We had decided a woman’s voice would make Brompton less suspicious. “It’s the concierge,” I said. “I have some information about your car.”
The door opened and an amazed and angry Brompton peered out at us. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
Sasha pushed past him and into the room. I followed, shutting the door behind me.
“What do you think you are doing? Get out at once. You have your money. Are you trying to hold me up?” Brompton reached for the phone.
Sasha threw a bundle of rubles onto the desk. “Here is the money—only hand back the icon.”
“Nonsense. Of course I won’t hand it back.”
“It was a mistake,” Sasha said. “I must have it.”
“What Sasha means,” I hastened to say, “is that his grandmother is very upset about selling the icon. You know how sick she is. She will die without it.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense,” he said. “Now get out of here.”
I stepped between them, afraid Sasha would throttle him. “Listen,” I said in the most authoritative voice I could manage, “my grandfather is friends with lots of people in the new government. They are very strict about taking original art, and especially valuable icons, out of the country. If you don’t give it back, my grandfather will report you to the customs officers at the airport. You’ll end up in a Russian jail instead of on a plane.”
Mr. Brompton was so angry, he could hardly speak. His face was red and puffed up. He turned to Sasha. “I don’t understand. You wanted to sell it. What happened?”
“I told you,” I said. “Sasha’s grandmother is very upset.” I walked toward the phone.
“No, wait.” Mr. Brompton strode over to the suitcase on his bed and began pulling out shirts and underwear. When he got to the bottom of the suitcase, he gave us a wary look. With a shrug, he began to remove the lining of the suitcase, and underneath was the package with the icon. Sasha grabbed the icon and headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said. I took the package from Sasha and unwrapped it while a furious Mr. Brompton looked on. I asked, “Is it the right one?”
Sasha, now close to tears, nodded.
As we left the hotel, the doorman winked at me. “Come by sometime when I’m about to go off duty.”
We took the steps to Sasha’s apartment two at a time. He knelt beside his grandmother. “Tanya and I got it back.” He blurted out the story. “You don’t hate me?” he asked.
“Sasha, Sasha,” his grandmother said, stroking his hair. “What you were doing was breaking my heart, but what could I say? You were doing it for me. And God forgive me, I don’t want to die and leave you. But even worse than death would be knowing that your love for me had made you do a dishonorable thing.”
Sasha stood up, brushing the tears from his face. He plucked the icon he had painted from the wall and picked up a brush thick with black paint.
Before he could smear the black paint over the icon, his grandmother snatched it from his hand. “No, Sasha. It must hang beside the true St. Vladimir. You did what you did for love of me. Every time I look at your icon, I will think of that. It’s as precious to me as my own St. Vladimir.” She smiled. “And now with two such miraculous icons, I will surely improve.”
CHAPTER 9
THE DANGEROUS ERRAND
At night Sasha’s words: “Look what you plan to do—cheat the ballet that has trained you and made you the fine ballerina you are,” kept me awake, but the next day Vera would be there to tug me in the other direction, talking of all the excitement of Paris. “Tanya, you are sure to be a great success. You will perform in theaters all over the world.”
To tell the truth, there was little time for thinking of anything. There were new costumes for the tour, so in addition to practicing for hours we had to stand still for fittings. The Firebird had been completely revised, requiring additional work. In the August heat the rehearsal room was punishing. We had to wring out our practice leotards when we took them off. The Leningrad summer was rushing by, and I saw it only in snatches on my way from the theater to the apartment and back.
The week before we were to leave, Maxim Nikolayevich had a fight with the choreographer. Finally, in a temper, he sent everyone home for the afternoon. I went at once to Sasha’s to beg him to come out with me. I was happy to see Nadya Petrovna was a little stronger.
“I was so relieved to have St. Vladimir back, I have been improving ever since. Don’t tell me the icon has not performed a miracle. Yes, Tanya, take Sasha out with you. He spends all his time at his painting. The poor boy needs an airing.”
