Vaganova Method
When the whitened woman found her, the girl’s skin was stretched tight against her bones, so translucent, it was a wonder you couldn’t see right through her. The blood in her veins painted blue webs that shot up her arms. Her hair was matted in a puddle of undigested Rollton noodles and dried blood, and her hand lay splayed against the concrete, missing most of its fingernails. The woman, cloaked by charcoal-stained white hair, knelt down, placing her fingers against the girl’s throat, checking methodically for a sign that the girl was still alive, watching for an expansion of the lungs, listening for any whisper of air escaping the battered nose.
*************************************************************
Lenora woke on the floor, wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket, her eyes watering from the fumes of the stove beside her. The room moved, a slight shift in the shape of the floor that she felt along her spine. Her eyes, the only part of her she could move, took in the creases of the dark. The room bending above her, she began to sit up, feeling the weight stringing across her ribs. Small, hyper breaths grew into gasps.
“You were thrashing in your sleep. This was the only way I could keep you from hurting yourself,” the old woman said, walking slowly towards Nora, across the dark oak of the floor. Her feet were bare, showing the intricate bands tattooed around her toes and snaking up her ankles. “I am Asya. I found you under a bridge... in Selenginsk.”
Nora tried licking her lips, her tongue pale and dry.
“Where are we?” Nora looked around, felt the floor give a shudder underneath her.
“We’re at the mouth of the Selenga River on Lake Baikal.” Asya moved forward, reaching for the fabric holding Nora to the ground, untying it with steady, callused hands.
Images from before snatched at Nora as soon as she was free. Rough, obsessive men, tightened the straps around her ankles and wrists, pulled at her arms and legs, trying to lengthen the joints. IV’s consistently stuck into her arms in the mornings before she woke, pulling the blood from her, and returning it weeks later, fully oxygenated, boosting her red blood cell count. Remembering the hours she spent staring at the picture of her sister with the pistol shoved tight to her temple caused Nora to fold in on herself, hugging her knees tight to her chest.
*************************************************************
Pointe shoes and rope was their binding of choice to keep her in their grasp, forcing her to surrender to their cruel intentions. The rope, rubbing and burning her ankles and wrists, was tightened just enough to leave scars buried in her skin, but the pointe shoes left mental scars, searing and tearing at her mind even after she took them off.
Day after day, she went through the motions, slipping the shoes on, tying the silk strands around her ankles, tight against the burns left from the night. Makar, the man with the stiff movements and sly touches crouched down, taking Nora’s right foot in his hands and massaged it gently, rolling it to the right, then pushed down, stretching her toes to the ground. The mornings created shadows on his face, right below his eyes, shadows that centered at the bridge of his nose and fingered their way to his cheekbones. The faded black and tan tiger on the man’s neck flicked its tail nervously as he spoke, the clipped tone of his voice solidifying the curdled milk in her stomach. None of the men spoke English well, the harsh syllables out of their mouths always insisting on her full attention. The only others who understood her were the girls, the others that they’d taken and never returned.
The years caught in the embrace of her captors had passed quite slowly. Every day, she gripped onto the seconds passing her by, leaving her with a life she could never truly want to live. The ballets, reminiscent of fairy tales and myths, she came to realize, were told by oppressed and sickened individuals, the number of participants thinned out from the sheer weight of the obsession.
Nora found the stone building too large for her wandering mind. She caught herself slipping down muted corridors, lined by wooden doors, in and out she went, tracing her fingers along the ridged grout lines of the walls. Those wooden doors, always hid empty rooms and aging dance equipment, costumes and props, the stages of the lonely. At night, they kept her tied, but during the day, when not in practice, for some inexplicable reason, they let her roam the hallways, doing as she pleased. Shuffling along the marble floor, she spotted a door to her right with shadows moving behind it. Softly, fingertips pressed against the carved oak of the door, she twisted the handle, expecting a gruff voice to call out, but finding instead a large room encased by windows, showing the treetops swaying in the wind. Closing the door, walking across the room, she looked out over the trees, down to the crashing waves on the shoreline below. Her breath warmed the window, causing it to fog, skewing her view. The trees twisted, the waves coursed through their gnarled roots.
