Snow in May: Stories

Rumba, 1996

Roman Ivanovich Chepurin first noticed her dollish hips during rumba at the spring competition. On the four-to-one and twist. The triangle of her panties, hugged by a slitted lime skirt, flashed then disappeared. Two, three, four — and twist. Away from him.

He had been standing at the back of the stage with the other judges, squinting under the lights. Headache, his cranky mistress, fluffed pillows behind his left ear, spurred on by three minutes of the same Latin music played over and over as the new dance pairs took the stage. Identical save for the colors of the girls’ dresses, they walked through their identical elementary routines. Roman Ivanovich was bored.

He didn’t know many of the children. He trained the junior and senior groups, while his teaching assistants waded through the endlessly replenishing pool of dancers under twelve. After twenty years of experience he knew what to expect. Some, for the life of them, wouldn’t flex their joints. They walked around like compasses, arms windmilling all over. Others twitched their shoulders as though trying to shake off a parrot, or wiggled their behinds like Papuans high on sun and coconut milk. Some couples stubbornly stepped between the beats.

Roman Ivanovich was long past the point where the efforts of these awkward, mostly talentless children endeared him. He and Nata, his wife and former dance partner, had coached only one pair to any kind of stardom. Lyuba and Pavlik now competed in quarterfinals in central Russia and Europe and returned to Magadan once a year to teach a master class at the Chepurin Ballroom Studio and Chess Club. Roman Ivanovich clutched his scoring clipboard to the sweat spot between his breasts and his belly, willing the competition to be over so he could go home and surrender his mind to the custody of the TV.

Then he saw her. He checked the number on her partner’s back against the list. Thirty-four: Nemirovskaya, Anastasia. To him she instantly became Asik. The little ace.

She was mostly leg. Her thighs were as slender as her calves, shades darker than he’d ever seen in still-wintry Magadan May. The ripe, gypsy-brown of her had to be natural: he prohibited the use of tanning sprays in her age group, six to eleven. Her bare back snaked without dragging in the shoulders. She moved as though her pelvis were suspended from the ceiling by an elastic string, weightless and pliable. Despite careless execution, her raw talent was hot.

The music had stopped and he hadn’t noticed. Applause. The other judges scribbled on the scoreboards, and Asik was already pulling her tree trunk of a partner toward the quivering side curtains, where Nata directed the sequin-and-tulled traffic. Away from him.

He decided on the spot to give Asik a good boy and make her a star by next winter’s competition. She’ll be his next Lyuba, he thought. No, she’ll go further. She had the mischievous sparklet that Lyuba — all step counting and obsession — lacked.

* * *

After the competition Roman Ivanovich established himself on a chair outside his office. The eternally cold studio smelled of sweat and hair spray. The girls exited the curtained changing room, their bright dresses hung over their arms in clear-plastic cocoons like discarded butterfly wings. The boys swept the floor with their tuxes. One by one they came up to say good-bye and wish him a good summer. Where was Asik?

The chess boys were cleaning up the postcompetition detritus and bringing the music equipment, lost shoes, tights, pieces of costume, and fake hair from the concert hall. Roman Ivanovich had one more chess match to officiate the following week, and then he would be done for the school year. As in summers past, Nata would be preoccupied with their anemic vegetable patch on the outskirts of town and with redecorating the apartment, which no rearrangement of furniture would make bigger or — against the view of the gray khrushchyovkas from their window — more inspiring.

He noticed a plump woman in a faded fox-collared coat trudging through the studio with a tall girl hooked in her elbow. They stopped by the black curtains of the changing room.

“How much longer? We’re suffocating here,” the woman yelled over the curtains. The girl looked with interest through the open doors of the office, where Nata was organizing a rainbow of rented dresses.

“Leave me alone,” a high voice hollered back. Asik, dressed in jeans and a giant blue flannel shirt, ran out with her costumes — the lime one and a coral number with a balding feather boa for the standard set. She returned them to Nata and started bickering with the woman. Roman Ivanovich hurried up to them.

“Ah, and you must be Anastasia’s mother and sister,” he said and turned to Asik. “Do you go by Nastya?”

“Asya,” Asik said. She looked frightened.

Up close she was snub-nosed and thin-lipped. Her eyes, big chocolate cherries. Her fake eyelashes had half come off, and strands of gelled black hair, released from her bun, stuck out around her head in question marks.

Asik’s mother turned and regarded him. “And you are?”

“This is Roman Ivanovich. Chepurin. As in Chepurin Ballroom Studio and Chess Club?” Asik said.

