Colum McCann - Dancer

Your mother told me you were a good boy.

Yes.

She said you’ve been doing lots of things.

I danced at the hospital.

I heard.

For the soldiers.

And what else?

School.

Yes?

And Mama took me to the big place, the Opera House.

She did, did she?

Yes.

I see.

Mama only had one ticket, but we got in and there was a big crush at the door and the door fell in and we almost fell but we didn’t! We went down near the front, where they didn’t come looking for us! We thought they were going to come looking!

Slow down, says his father.

We sat on the stairs and there were big lights and then it got dark and it started! They turned off the big lights and the curtain came up and the music was loud and everyone got quiet.

And did you like that?

It was a story about a shepherd and an evil man and a girl.

Did you like it?

I liked the way the boy saved the girl after the man got her.

And?

And the big red curtain.

Well that’s good, says his father, pulling his tunic tight, checking the line in the ice hole to see if any more fish have been caught, his face flushed and his mouth red as if he himself has just been hooked.

And when everyone was gone, says Rudik, Mama allowed me to sit in the seats. She told me they were velvet.

That’s good, his father replies again.

When the next fish comes his father takes out the knife, cleans the blade on an inside thigh of his trousers, leaves a streak of blood. He hands Rudik the small trout and says: You do it, son.

Rudik tightens his fingers inside the coat sleeves.

Try it.

No thanks, Papa.

Try it!

No thanks.

Right now, I said! Try it!

In a warehouse on Sverdlov Street — under the auspices of the Bashkirian Ministry of Culture — the new curtains of the Opera House are sewn by a crew of six women, the best seamstresses in Ufa. The special bolts of red velvet are forty-five metres long and eight metres wide and a single fold, when lifted and relifted, makes their arms ache. The women, in their hairnets, are not allowed to smoke or eat or drink tea anywhere near the cloth. They sit at the curtains for ten hours a day, shifting their chairs along the red sea of velvet. Each seam is supervised, and the lining where the curtains meet is restitched seventeen times before the supervisor feels that the proper nuances have been attended to. A running cloth, again of velvet, is made to order. The pelmets are carefully belled with white lace. The insignia of the State is embroidered on the curtains, at the center, so the two halves will meet at the beginning and end of every show.

When the curtains are finished, three representatives from the Ministry come to inspect them. They look the work over for an hour, running their fingers along the seams, gauging the height of the pelmets with their rulers, checking for consistency of color. They debate over the State insignia, holding a magnifying glass to the embroidered handle of a sickle. Finally they crack open a flask of vodka and each drinks a thimbleful. The seamstresses, watching through the blinds of an office window, touch each other’s elbows and sigh with relief. They are called from the office, and the men from the Ministry line them up and speak in gruff voices of collective harmony.

The curtains are carefully folded and transported to the Opera House in a truck. Two carpenters are on hand, having designed a series of poles and pulleys to support the weight. A reinforced rope is threaded through the greased pulleys. Scaffolding is put in place to hang the curtains, and the cloth never once touches the ground.

The first night, before the show starts, one of the stagehands, Albert Tikhonov — from a well-known family of stilt walkers — hitches himself high onto his stilts, winks at his fellow stagehands, crosses the boards like a giant insect, wooden ends clicking on the stage floor, checking for flaws in the curtain. He finds none.

The Motherland is benevolent. The Motherland is

strong. The Motherland will protect me. The

Motherland is benevolent. The Motherland is strong.

The Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me. The Motherland is

benevolent. The Motherland is strong. The

Motherland will protect me.

He hides the punishment lines from his father, but there is something about the crawl of the pen over the page that Rudik has grown to like. He connects the letters as if each word were a piece of string, never arranging the lines in columns, preferring their disorder, their bump up against each other. This is contrary to how the teacher wants it and sometimes the amount of punishment lines is doubled or tripled the following day.

When his homework is finished he runs to the lake to check the flags along the shore. If they are at half-mast it means someone eminent has died, and this delights him since later Tchaikovsky will be on the wireless again, uninterrupted, and his mother will lean into it also.

They have moved to a new communal house on Zentsov Street — one room, fourteen square meters, with an oak floor. A carpet from the market hangs on one wall. His mother has placed the wireless against the other wall so that the neighbors, newlyweds, can hear it if they desire. Rudik clicks the radio on, tunes the dial, raps four times on the wall so the couple knows to listen. The wireless takes a while to warm up and, in that time, Rudik imagines the notes floating through as if the air itself is in rehearsal. He positions himself at different points in the room to find the angle at which the music arrives best. The notes begin high and alien and scratchy and then settle down. During the broadcasts his mother moves across the floor, soundlessly in slippers, sits beside him, serious and appreciative. She tries to hold him back from dancing in case his father comes home, but often she relents, tells him not to make too much noise, turns her back as if she can’t see.

His mother smells to him of the yogurt from the bottling plant where she has found a new job. Just after his tenth birthday the paper carries a photograph of her after winning a commendation for helping to double the production, the caption reading: Labor as purpose: Muskina Yenikeeva, Farida Nureyeva and Lena Volkova at the kefir bottling plant. The clipping is placed on the window ledge beside his father’s medals. After two months the paper yellows, and his mother patches some foil from milk-bottle caps, backs it onto the newspaper cutting, makes a little hood over the picture to keep the direct sunlight from ruining it.