Nora closed her eyes, focusing on the movement the sun gave through her eyelids. Her arms almost always followed her body on stage but there in that room, she lifted a finger up, tracing arches through the air, followed by her slender arm, then by her wiry body. Dancing alongside the writhing trees, she remembered herself in love with the movements, flitting and whirling on the stage, before they forced them from her, using her to win their battles.
***************************************************************
“Do you remember where they kept you?” Asya asked, dipping the tea bag into the water, and handing the cup to Nora.
“I was never able to see anything outside. All I remember is that room, the one with the windows, showing the expanse of the ocean. The way the building sat on the rocks, there was no way for me to see where we were.” Nora stopped. “When we would go from theatre to theatre for the shows, we would travel in windowless vans and I was allowed no interviews after the performance.” Here, she looked out the door, listening to the lake slapping the side of the boathouse. “The water below the window was nothing like this lake. I sat there for hours watching it slam against the shore, all froth and spray.”
Asya nodded.
“Yes, the lake leaves you in peace. There’s never much disturbing me out here,” Asya said. Her eyes landed on the fading bruises on Nora’s feet. “Where did you come from? Before…”
“I came from Tel-Aviv. That’s where I was born, and brought up. That’s where I began dance. I had an interview with the school of the Israel Ballet, but the night before, there were two men in my driveway. One of the men had a face that looked as if he stitched a piece of string through the left peak of his lip, up through his nostril and pulled tight.”
Asya paused, pursed her lips.
“Did you ever find out why it was you?”
“I pieced together what I could,” Nora shook her head, her eyes searching the floor, “but I still don’t understand it. Before it happened there was many Russian dancers immigrating to Tel Aviv and into the Israel Ballet. The Russian Ballet, on the outside seemed as if it was prospering, but on the inside, it was dwindling. I can’t be sure whether the dancers were leaving because of the corruption, or if that is what sparked the system to deteriorate, but it became this company of depraved and senseless men, desperate to build up their reputation once again.” Nora walked outside, onto the deck of the boat Asya had made into her home. The water was clear enough to see down to the bottom of the lake, showing the rough pocketed boulders, the Artic graylings floating past with their dorsal fins piercing and spreading from their spines.
“Why were you there, in Selenginsk?” Nora asked, taking her eyes off the fish and looking back at Asya.
“I go into that city when I need supplies, but I am never on that side. It is barren and filthy, and I was only there to see my brother, but there you were, a heap of bones with a tarp of skin thrown over you.”
A spasm hiccupped through Nora’s chest. Bringing her hand up to her mouth, she held the bile in, the sourness watering her eyes. Looking back out towards the lake, the surface rippled calmly.
“Supposedly a sea monster lives in this lake.” Asya said. “People have assumed it to be an evolved species of Sturgeon, growing itself larger and larger each generation from all the pollution dumped here. I’ve been on this lake for decades and never seen it, but if one longs to stay hidden, what’s to stop them?”
********************************************************************
The blank eyes in the picture followed Nora as she dressed, as she slept. Those eyes were a mirror of Nora’s own eyes, eyes of her twin sister, Kefira. The man she knew as Anton, the one with the disfigured lip, handed her an envelope the night they took her. They waited for her to open it, a smirk pulling the scar tighter. Kefira showed no terror, only stared straight into the camera as the man pressed the pistol snug against her temple, finger stable on the trigger.
Nora’s hand tightened on the picture, crumpling the edges.
“What have you done?” Nora lunged at Anton, gouging the top of his head, blood running through his white gold hair. His fist shot out and collided with the right side of her mouth. She landed on her back, bruising on the grimy porcelain of the bathroom floor.
“You give dance to us now. The sister has life until there is no more dance from you.” Anton said as he flicked the burning end of the cigarette onto Nora’s stomach.
*********************************************************************
Asya sat on the edge of the deck, her toes brushing the water.
“They did not kill her?”
“No. They left her alive as a weapon against me. That was the only picture they gave me though. Really, I had no idea if she was alive until they took me to where they kept her to show me what I had done.”
Asya shook her head, gripping the edge of the deck, her fingers going white.
“So she’s still out there?”
Nora’s features pinched as she looked back towards the inside of the house, focusing on the twin sized bed heaped with wool blankets and homemade down pillows.
“Where is the rest of your family?” Nora asked.
