Free Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay Page B

question is moot. Any men close to their age would have been eaten up years ago by the war. The only healthy young men Nina ever sees are danseurs in the ballet, and even some of them have lost their teeth to scurvy.The rest were killed in action, or exiled if they happened to have a German name. Nina’s romantic fantasies are just that, fantasies, childish ones, of brave parachutists, aeronauts, deep-sea divers—no one she’s ever met. She looks out at the clusters of military men and Party officials, members of the Secretariat, all of them twice her age. Dessert has officially begun, petits fours and scoops of ice cream. Nina spots the foreign diplomats, visibly alien in their fitted suits and neat haircuts, eating contentedly. No chance, of course, for any one of them to be a Prince Charming. A new law has made it illegal to marry non-Soviets.
    Her own countrymen look comparably scruffy, their suits rumpled the way only men are allowed to be, their cuffed trousers pooling at their ankles. Nina watches the Dutch wife, who with her clean new shoes and prim dress looks so different from the Russian wives in their furs and long gowns of panne velvet. “Do you know anyone?” Polina asks, her chin high.
    “No. Oh, well, there’s Arkady Lowny.” Aide to the culture minister. A face like the fat pink boiled hams at the Gastronom. He goes around with a broad, inexplicable smile, as if he has just been told good news—but his hands, Nina has noticed, are always trembling. Now he is approaching them, grinning.
    “Good evening, ladies.” Brushing his hair to the side with a shaky hand. Polina says a bright, “There you are!” clearly relieved to know someone. Soon she and Arkady are deep in a back-and-forth of meaningless chatter, Polina’s freckles disappearing as she blushes. “Oh, but you do!” “No, I don’t!” “I’d say you do!”
    Just a step away from Nina are two other couples in conversation, one of the women slightly familiar. It is Ida Chernenko, the famous wild-animal trainer, older than in the posters. The other woman is younger, with a shapely bust and a long wave of golden hair, her hand resting just above her hip in a way that makes her waist look slender. Like many of the women she wears a big flashy oval ring onher index finger, and a string of amber beads. The man next to her is different from the others, younger, and tall rather than stocky, somehow elongated, not a Muscovite at all. He is telling a joke; Nina can tell because of the way Ida and the other man are listening, the corners of their mouths already upturned, their eyes crinkling, certain of a punch line. On her bosom Ida wears an enormous brooch, and when the man finishes his joke, she laughs so hard, the brooch flops back and forth like a small, severed head.
    “Please, no more,” the other man is saying, cheeks red from drink or from laughter. “Your jokes are a strain on my liver.”
    The younger woman just smiles in an elegant, amused way. The handsome man must be her husband. Square jaw, aquiline nose, thick gleaming brown hair. Long-limbed, so that his baggy suit drapes him in a way that seems refined rather than poorly constructed. He must not have served in the war. He looks too healthy and content.
    He has noticed Nina staring and glances up, a pleased look spreading across his face. Opening his mouth to speak—
    “Oh, good, you’re still here!” Lida Markova, who runs the State Archive for Literature and Art, beams at Nina. A thick wall of a woman, with coarse hair and a booming voice, and glass beads hanging from her earlobes. Lida loves the ballet, always seeks out the company of the newer dancers, who are not as aloof as the more senior stars. “So wonderful to see you dance tonight.”
    “Thank you. How nice to see you.” Nina tries to look past Lida, to see if she can catch the man’s eye.
    “And I absolutely adored you last month in Coppélia . You have such a lightness to you.” Nina danced the