Read Dancer for Free Online Page A

on the ice and says it is a mistake to create a single big fire, that is for idiots. Instead they make two small tepees and he instructs Rudik to squat over the fire whenever he gets cold, that the heat will rise through his body and spread, a trick Hamet learned during the war.
    All along the river the other fishermen chat in low tones.
    I want to go home, Rudik says again.
    His father doesn’t reply. He takes three of last night’s potatoes and heats them in the embers of the fire, turns them so the skin doesn’t scorch. They wait an hour for the first fish. When his father lifts it up through the ice, he takes off his gloves and the trout goes from living to gutted in seconds. He rips the fish belly open with his knife and, at the same time, follows with his forefinger, so that the innards come out in one motion. The guts steam in the air, and his father spears the body with a twig and holds it over the fire. They eat the fish and potatoes in the cold and his father asks him if he thinks it is delicious and he nods and then his father says: Do you like goose?
    Of course.
    Someday we’ll shoot geese, you and me. Do you like shooting?
    I think so.
    For oil, for food, for fat. Geese are good for that, says his father.
    Mama puts the fat on my chest.
    I taught her that trick. A long time ago.
    Oh, says Rudik.
    It’s a good one, isn’t it?
    Yes.
    When I was away, says his father, pausing for a moment, I missed you.
    Yes, Papa.
    We’ve a lot to talk of.
    I’m cold.
    Here, put this jacket on.
    His father’s jacket is huge around his shoulders, and Rudik thinks that now he is wearing three jackets while his father wears only one, but still he puts his arms in the sleeves of the coat, sits there rocking.
    Your mother told me you were a good boy.
    Yes.
    She said you’ve been doing lots of things.
    I danced at the hospital.
    I heard.
    For the soldiers.
    And what else?
    School.
    Yes?
    And Mama took me to the big place, the Opera House.
    She did, did she?
    Yes.
    I see.
    Mama only had one ticket, but we got in and there was a big crush at the door and the door fell in and we almost fell but we didn’t! We went down near the front, where they didn’t come looking for us! We thought they were going to come looking!
    Slow down, says his father.
    We sat on the stairs and there were big lights and then it got dark and it started! They turned off the big lights and the curtain came up and the music was loud and everyone got quiet.
    And did you like that?
    It was a story about a shepherd and an evil man and a girl.
    Did you like it?
    I liked the way the boy saved the girl after the man got her.
    And?
    And the big red curtain.
    Well that’s good, says his father, pulling his tunic tight, checking the line in the ice hole to see if any more fish have been caught, his face flushed and his mouth red as if he himself has just been hooked.
    And when everyone was gone, says Rudik, Mama allowed me to sit in the seats. She told me they were velvet.
    That’s good, his father replies again.
    When the next fish comes his father takes out the knife, cleans the blade on an inside thigh of his trousers, leaves a streak of blood. He hands Rudik the small trout and says: You do it, son.
    Rudik tightens his fingers inside the coat sleeves.
    Try it.
    No thanks, Papa.
    Try it!
    No thanks.
    Right now, I said! Try it!
    *   *   *
    In a warehouse on Sverdlov Street—under the auspices of the Bashkirian Ministry of Culture—the new curtains of the Opera House are sewn by a crew of six women, the best seamstresses in Ufa. The special bolts of red velvet are forty-five metres long and eight metres wide and a single fold, when lifted and relifted, makes their arms ache. The women, in their hairnets, are not allowed to smoke or eat or drink tea anywhere near the cloth. They sit at the curtains for ten hours a day, shifting their chairs along the red sea of velvet. Each seam is supervised, and