LITMIR.BIZ

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a gentleman.’

      John started to smile, but then looked startled, thoughtful. Silently he lifted a forkful of food to his mouth. For a few moments the only sounds in the room were the strains of a crackling, turgid symphony barely audible over the radio, the water running into the sink, and the tinkling knocks of their cutlery against the china. They glanced at each other from time to time as they chewed, then down at their plates, cutting, spearing. Suddenly, the window banged closed.

      They both jumped with alarm, chastened by the frankness of their conversation. They knew they shouldn’t talk in the apartment about anything political. The trouble was that Nina loved it so much, and was so hungry for conversation of real substance, that John couldn’t bear to keep things from her. And she was astute in such unexpected, convincing ways that he couldn’t resist finding out her opinions. He felt that whatever views she had, belonged to him, that he ought to know them all, that they were a valuable resource, that they shouldn’t go to waste. He hardly realized the extent to which he was continuously at work trying to master and make use of her Russianness.

      They went on eyeing each other dubiously, anxiously, as they cleaned their plates. Finally, they broke out in grim laughter.

      Nina said, slowly, quietly, ‘Our guys were in here sweeping for bugs again just yesterday. I know they miss things, but maybe …’ She puckered her lips, twitched them about like a rabbit’s quick nose, nervous, as if she might smell a listening device or do away with it by magic.

      ‘We didn’t say anything we shouldn’t have.’ Even if they had, they couldn’t take it back now. They had to brazen it out.

      ‘So tell me about George Balanchine,’ John finally said with a shrug.

      Nina got up, latched the window, turned off the water.

      ‘Well,’ she began, with a lilt of self-deprecation, hands plunged in her pockets as she stood in the middle of the floor, ‘I didn’t get to meet him personally. Not yet anyway. A real scene at the airport. A lot of press and – all the usual onlookers.’ She said this with sarcastic emphasis, not mentioning the KGB or any elements of the State propaganda machine. ‘And he was interviewed in very pointed fashion, to elicit certain – newsworthy answers. But after all, he’s a Russian. They want to look upon him as one of their own, and from what I could see, he knew exactly what he was doing. One of the reporters called out, “Welcome to the home of classical ballet,” and he said, “America is now the home of classical ballet.” Incredibly bold, as if it all belonged to him, the whole tradition, and he had just taken it all with him when he left. I think his work will make the Bolshoi stuff look fat and dull, romantic, old-fashioned. The Russians’ll be stunned.’ She paused, her eyes sparkling. ‘You remember when you went with me in New York?’

      ‘Not in the way you remember, Nines. It was beautiful, but I had no idea why.’

      ‘Well, it’s the speed, the decisiveness, the musicality, and the – the inventiveness. It’s so original, so complex.’ She was breathless with it, springing a little on the balls of her feet. ‘Even I was gagging with boredom the last time we went to the Bolshoi; there are only so many times you can watch a swan die.’

      John grinned with pleasure at her knowledge, at her relish, at her untrickableness.

      Nina rushed on, confident he was appreciating that she could dish it out. ‘He understands the music as a musician, you see, so it’s almost as if he – I don’t know – plays the dancers instead of playing the keys on a piano or the instruments in the orchestra. There’s usually not much story or acting out. And it moves fast fast fast. It’s unbelievably demanding for the ballerinas – who are the centre of everything. The men are just there to hold them up, to show them off. Balanchine’s crazy about ballerinas. You’ll see.’

      ‘But it was the Kirov, eh, where Nureyev danced?’ Half lazily, John shifted ground to the one thing he thought he understood about ballet dancers: their wish to leave the Soviet Union if they could.

      ‘Nureyev went straight to Balanchine when he defected to the West. But that’s what I mean about men. Nureyev’s too much of a star. In Balanchine’s troop, everyone is supposed to be the same, all on equal footing. He doesn’t want stars, especially not men – not men like Nureyev anyway.’

      ‘Sounds pretty communist to me,’ John remarked diffidently.

      Nina nodded. ‘I know. But it’s something pre- all that, some older ideal. It’s certainly Russian just as much as it’s American. Maybe more. He’s very religious, Balanchine, Russian Orthodox. And how he is about ballerinas is – well – mystical.’

      She fell quiet for a moment, a little self-conscious about her high-flown talk; then, shaking herself, she began to clear the table. When she had all the dishes in the sink, she crept a quick, questioning look around at John, checking to see whether he’d had enough of her obsession with ballet, whether he was just humouring her. There was no one else she could talk to as she could talk to him, and she didn’t want to use him up.

      But he smiled at her warmly, so she started afresh, in a gossipy, confidential tone, making it juicy for him. ‘Balanchine has an incredibly interesting personal life, you know. He marries his ballerinas, at shocking ages, really young, one after another.’ She took a breath, slowed down a little. ‘But the one he’s married to now caught polio, and so she’s paralysed from the waist down. Can you imagine anything worse, for a ballerina? And she was a star. Or she was going to be. He left her in New York in a wheelchair.’

      ‘That’s rough. God.’ John yawned, linked his hands behind his head, leaned back in his chair just enough to lift the two front legs off the floor. His loosened tie forked haphazardly over the white cotton expanse of his chest; his shirtsleeves hung deep and loose under his long skinny arms.

      ‘What would you do if that happened to me?’

      ‘If – what?’ The chair legs snapped down onto the linoleum.

      ‘If I became paralysed?’ She was staring into the plate she was rinsing, her hair down around her face like a rough russet curtain.

      ‘That’s an awful question. I don’t even want to think about it.’

      ‘But what would you do?’ Now she turned towards him, drying the plate, shaking her hair back, then dipping her face down towards his so that he couldn’t avoid her eyes.

      ‘Nina, you are not paralysed. I have no idea what I would do.’ John spread his arms high up in the air, bewildered, smiling.

      ‘Would you stay with me?’ Her eyes bore into him with their unsmirched, unrelenting blueness.

      ‘Of course I’d stay with you, but …’ he stopped himself. What was this all about, he wondered, this sudden whimsical comparison with a ballerina he had never even heard of before? ‘Are you serious, Nina? It’s a huge question. I don’t have an answer ready. I’ve never had to think about this.’

      ‘But what about, “In sickness and in health”?’

      ‘Nina, why crank things up in such a crazy way? Of course I’ve promised you that. You’ve promised me the same thing. But let’s give ourselves some time before we start in on ultimate tests. I like to think that I’d pass the test, but I don’t want to wallow in imaginary problems ahead of time.’ As he spoke, he reached for the knot of his tie, pried it loose with a long decisive index finger, snapped it off his neck, and hung it over the back of his chair. All the while, he held her look, quizzing, concerned.

      She turned back to the sink. ‘Leaving someone you love, when they can’t move, can’t go with you. It’s completely awful.’ Her voice was flat, empty.

      ‘Jeez. You are having a bad time, aren’t you, sweetheart? I am so sorry. Is this about your father?’

      ‘Oh, God. I don’t know.’

      He got up and put his arms around her from behind, and she started to scrub at the frying pan.

      ‘Can’t you wash the dishes

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