Russian Winter Read Free Page A

time to continue on. But Mother’s perfect oval face and slender waist must have impressed the guards—or perhaps they are bored and want to show off. They gesture to Nina and Vera, to allow them a turn through the doors.
    Utter silence as the men solemnly escort them round. Nina glimpses, for mere seconds, the hotel’s immense lobby, its gleaming floor and thick runner of carpet, and an enormous mirror with a heavy gilt frame. The ceiling is impossibly high, with glittering lights shining down. It is the first time Nina has seen such things, a whole other world—but the slow rotation continues, and now the marble floor, the plush carpet, the gold mirror and chandelier, are already behind her. That twinkling shower of lights—and the American woman’s diamonds right there in her earlobes, tiny and bright, like stars.
    Outside again, the tour over, Nina asks, “Did you see the lady’s ears?”
    Mother just gives a look that reminds her to thank the doormen.
    “Thank you very much.” Nina and Vera curtsy as they were taught at the audition, one foot behind the other, hands lifting the edges of their skirts, and turn away from the fascinating door, thatentrance to a whole other world, and only then does the understanding come to Nina, strongly, acutely—much more than at the Bolshoi school—that something momentous has occurred.
     
    W HEN THEY RETURN to the courtyard, the old woman who cleans the building looks quickly away. Frown of her mouth chewing sunflower seeds. Eyes shifting as she sweeps. She moves toward the only other people in the courtyard, a young couple who live in the same apartment as Nina and her mother and grandmother.
    Mother has said to stay and play, she will send Nina’s and Vera’s grandmothers down to fetch them. But Nina keeps one ear listening to what the old woman is saying. She hears Vera’s parents’ names, and then, “There was always something odd about them.”
    Nina has heard this before—not about Vera’s parents but other people in the building, who now are gone. Whispers in the courtyard, something odd…
    Vera turns and runs to the other side of the courtyard, where her grandmother has appeared.
    Nina’s grandmother, too, has arrived, her kerchief loosely knotted beneath her chin. “Come here, Nina!” But Nina continues to listen. “What did they do?” the young couple is asking, as the janitoress splashes a bucket of dirty water around the entryway. At the other side of the courtyard, Vera’s grandmother is taking Vera back inside, without even letting her say good-bye.
    “Ninochka! Come!” Her grandmother’s voice is shrill instead of warm and slightly annoyed, as it usually is. The old janitoress repeats herself: “I always knew something wasn’t right about them.” Nina looks up, past the crooked little balconies, to the window of the room where Vera’s family lives. Pale morning glories tremble in the breeze. Nina turns and runs, straight into her grandmother’s arms, to lean against her chest and feel the warmth of her body.
     
    B Y THE TIME the girl from Beller had left, the sky was black, the salon gloomy. In her wheelchair, Nina went about tugging the cords of various lamps, shedding weak saffron rays down upon themselves and little else. Instead of relief at having taken care of things, she felt the same wariness, the same anxiety she had for a fortnight now.
    She rolled the wheelchair up to her desk. With the little key she kept in her pocket, she opened the top drawer. She hadn’t looked back at the letter since first receiving it two weeks ago. Even then she had read it just once, hastily. She had always been one to make rash decisions; it was her nature. Now, though, she unfolded the typed page slowly, trying not to look at the photograph it enclosed.
    I am sending you this letter and the accompanying photograph after much contemplation. Perhaps you have already recognized my name on the return address, recalled even the very first letter I