Colum McCann - Dancer

Ru-dik! Ru-dik!

He barrels in the direction of the road but is stopped by the sound of a whistle, a guard waving him away. He turns with one skate, the other foot high, makes a wide arc, and is forced around to the sight of his father, red-faced now, panting, on the bank, without skates. A wind rips along the lake, making the end of his father’s cigarette glow bright. How small he looks, the smoke trailing away from his mouth.

Rudik, you’re fast.

I didn’t hear you.

You didn’t hear me what?

I didn’t hear you say Rudik.

His father opens his mouth to say something, decides against it, says instead: I wanted to walk you to school. You should have waited for me.

Yes.

Next time, wait.

Yes.

Rudik puts his skates around his neck and they walk together, hands balled into their gloves. The road circles past a row of old houses to the schoolhouse. Above the school wall is an arched iron insignia where four crows sit. Father and son make a bet on which of the crows will leave first, but none do. They stand silent until the bell sounds, and then Rudik tugs away his hand.

Education, says his father suddenly, is the foundation of everything. Do you understand me?

Rudik nods.

The bell sounds once again, and the children in the yard run towards the building.

Well then, says his father.

Bye.

Bye.

Rudik steps away, but then returns and rises to his toes to plant a kiss on his father’s cheek. Hamet shifts his head slightly, and Rudik feels the edge of his mustache, wet with ice.

Rudik runs the gauntlet to the classroom. Blondie. Froggy. Girl face. Smaller than most, he is often beaten up. The boys push him into the wall, grip his testicles, squeeze them — pruning, they call it. They leave him alone only when a teacher turns the corner. Inside, flags on the wall, pennants, portraits. The wooden desks with their lifting lids. Goyanov the teacher on the platform, pasty-faced, calm. The early morning call. The Motherland is benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The Motherland will protect me. The rustling of boys and girls settling down, the scratch of chalk on the board, mathematics, his name called, five times fourteen, you, yes you, five times fourteen, yes you, sleepyhead! He gets the answer wrong, and Goyanov strikes his ruler hard on the desk. Three more wrong answers and he is slapped on the palm of his left hand. And then, before the right hand is hit, a puddle appears on the floor. The other children laugh when they realize that he has pissed himself, giggle behind their hands, trip him as he walks the aisle. Seventeen steps from the toilets to the top of the noisy stairs, where the mosque and the blue sky hang together in the window frame. He roots himself there, touches the front of his wet pants. Beyond the mosque stand the chimneys, bridges, low smokestacks of Ufa. The sky is broken by the horizon’s clean sharp shapes. Goyanov comes up behind him and takes him by the elbow back to the classroom, and he pisses himself a second time as he enters, all the children quiet now, hunched over their inkpots, dropping beads of black ink onto copybooks. He sits in his seat and waits, even through the lunch call, Our Leader is powerful, Our Leader is great, his stomach tight and knotted, until he is fully dry, and then he disappears to the bathroom once more, the mirror cracked, his face a thousand pieces, the rank piss around him, but it is quiet here, he leans into his reflection, the angle of the cracks distorting his face.

After school his father is waiting again, against the wall, coat collar turned up. Resting against his thigh is a muslin sack. In his other hand, a large bag with the bulge of a lantern. Hamet beckons him over, puts an arm around Rudik’s shoulder and they walk silently towards the tram.

By the time they reach the foothills of the city, the sky is already darkening. Birch trees stand in armies along the ice-covered road. The last of the red light filters between the branches. They cross a broad rockslide threaded with the footprints of wild animals and snow falls in clumps from the trees. A cold wind huddles them together. His father takes a jacket out of his bag and puts it around Rudik’s shoulders. They walk down a narrow gorge, and when they get to the small frozen mountain river at the bottom Rudik sees a line of fires along the ice where men are fishing in holes.

Trout, says his father. He slaps Rudik’s back. Now go get some firewood.

Rudik watches his father stake out an empty ice hole. He re-breaks the ice and uses two thin blocks of wood for makeshift chairs, covering each with a blanket. Hamet sets up the lantern between the chairs and pulls a fishing rod out from the muslin sack. He snaps it together, runs a line through the eyes of the rod, attaches some bait to the hook, anchors the apparatus, stands over the ice hole clapping his hands.

Rudik waits near the trees, two large branches tucked beneath one arm and a handful of twigs in the other.

His father looks up. We need more wood than that!

Nudging his way along the tree line, Rudik dips out of view, clears snow from a rock, sits down and waits. He has never fished before. How can there be trout in a river that is frozen solid? How can they swim through ice? He breathes warm air into the openings of his gloves. A single star claws its way into the sky. No moon. He thinks about the warmth of the bed at home, how his mother nestles the gray blankets to his chin, arcs her arm to snuggle him. He is sure animals await him in the trees beyond the river, badgers, bears, even wolves. He has heard stories of wolves carrying children away. Other stars rise in the sky as if on a series of pulleys. He hears a plane but can see no moving lights in the sky. Sniveling, he drops the wood at his feet, runs back across the frozen river.

I want to go home.

You what?

I don’t like it here.

His father chuckles into his collar, reaches out and takes Rudik’s gloved hand. They step together into the trees and collect enough wood to last through the night. His father places kindling on the ice and says it is a mistake to create a single big fire, that is for idiots. Instead they make two small tepees and he instructs Rudik to squat over the fire whenever he gets cold, that the heat will rise through his body and spread, a trick Hamet learned during the war.

All along the river the other fishermen chat in low tones.

I want to go home, Rudik says again.

His father doesn’t reply. He takes three of last night’s potatoes and heats them in the embers of the fire, turns them so the skin doesn’t scorch. They wait an hour for the first fish. When his father lifts it up through the ice, he takes off his gloves and the trout goes from living to gutted in seconds. He rips the fish belly open with his knife and, at the same time, follows with his forefinger, so that the innards come out in one motion. The guts steam in the air, and his father spears the body with a twig and holds it over the fire. They eat the fish and potatoes in the cold and his father asks him if he thinks it is delicious and he nods and then his father says: Do you like goose?

Of course.

Someday we’ll shoot geese, you and me. Do you like shooting?

I think so.

For oil, for food, for fat. Geese are good for that, says his father.

Mama puts the fat on my chest.

I taught her that trick. A long time ago.

Oh, says Rudik.

It’s a good one, isn’t it?

Yes.

When I was away, says his father, pausing for a moment, I missed you.

Yes, Papa.

We’ve a lot to talk of.

I’m cold.

Here, put this jacket on.

His father’s jacket is huge around his shoulders, and Rudik thinks that now he is wearing three jackets while his father wears only one, but still he puts his arms in the sleeves of the coat, sits there rocking.