Russian Winter (29 page)

“Look,” Polina calls from the other end of the room. She is holding up a pocket watch. “For Serge!”

Nina’s heart thumps anxiously, the slip of paper in her pocket like a lit match. She tries to distract herself by going over to see the watch. “You two are serious, then?” she asks as calmly as she can.

“He’s such a wonderful man, Nina, I feel so lucky.” Polina turns to call to the old woman, to ask how much for the pocket watch.

All the while that Polina is bargaining down the watch for Serge, Nina wonders about the slip of paper in her pocket. What is it, and why has the woman given it to Nina, of all people? As curious as she is, she doesn’t dare peek at the paper yet.

When they have bought all they can afford, they head straight back to the subway, aware—without daring to speak of it—of their transgression. Nina finds herself trying not to look at the bright shop windows, at the different fabrics of coats and hats; she is ashamed of her own wonderment, and of the way these sights disconcert her, something wrong about it, that the “evil capitalists” she has been told about should look so content, their streets clean, with vendors hawking bananas—and no queue at all, no desperate rush. When she and the others have boarded the train back to their stop near the Lustgarten, Nina feels relief.

Only after they have emerged from underground, as they make their way along the street to their hotel, does Nina venture to say, under her breath, what she has been noticing—if denying to herself—since leaving the junk shop. “That woman there seems to be following us.”

Without looking up, Vera says, “The one in the gray hat?”

“You noticed her too, then.” Nina feels herself begin to tremble. Could it have something to do with the note in her pocket? And what about Vera and Polina—when they paid for their goods, did the woman press something into their palms, too? Or was Nina the chosen one, simply because she was the first to make a purchase? Nina wants badly to ask them but doesn’t dare. “It was an honest mistake,” she says, to calm herself. “If she really is following us, then she must have seen that. She saw that we were just trying to shop.”

Quietly Vera asks, “You don’t think she thinks we were trying to…leave?”

“Well, of course not.” Polina says it with affront. “Why would we ever want to do that?” But she still looks frightened. After all, now she
knows
. She has seen what’s there, on the other side. She too saw the ripe bananas, and people walking past as if it were nothing extraordinary at all.

Nina thinks of Sofia, the other Bolshoi soloist, who was at the last minute pulled from the trip as a travel risk. Rumor said it was because she had relatives in West Berlin; only now does Nina understand.

Her voice emphatic, Polina says, “Everyone knows it would be an insane thing to do.” She seems to have turned paler; the odd black spots on her cheekbones stand out even more.

Nina says, “I’m worried about your skin.”

Polina shifts her eyes. “Uncle Feliks says just to be patient and it will go away.” Then, as if uncomfortable talking about herself, she says again, “Really, you’d have to be crazy to want to
leave
.”

In a low, flat voice, Vera says, “They find you and break your legs.”

Polina looks frightened.

“No matter where you go.” Vera’s voice is soft, measured. “They have agents all over the world. It doesn’t matter how far away you get. And then, what would you do, in some country where you don’t know anyone, and you can’t even dance anymore.”

Nina has heard as much, although it always sounds extreme. Why punish a mere dancer, as if she were some sort of secret agent? Nina has to force herself not to look back and see if the woman in the gray hat is still behind them.

In a small, terrified voice, Polina says, “I’m worried it’s me.”

“What do you mean?”

“My fault that woman is following us.” Polina’s steps have slowed, and her voice is very quiet. “Why me? I’m just a ballerina. I only have a few close friends, no one really tells me anything personal at all.”

“Keep walking,” Vera says, while Nina makes what sense she can of Polina’s comment. Under her breath Vera asks, “Did someone ask you to do something?”

It happens often enough, even in the ballet: people being asked to write things, reports. Nina has heard of this, been warned of a few people in particular, mostly those younger or less accomplished—character dancers, or perpetual coryphées who can’t quite break into
the top tier. If informing will help their careers, then they will keep their eyes and ears open—though what could they overhear, really? Nina hasn’t ever considered that it might directly affect her. And after all, she hasn’t done anything wrong.

Vera is biting her lip, looking almost angry.

“You know me,” Polina says. “I like everyone, I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am. Do you see why it’s hard for me?”

Nina dares to look Polina in the eye, understanding, now, the hives, the anxiety, the nervous looks. “Have you…done anything?” Even as she asks the question, she is wondering what Polina possibly could find to say. How could she know anyone who would do anything truly wrong?

