Letters from Yelena (10 page)

Although Bruna would scold me when I was home, there was less opportunity for inflicting any real pain with me leaving early and coming home late, as well as entering competitions on the
weekend. I wanted to do ballet full-time, the other children at school seemed happy just to be outside of the normal system and enjoying their school days, but even then I was incredibly serious
about ballet. One salvation was that my private lessons continued, giving me the opportunity to practice on the weekend. Even if those classes were full of endless repetition and refinement, and
even if they were often painful, they became like a kind of religion to me. Nevertheless, after a long week it alarmed me to see the state of my feet. My toes seemed to want to fuse together, and I
constantly suffered from bunions and split nails. Uncle Leo would sometimes slip me a painkiller before a competition – but I was worried that I might be punished for taking drugs.

There were still very dark moments and for some reason my father remained unable to face up to Bruna and what she had clearly done to us in the past. I knew that Uncle Leo sometimes asked
questions about her, but it seemed that even to him Bruna was off-limits with my father. I wondered if she had a hold on him in some other way. One day, when I had had to stay late at school, I
came home to see that Inessa had a huge cut on her face. I asked me father what had happened to her, and without looking up from his desk, he quietly told me that she had just fallen over at
school. Bruna bounded into his study, insisted that I start my homework and gave my father a thousand and one important jobs to do before I could make more of an issue of it. Although Inessa stayed
quiet on the matter, I tried my best to make it clear that I would not tolerate these things happening. Over time, Inessa gradually became closer to my father; she knew that if she was at his side
she could not be hurt. I on the other hand, did not find intimacy easy, even with my kindly Uncle Leo who I kept at a needlessly suspicious distance. I see now that the experiences of being alone
with Bruna made me shy from company for many years.

The first person I began to get close to was my ballet tutor, Therese. She had only recently qualified from a French conservatoire, which impressed my father no end. Therese was a slim, pale
young woman, with a resigned expression, her faintly blonde hair pinned up with a couple of pencils. She did not spot any great potential in me – she retained that slight air of
self-preservation not unusual in ballerinas – but to me she represented another world. She had been a dancer of some note in her teenage years, though why she had returned to Donetsk after
training in Paris remained beyond me. But her sojourn away had been enough for her to now become, in my eyes, very cultured and worldly. I devoured every detail that I could about her. The photos
of the Champs Élysées above her desk, the
Vogue
magazines she kept in her drawer, the sparse way she used makeup. To my surprise, I started to enjoy dancing with her, as well
as merely craving it. I had never really enjoyed anything before, Noah, strange as that sounds. As a result, I found myself dancing every moment I was alone, though I was careful to keep up to date
with my school studies – lest any failure gave Bruna an advantage over me. But somehow I managed this rewarding compromise. Therese and I became close; she was like an exotic older sister
that I wanted to emulate. When it turned out that she smoked, I seriously considered starting myself.

I was delighted one evening when Therese invited me to join her for supper. By this point I was fifteen, and the outside world was beginning to seem in reach. I was starting to form my own
identity, which unsurprisingly was largely based around her. Like my mother, Therese adored all things English, and unlike many Ukrainian girls she insisted on expensive makeup and wore her hair in
a Western style. I tried to replicate her in every way. Just as you may have seen glam rock stars as otherworldly creatures from somewhere better, I saw Western women. Words like
‘London’ and ‘Paris’ were imbued with such exoticism to me.

That night, after a brief ballet class, Therese drove me to a restaurant to meet two men who had trained with her in Paris. They were now dancing in St Petersburg and I was just utterly
entranced. Young people from St Petersburg are some of the most fashionable and cultured in the East, and I instantly fell for their cultivated air of sophistication. Until then my romantic
liaisons had been restricted to guilty encounters behind the railway lines with the older boys from the college, who occasionally saw my developing figure as something to covet. But this was
something very different. I was told by one of the men that Therese had described me to them as her ‘star pupil’. They asked if I had applied to a Russian academy yet, and I told them I
had not.

