Russian Winter: A Novel by Daphne Kalotay

Author:Daphne Kalotay
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, Ballerinas, History, Moscow (Russia), Ballerinas - Soviet Union, Russians, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Defectors, General, Romance, Literary, Russians - United States, Fiction, United States, Love stories, Soviet Union
ISBN: 9780061962165
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-07T00:59:35+00:00

BOOK II

LOT 50

Tiara. Rhinestone and Austrian crystal, h. 1¾ in., dia. 5.5 in., plated in sterling silver, comb tines on each end. $800–1,000

CHAPTER NINE

In his mailbox in the Department of Foreign Languages, Grigori found a single piece of paper, folded.

His heart gave a little kick. Could it be a response at last? No, no, of course not, ridiculous to even hope. Even if Nina Revskaya did decide to write to him, surely it would not be like this, in the open, without an envelope. That squashed spider…Perhaps the note was from Evelyn, an invitation, some friendly suggestion. She had been away at a conference much of last week but had sent a few chatty e-mail messages. Grigori recalled that she was due back last night.

Unfolding the piece of paper, he saw that it was from Zoltan. Another photocopied page from the diary. February 1962. Zoltan would have been just twenty-nine years old; perhaps by then, after six years there, he considered London a permanent home. Grigori wondered if, in rereading these pages, Zoltan longed to be that sought-after young man again, instead of the eccentric old one he had become. Zoltan’s thickly slanting letters, handwriting from over forty years ago, rushed forward:

Thursday. Gray and rainy but I like it, I do, it seems to express, I think, all the beauty and sadness of being merely human, so many of us plodding along in our overcoats, aware and unaware of who we are and our place in the rainy world. Went to a luncheon put on by a member of the House of Lords who thinks himself a poet. Who am I to contradict him, though I do wish he would use less alliteration. Samuel was there with his latest model girlfriend. I thought I knew her, then realized it was her face I had seen, without ever speaking to her, on so many advertisements and magazine covers. All around, in fact, were recognizable persons: MPs, and the blond folksinger whose name I can never remember…Something came over me, a longing for the wet air outside, I can’t explain it, only that I felt I had to separate myself or I would become less real, less genuine. So I took my leave, early and perhaps rudely, but with that priceless feeling of sudden, exquisite freedom. It was as I was leaving that I saw the Butterfly herself, Nina Revskaya, with her sharply pretty face and dark hair. A sadness about her that I find quite beautiful, something just under the surface. Though she can’t yet be forty, age shows in her hands—big, painful-looking knuckles—and in her eyes, which are a magnificent green, bright and sharp yet somehow equally pained. She surprised me by following me to the coatroom. I didn’t notice until I turned around, ready to put on my coat, and there she was in a green wool dress with a fur collar. I wanted to tell you something, she said. When we spoke at the Christmas party, when you asked me about my husband and his poetry.

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