The Turning (4 page)

Aunt Marya shrugged. “Georgi, you above all should know that in this country everything is possible.”

After Aunt Marya left, I slipped away to my little closet and emptied out my purse to see how many rubles I had. As soon as I had enough, I was going to buy a CD of French love songs sung by Jean Sablon and Charles Trenet. Their voices were so sexy. My aunt Marya had a CD player she let me use. I forgot all about politics and what might or might not happen to my country. What could that have to do with me? Instead, I imagined myself strolling along the Seine on a spring day with a debonair Frenchman. When a little voice inside me said, “What about Sasha?” I silenced it.

CHAPTER 3

SASHA

The next afternoon, on my way to the children’s shelter where I volunteered as a ballet teacher, I stopped by to see Sasha. Home for Sasha and his grandmother was a walk-up apartment on a side street where even fifty years later you could still see bullet holes from the war. Sasha’s grandmother, Nadya Petrovna, was sitting up in bed. She was like a bird with tiny sharp features and hair like feathers sticking up around her small head. Even her voice had a chirping sound. “Sasha, love, here is Tanya to see us. Just what I needed to cheer me. Come, sit on the bed, Tanya, and tell me about your dear family. Sasha, put on the kettle and give Tanya some of those American cookies you brought me.” She shook her head. “My Sasha spoils me. Every day he brings me a present.”

His generosity was one of the reasons I cared so much for Sasha. He never spent money on himself; any money that did not go for his art supplies went for his grandmother. Besides her medicines, he bought little treats to make her happy. I settled down beside Nadya Petrovna, and she grasped my hand in her hot, thin fingers. Her wasted body was wrapped in a brightly colored silk kimono. Sasha had traded one of his paintings for it. Nadya Petrovna looked like a creature from a fable, a fairy godmother or a kindly witch. The apartment was only one small room with a portion curtained off for Sasha, but it was magical. The tables and dresser tops were covered with bright scarves; even the lamps were draped with scarves, so the room was faintly lit in different colors. On the walls were Sasha’s ballet sketches and paintings.

Along with Sasha’s work, Nadya Petrovna had several icons on the wall, all but one of them of little value except to her. Nadya Petrovna’s icon of St. Vladimir had a place of honor. St. Vladimir lived more than a thousand years ago. He started out very badly, what with killing Christians right and left and having lots of wives and eight hundred girlfriends. Later in his life he repented, became a Christian, and said goodbye to the eight hundred girlfriends. A candle burned in front of the icon, which was old and very valuable. Nadya Petrovna once told me the ancient icon had come to her family in a mysterious way that was never spoken of aloud, but that had something to do with the Empress Alexandra herself. “We clung to it through revolution and war,” she said.

The icons Sasha was working on were scattered on a table. He had once explained to me how he mixed his tempera paints in order to copy the soft blues, reds, and golds of the old icons. “Sasha, you are so clever,” I said. “These look like they are hundreds of years old. I could never tell them from the real thing.” Sasha merely shrugged. For all of his cleverness I knew he resented painting the icons and longed to have more time to spend on his own original work.

While Sasha put on the kettle, I turned to Nadya Petrovna. “Tell me how you are feeling,” I said.

Though she was nothing more than skin and bones, and looked as if she would disappear in a puff of smoke at any moment, she answered, “Very well, my dear. My Sasha is a miracle worker. Somehow he finds me medicine.” Papa often complained about a lack of medicine for his patients, and I knew Sasha had to buy the medicine on the black market and pay dearly for it.

Sasha came in bearing a tray with glasses of tea and a plate of dainty cookies. I longed to sample one, but Sasha did not take one and frowned at me, so I excused myself with “I am still full from lunch.” I knew he wanted the treats for his grandmother.

I was startled to hear a chirping noise and thought for a moment it came from Nadya Petrovna. She was laughing at my surprise. “Sasha, take the scarf from the cage. Let Tanya see the little companion you have given me to cheer me up.”

Sasha, looking embarrassed, pulled away one of the scarves, revealing a birdcage. Inside the cage a little finch hopped about, excited at the light.