“Grandmother, I am no goosefeather quilt to be taken out and shaken, but I can see Tanya needs a little airing herself.”
The city was full of summer afternoon. The kiosks were selling ice cream. Women were in summer dresses. Shops had set out pots of geraniums and petunias. We saw a few soldiers walk by, their caps pushed back on their heads, their collars open. In the Summer Garden where we settled on a patch of grass, the fountains were attracting children who dashed surreptitiously in and out of the flowing water while the attendant’s back was turned.
Sasha lay down and closed his eyes. “Are you going to fall asleep and leave me sitting here?” I asked.
Sasha peered at me from beneath his long black lashes. “How can you talk, Tanya? Aren’t you going to leave me, and not for a few minutes but forever?”
“Sasha, it’s no good discussing it. Anyhow, if Yeltsin has his way, people will be able to travel in and out of the country. You can come and live in Paris.”
“Visit Paris, yes. I long to see their museums, but live in Paris! Never. I’m a Russian. My art is Russian. Why would I leave this country just when it’s finally going to be free?”
“Don’t talk politics to me, Sasha. I hear it all the time at home. My family sit around the kitchen table and argue as if what they say can make a difference.”
“It does make a difference. Your grandmother has been writing poems about freedom of the heart and mind for years, and without your grandfather risking his neck, Yeltsin wouldn’t be where he is. Have you forgotten your past, Tanya? Your great-grandfather died from his days in a prison camp and your great-grandmother was exiled to Siberia. Your own grandparents were sent away after the war just because they had been heroes of Leningrad. You should be proud of them—you shouldn’t be running away.”
I jumped up and stood over Sasha, suppressing an urge to give him a kick. “I’m not running away. I’m going to live in a country were there is freedom.”
Sasha was on his feet. “That’s someone else’s freedom. What about freedom in your own country?”
“I don’t believe it will ever come.”
“If you have so little faith, then you ought to leave.”
We were standing there glaring at each other when Sasha put his arms around me and held me. I could smell all the old familiar smells of turpentine and varnish and something he used to tame his hair. I said, “I don’t care about the country, but I hate leaving my family and leaving you.”
“Don’t leave. Stay and marry me.”
I was startled into silence, but it took me only a moment to realize how impossible that would be. “How could we marry? You haven’t finished school. We would have no place to live and no money.” As soon as I dismissed the idea, I saw how much I liked it. If I stayed, in a few years Sasha would be out of school. Perhaps he would find a job teaching, or maybe his paintings would sell. I would be dancing more roles. What if I gave lessons as well? If, if, if. With the way things were now in Russia, it was an impossible dream.
We were holding hands and the fight had gone out of both of us. “Sasha, you’ll be a famous artist and your paintings will be in the Paris galleries, so you will be traveling to Paris all the time.”
“And you will be a world-famous ballerina and will come back to perform in your native Russia, where everyone will crowd around you and I will have to get in line to have a word with you.”
&n
bsp; We were laughing now and the arguing was behind us. But the words of the quarrel were still in our hearts, and when we said good-bye, the laughter disappeared altogether. I went away wondering if the dream I had chosen would make me as happy as the dream I was abandoning.
At the apartment it felt as if everyone in the family was holding their breath. It was clear that though no one seemed to know what it would be, something important was about to happen. Night after night I had found the family sitting around the kitchen table, discussing politics, more excited now than ever. Everyone had an opinion; voices were raised and fists pounded.
Grandfather complained, “Gorbachev is back at his dacha on the Black Sea, walking over marble floors and splashing around in his very own swimming pool. Meanwhile the starving miners are still on strike and industry is shutting down for lack of coal. All the money is going to the military.”
“What is this treaty that is about to be signed?” Mama asked.
“It’s Yeltsin’s idea and Gorbachev has had to agree,” Grandfather said. “Ukraine, Georgia, and all the other republics will have their own governments but will still be a part of the Soviet Union. I suppose it is like Australia’s and Canada’s relationship with the United Kingdom. The arrangement makes sense, but the old-line Communists are furious about giving the republics any independence.”
