Russian Winter Page 3

  Grigori took a seat. “I can’t stay long. I have a tutorial at eight thirty.”

  “And I have mine at one.”

  “Do you?” Grigori tried not to show disbelief. He had heard whispered in the department that Zoltan’s only class for the semester had been canceled; just two students had registered, insufficient for a course to go ahead.

  “Poetry and the Surrealists,” Zoltan said. “Two young students of truly interesting minds. There was some talk of the course not running, you know, but when I proposed to the youngsters last week that we continue to meet either way, they agreed. Who needs official credit? I admire their enthusiasm.”

  “They know what’s good for them.” They knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, to study with a man who had known in person some of the very poets whose work he taught, and whose most off-the-cuff remarks contained not just nuggets of wisdom but often a morsel or two of world-class gossip. Zoltan’s first book of poetry had been translated by a popular British poet shortly after his arrival in London, briefly turning Zoltan into Europe’s—well, certain circles of it—new enfant terrible. Zoltan had been something of a dandy then, with his sleepy eyelids and a confident smile; Grigori had seen photographs in subsequent translated editions (all of them now out of print). And though Zoltan wasn’t one to name-drop, his own name turned up in more than a few memoirs of painters and playwrights, art collectors and choreographers, muses and stars of the stage. Just a line here or a paragraph there, but Zoltan had clearly made his mark. Subtle probing of his memories teased out reminiscences of Mary Quant and Salvador Dalí, and sighing, surprising asides (“Ah, Ringo…He had those long eyelashes, you know”).

  The problem was, with the new Web sites that students used to publicly evaluate professors, word had spread that Zoltan’s classes were demanding and odd, more like prolonged conversations, for which students had to be impeccably prepared. He expected them to have not simply read but pondered, analyzed, even dreamed about the assigned works. And so students warned each other to stay away from Zoltan’s courses.

  Grigori had resisted the temptation to look up what his own students said about him. At any rate, he tried to stay away from the Internet. His most daring online escapade had taken place four years ago, when he made his first and only eBay purchase: a 1959 Hello magazine containing an article all about Nina Revskaya’s jewels. A four-page photo spread of earrings and watches, necklaces and bracelets, the majority of them gifts: from admirers and international diplomats and self-promoting jewelers. A photograph on page three of an amber bracelet and matching earrings had confirmed—in its way—what Grigori had long suspected. He kept the magazine in his office, in the top drawer of the filing cabinets reserved for his Russian Literature notes, behind a folder labeled “Short Fiction, 19th C.”

  Now, though, the jewels were to be auctioned. So much for proof. So much for confirmation. Grigori must have sighed, because Zoltan’s voice shifted to concern and asked, “How are you, really, Grigori?”

  “Oh, fine, please don’t worry.” The sad widower role was fine for a year or so, but after that it became tiresome. As for the news item about Nina Revskaya, he was not about to add today’s disappointment to his list of grievances. For some time now the adamant chatter of Carla and Dave and his friend Evelyn (who always made a point of inviting him out and taking him with her to movies and other cultural diversions) had made it clear that Grigori was expected to behave as so many men did after six or twelve or eighteen months alone—find a new woman and settle down and stop looking so glum all the time. Accordingly, Grigori had over a year ago stopped wearing the little pink ribbon pin from the hospital. Now that the second anniversary of Christine’s death had passed, he had even removed his wedding ring. The gold band lay in a small covered tray with a few tie clips he never wore. It was time to buck up and stop being tedious. To Zoltan he added, “No new complaints.”

  “Who needs new complaints if you have a good old one?” Zoltan’s eyes were smiling, but his mouth frowned. “Odd, sometimes, what the whims of the universe cast at us.”

  “And you?” Grigori asked.

  “Go on and eat that cake,” Zoltan said. “You nibble, as if it’s on someone else’s plate.”

  Grigori smiled. It was true. Just give in, give up.

  Give up. Give it up.

