My Sergei (5 page)

As a pairs skater, you have to learn everything you learned as a singles skater over again. Even something so simple as a
crossover is different, because now you are doing it with somebody else, and you have to align your body with theirs. We spent
two hours a day on the ice for a week just learning crossovers. Poor Sergei, his legs were so much longer than mine that he
was never able to take a full stride. His strokes were always shorter than was natural. We had to learn spins all over again,
because now we had to do them in synchronization with all the angles of our bodies—our “lines”—aligned identically with
each other. The death spiral was a very difficult element to learn. Both partners have to find the correct tension in their
arms. One time I would lean back too far, the next time Sergei would lean back too far; and each time we’d collapse in a heap
before the first rotation. My entire body was sore from learning the death spiral, which looks so effortless when it’s properly
done. But that’s an illusion. The girl’s abdominal muscles must be rigid the entire time.

We practiced the jumps endlessly. When you skate alone, you can jump whenever you’re ready. But with a partner, you must do
it together, right now, exactly, ready or not. The lifts, like every other move, are all technique, with each one requiring
a different way of holding the hands. My hands used to get very sore, and to strengthen them I used to hold a bar with a weight
attached to it by a rope, and wind this weight up and down. Sergei had to learn special steps so he wouldn’t trip and fall
when he carried me on these lifts. Zaharov taught us all these things.

I was never scared of the lifts, because I always felt very safe in Sergei’s arms. His whole career, even when he was just
learning, he fell on these lifts maybe three times. But the throws were terrifying to me. When doing a throw, the girl jumps
at the same time as the boy throws her like a rag doll, gripping her by the arm and waist. Triple salchow throw, double axel
throws—these were the elements Sergei and I performed. Propelled by the boy, the girl flies much higher than when she jumps
alone. She travels farther in the air. We used to practice it on thick mats while off the ice, and when that was mastered,
we’d move over to the rink. That was very, very scary. Zaharov would say something like, “Today we’ll work on the spiral,
some lifts, the spins, and then the throw.” As soon as he said “the throw,” I worried about it the entire session.

I fell repeatedly while trying to learn to land. I wasn’t rotating far enough, or was opening my arms too late, or I didn’t
have my right leg bent and my left leg ready to reach out and point. It’s difficult to know where the ice is when you’re in
the air after having been thrown. I kept falling and falling and falling. Sergei would say, “Don’t you think you should go
unlace your skates for a while?” That’s what he used to do when he was tired: pretend there was something wrong with his boots.
“Go sit a little bit,” he would tell me. “I can’t throw you anymore.” I’d answer: “Why do I have to go sit? I’ll just freeze
and get more scared while I’m waiting. I’d rather do it ten more times and get it over with.”

So Sergei would throw me some more, and I’d keep crashing. He’d keep making the sad faces at me, hiding his eyes like he could
no longer watch because it was too painful. But he never got mad at me. Some partners got angry and screamed when the girl
didn’t land the throws. Pairs skating can be very, very dangerous for girls. I’ve seen boys, exasperated to the point of cruelty,
purposely throw their partners in a different direction than she expects, or throw her too high on purpose. This can be deadly.
But Sergei was never like this.

I didn’t cry. Maybe just a little, but I don’t really remember. Stanislav Zhuk, who became our coach when we were a little
bit older, used to tell Sergei, “You have to throw her as if she were a crystal vase.” It may be true, but I wasn’t very happy
about this analogy. Why a vase? Why not a person? I’m not a vase. But maybe it helped Sergei throw me a little more gently.
All I know for certain is that whenever Zaharov said we’re going to practice the throw today, I got so nervous I wanted to
be sick.

The other skaters in the club used to call me
BabaKatia,
which meant “little grandmother.” I didn’t particularly like this nickname, but they gave it to me because I liked to needlepoint.
Also, probably, because I was very serious, very meticulous. Whenever we traveled anywhere, I always carried a bag with me
that my grandmother had packed that was full of everything a skater might need if something went wrong with a costume: safety
pins, ribbons, rubber bands, scissors, thread. Also little sweet cookies and candies and snacks. My grandmother would tell
me, “If you don’t want to eat it, Sergei will have it.” She loved Sergei, and used to make him pastries filled with meat or
cottage cheese, called
pirochkis.