“That’s Kuzma. My little darling takes a nap when I do,” Nadya Petrovna said. “When Sasha is gone, he keeps me company. We sing to each other.” At this she began a chirping, peeping noise and the bird answered. “There, you see, we speak the same language.” The difference between them was that the bird sang freely and Sasha’s grandmother was soon out of breath.

I saw that Nadya Petrovna’s face was paler than it had been when I first arrived and her eyelids drooped. Hastily I excused myself, promising to return. Sasha took up the glasses and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Come again soon,” she whispered. “I like to have lively young people about.” She held on to my hand. Suddenly all her cheerfulness was gone. It was like seeing a bird dropping from the heavens to the ground. With a quick glance toward the kitchen, she whispered, “Promise me if anything happens to me, you will watch over Sasha.”

I was going to reassure her that nothing would happen to her but I saw from her eyes that she did not want easy comforting. I held more tightly to her hand and nodded, hating myself for my deception, for I might be far away in Paris.

Sasha followed me into the hallway. I knew from his closed, sulky face that he did not want me to see how much he cared for his grandmother. I held his face in my hands and kissed him. “Sasha,” I said, “Nadya Petrovna will be fine. With all your good care, how could she not be?”

As I left, I heard his grandmother say in a small breathless voice, “Sasha, dear, put the scarf over the cage. Kuzma and I will have a little rest.”

I tried to put Sasha’s troubles out of my mind as I hurried along to the children’s shelter, cutting through the Summer Garden where the rows of statues were covered with gray wooden boxes to protect them from the snow. Inside the boxes were Roman emperors and voluptuous women all waiting for the spring to set them free. It was like Russia itself, waiting for some miracle to turn it from a gray, drab country into the great land it had once been. Grandfather Georgi was an optimist, insisting that the people of Russia had survived revolutions and terror, starvation and war, so that one day they might be free. I could not be as optimistic as Grandfather, for the dream of Russia’s freedom kept slipping away.

A few years ago some archaeologists, digging in the Summer Garden just where I was walking, found unexploded artillery shells from the Great Patriotic War. Fearing that the bombs might go off before they could be safely dug up and detonated, people from all over the city brought their old clothes and blankets to protect the elegant statues. I remembered Grandmother setting off for the garden with our only tablecloth. It was like that with Russia. It seemed as if there was always some emergency requiring its people to make sacrifices.

On the Prospekt people walked against the wind, their heads down, brushing past one another without a look. On Ostrovsky Square snow was wrapped about the statue of Catherine the Great like an ermine mantle. I turned into the ugly warehouselike building that housed the shelter. Most of the children were runaways, many of them children who had been abandoned and abused. There was a name for such children,
besprizorniki
, neglected ones. The name had first been used seventy-five years ago for the orphans of the revolution. After all the years of communism we still had to have shelters for
besprizorniki
. I admired Grandfather for working so hard for change, but it seemed it would never come.

Uncle Fyodor was in charge of the shelter and had talked me into giving ballet lessons to some of the children. Uncle Fyodor was not really my uncle. During the Siege of Leningrad Aunt Marya had found him abandoned, his parents dead of starvation, a
besprizornik
himself. She had adopted him. He had never forgotten her kindness and had given his life to the abandoned children of Leningrad.

He was a heavy man with a healthy appetite and a round belly to match. He had large features and a massive shiny bald head. Everything about Uncle Fyodor was big: his gestures, his round eyes, his wide smile, and his heart. It was hard to imagine the shy, skinny child Aunt Marya talked of rescuing.

I was greeted with a hug and nearly disappeared into Uncle Fyodor’s big arms and chest. “Tanya, the children have been counting the hours until your arrival. They live for your visits. Let me take your coat and get rid of your wet boots.”

I had been working with my class for over a year. It was small, only four children ten to twelve years old: Anatoli, Galina, Yulia, and Natalia. Anatoli had no discipline but jumped about as he pleased, thinking ballet was a kind of gymnastic exercise. Galina and Yulia were dear girls who were in love with the idea of becoming ballerinas, but who would be just as happy to be rock singers or movie stars. They only wanted a glamorous life and had no idea of the years of work it takes to learn ballet. It was Natalia who gave me hope. She was like me. If she had to give up dancing, I believed she would die.