  Grigori realized that he was nodding to himself, as much as he disliked the thought that came to him next.

  But it was the only way. If nothing else, it might prove…what? That he was done with it. That he respected Nina Revskaya, and that she need not be afraid of him. That he had surrendered.

  Yes, he knew what to do. Feeling much lighter, he finished the cake, while Zoltan immersed himself in another fit of scribbling. Then Zoltan looked up, and his voice became suddenly serious. “We must talk—at your earliest convenience.”

  Grigori paused. “I’m sorry, I thought that was what we were doing.”

  Zoltan shook his head angrily, whispered, “Not here.”

  “Oh.” Grigori looked around, but there was no one listening. He wiped the crumbs of cake up with the waxed paper. “Then shall I call you at home?”

  “No, no, in person.”

  Grigori shrugged, perplexed. “Well then, you let me know when. I’d best get going.” He stood and pulled on his gloves, as Zoltan nodded furtively. Two more café patrons took a seat at the next table, but now they murmured something and moved to another one, farther away. Grigori realized that this was due to Zoltan, that they thought him a vagrant, with his dirty plastic bags and stained, if perfectly tailored, gabardine pants, and his silk cravat with its many escaping threads. Well, that was America, the great equalizer—where revered poets were mistaken for homeless men. Grigori said, “All right, Zoltan. Until then.”

  “I look forward to it.” Grigori heard a genuine hopefulness in Zoltan’s voice. He tried to recall, as he turned away, when he himself had last looked forward—really, truly—to anything.

  He had been young and hopeful, once. He could still see in his mind the stiff canvas backpack he had carried with him from Princeton, the one with the long thin straps that never fit him properly and the stains at the bottom from so many floors and sidewalks and lawns. He remembered how his T-shirt had smelled after all the hours on the Greyhound, and how hungry he was as he made his way along the avenue. He was nineteen years old, tall and long-limbed, his hair shaggy and less than clean. He had gotten off at the wrong T stop and so went a longer distance by foot than planned. The only cities he knew were Paris and New York, and in comparison the old Back Bay buildings looked both quaint and stately. All that mattered to him, though, was the address he had written down, the building with the tall stoop and the wrought iron railings. The big front door, of thickly carved wood, was propped slightly open. Grigori took a deep breath and wiped his hands on his pants. But he was still sweating, so he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

  In the front vestibule, he took the large manila envelope from his backpack, holding it anxiously, ready to put it back into the pack if no one was home. Inside were the various items he had come to think of as “proof.” Grigori found the intercom and the correct button beside it. All of his hope he aimed at that one button.

  He could still hear, in the remote bays of his memory, her voice on the intercom, suspicious, doubtful: “Yes?”

  In Russian he announced himself.

  “Your name again?” she asked in Russian. She sounded perplexed but not annoyed.

  “Grigori Solodin. My parents knew neighbors of yours. In Moscow.” It wasn’t exactly true, but it sounded true enough. “I was hoping to speak to you about something important.” He had a brilliant thought and added, “Briefly.”

  “Wait, please,” she said firmly.

  The wait for her to arrive…watching through the glass partition, his heart pounding as he eyed the elevator, waiting for its narrow doors to open, to reveal her. But then she emerged from around a corner on th
e stairs, that elongated neck, the long thin arms, and there she was, stepping down as if floating. She looked at him through the glass, politely inquisitive, her face a perfect oval, her dark, dark hair pulled back sharply. Those incongruous hands, already old though she herself wasn’t yet, pushing the door open just a crack, their knuckles already enlarged.

  “Now, who exactly are you?” she asked in Russian. She seemed to have a tiny smile in the corners of her mouth, perhaps at how young and bumbling he looked.

  There Grigori always forced himself to stop, to prevent the memory from rolling forward. He had to. The rest was no good.