“I only write very general things,” Polina whispers. “But they keep telling me it’s not enough, I’m not doing a good job.” Tears have started.

“But if you’re telling the truth,” Nina says, “then what more can they ask of you?” Vera looks steel-eyed, no such question on her face. Maybe, Nina considers, it is only Polina’s perception that she is supposed to be doing more than she already is. Perhaps Polina has misunderstood. She’s always so eager to please.

And then the thought occurs to Nina: Have I said anything, done anything? Laughing about Stalin’s speeches…Even that comment about Arvo…Nina tries to recall exactly what she said, how it might have sounded to Polina. How it might sound on the page. And that slip of paper from the old shopwoman…

“I didn’t have anything to do with Sofia!” Polina blurts out, her eyes suddenly wider. “Honestly, I didn’t. There’s no one I could ever bear to hurt. There’s no one I don’t like.”

Nina’s hands are trembling, while Vera hushes Polina, tells her to keep her voice down. “Can’t Serge help you out? Get you off the hook, so that you don’t have to write anything anymore. It’s his job, after all.”

“His job?” Nina asks.

Polina’s voice drops. “He’s with the State Security.”

The secret police. Before Nina can ask if he is an agent or an administrator, Vera adds, “He must have some sort of pull. Surely he knows someone who can do something.”

“But won’t it sound like I’m complaining? I’d hate for him to think I’m unwilling to help. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

Nina says, “You’re a ballerina, not an informer.”

“I suppose I could ask him,” Polina whispers, and a small whimper escapes. “It’s just—I love him, I really do. I don’t want anything to go wrong between us.” Even in a whisper, there’s a wailing sound to her voice. “I feel so sick. I’m sick with it.”

They have reached the hotel. Vera holds the door open for Polina while Nina, feeling around in her pocketbook, finds her handkerchief, onto which she sprinkles some eau de cologne. The woman in the gray hat and scarf lingers outside.

Vera has led Polina to a chair in the hotel lobby. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath,” Nina says, laying the kerchief over Polina’s forehead. “It’s going to be all right.”

It isn’t until many hours later, when they have danced and showered and eaten and are back in their rooms, that Nina finds a moment alone to look at the note in her pocket. On it is printed, in small but clear letters:
Passports, i.d. Ernst 11 6275.

T
HE REST OF
that year, the year Grigori turned twenty, was filled with Elsin’s poetry. Grigori returned to the vinyl bag and its contents, the photographs and letters; the pendant remained his secret. He read all he could about Elsin and Revskaya, and like a sleuth pieced the puzzle together. And then came the disappointments: Big Ears’ dismissive response to his essay, not to mention—after his careful and timid approach—Nina Revskaya’s angry green eyes.

But his efforts were not wasted. If nothing else, he now had his topic of study; the socialist realist poetry of Viktor Elsin was soon to become his subject of expertise, and won him a student travel grant—his first trip back to Russia. In Moscow, using the address and bit of information he had gleaned from the hospital certificate, he sought whatever records he might find. The frustration of trying to access those records, a search that, on that first trip, proved futile, was like nothing he had ever experienced. Even when he returned two years later—as a chaperone on a student exchange program—to repeat the attempt, the ordeal was dismaying. First he waited all morning for the burly woman at the housing records office to finish whatever she was doing and pay attention to him; when at last Grigori was allowed to explain his reason for being there, the woman announced that it was her lunch hour. When she returned much later to find Grigori still waiting, she allowed that any files she might be able to locate for him were only accessible, for some reason, between nine and ten thirty in the morning. And so Grigori showed up the next day at the appointed time, only to be told that the woman was not in that day and that, since she was the only person in charge of housing records, no one else could help him. When he returned on the third day, the office was inexplicably closed.

“You look grumpy,” Evelyn said now, as they made their way in Grigori’s Volvo to the home of Roger and Hoanh Thomson, both colleagues of theirs at the university. “Don’t worry, we don’t have to stay long.”

“Sorry, no, it’s—I was just remembering something.”