“The ones who are left are in the West, near Moscow, rotting away in the cities.” Asya smiled briefly, “But they deserve all they have. They were never fair people, always working with the Bratva, it’s a shame they’re still alive, but I hear word of their movement through the West every ten years or so.”
“Why are you here, by yourself, hiding away on this monstrous lake?”
“I felt one with the giant Sturgeon. His lineage creating him into something people abhor. I understand his need to hide himself from the world’s disapproval. He doesn’t even exist for most people.” Asya picked at the wood, quickening the erosion of her home. She looked at Nora, for the first time noticing the girl’s chipped front tooth. The black curtain of Nora’s hair rose with the wind. Her skin was pale compared to other Israeli girls Asya had seen and she wondered if it was caused by Nora’s lack of nutrition and sunshine. She couldn’t imagine someone dancing for the Russian Ballet and not being cared for properly, but Nora’s thinness went past the regular wiry muscularity of ballerinas and straight to malnourished. Could it be that she was hidden so well, no one recognized her face as she flitted around the stage?
*************************************************************************
The mask covered Nora’s face as she darted across stage, wishing she could see the faces of the people of Brisbane, the made up faces dotted across the large theatre. Wide eyes circled by plump faces took her in. Feathers played around her molded plastic mask as she executed Deboulés toward the audience, pulled out and effortlessly glissaded into a grand Jeté, her legs split and paralleled the floor. The fabric of her corset bunched around her middle, the gold flecked tutu shooting rays straight from her waist. The trumpets blared and the drums vibrated through the stage.
Coming out of her arabesque, Nora stumbled, a slight misstep. As her breath caught in her throat, she looked over at Anton, seeing the blank fury on his face. His blue eyes pierced her sharply throughout the remainder of the performance, making her dizzy from her pirouettes, and shaky while bringing her knee up next to her shoulder, her toe pointing to the ceiling for her grand battements.
Nora bourreed off stage, her legs pressed together, toes tapping the ground rapidly. Anton snatched at her, one hand clutching onto her hipbone, his other yanking her hair at the roots, pulling her head back, his lips brushing against her ear.
“Who do think you are? No dance from you, there is no life for dirty sooka sister.”
*************************************************************************
Kefira’s amber tinted eyes creased and slanted upwards, following her cheekbones as she smiled.
“See, the thing about the men here, neshama, is that they are quite useless. A series of ezeh bassas, such disappointments.” Kefira said lightly and laughed, a high trilling thing, snatching at people’s attention. “Their jokes, they fall. Their wealth keeps them cheap and well, their schmucks, well, if you’ve gotten that far, you might as well give up all your dignity and get impregnated by the fool,” Kefira dropped her voice to a whisper, leaning in close to Nora, “popping out little schmucks every year ‘til you die.”
Nora rolled her eyes, but still couldn’t help, but grin.
“No one says I will meet a man at university. They will all be dancers anyway, and a dancer as a husband? You would never allow me to live that down, would you?
Kefira giggled.
“No. Of course I wouldn’t. I would write of it in all the family’s Rosh Hashanah cards, and maybe make a tradition of buying a different color tutu for him every year.” Kefira said, slyly pinching at Nora’s arm.
**************************************************************************
Anton swung the door open, the swollen wood scraping the dirt across the floor. The burlap sack gave Nora a checkered view of the room before her. A lone light bulb dangled from the rafters of the ceiling. The sulfurous smell permeated through the pores of the bag, Nora’s eyes watering until she was unable to make out the form huddled on the far wall. The whimper traced its way through the room and Nora followed the sound with a nodding of her head until the moisture in her eyes gathered on her eyelashes, clumping them together, giving her a narrowed vision of a clustered mass of black hair, vibrating in front of her.
The sack scraped along her cheekbone as it was pulled over her head from the left of her, where Anton stood.
“You see what you done? Playing with your filthy sister’s life, you are. When you make mistake, we string her from limbs like witch burning at the stake. But first, we cut off ear, have it on string and you can wear it for necklace wherever you go.”
***************************************************************************
Nora walked inside the house, sitting on the single bed. A picture sitting on a shelf across the room caught her attention. Asya and a blonde man were shown standing straight shoulder to shoulder, the ice blue of their eyes matching sets, their hands flat by their sides. Nora’s mind told her it couldn’t be. Not now. Not when she’d just gotten away. Asya sat on the deck, her feet still skimming the water. Nora stood, crossed the room and knelt down, pulling her face close to the picture. She gasped, seeing the scar above the lip. Springing away from the picture, she tripped backwards over the rug and landed against the opposite wall.
