Even a Perfect Ballerina Succumbs to Gravity

Even a Perfect Ballerina Succumbs to Gravity

An excerpt from City of Night Birds by Juhea Kim

I wasn’t meant to be a dancer. It happened only because our north-facing window looked across the courtyard and into the apartment of a Ukrainian couple: a slender, soft-spoken mailman named Sergei Kostiuk and his cheerful and dark-haired wife. That family’s apartment was a diorama for my curious and bored eyes, as is often the case in compressed quarters of poor neighborhoods—although I didn’t yet think of myself as poor.

The Kostiuks had a son my age called Seryozha, whose padding around the rooms in a white sleeveless top and underwear is one of the earliest images I can recollect. Seryozha’s arms were all one thickness from shoulder to wrist, and he was pale, thin, and soft in a way that reminded me of a Q-tip. Like the other boys in our class, he filled me with disdain. I hated how they spoke in short, overlapping shouts that only they could understand, how they pulled on girls’ ponytails, the dirt caked under their nails, their damp smell like earthworms. Out of them, Seryozha was the worst because he constantly ran into me outside of school. When we crossed paths in the stairway I looked coldly away, although Mama said I should be nice to him because he was nice to me. I was sure Seryozha was only nice to me because his mama was saying behind our backs that I was nice to him. And so, on and on it went, the chain of mothers who forced their children to be nice to their neighbors’ children.

It was a cold and raw Sunday morning. A sense of resignation coursed through the dead leaves and fallen apples strewn in the courtyard. The crows on the electric lines started cawing and Seryozha turned to his window—he caught me staring, turned red, and disappeared. A little later the yellow curtains of his room were drawn hastily shut. The birds cried louder, then lifted off as Sveta entered the courtyard below.

Something that I learned from her is that some women are beautiful even from above. I called out to Mama, “Sveta is here!”

She opened our door before Mama had a chance to do a quick sweep around the apartment. Sveta—as I called her instead of Aunt Svetlana, at her insistence—had been visiting us as long as I could remember. Even as I grew older and Mama went to the theater more, Sveta enjoyed the tea, gossip, and bespoke adjustments Mama made for her at our home. She kissed Mama’s cheeks and the top of my head while pulling off her tight-fitting leather gloves, one finger at a time. Then she stood in front of Mama’s sewing table, exuding glamour at ten in the morning on a Sunday. It was the small details that proved fatal in ballet, Sveta said. Her Lilac Fairy costume was too tight in the bodice; the shoulder straps restricted the movement of her arms as she leaped onto the stage for her variation, so she couldn’t get any ballon. Sveta had asked the chief seamstress of the women’s costume department to loosen the straps so they could fall slightly off-shoulder, but the answer was a firm no. This was the costume design from the original 1890 production of The Sleeping Beauty, and changing something at the whim of a mere second soloist went against everything that the Mariinsky stood for, which was tradition—the very fabric of ballet passed down from feet to feet for two centuries. As Sveta said this, I imagined pointe shoes trampling all over the theater’s pale blue velvet curtains fringed with gold tassels.

Mama told Sveta not to worry and then ordered me to go play in the living room. I turned on the TV and sat on the floor, where Mama had laid out the finished costumes to be steamed. The news program ended, and a black-and-white figure of a ballerina appeared on the screen. She looked like Sveta, with long thin legs ending in pinpricks of pointe shoes—and she bounded off those sharp feet with one leg reaching high behind her so that it almost grazed her marvelous backbend. Her every movement was quick and spry like a sparrow’s, as if she barely needed to touch the ground. But what I really couldn’t resist was the music. I ran to our room to get my tutu that Mama sewed out of scrap tulle. I pulled it over my hips and started mimicking the dancer on the screen, shouting, “Mama, Sveta, look at me!” I turned up the volume of the TV, knowing that would annoy them. But I’d miscalculated how much I could push my luck, and a fatal back-bending jump sent me landing right on top of Mama’s piles of costumes.

Before my foot slid out from underneath me and my bottom crashed to the floor, Mama rushed over screaming. “I didn’t mean to,” I began to say, curled up on the floor. I could feel the beginnings of a massive bruise on my bottom, but I didn’t dare cry in front of Mama. She shushed me and examined the pieces one by one. There was a finger-length tear on a soft white tulle tutu, and she ran to the fabric closet in our room, swallowing curse words. When I made trouble like this, Mama whipped me with her belt. I wondered if she’d do that then—and suddenly I didn’t want to dance or wear a tutu or do anything, I didn’t want to live. I reached over and grabbed Sveta’s hand, and she folded me into her stomach.

“Sveta,” I closed my eyes and whispered. “Please take me with you.”

