Dancing in the Light (22 page)

We sat down and looked up at the hovering waiter. Vassy lapsed into French with a Russian accent. I laughed to myself. He ordered a double vodka and I a glass of red wine.

I pulled out my cigarettes and he took one. He didn’t seem to own any himself. “I smoke too much last night. First cigarette I smoke this year. Not good.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“I am nervous finally meeting you,” he answered, “and worry about your opinion of my film. Did you know I am calling you by telephone for twelve years?”

“Oh, come on, Vassy,” I said, calling him by his first name for the first time.

“No, is true. You had secretary in New York who protect you very well. She wonders who is this crazy foreign-sounding Russian and always says you are out of country. You have been out of country twelve years?”

I laughed out loud.

“Well, I always tell people to say that, unless it’s someone I want to talk to! Most people don’t think I’m anywhere anymore. Or, at the very least, that I’m probably in Bucharest for a wine-tasting festival or something.”

“So, I called you from Russia many times. Maybe you were in my country when I called you in New York.”

“Maybe.”

“You were in my country. I remember. You made a scandal. You were with students in Leningrad, yes?”

“Jesus, yes,” I said, surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Oh, I know. And you disobeyed authorities by missing train and made scandal.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, hearing my voice rise. “I had a right to go with the students if they invited me. And if I decided to take another train, that was my business.”

“No, no,” he said in a way I was to become infuriatingly familiar with. “No. Bureaucratic system unable to change schedules.”

“Well, tough,” I said, finding myself assuming the persona of a loud-mouthed American.

“But is very funny and amusing,” he said soothingly, taking a swig of vodka that would have put away any sailor who wasn’t also Russian.

“I wanted to make film of your scandal. You came as plain tourist but you acted as elite American star making scandal. Russian bureaucracy couldn’t
cope, as you say. Very funny comedy. Big news in gossip in Moscow. Big scandal.”

Vassy smiled to himself and took another belt of vodka. Only the ice was left. He ordered another one. I thought of Khrushchev and how he had told someone the story of Russians coating their stomachs with oil so they could drink each other under the table.

Vassy ordered a complicated French salad with hot lettuce and oysters or something, and I had
rognons
(kidneys).

“I am vegetarian,” he said, looking at my meat order with decided disapproval. “Meat not good for muscles,” he pronounced. “You must be careful as dancer. Particularly not being twenty-one anymore.”

I hooted at the same time I wanted to slug him. He was sö unconsciously funny with his dead serious autocratic pronouncements, and, as I was to find out as time went on, he was usually correct.

“I saw you at Palace Theatre in New York,” he said suddenly. “I saw your one-man show. Beautiful, brilliant. Did you receive my caviar?”

His caviar? I didn’t know he was alive.

“Your caviar? What do you mean?”

“I sent you five pounds caviar backstage. You were brilliant. I wanted you to contact me.”

This was all too much.

“I don’t remember receiving such an extravagant gift from anyone. No, I’m sorry.”

His face fell, but his eye still had a twinkle in it.

“Oh,” he said, “I think I make BIG impression. Oh, well. Self-illusion can be happy anyway.”

I honestly couldn’t decide whether he was putting me on or whether what he was saying about anything was actually true. He was so disarming, so enthusiastic, so total about everything that I guess it didn’t really matter to me. His intense vitality was just too colorful to ignore. My feelings and confusions about him during that dinner were the first in a long series of roller-coaster rides provoked by knowing
a person, a Russian person, I should say, who really did speak his mind and his perceptions as he saw them. His perceptions were so thoroughly foreign to mine that I was continually delighted, outraged, and amused.

Vassily Okhlopkov-Medvedjatnikov ate his fancy French salad as though the Russians were in Bakers-field. Hunched over his plate, he downed long slurps of vodka in between delicate warm oysters and laughed at how different we were.

It wasn’t long before he was obviously just plain drunk. I didn’t drink as much because I didn’t want to miss anything. He ordered Zoappa Inglese for dessert, which I thought must be some kind of sweet soup. No, it was a rum cake. He finished it in three bites and ordered another one.