A splash sounded outside and Asya darted into the room.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
Nora pointed.
“Who is that? Why are you in that picture with that man?”
“That is my brother, Anton. He was the one I was supposed to meet with in Selenginsk, but he never came.”
*****************************************************************************
Kefira was tied from her hands and feet, her body an X in the air. Her black stringy hair was tangled in the chains connected to the ceiling, her stomach dotted by fist sized burns. Nora ran to her, quickly noticing the thin wire wrapped around Kefira’s neck. Nora whispered Kefira’s name, trying to rouse her, while brushing her sister’s cheek with the backside of her knuckles. Kefira jerked her head back and the wire cut deep underneath her ear, showing the edge of her jawbone. A whimper sounded as blood coursed down her throat.
“Oh!” Nora wheezed, suppressing a scream. “What have they done to you? Oh HaShem, oh Lord please save her. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Nora ran her hands over Kefira’s head quickly and stepping back, began pulling off her own sweater.
“Nora,” Kefira sputtered, “pull the wire all the way. Please. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“What? No! I’ve come. You’re getting out of here,” Nora said, pressing the sweater tight against Kefira’s throat, tying the sleeves around her head.
“Nora. Please. Pull it.”
“No!” Nora said as she looked frantically around the room for something to cut the chains. Seeing nothing, she opened the door to the hallway, noticing again the doors lining the walls, wondering about the tortured behind them.
“Nora. It’s not your fault, it will never be your fault. Please.” Her eyes showed that same stare as the picture Nora had lived with all that time.
“Please neshama, pull.”
Nora squeezed her eyes shut; thinking of the life her sister would live, and then how they were both raised to believe that death was not a fearful thing, how it was a gift given to one at the end of life. The knot inside her squeezed from her chest and dropped into her stomach as she yanked the wire connected to her twin’s throat.
****************************************************************************
“You killed her.” Asya’s disgust was blotched on her face.
“There was nothing more that could have been done. She will be in Olam Ha-Ba, cared for in death.” Nora paused, wondering how to tell the woman the rest of the story. “After Kefira’s heart stopped beating, after all her blood was on the ground, I hid behind the furnace, waiting for someone to find her body... Anton was the one to find her.” Nora stopped again, looked outside to the snow spotted mountains, the Siberian pines standing guard on the shore. “I felt under my hand a chunk of cement loosened in the wall. When Anton turned away from where I was hiding, I leapt out and used the cement to bludgeon him so that his blood pooled on the floor as well. And then…”
“And then what?” Asya forced out, her teeth grinding together, her eyes clamped shut.
“And then… I left.”
*************************************************************
Lenora woke on the floor, wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket, her eyes watering from the fumes of the stove beside her. The room moved, a slight shift in the shape of the floor that she felt along her spine. Her eyes, the only part of her she could move, took in the creases of the dark. The room bending above her, she began to sit up, feeling the weight stringing across her ribs. Small, hyper breaths grew into gasps.
“You were thrashing in your sleep. This was the only way I could keep you from hurting yourself,” the old woman said, walking slowly towards Nora, across the dark oak of the floor. Her feet were bare, showing the intricate bands tattooed around her toes and snaking up her ankles. “I am Asya. I found you under a bridge... in Selenginsk.”
Nora tried licking her lips, her tongue pale and dry.
“Where are we?” Nora looked around, felt the floor give a shudder underneath her.
“We’re at the mouth of the Selenga River on Lake Baikal.” Asya moved forward, reaching for the fabric holding Nora to the ground, untying it with steady, callused hands.
Images from before snatched at Nora as soon as she was free. Rough, obsessive men, tightened the straps around her ankles and wrists, pulled at her arms and legs, trying to lengthen the joints. IV’s consistently stuck into her arms in the mornings before she woke, pulling the blood from her, and returning it weeks later, fully oxygenated, boosting her red blood cell count. Remembering the hours she spent staring at the picture of her sister with the pistol shoved tight to her temple caused Nora to fold in on herself, hugging her knees tight to her chest.
