Colum McCann - Dancer

I looked around the room. It was still functional and drab. There were always plenty of birdcages to be found in Leningrad and so I hung one from the ceiling and inside I placed a porcelain canary, tasteless but delightful. At the market I managed to find a beautiful hand-crafted music box, which, when wound, played an Arcangelo Corelli concerto. It was an odd item which cost the price of many poems but, like the china plate my father had given to me, it seemed to resonate into both past and future.

When Olga was finally able to institute wardship, in late September of that year, nothing in my life, absolutely nothing, was better than that moment.

Kolya stood in my room and wailed so much that his nose bled. He scratched himself and an array of fresh cuts appeared on his arms and legs. I prepared a poultice, wrapped the wounds, and later that evening gave him a chocolate bar. He didn’t know what it was, just stared at it, began unwrapping. He nibbled then looked up, bit a whole chunk, and tucked half of it under his pillow. I stayed up all night, nursing him through a series of nightmares, and even put some of the foul poultice on my own fingers to stop myself from biting my nails.

When he woke in the morning Kolya kicked out in fright but, finally exhausted, he asked for the other half of the chocolate bar. It was one of those simple gestures that, for no obvious reason, shores up the heart.

After a month I wrote to Rudi, telling him how life had quickened and veered. I never sent the letter. There was no need. I was a mother now. I gladly accepted the gray at the roots of my hair. I went down to the Fontanka with Kolya. He rode a bicycle we had found in the rubbish dump and he stayed close by my side, wobbling on the bike. We were on our way to the Ministry to file a report on his progress.

Watched All in the Family then cabbed to Judy and Sam Peabody’s to see Nureyev (cab $2.50). Nureyev arrived and he looked terrible — really old-looking. I guess the nightlife finally got to him. His masseur was with him. The masseur is also sort of a bodyguard. And I didn’t know this before I went over there, but Nureyev has told the Peabodys that if Monique Von Vooren showed up, he would walk out. He says she used him. But he’s terrible. When he was so cheap and wouldn’t stay in a hotel, Monique gave him her bed, and now he says she uses him. He’s mean, he’s really mean. At 1:30 the Eberstadts wanted to leave and I dropped them off (cab $3.50).

Monsieur was still sleeping and the city was quiet in the way I had loved since I was young. I stood by the window and took in the smell of the Seine, which was occasionally foul but on that morning quite fresh. The pastries were baking in the kitchen and the two scents merged together in the air.

At nine in the morning the bells from Saint Thomas d’Aquin were carried on the wind along the quays. The kettle boiled for the fourth time as I waited for Monsieur to wake. He generally did not sleep in beyond nine, no matter how late he arrived home. I always knew whether he had a companion with him since there would be jackets and other clothes strewn on the chairs. On that morning, however, there were no guests.

I took the kettle from the stove top and heard Monsieur rumbling as Chopin came to life on the record player in his bedroom.

When I first began my duties, years earlier, it was Monsieur’s custom to come out from his room wearing only his undershorts, but I had bought him a white bathrobe for one of his birthdays, which, in appreciation, he had begun to wear every morning. (He had dozens of silk pajamas and many fine Tibetan robes, none of which he ever used, but he gave them to house guests who had not expected to stay over.)

I rinsed the teapot with a little hot water, spooned the tea, and put the kettle back on the stove over a low heat. Monsieur appeared and greeted me in his customary manner, grinning broadly. The simple things in life still pleased him, and there was seldom a morning when he didn’t go to the window and take a deep breath.

I always thought that, for a young man of infinite means — he was forty-two years old at the time — there should be nothing but happiness, but he had days when the sky was indeed upon him and I would leave him alone to brood.

That morning, he yawned and stretched. I put the tea and pastries on the table, and Monsieur announced that he would be leaving the apartment later than usual. He said he had a visitor, a shoemaker from London, who he wanted to keep a secret as there were other dancers in Paris who might steal his time.

It was unusual to have morning visitors and I worried that perhaps there were not enough pastries or fruit, but Monsieur said he had met the shoemaker many times before, he was a plain man who would desire nothing more than tea and toast.

I knew about Englishmen since my aunt had for twelve years after the War kept house in Montmartre for a celebrated theater actor. The English had always struck me as polite, but I had grown to prefer the Russian way, demand and apology, which Monsieur displayed quite openly. He would, for example, raise his voice significantly over a meat dish that was overcooked and then afterwards express sorrow for his ill humor. I had even grown to enjoy Monsieur’s tantrums, plentiful as they were.

Monsieur had laid a number of his old dancing shoes out on the floor when the shoemaker arrived. I answered the door to a small bald man who carried his overcoat draped over his arm, a suitcase in his other hand. He was about a decade older than me, in his late fifties at least.

— Tom Ashworth, he said.

He bowed and said he was here on instructions. I reached for his overcoat but he did not seem to want to part with it. He smiled apologetically and hung the coat on the stand himself. Monsieur paced across the floor and embraced the shoemaker who stepped back in embarrassment. His suitcase hit the coat stand and it rocked on its legs. I managed to suppress a laugh.

The visitor had a ruddy face, his eyebrows were full and bushy, and he wore crooked spectacles.

I retreated to the kitchen, leaving the door slightly ajar so I could see into the living room, where Monsieur and the shoemaker had taken their seats. The visitor fumbled with the lock on his suitcase and then opened it to an array of shoes. His demeanor loosened as he took the shoes out one by one.

I had guessed that, as an Englishman, he would take his tea with milk and perhaps sugar. I carried a tray out into the living room. I had forgone my own breakfast pastries in case he might want one, but he hardly looked up, so engaged was he by the shoes. They chatted in English, each leaning forward to hear the other. Monsieur had, it seemed, formed a deep attachment to certain older shoes and the tenor of the conversation was such that he wanted the old shoes to be repatched.

— They live on my feet, said Monsieur, they are alive.

Mister Ashworth said he would be delighted to repatch them to the best of his ability. I closed the kitchen door, began making an inventory of what I would need for the evening’s dinner party: capon, spices, carrots, asparagus, butter, milk, eggs, hazelnuts for pudding. Monsieur had invited twelve guests and I would have to check the stock of champagnes and liqueurs. I generally cooked with a country flavor that had been passed down through my family. It had been for this reason that Monsieur had hired me, preferring, as he did, strong hearty meals. (Four generations on my mother’s side had cooked in a country inn in Voutenay, outside Paris, but the inn was a victim of the victory in 1944, burned by the Germans in retreat.)

It was always my pleasure to travel to the markets around Paris in search of the finest ingredients. In general the freshest vegetables were found on rue du Bac. There was a butcher on rue de Buci whom I always visited for the best meats — he spoke a guttural Parisian that reminded me at times of Monsieur. For spices and condiments I had made the acquaintance of a Bangladeshi man in the Tenth Arrondisement who ran a tiny store in an alleyway off passage Brady.