“What is the difference then between Gorbachev and Yeltsin? Why is everyone taking sides?” Aunt Marya wanted to know.
“It’s very simple,” Grandfather said. “Gorbachev is against private property, and Yeltsin is for it. Gorbachev tries to clean up the corruption in the Communist party, and Yeltsin says as long as we have a one-party system, we will never clean up the corruption. He says the Communist party has to go. The most important difference is that Yeltsin wants everyone to be able to vote.”
“There is something else,” Grandmother Yelena said. “Gorbachev has started to censor the newspapers and the magazines again. No one is taking my poems now, because my husband is fighting for Yeltsin.”
“Gorbachev and Yeltsin can fight all they want to,” Papa said. “The real danger is with the old Communist party members. They see their days are numbered. In a democratic country they won’t be running things anymore.”
“You are exactly right,” Grandfather said. “Look for a last gasp, a last move on the part of the Communist party to take over the country.”
I thought as usual Grandfather was just looking for a fight. After a few minutes of listening to the discussion I kissed everyone good night and pulled the curtains on my little cubbyhole. I didn’t care about politics. I was going to be far away. For the thousandth time I took my suitcase from under my bed. My clothes for the trip had been packed and repacked. Tucked among the clothes were pictures of the family.
When I had asked for them, Mama had said, “Tanya, you are only going to be away for a little while. Surely you can remember us for so short a time.”
“I’ve never been away from you, Mama. Let me have the pictures. I’ll take good care of them.” Reluctantly she took them from their frames and gave them to me.
The troupe was to leave for Moscow on August nineteenth. We would take the overnight train to Moscow, remain in the capital for two days, and then fly to Paris. We were all excited, for none of us had been on a plane and most of us had never been to Moscow or even on a train. Since I had been packed and ready to go for weeks, there was little preparation. The hard part was saying good-bye to those I loved. Mama must have sensed something in my behavior, for the morning before I was to leave, as we were sitting at the table having a second glass of tea, she put her hand on mine. “Tanya, is there something you aren’t telling me?”
I could feel my cheeks burning. “What do you mean?”
“You seem so sad. I would have thought you would be thrilled at going on the tour.”
“It’s just that I’ve never been away from home before.”
“You will be back before you know it. A couple of weeks is nothing when you have so much excitement ahead of you. You must write down everything so that you can tell us all about it. Now Papa and I have a surprise for you.” Mama gave me a carefully wrapped package. Inside was a small camera. “There, you see. You’ll take pictures of everything, and you’ll be able to show us what you have seen when you get home.”
All I could think of was putting pictures in an envelope and sending them back, and of what a rebuke that would be to Mama and Papa, who had sacrificed to buy me the camera.
Aunt Marya brought me a lovely silk scarf. “It belonged to a friend of mine and will bring you good luck,” she said. “When you are in my beloved city of Paris, you must think of me.”
Grandmother gave me a book of French poems. “They will help you understand the soul of the French,” she promised.
Sasha came by for a final farewell. In front of the family we had to hide our two secrets: how much we cared for each other and our worry that we might never again see each other. When he left, he gave me a small parcel. “Open it when I’m gone. And keep it with you to protect you.” Inside I found a miniature of St. Vladimir, so small it fit into the palm of my hand. Sasha had made a perfect copy of Nadya Petrovna’s icon.
Grandfather’s gift was the strangest gift of all, though it wasn’t exactly a gift. It was the early afternoon of the day I was to leave, only an hour or so before I was to meet the others at the theater, where we would board a bus for the Moscow train station. I had already said good-bye to Mama and Papa, who had both left for work. Grandmother was at a writers’ meeting. Grandfather and I were alone. He had been out and had just returned with a worried expression on his face. He began to pace back and forth in the tiny apartment. He was large and the apartment small, so the pacing took only a few steps each way. For the last two days Grandfather had acted strangely, all but looking over his shoulder as if he expected some calamity to appear. He had pored over the newspaper and spent long hours with his political friends, coming home late at night. He wore a worried frown all day long and was given to making gloomy predictions about the fate of the country.