*************************************************************
Pointe shoes and rope was their binding of choice to keep her in their grasp, forcing her to surrender to their cruel intentions. The rope, rubbing and burning her ankles and wrists, was tightened just enough to leave scars buried in her skin, but the pointe shoes left mental scars, searing and tearing at her mind even after she took them off.
Day after day, she went through the motions, slipping the shoes on, tying the silk strands around her ankles, tight against the burns left from the night. Makar, the man with the stiff movements and sly touches crouched down, taking Nora’s right foot in his hands and massaged it gently, rolling it to the right, then pushed down, stretching her toes to the ground. The mornings created shadows on his face, right below his eyes, shadows that centered at the bridge of his nose and fingered their way to his cheekbones. The faded black and tan tiger on the man’s neck flicked its tail nervously as he spoke, the clipped tone of his voice solidifying the curdled milk in her stomach. None of the men spoke English well, the harsh syllables out of their mouths always insisting on her full attention. The only others who understood her were the girls, the others that they’d taken and never returned.
The years caught in the embrace of her captors had passed quite slowly. Every day, she gripped onto the seconds passing her by, leaving her with a life she could never truly want to live. The ballets, reminiscent of fairy tales and myths, she came to realize, were told by oppressed and sickened individuals, the number of participants thinned out from the sheer weight of the obsession.
Nora found the stone building too large for her wandering mind. She caught herself slipping down muted corridors, lined by wooden doors, in and out she went, tracing her fingers along the ridged grout lines of the walls. Those wooden doors, always hid empty rooms and aging dance equipment, costumes and props, the stages of the lonely. At night, they kept her tied, but during the day, when not in practice, for some inexplicable reason, they let her roam the hallways, doing as she pleased. Shuffling along the marble floor, she spotted a door to her right with shadows moving behind it. Softly, fingertips pressed against the carved oak of the door, she twisted the handle, expecting a gruff voice to call out, but finding instead a large room encased by windows, showing the treetops swaying in the wind. Closing the door, walking across the room, she looked out over the trees, down to the crashing waves on the shoreline below. Her breath warmed the window, causing it to fog, skewing her view. The trees twisted, the waves coursed through their gnarled roots.
Nora closed her eyes, focusing on the movement the sun gave through her eyelids. Her arms almost always followed her body on stage but there in that room, she lifted a finger up, tracing arches through the air, followed by her slender arm, then by her wiry body. Dancing alongside the writhing trees, she remembered herself in love with the movements, flitting and whirling on the stage, before they forced them from her, using her to win their battles.
***************************************************************
“Do you remember where they kept you?” Asya asked, dipping the tea bag into the water, and handing the cup to Nora.
“I was never able to see anything outside. All I remember is that room, the one with the windows, showing the expanse of the ocean. The way the building sat on the rocks, there was no way for me to see where we were.” Nora stopped. “When we would go from theatre to theatre for the shows, we would travel in windowless vans and I was allowed no interviews after the performance.” Here, she looked out the door, listening to the lake slapping the side of the boathouse. “The water below the window was nothing like this lake. I sat there for hours watching it slam against the shore, all froth and spray.”
Asya nodded.
“Yes, the lake leaves you in peace. There’s never much disturbing me out here,” Asya said. Her eyes landed on the fading bruises on Nora’s feet. “Where did you come from? Before…”
“I came from Tel-Aviv. That’s where I was born, and brought up. That’s where I began dance. I had an interview with the school of the Israel Ballet, but the night before, there were two men in my driveway. One of the men had a face that looked as if he stitched a piece of string through the left peak of his lip, up through his nostril and pulled tight.”
Asya paused, pursed her lips.
“Did you ever find out why it was you?”
“I pieced together what I could,” Nora shook her head, her eyes searching the floor, “but I still don’t understand it. Before it happened there was many Russian dancers immigrating to Tel Aviv and into the Israel Ballet. The Russian Ballet, on the outside seemed as if it was prospering, but on the inside, it was dwindling. I can’t be sure whether the dancers were leaving because of the corruption, or if that is what sparked the system to deteriorate, but it became this company of depraved and senseless men, desperate to build up their reputation once again.” Nora walked outside, onto the deck of the boat Asya had made into her home. The water was clear enough to see down to the bottom of the lake, showing the rough pocketed boulders, the Artic graylings floating past with their dorsal fins piercing and spreading from their spines.