“Hello,” her sister said. Despite her long coat (vintage by necessity, clearly), he could tell she was well built. Her features were a watered-down version of Asik’s: a straighter nose, smaller eyes with irises the green-brown of weak tea. Classic, honest. Yawny. She lacked her younger sister’s playful slant, which sprang up now in Asik’s eyes, now in the flick of her wrist.

“Congratulations on your daughter’s success.” He’d made sure Asik reached the finals. “She has the kind of talent I haven’t seen here for the last ten years,” Roman Ivanovich added, continuing his customary pitch. Only this time he meant it. “When she joins my junior group in the fall, she’ll be eligible to have a personalized routine choreographed for her during private lessons. I’ll partner her up with a capable boy. With much practice and private coaching, she’s guaranteed to win first place here. Such talent. My wife will sew new costumes for her, order special fabric and rhinestones. Then take her to Moscow, the big races.”

By this point in his pitch, Roman Ivanovich would usually see in the glimmering eyes of even the poorest parents the accounting machinery rebalancing the family budget to accommodate the incubation of their very own star. Asik’s mother appraised him coldly, then looked at Asik, who was pumping up and down, her face a blur of runny makeup and thrill.

“We’ve had enough of this, Ivan Romanovich,” the mother said. Her eyes were bloodshot.

“Roman Ivanovich!” Asik said.

“We hardly get by as it is. I’m raising two girls by myself.”

So the mother was going to play that game. “I understand, of course. But dance is a very important part of a young girl’s education. A real classical education. It’s the Russian tradition. Everybody must learn to dance. Why don’t you dance?” he asked Asik’s sister.

“I took your adult beginner class last year,” she said. “I liked it a lot, but I had to partner with another girl.” She smiled shyly. Perhaps he could get her on his side.

“Inna’s busy with something more useful. She’s a piano student at the arts college,” the mother said. Asik rolled her eyes.

“A talent like this must be nurtured,” Roman Ivanovich addressed the sister. “We have a duty before the art—”

“Is there money involved, in Moscow?” the mother said. “If she could earn something—”

“At top places. Depending on the type of the competition. In the beginning it would be to cover the entry fees, costumes, plane tickets.” He looked from one girl to the other. “If only I had such talented daughters. I’ll even lower the tuition for Asya. Private lessons — half off. It’s a unique opportunity.”

“She’s on the verge of failing several classes at school,” the mother said. “Instead of shaking her half-naked ass around here like it’s some Africa or Brazil, she should be locked up studying.”

“Are you deaf?” Asik cried out in that wild, harsh falsetto young girls use in desperate moments. Her sister looked down. “He said I have a rare talent, too. It’s not just your precious Inna.”

Over the years, Roman Ivanovich had seen all strains of sibling rivalry. This one, he could already tell, was particularly toxic. The mother favored the older daughter. But Inna seemed too nice to exploit such emotional ammunition, thus withholding from Asik permission to fully throw herself into the rebellion she so craved.

Asik looked at him as if he were about to give away the last ticket to the Ark. He put his hand on her crown — her hair was coarse and sticky, like a cub’s — and ever so slightly she buckled into the eave of his shoulder.

“I promise to study hard, I promise.” Asik spoke only to him. “Honestly. Please take me.”

“Fine, get her off my hands,” the mother said. “One more bad mark at school, and she’ll be too bruised to wear those skimpy dresses. Seriously, Roman Ivanovich, we can’t pay.”

“Deal,” he said, matching her haggling stare. “She’ll attend free of charge.”

Eight minutes later they disappeared into the gates of summer. His headache had gone, too.

* * *

All summer Roman Ivanovich swung and turned his stocky but not yet hopeless physique around their small living room. Nata, rosy from working on the vegetable patch, sometimes joined him, testing the steps Asik would have to learn in the fall. Her blue eyes lit up with memories of a life well danced. She could still follow his lead effortlessly, although there was more flesh between them now. Her short, once-sporty figure reminded him of a hen’s: ample bust and backside, drumstick legs. Those small feet that used to excite him.

He didn’t ask for Nata’s help with rumba, which he’d originally dreamed up for Lyuba and Pavlik but had never dared to stage. He feared the routine was too tantalizing for the Soviet standard. Besides, Nata was too heavy for all the lifts and dismounts.

“Are you sure she’s ready for this?” Nata said one pale day, after Roman Ivanovich almost knocked a crystal vase off the shelf while practicing an imaginary lift. “Don’t you think it would be more appropriate for a senior couple?”

She was right. “Asik can handle it,” he said with irritation. Nata knew that her role at the studio ended at costumes and keeping the books.

