empty. Mother shushed him, but he leaned towards her and said enigmatically: Until morning comes, we are not yet free of journeys.

My mother said: You and your poetry.

He grinned and pointed to the suitcase. Yulia, my darling, he said, carry us.

On the trolley bus he didn’t want to sit. Instead he clung to the pole with one hand and to his cane with the other. He grimaced as the bus moved, but his eyes darted around. Most of the time he seemed wounded — his city was largely lost after the Blockade and the rebuilding after the war — but every now and then he shut his eyes as if he were closing his whole self to a memory, and once he quietly whispered: Petersburg. His smile flickered, moving like a wavelength to my mother and then to me, so that his memory had a sort of domino effect.

Just off Nevsky the wire jumped from the trolley pole, stopping the bus in the street. My father went to the door to rejiggle the wire back into place, but the buses had been redesigned and he was standing in the wrong place, utterly lost. The conductor glared at him. The other passengers turned around, and I saw my father’s face flush with fear.

My mother beckoned him to sit down. He put his hand on hers and remained silent the rest of the journey.

Iosif greeted my parents expansively. My mother held his shoulders and examined him. She had only ever seen photographs. Iosif blushed and hurried to open a bottle of vodka. His toast was long and formal. In the room my mother touched things, the butter dish, my husband’s Party bulletins, the books I had half-translated. We had a fine meal together and afterwards my mother went down the corridor to the bathroom, ran the hot water tap, took a bath, while Iosif excused himself to the university.

When she returned my mother said: He’s not as tall as I had imagined.

My father stood at the window and said: Ah, the Fontanka.

By mid-afternoon my mother had fallen asleep at the table. I managed to move her to the couch. My father propped up her head with his overcoat. He stroked her hair while she slept, and even in his slight frame he seemed to surround her with his generosity. Soon he was sleeping also, but fitfully.

Early in the evening Mother woke to prepare for a visit from Rudi. She brushed her hair and put on a dress that smelled as if it had been hanging in a wardrobe too long. Father took a long walk down to Nevsky, desperately wanting a cigar, only to find that the stalls were closed, but a neighbor gave me two, and my father sniffed the length of them, quoted some line from a Lithuanian poet about the deep mercy of strangers.

Rudi arrived late, of course. He was without RosaMaria. He wore a double-breasted suit and a thin black tie, the first I’d ever seen on him. He had wrapped a single lilac in notebook paper, and he presented it to my mother as he kissed her. She beamed and told him that he’d already grown beyond what she could have dreamed.

For the next hour they were like two cogs clicking together. She listened and he talked rapid-fire, endlessly, in a perfect pitch and rhythm — the slope of the school’s floor, the sweat stains on the gymnasium barre, the rumor of a certain move once done by Nijinsky, the books he was reading — Dostoyevsky, Byron, Shelley — and how he had switched dormitories to live with the Pushkins. He said: I am hanging in the air longer, you know!

My mother seemed lost. Rudi placed his hand on my her trembling fingers for a moment. The problem was that Rudi had learned too much and he wanted to tell her everything. The old teacher was being taught, and she was confused by it. She nodded and pursed her lips, tried to interrupt, but he was unstoppable: the routine for his classes, the Dutch masters at the Hermitage, a step that Pushkin wanted him to learn, a fight with the director, his fondness for Rachmaninov, rehearsals he had seen at the Kirov, nights at the Gorky theater. He seldom slept, he said, needing only four hours a night, and the rest of the day was packed with learning.

To control her trembling hand my mother twirled her wedding ring and it struck me how thin she had become, the ring slipping easily along her finger. She seemed extraordinarily tired but she kept repeating: That’s right, dear boy, that’s right.