Colum McCann - Dancer

In his leaving he has forced me home. Moscow seems years away already. What am I to become? My anger boils over. I almost smashed Mother’s teacup but held myself back.

August 17

Father came home from the factory long-faced. We dare not ask. We cooked chicken broth to soothe him. He ate without a, word.

August 18

A white car in the street, traveling up and down, up and down. It is marked Driving School, but the driver makes no mistakes.

August 19

At the Big House with Mother again. They believe she is the only one who can change Rudik’s mind. They gave us tea, unusual for them, considering. It was lukewarm. I thought for a moment it might be poisoned. A half-dozen phones were set up on the desk. Four men and two women. Three wore headphones, two worked into dictation machines, the other supervised. Most of them did not look us in the eye, but the supervisor stared. He gave Mother a set of headphones and told me to sit in the corner. They finally got through to Rudik on the third try. He was sleepy since there is a time difference. He was in an apartment in Paris. (They said later that it was a place famous for its men with unnatural perverted instincts. They insist on using that phrase in front of Mother, to watch her face. She tries not to have her face betray her. It is important not to display emotion, she says.) There was a time delay on what Rudik said. Sometimes they bleeped it out. They got angry when there were exchanges in Tatar. Mother swore later that she heard the end of the word happy but of course what she really wanted to hear was return. We are to tell nobody about the betrayal, yet they go ahead and question the dancers in the Opera House, his friends, even Rudik’s old teachers, how do they expect word not to get out?

August 20

I walked by the Belaya and ate an ice cream on the sandbar. Children were swimming. Old women sat in bathing suits and caps. The world goes on.

August 21

They have suggested a possible amnesty if he renounces what he has done, returns. What chance? It will be seven years hard labor at the absolute minimum, at the worst it is death. What would they do? Shoot him? Electrocute him? Would they hang him so that his feet would swing in the air, his last dance? These terrible thoughts.

August 22

The knowledge that he will never be here again makes him all the more present. I lie awake late at night and curse what he has done to us. They are always the same two people who sit in the Driving School car.

August 23

The bulb in the kitchen went out, there are no more. We are relieved only by the late hour of the setting sun and the beauty of the colors in the sky. Father said that the smoke from the factories makes the colors stronger.

August 24

We were coming home from the Big House when Mother’s legs went out from under her on an oil patch near the statue in Lenin Park. She caught herself on the base of the statue and then said to me, Look, I am almost hanging on his toe. She was immediately frightened by what she had said, but there was nobody around to hear. All the way home she was scratching her arms. Father found lime for the outhouse to stop the stench caused by the summer heat. I sat in peace and read the newspaper.

August 25

Mother has shingles. She took to bed, although the sheets irked her terribly. Father sat by the bed and pasted her stomach with a tomato poultice, an old army cure, he said. The juice made her look red and bloody, as if she had been skinned from the inside out. Father and I took a tram out of the city and went for a walk in the woods near the river. He told me that he and Rudik went ice fishing once. He said Rudik was great at gutting the fish with one sweep of the fingers. Returning home, Father wished for his rifle when a flock of geese rose.

August 26

I washed the sheets. They had an imprint of red tomato where she has been lying.

August 28

The fire in her skin has cooled, thank the heavens. Father thumped his chest and said, Tomatoes. Mother took a chair and sat in the sunlight.

August 29

Power failure in the oil refinery, and so the air was clean today. I went walking in the sunshine, found berries in the bushes behind the tool manufacturing yard. Came home and Mother made berry juice, her specialty, which made her sparkle. But in the late afternoon I caught sight of a wizened face reflected in a pane of glass. I was momentarily unsure who it was. It came as a shock to realize it was Mother, I suppose I haven’t truly looked at her in a long time. The irritation is almost gone, but her face is still puffy. Perhaps that is the way of age. I have to remind myself that she is only a few years from sixty. These days her mouth is set in a little pouch, which turns downward. To think that during the war she lived without a mirror! The only way to see herself was in a window, but even then many of the windows were shattered. There was the story she once told of a girl who lived underground. When she came out she didn’t recognize herself and wanted to go back underground again. We return to what we know. I spend my time wondering why I am here in this hellhole, how could I have given up my Moscow registration, am I mad, how much do they need me? Moscow. How I miss it, and yet how can I return? Father cut himself opening the window this morning. Bandaging his wrist, Mother said to him, Perhaps Rudik will find a nice girl and come home.

August 31

Have come down with a summer cold. Took gingerroot.

September 1

Father has been demoted, no longer politruk. It happened two weeks ago, but he refused to tell us. It is possible he will have to leave the Party. There has been no announcement of Rudik’s betrayal, though the word is almost certainly in the air. Mother’s friends have changed their time to go to the steambaths. I saw them walking down the street carrying their towels and birch twigs. Mother shrugged her shoulders and said no matter, she will go alone. She has great strength. If I have the time I shall accompany her. At the market on Krassina we found a delicious jar of sour pickles. Good fortune and joy. My favorite, Father said.

September 3

On the bus to the market the old woman said to her companion, You think it’s bad now, wait until tomorrow! Her friend laughed. For some reason I remembered that in Moscow, Nadia, from the third floor, once said everything happens so fast that living it never made any sense to her. She could never catch up with herself. She had a theory about being in the past, looking ahead at a stranger living out a life. Of course the stranger was herself. I never understood until the bus journey this afternoon. I saw myself sitting there, listening to two old babushkas. I watched myself, watching them. Before I knew it I had become them. How easy this shift from young girl to old woman.

September 4

This journal writes of too many small disappointments. I must be stronger.

September 6

It is a strange mill that does not churn the river! The kindergarten on Karl Marx Street has accepted me, and it is a good job. I am almost a week late but I will catch up. Joy!

September 9

We cannot open the classroom windows, they are soldered shut. But the wind blows through the front door and gives us some relief. The late summer drags its good days into bad. Muksina drew a picture for me. Majit brought me a drink from cowberries, how refreshing. The school takes me back to my youth. When Rudik was here they pulled his hair and bit him and teased him terribly, called him names. The children still have a number of cruel games, one is called the Little Macaroni. They make a child rock his head to the left and right and someone strikes him on each side of the neck as he turns. Another is the Dandelion, where they bash him on top of the head. I could not help the bad thoughts that came while walking home. Perhaps all those years ago the bullying of Rudik was punishment in advance.