Russian Winter (17 page)

“Good luck with that,” Grigori Solodin said drily.

“Yes, well, any level of cooperation is appreciated.” Drew felt
slightly piqued but tried not to show it. “Which is why I’m mentioning it to you, in case you have anything else you might share. Even information that might seem peripheral could be interesting. I’m trying to personalize things a bit. Since there’s so much interest.”

Grigori Solodin’s face was oddly blank—as if forcing blankness on itself.

“None of this risks losing your anonymity,” Drew assured him. “I’ll be sure to write it in a way so that it’s about the necklace, not about you. I’m hoping to even have photos—of things like the original box from the jewelers, or the gift card. That kind of thing.”

With a tight nod, Grigori Solodin pressed his lips together so that the dimples toward the backs of his cheeks showed. “I see.” But he didn’t offer up anything of his own. “Is it common, to have a…supplemental?”

“For the more popular auctions, yes. Have you ever been to one of our auctions?”

“No. In fact, I believe I’ve only ever been to one auction, out in the Berkshires. My wife liked Oriental carpets, and there was—still is, I suppose—a rug place that would auction them. Nice stuff, not expensive, really. I went with her once.”

His face was only slightly sad, so that Drew could not be sure if he was a widower or divorced. Whichever it was, he seemed to be accustomed to speaking of his wife in the past tense. Drew wondered again how old he was. He seemed to possess a certain wisdom she associated with age.

“And you?” he asked. “Are you allowed to bid in your employer’s auctions?”

“Yes, but only as absentees—otherwise it could look like we’re trying to raise the price. And if there are things left over afterward, sometimes we can buy them after the fact.” She showed him the ring on her right hand, told him how her grandmother had left her a bit of
money in her will. “Not terribly much, but for two years I kept wondering what I should do with it. She had specified that she wanted me to ‘buy myself something nice.’”

“It’s very nice.” He smiled, and the dimples in the side of his cheek stretched into three lines.

“Thanks.” She had never seen three dimply things in a row like that. “I bought one other thing. Just last year. A watercolor from the Japanese Paintings auction.” Now it was on the wall in her bedroom, a simple picture, a small black bird alone, not flying but standing, though there was no ground, no earth in the painting, just an empty background, so that the bird stood out even more singularly. For some reason no one had bid on it; afterward Drew had been able to purchase it for less than two hundred dollars. She often found herself looking at the bird as if it were real and could return her gaze. It was just a plain black bird, but it was beautiful in its simplicity, its aloneness, its adamant there-ness, both proud and humble against the white space. But it would be too hard to describe to Grigori Solodin. Drew said, “You’re welcome to come to the jewelry auction, of course. No one need know of your personal involvement.”

“Thank you.” He seemed suddenly uncomfortable. Taking up his hat and gloves, he said, “And, again, if you could tell me when you hear from the lab.”

He looked about to step away, and Drew found herself speaking in a rush. “If you think of anything I might use for the supplemental, please do give me a call.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, looking away, “I don’t believe I have any ancillary materials.”

“Well, I just wanted to be sure to ask.” Drew felt oddly disappointed, although really she hadn’t expected much from him. But even after he had wished her a good afternoon and ducked his way out the door—as if he were too tall, too big-shouldered, for it—Drew felt somehow hurt that he had not wanted to help her.

A
MONTH LATER
Nina is installed in the communal apartment, which she and Viktor share with thirty-three other people. A big kitchen with three stoves and six tables, and hanging laundry everywhere. The clunky black telephone, always either in use or ringing, at the end of the hall just outside their door. One toilet and washroom, always a wait. Now that she is right at Theatre Square, though, Nina simply runs to the Bolshoi when she needs a bathroom. It is one of the privileges she is daily thankful for—like the portable stove, which she and Viktor use to heat their room, and Viktor’s stipend from the Moscow Literary Fund, and the bread they receive from the Writers Union, and the retired woman, Darya, who cooks and cleans for them daily.

On the same floor with them, each with their own family, are two other dancers, four opera soloists, a playwright, a painter, a cellist, and three actors. One of the ballerinas goes around in a silk dressing gown that is always flapping open, and the cellist’s husband spends much of each day in the bathtub. The playwright is always screaming at his wife. Two of the opera singers, both tenors, with rooms at opposite ends of the corridor, practice at the same time, as if trying to drown each other out. The children of the family across the hall own a small, frightened cat that wanders the building mewing and whining.

