Colum McCann - Dancer

The skinheads parted a little to allow me a passage. But the one who had torn the poster was jumping up and down and pretending to wipe his backside with Monsieur’s image. I could hardly control myself. I felt my knees buckling. I pushed on until the pram got caught on a gap in the concrete and the wheel stuck. I wrenched the pram out from the crack but my feet tangled and I fell back on the ground, grazing my knee. The skinhead started laughing and dropped the torn poster near the wheel of the pram. I caught sight of half of Monsieur’s face, his ease, his happiness. I scrambled to rise as one of the troublemakers called me a particularly nasty name. I was trembling, yet I grabbed the torn poster and stuffed it in the pram beside the child.

The skinheads shouted after me as I ran and ran down the promenade away from them. I stopped only when I could no longer hear their foul mouths. Then I leaned against the railing and tried to soothe the child who was screaming now, loud wrenching cries.

At that moment I knew that I hated my husband Tom more than any other person I had ever met in my life.

Two days later, when I got back to London, I found Tom dozing in a chair in our quarters with his hands in his lap. He looked wretched. His shirt was sloppy with stains and I could smell beer off his breath.

I ignored him and began to change into my night clothes, sat on the edge of my bed to remove my tights. Tom woke groggily and looked around as if unsure of where he was. But then he straightened when he saw the grazed cut on my knee. He didn’t say a word, just went to the bathroom and came out with a damp tissue. He sat beside me on the bed and raised the edge of my nightdress and started to clean the cut. Little bits of the tissue tore off where the scab had begun to form.

— What happened, love? he asked.

I got into my bed and pulled the covers high, turned my face away. My knee stung from where he had tried to clean it.

Later I could hear Tom rummaging in the bathroom cabinet and then the kitchen. He came back into the bedroom with what smelled like a poultice. I pretended to sleep while he lifted the covers and applied the pungent mixture to my knee. I remembered then something Monsieur had said to me just after his fiftieth birthday — he had seen a photograph of himself standing alone onstage after receiving a curtain call, looking tired, and he had murmured: Some day this hideous moment will be the sweetest memory.

When he was finished, Tom pulled up the covers carefully and patted the edge of my bed. He said good night in a whisper, but I didn’t stir. I could hear him removing his shirt and taking off his shoes, then lying down on his bed. The odor of his socks began to mix with that of the poultice. I smiled then, thinking to myself that, no matter what, his socks would have to be washed.

Ronde de jambe par terre to see range of motion of joints. Severe restriction. Erratic rolling. Hop is acutely pronounced and bones are jammed. Left foot can hardly brush the floor. Acute pain when metatarsals are touched, even when foot is held at central shaft. Key is to move metatarsals like fan, twist from side to side, effleurage gently between rays. Drain blood blisters and immediately remove welt between second and third digit on left foot.

November 5, 1987

The thought of plane touching down next week. Landing on the ice, finally skidding to safety. He might be arrested on his stopover in Leningrad. Ilya says there will be no scheming, yet I am not sure. They could take him away for his seven years and who could stop them? I woke up perspiring. After breakfast I put on my coat and walked to the department store on Krassina. Everyone was walking around in the warmth. There were rumors of a shipment of toaster ovens but none came. In the afternoon Nuriya showed me the painting she has made for Rudik — crows along the Belaya and a single white seagull flying above the cliff. She wrapped the painting in butcher’s paper and said she would find a ribbon for it. She cannot contain her excitement, but at her age it is hardly surprising. Equal, I suppose, to my nervousness. Nuriya went to bed early and we could hear her tossing and turning. In Mother’s room I tried to tell her that Rudik will be coming in a few days. For a moment Mother’s eyes lit up with moisture as if to say: But how could that be? Then they fluttered closed again. How peaceful she looks when she sleeps and yet how terribly tortured when awake. The doctor has given her a couple more months. But what use is a couple of months when she has nothing to live for and no real body in which to live it out? Her mind continues to slip away. Ilya said perhaps Mother has stayed alive to see Rudik. Then he asked me if I am not old enough yet to forgive. Forgive? Does it matter? There is the simple reality that there is no soap and the handle of the toilet is broken.

November 6

There is much to do: darn the tablecloth, clean the window ledges, fix the table legs, let down the hem of Nuriya’s dress, boil Mother’s nightgown. Ilya was asked to do odd jobs at the Opera House. It is good news. More money.

November 7

Revolution Day. Blizzard across Ufa. The cold keeps us inside. The snow was three feet high in the graveyard and Ilya could not go out to prepare Father’s plot. A forty-eight-hour visa seems worse than allowing Rudik no time at all. The flights alone will take a whole day.

November 8

I watched Mother’s lips. It is an effort in mind-reading. Perhaps Ilya is correct that she has kept herself alive these last few years just for one more look at him. But you cannot cure three decades in a moment. The thought is pure stupidity. We have heard they are arranging a special room at the Rossiya Hotel. It is said that they have refrigerators which make ice cubes. Who would want them? In the afternoon the snow relented. A trip to the department store yielded no new nightdresses, but the second attempt to boil Mother’s was more successful. Deep in the cupboards I found an old gown with the faded imprint of tomato stains from the shingles. She has kept everything, even Rudik’s shoes. The toes are still scuffed and the backs are broken from the way he always stuffed his feet in.

November 9

Even the nursery rhyme in school today seemed to have implication: If you can’t find your way back, why did you leave in the first place? At the market we searched for sugar. Nuriya offered to barter the precious silver necklace we got for her fifteenth birthday. But still there was no sugar to be found. She cried. What is to be done? Ilya’s salary is two weeks in arrears. What can we use to sweeten the cakes? Perhaps there will be some miracle at the market — truckloads of sugar will arrive just in time, herring, sturgeon, and we will celebrate under a large white tent, drinking champagne to the music of an orchestra. Ha! Ilya has, at least, managed to find the parts for the bathroom plumbing.

November 10

There were teenagers behind the mosque wearing leather jackets. Their hair was untidy and they wore badges on their sleeves. Nuriya said she did not know them. One can imagine this sort of thing in Moscow or Leningrad, but here? People talk of another thaw, but do they not know that a thaw always brings a dirty stench?

November 11

Ilya says it takes great control not to tell anybody at the Opera House. The older workers have not dared speak Rudik’s name for years. And some of the dancers have only ever heard it spoken with viciousness. Ilya says the younger ones are dreadfully rebellious. If they found out they might try to greet him at the airport. Nuriya is counting the hours until his return. The days pass too slowly for her. She keeps changing outfits and looking in the mirror. She has a photograph of when Rudik was a teenager. I hope she will not be shocked when she sees him. The good news: Ilya found a half-kilo of sugar this evening and a shipment of beetroot came in from the countryside. All is not lost.