  LOT 12

  Platinum, Onyx, and Diamond Butterfly Brooch. Solid platinum, wings comprised of six fancy cuts of black onyx 27.21 ctw, body comprised of approx. 7 ctw of old European cut diamonds. Center stone is bezel-set, pin detailed with milgrain edges, lg. 2 in., w. 1½ in., 11.5 grams, marked Shreve, Crump & Low. $8,000–10,000

  CHAPTER TWO

  It is decided—in that silent, abrupt way that adults make decisions—that Vera and her grandmother will go live with an aunt and uncle, in a town far north of Moscow.

  That is what happens, Nina acknowledges, when your parents must go away. When two other people, ones you’ve never seen before, come to live in their room. It is what would happen if Nina’s own mother were to suddenly depart. But maybe Nina could stay here with Grandmother instead…. She comforts herself with this thought as she and Mother accompany Vera and Vera’s grandmother to the train station. It is a bright, mild morning, the second of September—the day before the first day of school. The streets are suddenly full again, everyone back from summer holiday, boys looking goofy and big-eared with their freshly trimmed hair, and all the girls purchasing the prescribed bows for their ponytails. The station, too, is crowded; at the track where Vera’s train is to arrive, there is barely space for them among all the waiting people and tattered wicker hampers. All Nina can think is that now Vera won’t be starting at the Bolshoi School with her, won’t be here to play in the gritty courtyard, concocting elaborate games with convoluted, indispensable rules.

  Vera, though, looks untroubled, proud of her cumbersome suitcase and little wrapped package of food for the train. Mother and Vera’s grandmother make polite, strained talk a few feet away.

  “I got a telegram,” Vera whispers.

  Nina looks at her with wide eyes; she hasn’t ever seen one. “When?”

  From the pocket of her overcoat, Vera takes a crisp square of paper and unfolds it, her back toward the others, as if shielding an important secret. “See?” Words typed in the center of the slip of paper, very brief, so that the message seems rushed and all the more important: We love you Verochka Mother and Father.

  Vera looks at Nina proudly. “They’re doing important work. That’s why they had to go away.”

  It is more of an explanation than Nina’s mother has been able to give her. Nina accepts it. Vera looks back at the telegram, reads it to herself once more, then folds it and returns it to her pocket.

  A loud clanking sound, and that hot coal smell—the train easing heftily into the station, spitting puffs of white steam, and Vera’s grandmother saying, “Stand back, people are going to have to get off first. Oh, well, now look at your hair.” Old gray hands smooth Vera’s auburn braids, sweeping a stray lock back behind her ear.

  “Well, girls,” Mother says gravely, turning to gather up Vera’s grandmother’s bags. “Time to say good-bye.”

  Vera does so tearlessly, while her grandmother laboriously pulls herself up onto the train, not helped by anyone. Nor does Nina cry, distracted by the rush of passengers, as Vera is sucked into the depths of the train. Mother has said Nina and Vera can write letters and stay friends through the post, but all Nina can picture, all the way back home, is the train carrying Vera away.

  Now they stop at the post office, where Mother asks Nina to run around the corner, to get in the line for bread.

  Nina hurries off and at the bakery joins the crowded, silent queue. She likes to watch the cashier counting on the abacus, the quick snap of the wooden beads back and forth on the wires. But after a few minutes, as the line moves slowly forward, she realizes Mother has forgotten to give her money. She scurries back to the post office.

  Inside she finds Mother and runs to her side. But her mother hasn’t noticed her; with great focus she is carefully printing something onto a special form. Be good sweet Verochka. All our love Mother and Father.

  Nina turns and runs out of the post office, into the blinding September sunlight. Her chest feels cold, and the backs of her eyes ache. For a moment she wants to yell, to shout, to tell someone, anyone. The sad trick of it, this lie, this double secret. And that other, awful chafing feeling: that Mother must really love Vera, very much, to do such a thing. That she would do that, for Vera.

  Waiting by the entrance, Nina tries to calm the pounding of her heart. It is a good thing Vera is gone, she tells herself, so that Nina cannot tell her what she knows.