“I’m glad someone’s finally come along,” she added. “You were beginning to waste away. And she has at least Lyuba’s potential. At least. You’re absolutely right about that.”

* * *

Roman Ivanovich steadied himself against the mirror in his office. The first class with Asik in his junior group would begin in fifteen minutes. Time was a brilliant caricaturist, indeed. Over the years, his small gray eyes had become smaller. The bulb of his nose had ripened from overexposure to frost and vodka. His jowls drooped. His hair, once the wheat silk envy of even the girls, had deserted him clump by clump. He forced a smile: at least he still had his shallow dimples.

One of the chess boys barged into the office.

“How many times have I told you to knock before entering?” Roman Ivanovich yelled. Was this one Gleb?

“I just needed you to approve the player matchups.” The boy pulled his thin neck into his shoulders. His trembling arm held out a piece of paper. Roman Ivanovich glanced over the sheet, made some marks, and handed it back.

“Tell everyone to be quiet at the tables.”

The boy slinked out. Roman Ivanovich turned to the corner plastered with photographs of Lyuba and Pavlik in poses or holding up trophies. He made the sign of the cross, then tightened his belt and walked out into the studio.

The girls stood in clusters, twisting their feet on high silver heels. Some boys were observing the chess games. More loud voices came from the boys’ changing room. Someone must’ve brought in the latest comic book or a Game Boy. What were those boys interested in? Certainly not the girls, not yet. The junior girls still belonged to him.

Asik sat on the windowsill, which Roman Ivanovich forbade, banging the expensive satin shoes he’d ordered for her from Moscow against the rusty radiator. Both her short bob and her outfit — a long-sleeved ballet shirt and jeans — violated the studio rules. He wondered whether the junior instructors had really forgotten to drill in the studio regulations.

He clapped three times, and the boys began appearing on the dance floor. Asik jumped down. She was thinner, darker, and at least two centimeters taller than in the spring. The chess section turned to watch.

“Girls, a dress code reminder. Tight skirts no longer than halfway down the thigh,” Roman Ivanovich began in an impartial tone. “Black tights, no leg warmers. I need to see the lines of your body clearly. Hair no shorter than one-third down the upper arm, in a bun or a ponytail. If your other instructors didn’t require it before, fine. These are the rules for the junior group,” he added for Asik’s benefit but didn’t look her way.

“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about the no-dating policy. No boyfriends or girlfriends, no little love associations. Not the dancers, not the chess players. You will be expelled. Now, I’ll be making some partner switches based on May’s results. This is not up for discussion, so please spare me the whining. Igor,” he addressed Asik’s partner, “you will dance with Olesya.” He was tall enough now.

The ballroom mothers (Olesya’s mother the most involved among them) lobbied fiercely for the few talented tall boys. They invited the boys’ mothers for dinner, bought the boys dance shoes and gifts, and bribed the poorer families. Roman Ivanovich, however, still had the final — often paid for — word in the matchmaking process.

“And Sasha will dance with Asya.”

The room gasped. The boys moved obediently, like chess pieces. Asik looked up at handsome Sasha, then looked down, chewing a smile. Sasha’s main merits were his height, a solid sense of coordination, and a tolerance for being bossed around, which Olesya had exploited with impressive results at the competitions.

“But Roman Ivanovich,” Olesya began, her voice tripping over swells of injustice, “it’s—”

“No discussions. Now, everyone, let’s start with the basic samba walk to remind your lazy butts what it means to dance. And no sitting on the windowsills!”

The children formed a circle. Roman Ivanovich noticed Olesya creeping toward the exit.

“That’ll have to wait till the bathroom break,” he said. He couldn’t stand tears.

He walked to the CD player, nailing his heels into the parquet, and turned on the music. And they were rusty, his little pupils, oh, they were rusty after the summer rains. Sonya, who had once been his pet, seemed to have completely forgotten how to use her feet. Unable to delay it any longer, he found Asik in the bouncing roundelay. Her hips were indescribable — two distinct entities, each containing a delayed-action spring. When the right hip moved, the left hip lingered, teasing, then snapped to catch up. She walked swinging and swaying. For several counts she looked straight ahead, and then she looked at him and smiled.

* * *

As the fall term progressed, Roman Ivanovich submerged himself in the Asik project. For a month, she was a dream. She personalized every detail he pointed out on the competition tapes — syncopated click of the knee, degree tilt of the hips, pecking nod versus ladling bow. Even her ribbon lips danced, shaping words the true meaning of which she couldn’t possibly understand, in languages she couldn’t know.