‘Therese,’ one of them said. ‘People will look upon you in a highly favourable light if one of your pupils, in your first year of teaching, is accepted into a Russian
academy.’

This remark seemed to catch something in Therese and after that night, she began to train me to be accepted into the Vaganova, the most prestigious ballet school in Russia; even the world. This
became her purpose in life, and I think she gave it everything she had. In Russia, ballet is a way of life, and normally girls are accepted into the academy as young as ten. But it would be
possible, we soon learnt, for me to gain entry there to qualify for a ten month certificate as a foreign student. The prestige it would bestow on me, and upon her as my tutor, would be incredible.
It would allow me the opportunity to go on and dance anywhere in the world. It seemed that Therese and I were now bound on a journey together.

My increased focus on dance gave Bruna new ammunition, and life at home became more difficult. Inessa was not quite the ally I had hoped she would be, and we were rarely on the same page. I knew
that to get out of this situation I had to leave Donetsk the moment I could, and Therese was my ticket out.

Fortunately, my father supported this new venture wholeheartedly and paid for me to attend summer schools, which he knew would give me an edge over the other girls. These summer schools were
wonderful places to me – whole buildings dedicated to teaching young people to express their creative side. It was an eye-opener to know that other people shared my passion; even if they
often found pleasure where I found duty. I could not help but view the whole affair through slightly detached, ironic eyes, but I also discovered intriguing new parts of myself.

Yet something always held me back from embracing happiness. Experience had taught me that happiness was a delusional state. I must have constantly looked coiled, haunted. I sometimes wonder why
no-one ever questioned why such a young girl was so reticent. I learnt that sentiments were not ordered as ideally as culture would let us know; people dedicated time primarily to their own
concerns and welfare, with little time to look out for others. My resignation to this belief led me to find other people pretty unsavoury.

As my body began to develop, some of the boys at the school started to take an interest in me. Though I had initially felt pleasantly surprised, the sensation was to be short-lived.

One in particular, a tall and muscular boy from the city with a quizzical smile, started to pass me notes during quiet moments in class. I didn’t dare tell anyone else about these notes.
The contents of them were by turns flattering and, it had to be said, a little frightening. After a few weeks, I started to write him the odd note back, more out of boredom and slight curiosity
than anything else. I hadn’t yet ever felt romantically inclined, but in a moment of weakness, I agreed to meet him in a quiet place behind the log cabins after school.

When he arrived, there was an urgency about him that seemed to suggest I had promised something that I couldn’t remember doing. For a while we sat and talked, and it felt good that someone
was interested in aspects of my life that I felt were so mundane. Then he wanted to kiss me. At first I resisted, but gradually I began to relax. Then the moment came when he started to touch me. I
felt the tension in me rise, and then to my horror, I began to wet myself.

‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be late.’

‘Where are you going?’ he said. Just then, the wet patch on my trousers became visible and he began to laugh. On my way back to the dormitory I couldn’t find my key, and in
that awful moment a group of girls saw the wet patch on my clothes and began to openly laugh at me. I’d never felt so ashamed.

At about sixteen, Therese and my father agreed that I had won enough local awards to start applying to the Russian schools. Though the audition itself would not cost, the flights to St
Petersburg most certainly would. For the first time, I had a goal on the horizon. I wanted desperately to escape this stifling town for the excitement of St Petersburg, and the elegant streets of
Ulitsa Rossi, which housed the Vaganova Academy.

Eventually, I had to hear Bruna’s thoughts on the matter. On one occasion, she snapped down the knife she’d been using and said, ‘Yelena, you are too ugly and fat to be a
ballerina. What makes you think you are so special?’ Something shifted in her face as she said it, as if she had wanted to unload this thought for a while. I left the room, but Bruna was not
to know that I went straight upstairs and cried. That evening, the razor blade came out again, the shock of the vivid red and the blessed sense of calm returned. I pulled the pillow hard around my
face, desperate to not leak a single sound. Deep down I was terrified that she was right. On the internet, Therese had showed me videos of girls who had been accepted there. Their bodies had been
so beautiful, flexible and disciplined. However many classes I undertook, and however much practice I did, I had still never been a member of a ballet school, and here I was applying to the best
one.

