“How could we do that, Nikolai? Could you be a doctor there?” she asked, stunned by the suggestion that she follow him halfway around the world.
“Eventually,” he answered carefully. “I would have to go back to school in America. It would take time. I could do other things in the meantime.” But what? she asked herself as she listened to him. Shovel snow? Clean stables? Curry horses? To her, the situation seemed hopeless. Surely there was no ballet in Vermont, wherever that was, and that was all she knew. Who would she teach? Who would hire either of them? How would they get there? “You must let me work this out for us. It's our only hope, Danina. We cannot stay here.” But to leave required a series of betrayals, abandoning his children and wife, the Czar and his family, who had been so kind to him, and Madame Markova and the Maryinsky Ballet, which was the only home she had known since she was a child. She had given everything to them, her life, her soul, her spirit, her body, and in turn they had given her a life, which was the only one she knew. What would she do in this place called Vermont, and what if he should tire of her and abandon her there? It was the first time she had thought that, but she was frightened, and she looked it, as she met his eyes. And he could easily read all her fears there.
“I don't know…. It is so far away…. And what if your cousin doesn't want us?”
“He will. He is a kind man. He is older than I, widowed, and he has no children. He has invited me to visit him for years. If I tell him we need his help, he will do it. He has a big house, and some money. He owns a bank, and he lives alone. He would welcome us there. Danina, it is the only hope we have for a future together. We must begin again somewhere, and forget everything we have known here.” But as much as she wanted to be with him, she wasn't sure she could do it. “You mustn't think about it now. Get healthy and strong, and we will talk about it again. I will write to him in the meantime, and see what he says.”
“Nikolai, no one would ever forgive us.” The mere thought of it filled her with terror, and grief.
“And if we stay here? What will we have? Stolen moments, a few weeks a year when the Czarina invites you to Livadia or Tsarskoe Selo? I want a life with you. I want to wake up beside you every morning, to be with you when you're ill. … I never want something like this to happen to you again…. Danina, I want our children.” She also wanted the life he described to her, but they each had to hurt everyone they had ever loved in order to be free.
“What about my father and brothers?” She had a family here, a history, a life. She could not turn her back on all of it because she loved him. And yet he was willing to do that for her, and he had as much to lose as she did. He had to abandon his children, his wife, and his career in order to be with her.
“You told me yourself you never see your family,” he reminded her. And for nearly the past two years, her brothers and father had been at the front. “They would be happy for you.” Nikolai did everything he could to convince her. “You cannot dance forever, Danina.” But as he said the words to her, she remembered everything Madame Markova had ever said.
“I can teach afterward, like Madame Markova. “
“You can teach in Vermont. Perhaps even start a school of your own. I will help you.” He seemed so sure, and so strong.
“I must think about it,” she said, exhausted by the prospect of such an enormous decision, and all that it entailed.
“Rest now. We will talk about it later.” She nodded, and drifted off to sleep again, but she had nightmares of terrifying, unknown places. She kept dreaming of losing Nikolai there, of wandering the streets, looking for him, and never finding him, and when she awoke in the hospital, he was gone, and she was crying and alone. He had left her a note that he had gone to check on Alexei, and would return to see her in the morning. And as she read it, she was lost in thought.
She stayed in the hospital for two weeks, and when she left, the doctor ordered her to stay in bed for two more. Nikolai wanted her to stay at the Czar's cottage with him, at Tsarskoe Selo, but Madame Markova was violently opposed to it. She wanted Danina back at the ballet, and said the trip to Tsarskoe Selo was too far. This time, Danina didn't have the energy to fight her. The mistress of the ballet was too determined, and unwilling, to let Danina slip out of her hands again. She didn't want her to spend another four months “recuperating” in the cottage with her lover. She was intransigent this time, and in the face of the ferocity of her objections, Danina returned to the ballet.
And as Nikolai had when she was ill when they first met, he came to see her every day, and stayed for as long as he could, a few hours at least, before he went back to his own duties. He sat in her dormitory room with her while she rested in bed. And while she walked slowly around the small garden at the ballet with him, he talked to her of Vermont, and his cousin there. He was convinced it was the only way, and he wanted to go with her as soon as they could both get away. He suggested early summer, which was only a few months away.
“Your season will be over then. You can complete what you are doing. We must pick a time, and then go through with it. There will never be a perfect moment to leave, we must seize the moment while we can.” She would be twenty-two by then, and he would be forty-one that year, time enough for both of them to start a new life in America, as countless others had done before them, some for reasons as complicated as theirs.
She promised to think about it, and she did, constantly. All she could think about now was the terror of moving to Vermont. Madame Mar-kova sensed easily that something was happening to her. Danina was still tired and pale, and she looked deeply unhappy at times after Nikolai's visits. He was asking her to cast her lot with him, follow him to the end of the world, and trust him completely. And in spite of her love for him, it was a great deal to ask.
“You are troubled, Danina,” Madame Mar-kova said cautiously one afternoon, when she came to visit her, and sat beside Danina's bed while she rested. Nikolai had just left her, and as always they had spoken of the same things. Their future. Vermont. His cousin. Leaving Russia. And the ballet. “He is asking you to leave us, isn't he?” she asked wisely, and Danina didn't answer her. She didn't want to lie, or tell her the truth either. “It always happens that way. They fall in love with who you are, and then want to take it away from you,” she persisted. “I promise you, Danina, if you leave us, it will kill you. You will be nothing. And when he casts you aside one day for someone more fascinating, or perhaps even younger, you will regret all your life the part of your heart you left here.” She made it sound like a death sentence, and it was, in a way. But it was also an exchange for something Danina wanted desperately. It would be the end of her life as a ballerina, but the beginning of her life with Nikolai, a real life with him, which she also wanted. But to have it, she had to sacrifice everything she had now, just as he did. “If he truly loved you, Danina, he would not ask you to leave us.”
“And when I am old, what will I have without him, if I stay here?”
‘ ? life you can be proud of in remembering. No one can ever take that from you. Instead of a life of shame, which is all that he can give you. He is a married man, and his wife will not leave him. You will always be his mistress, the little ballet dancer he sleeps with, nothing more.”
But there was so much more between them, even now, and Danina knew that. “You make it sound so tawdry, and it isn't,” Danina said sadly.
“It is precisely what these things always are. Extremely romantic in the beginning. A dream you think you will have. And when you wake up from it one day, you will find it is a nightmare. This is the only life you will ever have that means something to you, this is the life you have worked hard for and trained for. Can you throw it all away for a man who cannot even marry you? Look what has just happened to you. How beautiful was that? How romantic?” It was a cruel thing to say and it unnerved Danina just listening to her. What if she was right? If Nikolai threw her away one day, if she regretted giving up the ballet all her life, and hated Vermont, if they were not happy together? Who could know the answers to those questions? There was no certainty to his plans, only promises, and hopes and dreams, and wishes. Hers as much as his own. Yet he was willing to give up medicine for her, the security he had, the life he had known for over fifteen years with his family. He was willing to sacrifice all for her. Why couldn't she do the same for him?