She stroked my hair and patted my back, the way I wished Mama would do more often. She then crouched down to kiss my cheeks, and said, “Natashka, I can’t.”

I stepped back from her in disappointment, but she held on to my shoulders and smiled. “I saw you dancing. Do you know what ballet that was?”

I shook my head.

“That was a solo from a ballet called Don Quixote. What you did is called a Kitri jump. How old are you, Natashka?”

“Seven,” I said, rolling my eyes to the ceiling while recalling the few significant dates in my short life. It was 1992 and I was actually seven and three months old. Less than a year ago, all the flags had been changed from red and yellow to white, blue, and red.

“Well. I’m going to tell your mama that you should start taking ballet, as soon as possible. You’re the rarest thing for a woman dancer, and by that, I mean you’re a jumper, Natalia Leonova.”

Sveta left early, promising to return soon for more gossip and fittings. The minute she walked out, Mama called me to her and boxed my ear hard. Just once, so I would know she meant only to set me in my place, to make me behave and not act so wild. It was not because she hated me—in fact it was because she loved me, she told me later while snuggling me tightly in her arms. I believed her words, the warmth of our creaky bed, her gentle hand caressing my head, which she kept reassuringly moving like an oar dipping into a lake, even though she was so tired. She was so tired that she sometimes fell asleep with her eyes open, but she would keep stroking my head for hours until I forgot that she’d struck me with that same hand. This was what love was, I thought—being able to forgive. But it was not happiness. 

---

I knew that Mama couldn’t teach me happiness because she’d never been happy. At least not since Nikolai—a name that was within my name, yet so unfamiliar to me. Mama never talked about him with me; everything I know, I heard through whispered conversations between Mama and Sveta when they thought I was asleep. Mama met Nikolai while working as an alterations seamstress at a department store. Two men, rather shabbily dressed, walked in one day wanting to buy winter suits and coats and tailor them on the spot. They were friends who lumbered out in Sakhalin in the Far East; they had just come out for a month-long vacation after an eighteen-month run. The short, skinny, polite, clean-shaven one was Pavel, and the tall, blond, bearded, silent, and somewhat wild-eyed one was Nikolai. They were both flush with their wages that they hadn’t had the chance to spend for a year and a half. During that time, they had caught a glimpse of fewer than five women on the entire island of Sakhalin. Both were eager to do something with their money and to hold a woman close. And it so happened that Nikolai was the one who spoke to Mama first, which set the tone for all the rest that followed. If Pavel had been the one to approach her, Nikolai would have fallen respectfully behind his friend, and Mama would have gone along for the ride just the same, only her entire life would have been different.

Mama hemmed the coats for the two friends and they asked her to join them for dinner after her shift. After a few days of meeting like that, Pavel naturally fell away and Nikolai and Mama spent time together alone. Mama had not been courted until then. No one had bought her boxes of chocolates or walked the scenic way along the canals instead of taking the Metro. Nikolai quoted from the poets and asked Mama about her girlhood; and when she explained how lonely she’d felt her entire life, he wrapped her tightly in his arms and squeezed all the breath—and sadness—out of her. Nikolai, whose father had downed a bottle of vodka a day, ran away from home when he was fourteen and had been making his own way ever since. The only friends and family he had in the world were books and trees; he stared into loneliness every time his eyes opened in the morning. But not anymore—he told her, interlacing his hand with hers. His every word, glance, and kiss burned her like hot coal. In short, Mama fell in love with Nikolai.

At the end of the month, Nikolai flew back to Sakhalin, promising to call and write as often as he could. He did call every week for a number of months—even after Mama told him she was pregnant. Later she gave birth and had to stop working at the department store, and Nikolai started sending her money, too. I was already nine months old when he came to visit on leave. He spent hours playing with me, reading out loud from Pushkin and rocking me to sleep. Only on a few occasions, he disappeared and came back the next morning, saying he went out with his logging buddies and lost track of time. Mama was so relieved to see him, and the time she could spend with him was so short anyway, that she immediately forgave him.

Some months after Nikolai returned to the lumberyard, Mama couldn’t get a hold of him. He didn’t pick up, so she would leave messages. Did he miss her and Natasha? Did he still love her? He called her back, and they talked briefly about her concerns until he went back to work. This happened several more times—anywhere between four to a dozen times, her memory falters—but what Mama does remember is that, during what was to become their last phone call, he quoted to her these lines from Dante: “Take heart. Nothing can take our passage from us / When such a power has given warrant for it.”

