My Sergei (13 page)

When we got back to Yegor’s, all the women went into the sauna. I didn’t say anything about being kissed by Sergei. It was
my secret, and I didn’t want to share it. Maybe because I was worried that Sergei was just in a good mood that day, and that’s
why he wanted to kiss me. Maybe because, deep down, I believed that he would love me just for a little while, and then it
would be over.

Then we got out, dressed for the party, and put on our makeup. I wore the same miniskirt I had worn at the banquet following
the World Championships, and I drank champagne at dinner. At midnight, everyone kissed each other as custom demands, but Sergei
just kissed me on the cheek, I suppose because my parents were there. We danced and gave gifts to one another, then later
shot off the fireworks that Yegor had been saving for the occasion. They showered the snowfields in color.

The next day, Sergei and I had to return to Navagorsk, and we sat together in the back of my parents’ car on the way there.
We wanted to be alone again as soon as possible, so once we arrived I went with Sergei into his room.

After we had kissed, I asked, “Seriozha, why did you pick me? I’m not old enough. I’m not beautiful enough. My body’s not
perfect.”

But when I had expressed these doubts, Sergei put his fingers to my lips and said, “You’re wrong. You’re old enough, you’re
already seventeen. You have a beautiful body. Everything’s going to be okay. I love you just the way you are, Katoosha. Just
as you are right now.”

He was very, very serious. He held me, and I didn’t feel the time passing, didn’t know what time it was, whether it was day
or night. We just hugged and held each other and kissed.

Eventually someone knocked on the door, probably Marina, to find out if Sergei had returned. We stayed quiet and didn’t answer.
We didn’t want anyone to know. I still couldn’t believe how fast everything was happening. It had been a year since we first
started to feel special things for one another, after Sergei dropped me doing the star lift, and I’d spent six days in the
hospital. In all that time, he hadn’t kissed me. Thirteen months it had taken us to make that first step. And now, overnight,
we were in love.

I didn’t tell anyone about these feelings we shared. Not my mother, not my sister, not any of the other skaters. No one at
Navagorsk knew about our relationship. Only Sergei’s sister, Natalia, knew. Natalia is very, very similar to Sergei. Their
smile is the same. Their faces are the same. He had talked to her before that New Year’s, saying, “I think I love Katia.”

Since it was Sergei who had taken this last step, I was braver with him, more giving, more secure. From this point on, I never
paid attention to any other man, not ever again.

On January 9, after almost two months off the ice, I started to skate, but it was not nearly enough time for us to get ready
for the European Championships, which were being held that year in Birmingham, England.

Still, the federation sent us to watch the competition. This was in mid-January, and the entire world seemed to have changed
in the past two weeks. In the hotel I had my room, and Sergei had his room, but we only used one of them.

It was very important to Sergei that he not scare me. I had no experience at all with men. My mother never really had the
chance to tell me about the facts of life. I was just a naive young girl who had no real girlfriends to talk to or ask questions
about sex.

I’m sure Sergei didn’t expect me to be so inexperienced. But he never rushed me. He cared about my dignity, my modesty, and
he was so gentle. He could have said a couple of impatient words, and it would have broken my heart.

Maybe all men are like this, I don’t know. He made some suggestions, and I started to understand that I had to be more sensitive,
more tender. He made me feel, suddenly, that I was much older now, that I was a woman. I didn’t feel awkward or inadequate,
even though I know I was at first. Sergei just couldn’t hurt people. He had no meanness in him. None. Every girl, I think,
would have loved to have this kind of lover for their first experience with sex.

I don’t remember the competition at all. We would take the train from Birmingham to London in the morning and walk around
the city. Sergei would go into the pubs and have a beer, and order me a cocktail with my lunch, but I was drunk without drinks.
In the evenings we would return to Birmingham to watch the skating, but I was so tired I didn’t see anything. Then we’d go
back to the hotel and spend another romantic night together, very fun, very wonderful, very little sleep.

We told no one about the change in our relationship. It was so special for me that I didn’t want to share it with just anyone.
When I finally talked about sex with my mom, and asked her some questions I’d been wondering about, I didn’t mention Sergei.
Instead, I phrased these questions as if I were curious about my parents: What did you and Daddy do when …? This sort of thing.

