Devotion

  In their languid nights they glimpsed into one another’s world. He spoke of a privileged life, his father a diplomat, his mother from a prominent Swiss family. Privately tutored, he excelled in languages, and was socially impeccable, yet internally restless, consumed by the desire to tear things apart and rearrange according to his own design. He found solace in the poet Rimbaud, who did so with words.

  —Is he your poet? she asked, touching the little pouch.

  Alexander gravitated toward the arts but acceded to his father’s demands, studying engineering in Vienna. He was unhappy there, turned his back on his father, and joined the resistance in France. He came to understand that tearing things apart was a powerful aspect of human nature. He explored on his own and followed the poet’s footsteps from the Gothard Pass to the Abyssinian plain.

  He read her passages from Une saison en Enfer. She lay beside him, picturing the young Alexander leaving the university as she had left her academy. The hypnotic sound of his voice lured her to sleep. He continued to read, then placed the book aside to look at her, small and glowing with a trace of dampness below her navel, and was moved to rouse her from her slumber.

  All of nature awakened, flourished. Eugenia told him her stories, as she had written in her exercise book, answering his questions in lilting monotone, an impassive voice-over from a phantom existence.

  —Were you close to your father?

  —I never knew either of my parents. They were deported from Estonia in the spring to a Siberian work camp.

  —For what reason?

  —No reason is required for the herding of people like sheep.

  —A story full of holes.

  —Some things melt before they become memories. I remember trains. I remember new languages that I swiftly grasped. My aunt Irina sitting before a mirror, with her head tilted, brushing her hair.

  —Tell me of Irina.

  —She raised me, yet remains a mystery. She dreamed of going to America to be an actress, but the war changed everything. She had a beau who was more than twice her age, who was taking her away and my father begged him to take me as well. We crossed several borders and settled in Switzerland under his protection. He already had a family but he was as kind as he was rich. He bought me dresses and Irina a gold charm bracelet.

  —My mother’s sister was beautiful; how else could she win a man so kind? He indulged her moods, and was moved by her uncomplicated delight with each new gift. I was five when he took us to an ice pageant. Never had I seen something so wonderful and yet I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to be her, the girl in the center of the ice. Even that young I knew that was my destiny. I could speak many languages by ear. I excelled in school yet nothing before skating gave me the tools to express the inexpressible. The world outside was rebuilding, but we lived in a bubble and I was too young to know of such things. After Martin died, Irina never brought anyone home, ever so often she would disappear, but she always returned. Not long after my fourteenth birthday she brought Frank home.

  —Frank. Is he a good man?

  —He is good for Irina, that I believe, as handsome as she is beautiful. Frank was an overseer in a construction company and has made a good living after the war. He made Irina laugh. He had to go away a lot for work, but when he was there things were better. Not long ago I grew out of my skates and took money from his pocket and bought a used pair, a bit too big, but good quality with fine blades. Irina asked me where I got the money and I told her. I thought Frank would be mad, but he wasn’t. Let me see them, he said. I told him they were a bit big, but I stuffed the toes. Frank removed the blades and took them into town to have them sharpened.

  That’s the way he was. Irina was different with him than with Martin. She took off his shoes and rubbed his feet. Perhaps she was happy.

  —Were you jealous of Irina?

  —Jealous? Why should I be jealous? Irina cannot skate.

  She got up for a moment and removed her slip.

  He lay on the bed waiting. He gripped her hips. Slowly, Philadelphia, he said, and then rolled her on her stomach, gently prodding. When she cried out he turned her over. She felt his breath. She felt a pulse, like a small heart, and as she raised her hips she recalled the face of a boy who threw mud on her communion dress. She saw the smear and his dirty hands. She saw Irina’s white lace glove. Outside the bells were tolling. She was swimming in filth, utterly lost.

  6

  Theirs was a story that could not resolve, only unravel. A story with the intrinsic power of myth. One that turned in on itself, leaving only a transparency, their bed an acrid cloud, on which they brutally coupled, then floated. When does it cease to be something beautiful, a faithful aspect of the heart, to become off-center, slightly off the axis, and then hurled into an obsessional void? He pondered this on an evening walk, stopping to flick his lit cigar into the fallen leaves. He watched them ignite, then smother in their own wetness.

  When he went in on a business trip she could not help thinking of him. No, not really him, but what fanned between them, seeming to spread its warmth over the sacred pond, thawing its edges. She dreamed she was skating faster and faster, his voice whispering in her little shell ear. Philadelphia. She thrust herself above the ice, executing three revolutions, attempting a fourth. A magnificent leap was shattered by sun streaming in the window across her pillow as she opened her eyes.

  Boarding the trolley she went back to the cottage to retrieve some of her things, She found two letters from the Academy waiting for her. Her National Scores were among the highest in the country, and she would receive a silver medal in mathematics. Little of this mattered to her. Despite a veil of light rain she took a walk through the woods. The path leading to the pond was muddied. Before her, it appeared: a heavily misted diorama, strangely alien. It began to rain more heavily just as she took her place on the flat boulder, where she had sat since she was eleven. Abject, she bade her pond farewell and made her way back to the cottage. She slept in her old bed. The night turned cold and there was no wood for the fire. She awoke shivering, feverish.

