Dancer (17 page)

August 26

I washed the sheets. They had an imprint of red tomato where she has been lying.

August 28

The fire in her skin has cooled, thank the heavens. Father thumped his chest and said,
Tomatoes.
Mother took a chair and sat in the sunlight.

August 29

Power failure in the oil refinery, and so the air was clean today. I went walking in the sunshine, found berries in the bushes behind the tool manufacturing yard. Came home and Mother made berry juice, her specialty, which made her sparkle. But in the late afternoon I caught sight of a wizened face reflected in a pane of glass. I was momentarily unsure who it was. It came as a shock to realize it was Mother, I suppose I haven't truly looked at her in a long time. The irritation is almost gone, but her face is still puffy. Perhaps that is the way of age. I have to remind myself that she is only a few years from sixty. These days her mouth is set in a little pouch, which turns downward. To think that during the war she lived without a mirror! The only way to see herself was in a window, but even then many of the windows were shattered. There was the story she once told of a girl who lived underground. When she came out she didn't recognize herself and wanted to go back underground again. We return to what we know. I spend my time wondering why I am here in this hellhole, how could I have given up my Moscow registration, am I mad, how much do they need me? Moscow. How I miss it, and yet how can I return? Father cut himself opening the window this morning. Bandaging his wrist, Mother said to him,
Perhaps Rudik will find a nice girl and come home.

August 31

Have come down with a summer cold. Took gingerroot.

September 1

Father has been demoted, no longer politruk. It happened two weeks ago, but he refused to tell us. It is possible he will have to leave the Party. There has been no announcement of Rudik's betrayal, though the word is almost certainly in the air. Mother's friends have changed their time to go to the steambaths. I saw them walking down the street carrying their towels and birch twigs. Mother shrugged her shoulders and said no matter, she will go alone. She has great strength. If I have the time I shall accompany her. At the market on Krassina we found a delicious jar of sour pickles. Good fortune and joy.
My favorite,
Father said.

September 3

On the bus to the market the old woman said to her companion,
You think it's bad now, wait until tomorrow!
Her friend laughed. For some reason I remembered that in Moscow, Nadia, from the third floor, once said everything happens so fast that living it never made any sense to her. She could never catch up with herself. She had a theory about being in the past, looking ahead at a stranger living out a life. Of course the stranger was herself. I never understood until the bus journey this afternoon. I saw myself sitting there, listening to two old babushkas. I watched myself, watching them. Before I knew it I had become them. How easy this shift from young girl to old woman.

September 4

This journal writes of too many small disappointments. I must be stronger.

September 6

It is a strange mill that does not churn the river! The kindergarten on Karl Marx Street has accepted me, and it is a good job. I am almost a week late but I will catch up. Joy!

September 9

We cannot open the classroom windows, they are soldered shut. But the wind blows through the front door and gives us some relief. The late summer drags its good days into bad. Muksina drew a picture for me. Majit brought me a drink from cowberries, how refreshing. The school takes me back to my youth. When Rudik was here they pulled his hair and bit him and teased him terribly, called him names. The children still have a number of cruel games, one is called the Little Macaroni. They make a child rock his head to the left and right and someone strikes him on each side of the neck as he turns. Another is the Dandelion, where they bash him on top of the head. I could not help the bad thoughts that came while walking home. Perhaps all those years ago the bullying of Rudik was punishment in advance.

September 11

A consignment of chalk and a new blackboard, the small mercies.

September 13

The days seem to grow longer as they grow shorter. Mother worries that Rudik did not take his boots with him. Imagine.

September 14

Another long day. Mother recalled that when Rudik danced in Moscow he bought her a long black coat and, at the Bolshoi, she was loathe to check it in. At the end of the dance, during his encores, she rushed down the stairs to retrieve the coat, afraid it would get lost, and she almost missed the cheers. Now she says she would be glad to check her coat in, she would check her very soul in if she could just see him home again. Yet in the end she must realize she would lose both soul and son. There was one relief. We went walking and there was a beautiful red sunset over the Belaya.