Although she was a perfect china doll in the waltzes, fox-trots, and quicksteps, her hips were too impatient for the standard set. Latin dances were her forte. She danced paso doble like the daughter of Bizet’s proud Carmen, little Carmenochka. A scarlet costume flower she insisted on wearing at practices gleamed against her bluish-black hair. Her samba was pure and easy, as though she’d shaken her backside in Rio de Janeiro’s carnivals since she could walk. Her rumba was transfused with imaginary love and heartbreak. Whenever Nata passed through the studio, she stopped to watch Asik. Sometimes Olesya would run up to Nata and plead to be switched back to her old partner, but Nata only nodded and glanced toward Roman Ivanovich with blind faith.

For a month, he was happy. Everything was justified: the lost income, the unpleasant phone conversations with Olesya’s mother, the gossip he knew was being chewed like cud behind the changing-room curtains and at the dinner tables.

Then, at the beginning of November, Asik became unpredictable and moody, an ungrateful little caterpillar. Some days she switched herself off. Her hip springs creaked. She yelled at Sasha and threw around her sharp-heeled sandals, the satin of which was already filthy from improper care. Sasha endured her moods with a calm that baffled Roman Ivanovich.

He could tell she was making mistakes on purpose. His usual tactic was to roar and spank the applicable backsides. But with her, he held back. During private lessons, he coolly drew loops and turns with her hips, feeling her sharp, small bones slide under his fingers. At group practices, he first ignored her tantrums, then broke down and asked Sasha to step aside. With him, she quickly corrected her errors and danced so tastily one could bite one’s fingers off.

Asik kept breaking studio rules. She’d come in late, walk through the studio in slush-caked boots, slack off during warm-ups, wear baggy sweaters, and go to the bathroom whenever she pleased. He’d had to assign a special chess boy to mop up the street slush after her. Some days he could almost see the other girls bristling in her presence.

More and more Asik was becoming just another rude girl of twelve, with stooped shoulders and a messy ponytail, angry at the cold wind for chapping her lips and stripping her summer tan. He’d always considered that handling cranky girls was a part of his profession. But with her, he was stumped. To punish her was to admit he’d made a mistake.

* * *

“You should be careful with that Nemirovskaya girl, Roma,” Nata said to him one evening at the end of November. With less than a month to go until the winter competition, she was buried under a mountain of fluorescent satin and tulle, sewing new dresses for the rich girls and tailoring rentals for the others. “I know she’s not just another one of your dancey girls. But you’re alienating everyone else, and they pay. We’ve got plenty of couples who work hard, and who may yet hatch when they move up.”

Stupid, naive, comfortable Nata. The senior girls were lost to him. Those who stood a chance of scholarships to universities in Moscow or St. Petersburg studied maniacally. The ones stuck in Magadan worked their assets on the local potato oligarchs in hopes of securing a warm, well-fed life.

“I know what I’m doing, Nata.”

Behind gold-rimmed sewing glasses, her blue eyes were moist and vulnerable. In ten years or less she could’ve been a grandmother, if they had had any children. He’d never liked the haircut she’d settled into years ago, which concealed the lovely line of her nape. Or maybe it wasn’t lovely anymore. Maybe now it was loose and wattley like her neck.

Their relationship began just as their ballroom careers got serious, when they were partnered as teenagers. On the dance floor, it was crucial that he led and she followed. She seemed content to follow him outside the studio, too. He often told himself that they were one of those couples who understood each other implicitly. But, as time went on, he became afraid to ask whether she was happy. He, unlike her, applied his love selectively. It wasn’t that he loved one thing about her and didn’t quite love another. That was natural enough. Rather, he stopped loving her entirely when a hint of coarse independence manifested itself: when she questioned him, when she told him he was wrong. This unlove persisted until the episode lived itself out and sedimented in memory. Only then, like a harbor cleared of the night’s fog, the qualities that made his life bearable, her comfortable qualities, became visible again, and he slid back into his way of appreciation. Because — who was he kidding — it was not love, it was not love.

“Do as you know, Roma,” Nata said and went back to her sewing.

He began to pace around the living room.

“We need eggs,” she said. And within minutes he was out the door, embarrassed and thankful for her knowledge of him.

On his way back from the grocery store he lingered in a small park with a worn-out bust of Berzin, the first director of the Dalstroy trust and forced-labor camps in Kolyma. Naked trees stuck out of the tall banks of hardened snow. Theatrically-fat snowflakes streamed from the black sky. It was quiet. The cold air smelled of burning garbage — his childhood’s scent of freedom and adventure, when he and his gang of ruffians would run through courtyards and set trash containers on fire to the grief of hungry seagulls. Before his mother bound his feet in dance shoes and shackled him to a girl.