By this time, his designated month-long vacation was drawing near. Mama believed that he would show up one day bearing a box of chocolates and toys for me. Incredibly, she never lost this faith until the last day of what was supposed to be his leave. When even that day passed without any sign of Nikolai, Mama would have gone mad if only she hadn’t had a toddler to feed and raise. Nikolai hadn’t sent money in months, and she had no idea how she could work. One winter day, when she had mustered enough energy to take a walk with me in a stroller, a gentleman in a familiar coat called out to her on the street. It was Pavel, wearing the same dark green wool gabardine coat she had sold to him, a lifetime ago it seemed. Nikolai had one exactly like it, she couldn’t help but recall at the same time. A thought crossed rapidly in her mind that she’d much rather have seen Nikolai in that coat instead, and this weakness shamed her as Pavel reached out his two gloved hands and wrapped them around her own. Pavel had gotten out of lumbering in the past year—he’d made enough to buy a co-op apartment for him and his new wife. After listening to him for a while, heart pounding from impatience, Mama finally asked in a shaky voice if he’d had any news of Nikolai—she was afraid he had been killed in a logging accident. Pavel looked at a loss for words, studying the face of the toddler in the stroller. Finally he said, very sadly, “I respect you so much, Anna Ivanovna; it hurts me that neither truth nor lie can bring you any comfort. In that case I think you might prefer hearing the truth. Nikolai is well. He found a better-paying post in Vladivostok, which isn’t so wild as Sakhalin. I didn’t know he stopped calling you.”

The only way to ensure that you don’t get left behind is for you to be the one to leave.

To Mama’s credit, she did not break down in tears out there on the plaza. She thanked Pavel for giving her this news with integrity and compassion. To Pavel’s credit, he did everything he could to help this woman whom, after all, he’d only met for a few days, several years ago at this point. His wife knew a makeup artist at Mariinsky, and through her he got Mama some sewing work that she could do at home.

So I learned early on that the most painful thing in the world is uncertainty. Not knowing whom to trust. Not knowing who will stay. The only way to ensure that you don’t get left behind is for you to be the one to leave.

When I lay in bed at night, I didn’t fantasize about getting married in a white wedding dress as did other girls, I fantasized about leaving. But instead of disappearing like Nikolai, I dreamed of becoming so famous that the only way the ones I left behind could see my face would be in photographs, in newspapers.

---

At the artist entrance, an unfamiliar porter is listening to Puccini on the radio. When I walk in, he stops humming, uncrosses his legs, and gets up from his swivel stool so abruptly that it skids to the back wall.

“Natash—Natalia Nikolaevna,” he stammers. “I am so—it is wonderful to see you again.”

I am ashamed to admit that I don’t remember him at all. “Please, just Natasha,” I say. “I’m here to take class.”

“Yes, of course.” The porter smiles nervously, smoothing down his dwindling hair with one hand and gesturing toward the hallway with the other. When I’m about to turn away, he stops me by my elbow.

“Natasha,” he reaches and clasps my hand, which costs me a great deal of effort not to flinch.

“Welcome back to Mariinsky,” he intones rather formally, and when I smile and thank him, he releases me with an expression of terrified joy.

The dressing room is empty, and so quiet that the second hand of the yellow-faced wall clock can be heard. It’s three minutes past eleven; the company class has already begun. I change into one of the brand-new leotards and tights. Without looking at a mirror, I rake my hair up into a bun. Inside ballet slippers, my feet begin to feel more alive and alert, connecting to the floor, lifting my kneecaps, turning out my hips. My shoulder blades pull down and back, my neck lengthens upright. A shocked relief courses through my body. I recognize myself again for a moment, like a candle flame enlarging and then coming into focus.

A trickle of music seeps into the dressing room, and I follow it out the hallway. The studio door has been left open. They are doing pliés, and as I slip inside to find a spot at the barre, all eyes turn to me—the ones facing me and even the ones facing away, who are staring at me in the mirror. They are expressionless. I cannot tell whether they are happy to see me or hostile—except Nina, who flashes me the briefest, kindest smile from her perch. Out of habit, I scan the room in vain for Seryozha. Not seeing him here gives my heart a brief, sharp sensation like a pinprick under your nail. The only person resolutely not looking at me is Katia Reznikova, who at forty-one is still ravishingly beautiful and commanding as only true primas can be. All this transpires before the pliés finish and Dmitri stands before the company with a hand on his hip, announcing, “Natasha will be guesting in the fall season, dancing Giselle with TaeHyung. Please welcome her back.”