September 15

The first cold winds have blown in. Mother says she has pain in her knees. Her old body is a weathervane, she can tell when a storm is coming. The bathwater was as dark as tea.

September 17

Electricity problems in the kindergarten once again.

September 18

Life begins with bread. There is none. Still, there is the radio for distraction, at least for Father, who turns it on immediately when he comes from work. He says that a desire to make the world better is not worth much, the question is how. Before he left the house this morning Mother put goose fat on his chest, but still he came home coughing. The sicknesses switch between them. He didn't even want the borscht that Elsa brought from upstairs. He is terribly thin, he keeps waiting to be expelled from the Party, which will surely break him completely. A conference is to be held some time soon. I heard him say something odd as we were waiting for the evening bus to the garden plot,
We can put a satellite in the air, Tamara, but we cannot run our buses.
It was almost as if Rudik was whispering in his ear, how dangerous. Only last year Father said we were living in a glorious time, another record harvest, Siberia open, nuclear power, Sputnik, the freedom of the African nations, and he had even almost reconciled himself to Rudik dancing—such a brightness in his cheeks then. Now the problem of being himself seems to exhaust him.

September 19

Mother talks sometimes of Rudik not having any food. When she speaks to him in the Big House he says he is fine. She is sure this is propaganda. She keeps asking if they still throw glass on the stage. He says no, but she is not so sure. She knows how they feel about us in the West. Rudik says they only did that at the beginning and, besides, it was Communists. We puzzled over that for a while. It makes no sense. When Mother left I sneaked an ice cream in the park.

September 20

Father's wages went automatically to the State bonds. And mine have not yet come through. How I regretted yesterday's ice cream. Mother scrounged together some kasha. Elsa shared her leaves, but drinking tea so late disturbs Mother's sleep. Father screwed in the double windows for winter. The look on his face was as if the cold was already here.

October 2

Fierce whipping winds. We must ration the oil in the school tanks.

October 10

I have been unable to write, such misery, I must arrest these bad thoughts. The children are terribly cold. Games must be invented to keep them moving around the classroom. This is not my strength. Sasha dislikes running. Guldjamal likes to sit perfectly still, wrapped in two coats. Nicolas dislikes standing. Khalim likes to perch on one foot, he says this keeps his warm. And Majit is such a nuisance! What to do? The rest of the children gravitate toward whoever will give them extra food from their lunch boxes. Such fights! After school I tended to the garden plot. The first layer of snow had fallen so there was nothing to do. An old man came up to me and asked about Father. He said they had met many times at the plot. I cut the conversation short but told him to call around to the house since Father could do with the company. The man tipped his hat. He had a slightly bourgeois tone. I went back to work. Tending to the plot is for the sake of ritual. On the way home a bus splashed slush onto my coat. While I was cleaning it I found a new hole in the inside lining which needs to be darned. Mother, with her problems of incontinence, says if we could darn our bodies she would get a job as her very own seamstress! On my return I stood at the gate and saw something red on the door. My heart pounded with the thought that it might be sealing wax over the keyhole in order to move us. But it was just a notice saying to go down to the Big House again tomorrow The thought of talking to Rudik warms Mother. She misses the things he used to send her from Leningrad. She sometimes searches for the Voice of America on the radio, but of course it is impossible. Even in Moscow it was always scrambled and besides, it is pure Western propaganda. She is aware of that. How I detest their two faces, the joke they try to make of us.

October 11

A terrible mistake. The old man I talked to in the garden plot came over today to talk with Father. He is Sergei Vasilev, the husband of Rudik's old dance teacher, Anna. Naturally Father was polite to him, in fact he even seemed to enjoy himself. I tried to apologize to Father, but he waved me away, said he had met the man before and he was happy to spend time with him, the man was rehabilitated years ago. Father said to me,
If an undesirable wants the company of another undesirable, well then, so be it.
He cannot afford to think in this manner, nor give up hopes of remaining with the Party. That would pierce him. I washed his shirts to make him happy.

