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.In the middle of the floor he pirouettes beautifully.His partner, Sizova, gives a calm nod of her head, comes across and says: You’re injured, don’t show off.Rudi nods and does the move again.At the window he sees Xenia, elegant in a beautiful coat and headscarf.He whisks his hand in the air, waving at her to go away.When she doesn’t he turns to the front of the studio where she can no longer see him.Later, with Sizova he works on the finishing touches for a duet from Les Sylphides.His ankle swells further but he dances through the pain, plunging it in a bucket of cold water at the end of the three hours.Then he rises again and puts in an extra half hour.Sizova watches the mating ritual in the mirror, not so much with himself as with the dance.Too exhausted to practice any more, she tells him she must leave to get a few hours’ sleep.As she goes down the corridor she passes Xenia smoking on the steps, her long blond hair covering her face, her eyes red and swollen.Far behind, in the rehearsal room, she can still hear Rudi cursing to himself: Your legs are still not long enough, asshole.* * *When I was a young girl in Santiago, there were games my brothers and I played when the day of the dead came around.My mother would fix up a basket of bread and corn fritters.We’d walk, with my father and brothers, to the cemetery, where other families had already lit up candles in the darkness.Hundreds of people crowded the graveyard.We had a humble family tomb under the oaks.The adults drank cheap rum and told stories.My parents talked of dead grandmothers who had baked wedding rings into bread, grandfathers who had held their breath in underwater caves, uncles who had received signs in their dreams.We, the children, played at the vaults.I put my favorite dolls on tombs and my brothers rode around on stick horses.Later we lay down on the cool stones and played at being dead.Even then, at the age of seven, I wanted to dance.On the tombs I sometimes thought I could feel the satin against my feet.It was the only night of the year we were allowed in the cemetery—our parents watched and made hot chocolate for us, and later we fell asleep in their arms.It all returned to me like a dream on my last night in Leningrad.A small farewell party had been held at a function room in the Kirov, hors d’oeuvres and Russian wine that tasted vaguely like hand lotion.My room was three kilometers from the Kirov but, instead of getting the tram, I walked, taking it all in, following the curve of the canals, a final gesture to the city.It was a warm white evening.Three years in skirts.I wore my orange pants.Girls giggled and waved.The wine had made my head a little woozy.The straight lines of the architecture were gone, the palaces were blurry, the wide streets narrowed, and the bronze statues of the Anichkov bridge seemed to sway.I hardly cared.My spirit was already home in Chile.When I got to the apartment block I ran up the stairs.Inside, Rudi was sitting on my bed, cross-legged.“You left the door open,” he said.He had been at the party earlier and had already said a theatrical good-bye, but I wasn’t surprised to see him.My bags were packed but he had opened them, removed the copies of Dance magazine that had beaten the censors, and they were spread out on the bed, open to pictures of London, New York, Spoleto, Paris.“Make yourself at home,” I said.He grinned and asked me to take out my guitar.He sat, then, on the floor with his head against the bed, his eyes closed, listening.I thought of Mama, the way she, had sung to me at night beneath the murraya branches.She said to me once that a bad voice came from a good life, a good voice came from a bad life, but that a great voice came from a confusion of both.After his favorite song Rudi stepped across to me.My head was still spinning from the wine and he put his finger to my lips, took the guitar from me, laid it against the wall.I said, “Rudi, no.”He touched the buttons on my cardigan, circled them with his finger, his fringe of hair against my forehead.He ran his hands across my waist, moved his fingers up my arms and on to my shoulders, his touch uneasy yet precise.I laughed and slapped his hands away.“You’re leaving,” he whispered.My buttons were open.His hands rested on my back and his legs trembled against mine.I had not slept with anyone since my arrival in Russia.I bit my tongue, pushed him away.Rudi gasped and lifted me, put his mouth to the ridge of my collarbone, thrust me against the wall.I slipped against his shoulder, caught the scent of him, said: “Rudi, no.”I turned my face to his.“We’re friends.”His mouth touched my earlobe.“I have no friends.”“Xenia,” I whispered.He drew back sharply from me.I hadn’t meant to invoke her, the name had slipped off my tongue.I immediately felt sober.He had been sleeping with Pushkin’s wife for a while but the affair had ended abruptly.Although Rudi had dismissed her, she still watched him rehearse, cooked for him, cleaned his clothes, attended to his whims.He went to the window, his hands cupped low, embarrassed by his arousal.I laughed nervously, not meaning to shame him, but he stepped backwards and slammed his fist into the wall.“For this I missed rehearsal,” he said.“For this?”“For this.”He was so close to the window his breath steamed the glass.At the bathroom sink I poured cold water on my face.He was still at the window when I returned.I told him to leave and come back when he was Rudi once more, his ordinary self.He had his own apartment now, eight streets away.But he didn’t budge.The child in him seemed to reflect off the glass while he watched me in his own reflection.He had often told me that he loved me, that he’d marry me, that we’d dance together around the world—it had become our joke in the few moments when we found ourselves with little to say, but now the silence parted us.He pouted in a charming way and I thought about the days we had spent together: massaging each other’s feet, skating, sunbathing by the canals, the evenings with Yulia.Perhaps the wine was still in me, I don’t know, but finally I said to him, “Rudi, come here.”He turned on his toes, brushing his feet as if in ronde de jambe.“What?”“Come, please.”“Why?”“Unbind my hair.”He waited, fidgeted, then came across to remove the clips, fumbling and tentative.He held the weight of my hair and let it drop.I pressed against him, kissed him, my mouth filled suddenly with his breath.I whispered that he could stay with me until morning, or until 9.30 A.M.exactly, before I left for Pulkovo Airport, to which he smiled and said that his head had run rudderless thinking of me and we should sleep together, yes, make love, since we would never see each other again, spoken like hard fact or the first piano note of the morning.His eyes were intense and narrow as if a phonograph needle had stopped just at the point of a trumpet blast
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