A scattered round of applause, led mostly by Nina. I find a space at the barre and do a few pliés on my own before jumping into battement tendus with the others. Without any conscious thought, my toes activate against the floor like they’re plucking harp strings. That simple and ingrained movement floods me with an exquisite consciousness of my body; and it shocks me to realize that for the very first time since the accident, I am hopeful. But during frappés, the pain returns to my feet, traveling up to my ankles, then calves. A short center combination makes both my ankle and arch collapse, and I’m hopping out of a single pirouette. When Dmitri gives a basic coda ending in a fouetté, I have no choice but to leave the studio rather than expose my complete inability to execute what was once my signature.

In the dressing room, I slump down on the bench with elbows on my knees, cradling the weight of my head in my palms. When the faint trickling of the piano stops, I pick up my things and walk out.

Dmitri is waiting outside the door, leaning against the wall like an adolescent.

“Let’s talk in my office,” he says in a neutral voice, devoid of his usual mocking tone.

“It’s really not necessary,” I reply, sounding colder than I intend or feel. “Look, Dmitri. Aside from all the things in our past—I appreciate the confidence you’ve shown me. It was tempting, I admit. But as you can see yourself, I can’t do this.” For a second, I worry that I might break down while saying this. But my eyes remain dry—there are no more emotions I have left for this situation.

“We don’t have to go up. Let’s just talk in here.” Dmitri walks inside an empty studio and motions for me to follow. Since I have come to take his class, I at least owe him a conversation. Dmitri sits down on a chair in front of the mirrors, and I take a seat next to him. He smoothes his hair away from his face and exhales, and says something I didn’t expect.

“Tell me about your injury.”

After so many years of knowing Dmitri, he remains an enigma—not just to me, but to most of the world—which is probably why my eyes pool with moistness at the hint of something that, in anyone else’s voice, could be construed as compassion. His sudden openness catches me off guard and compels me to speak.

“Arches. Achilles. Calves also—but mostly down in feet and ankles.”

“Which side? Both?”

“Both.”

We are silent for a while. In the next room, the accompanist has begun playing the Act III pas de deux in La Bayadère, a sound as calm and luminous as spun moonlight. Moonlight, fountains, clinking of glasses, Dmitri’s laughter with my friends as I hid in a corner in pain. The memory comes alive as the swelling, throbbing pain in my feet—and then as fresh anger.

“My injury is because of you.”

Dmitri snaps his gaze onto me. “Natasha, I know you’re not my fan. But let’s be fair. I didn’t cause you to get hurt.”

“If it weren’t for you—” I struggle to string my words. “No accident.”

All traces of what I thought was compassion disappear from his face. “I wasn’t even there, Natasha. I—” He raises his eyebrows and emits a short laugh of disgust.

“You used to be someone who took responsibility for her own life. At the very least, I liked that about you.”

More silence. The pair in the next studio must be talking, working through the difficult lifts and transitions. After a minute, the piano restarts fitfully.

“Here’s what I think,” Dmitri begins again. “It wasn’t right to jump straight into company class. Let’s get you working slowly back up with your own pedagogue. And we’ll get you started on physiotherapy. I know you can do it.”

“It’s not possible,” I say weakly. Dmitri becomes impatient again.

“Natasha, I was watching you during class. Do you really want to know my opinion?” He fixes his grass-colored eyes on me, and I shrug.

“Your injury,” he says, tapping the side of his temple. “It’s mostly, if not all, in your head.”

---

On the way out, I pass by the next room rehearsing La Bayadère and see Nina working with her partner. She breaks protocol by stopping midsequence, causing the piano to peter off; and then she comes over to lock me in a tight embrace.

“I have a break in thirty minutes. Let’s get tea,” Nina says, standing close so I can see a cropping of lines on her forehead and the lovely flush of her cheeks. There is a new slackness to her skin over her neck, collarbones, and knees, which would not be discernible on stage. It is unexpectedly attractive off stage, in the way a white shirt feels more elegant after a few hours’ wear, when it’s not so pristinely pressed. Also new: shooting stars threading across the midnight black of her center-parted hair. Nina makes aging look like an adornment. I find myself mesmerized by her appearance, as if meeting an actress in real life—because so much of her now lives only in my memories.

“I’m so sorry, Nina,” I implore. “We have to catch up, but I’m exhausted right now. You saw me earlier, so you know why. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You really are coming back?” she asks doubtfully, and I nod. Her face softens with relief because the Natasha she knew would stop at nothing to fulfill what she said she’d do. Nina doesn’t know that this Natasha is gone. All I can think of now, standing with a parched throat and inflamed feet, is the Xanax on my bedside table. The pills are rattling like white bees in their bottle—soon they will take me to a room covered in down pillows, floor to wall to ceiling. I so look forward to the feeling that a tear forms at the corner of my eye. Nina sees this, mistakes it for the normal disappointment of a bad class, and pats me soothingly on my arm.

