“Please excuse me,” I said. “Karin, a delight to see you. Dick.”
We exchanged pleasantries and I escaped as quickly as I could, joining Madeline and James at the opposite corner of the large room. They were part of a small circle of men and women, mostly musicians, who stood near Joseph, our host. Madeline was drinking soda water. They were expecting a baby in June.
Madeline leaned close and whispered in my ear. “I saw you cornered over there.”
I shrugged. “It was really all right. Though her new boyfriend Bob is a little insufferable.”
“I think his name is Richard?” Madeline said.
I shrugged. At that moment I froze in place. Vita Carulli and her fiancé Malcolm Carroll had approached the crowd.
I’d once admired Vita. She was a remarkable performer.
She was also Savannah’s mother ... the mother who had hurt and abandoned her.
“Gregory,” Vita said, nodded. One star of the music world to another.
I turned away from her, taking a sip of my drink. I had an established reputation as an arrogant bastard; might as well monopolize on that by snubbing a world class opera singer. Her career was on a downturn anyway.
James clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time you moved on. I meant to tell you, I met a lovely young cellist the other day ...”
Madeline rolled her eyes. “James, really ...”
“Seriously. He needs to go out and—”
“Don’t say it.” Madeline raised a disapproving eyebrow as he spoke.
I chuckled. “I think you can let it go,” I said.
“So ... what are your plans?” she asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t have an easy answer to that.
“Whatever it is,” James said, “you look ... relaxed. Happier than I’ve ever seen you.”
“I am happy,” I replied. And in truth, I was. I had a cello still, but somehow giving up the Montagnana had freed me. Freed me of the kind of expectations that I’d put on myself. The house was gone. My divorce was final. I no longer had a million dollar instrument weighing me down like a chain around my neck. “I’m very happy, in fact ...”
As I began to expand on that, someone in the crowd began to shout, counting down the seconds until midnight. I trailed off. They didn’t really need to know where I was headed, anyway. But as everyone shouted “Happy New Year!” my thoughts turned, far off to the east, to a woman I’d loved and lost.
And hoped to win again.
Savannah
One of the lovely things about attending the Bolshoi Christmas Ball is the dancers; several of whom were twirling in circles in extravagant ball gowns as I stood on the sidelines watching. I’d always been a confident dancer, but in front of these women? Hardly. I sipped my champagne and let my eyes scan the crowd.
It was a lavish setting without a hint of pretense. It was a celebration. Polished white marble columns that climbed to forty-foot ceilings. Four hundred or more people were in attendance. Musicians, dancers, businessmen and women, politicians, and diplomats. A small contingent of soldiers were led in a dance by the beautifully gowned dancers of the Bolshoi.
Like many of the women in the crowd, I wore a ball gown and felt unabashedly like a princess. The dress was a soft gold, all the way from the fitted silk bodice, down to the tulle-covered oversized skirt. Gold rhinestones covered the bodice and trickled down throughout the skirt, creating a dazzling effect under the lights. I chose black opera length gloves to compliment my mask. Ah, the mask. It was a deeper gold than my dress and adorned with scrolls of black music notes and black, silver, and gold feathers along the outer edge. Thick jewels circled my eyes. While it paled slightly in comparison to the rich opulence around me, I felt like I was in the middle of a fairytale. The vodka, the music, the dancing … it was choreographed with breathtaking precision.
My evening had begun by playing for an hour with a small ensemble, but others had taken over, and I had the rest of the night to avoid the politics and infighting and enjoy my evening.
As I watched a group of dancers make choreographed turns across the room from me, Aldo approached. He wore a black mask that bore a long nose. I hated those, but his tuxedo was far more elegant than the one he typically wore for shows.
“Good evening, Savannah,” he said, taking my gloved hand and bending over it, brushing it with his lips.
“Good evening, Al.” I couldn’t help but smile.
“You will dance with me,” he stated. I think he intended it as a question or an invitation, but his garbled English came out as an imperative.
I thought about it for just a moment and then said, “I’d be delighted.” Although I didn’t particularly want to make a fool of myself in front of the most advanced dancers in the world, I wasn’t a bad dancer. And not a single one of them was a world class musician. So I took Aldo’s hand and allowed him to lead me out to the floor.
I tried to ignore the undercurrents as we began to dance. Sergei Danshov, the ballet director, held court at one end of the hallway, surrounded by many of the younger and more aggressive dancers and cast members in a raucous circle.
At the opposite end of the room, Nikolai Timoshenko stood with his own smaller and slightly older group. Last year, when the previous director retired, probably due to the stress of all the politics and vicious infighting, Nikolai had been a candidate for ballet director. He lost out to Sergei after a struggle that I sometimes thought wasn’t over.
In between the two camps, the rest of us watched and enjoyed the spectacle of the evening. Of course, I’d spent much of my life around musicians, the symphony and opera. But the Bolshoi operated like no other outfit, and put on balls like nothing I’d ever seen. In the dead of the Russian winter, this was a night filled with exuberance.
Aldo spun me around in a circle as we danced, and I felt lightheaded from too much vodka and champagne. After my third twirl, I stopped in place at the sight of a man who had his back to me. Even among the sea of black tuxedos, I would recognize him anywhere.