When I first saw her, she had a bruise on her pinched face and a patch of her hair was missing. Even with her injuries she had a delicate beauty. She had come to the shelter because her father in one of his drunken rages had beaten her and her mother. The mother had stayed, but Natalia had run away.

She refused to say where she came from or what the rest of her name was. She insisted that she had run away only to be a ballerina. When she told Uncle Fyodor her story, he contacted me and the classes began. “There is very little for them here,” he had said. “They need some occupation.” While the other three children forgot about their dancing the minute the class was over, Uncle Fyodor said, Natalia practiced day and night.

For once Natalia’s somber, pale face was flushed and excited. “Tanya,” she said, “I have done a hundred and twenty
sur les pointes
on my new shoes. Soon I will have to darn them as you do.” I had coaxed the members of the ballet troupe to save their worn toe slippers for me, and the last time I had come, I had brought four pairs.

I had to smile at how quickly she picked up the French words that are so much a part of the world of ballet. “Natalia, the minute you have new shoes, you want to wear them out!”

“But you are always complaining about darning your shoes.”

“Yes, yes, but give yourself a little time. Now everyone at the barre.” Uncle Fyodor had put a practice barre up against the wall of the little room that served as a cafeteria for the shelter at mealtimes. The shoes seemed to have enchanted the four children, and they worked earnestly at their exercises. To reward them, I told them the story of the famous red dancing slippers and how the little girl who wished for them got them and then couldn’t stop dancing. The story gave me an idea. I would make up my version of a ballet about the shoes, and Natalia would dance the part of the girl. I had wanted to show her off to Madame Pleshakova, hoping that Madame would take her into the ballet school next year. If it was to happen, it must be soon, for Natalia was already old to begin her training.

I assigned parts and calmed Anatoli, who was rejoicing in the grisly part of the woodman who chops off the girl’s feet. It was the first time the class had danced a story. In the beginning everyone was interested, but when Galina, Anatoli, and Yulia saw that each movement would have to be practiced over and over, they soon lost interest, just going through the motions. In Natalia the story ignited a fire. She practiced each step until she could dance it effortlessly. She
was
the girl who was dancing in enchanted slippers. Although the only training she had was the little I had given her, she was like a force of nature, like a tornado or a typhoon. There were mistakes and awkwardness, and her steps were simple ones, but with a deep sigh I wondered if with all my skill and practice I would ever have Natalia’s fire.

CHAPTER 4

GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION

The February snows melted into late-March fogs and into mists that rose from the rivers and canals and turned the city into an illusion of a city. Leningrad became St. Petersburg again, the city that Peter the Great was said to have built in the sky and then, when he had found just the right place, let down to earth.

Everything in my life was as up in the air as Peter’s city. We had yet to learn who would be in the tour and who would be left behind. A great deal depended upon the ballets that would be danced. If we did the classical ballets such as
Sleeping Beauty
and
Swan Lake
, it might be one group of dancers. It might be another group of dancers if we did the more experimental ballets, like the new version of
The Rite of Spring
that we were premiering on this evening.

The Rite of Spring
, with its discord and primitive rhythms, was demanding. The brilliant colors of the setting made an almost garish background. The choreographer had captured the wild frenzy of the music, so by the end of the evening’s performance Vitaly had pulled a hamstring and Vera had twisted her knee. We were all exhausted and dreaded hearing the verdict of our director, who marched onto the stage the moment the curtain came down. If Madame was strict, Maxim Nikolayevich was a tyrant. The very sight of him made us cringe, yet any one of us would have given our life for him, for he was a genius. Now he began to shout, “You must all have been under the illusion that you were movie stars tonight. What smiles, what grimaces, what raised eyebrows and turned-up mouths. How often do I have to tell you—you do your acting with your arms and your feet. The emotion is in the music and in the dancing.
Please
, there is no need to make faces!”