“It will get better. See you tomorrow, Natasha.”

---

Before I met Nina, I’d never had a real friend. I was always alone at school. It’s not that I didn’t want to make friends; but the other girls instinctively sensed that I was different. They were lambs—soft, pretty, playful, easily satisfied, happy in flocks. I didn’t have such endearing qualities. I was not good-looking, rich, pleasant, or noticeably bright. I was already serious and brooding, and my obsessive nature grated and exhausted me without a proper focus. What helped me later didn’t make me an ideal lunch companion in primary school. I dimmed the light behind my eyes, laughed at their jokes, and hid that thing that burned inside me, sometimes like ember and other times like molten rock. A secret power that others couldn’t fathom. I concealed this part of me at home, too, so that Mama wouldn’t have one more thing to upset her. It was only when I was alone that I didn’t have to act like what I was not—and only then did I not feel as if bursting into flames from the roots of my hair to my toes.

One day after school, I was walking home alone through the snow-packed streets. This was my favorite time of day, when I could be free to regard the world—even if that world was just bare black trees, brick buildings, and white fumes rising from smokestacks and pouring into the sun-blushed sky. In the summertime, the burning smell stung my nose and I ran as fast as I could. But now the iciness sealed everything cleanly and I breathed in only the pure scent of snow. As the wind blew and the evening chill set in, the crows began cawing from electric lines, tops of buildings, even the thin air where you couldn’t see but still hear them. Then above their cacophony, a sound of rapid footsteps was layered over my own, and momentarily my blood froze. Before I panicked, he caught up to me.

“Natasha.” It was Seryozha, with bright red cheeks. Like a couple of baby turtles on the sand, we used to clumsily overtake each other in height so that he was taller one year and I taller the next. This was evidently Seryozha’s year: he’d grown since I last stood so close to him, and I could see that he was now the exact height of a standing piano—which made me look up at him by a few centimeters. A little breathless, his blond hair swept up from the run, he asked if I would come with him to a party. It turned out that a certain Reznikov, his father’s boss’s boss, not just a postmaster but someone at the Ministry of Communications, was hosting a New Year’s party. Despite their difference in rank, the Reznikovs met the Kostiuks because their daughter used to train at Seryozha’s ballet school. I hadn’t known that he had been taking ballet lessons since he was three, and stared at him until his cheeks looked smeared with beet juice. I had never been to a party before. I said yes and Seryozha’s eyes brightened so that I could clearly see the starbursts of his blue irises. Somehow they reminded me, briefly, of snowflakes.

On the night of the party, which was very cold, the Kostiuks and I took the Metro to the Reznikovs’ apartment. After getting out of the station, we still had to walk many blocks to the Fontanka Embankment. Seryozha’s mother occasionally turned around to ask us if we were okay. Seryozha and I both shrugged, although I could feel my two pairs of thick tights had already become wet inside my boots. Soon, Seryozha’s father walked ahead to the ornate facade of a building, and motioned at us to catch up. On either side of the entrance, a pair of lanterns held the dancing light of real flames. The canal shimmered white in the moonlight except where people’s footsteps had dented the snow, revealing the hard, black ice beneath.

When we arrived, the door was opened by an elegant woman, older and more beautiful than either my mama or Seryozha’s. Her rust-red hair was swept up into a low bun, a style that usually suited young women better but looked perfectly becoming on her. She kissed Uncle Sergei on both cheeks, then moved on to his wife and son. Finally, Uncle Sergei pointed at me and said awkwardly, “And here is Natasha, a friend of Seryozha’s.” She barely glanced at me, but the way she smiled at Seryozha made me realize that they knew each other already—and that she thought highly of him. It struck me then that the Reznikovs invited the Kostiuks because of Seryozha, not Uncle Sergei.

“Have you been practicing hard for the Vaganova auditions? How are you getting on with your double tours?” She asked Seryozha, leading us through a hallway lined with paintings.

“I’ve been improving, thank you,” Seryozha said as we entered a large room. It was suffused in a smooth golden light that blurred the edges of everything. Guests were gathered in groups of twos and threes, never alone and never more than four; they were well-dressed, well-coiffed, and appropriately funny, like actors in commercials. The women were slender, polished, and lovely in a way that made me feel self-conscious for Seryozha’s mother. Madame Reznikova gestured in the direction of a striking girl, whose fiery hair immediately called to mind her own, and said, “There’s Katia. Why don’t you go say hello, Seryozha,” before being seamlessly pulled away to a sphere of guests.