“The Armenians,” Nina discovers, are the family to their right, with three children. The father is an artist known for his paintings of Stalin.

As for Viktor’s mother, she stays in her room much of the time, drinking tea brewed in an ancient charcoal samovar. (Viktor and Nina have their own samovar, a good brass one from one of the Tula factories.) When she does emerge from behind the plywood door, it is to boss tired, heavy-footed Darya, questioning whichever cut of meat the poor woman has managed to find at the market, or picking
with dissatisfaction at whatever dreary meal she has set out on the wooden table. Quiet, uncomplaining, looking perpetually exhausted, Darya seems to think this treatment her due. She arrives each noontime having fought her way through the markets, and always seems genuinely surprised when she turns out not to have procured exactly what Madame wanted. Wordlessly, she changes Madame’s chamber pot, rinses her laundry, carries in sloshing tubs of water when she wants to wash; Madame refuses to go to the public bathhouse like everyone else. And though now Darya cooks and cleans for Nina, too, she clearly understands Madame to be her mistress. When Nina increases her pay, now that she is serving three instead of two, Darya looks utterly surprised. But Nina has no talent for cooking and is grateful for her help.

Madame, meanwhile, always seems affronted to discover Nina there in the apartment, as though she were a guest who has over-stayed her welcome. It is as if Madame spent most of her patience—her politeness—at their introductory tea, and there is little left for daily use. Although Nina is at work much of the time, and does little at home other than sleep, only the fact that Madame is hard of hearing gives her any sense of privacy. Madame is often unhealthy, frequently out of sorts. “Not so loud, please, I’m feeling a bit flu-ish,” she says, her face flushed, her head heavy. Other times she declares that she is unable to find her heartbeat. “I’ve been trying all day, but I suppose this is the end for me.” When Nina responds dubiously, Madame narrows her eyes, thrusts out her wrist, and says, “Just try to find my pulse!” At times she even manages to convince Viktor that she is gravely ill—but Nina is certain this is an act, to steal his attention from other things, such as Nina herself.

Sometimes Madame’s hair is neat, the big, high bun thick and tight. But with the bird constantly climbing around on her head, picking at her tortoiseshell comb, Madame always becomes gradually disheveled, her dress peppered with bird droppings. So different from Viktor, who is always dapper and cleanly shaven, makes
regular visits to the barber, polishes his boots each morning, and has his shirts cleaned and pressed at the Chinese laundry.

Sometimes Madame sits at the table and counts the silverware. Lola accompanies her, perched on her shoulder, pecking at the little buttons on the front of Madame’s dress. Shiny things attract her: the pearls that dangle from Madame’s earlobes, and the thin glass of her lorgnette. Little tap-tap-tapping sound—soon Nina has grown used to it. That and Lola’s squawking. The bird is vocal and boisterous, saying, “Good day!” and “
S’il vous plaît!
” and chirping loudly. Madame, too, can at times become loud, both of them carping away like unhappy women.

On days when she is feeling loose-tongued, Madame reminisces about her childhood, growing up with a cook and a maid and a tutor and a nanny. For slow, tired Darya she describes in great detail the house where she lived, from the cut-glass door handles to the oil paintings that hung in heavy frames on the walls. It is as if she is taking a stroll through her old home, a private tour in her mind, pausing before every treasured object: the Dyatkovo crystal paperweight, the silver candelabra by Sazikov, the parasol with an enamel handle by Fabergé. Sometimes Nina too can picture it, the separate rooms for every activity: library, music room, dining room. Her mind follows Madame’s through French doors into a salon hung with silk wallpaper patterned in vines, and an airy kitchen where cooks use only the best cuts of meat, and a high balcony overlooking a broad stretch of private grounds. “And then, when we returned, not a painting was left. Those beautiful paintings. I used to walk right into them with my eyes, the way one walks down a path into the woods.” She looks momentarily bereft. “Our house—filled with boors. Muddy boots lined up all along the hall. You have never seen such rudeness. One could smell them through the walls. They never washed. Like the Armenians next door. Thieves.” Saying so reminds her; she begins, again, to count the cutlery.

Well, the fact is, Nina’s mother too stores cutlery and cookware in her room, won’t leave even a bar of soap, hard and full of dark cracks, where other tenants might get to it. Madame’s behavior is really only a step away from the usual hoarding of soap and salt and kerosene, the faint distrust of everyone else that even Nina, she has to admit, feels. The one difference is that Madame’s complaints are loud, unconcealed, like those of Nina’s long-gone grandmother, and of so many old grandmothers. The last of her kind.