He had a sudden craving for fried eggs with a particular Polish brand of cured ham, sold at a private shop in the town’s center. It was his one evening off work; he figured he deserved a small indulgence.

He walked up Lenin Street. Its preholiday luminescence was even more radiant this year, more drunkenly optimistic. White lights lay tangled in trees. A shimmering canopy of pink garlands hung across the roadway. Up ahead, the dystrophic A of the TV tower, the Eiffel Tower’s long-lost illegitimate child, shyly illumed its red and white stripes. The town clock, lit up in green, read half past eight. By now the junior group would be halfway through their weekly ballet class.

These classes weren’t mandatory, but Roman Ivanovich had made it clear that no dancer should dream of correct posture without paying their dues at the barre. He considered the instructor, Gennady Samuilovich, too lenient, though, and preferred not to imagine the likely chaos of his practices.

The wind had picked up. He bought the Polish ham and walked, out of habit, to the Palace of ProfUnions. He crept around the back and hid in the shadow of a copse.

Through a single window Roman Ivanovich could see the ballet class. The vision, suspended in the darkness, seemed to him all the more brilliant and distant. Against his expectations, most of the junior group was at the barre by the mirrored wall, diligently knocking out petits battements. Gennady Samuilovich strode back and forth, whipping the air with his wrists. His white tights showcased the anatomy of his legs in excessive detail.

Pale Asik, dressed in a black leotard, with her hair up in a tidy bun, was merely adequate. Her butt kept sliding out of alignment, and she wobbled as her leg swung. But she was trying the hardest of them all. Roman Ivanovich was in shock. Who would she be now? Not his Carmenochka, not his fiery little gypsy. He watched her till the end of class. She was that hardworking average student he liked to praise to the parents. Effort over results. He breathed easier.

Gennady Samuilovich dismissed the class. Before wandering off, several girls — Olesya among them — trapped Asik in choreographed parentheses. They were saying something to her, something unpleasant, judging from Asik’s pinched mouth. She crossed her arms and threw her weight to one hip. After they left, Asik was alone in the room. She turned to the mirror and performed an ironic half plié, half curtsey to her reflection. Then she put her elbows on the barre and worked her face through a series of smiles in different tonalities. A laughable sinner-seductress. Pierrot at a party. Piranha. She stomped — sloppily, neurotically — pitched forward and folded herself at the waist over the barre (against the rules! The barre wasn’t made to sustain such weight), her leotarded backside the shape of a black heart. She closed her eyes and just hung there, like a piece of laundry forgotten in the courtyard.

Roman Ivanovich imagined the fragile basket of her hip bones rubbing painfully against the barre, all her little organs squished. He looked down. The snow was mildewing over a pile of cigarette butts and a green balloon scrap still attached to a string. She was nothing more than a body that danced.

* * *

“Remember, dancers,” Roman Ivanovich said at the last group practice before the all-studio run-through. Less than a week remained before the winter competition. “Although in the junior group we call rumba the dance of friendship, in the professional world it’s the dance of love.”

Shivery giggles. The heat was off all winter, the town’s clever way of rationing coal. Despite the chess boys’ valiant efforts to bandage the windows, the studio was still an icebox.

“As I’ve told you all before,” he continued, “rumba originated among the African slaves in Cuba. In the sugarcane fields, the barefooted slaves first stepped lightly, without bringing their full weight down, until they were sure there weren’t any sharp pieces of cane on the ground. Once you make the commitment, make the step deliberate, like squashing a cockroach.” More giggles. “Keep your shoulders and head still; the slaves had to carry heavy weights perfectly balanced on their heads. And try to show some passion. If not for each other, then at least for dancing. Controlled passion! Tension is in the promise.”

He put on the music and sat back to watch his flock. The dancers grimaced and jerked their gawky bodies. Asik made a soap opera of her routine, complete with eyelash flapping, hair pulling, and clutching of poor Sasha’s shirt. At every twist, she fished for Roman Ivanovich’s eyes. It took the last of his willpower not to walk over and slap her.

When he came out of the office after the break, he saw that among the couples ready to resume practice Sasha stood alone.

“Where is she?” Roman Ivanovich yelled.

Sasha shrugged and looked toward the exit. As Roman Ivanovich crossed the dance floor, twenty-nine pairs of eyes followed him, vulturelike.