“Why were you there, in Selenginsk?” Nora asked, taking her eyes off the fish and looking back at Asya.
“I go into that city when I need supplies, but I am never on that side. It is barren and filthy, and I was only there to see my brother, but there you were, a heap of bones with a tarp of skin thrown over you.”
A spasm hiccupped through Nora’s chest. Bringing her hand up to her mouth, she held the bile in, the sourness watering her eyes. Looking back out towards the lake, the surface rippled calmly.
“Supposedly a sea monster lives in this lake.” Asya said. “People have assumed it to be an evolved species of Sturgeon, growing itself larger and larger each generation from all the pollution dumped here. I’ve been on this lake for decades and never seen it, but if one longs to stay hidden, what’s to stop them?”
********************************************************************
The blank eyes in the picture followed Nora as she dressed, as she slept. Those eyes were a mirror of Nora’s own eyes, eyes of her twin sister, Kefira. The man she knew as Anton, the one with the disfigured lip, handed her an envelope the night they took her. They waited for her to open it, a smirk pulling the scar tighter. Kefira showed no terror, only stared straight into the camera as the man pressed the pistol snug against her temple, finger stable on the trigger.
Nora’s hand tightened on the picture, crumpling the edges.
“What have you done?” Nora lunged at Anton, gouging the top of his head, blood running through his white gold hair. His fist shot out and collided with the right side of her mouth. She landed on her back, bruising on the grimy porcelain of the bathroom floor.
“You give dance to us now. The sister has life until there is no more dance from you.” Anton said as he flicked the burning end of the cigarette onto Nora’s stomach.
*********************************************************************
Asya sat on the edge of the deck, her toes brushing the water.
“They did not kill her?”
“No. They left her alive as a weapon against me. That was the only picture they gave me though. Really, I had no idea if she was alive until they took me to where they kept her to show me what I had done.”
Asya shook her head, gripping the edge of the deck, her fingers going white.
“So she’s still out there?”
Nora’s features pinched as she looked back towards the inside of the house, focusing on the twin sized bed heaped with wool blankets and homemade down pillows.
“Where is the rest of your family?” Nora asked.
“The ones who are left are in the West, near Moscow, rotting away in the cities.” Asya smiled briefly, “But they deserve all they have. They were never fair people, always working with the Bratva, it’s a shame they’re still alive, but I hear word of their movement through the West every ten years or so.”
“Why are you here, by yourself, hiding away on this monstrous lake?”
“I felt one with the giant Sturgeon. His lineage creating him into something people abhor. I understand his need to hide himself from the world’s disapproval. He doesn’t even exist for most people.” Asya picked at the wood, quickening the erosion of her home. She looked at Nora, for the first time noticing the girl’s chipped front tooth. The black curtain of Nora’s hair rose with the wind. Her skin was pale compared to other Israeli girls Asya had seen and she wondered if it was caused by Nora’s lack of nutrition and sunshine. She couldn’t imagine someone dancing for the Russian Ballet and not being cared for properly, but Nora’s thinness went past the regular wiry muscularity of ballerinas and straight to malnourished. Could it be that she was hidden so well, no one recognized her face as she flitted around the stage?
*************************************************************************
The mask covered Nora’s face as she darted across stage, wishing she could see the faces of the people of Brisbane, the made up faces dotted across the large theatre. Wide eyes circled by plump faces took her in. Feathers played around her molded plastic mask as she executed Deboulés toward the audience, pulled out and effortlessly glissaded into a grand Jeté, her legs split and paralleled the floor. The fabric of her corset bunched around her middle, the gold flecked tutu shooting rays straight from her waist. The trumpets blared and the drums vibrated through the stage.
Coming out of her arabesque, Nora stumbled, a slight misstep. As her breath caught in her throat, she looked over at Anton, seeing the blank fury on his face. His blue eyes pierced her sharply throughout the remainder of the performance, making her dizzy from her pirouettes, and shaky while bringing her knee up next to her shoulder, her toe pointing to the ceiling for her grand battements.
Nora bourreed off stage, her legs pressed together, toes tapping the ground rapidly. Anton snatched at her, one hand clutching onto her hipbone, his other yanking her hair at the roots, pulling her head back, his lips brushing against her ear.
“Who do think you are? No dance from you, there is no life for dirty sooka sister.”