  In late morning she returned to his apartment, and lay on the bed in her room, small with one window, but it was hers. She remembered feeling this sick as a child. Martin told Irina to cut several white onions and boil them in a pot. Irina said the smell of onions would ruin her dress. He said he would buy her a new one. Eugenia had to bend over the pot and inhale the steam through her mouth. He stayed through the evening. Repeating the strangely solemn ritual. Peeling. Cutting. Boiling. Steaming. Breathing. She dreamed of her guardian, who had asked for nothing. He was always kind. There was always food and flowers. She had a bedroom with pale yellow walls and a doll with a dress that seemed to take on different colors in the morning light. Cream to pale rose to peach. She dreamed her mother dream. Sun, sheets on a line, and a woman, not unlike Irina, but with shorter, darker hair, shading her eyes from the sun.

  Upon returning Alexander called out to her, but she failed to respond. He found her in her room lying awake in the dark. He approached her quizzically, but touching her throat, immediately grasped the situation. Eugenia was burning with fever. He filled the great claw tub with ice, and she lay in it shivering. After giving her something warm to drink, he carried her to his bed. She could feel his hands on her, his breath. She could feel herself slipping away.

  Onions, she remembered whispering.

  7

  Alexander kept his promise. He asked to see her skates and removed the laces. You will no longer need them, he said, and gave her money for new skates, more than necessary. She was fitted with a flesh-colored pair with reinforced silk laces. They were perfect, made solely for her. Instead of crushed paper, her toes now feathered the tips of the boots. With the rest of the money she went to a small practice rink and slowly broke them in. It had been a long time since she had worn new skates. Her blisters were uncomfortable but a small price to pay. How miraculous it seemed to be able to skate when flowers were blooming.

  Ale
xander introduced her to an Austrian coach named Maria. Eugenia sat quietly as the two of them discussed her as if she were a porcelain figurine without a tongue. Maria wrote down an address.

  —Come tomorrow, she told her, and I will watch you skate. Earlier is best as the ice is resurfaced at night.

  It was a large indoor arena with two rinks. Maria greeted her the following morning somewhat coldly.

  —Your benefactor has given me a stipend for you to practice daily, for as long as you choose. I will observe you and give him my assessment.

  Eugenia felt a bit manipulated but was elated by the prospect of unlimited time in the arena. Although Maria seemed unimpressed, she knew her own worth and felt confident as she laced up and entered her world. After a few times around the rink to feel out the space, any misgivings dissipated.

  Maria was mystified by the young skater who seemed to appear from nowhere. Below average height, not conventionally pretty, yet striking with an odd sense of grace. There was something uniquely perceptive, even risky about her method; she skated on the brink. Though initially skeptical, the coach quickly recognized her charge’s undeniable potential. Maria was to have her champion. Eugenia was to have her mentor, one who spoke her first language. The language of skating.

  She came to call her coach Snezhana, for she was white as snow. Thick white sweaters to her knees, white leggings, and another white sweater wrapped around her waist. Her pale face, framed by unruly yellow hair, still retained some of its youthful beauty. Once she had captivated audiences with her ice-blue eyes and her steely performances. Emotion stripped of emotion. But a terrible accident had put an end to her escalating career. A sequence of operations had been successful, but she never recovered her remarkable dexterity, or her powerful athleticism.

  A champion would provide her with some redemption for what she had lost. Maria, imposing her iron will, invested all she knew into Eugenia, attempting to refine, mold, give her the tools she needed to claim her destiny. But Eugenia could also be willful; she was ambitious but to what end? She dreamt not of laurels but of unprecedented action.

  Alexander was preparing for a long journey. Eugenia confided their conflicts.

  —Maria doesn’t understand how I work. How I improvise the moves on my chessboard.

  —Perhaps she suspects that you think too much.

  —Every thought transforms as feeling. Skating for me is pure feeling, not the gateway to completion.

  —She wants you to succeed.

  —She wants me to perform within a traditional framework, to act out stories that seem unnatural.

  —You have your own stories. You can convey them in your own style, your gestures. A mother’s empty arms for example.

  —My mother.

  Eugenia fell silent and watched as he packed his trunk, emptying the contents of his dresser.

  —Will you be gone long?

  —For a long time, yes. But I will come back for you.

  —Maria wants to take me to a skating camp in Vienna. She said I would need to get my papers in order.

  —Maria seems quite possessive, he said.

  Eugenia stiffened, yet she knew this was true; in a relatively short time Maria had inserted herself as mother and mentor.

  She watched as his fingers moved across the delicate folds of the robe of an ivory Madonna. Her patina appeared more golden than white, from centuries of caresses.

  —Are you taking her with you?

  —Yes, she is my talisman for travel.

  —You are also possessive, she said.

  —Our possessions cause us much pain, he replied.

  —How can that be when they give you such pleasure?

  —Someone else will have them when I am dead. This causes me pain.

  —I belong to no one, she said defiantly.

  —No one? He smiled, unbuttoning her sweater.