He walked into the hallway and knocked on the girls’ bathroom door. No answer. He barged in. No one. The acrid smell of tiled walls, the floor toilets, and the flimsy wooden partitions was laced with cigarettes. The girls smoked, too? He felt betrayed. Three faucets dripped in echoey discord.

He found her in the boys’ bathroom. Asik was pushing a scrawny chess boy against the dirty wall. Him? Couldn’t she find someone better? It took a second to recall his name. Gleb. Released, he sprang away from her. Asik wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked defiantly at Roman Ivanovich. His face grew hot, as though he was the one who’d been caught.

The spin of his world slowed. He heard from the studio the tak-chwoot-tak-chwoot of the heels and suede soles of the ballroom shoes shuffling on the parquet, and the hollow thumps of the chess pieces landing on their felt feet.

“Please, don’t kick me out,” Gleb squeaked. “She made me do it.”

“Get out of here,” Roman Ivanovich said. The boy scuttled out.

Roman Ivanovich stared at a picture of a horse in a jacket and tie that someone had drawn with a black marker on the wall.

“I know it’s against the rules,” Asik said. She looked him straight in the eye, then hung her head. “But he loves me. I don’t love him, but he loves me. What can you do in such a situation?” She sniffled.

The boy does. She was lying. Or not. What did either of them know about love? The claw-grip of anger loosened on his neck, and he felt a twinge of forgiveness and generosity toward the children, toward all of them.

“Please don’t kick him out, Roman Ivanovich. It’s not his fault.” She was flat-chested, the front and elbows of her purple sweater covered with fuzz balls. The beauty marks on her gangly, pale thighs showed through her mesh tights. Little fishes caught in a net. “And please don’t kick me out. I’ll kill myself, I swear.”

He came closer. She stood slumped, looking to the side, her eyes teary. She wiped them with the back of her hand, leaving black smears on her face. Makeup was against the rules, he thought wearily. He wanted to squat down and clutch her legs, to comfort her.

“So you won’t? Roman—”

“Shhh.” He looked at her without blinking until her image trembled like a reflection thrown upon water. He was struck by the whiteness of the razor-thin part in her sable hair. He couldn’t resist drawing his finger down the length of the part, her forehead, the ski jump of her nose. Her skin was hot and smooth. Asik smiled brightly, as if she’d won a small prize.

He pulled some tissue out of his pocket and gave it to her, then walked out.

“Attention, dancers!” Roman Ivanovich roared back in the studio. The children started, like electrocuted mice, and quickly paired up. Asik took her place by Sasha. Her gaze hovered low.

“Aren’t you going to kick her out?” Olesya said. They all looked at him expectantly. Gleb must’ve told.

“What did you say?”

“The rules. She broke all of them. Even the worst one.” Olesya’s tone was shaky but with a righteous core.

“I didn’t want to,” Gleb said. He stood in no-man’s-land between the studio space and the chess tables. The chess boys pretended not to be interested in the scene.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve made a decision. A while back,” Roman Ivanovich said, inhaling and exhaling in the wrong places. “I am canceling the no-dating rule. You are not children anymore. Feelings should inform your dancing — as long as you’re not distracted. It’s not a secret that I met my wife in a class like this one. Love … Good, beautiful feelings deserve respect.”

The children gaped.

“What? I can’t anymore, like this. I quit,” Olesya muttered and ran into the changing room. Asik threw her palms over her face and bent forward. Roman Ivanovich caught peripheral sight of himself in the mirror — a gray, blurry lump.

* * *

At the final run-through on Friday Asik danced the way he had dreamt of since he’d first seen her on stage in the spring, in that little winking lime skirt. On Sunday she would be discovered, no longer his secret.

He stalled her after practice.

“You made me proud tonight,” he said. “If you don’t lose anything before Sunday, the first place is yours.”

Asik smiled. Her teeth were small and crowded.

“Why would I lose anything?” she said. Her confidence annoyed him.

“It’s important to keep moving, to keep dancing in your head tomorrow.”

“I know.” She lazily collected her face into a serious expression. “I’ll dance in my head through my sister’s piano banging and my mother yelling.”

“The studio floor will be open.”

“And packed with seniors and all those girls who hate me.” She looked around to see who was passing by.

“Maybe it would benefit you and Sasha to have one last private lesson. You were wobbly on that dismount in rumba.”

“Oh. For me it was okay.”

“I have time tomorrow late evening. A lot to do before Sunday.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

“Will your mother worry?”

“She doesn’t care.”