She must have known, though. My mom had always loved Sergei. He was more like a friend to her than a son-in-law. He started
calling her by her middle name—Levovna—which is very familiar, and which no one else called her, and it made her very
happy that he did so. It showed he liked her, and respected her, and that she was a special friend to him. For me, I could
never have been so familiar with older people. Sergei’s mother, I always called Anna Filipovna. Leonovich, I always called
Stanislav Viktorovich. Marina, I always called Marina Olegovna. It was a sign of respect, but it was also a means of keeping
some distance. I can’t break through this barrier of formality, even now.

Maybe I don’t have as much confidence in myself as Sergei did. I’m more reserved. Maybe I don’t want to open myself up to
closer relationships. I was always jealous of Sergei’s ability to be so natural and comfortable with people. He didn’t care
that they were older. He had read so many books, and some of these books were about people who lived in the villages of rural
Russia, where life was not so structured and formal as in the city. And these villagers called each other by their middle
names. Sergei took a lot from books. They were very, very important in his life.

He began talking to me for the first time of the things he wanted to do, dreams that he had for the future. Things like the
train trip through Europe that he wanted to take me on. I still had not told him “I love you,” though he had said these words
to me. For me, these were such special words, and I wanted to be sure. You don’t just say them casually, and he never asked
me to. I was still worried, I think, that for him I was a passing fancy.

After returning to Navagorsk from the European Championships, Marina and I noticed that Sergei was acting sad and pensive,
and that he was complaining about things more and more. Sergei never complained, so Marina, who is very direct, asked him
what was on his mind. He told her: “I don’t want to skate anymore.”

This came out of the blue. Marina and I were quite shocked, and we talked to him about it in the dressing room. Sergei said,
“I’m twenty-two, and I have nowhere to live. I have to share a room with my parents. I have no car, no apartment, and I spend
all my time on the ice. The federation doesn’t think of me at all. They promised me a car and maybe an apartment after the
Olympics, and they didn’t keep their promise. Why, when I’m twenty-two, do I have to live with my mom? I can’t spend all my
time in Navagorsk.”

He was quite serious. Sergei was someone who could have given up skating for good at any time. I didn’t feel this dissatisfaction
with our life in Navagorsk yet. But I wasn’t twenty-two. I thought our life there was wonderful. But Sergei wanted to be able
to bring me to his own house without asking his mother’s permission or asking his sister to leave. He said he just wanted
to have a normal life like other people.

Marina must have talked to someone very high up, because very soon after that, in February, Sergei got a car. It was a Volga,
which is like a Russian tank. And Sergei was also told that very soon he might get an apartment.

A
pproaching the 1989 World Championships in Paris,
we were more nervous than usual. Because of my foot injury, we hadn’t competed all season, and we weren’t as prepared as
we’d been in other years. In our long program, which was skated to Mozart, I was supposed to be the image of a girl being
asked to waltz at her first fancy ball. I was supposed to feel like a young lady for the first time, not a child. This was
fitting for my own life, too, but Sergei and I tried to skate the same as we always did; and truthfully, it felt no different
to skate with him now than before we were in love. The big change had been after he dropped me on the ice a year earlier.
Since then, Sergei had always held me like I was something he was afraid to lose.

We wanted Marina to accompany us to Paris. Up until that time, only the coaches traveled with Russian skaters, never the choreographers.
But because she had helped me so much with my rehabilitation, overseeing my ballet exercises, and because she had spent so
much time with us both on and off the ice that year, we wanted Marina to be with us for the Worlds. We talked to Leonovich
about it, and he said we had to go to the federation and ask them. He told me it was important that I say something to them
myself at this meeting. So Sergei, Leonovich, and I did this, which was quite unusual, and would have been impossible for
anyone but the Olympic champions. At the meeting I told Alexander Gorshkov, who was the head of the federation, how great
it would be for me if Marina were there. So they agreed to send her.

