Colum McCann - Dancer

“Sasha,” he said into the pillow.

He began to say Pushkin’s name over and over again. I knew then that we would not make love. I stroked his hair and the night thickened, we pulled a blanket over us, the sensation of our toes touching. He fell asleep with his eyelashes fluttering and I wondered, What dreams?

I awoke during the night, disoriented. Rudi was sitting on the floor, naked, his feet curled into his stomach, staring at photographs, finally noticing me, gazing up, pointing at a picture of Covent Garden, saying: “Look at this.”

He was studying a picture of Margot Fonteyn in her dressing room, her hair pinned back, her face serious, her eyes deliberate. “Look at her! Look at her!”

I propped myself up and asked if he had thought about the Pushkins during the night, if they’d appeared in his dreams, but he dismissed me with a wave, said he didn’t want to talk of trivialities. He immersed himself in the pictures once more. Feeling useless, I patted the bed. He climbed in beside me and began crying, kissing my hair, saying, “I’ll never see you again, RosaMaria, I’ll never see you, I’ll never see you, I’ll never see you.”

For the rest of the night we slept beside each other, arms entwined.

In the morning we left the room, carrying my suitcases. Outside a man in a dark suit was sitting on the low wall, smoking. When he saw us he stood up nervously. Rudi went over to him, whispered something in his ear. The man stuttered and swallowed, eyes wide.

Rudi started leaping down the street.

“I don’t give a shit!” he said. “Fuck them! All I want to do is dance! I don’t care!”

“Rudi,” I said. “Don’t be foolish.”

“Fuck caution,” he said.

He was going soon to Vienna to perform at the Stadthalle, and I said they would surely withdraw permission for the trip if he kept drawing attention to himself.

“I don’t care,” he said. “All I care about is you.”

I looked at him to see if this was just another of his mood swings, but it was hard to tell. I told him I loved him, that I’d never forget him. He took my hand, kissed it.

We put my bags into a taxi. The driver recognized Rudi from a performance of Les Sylphides the previous week and asked for an autograph. Fame fit Rudi like a curious coat, new but oddly snug. In the taxi he closed his eyes and rattled off the street names as we passed them, each note in the right place. I kissed his eyes. The driver coughed as if in warning. Behind us a car was trailing.

At the terminal in Pulkovo there was a group to see me off. I felt light-headed, blissful at the thought of returning home — already I was taking the white dustcloths off the mirrors and the furniture. I could taste the dust in the room.

Yulia was at the airport in all her loveliness. She smiled her subversive smile. Her long dark hair was draped around her shoulders. I had given her some clothes a few days before, and she was wearing a bright purple blouse of mine, which set off her dark skin, her eyes. Her father had written a letter from Ufa and in it had enclosed a small note for me. He said I’d made his wife, Anna, happy with my spirit when we met and that he appreciated my attendance at her funeral. At the very end of the letter there was a rather oblique reference to the deserts of Chile — he said he had always wanted to see the Atacama, where it had not rained in four hundred years, and if I ever got there I should throw some earth in the air in his honor.

I kissed Yulia good-bye, shook hands with the others.

My flight was to Moscow and then onward to Paris and then New York, where I was to make the final leg to Santiago. I wanted to say a final farewell to Rudi but he had disappeared. I pushed through the pockets of people, called his name, but he was nowhere to be seen among the passengers and guards. I called his name again and still he did not show. I turned towards the glass wall that led to passport control.

Just then I caught a glimpse of the top of his head, distant in the crowd. He was engaged in serious and animated conversation with someone — at first I was sure it was the man who had been spying on us, but then I saw it was another young man, dark-haired, handsome, with an athlete’s body and a pair of denim jeans, a rarity in Leningrad. The young man was touching Rudi gently on the inside of the elbow.

The call for my flight came through the loudspeakers. Rudi strode across and hugged me, whispered that he loved me, that he could hardly live without me, he would be lost, yes, rudderless, please come back soon, he would miss me terribly, we should have made love, he was sorry, he did not know what he would do without me.

He looked around over his shoulder. I turned his face back to mine and he smiled, a strange and chilling charm.

Incident Report, Aeroflot, Flight BL 286,

Vienna-Moscow-Leningrad, March 17, 1959.

Due to circumstances beyond the airline’s control, there were no meal or beverage carts provided for this flight. Passengers were so advised at the airport. Upon boarding, however, the Subject, a People’s artist, was noticed to be carrying a case of champagne. The Subject at first seemed to exhibit a severe fear of flying but then became rowdy, complaining about the lack of food and beverages. Midway through the flight, unbeknown to flight attendants, he took a bottle, shook it, and sprayed the contents around the cabin. The Subject then walked the aisles, offering champagne to passengers, pouring the alcohol into paper cups. The champagne soaked through the paper cups and leaked. Fellow passengers complained about wet seats and clothes. Others began singing and laughing. The Subject took out additional bottles from the same case. When confronted he used foul language. The Subject remarked that it was his twenty-first birthday and began gesticulating and shouting about being a Tatar. Late in the flight the plane hit turbulence and many of the passengers experienced bouts of violent sickness. The Subject seemed increasingly frightened but continued to shout and sing. When asked to calm down by representatives of the ballet company with whom he was traveling he used another epithet and sprayed the final bottle of champagne around the cabin just prior to landing. After the landing in Moscow a warning was issued and the Subject calmed. On disembarking in Leningrad he made a comment to the Captain of the flight, the nature of which remained undisclosed. Captain Solenorov reported in sick for the return flight.

He goes to the edge of the bed, pulls his shirt over his head, undoes the button at the top of his trousers, stands naked in the light. He says to the pilot: Close the curtains, keep the light on, make sure the door is locked.

Late at night in Ekaterina Square, in the antique dust of Leningrad, when the streetlamps were turned off to save power and the city was quiet, a scatter of us would come from different parts of the city to walk beneath the row of trees on the theater side of the park. Quietly. Furtively. If stopped by the militia we had our papers, the excuse of our jobs, insomnia, our wives, our children at home. Sometimes we were beckoned by those we didn’t recognize, but we knew better, we moved quickly away. Cars passed on Nevsky, catching us in their headlights, obliterating our shadows, and it seemed for a moment that our shadows had been taken for questioning. We imagined ourselves on the jump seat of a Black Maria, whisked away to the camps for being the goluboy, the blue boys, the perverts. The arrest, if it came, would be swift and brutal. At home we kept a small bag packed and hidden, just in case. The threat of it should have been enough: forests, mess cans, barracks, bunks, plank beds, five years, the crack of metal on frozen wood. But there were nights when the square was silent and we waited in the fog, stood against the fence, and smoked.