At the beginning of our second year together, in September, Sergei missed a morning practice, and Zaharov lost his patience.
Naturally, I was there. I never missed anything. If you told me to go to the moon, I’d have gone there, too. But Zaharov told
me to go home and not come back for the rest of the day. He said, “You don’t have a future with Sergei, and I’m not going
to coach him anymore. You, Katia, will keep skating as a singles skater, and we’ll look for another partner for you.”

I didn’t think it was fair. I was proud to be skating with Sergei. He made me feel safe. He seemed like an older brother to
me, and I knew he didn’t miss any more practices than the other boys. From what I remember, he didn’t even miss more than
Zaharov. Sergei was just a normal teenager who wasn’t totally committed yet to skating, wasn’t sure if he was going to keep
skating or not. But Zaharov pushed him hard, and overreacted to Sergei’s mistakes.

Zaharov called our parents and asked them to come to a meeting at the club the next day. This, of course, was unusual, so
my parents decided to meet that afternoon with Sergei’s parents to discuss the situation, before they saw Zaharov. It was
the first time my parents went to Sergei’s house. My father said that he thought Sergei was a good skater, that his body was
nice, maybe not strong, but fine for only sixteen. But he thought he had to be more serious about training. They all wanted
Sergei to realize he had done something wrong by missing too many practices. So my parents waited at his house, and when Sergei
got home, he was shocked to see them sitting there. The first words out of his mouth were “Where’s Katia?” because I’d stayed
home from the evening training session. He still didn’t realize how upset Zaharov was at him.

My parents told Sergei to call me at home. He phoned, and he and I decided to meet the next day at the subway before practice
and talk things out. That was the first time we’d ever met off the ice together, and I was very upset, crying, because I knew
how angry Zaharov was. I knew that Zaharov wouldn’t coach Sergei any longer, and the idea of changing partners scared me.
I’m not sure why, but I always believed Sergei was the only one who could skate with me. It had nothing to do with having
romantic feelings toward him. I thought that he was a very attractive man, of course, but since I was so little, and he was
so much older, I never thought he’d have special feelings for me. But I’d always imagined it would be fun to be around him.

Not that anyone asked my opinion. It’s only in America that they worry about how the skaters are feeling. For us, it was always,
“Go ahead and skate. It’s too bad for you if you don’t like it.”

When he met with our parents later that morning, Zaharov spoke very bluntly. He said I could not skate with Sergei, because
Sergei wasn’t very good as a partner. Sergei’s mother said, “Fine, we’ll leave CSKA and go to another sports club, and Sergei
will become an ice dancer.” She always thought pairs skating was the hardest discipline because of all the lifting the man
had to do. Also, in ice dancing there was no jumping. But my parents, who knew my feelings, told her I was not going to skate
with anyone else. They thought the decision of whether we stayed together or not should be mine and Sergei’s to make. Not
Zaharov’s. It was then that Sergei and I made the commitment to skate together, to become a team.

So Zaharov left us after coaching us one year. Our new coach became Nadezheda Shevalovskaya, a woman who also worked at CSKA.
She had an old friend, a former ice dancer, who was studying to get a degree in choreography from the National Theater Institute
in Moscow, and Shevalovskaya asked this friend to create a couple of programs for Sergei and me. In this way, the incomparable
Marina Zueva came into our lives.

Our first program choreographed by Marina Zueva, 1982.

We were young, she was young, and Sergei and I became Marina’s project. In order to graduate she had to present a finished
program to a panel of her teachers, and we skated this program for her. It was done to music sung by a boy’s choir, very romantic
and light, with no throws to worry about. Still, I was nervous the day her professors came to the rink to judge Marina’s choreography.
But Marina told us then, and repeated it to us often over the years, “Don’t worry about the judges. They’re just people who
want to enjoy your program. They’re happy they’re not going to the office, so try to help them enjoy it.”