“I always eat only appetizers and desserts,” he said. “More healthful.”

“And vodka instead of water?”

He beckoned the waiter very deferentially. “I would like to have double stinger, please. That’s all.”

He didn’t ask if I wanted anything.

I cleared my throat. “Vassily,” I said, “I think I’d better go for an after-dinner drink, too, do you mind?”

“Oh,” he said looking genuinely apologetic. “Of course. Sorry. You should nave asked.”

Jesus, I thought, I wonder how this small social confusion will translate when it comes to a deeper involvement.

In fact, I wasn’t really sure whether his “color” was worth a deeper involvement. Minor—and possibly not so minor—cultural differences were glaringly clear already. Before I could pursue that thought any further, he diverted me again with what was apparently a mystical streak in his makeup.

“You know, Sheerlee,” he began in his now drunken state. “I have been looking for you all my life, I believe. I believe it. I know it. I saw your face
in my mind here”—he touched his head gently—“before I ever saw you on the screen. I knew your face before I knew you were real.”

That stopped me in midstinger. He was too drunk to be consciously making up a sweet Russian-coated proposition. No, it wasn’t like that. Moreover, I had seen
his
face—something he did not yet know.

“Is time,” he repeated. “All my actresses are as copies of you.
All.
I always loved a woman in my head who had red hair, a nose turning up, long legs, and blue eyes with small spots on face.”

“Small spots? What do you mean?”

He reached over and touched my arm, pointing to my freckles.

“Small spots. What is name?”

“Freckles,” I answered. “I hate my freckles. I’ve always tried to cover them up.”

“No, no. Never. Beautiful small spots. They are endearing.”

“Endearing?” I said. “For a man who doesn’t speak fluent English, you have some choice words in your vocabulary.”

“I only learn ‘endearing’ this week. It is a word I feel is right for what I want to say about these small spot freckles.”

It was sort of like being with a Frenchman who knows how to sweep an American woman romantically off her feet. But with the exhaustive, concentrated energy of a child. American men never bothered with that brand of romance. American men were infinitely more realistic, more down-to-earth, less motivated by fantasy. They couldn’t seem to let themselves become childlike. They seemed slightly embarrassed by sensitive, romantic allusions to childish associations. Not European men. And apparently not Russian men either.

Vassy was like some floppy, lean, overgrown brown Tartar puppy with feet that turned in when he walked and hair that flopped wildly in his eyes as
he lost more and more control. And there was a reckless quality about him as he enjoyed himself as though he would leap at lightning just to see if it would strike him dead.

Right now, though, he couldn’t walk straight. He tried to make it to the men’s room in a straight line, but there were too many potted palms around. So he smiled, shrugged, and lurched ahead until he found
hommes
and disappeared inside. I wondered if he could do what he had to do alone and upright.

The waiter brought the check, which I noticed was over a hundred dollars. I felt inclined to pay it because it was simply not possible, in my view, that he could afford such a tab. I left the bill where it was and waited.

Soon he returned, saw the bill, and with a great drunken Russian flourish he pulled out a checkbook from a Beverly Hills bank and made out a check for the required amount of money.

“How can you afford this?” I asked diplomatically.

“I have bank account of money from Universal work, but is almost gone. Why not use it and have pleasure?”

I felt a scribble of guilt pass through me and said nothing.

“Did they pay for your hotel?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he answered. “They are major company who pay expenses.”

I was sure he was just playing big shot, but even that was “endearing” in my view because he had somehow managed to finagle a freedom for himself that no other Russian I had ever heard of had, without defecting.

“Soon I will be able to travel, God’s willing, and make wonderful film here in States and show my minister how American filmmakers want understanding with Soviet Russian filmmakers.”

I thought it had to be the vodka talking. Yet, in
a way I couldn’t define, I felt that his flagrantly ingenuous attitude might just pull such a thing off.

