Chapter 10
Tatyanna worked hard once she got to Paris to dance with the Ballet de l’Opéra national.
She went to class every day, went to every rehearsal, put her heart and soul into her technique, and followed directions carefully.
Each ballet company had its own style and she tried to adapt to theirs.
It wasn’t always easy, not speaking French, but she tried to learn the language, at least the dance instructions and the subtleties of what the choreographer wanted from her.
She danced several performances at the opera house every week.
She rehearsed intensely six days a week, and put her heart into it.
And on Sundays, she worked on her French.
The city was beautiful, and she loved walking everywhere when she had time.
She discovered little pocket parks, and learned all about the history of Paris.
She went to the Louvre and Versailles to absorb the elegance and grandeur of what the French court had been.
She fell in love with the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and could imagine herself dancing there.
The city had a soul and she wanted to make it part of her so that when she danced you could feel it in her performances.
She wanted to fall in love with the city and the country, but what she realized after a month was that she didn’t belong there and she wasn’t in love.
She was grateful to be there. It had provided a refuge for her, and a job, and paid enough to live on and even save some money.
They paid her well, but she felt as though there was no depth to her dancing, and no heart.
She was relying on the impeccable technique she had learned before.
It was like discovering that she was still in love with a previous lover and her heart wasn’t open to the new one.
Tatyanna loved her country and she wanted to go home.
Her country needed her, and in its hour of need she had fled.
Now the country was on its knees and she was dancing in Paris, but she felt like there was no soul to her performances.
She missed Ukraine. She felt guilty for leaving, and the photographs she saw in the press of the war zone and the damage broke her heart.
She thought about it all the time. Paris was beautiful, but she wasn’t in love with it.
She had always wanted to dance there and she was glad she had.
Maybe she would dance there again one day, but she felt like this wasn’t the right time.
She had a mission now. Her country needed her to nurse it back to health after the brutal beating it was taking at the Russians’ hands.
They hadn’t stopped their merciless attack.
They wanted to bring the country to its knees, and they had.
There was no one she could talk to about it.
She didn’t want to burden Yulya with her torment.
It was a decision she had to make herself, and she finally did.
The head dance master spoke English, and Tatyanna’s English was good enough for her to explain it to him. She said that her country needed her, and she wanted to go back.
“It will be very dangerous for you,” he said.
“People are getting killed there.” Bombs were still falling, missiles were still flying.
The killing hadn’t stopped, and it might not for a long time.
But Tatyanna felt that she belonged there.
He accepted her resignation with regret, and told her that if she wanted to come back after the war was over, they would love to have her join them again.
She was one of the most promising young ballerinas he had seen in his career.
She was the soul of what ballet should be and she had impeccable technical training.
Tatyanna had saved her money, and she had enough to live on for a while.
She had nowhere to stay when she went back, but she planned to join the volunteer civilian army, and she could live in the shelters if she had to.
As frightened as she had been when she left, she wasn’t afraid now.
It felt like the right thing to do. She was Ukrainian and she wanted to defend her country against the invaders who were destroying it.
She gave up her room that the ballet had provided her.
She had made no friends in the past month, so she had no one to say goodbye to, only to a city that was beautiful and that she wanted to love, and maybe would at some other time.
But that time wasn’t now. She wanted to dance the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.
Maybe she would one day, if she came back.
She left Paris the next day, retraced her steps back to Poland, and traveled all the way back to the border town of Przemy?l.
It took her a full day on the train. She hadn’t called Yulya to tell her because she knew she would worry about her.
This was just something she had to do. All over Europe, Ukrainian refugees were waiting to go back when the fighting ended.
Tatyanna didn’t want to wait any longer.
She wanted to be part of the forces that would drive the enemy from their land.
She was rested and young, healthy, well fed, and strong.
Her fellow countrymen were exhausted from the battles, the months of bitter fighting, the destruction, the deprivation, the bombs. She was ready to go back and help them.
She couldn’t decide which was less dangerous, the bus or the train, for the final leg of the trip to Kyiv, and finally decided to go by train.
She was traveling back with the same small suitcase.
She’d bought a few minor things in Paris, but nothing much, among them a pair of solid military-style boots to wear once she went back, and a warm camouflage jacket.
And she had two pairs of new toe shoes the ballet had provided for her.
When she volunteered, she knew they would give her weapons and teach her how to use them.
She had never touched a gun in her life, but the idea of having one didn’t frighten her now.
She was in the right place, on her way to do what she knew she had to do. There was no other choice for her.
Even though she knew he would be frightened for her, she thought Vlad would approve.
She knew that women had joined the regular army and were fighting alongside men.
She didn’t want to join the army, she wanted to fight with the civilian volunteers.
When the fighting was over, she’d be free again, to stay and help rebuild the country, or go back to Paris, or maybe move to Warsaw.
She liked the city, and she knew Olek and Nina, and maybe Yulya would stay there now.
But she had to get this out of her system first. She wanted to contribute to the liberation of her country, and help them achieve victory.
The negotiations had been stalled for months.
The only thing the invading army understood was violence.
She wasn’t afraid to kill one of them if she had to.
The cause was right, even if the violence was wrong, on either side.
But the Ukrainians were defending their homeland.
And the enemy was trying to take it away from them, and killing her countrymen.
Her train ticket took her all the way back to Kyiv.
There were no airstrikes against the train that night.
The station looked familiar when she got there, and reminded her that the last time she’d been there, three months before, Vlad had been with her, and Yana had died the day before.
She was doing this to avenge them both, and all the others who had died and were buried somewhere in unmarked graves.
It was nearly midnight when the train pulled into the station.
She walked along familiar streets, and saw all the destruction that had happened since she left.
Whole neighborhoods were gone, with charred buildings and wreckage where tree-lined streets of apartment buildings had been.
Familiar monuments were gone. Sometimes she thought she was on the wrong street or had gone too far or not far enough.
The whole face of the city had changed. She could hear rapid gunfire in the distance, but not close enough to worry about.
Otherwise it was quiet, until the next bomb dropped, or the next building crumbled.
She saw a soldier’s helmet lying in the gutter, and wondered if the man who had worn it had been killed, or if someone had just lost it.
Out of habit, Tatyanna walked in the direction of the ballet school, and was shocked when she saw it.
Everyone had disbanded by then, living in shelters, or had left the country and become refugees in cities all over Europe, or were living on the other side of the Polish border.
She had lost contact with all of them while they struggled to survive.
There were few apartments to stay in now.
The Russians just kept bombing the buildings, setting fire to them and destroying them and killing the residents.
She had heard that most people spent the nights in the bomb shelters now, since bombs rained on them all night.
Many of the schools had been hit. They had been used as shelters before that, but nothing was safe to use as a shelter now, unless it was deep underground.
She sat down in the park across the street from the ballet school. There used to be a bench there, but it was gone, either blown to bits by a bomb, or used for firewood during the cold weather.
She leaned back against a tree, with her suitcase next to her, and fell asleep.
She was hidden from view by some bushes, and voices woke her early in the morning.
A tall Ukrainian soldier came around the bush and gave a start when he saw her.
She looked harmless sitting there, but he asked her what she was doing.