  Eugenia felt the unspoken pull between two forces. Both were controlling, but Alexander feigned indifference and thus drew her to him. During his absence Maria attempted to strengthen her influence. All her concentration was directed to ready Eugenia for competition. She had never seen such an innovative and daring skater, yet her unorthodox methods had to be tamed. In the process Eugenia felt oppressed, resisting discipline in favor of self-expression.

  — We are preparing for a championship. There are rules. There is an entire system to embrace, then conquer.

  —There are many ways to conquer.

  Eugenia skated into the heart of the rink, and without hesitation performed a series of unfathomable combinations. In the silence of the arena she was entirely self-possessed, conjuring her own music. She was at that moment the legendary firebird rising from the ashes of a delicate nocturne, a blessing and a curse to her captors.

  Maria was mesmerized by her young charge.

  —Did you make a pact with the devil, some unholy deal? Maria laughed.

  But Eugenia saw another truth within her eyes. Inside, Maria was not laughing.

  Alexander returned without notice. Maria greeted him when he entered the arena; Eugenia did not see him, but felt him. He watched with satisfaction as she skated, catching the moment that she felt him near. Maria held her breath, astonished by the unprecedented height of her jump. His effect on the girl was not lost on her.

  — She is doing very well, she told him, but needs further training. I want to take her to Vienna, where she will be exposed to a more competitive atmosphere. I understand her papers are not in order, she doesn’t even have a proper passport. For a girl who knows so many languages it seems she has never been anywhere.

  —I will see to it, he assured her, not wishing to betray his own plans for Eugenia’s future. I will need to take her to Geneva for a few days while the embassy processes her papers. Then she will be free to travel as she wishes.

  Eugenia continued to skate, oblivious to either of their designs. She had her own aspirations. An axel culminating in four rotations, why not five? The impossible reigned in the poem of her mind. To do what no other had done, to reinvent space, to produce tears.

  8

  She was sleeping in her own room. He woke her, and brought her coffee. We are leaving soon, take nothing, he said. I have everything we need.

  —My papers? she asked sleepily.

  —Yes, we have a 6 a.m. train to Geneva.

  Using diplomatic connections, Alexander was able to obtain a passport for her. Yet they did not return as promised. Despite the strengths she had nurtured under Maria’s aggressive tutelage, Eugenia allowed herself to be drawn away by him. In the beginning she was beguiled by their travels, the continuous motion of motorcars, trains, and ferries. She put out of her mind reoccurring images of Maria waiting, curiosity and desire eclipsing reason and responsibility.

  She saw things that one sees only in books. The River Elbe. The bridge over the Danube. A spiraled steeple encasing a bomb. The Vieux-Marché where Jeanne d’Arc was burned, and the obscure room where the great map of the world was carved apart by victorious generals after the war. She walked barefoot on the stones that formed the uneven patio of the citadel of les baux. Alexander left an ivory cross in a niche quarried in the rock. They stood before it but they did not pray. She felt weary of travel but said nothing. In Marseille they laid flowers beneath the low window of a room at the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception before continuing a journey without repose.

  —Where are we going?

  —Far from here.

  —Why must we go?

  —To retrieve what I promised you.

  —Can I skate? Is there a pond?

  —No, Philadelphia, there are deep salt pools that will never freeze.

  The sun was a burden. Everything seemed dead. How cruel you are, she was thinking. Yet she numbly followed him, like Trilby trailing her master.

  They boarded a great ship. She tasted the salt in the air and shuddered. The sea was vast and the waves had beautiful curves. Eugenia imagined them frozen. She imagined the entire sea froze
n so that she could spend her whole life skating on it and never reach the end. At the captain’s table she stared intently at the centerpiece, a swan carved of ice, as it slowly melted. Lulled by the churning sea, she slept deeply, lifting one arm above her head, as she did when she skated. Looking down at her small naked body, Alexander felt a wave of remorse that he swiftly stifled.

  Arriving at port they continued on, through miles of red dust, desert and savannah, until they reached a small compound surrounded by acacia and eucalyptus. A young man greeted Alexander in a dialect she did not know, and then welcomed her in French. His mother led them wordlessly to a room, which was annexed to theirs. It was spacious and washed with lime. The mat for sleeping was unrolled and there was a rifle against the wall. The woman brought them a thick broth, fermented bread, and cups of what smelled like the blood of an animal. The son killed a goat in their honor, and the woman burned chunks of frankincense.

  Alexander rose before dawn, leaving her behind for several hours. He repeated this ritual daily, combing villages for sacred and discarded vestiges of their ancient culture, then returning to her in the evenings. The woman and her son tended to Eugenia as if she were a convalescing princess, serving her bowls of semolina and honey. They are trying to fatten me up, she was thinking, yet she ate greedily.

  Unaccustomed to the heat, she slept more than usual. When she woke the woman would serve her a bitter-tasting drink with a sweet paste that did nothing to quench her thirst, but seemed to heighten her physical craving. Then she would wait, anticipating his return, their rapacious nights. Planets hung low in the black sky, dizzyingly close. All things seemed written on a shard of glass. She possessed not the glow of love but the face of a ravaged bird.