Seryozha surprised me by walking up to Katia and greeting her. She was so much taller than him—she looked about sixteen or seventeen—but she smiled at him without impatience, much like her mother. Seryozha introduced me, standing a bit behind him, and she smiled at me, too. I was bewildered—why did this beautiful older girl act as though she was friends with Seryozha? He spoke rarely in class and never made any lasting impression; our teacher hardly paid more attention to him than to me. But here, Seryozha was at ease. They talked of his upcoming audition for Vaganova, where Katia was a star student in her final year. I gathered that this was the best and oldest ballet school in Russia, where the most talented children trained all day to become professionals.

As night deepened, guests grazed on the aspic, deviled eggs, and tiny buttered toasts topped with caviar. I was hungry but resisted going to the buffet table and drawing attention to myself. No one noticed that I was not eating or talking to anyone—not Seryozha, nor his parents, who were quietly milling around the room as if terrified.

The clock struck eleven. Everyone downed glasses of vodka until their careful mannerisms unraveled and they became messy; the men got red in the face and sweaty, and the women’s makeup wore off and looked dry on their skin. Then a tall man with tin-colored hair, who had been shaking hands with guests all night, raised his glass and called the room to attention. A hush spread around him.

“Thank you everyone for coming to our home and blessing us with your friendship.” Reznikov began, then proceeded to salute a long list of guests, no doubt in the order of importance at the Ministry. The air became slightly tense as this went on for a while; some guests had thought they ranked higher in Reznikov’s esteem, and when they lay down in bed later, they would toss and turn over this snub.

Then, most extraordinarily, Reznikov turned his attention to Seryozha.

“And I want to point out this brilliant young man, a gifted dancer, whom I met while my daughter Katia was still dancing at her old studio. I must say, I used to think ballet was for girls—I was happy for Katia to learn it, but took no interest in it myself. It was when I saw Seryozha dancing that I came to truly appreciate the art form.”

I thought that Seryozha would turn beet red and stare at his feet, but he didn’t. He stood tall and glowed as the elegant adults around him cast admiring glances.

“Speaking of ballet,” Reznikov now gestured at Katia, who had been allowed to drink a little bit of vodka for toasts. “Katia has just been offered the title role in Cinderella at the Mariinsky—six months before her graduation!”

Reznikov started clapping, and the guests followed suit, murmuring with astonishment; Madame Reznikova wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulder and embraced tightly. After the applause died down, Reznikov changed the music and asked Seryozha to dance. This surprised me less than the fact that Seryozha, the shy boy across the courtyard, showed no hesitation at the host’s request.

If you were talented enough, it didn’t matter if your papa was a postman or if your mama was heavyset and unfashionably dressed, even the rich adored you.

Seryozha’s eyes were glittering—not the dreamy, soft, snowy way they usually did, but hard like diamonds. He walked to the middle of the salon’s wooden floor, gently nodding his head to the beat of the strings. The guests fell into an attentive silence. Without any preparation or forewarning, Seryozha took his right foot to the side and then pushed off onto his left tip-toe, putting his right toes to his left knee. Then he turned. And turned. And turned.

I understood then the reason the Reznikovs took an interest in him—he was marked by talent, as young as he was. And if you were talented enough, it didn’t matter if your papa was a postman or if your mama was heavyset and unfashionably dressed, even the rich adored you. They remembered your name and noticed if you haven’t eaten or drunk anything. But these things, I did not envy. It was the expression on Seryozha’s face as he spun that made me burn with longing—and in that moment I realized that my inner fire, of which I was so proud, was not talent like Seryozha’s: it was merely desire.

---

Mama was waiting up for me to come home, wrapped in a blanket and drinking tea at the kitchen table. The TV in the living room was softly playing the rerun of the president’s New Year’s address, the only sign of the holiday in our family. I sat next to Mama and asked if I could audition for Vaganova. I guessed she would tell me no, because she mostly disapproved of new things or “nonsense.” But she took a long sip of her tea and told me I could, if I really wanted. She herself thought it was a bad idea. They auditioned thousands of girls each year and took thirty. And half of that number didn’t make it to their final year. Out of the remaining, just a few of the best graduates would enter Mariinsky as corps de ballet, mostly to be a prop in the background. If you were lucky, you could dance Queen of the Dryads some year or Myrtha in Giselle. Then your body would break down, a new crop of hungry graduates would fill your shoes while you languished in the rank and file. So you were finished with your career at thirty-eight, with no education or experience anywhere else outside the theater. It would be better to choose something more sensible. They always needed nurses and teachers.

“Mama, I know I can do it. Dance Odette—dance all of it,” I said quietly, and she shook her head.

“There’s something that they told me, Natashka. Prima ballerinas are born once in a decade.” As she said this she stirred another spoonful of jam into her cup of tea, as if to neutralize the bitterness of her words. But it wasn’t just her words. It was her thoughts about the world, about me.

