Red Sparrow

Continue speaking of my father and I shall lean forward and bite your lower lip off, she thought. Instead, Dominika gave him a smile that only recently she had come to recognize had an effect on people. “Now that my ballet career is over,” she said, “I may as well do secret chores for you.” Vanya’s face moved, then he recovered. He took his hands from her shoulders.

“Come to see me next week,” he said, looking down at her cast. “If you are able. I will send a car for you.” Vanya buttoned his light woolen suit. He took her hand in his big paw, his face inches from hers. “Come give your uncle a proper good-bye.” Dominika put her hands on his shoulders and pecked him lightly on either cheek, looking for a moment at his wet liver lips. Lavender scent and a yellow halo.

He whispered in her ear. “I do not ask you to help me for nothing in return,” he said. “I believe I can intervene in the matter of this apartment.” Dominika pulled back. “Your mother would not lose it, even after your father’s death. It would be a great comfort to her.” Vanya let go of her hand, straightened, and walked out of the room. Astonished, she watched him close the door behind him. A first taste of the yoke, thought Dominika.

On the street, Vanya motioned his driver to get going and settled into the backseat of his Mercedes. There, he thought with a sigh, I’ve paid my respects. Brother Vassily was a fuzzy-headed academic, living in the past. And that sister-in-law. She’s already lost her mind, a sumashedshij, a lunatic. But that niece—she’s a real Greek statue—is perfect for this matter, I’m glad I thought of her. Now that she’s ruined her foot she has no options. She can learn other things. That apartment would sell for millions, Vanya thought. Yes, after all, this is family and it’s the least I can do.

=====

That evening after the guests had left she sat with her mother in the darkened living room. Bach was playing softly, accompanied by the nearly empty samovar that sighed occasionally with the last of its steam. Dominika didn’t need lights in the room. Great waves of deep red pulsed past her from the music. Holding both her hands in her lap, Nina looked at her daughter and knew she was “looking at the colors.” She squeezed Dominika’s hands to get her to concentrate, and began talking in a low, slow voice. She whispered to her, leaning close to her daughter, and spoke about her father and his life. She spoke about ballet school and Russia and what had happened to her. And then Nina spoke of darker things, of promise and betrayal and revenge. Two figures in a darkened room filled with vermilion Bach, two klikushy in a forest glen, planning mayhem.

Two days later, Dominika returned to the academy, ostensibly to talk with the doctors and to collect her belongings. She was already an outsider, it was as if they were waiting for her to leave. She lingered unobtrusively, sitting in a chair near the exit, watching Sonya Moroyeva and Konstantin dancing, Sonya’s right leg impossibly high, impossibly straight en penché, Konstantin turning her in a slow promenade. His eyes were on the slash of black leotard stretched across her crotch. At the evening break, with shadows lengthening in the nearly empty practice hall, Dominika watched Sonya and Konstantin slip down the hall toward the sauna room. There had been rumors about the two, of course, but now Dominika knew. She waited and watched the light on the practice hall’s parquet floor fade, feeling the familiar tightening, controlling it, bringing the ice.

The building had grown silent, the various offices dark. The ballet master and two matrons were still in their offices farther down; dim lights shone at the far end of the otherwise darkened hallway. Dominika hobbled silently to the door of the anteroom of the large wood-paneled sauna used by students and pushed through it, silently walked to the door of the steam chamber and peered through the smoked-glass port in the cedar door. They were both naked on the wooden slats of the top bench, barely illuminated by the single bulb in the ceiling. Konstantin had just raised his face from between Sonya’s wide-spread legs and was poised over her like a great beast. Sonya clasped her hands behind Konstantin’s neck and swung her legs over his shoulders. Through the glass, Dominika saw the calluses on the pads of Sonya’s feet and the splay of battered ballerina toes.