“Are you saying, Vassy,” I asked, “that you believe your minister will allow you to go back and forth between Moscow and Hollywood and make movies and return any time you want to, to make films in Russia afterward?”

“Why not?” he answered. “If I become famous international filmmaker, it will be good for Russia film industry. I will do that. You will see. It will be difficult, but I will accomplish my dream.”

I sat up straighter, hoping I could pursue the conversation more specifically.

“And can you make films in France now whenever you want to?”

“Of course,” he answered. “I have French wife. We don’t live together anymore, not for long time. She prefers live in Russia.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “Your wife would
rather
live in Russia than Paris?”

“In Moscow, yes. I and my family very well known. She is center of attention and activity when she lives there as a Medvedjatnikov. In Paris she is nothing. Now, so you want to go somewhere and have small drink?”

We stood up and he put his arm gallantly around me as though the evening were just beginning. The waiters and maître d’ smiled and bowed us out, grateful that Vassy would evidently make it to the car.

I must say, I didn’t get the impression the guy was a drunk. I got the impression he really needed to get drunk
tonight
and most of that need had to do with me. We lurched back to my car where I could gratefully take off for Malibu, and he said he would rather maneuver back to the Chateau alone.

He put an arm around me as I crawled behind the wheel.

“You will excuse me,” he asked, “for being drunk? I’m sorry. But thank you for supporting me.
Will you please see me one more time before I leave for Paris? I want to prove to you this isn’t a common thing.”

“See you again? When?” I asked.

“I will drive to Malibu tomorrow night and we will have dinner there?”

“You know how to get to Malibu?”

“Of course, I play tennis there often. Please, give me your address. I will behave.”

I did, and we said good night.

The next day I didn’t shoot, so I sat around in the sun and wondered what would be in store for me that night.

He called late in the afternoon and around eight o’clock showed up promptly at my doorstep carrying a phonograph record and his jogging shoes. He, of course, realized he couldn’t have been more obvious and smiled sheepishly, but then nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I cooked him a vegetarian meal over which he “oohed” and “ahhed.” And then he expertly eyed my hi-fi set and put on a record of a famous Russian pianist playing (what else?) Rachmaninoff. Vassy leaned back on one of my sofas, closed his eyes, held out his arms for me. Presumptuous, I thought, and, amused nevertheless, allowed myself to be gathered up in them. Then we just lay back and listened to the crystal sounds of the piano flood the room.

Vassy couldn’t listen to anything quietly, of course. Every once in a while he would raise an arm and conduct his invisible orchestra while swaying in ecstasy against the pillows. After the first side played, he got up to turn the record over.

“I was concert pianist,” he said. “I graduated Moscow Conservatory of Music. I was in competition in Moscow with Van Cliburn. Then I saw him play with such”—he gesticulated volubly, “freedom, I realized I was working too hard at music and I quit immediately.”

“You quit playing the piano when you were in the same league with Van Cliburn?”

“Of course.”

“What do you mean, of course? Why would you do such a thing?”

“Because,” he said, “in the competition I understood. For him it was easy and freedom and perfect as well. As for me, I had been forced by my parents. I didn’t basically want it for myself. So I quit.”

“Did you quit right then at the competition?”

“Of course.”

“What do you mean, of course?” (This man was making me repeat myself …) “That is a very impulsive thing to do, particularly after you had studied music all your life. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. We Russians are impulsive. Many times we do things dramatically and perhaps regret it afterward.”

A sharp twinge went through me.

“Have you regretted it?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it. I only play now when I am drunk.”

That kind of impulsiveness, even I hadn’t engaged in. It seemed so sweepingly destructive and without consideration of consequence. I was to learn later how right I was. But then, as I also learned, things seemed that way from
my
point of view.

After more music and some discussion of Rachmaninoff, which included how much Vassy wanted to do a film about his, Rachmaninoff’s, life, we had some hot coffee and just sat together. He was gentle and self-assured, but I think almost slightly taken aback that I didn’t object to any of his further advances.