That was the first time I realized something very important. Everyone—the girls at school, my teachers, even Mama—thought I was nothing. No, nothing would be infinite and consequential, like the vast black emptiness of space; I reminded them of something so little and ordinary, like a cat or a comb or a kettle, that it would be ridiculous to think of it trying to become anything else. Tears rained down my face and dropped on my lap. “I don’t want you to suffer, Natashka,” she said, patting my back.

But later that night, Mama called Svetlana, who had taken a teaching position at Vaganova. She was encouraging of the idea of auditioning and promised to register me herself for the August cycle. “I don’t know why she has to overreach,” Mama said to the receiver, not even bothering to lower her voice. “But I guess she was always bound to try something like this.” Hearing this, I jumped up and down in silence, pumping my arms in the air. From then on, I practiced copying the movements I saw on TV, leaping on my way to school and stretching my legs at night.

In June, Seryozha auditioned and was accepted, as his mama proudly told us at the stairwell. Mama smiled and agreed with her that indeed, Seryozha was exceptionally talented. She didn’t mention that I was auditioning, too. After we came back to our apartment, Mama opened the pantry door and said quietly to the jars of pickles, “Let’s not get our hopes up and just show up, Natashka.”

---

On audition day, Mama and I left together for Vaganova Academy on Rossi Street. Painted in cake-batter yellow and lined with white columns, it stretched an entire block toward the Alexandrinsky Theatre. There were dozens of children and their parents crowding around the entrance, and we took our places on one side of the stone stoop. A bronze-faced man with high cheekbones turned to Mama and asked, “Your girl is auditioning?”

“Yes, her name is Natasha,” Mama said, stroking my head.

“She has a nice form,” the man complimented me offhandedly before continuing. “My boy Farkhad is trying out, too,” he said, clasping a scrawny boy a few times on the shoulder. The son was his father’s miniature with dark almond-shaped eyes and sharp cheeks.

“Has your girl been doing ballet for a long time?” the man pressed, although Mama pursed her lips to show she wasn’t inviting further conversation.

“No, she hasn’t taken any classes. But she dances wonderfully.”

“Farkhad has been training and performing since he was five.” The man cast loving glances at his son, who reminded me of Seryozha with his mild discomfort around hovering parents. “But do not worry—I’m sure your girl—Natasha?—will do fine. You see, when I was admitted to Vaganova, I had no training either. They look for ability, not experience.”

“You were a student here?” Mama asked, forgetting to be annoyed at the man’s talkativeness, and he responded with enthusiasm.

“Yes! I started in 1960, right before Nureyev defected. It took my father and me three days to take the train from Nur-Sultan to St. Petersburg when I was ten. We packed all of our food for the journey, and I got so sick of boiled eggs by the end. Father said, this will help you stay strong and have energy for dancing! And we passed right through all the cities—Ufa, Samara, of course Moscow. I just watched everything through the window. It didn’t matter though, when I got in. The happiest day of my father’s life, he told me.

“You know, it’s funny. My son and I took the same train. And I packed the same foods for Farkhad and me, even though I was sure he’d hate it as much as I did back then. He doesn’t yet know what’s good for him.” The man smiled, his eyes shining with memories.

“Children take so long to realize anything, and then it’s too late,” Mama said.

“It’s all right though, isn’t it?” The man raked his hand through his son’s dark hair. He continued, non sequitur, “You know, Nureyev was a Tatar Muslim.”

“Was he? Well. So did you dance for a company?”

“I did, for a time in Nur-Sultan. Then I got injured . . . Back then, there wasn’t much you could do if your hip was finished, not like these days. Now I do contracting work.”

---

When people were starting to tire of waiting, and even Farkhad’s father fell silent, a teacher came out to tell the parents to leave. She stood aside so the children could walk into the foyer on their own. The moment I was inside, I knew that this was the world for which I was born. It was home—the walls painted in the light gray of February, the smell of aged wood, the blue-carpeted staircase, and the framed pictures of all the legendary graduates since 1742. I recognized the ethereal Anna Pavlova from her poster that had hung at my school, and instantly committed the others to memory. Nijinsky, Balanchine, Baryshnikov. And as I looked around in amazement, a clear sign assured me that I would pass the audition: there was music in my head that I’d heard only once before. It was from the ballet on television that day when Sveta told me I was a jumper. I could now recall the music note by note; I’d kept the score in my subconscious all this time. The very strangeness and improbability of the premonition made me feel absolutely certain that it was real.