When Marina first started working with us, she was skinny, with long black hair that hung straight down. Her fingernails were
red, which I liked, and her fingers were long and slender. She touched you softly, and it felt good when she tried to help
you fix some little movement. After she was with us a couple of years, she started to pay attention to fashion, and I was
always amazed how she could change her look completely overnight to stay in style. She made many of her clothes herself, and
they were always tasteful. She wore leggings and long sweaters in the mid-eighties, when they were the style elsewhere. But
in Russia it was very radical for a woman not to wear a skirt. She cut her hair and dyed it red. She was a pioneer who wasn’t
afraid of what people would say. In those years, if you stood out, people would talk about you. That’s all changed now, of
course. Now the people in Russia can’t spend their money fast enough to keep up with the fashions. It’s crazy. But everything
was different then.

As she created a program, she’d describe every movement for us. She’d tell us why we were holding our hands a certain way.
Why she wanted it soft. Why it should be strong. She’d bring a picture of something onto the ice and would say, Do this pose
for me. Copy this picture. Or she would say, How would you act out spring? Do flowers, birds, love, sun. Now show me winter.
Or, Make this shape for me on the ice. Sergei would laugh sometimes at these exercises, because Marina always used unusual
words. She might say, Go run across the ice like a little animal. And she worked with us a lot on our expressions. We would
stand in front of the mirror and make faces at ourselves for hours after practice, sometimes from 7:30 to 9:30 in the evening.
Marina would ask, How would you be funny? How would you be sad? And we would show her.

The programs tended to be very difficult when she first made them, and then she’d have to take things out to make them skateable.
For instance, she might ask us to clap twice during a crossover, turn our heads, then do a difficult jump. Impossible. Sergei
would say to her, Marina, will you show us? Can you do this first, Marina? Or, Marina, it’s not possible to close your eyes
before you jump.

We finished sixth in our first Junior World Championships, which were held in Sapporo, Japan, in December of 1983, three months
after we had started skating with Shevalovskaya. The next year, when the Junior World Championships were held at the Broadmoor
in Colorado Springs, we won them. Sergei was seventeen years old and I was thirteen.

It was our first visit to the United States, and to us it was like a little fairy tale. It was Christmas and there was a lot
of snow, and Christmas trees decorated with beautiful ornaments. I took two of these ornaments home for souvenirs, a gold
one and a navy blue one; I stole them right off the tree. There were candles all around, and Santa Clauses. And when the snow
stopped falling, it was suddenly sunny, just as in a dream, all the snowflakes sparkling like crystal. The Broadmoor had a
little pond with ducks in it, and Sergei and I would walk out and feed the ducks. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it all
was. Then the weather got warm, and I was amazed that in winter you could walk outside without your jacket.

Everyone had warned us that the skating would be difficult because of the altitude, and one of the skaters before us came
off the ice coughing blood. But it didn’t turn out to be a problem for us, and we skated clean, which our coaches had told
us was the most important thing. Don’t try too hard, they warned. We weren’t expected to win, and after we did I remember
going to a toy store to celebrate. There was a little monkey on sale for six dollars that I loved, and since, for me, it was
a lot of money, I made a trade with the shopkeeper for a
matroishka
I had brought with me, one of those stacking wooden dolls that are made in Russia. Then I asked Sergei to trade another matroishka
for a turtleneck sweater. It was very difficult at that time to buy children’s clothes in Moscow, so I was always careful
to bring home the same number of gifts for my sister that I bought for myself. I bought us both a pair of pants and a shirt,
plus warm boots for Maria and a long blue winter coat for me. The coat cost sixty dollars, which was a fortune. But it was
something I could never have found at home. For my friends I always brought back souvenir soaps, shampoos, and lotions from
the hotel to give out as little gifts.