When I think about this time in Paris, I just want to smile and smile. It was the first and only time in my career that the
competition meant nothing to me. Nothing. It was warm and sunny outside, I was in love, and I remember warming up on the fresh
green grass wondering why in such a gorgeous city with such beautiful weather did we have to go into an ice rink and compete?
We could just be walking and walking. I only wanted to get our programs over with. I can’t say I didn’t care if we won or
lost, but I didn’t worry and concentrate the way I had always done.

It didn’t seem to hurt our performance. We didn’t miss anything, although we had taken out one of our double axels, so it
wasn’t as difficult a program technically as we’d skated in the past. But we won, and for winning they gave us seven thousand
French francs each.

To celebrate, Sergei took me to lunch at a restaurant. He was drinking beer, and he ordered me a cocktail, which I didn’t
like. Then the manager recognized us and brought us a bottle of champagne. I was drinking it very fast, and I got so drunk.
It was delicious, actually. We had tried not to tell people that we were now boyfriend and girlfriend, but the other skaters
realized that I had grown up, and that I now had more of a woman’s body. And after this lunch we were laughing and kissing
on the street. I didn’t care if anyone saw us. We didn’t take a taxi back to the hotel. We just walked, and sat on the park
benches, and watched the people and watched each other. The atmosphere in Paris will make you feel special even if you’re
not in love. And for me, this day could have lasted forever.

Then Sergei said we had to invite Marina and Alexander Fadeev to a restaurant, too. So the day after Sasha finished the singles,
we said we would meet them at a restaurant on the Champs-Elysées.

The time came, and Sergei and I were still back in our room. Who cares? So we’re late? I was just drunk all the time with
love. Marina and Sasha called our room to find out what was the matter. “Oh, we’re coming,” I said. “Don’t worry.” When we
arrived, Marina looked at us like, What’s going on with you two? That, I think, was the first time she knew there was something
between us.

Sergei had bought flowers for me, and flowers for Marina. She was quite upset at first because she had left Vasily, her stuffed
animal that brought us good luck, in the taxi that had brought her to the restaurant. Vasily was a hedgehog that had originally
belonged to me. Marina came to my room one time and saw all the pink animals, yellow ones, green ones, blue ones, white ones,
and purple ones—and this one poor gray hedgehog. He looked very plain, and Marina said, “I feel very sorry for this toy.”

I said to her, “If you’re sorry, Marina, take him with you and give him a better life.” Which she did. He saw the world. But
now she had left him in a taxi in Paris.

It was a seafood restaurant, and we asked the waiter to bring us a little of everything for the first course. He delivered
this huge tray of ice covered with shellfish: mussels, oysters, shrimp, clams, scallops, crab legs, periwinkles. I didn’t
think I’d have the courage to even try these things. I didn’t know it was possible to eat them. But they were delicious, and
we laughed as we watched each other try to get them out of their shells. I saw people at the other tables eating their oysters
so professionally, and couldn’t figure out how they were doing it. It was very impressive.

Then Sergei said, let’s call home. So we did, and I was so surprised to be talking to my parents from a pay phone in a restaurant
in Paris.

We kept ordering more shellfish and bread. Loaves and loaves of bread. It took us five hours to eat, and we never had a main
course. It was all appetizers, and three bottles of Chablis, which was the first time I’d ever had it. The people at the tables
around us changed many times, we were there for so long. And at the end Sergei insisted on paying for everything.

Afterward we went back to the hotel by taxi, and who do you think was sitting in the back of this cab? Vasily. Marina said
he was indeed a very lucky hedgehog, and that he had showed us his power that day. Back at the hotel, Sergei kept buying drinks
at the bar, and he bought me a Bloody Mary. But I didn’t drink it. I was drunk enough from Paris and the wine.

The next day we visited Notre Dame cathedral. It was strange, but I’d always been afraid of churches. During the European
tour in 1988, we stopped several times to visit the famous cathedrals: in Milan, in Prague. But I didn’t feel comfortable
there. I knew what God was, but I was a little scared because my family had never gone to church. Both my grandfather and
father were army men, and this was the period of time in the Soviet Union when it was illegal to believe in God. You couldn’t
speak about religion at home or in school. Either of them could have been demoted if it had been discovered we were worshiping
at home.