But as I went through the physical exam and choreography, I realized I was far from the best. It was evident that most of the auditioners already had years of dance and gymnastics—whereas the extent of my training was doing splits in the living room when Mama wasn’t watching. The other girls seemed extraordinary in my eyes, but the teachers grumbled “stiff back,” “weak turnout,” “too short,” “too short legs,” “too muscular,” and in one horrific instance, “too fat,” loudly enough so that everyone could hear. Mine was “bad feet.” Not one, not two, but three board members muttered this while watching and prodding me as I stood or moved to their commands only in my underwear. On the second day, a doctor—one of those rather numerous people who look as though they were born middle-aged, wearing bad shoes—explained in more detail, as if comparing potato varieties in his garden: “You have a classic Greek foot. This will create problems later, on pointe.”

After the second-round medical exams, Svetlana came out and posted the results on the bulletin board. I didn’t have the strength to face it and let others push past me. There was a girl called Berezina who also hung back near me, looking frightened. She was vivid but delicate, like the wings of a butterfly. With her white leotard and white chiffon skirt, long-lashed dark eyes, and perfectly centered black bun, the only part of her that felt human was her bright pink earlobes. She was the one auditioner who hadn’t gotten any disparaging remarks—she had no discernible flaws. A girl near the board turned around and called out to her, “Nina, we both made the final round!” Only then did Berezina work up the courage to move to the front. I heard the friend say, “What would make you nervous, Nina? You’re one of the best girls here.”

My heart was beating right underneath my skin, which had become as thin as a balloon. Even other children had been taking stock of the competition, just as I inevitably noticed Berezina, and no one had singled me out or stared at me with envy. Then my mortification turned to fury, which pushed me to the front of the board. My heart nearly stopped when I saw my name with those who passed.

By the final round, the remaining fifteen auditioners resembled one another like apples at the grocery store. Small head, willowy neck, slender shoulders, supple spine, long thin legs, narrow feet—the Vaganova look, one they say is more delicate and graceful than any other school in the world. Differences in physique had been weeded out; girls simply standing in their underwear already had a pleasantly unified effect of a corps de ballet. For a second I couldn’t even locate myself in the mirror. Then I saw my reflection—same litheness, my skin stretched taut over my ribs, high and sculpted hips, sticklike legs, dark brown hair pulled back into a bun. Identical to all the others, no deviation worth mentioning except my bad feet.

“Girls, in one long row. Sixteen sautés in first, sixteen in second, sixteen changements,” one of the board members said, using her hands to show us the jumps. She cued the pianist.

In the mirror, the girls jumped together in unison. Then one of them—my reflection—rose higher than the rest. It was the force of all I’d been suppressing; I felt like I could reach my hands and tap the ceiling if I wished. The board members were now pointing in my direction. Murmurs and gasps. That’s a jumper. I sprang even higher. I could fly to space and touch the stars if I wished.

When the piano stopped, I finally came back down to earth, my cheeks warm with the other girls’ stares. I stood with my back straight, feet folded into a perfect fifth position, while the board members muttered and scribbled at their long table. Then they seemed to reach an agreement; the ones at the corners who had walked around the back to talk to other colleagues returned to their seats, and Svetlana cleared her throat.

“We are taking two,” Sveta said. Two out of five hundred girls. “Natalia Leonova. Nina Berezina. The rest of you are dismissed.”

---

I say goodbye to Nina and return to the hotel at three in the afternoon, the most ambivalent hour of the day. My curtains have been shut since I arrived, and the air is dense and warm. I pull aside the drapes and open the French doors, and a pale, foamy light pours into the room. Outside is a tableau of corniced buildings, cars, and people, mixing in and out of the frame, each in their own worlds. At the precise moment when I turn away from the balcony, my eyes catch the first of the cream roses drop a petal. It whispers softly as it touches the coffee table.

After I shower, I hobble out in a towel and collapse on the bed. An iron weight has been tied to every joint in my body. I feel I could fall through the many floors, to the lobby and to the center of the earth, until I put a Xanax on my tongue and float back to the surface. The cool breeze and the diffuse sound of traffic lull my eyes to close. Sleep crashes in like a wave, and I dream of a black bird—with shiny jet feathers, a curved yellow beak, and large eyes like dots of oil. I have seen this bird before. It flies ahead of me and I follow. Then more and more black birds appear, thickening the sky. Their cawing envelops me in a veil of sound, carrying me up to their height. They begin swirling upward in formation around me, creating a vortex of feathers above the clouds, just before plunging to the ground and taking me with them all the way down, down, down.

---

Of all creatures in the animal kingdom, birds are the most social. Even an albatross, which flies alone in the ocean for up to several years without ever touching land, sleeping midair and never seeing one of its kind, eventually returns to its colony—the exact place of its birth.