“Does she ever go out?” Nina asks Viktor, when she has been living there for nearly three months. She is still trying to figure out just how much of a “secret” Viktor’s parentage is, and just how quiet she ought to be about Madame. Because as much as Viktor doesn’t speak of it in public, he has never specifically warned Nina about saying anything, and is clearly unworried about Darya spreading gossip. Perhaps his literary success has exempted him from such a thing being held against him. After all, he cannot help which family he was born into. “Does she ever leave the building?”

“I used to take her out to walk a bit, but it always upset her. She simply doesn’t like the outside world.” He seems to be thinking to himself. “There’s a word she uses.
Base
. She isn’t accustomed to seeing…oh, you know, drunks on the street. Unpleasant behavior. A lack of manners. It’s because of her background, of course. No one treats her as she feels she ought to be treated.”

After all, she is a woman raised on a private estate, a woman who has traveled abroad, a woman adept at musical instruments and foreign languages. No wonder she clings to her old title, her haughtiness, her ancient dresses of silk and lace. In a way, Nina realizes, she is like the demobilized men who, though the war has been over for three years now, go out in their military uniforms on Sundays to display their medals and their wounds. As if to remind everyone—or perhaps just themselves—who they used to be.

E
velyn leaned her head in around six o’clock, her blond hair feathering lightly away from her face. “Let me just go wash up, and then we can go.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

The other inhabitants of the Department of Foreign Languages had left earlier, but Grigori had used the time to grade three papers from his graduate seminar. He didn’t want to risk spending time home alone today. Even this morning he had felt the need to hurry out of the house, hadn’t dared listen to the radio, even, avoiding the songs they would be dedicating, this and that message read over the air. It would only make him miss…everything. Yes, everything. He missed the sound of the door closing behind her when she arrived home from work in the evening. He missed the telephone messages, loads of them, she had so many friends, Barb announcing that Bowie, her ancient pug, had died, or Amelie saying she was going to be in Boston next week, how about a drink at the Fairmount? He missed Christine’s book club sitting in a chatty circle in the living room, laughing in a way he had always envied, sharing personal information he at times found almost shocking; it seemed no subject was too private to be mentioned around a cheese tray and bottle of chilled white wine. He missed what it had felt like to follow her
upstairs, to peel off her clothes and make love to her lusciously in one of those spontaneous bouts of romance that Grigori considered a secret privilege of married life.

Of course he knew what kinds of thoughts these were: the not-always-true ones, conveniently forgetting the other times, when he and Christine had bickered at the smallest thing, aggravated by the other’s mere constant presence, and sometimes even said awful things—irreversible and stinging—that lingered like a foul odor for a long time afterward. Then there were long stretches of calm. And yet the bickering, the irritation, that too was part of the delicate glue that kept them together, still feeling
something
, even when they grew, sometimes for long periods, bored with each other, tired of each other, before settling back into their more usual, tamed and tamped down but still real and extant love.

“Okeydoke, I’m good to go.”

He looked up to see Evelyn in the long, sleek leather coat that matched her high-heeled boots, and around her neck a tasseled wool scarf, knotted affirmatively. “Don’t you look elegant,” he told her and, buttoned into his own coat, went with her out to the T.

She had suggested they eat at the Thai place near the Wang, and though Grigori had little appetite, he supposed it would return. He always had a good time with Evelyn, or at least a perfectly enjoyable time. She was smart and good-natured and not afraid to make fun of herself. Plus she had known Christine well and wasn’t afraid to talk about her. At the same time, a new awareness had crept into Grigori’s thoughts—just faintly, but consciously, on the last few occasions the two of them had gone out. There had been moments, saying good night, when Evelyn seemed to expect something more. It was not the first time Grigori had seen this look on her face, but until recently he had thought he was imagining it. Then things had become a bit awkward, a split second of visible disappointment from Evelyn last time, that he had not picked up on her cue.

But Grigori had never considered her as more than…Evelyn, petite and pretty and inexplicably single, with an honest laugh and expensive-looking blond hair and about thirty different pairs of high heels.

This morning, though, Grigori had told himself, as he rushed to dress and escape the house, to be open to the possibility of Evelyn. He had even put on his best shirt, one that Christine had given him, of soft thick patterned cotton, a visibly luxurious shirt, the kind that required cuff links. In the past he had worn it only for special occasions. Well, perhaps tonight would turn out to be one.

