Colum McCann - Dancer

November 14

They have once again delayed the committee meeting. We went to the Big House again. Rudik, in London, was weeping, and I felt momentarily sorry for him. He is convinced he has made a mistake. They put pressure on him, and every day he appears in the newspapers. He says he cannot walk down the street without a photographer jumping from the bushes. He kept mentioning a dancer’s name — I believe he was trying to hint at something — but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The stenographer gave me a rude look.

November 16

I have been working on a cardigan for the newborn next door. It is almost finished but not quite as good as I wanted it to be. It has four buttons but needs a fifth. A walk in the snow with Ilya. He mentioned how he would someday like to have children. I wondered what I would call a child. Not Rudolf certainly. Maybe after Father. And what if it was a girl? For school; prepare letters to be sent to Brezhnev for his birthday.

November 20

A knock on the door and it scared us so! Suffering birds! The woman was nervous. Blond hair. Finnish. She said she was a dancer. I believed it from her body. She did not give her name. She said she was a friend of a friend who had come in through Oslo, she didn’t explain how. She asked to be let in but Father refused. Then she got desperate. She had driven all the way from Moscow! Two full days! She said that Rudik had made friends with ambassadors in different countries and they had been able to bring things back. She had some items for us. We were convinced at first it was a ruse. Father told her it was against the law of the land. She flushed bright red. Then Mother asked her to leave. We kept looking up and down the street for the Driving School car, but it was not there. The woman pleaded but still Father said no. Finally the woman left the large package on the doorstep. She was crying with fear. It was terribly dangerous. We left the package there but before dawn Mother got up in her nightgown and brought it in, a light coating of snow upon it.

November 21

The package lay on the table. We could not bear to leave it unopened any longer.

November 22

Father drank a thimble measure from the bottle of brandy. Mother wore her new fur-lined coat, though only in the dark since she did not want the neighbors to see. When she put her hands in her pockets she found a note which said, How I miss you. Your loving son. I pondered what to do with the dress he sent me. It was far too tight at the hips. At first I thought I might burn it, but why? I decided instead to let the waistband out and wear it to the Motherland cinema next week with Ilya.

November 23

Father remembered that the dancer had said we are due another parcel, perhaps in the New Year. Next time I am sure we will open the door to her. Unless it is a ruse. We will find out soon enough. Father felt a certain measure of guilt, but he knows returning the parcel would mean even more trouble. Mother said, Yes, it is wondrous, but a new coat does not replace him. She was sitting in the armchair rubbing the fur collar.

November 26

Father was nostalgic and raised a glass to Rudik, and for the first time I heard him say, My dear son.

Hereby we report that on June 16, 1961, NUREYEV Rudolf Hametovich, born 1938, single, Tatar, non-Party member, formerly of Ufa, artist of the Leningrad Kirov Theater, who was a member of the touring company in France, betrayed his Motherland in Paris. NUREYEV violated the rules of behavior of Soviet citizens abroad, went out to town, and came back to the hotel late at night. He established close relations with French artists among whom there were known homosexuals. Despite talks of a cautionary character conducted with him, NUREYEV did not change his behavior. In absentia he was sentenced in November 1961 to seven years hard labor. Furthermore, it has been decreed that, following the January 21, 1962, public disavowal by Hamit Fasliyevich NUREYEV, vehemently denouncing the actions of his son, he will be allowed to remain a standing member of the Party.

Six months before Rudi defected, Iosif came home to our room along the Fontanka, carrying a bottle of cheap champagne. At the doorway he kissed me.

Yulia, he said, I have wonderful news.

He removed his spectacles, rubbed the black semicircles beneath his eyes, and guided me to the table in the corner of the room. He opened the bottle, poured two cups, drank one immediately.

Tell me, I said.

His eyes drooped, and he quickly drank a second glass of champagne, pursed his lips and said: We have a new apartment.

For years I had cultivated our communal home along the river. The kitchen and toilet were down the hallway and our room tiny, old, ruined, but it felt majestic: an ornate fireplace, an intricate medallion in the center of the ceiling from which a yellow lampshade hung as a reminder of other days. Imagining the history of the chandelier that once hung there wasn’t so much bourgeois sentiment as a quiet nod to my father’s life. I had fixed all the window sashes and arranged the curtains so they didn’t obscure the view to the Fontanka. Most of all it was the sound of the water I adored. In summer it gently lapped against its walls as the canal boats passed with their wares and in winter the ice crackled.

Where? I asked.

In the sleeping quarters, he said.

The sleeping quarters were in the outskirts of Leningrad, where tower blocks met tower blocks, a place where I’d always felt that our country housed whatever was falling apart.

Calmly I took a sip of my drink.

Iosif said: It has an elevator, hot water, two rooms.

My silence made him shift in his seat.

I got the permits through the university, he said. We move next week.

I startled myself by saying nothing, rose slowly from the chair. Iosif grabbed my hair and yanked me across the table. I attempted to pull away, but he slapped my face: You’ll start packing tonight.

I thought about telling him that he slapped like an academic, but that would only have invited his fist. I watched as he poured himself another glass of champagne. As he tipped it back his double chin disappeared, and in a chilling way he looked briefly attractive.

Good night, I said.

I removed a scarf from the drawer and walked out into the corridor.

Patches of sunlight spun on the Fontanka. I thought for a moment that I might tumble over the low wall and get carried through the city, drawbridges rising as I floated on. Such elegant foolishness. I followed the river north and took a sidestreet towards the Conservatory, to the Kirov, palatial in the square. Outside there was a poster announcing Rudi’s performance in Giselle.

When I returned home Iosif was still at the table. He didn’t look up. I had hidden some rubles in an antique samovar next to our bed. I took out enough for a balcony seat, pulled on my cashmere sweater. Descending the stairs once again, I thought I could hear the echo of Iosif’s slap still reverberating around the building. By the time I returned to the Kirov, the lobby was teeming.

It was the rule of the theater that all coats and jackets must be hung in the cloakroom before the performance. I contemplated checking my cashmere sweater, but it felt good around me, its warmth, its delicacy. I wedged in my seat between two rather large women. I wanted to turn to them and say something ridiculous like, Ah ballet, the perfect antidote. I began thinking that perhaps Iosif was playing a crude trick on me, that really we wouldn’t have to move from our room at all, that things would stay the same, that I would still sleep at night to the sounds of the river.