Mama had asked, “Papa, why the worried look? Your Yeltsin is president of Russia and gaining in popularity every day.”
Grandfather replied, “The stronger Yeltsin gets, the more the old guard in the Communist party plot to get rid of him and take the country back.”
As I was strapping on my backpack, Grandfather stopped his pacing and said, “I must have a word with you, Tanya. There is a moment each spring just before I jump into the Neva River with its chunks of ice when I think, ‘Georgi, you are a fool,’ but I take the plunge. This is such a moment. I had not wanted to involve you in something dangerous, but I must. You would not be my granddaughter if you were unwilling to take a risk to save Russia.”
“Me? Grandfather, what can you mean? What could I possibly do?” My heart skipped a beat, for I knew my grandfather could not always tell the difference between bravery and recklessness.
“Here in Leningrad phones are tapped and mail is censored. It is the same for the deputies in the parliament building in Moscow.” Grandfather gave me a long look. “If you would agree to carry a letter, Tanya, to a certain deputy in Moscow, you will be doing your country a great service. We have come to the moment when Russia’s fate will be decided. If you are reluctant to do it, you have only to tell me. I will surely understand.”
I knew there was danger—that it might be the end of my dream of escaping Russia, that I might even be arrested—but Sasha’s accusation that I was running away and betraying all that my grandparents and great-grandparents had suffered for our country still hurt. Here was an opportunity to prove him wrong. “I’ll do it, Grandfather. But will they let me into the parliament building?”
“Russian tourists sightseeing in Moscow often go there to visit the deputy from their own town to lobby for some request or other. How suspicious could anyone be of a young ballerina making a dutiful pilgrimage to the seat of the government? Here is a le
tter of introduction to Lev Petrovich, one of the deputies from Leningrad. There is nothing suspicious in the letter. It says only that you have a petition from his Leningrad constituents begging him to apportion more money for the training of ballet dancers, a perfectly natural request coming from you. And here is the confidential letter for Lev Petrovich, which you must guard with your life. Lev Petrovich, like me, is a Yeltsin man, and this letter will let him know the names of those he can trust here in Leningrad in the event of a coup.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “A coup!”
“An alliance of the military and the old Communists, both of whom see their power slipping away, is going to try to take over the country. Gorbachev’s days are numbered, and they know that when Yeltsin is in charge of the country, he means to get rid of the Communist party. If the alliance succeeds, we will be back to censorship and to people being dragged away from their homes in the middle of the night. When the coup comes about—and we don’t know when that will be, but it will be sooner rather than later—Lev Petrovich must know whom he can count on in Leningrad to oppose it. This letter will tell him.”
Grandfather handed me an envelope and I hastily put it into my backpack, where, flimsy as it was, it felt as heavy as a stone. I was terrified but I knew I could not let Grandfather down. “You can trust me,” I promised.
He reached into his pocket and gave me a handful of rubles. “Buy yourself something pretty in Paris,” he said. His bear hug and the look of relief on his face swept away my fears.
Grandfather offered to send me in a taxi to the Kirov theater, but it was a warm summer afternoon, and though I couldn’t tell him, I wanted to see the city one last time. As I walked along, I thought it ironic that just as I was leaving, Leningrad had never looked lovelier. Across the street from our apartment was the great semicircle of Kazan Cathedral, with its ninety-six columns and its dome topped with a golden spire. When the light was at just this slant, the shadows of the columns lay in black stripes across the cathedral square. In the canal the water shimmered gold. For a moment I did not see how I could leave the city. I knew I should be thinking only of what was ahead of me, of my escape and of Paris, but instead, there were tears in my eyes. It seemed impossible that I might never see the Prospekt again or walk along the Moika canal. The sight of the great Kirov Theater building with its magnificent entrance made my heart stand still. I saw what I would be giving up. Only the excitement of what I was carrying and the danger of my assignment in Moscow kept me from weeping.