Colum McCann - Dancer

The musicians entered the orchestra pit and began tuning up, a flute here, a cello there, and the notes, initially discordant, started moving in unison towards one another.

My neighbors in the seats were chattering excitedly. Rudi’s name fluttered in the air, and their pleasure at owning him began to disturb me. I wanted to stand and shout, But you don’t know Rudi, I know Rudi, my mother taught him how to dance! Yet I hadn’t seen him in a long time, almost a year. He was twenty-two, he had his own apartment, food privileges, a good salary and in the corridors of fate his portrait hung high.

The lights were dimmed. When Rudi entered, exploding from the wings to a round of applause, he tore the role open, not so much by how he danced, but by the manner in which he presented himself, a sort of hunger turned human. I wanted to let myself slip away into the performance, but after the first variation I began to realize how terribly hot I felt. Without drawing attention to myself, I tried to fan air to my body. I grew hotter and hotter, and yet I didn’t want to disturb my neighbors by wriggling around in my seat, or pulling the sweater over my head. The shrill alarm of Rudi’s dancing was saying, Look at me! Look at me! but I was obsessed by my sweater and how hot I was becoming. The air was packed with intensity. My face flushed and sweat collected at my brow.

When the intermission finally came, I stood up quickly, only for my knees to buckle and my legs to fold beneath me. I came to almost immediately, but already I’d created a fuss — people were pointing at me, whispering, and I had an immediate vision of the next day’s newspapers writing about the lone woman who had fainted during Rudi’s performance.

With the help of a gentleman behind me I got back into my seat and removed my sweater. I desperately wanted to explain what had happened, but I could tell he thought I was simply overcome.

He’s wonderful, isn’t he?

I was just hot, I said.

He has quite an effect, said the gentleman over my shoulder.

I thought I would faint a second time, but I managed a deep breath, rose, and stumbled out along the aisle, down the staircase under the light of the chandeliers. In the bathroom someone held my shoulders as I vomited. I was horrified when I heard her suggest that I might be pregnant, an impossibility. I cleaned up and splashed water on my face. The mirror was smudged with fingerprints, and I had the strange feeling that someone else’s ghostly hand was on my face. At thirty-six, I had acquired crow’s-feet, and there were the beginnings of dark bags beneath my eyes.

In the bathroom I could hear women exclaiming over the extraordinary performance. A couple of girls were smoking at a corner sink, rolling Rudi’s name around on their tongues.

On the second floor I bought an ice cream, and by the time the bell sounded for the second act I felt I had recovered sufficiently to take my seat.

I leaned forward and squinted at the distant stage, until the woman in front of me, annoyed that my hair was, touching her, handed me a pair of opera glasses.

Rudi’s body was a thing of the most captivating beauty — hard lines at his shoulders, his neck striated with muscle, enormous thighs, his calf muscles twitching. He took his partner in the air and spun her with remarkable lightness. I couldn’t help thinking about the day he had first arrived, at seventeen, when I had seen him undressing in my room, the pale promise of his body slipping beneath the blanket on my sofa. I returned the glasses and tried to quell whatever emotion was overcoming me. I was holding the edge of the chair far too tightly, nails gripping the wood.

When the ballet finished Rudi extended his arm in the air and slowly turned his head from one side of the theater to the other. The ovation rang in my ears.

I ran outside and hurried along the Fontanka, then ascended the stairwell. When I entered the room Iosif was still sitting at the table, drunk. I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him. Shocked, Iosif pushed me aside, filled his glass, downed it quickly, then stumbled across the room and kissed me back. I tried to guide him into making love to me against the wall, but he was hardly able to hold me, drunk as he was. Instead he pulled me to the floor and yet I didn’t care, why should I care, the dancing still spun in me — Rudi had stood upon that stage like an exhausted explorer who had arrived in some unimagined country and, despite the joy of the discovery, was immediately looking for another unimagined place, and I felt perhaps that place was me.

I opened my eyes as Iosif was wiping the sweat from his neck. He went back to the table and said: Don’t forget, you have to pack.

If I could stack the foolishness of my life in cardboard boxes I could make a monument of it — I packed.

The following week I was out in the sleeping quarters of Leningrad, having left my beloved Fontanka behind. The new apartment was large and dark. It had hot water, a telephone, a stove, a small fridge. The elevator squeaked outside the door. I listened to the high whistle of the kettle. I promised myself that I would leave soon, get enough money together, pay the taxes, negotiate a divorce, take on the enormity of finding another place to live. But in truth I knew I had caved in to Iosif, that allowing him to make love to me had only cemented his dispassion.

Six months later I was sitting on the eighth floor of the new apartment building — trying in vain to translate a Cuban poem about mystery and shadow — when my friend Larissa knocked on the door. She had taken a tram all the way out to the tower block. Her face was ashen. She took me by the arm and escorted me out to the soccer field beyond the towers.

There’s a rumor, she whispered.

Pardon me?

Rudi has left, she said.

What?

People are saying that he defected to Paris.

We walked under the goalposts and looked at each other in silence. I began to remember moments that seemed like clues. How, during that first week, I had often caught a glimpse of him looking in the mirror, as if he was willing himself into someone else’s body. How he had talked about foreign dancers, listened to RosaMaria’s songs, rifled through my books. How, whenever he went to the Hermitage, he was drawn to the Italian Renaissance painters and the Dutch masters. How, when we sat around my table with my friends, he had always looked hungry, as if he were ready to pounce on a word or an idea. I felt a terrible guilt and a dread.

Paris? I asked.

We must keep this quiet, said Larissa.

That evening I sat with Iosif and heard the elevator’s pulleys screeching in the hallway. When it stopped on our floor I could hardly shuck the thought that they were coming to knock at the door. I packed a bag with what I imagined I would need. It included a Gorky novel with money pasted beneath the cloth cover. I put the bag under my bed, had nightmares of being chained to a table.

Iosif said: The little bastard, how did he dare?

He rose and paced the room, whispering: How did he dare?

He looked me in the eye: How did he fucking dare?

The next day Iosif surprised me by saying I had nothing to worry about, that I had done nothing wrong, that through his connections he could make sure I would be left alone. I ironed his shirt for a conference and as he prepared his briefcase he assured me that everything would be all right. He kissed me brusquely on the cheek and set out for the university.

They came anyway, the following Monday morning.

I was alone when I heard the rapping on the door. I stuffed money beneath the insoles of my shoes, even took a slice of bread and put it in the pocket of my housedress. Trembling, I went to answer. The man was the traditional sort, beady, in a gray overcoat, but the woman was young and beautiful, blond hair, green eyes.