  THE TELEPHONE INTERRUPTED her thoughts. It had been ringing every few hours, but Nina refused to answer. More of those Charles Street estate jewelers, probably, nobody she need attend to. She was too exhausted to speak to anyone. These past few days had been bad ones, and nights of pain instead of sleep. Cynthia kept trying to make her take her tablets.

  At her post by the window she took in the view, snow in heaps after this weekend’s blizzard. Along the mall knobby trees, still strung with holiday lights crusted in ice, seemed to shiver; Nina could see past their branches to the other side of the avenue, where parked cars crowded up against thick banks of snow. Nina often sat here, in the salon. It was her favorite room, with its tall windows and good light—and the stereo sounded best from here. The only bother was the cold air that leaked in from the crack above the middle window. This had been going on for two years now, ever since the top pane had somehow slipped down an inch, but Nina hadn’t bothered to mention it to anyone. In the warmer months it didn’t trouble her, except on breezy days, when it caused the Venetian blind to make an ominous flapping noise.

  Today the blind was up all the way. From the open space at the top of the window, a long-dead leaf, remnant of autumn, slipped in and fell quietly to the sill. It lay there like a secret missive, brown with age, and for a few minutes Nina simply looked at it. Then she reached out and with cold fingers felt the crisp delicacy of its tiny, cracked veins.

  Would anyone other than herself ever notice the gap at the top of the window? The thought seemed to Nina profound. She rarely had visitors anymore. Cynthia was the only other person who ever spent time in this room, when her casseroles were baking and she came to sit and ask Nina lots of nosy questions. The cleaning women—Marya and a nameless crew of helpers who loudly, hastily blew in and out of the apartment once every three weeks—did a less than thorough job, taking no notice of details. Not to mention that they had yet to clean a single window.

  No one else had any reason to enter this room. Nearly a decade had passed since Nina had entertained. When it came to Boston friends—real friends, close friends—in this last and longest chapter of her life, she had never really made any. There were plenty of acquaintances, of course, and colleagues from the ballet, but no friends as she had loved in Paris and London. No one she cared about as she cared for her Russian friend Tama, or dear Inge, “the Berlin girl,” as she still thought of her. Well, there was Shepley, whom she had known, as astonishing as it sometimes seemed, for forty years now. But ever since his move to California, Nina had felt less connected to him.

  Like Veronica back in England, Shepley was a fan who had gradually become a friend. As a young lawyer and balletomane, he had insinuated himself into Nina’s life in a gentle, measured way, through small gifts and intelligent, respectful notes. His attention was never overbearing, nor disturbingly selfless, but wise and reserved. Even Nina—who, despite shedding fully and completely the first third of her life, never could meet a new person without feeling w
ary—had liked him immediately. She still thought of him as a skinny young man with a calm, youthful voice; on his annual visits it always shocked her, at first, to confront a gray-haired fellow in his sixties.

  Back when her illness began to take hold, over a decade ago, Shepley (who had not yet met the love of his life in L.A.) had become doting and indulging, a pleasing combination of nephew and servant, driving Nina to her doctor’s appointments and tests by specialists, visiting her regularly, and always including her in holiday celebrations. But it had been eight years since he moved west to be with Robert, and Nina had grown used to his absence. Only rarely did she miss him, mostly after one of his visits, when he took her to tea at the Four Seasons and shopping at Saks in Prudential Center (though she didn’t need to buy anything and always felt exposed in public). At her apartment he would cook roasts and bake cakes and freeze things for her to eat for months to come, and afterward his joyous babbling and lurid anecdotes hung in the air—clung to the apartment itself, like cheery wallpaper—for a few days, and then fell away.

  Other than Shepley, Tama, a Russian-born journalist a decade younger than Nina, and whom she had known since 1970, was the only friend she still spoke to regularly. Tama telephoned often, long distance from Toronto, mostly to complain. But her complaints were the benign sort that always cheered Nina up, and the ease of gossip in her native tongue was a pleasure.