My Sergei (3 page)

But the Central Red Army Club had a long history of producing skating champions, and the coaches knew how to train a young
child for future success. We did physical conditioning off the ice three times a week—abdominals, jumping, leg exercises
—and ballet training three days a week, which I loved. We learned how to stand, how to hold our heads, how to hold our hands
and arms. Everything. There was a mirror the entire length of the army club rink where we skated, so we could keep an eye
on our posture. And I was always the smallest one, boy or girl.

My mother tells me that as a child I was obedient. I was not a troublemaker at all. And disciplined. In order to be at the
rink by 7:00
A.M.
, which was when we had ice, I had to be up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes my parents wouldn’t want to drive me
to the early practice. I’d toddle in and wake them, insisting, “I can’t miss it. It’s my job.”

This side of me came from my father. He was very hard on me, very demanding. He got mad at me if my hair wasn’t braided, or
if my shirt wasn’t tucked in, or if my room wasn’t neat; if my posture wasn’t right, or if my face wasn’t clean, or if my
food wasn’t eaten.

As a child I was always tense around my father. He expected me to be able to tell time when I was four years old. My mom always
said, “It’s all right, she’ll learn it soon enough.” She always had sympathy for me, probably because I was so tiny. But my
father just kept on pushing me. I was scared of him. If he came to help me with my homework, my head didn’t absorb anything
because I was so afraid that I’d make a mistake. Always fast in mind and movement, he wanted the answers immediately. I got
so stiff, so panicky, I couldn’t do it. He expected the homework perfect, with no mistakes. If I didn’t do it right, he made
me repeat it again and again, until it was not just correct, but also neat. I used to make my sixes backward, and if I erased
one of these mistakes, I had to do the whole homework sheet over again.

Looking back now, I can see that he was teaching me to strive for perfection. Sometimes I think he overdid it. But whenever
I made a remark like “I want to finish first” or “I want to be the best,” my father liked it.

Deep down, though, my father always had a kind heart. It’s said that the eyes are a window to the soul, and I know it’s true,
because my father’s eyes were kind. He sometimes came to my room before I went to bed and said, “Katia, I’m sorry I was so
hard on you.” He used to get angry with me if I got sick, saying it was my fault because I wasn’t wearing warm enough clothes.
I was even afraid to cough in front of him. But in the evening he’d come up to my room and give me my medicine, or would rub
cream on my chest, and he’d apologize for getting mad.

He explained that he was the way he was because he’d always been hard on himself. He was already a dancer when he began serving
two years in the army, and every night, after doing his army duties all day, he’d go to the ballet and work out so he wouldn’t
lose his conditioning. He told me, you always have to do extra. If your coach tells you to do five jumps, you must do eight.
If everyone else does something once, you must do it twice.

Now I see my father with my daughter, Daria, and I can’t believe he’s the same man. He’s so patient, and will take hours to
explain something to her. If he asks her to clean up her toys, he will also help. I don’t remember my father ever helping
me clean up. When Daria was little, he would feed her the bottle and hold her as long as he could. He is completely different
now that he’s a grandfather. His body shape is different, too. Perhaps there’s a connection.

I
went to a sports school as a child. It wasn’t just for CSKA
athletes. There were also kids there from other sports clubs around Moscow. But everyone in the school trained in a sport
in addition to taking regular classes. One of my classmates, in fact, was the hockey player Pavel Bure, who’s now with the
Vancouver Canucks.

Elementary schools in Russia have ten grades, and you start when you’re seven and graduate at sixteen. We all wore uniforms.
From grades one through eight, the girls’ uniform was a brown dress with a black apron in the front. On holidays, the black
apron was replaced by a white apron. At the top of the dress we wore a little white lace collar that was removable and could
be washed separately, because the collar was always supposed to be clean. Then in grades nine and ten the uniform changed
to a navy blue skirt and jacket, under which you could wear any color blouse. The boys, throughout, wore navy blue pants and
jackets.

Then there were the pins. From grades one through three, we wore a pin on our shirts the shape of a red star that had a portrait
of young Lenin on it. From grades four through eight, we wore a red scarf around our necks that signified we were members
of the Pioneers, an organization something like the Boy Scouts. It taught us to respect older people, to be good citizens,
to be patriots—that sort of thing.

In grades nine and ten, we wore a pin on our shirts in the shape of a red flag that had a portrait of old Lenin on it. That
meant we were members of the Komosol, which is for strong young people who would help our country grow up. After that, we
graduated, and it was everyone’s hope to some day be invited to become members of the Communists, which was a great honor.
My parents were in this organization. To be a Communist, in Soviet society, was considered the highest level of good citizenship.

Sergei
(in back)
in his school uniform.

Classes went from September till May, and until I was ten years old, we had the summers off from skating. My favorite thing
to do for vacation was to go to our
dacha
—a summer home an hour north of Moscow. We shared it with another family, and our part of the house had a living room, a
small kitchen, and three bedrooms. It was in a village near the forest, and three miles from the dacha was a river where my
father could swim. In most places this river was so shallow I could wade in it.