Evelyn gave him a sympathetic look. Probably she thought he was thinking something sad about Christine. She had been very patient with him ever since Valentine’s Day, had even made a point of saying she was glad that they were “taking things slow.” Grigori sat up straighter and tried to look cheery. It was a cold Saturday evening, the first of March, and they were headed to the Thomsons’ yearly
faculty party in honor of International Women’s Day. (Really it was meant to be celebrated on the eighth, but spring break was next week and most people would be away.) This was an event to which “Grigori and guest” were annually invited simply because he and Hoanh—who tutored French and Vietnamese and dressed in aggressively tarty outfits—had offices on the same floor. Though she was not particularly pretty (bad skin, and something cold in her small brown eyes) Roger clearly thought her a sexpot, and everyone at the university (well, perhaps not Evelyn, who knew about fashion) acted like she was, since she wore lots of makeup and form-fitting clothes more revealing than anything they themselves ever dared. Even to this party most of them would surely turn up in rubber boots and baggy turtlenecks and goofy all-weather parkas intended for trekking the Himalayas; you would think they were in the middle of a blizzard. Not Evelyn, of course. She had styled herself in a sleeveless silk blouse, a slim black skirt, and those high-heeled leather boots she looked particularly good in.

“That sounds good,” Grigori had told her when she asked if he wanted to carpool. That was how she put it, “carpool to Roger and Hoanh’s,” as if even phrasing it some other way—“Would you like to go to the party together?”—might not be “slow” enough for him. Of course, no matter how she phrased it, their colleagues would whisper when they showed up together. Fine, let them talk. It didn’t matter.

“Oh, brother, I forgot about the no-shoes policy.” Evelyn looked put out as they came upon the sad-looking lineup of dirty boots and sneakers and salt-stained galoshes arrayed on a layer of newspaper in the foyer. The Thompsons’ home—a roomy apartment on Med-field Street—was toasty, the fireplace emitting its woodsy scent. “My whole outfit is about the boots.” Evelyn gave a good-natured laugh, unzipping the slender boots, and slid them off, as Grigori silently stepped out of his loafers. Though he too found the no-shoes policy inhospitable, something stopped him from showing sympathy for
Evelyn, even when he saw how small she now became, a good three inches shorter in her sheer-stockinged feet. “Well, here goes,” she said, opening the door. Feeling guilty and ungenerous, Grigori held it for her to go ahead of him.

“Welcome, Greg, and Evelyn, I salute you.” Roger greeted them and handed a tiny bouquet of pinkish rosebuds to Evelyn. This too was part of the tradition, little posies for all the women, and on Roger and Hoanh’s stereo music by female artists only. By the door was a framed declaration of International Women’s Day and a donation box for the Girls’ Fund of America.

“Mmm, this way I can keep smelling them,” Evelyn said, carefully pinning the posy to her silk blouse, as Roger hung their coats on the wall rack. “Thanks, Roger.”

The other guests stood around in fuzzy socks and pilly sweaters, drinking Roger’s homemade coffee liqueur. Deplorable, thought Grigori—though his trousers too were somewhat rumpled. New England winter…Yet even Christine, in the long last winter of her illness, had not fallen into the torpidity of perpetual poly fleece.

Roger said, “You’re looking lovely, Evelyn, I must say.” It was true; the shimmer of her silk blouse made her eyes look even brighter, and she held herself straight and proud, in that petite, fit way of hers, unlike so many of the others here, lumpy in their heavy sweaters. “So, you know the ropes. Drinks, et cetera, over here, edibles over there.” Roger indicated the table over by the window, said, “Oh, my bride is beckoning,” and went over to where Hoanh was standing in a tight, stretchy dress that somehow managed to accentuate her pubis.

Grigori was glad not to have to talk to them. The truth was, he couldn’t stand Roger, a sociologist who studied fripperies such as “the social impulse” and even got away with teaching a course on “friendship.” There was a falseness about him, a posturing, and that embarrassingly transparent pride at having managed to marry a
skinny Asian fox of his very own. Something so practiced about him, always a new sleek tie, or suits he wore with Converse high-tops. In better weather he rode an old Schwinn three-speed to work; he had spent months researching retro bicycles before having it shipped from Chicago. Even this apartment seemed a pose rather than genuine, the African masks and Vietnamese water puppets carefully commingled with a circus poster, a London transit map, and photo-booth Polaroids in which Roger and Hoanh made faces of forced jollity. Atop the living room bookshelf, record albums were propped for display—Joan Baez, Laura Nyro, Patti Smith, Joan Jett—though really all of the music was coming from one of those iPods advertised everywhere these days, plugged into a speaker system in the corner.