The thought made him nervous. At the restaurant, he realized he was tugging at his cuffs. But Evelyn looked relaxed and happy, and Grigori was relieved when the waiter took their order for drinks.

“Cuff links,” Evelyn said. “Nice.”

“They belonged to my father.” A geologist who often worked in the field, he had rarely had opportunity to wear them. Feodor, quiet and contemplative, always patting down his little flap of hair as if it contained all the world’s unruliness…And yet he could yell when he wanted to—grasping the sides of his head with exasperation when Grigori asked mathematics questions considered elementary. It was only after leaving Russia, when Grigori made friends with other little boys in Norway, that he came to understand that not all families yelled out their thoughts this way. A young friend, playing at the apartment in Larvik, had looked frightened to hear Feodor screaming at Katya in Russian. They were simply debating something they had heard in the news—but Grigori understood for the first time that this was not the way other people, other cultures, debated things.

“You look very dapper,” Evelyn said, smiling in her easy, radiant way.

Perhaps this was his big chance, to move on—though he worried it might be too much of a risk, to try to convert friendship to
romance. Also, Evelyn was younger than Grigori, at most forty—though the age difference apparently did not bother her. Perhaps Grigori was some sort of “catch.” Well, he had been the object of student crushes often enough, though surely that was something different. The little notes he at times received on the last pages of essays or exams, “Can we continue this discussion in person?” or “Would you like to meet for a drink?” only slightly surprised him. He had assumed they would taper off as he aged, and for a few years, in his forties, they had. Then something happened, he still did not quite understand it, but the crushes suddenly returned, one or two students each term. Some were overt, some unintentionally obvious. E-mails suggesting coffee “somewhere off-campus?” or an exhibit of Russian painters they might go see together—in Connecticut. One girl last year had written a long message detailing the ups and downs of her heart, explaining that she was now “over” him—but would he like to meet up tomorrow evening?

It was his grief, he had decided, that attracted them. For as sad as he was, his anguish had its own terrifying energy, an electricity that must have shone from him visibly, infused his very being.

And now Evelyn, with the blond flyaway hair…

The waiter was back with their wine. “Cheers,” Grigori said, clinking his glass to hers, and Evelyn said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

T
HE FIRST REHEARSAL
of the new season, a cold wet day, Nina’s second year as a wife. In the dressing room, she is stitching ribbons into a pair of toe shoes. At the small vanity across from her, Polina diligently applies moisturizing cream to her face, lightly tapping her skin with her fingertips to help the cream penetrate. This is just one step in a long complicated regimen that ends with her washing in cold water with a few drops of ammonia in it, to help diminish her freckles.

As Polina pats at her face, she tells Nina about her new love, a man named Igor. The way she talks about him, he might be a movie star, but really he’s another Party functionary, the deputy director of a division of a branch of an office of some department or other—Nina can no longer keep track. “He treats me so sweetly, Nina. Like a kitten.”

“Well, good, he ought to.” What Nina wants to say is, You don’t need him. You’re a dancer; work on your technique, not your relationships with these…lackeys. That’s the word, though she doesn’t say it. Assistant bureaucrats trying to make their way up the ladder. Nina sees them often enough, in the theater’s personnel department, where government agents in civilian clothes comb through everyone’s paperwork for anything worth reporting to their superiors; and at her performances at the various ministries, where officials in dark wool suits say demeaning things to their subordinates; and even in the Bolshoi concert hall, agitprop men from the Central Committee every now and then silently watching from dark seats all the way at the back of the theater, while the poor director trembles his way through a dress rehearsal. Career types who will do anything to make their way up the ranks.

“I think he’s the
one
, Nina. I really do.”

“That’s good, Polina, I’m happy for you.” But she doesn’t look her in the eye. Sometimes she gets the sense that for Polina, a career at the ballet is not so much about the dancing as it is about the concept—the idea—of being a ballerina.

The door opens. “They told me I’d find you here.”

Nina stares, wonderingly, at a strikingly beautiful woman, and then drops the ballet slipper. It is Vera, standing there.

Yes, it really is Vera, smiling, pleased with her surprise. Very slender and long-limbed, no longer a girl. Nina gives a small yelp and embraces her, Vera’s figure slight—though she is taller than
Nina—in her arms. The truth is, for a long time Nina hasn’t even thought of her.