I loved being outside all day long. The train line between Moscow and Leningrad—now Saint Petersburg—was only a mile away,
and five times a day the train roared through. We’d play on the tracks, or would sit on the nearby hillside and throw stones
at the trains as they passed. The best game we played was War, where we built a camouflaged hut, and I played the nurse waiting
for the soldiers to come back wounded. I’d bandage them up and send them back to the front. My father wanted me to spend this
time stretching or running to improve my conditioning, but I just wanted to play. As I said, my father was a very serious
man in those days.

I liked painting and coloring and crafts and playing with dolls. Very normal things. I used to choreograph shows for my sister
at the dacha, creating little dramas to which we gave grand names like
The Last Concert
or
Borahtino,
the last of which is a Russian fairy tale similar to Pinocchio. Then we’d invite the neighbors to come watch our production.

I’m afraid I was very tough on my sister when directing these shows, much as my father was tough on me. Maria was a cute and
quiet girl who had very blonde hair as a child. She had round cheeks, pale skin, and wore her hair in bangs, so she looked
a little bit like a boy. I would expect her to do certain ballet moves in the productions, even though she was four years
younger than me and had never studied ballet. “So, you can’t do this?” I would say haughtily, showing her a pirouette. I was
domineering and very demanding.

Me, my mother, and my sister, Maria.

But my favorite thing to do at the dacha was to pick wild mushrooms with my grandfather. He loved the forest, and had names
for all the different places where we hunted for mushrooms. There was the Forest Across the River, or the Big Forest, or the
Dog’s Road. They all had different kinds of mushrooms that grew at different times of the year. One was a pine forest, where
white mushrooms grew. One was a birch forest, where orange mushrooms grew. September and October were good months for picking,
but in June the biggest mushrooms came up, bigger than the biggest tomato.

Diaka would come in and wake me up at 6:00
A.M.
My parents would still be asleep, because they came to the dacha for relaxation, and the last thing they wanted to do was
get up early to pick mushrooms. Sometimes they slept till noon. My grandfather told me it was better to go early so the other
mushroom pickers didn’t get there before you. It’s a very popular activity in Russia. But if we were late some days, he told
me not to worry; our mushrooms would hide from the other hunters until we came. And he was right, because we always found
them.

Russian people have long looked at mushrooms as being mystical. There is a very old belief that says that once a mushroom
comes under the gaze of a human eye, it ceases to grow. Diaka wouldn’t let me carry a basket when we went hunting, because
if the mushrooms saw you carrying a basket, they’d know what you intended and would hide in the grass and not show their faces
until you had passed. And we never carried a knife. Imagine what you would look like to a mushroom, creeping through the forest
with a basket and terrible knife. Very scary.

So Diaka would hide a plastic bag in the leg of my pants, and another in his pocket, and then the mushrooms would let us come
near. We’d go far into the birch forest, and I’d try very hard to keep up with his long stride so the next time he would let
me come, too.

When we had filled our bags and returned home, everyone would get excited, because Babushka would make nice dishes with our
mushrooms. We cleaned them very carefully, washing them twice with a brush. Then my grandmother would begin to cook. In one
dish, she would cut them up, blend them with onions, eggs, and spices, then make them into patties that she fried in butter.
Or she would make a mushroom soup. Or she pickled them. I liked them pickled, and my grandmother would sometimes pickle a
whole jar of only the smallest ones for me, because I, too, was the smallest. Unfortunately I hated mushroom soup. I preferred
picking mushrooms with my grandfather to eating them.

Diaka would also take me fishing. He made a special pole for me, not too big, a very small one, and a bigger pole for him.
Then we went to dirty places looking for worms. It’s gross, of course, and maybe something I wouldn’t do now, but when I was
ten or eleven, I loved to put the worms on the hook. Red ones, ugly things, the bigger the better. We used them to catch carp.
My father, too, sometimes went fishing for eels. He went at night to a place where he would shine a light into the water and
then spear the eels as they swam toward it. Then he’d bring the eels home, and I’d help him smoke them in alder. Very, very
delicious.

So, you see, it was a good childhood, filled with happy memories. I was skating singles then—the club did not put pairs
together until the girls were at least eleven—and I was proud that my parents never came to my practices to watch. Many
of the parents did that, and I always felt sorry for these skaters. You saw these kids later in their careers, and the first
thing they did when they finished a program was look to their coach, then look up to their parents.

But my father always asked me about my practices. Every day. Which was why I always wanted to do well. I couldn’t lie to him.
If I did badly that day, I told him I did badly, and he would speak to me disapprovingly. That’s why I used to hope that my
Babushka would come to get me after practice, not my father. She knew I preferred it, and even though it meant she had to
take two buses and the subway, she always tried to come get me. But often my father picked me up in the car, and if I told
him it was just a normal day of practice, that was very bad. Definitely the wrong answer to give. If I said practice went
okay, he’d say, “Explain to me how it was okay.” He wanted to know every jump I tried and why I thought I missed it. Every
night I had an exam.