Dancer by Colum McCann Read Free Book Online Page A

must classify the dead man as drowned; sometimes he dreams of them at night, remembering soldiers whose bodies were used instead of trees to build roads. In the winters, when the lake is frozen and logs no longer drift downriver, he tours the factories, giving political lectures to the workers, just as he did for many years in the army, and he never questions what any of it means, to hook these logs and men.
    One evening Hamet catches Rudik by the ear and says: There is nothing wrong with dance, son.
    I know.
    Even our great leaders like dance.
    Yes I know.
    But it’s what you do in the world that makes you. Do you understand?
    I think so.
    Your social existence determines consciousness, son. Remember?
    Yes.
    It’s very simple. You’re made for more than dance.
    Yes.
    You will be a great doctor, an engineer.
    Yes.
    Rudik looks at his mother in the ratty armchair across the room. She is thin, and there is a hollow in her neck that looks smoke-blue. Her eyes don’t move.
    Correct, Farida? says his father.
    Correct, replies his mother.
    The following day, on the way home from the factory, Farida stops momentarily outside a house on a rutted dirt road. The small house is painted bright yellow, the paint is peeling off in large flakes, the roof is sloped by weather and the wooden doorway sags. The carved wooden shutters flap in the breeze. A single wind chime lets out a note.
    She spies a pair of shoes on the porch step. Old, black, unpolished, familiar.
    She works her tongue around in her mouth, moves it against a back tooth that has been loose for weeks, pushes at the tooth with force, places her hand on the gate in order to steady herself. She has heard about an old couple who live here with three or four other families. She feels dizzy, faint. The tooth rocks back and forth in her mouth. She ponders that she has lived her life through a constant driving storm, she thinks, she has walked on with her head down, her jaw locked, her mind always on the next step, and seldom before has she been forced to stop and examine it all:
    Her tongue pushes against the loose molar. She puts her hand on the gate of the house to open it, but in the end she turns away, a pain shooting through her gums.
    Later, when Rudik comes home—the flush of dance in his cheeks—she sits beside him on the bed and says: I know what you’re doing.
    What? he asks.
    Don’t fool with me.
    What?
    I’m too old to be fooled with.
    What?
    I saw your shoes outside that house.
    What shoes?
    I know who those people are, Rudik.
    He looks up at her and says: Don’t tell Father.
    She hesitates, bites her lip, then opens up her hand and says: Look.
    A tooth rolls in her palm. She places it in the pocket of her housedress and then lays her hand on the back of Rudik’s neck, draws him close.
    Be careful, Rudik, she says.
    He nods and steps away from her, spins onto the floor to show her what he has learned, and he is confused when she doesn’t watch, her eyes fixed firmly on the wall.
    *   *   *
    After the boy left, Anna put on her nightgown, worn at the elbows, and perched at the very edge of the bed. I was at my desk, reading. She whispered good night, but then she coughed and said she felt blessed, that it was enough in this life just to feel blessed from time to time.
    She said she knew, even after just one session, that the boy could be something unusual.
    She rose and shuffled across the room, put her arms to my shoulders. With one hand she removed my reading glasses. She placed them in the center spine of the book and turned my face to hers. She said my name and it pierced my fatigue in the most extraordinary way. As she leaned across, her hair brushed against me and it smelled like the days when she had been with the Maryinsky. She turned me sideways in the chair, and the light from the candle flickered on her face.
    She said: Read to me, husband.
    I picked up the book, and she said: No, not here,