Now Nina says, “You!” because it is all she can manage. She cannot even find her breath to introduce her to Polina; Vera has to introduce herself, while Nina regains her composure and takes in the ways that the years and the war and who knows what else have altered Vera, who now tells Polina, “I’m Vera Borodina.”

Nina has heard this name—the new young beauty of the Kirov. It’s a different last name, a stage name, she supposes, and then recalls what happened so long ago, the day of the Bolshoi school audition. Vera’s parents gone, and “There was always something strange about them….” The first time in years Nina has thought back to them, that seemingly ordinary couple whose daily life divulged no inkling of where they would end up. Because only now, in adulthood, does Nina understand, in the way her childhood self could not, what must have happened. Not that Nina dares ask Vera—not in front of Polina. Whatever happened, it is in Vera’s best interest to have erased any ties to her parents. And so she has become Vera Borodina….

Nina regards her with surprise, notes that her face, though thinner than years ago, has blossomed, her cheekbones more prominent and delicately rosy. Front teeth surprisingly straight, with little spaces between them, giving her an air of youth as she stands there smiling. Hair a deep reddish brown. Big dark eyes set wide apart, something melancholy, almost strange, about them. Perhaps it is the way her eyelashes have been crafted with mascara into little clumps, making her look young and innocent, almost as if she has been crying.

She has in her hand the same small drawstring sack all the dancers are given, in which they all carry their tights and tunics and precious bars of soap. It must mean that Vera is joining the company. But at that moment Nina is still focused on other thoughts: Vera is
alive
; she has
survived
; she has
returned
. Polina says, “Well!” as if
she too once knew Vera years ago and nothing could have surprised her more.

When Vera confidently drops the sack onto the chair of the vacant dressing table that for two years has been shoved into the corner of the small room, Nina feels a small proprietary flinch; now three of them will have to fit here. But it is
Vera
, she tells herself—Vera Borodina…Still, Nina’s guard is up, as it always is in the presence of someone new. Vera, meanwhile, in brisk, distracted motions, flicks dust off the table. To be in this dressing room means she will be dancing solos and the occasional lead. Nina supposes the director must have recruited her, or that Vera knows someone in the administration—in the Kremlin, even. The Bolshoi pays attention to connections—friends, family, relationship to the Party. Just look at Lepeshinskaya, once the embodiment of youthful vitality, now almost forty yet still dancing lead roles; she is married to the head of the General Staff of the USSR, and everyone at the Bolshoi is terrified of her.

Vera too must know someone important. Nina can see that Polina is wondering the same thing, the way she keeps stealing glances at Vera, perhaps envious of her beauty, or simply curious, or fearful of who she might turn out to be. Because Vera is now one more person to have to compete with. She too, like any ballerina, must want what they want: to rise to the very top.

It becomes clear the moment they see Vera in class that she is indeed here on her own merit. Agile and precise, with feet quicker than theirs. Her beats are clean and sure, her pas de bourrée exact. More important, she has that quality—the elusive, magical one—that Nina too has been said to possess: the spark that makes people want to watch you.

And yet Nina witnesses how Leningrad-style dancing can be somewhat cold. There is a strictness to Vera’s movement, all expression confined to her upper body (clad in a thin wool sweater, her
delicate collarbone visible, her skin very pale). This contained perfection is a reminder to Nina: that not only have their experiences of youth, and of growing up, been different, but their bodies too have been variously trained.

At first Nina experiences something close to envy, not just of Vera’s technique but also of her form—those long, delicate limbs and highly arched feet. Nina suffers a pang she has felt before, knowing she would do almost anything to have such a body (though it has been years since she and her classmates sat on one another’s outstretched feet attempting to shape higher insteps, or massaged one another’s bulging calf muscles to try to make them slimmer). From the tips of her fingers to the strong points of her toes, Vera is the embodiment of the quiet dignity the Kirov is known for. Her thin frame and her big soulful eyes make her look almost ethereal. Nina cannot help envy that otherworldly quality—not to mention Vera’s wide cheekbones and thick russet hair. She reminds herself that she has her own strengths: energy and airiness; passion and musicality; fast turns and seemingly effortless jumps. Being petite and strong is a gift itself, and a more standardly pretty face, if lacking mystery, has its own allure. Really it is a blessing that she and Vera possess different styles and physiques; it means they will not, most of the time, be competing for the same roles.

She has to stop herself from asking too many questions that first day, as Vera arranges the contents of her sack in her locking drawer. But she asks where she will be living.