October 12

A raven bashed against the school window and broke the glass, then died in the children's hands, which made them cry. Mother said that Rudik is in Monte Carlo, where there is a palace and a beautiful beach. It is very odd. Why have I never seen the sea?

October 13

Sergei V. came over to visit. He brought a pot of jam, which I hate to admit was very tasty. He smoked half a cigar. Father coughed all evening.

October 15

A spoonful of raspberry jam to sweeten the tea.

October 16

Three tubes of toothpaste were bought at the market. One will be kept to give as a gift. It is Bulgarian. It tastes just as bad.

October 17

They still think Mother has the power to draw him back. The tapes they make are sent to Moscow, where they are examined and filed. Rudik said to her in Tatar that he is afraid the secret agents will break his legs. They were not quick enough to bleep it out. Mother said,
I cannot sleep, beloved son.
He says he is well-fed and has lots of money and that he is doing very well, yes, he even meets theater stars and singers and he is due to meet the Queen of England. Mother says perhaps they have brainwashed him, filled him full of delusions. He said some other famous names, and even the stenographer's eyes opened wide. But in the end who cares, they are just names, they will die too. The supervisor slammed the desk when Mother slipped in a few more Tatar words and Rudik's voice went high with worry. He is surely homesick. They told us Monte Carlo is full of gambling and perverted men, and also very violent, he could get stabbed or shot. That happens a lot.

October 19

Mother woke with terrible dreams about his legs. Later she said,
I am sure he will find himself a nice girl.

October 20

The oven is broken. The school janitor says he will come to the house to fix it next week. Even these small things worry me. But he is as handy as a small pot and quite handsome too.

October 21

Father has been so tired, he has no strength for this. He'd prefer not to eat. There was a postcard from an acquaintance of Rudik's, but it was impossible to read with the black marks. Sergei came over again. It seems that neither he nor Father has anything else to do with their lives. I dislike this old fool. I worry about him being in our house but it is true he has been rehabilitated. And I don't suppose things could get much worse. He had more cigars, which made the room rank. They were cheap, he said, they came from Yugoslavia. He offered Father one, but Father said that smoking it would make him feel like a pig with a gold ring in its nose. They laughed and then had a long discussion about the weather on the radio. Father says he likes to listen to the weather in Chelyabinsk and then he knows what it will be, whereas Sergei listens to the weather from the east, something to do with the winds and a complicated idea to do with patterns from the mountains. And then he quoted poetry, as if poets were weather forecasters! Mother said why would we want to know the weather in advance anyway? All we have to do is to look out the window. Or, even better, step outside if your body allows it. Before Sergei left he saw the postcard and said there is a way to read the sentences underneath the black marks, that you must get a very thin sheet of paper and lightly rub the postcard with a pencil and that way the indentations will come out. Father was made nervous by this and asked Sergei not to say such things. Mother tried with the postcard but it was a complete and utter failure.

October 22

Mother says she is thankful for the small mercy of her body (even her varicose veins!) when she sees Father and Sergei together. She told me that they often finish their conversation chatting long and seriously about their bowel movements.

October 23

Father said,
What is there to think about, except the past, if you have no future?
I tried to remind him of things, but that was a mistake because it made him angry. I attempt to convince him that Rudik is an ambassador, one of goodwill, he can tell the world the truth about us, but Father just shakes his head, no. He continues to say, My son the traitor, how can I walk down Lenin Street? Nor does Father like his armchair anymore. The problem is that he used to be bigger and now, in these months, his smaller body has to lie in the big indent. And there is a coiled metal spring beginning to bulge that must be contained, perhaps tomorrow, tie it back with string so that it doesn't stick out and hurt his back.