Asik’s orange lip gloss failed to conceal how chapped her lips were. She could’ve been beautiful, if her nose was a bit smaller. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“She’ll care if I win the stupid competition.” She caught herself. “I mean, I’m just nervous. We’ve worked so hard.”

“Come at nine, then. Tell Sasha,” Roman Ivanovich said, then went into his office and locked the door. He sat alone for a long time before the shrine to Lyuba and Pavlik.

* * *

The next day, as Roman Ivanovich took care of the final arrangements for Sunday’s competition, a reel of Asik dancing looped in the back of his mind. He had visualized her routines so many times it seemed she’d already danced all of them flawlessly and won first place. He wondered what dresses she would wear. He hadn’t asked Nata which costumes of the ones she’d been working on were Asik’s, so as not to spoil the surprise. He’d spotted a black Latina dress with long sleeves and a low-cut back that he particularly liked.

When he had a free minute in his office, he took the new pair of dance sandals out of the box and inspected them. They were made of smooth gold leather, with rhinestones on the front strap. He’d ordered them for Asik especially for the competition, but they arrived too late for her to break them in. There was a danger of blisters now; plus, the heels were much higher than what she was used to. He turned the shoes over, contemplating whether to give them to her anyway: they were so beautiful. He touched the virgin suede soles, still soft and creamy. The size was printed in gold on the shaft: 35. The same as Nata’s, he realized. He still remembered the moment when that number had become significant to him. Minutes after they were paired up, Roman Ivanovich dared Nata to follow him through an improvised choreography. He appreciated her smooth movement, her lack of extra limbs. Girls usually grew at least one additional set of legs with the purpose of sticking them in the way of a new partner. He threw her into a dip, nearly folding her spine in two. She gasped but obeyed pliantly. Before his eyes lay the valley of her chest and the shadowy, aromatic hollow at the base of her neck, in which a silver wishbone pendant sparked. Farther down was the underside of her jaw with a faint trail of a vein, her blond ponytail juxtaposed against the black satin heel, the suede sole with the number 35, and her little toe sticking out from between the straps, the nail painted purple. He was impressed with the elegant way she’d responded to the dip. He pulled her up and appraised her with a smirk.

“Nu, you think you can handle me?” he said.

There was something of a young Catherine Deneuve about her, he thought.

“I almost peed myself,” she said.

Nata always seemed older when they danced, more serious, and he was often surprised at the silly things she said after practices — when she would turn back into a girl.

* * *

At nine o’clock Roman Ivanovich came out of the office. The chess boys had set up curtained partitions to accommodate the upcoming costume-changing frenzy of over a hundred dancers, aged six to twenty-one. The darkened studio resembled a military camp, still and quiet before battle. Asik and Sasha sat on the windowsill. Asik was dressed in all black.

They winged through the five standard dances with few mistakes. During the Viennese waltz, they shipwrecked one of the changing tents.

“Don’t bend back as much, Asya, head at a forty-five-degree angle between his ear and the tip of his shoulder,” he shouted over the music because he couldn’t be silent. “Sasha, straighten your fingers, hand no lower than her shoulder blade.”

The first two Latin dances — flawless. Then rumba. Roman Ivanovich had arranged for his favorite rumba song, “Loco,” to be played during Asik and Sasha’s turn on the stage. He turned it on now — though to the other dancers their competition songs would be a complete surprise — and sat down to watch.

At first Asik stands alone, dancing with just hips and arms. The man walks around her as she watches coyly. Sasha couldn’t yet master the right seductive look. He circled her like a predator. On the first couplet of Loco, he takes her hand and gives her a light push, initiating the classic Hockey Stick figure. For several counts they dance Alemanas, Cucarachas, Chase Peek-a-Boos, Serpientes. She dances a little carelessly — a tease to his attention. Nothing more.

On the third Loco, she twists into another Hockey Stick, reaching out away from Sasha with her hand. She is ready to leave, but the man doesn’t let go. He lowers her within a hair’s breadth of the floor. She dares him to drop her. Then, she puts one foot on his high shoulder and he drags her across, her other foot slicing the parquet like a blade.

On the sixth Loco he spins her away from him, and she bends like a bow. This time she comes back to him herself. She holds his face as he dips her. Could she have changed her mind about wanting to leave? After a few counts he lifts her and turns with her. Then she rolls off his shoulder, down his side, and between his legs. He gives her a hard whirl and she swivels on her backside, away from him. On the floor, right leg pulled up, she arches back. She never surrenders.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Roman Ivanovich said and turned off the music. “The dismount — Sasha, make sure you hold her with both hands when she’s mid-hip, and then quickly switch the grip for the push-off. Otherwise you’ll drop her.”