After school, alone in my bedroom I would sometimes strip off and inspect my body in the full-length mirror. It gave me a curious sensation. For years I hadn’t done anything to earn the
body of a ballerina and yet, if what the other girls were saying was true, I had one. Yes, I still badly wanted to reduce the swell of my stomach and the weight at the top of my thighs. But I had
at least got my mothers’ neck, expressive eyes and long legs. Looking in the mirror it occurred to me then that this body was simply on loan to me for a few years, and I had to fight with
every ounce of strength I had not to loathe it. I knew I had to learn to see it as an instrument. A lump of rock that I needed to chip away at in order to make the sculpture required. And yet this
increasingly practical attitude to my body was very different to the way I saw myself, as a person. I felt that my Mum had abandoned me because I wasn’t good enough, and that perhaps Bruna
was the only one unafraid to tell me that. She simply treated me as I deserved. I was waging a considered war on my body, but a far more vicious war on my mind. Bruna was a factor I had to
constantly consider. The blood letting helped, but then I started to live in fear that she might discover that too, and send me away to some asylum.

During practice, my determination manifested itself by refusing to leave the barre until I felt I had got it exactly right. At times I became frustrated with Therese because I felt she was too
gentle, too timid with me. I knew that when I auditioned, at any moment I could be tapped on the shoulder, and have to leave the room instantly. The other girls would know what to be thinking of
second by second, and yet I would not. As I strove to better myself, Bruna’s voice became part of an internal monologue, taunting me. Often it would just laugh, the laugh ringing around my
head for long into the next exercise. But I was damned if I was going to give into it. I watched every morsel that entered my mouth, and I practiced every moment that God sent. My feet sang with
pain at the end of the day when I finally took to my bed. But I didn’t have a choice, I had to escape that life. After a few months, Therese started to tell me that she thought I was doing
well. And what was more, she felt I had a good chance of getting in.

The only way to get an audition at the academy was to send a tape of myself dancing. Of course, I made Therese tape me six or seven times before we finally made one that I felt was good enough.
We eventually sent the tape off and one day after school I had a letter from the Vaganova inviting me to audition with them. My father was delighted, and not a little surprised, and he booked
flights to St Petersburg for Therese and me.

On the flight over, I was barely able to speak. Therese tried to remember exactly what the audition would comprise. I would undertake a usual session at the barre along with all the other
candidates, followed by some centre work. I must not allow myself to be distracted by the other girls, she said, however good they were. Although I had walked through this process in my mind many
times, I had no idea how little mental preparation can replace the education of experience.

St Petersburg was bustling and overwhelming as Therese and I tried to find our way with our little bags. I felt awed by the austere buildings, their windows set high above the ground by stone
pillars. Each seemed imbued with centuries of sacrifice and pain and yet around us young people nonchalantly chewed on fries and snapped one another on cameras.

The Vaganova was just off the manic Nevsky Prospekt, where screened Pepsi adverts sat opposite ancient palaces. It encompassed one long street, which stretched out just behind the compact
majesty of the Pushkin Theatre. The academy filled the buildings on both sides of the street, which were painted in a majestic but slightly queasy shade of yellow. Inside, the halls of the academy
were grand, but disarmingly blank. Despite the glorious chandeliers that hung from the ceilings, the building itself was filled with a curious, expectant silence. As I waited for my audition, I saw
around me mums fussing over their daughters as they waited too. Although I felt fortunate to have Therese at my side, at that point I would have done anything to have had my mother with me. The
academy had an aura that was so overwhelming, but my Mum, I knew, would have somehow made it all seem like an adventure.