Danielle Steel: Granny Dan

“I can't do that again. I can't impose on the Czarina,” she said weakly, although she would have liked nothing better than to be with him, as they had been in the cottage before. She loved the sweetness of their living together. But she could not abandon the ballet again to recuperate. She knew that this time Madame Markova would not take her back, or ever forgive her for deserting them, sick or not. Danina had paid a high price with her for her last recuperation, and she needed the ballet. Nikolai could not help her, he was not free to marry her, or care for her, or even able to support her. She had to rely on herself.

“You can't go back to dancing for a while,” he said carefully, and then he decided to tell her what he'd been thinking. “I want you to think about something. I have thought of a thousand ways to solve our problem, while you were lying here. We cannot go on this way. Marie will never relent. It will take me years to buy a house for you, and Madame Markova will never release you from the ballet. I want to be with you, Danina. I want us to have a life together, away from all of this, and all the people who want to keep us apart. I want a real life with you, far from here, where we can begin again. We cannot be married, but no one need ever know.” And then he added gently, “In another place, we could even have children.” A look of sorrow crossed her face as he said the words, and he squeezed her hand. They both felt the loss of what had just happened between them.

“There is no place where we can do that. Where would we go? How would we support ourselves? If Madame Markova wishes to discredit me, no other ballet will have me.” She was thinking of Moscow, and other cities in Russia, but he wasn't. His plan was far more daring than that.

“I have a cousin in America. In a place called Vermont. It is in the Northeast, and he says it looks a great deal like Russia. I have enough money saved to pay for our passage there. We can live with him at first. I will find ajob, and you can teach ballet somewhere, to little children.” She knew Nikolai spoke English perfectly, because of his wife, but she did not. She couldn't imagine a life in a world so far from theirs, and the very thought of it was frightening and foreign to her.

“How could we do that, Nikolai? Could you be a doctor there?” she asked, stunned by the suggestion that she follow him halfway around the world.

“Eventually,” he answered carefully. “I would have to go back to school in America. It would take time. I could do other things in the meantime.” But what? she asked herself as she listened to him. Shovel snow? Clean stables? Curry horses? To her, the situation seemed hopeless. Surely there was no ballet in Vermont, wherever that was, and that was all she knew. Who would she teach? Who would hire either of them? How would they get there? “You must let me work this out for us. It's our only hope, Danina. We cannot stay here.” But to leave required a series of betrayals, abandoning his children and wife, the Czar and his family, who had been so kind to him, and Madame Markova and the Maryinsky Ballet, which was the only home she had known since she was a child. She had given everything to them, her life, her soul, her spirit, her body, and in turn they had given her a life, which was the only one she knew. What would she do in this place called Vermont, and what if he should tire of her and abandon her there? It was the first time she had thought that, but she was frightened, and she looked it, as she met his eyes. And he could easily read all her fears there.

“I don't know…. It is so far away…. And what if your cousin doesn't want us?”

“He will. He is a kind man. He is older than I, widowed, and he has no children. He has invited me to visit him for years. If I tell him we need his help, he will do it. He has a big house, and some money. He owns a bank, and he lives alone. He would welcome us there. Danina, it is the only hope we have for a future together. We must begin again somewhere, and forget everything we have known here.” But as much as she wanted to be with him, she wasn't sure she could do it. “You mustn't think about it now. Get healthy and strong, and we will talk about it again. I will write to him in the meantime, and see what he says.”

“Nikolai, no one would ever forgive us.” The mere thought of it filled her with terror, and grief.

“And if we stay here? What will we have? Stolen moments, a few weeks a year when the Czarina invites you to Livadia or Tsarskoe Selo? I want a life with you. I want to wake up beside you every morning, to be with you when you're ill. … I never want something like this to happen to you again…. Danina, I want our children.” She also wanted the life he described to her, but they each had to hurt everyone they had ever loved in order to be free.

“What about my father and brothers?” She had a family here, a history, a life. She could not turn her back on all of it because she loved him. And yet he was willing to do that for her, and he had as much to lose as she did. He had to abandon his children, his wife, and his career in order to be with her.

“You told me yourself you never see your family,” he reminded her. And for nearly the past two years, her brothers and father had been at the front. “They would be happy for you.” Nikolai did everything he could to convince her. “You cannot dance forever, Danina.” But as he said the words to her, she remembered everything Madame Markova had ever said.

“I can teach afterward, like Madame Markova. “

“You can teach in Vermont. Perhaps even start a school of your own. I will help you.” He seemed so sure, and so strong.

“I must think about it,” she said, exhausted by the prospect of such an enormous decision, and all that it entailed.

“Rest now. We will talk about it later.” She nodded, and drifted off to sleep again, but she had nightmares of terrifying, unknown places. She kept dreaming of losing Nikolai there, of wandering the streets, looking for him, and never finding him, and when she awoke in the hospital, he was gone, and she was crying and alone. He had left her a note that he had gone to check on Alexei, and would return to see her in the morning. And as she read it, she was lost in thought.

She stayed in the hospital for two weeks, and when she left, the doctor ordered her to stay in bed for two more. Nikolai wanted her to stay at the Czar's cottage with him, at Tsarskoe Selo, but Madame Markova was violently opposed to it. She wanted Danina back at the ballet, and said the trip to Tsarskoe Selo was too far. This time, Danina didn't have the energy to fight her. The mistress of the ballet was too determined, and unwilling, to let Danina slip out of her hands again. She didn't want her to spend another four months “recuperating” in the cottage with her lover. She was intransigent this time, and in the face of the ferocity of her objections, Danina returned to the ballet.

And as Nikolai had when she was ill when they first met, he came to see her every day, and stayed for as long as he could, a few hours at least, before he went back to his own duties. He sat in her dormitory room with her while she rested in bed. And while she walked slowly around the small garden at the ballet with him, he talked to her of Vermont, and his cousin there. He was convinced it was the only way, and he wanted to go with her as soon as they could both get away. He suggested early summer, which was only a few months away.

“Your season will be over then. You can complete what you are doing. We must pick a time, and then go through with it. There will never be a perfect moment to leave, we must seize the moment while we can.” She would be twenty-two by then, and he would be forty-one that year, time enough for both of them to start a new life in America, as countless others had done before them, some for reasons as complicated as theirs.