“I’ve never dropped her,” Sasha said.

“I am a little afraid every time, Sasha,” Asik said. “To be honest.” She flicked her weight from one hip to the other.

“Watch my hands,” Roman Ivanovich said.

Sasha stepped aside.

Roman Ivanovich picked Asik up. She was heavier now than in the fall, when they’d blocked the choreography. And warmer, despite the chill of the studio. He wanted to coil her around his sore, tired neck. He rolled her down his side and pushed her from between his legs. She spun across the floor. One, two turns. It was so easy. Sasha could accomplish only one. They demonstrated the move several times.

“Your turn, Sasha,” Roman Ivanovich said. He was sweating. There was something he didn’t like about Sasha’s complacent smile.

At eleven, Sasha’s tall mustachioed father arrived. Both Roman Ivanovich and Sasha were exhausted. Asik remained on fire. She and Sasha ran through paso doble and jive. Sasha’s father applauded after each take, puffed out with pride. So this was the source of Sasha’s poise, Roman Ivanovich thought, his father. They adored each other.

“Anybody coming to get you?” Roman Ivanovich asked Asik after Sasha and his father had left.

“Nope. They’re busy. Busy, busy, busy,” Asik sang out.

He watched her small black figure slip into the changing room curtains. “I’ll walk you home, Asya. Hurry up.”

“If you want,” she yelled back.

He walked to the office to get the new golden sandals, then remembered that he had decided not to give them to her yet. No need to distract her from what is important. He would give them to her tomorrow, as a present for winning first place.

Away from the glow of the town’s center, the streets became emptier, angrier, underlined by violet ankle-snatching snow. The wind, with its erratic sense of rhythm, made it comically difficult to walk. Should he hold Asik’s tiny mittened hand? She prattled on about some intrigue at her school.

The world felt like a small, black box.

“Make sure you get a good night’s sleep,” he said when they reached Asik’s building.

“Roman Ivanovich, can you walk me up to my floor? You’re here already and it’s dark and I’m scared of the drunken bums that hang around on the stairs. Please?”

He came in. The hallway stank of piss and God knows what else. Weak light leaked from the upper flights, illuminating the nail-carved and chalked graffiti on the walls like cave paintings. They climbed the stairs, holding on to the rails. Asik kept on and on about school. Sometimes he’d catch a word: home ec, burnt, two, so unfair. He tried to reel his mind back, for he could not help looking down on this strange scene — his bearish body, sweaty and cold, dressed in a sheepskin and a synthetic woolen cap, clambering after a little girl.

Asik turned to him abruptly on the fourth floor. “Are you very tired, Roman Ivanovich?”

She had a few steps on him, her wan face level with his. He was no longer tired, though he wanted to be.

“Yes. You?”

She took off her gray rabbit hat, and a scent of wet bread rose from her scalp.

“Not really. Actually, night is my favorite time. They finally stop nagging me.”

“Isn’t your sister home?”

“Inka? She’s already in bed. She’s a lark.”

“I’m a lark, too.”

“Good night, Roman Ivanovich,” Asik said cheerfully. Neither of them moved. Then she threw her arms around the bulk of him. “You’re the only person in the world who’s on my side.”

She pulled away. Her child’s face was open. Tomorrow, she would pull back her hair, glue on the fake lashes, paint her lips red. She would put on the glittering dresses and go out into the floodlights. Her unbeautiful features already contained the drama of tomorrow’s competition, all the disappointments of her future and its small moments of bliss. Already in them lived the Asik of ten years from now, and thirty, and fifty — long after Roman Ivanovich had gone.

He grabbed her folded forearms and covered her mouth with his. Asik’s tongue fluttered like a butterfly under the net of his lips. He traced the uneven ridge of her small, cool teeth, flew up to the scratchy ribs of her palate, then swooped down and cajoled her tongue into submission.

Oh, his dancey girls! Their images flew before his eyes like a trick of cards: Anya with the dark curl tickling her ivory neck; the spattering of freckles on Oksana’s neck and chest; Lara’s chubby stockinged legs. Their cometlike flight over his gray planet had kept him alive.

Roman Ivanovich felt a gust of cold in his mouth and a dull tingling in his coated forearms. Asik was pinching him. Tears streamed down her blotchy cheeks. They should both be crying, mourning their innocence. Yet he was bellowingly happy. He couldn’t understand how up to now he had managed to carry this feeling inside, like water in a sieve. He kissed her again, holding on with his lips, his teeth, his claws. Ah, how she tasted, of salt and metal.