*************************************************************************
Kefira’s amber tinted eyes creased and slanted upwards, following her cheekbones as she smiled.
“See, the thing about the men here, neshama, is that they are quite useless. A series of ezeh bassas, such disappointments.” Kefira said lightly and laughed, a high trilling thing, snatching at people’s attention. “Their jokes, they fall. Their wealth keeps them cheap and well, their schmucks, well, if you’ve gotten that far, you might as well give up all your dignity and get impregnated by the fool,” Kefira dropped her voice to a whisper, leaning in close to Nora, “popping out little schmucks every year ‘til you die.”
Nora rolled her eyes, but still couldn’t help, but grin.
“No one says I will meet a man at university. They will all be dancers anyway, and a dancer as a husband? You would never allow me to live that down, would you?
Kefira giggled.
“No. Of course I wouldn’t. I would write of it in all the family’s Rosh Hashanah cards, and maybe make a tradition of buying a different color tutu for him every year.” Kefira said, slyly pinching at Nora’s arm.
**************************************************************************
Anton swung the door open, the swollen wood scraping the dirt across the floor. The burlap sack gave Nora a checkered view of the room before her. A lone light bulb dangled from the rafters of the ceiling. The sulfurous smell permeated through the pores of the bag, Nora’s eyes watering until she was unable to make out the form huddled on the far wall. The whimper traced its way through the room and Nora followed the sound with a nodding of her head until the moisture in her eyes gathered on her eyelashes, clumping them together, giving her a narrowed vision of a clustered mass of black hair, vibrating in front of her.
The sack scraped along her cheekbone as it was pulled over her head from the left of her, where Anton stood.
“You see what you done? Playing with your filthy sister’s life, you are. When you make mistake, we string her from limbs like witch burning at the stake. But first, we cut off ear, have it on string and you can wear it for necklace wherever you go.”
***************************************************************************
Nora walked inside the house, sitting on the single bed. A picture sitting on a shelf across the room caught her attention. Asya and a blonde man were shown standing straight shoulder to shoulder, the ice blue of their eyes matching sets, their hands flat by their sides. Nora’s mind told her it couldn’t be. Not now. Not when she’d just gotten away. Asya sat on the deck, her feet still skimming the water. Nora stood, crossed the room and knelt down, pulling her face close to the picture. She gasped, seeing the scar above the lip. Springing away from the picture, she tripped backwards over the rug and landed against the opposite wall.
A splash sounded outside and Asya darted into the room.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
Nora pointed.
“Who is that? Why are you in that picture with that man?”
“That is my brother, Anton. He was the one I was supposed to meet with in Selenginsk, but he never came.”
*****************************************************************************
Kefira was tied from her hands and feet, her body an X in the air. Her black stringy hair was tangled in the chains connected to the ceiling, her stomach dotted by fist sized burns. Nora ran to her, quickly noticing the thin wire wrapped around Kefira’s neck. Nora whispered Kefira’s name, trying to rouse her, while brushing her sister’s cheek with the backside of her knuckles. Kefira jerked her head back and the wire cut deep underneath her ear, showing the edge of her jawbone. A whimper sounded as blood coursed down her throat.
“Oh!” Nora wheezed, suppressing a scream. “What have they done to you? Oh HaShem, oh Lord please save her. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Nora ran her hands over Kefira’s head quickly and stepping back, began pulling off her own sweater.
“Nora,” Kefira sputtered, “pull the wire all the way. Please. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“What? No! I’ve come. You’re getting out of here,” Nora said, pressing the sweater tight against Kefira’s throat, tying the sleeves around her head.
“Nora. Please. Pull it.”
“No!” Nora said as she looked frantically around the room for something to cut the chains. Seeing nothing, she opened the door to the hallway, noticing again the doors lining the walls, wondering about the tortured behind them.
“Nora. It’s not your fault, it will never be your fault. Please.” Her eyes showed that same stare as the picture Nora had lived with all that time.
“Please neshama, pull.”
Nora squeezed her eyes shut; thinking of the life her sister would live, and then how they were both raised to believe that death was not a fearful thing, how it was a gift given to one at the end of life. The knot inside her squeezed from her chest and dropped into her stomach as she yanked the wire connected to her twin’s throat.
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“You killed her.” Asya’s disgust was blotched on her face.
“There was nothing more that could have been done. She will be in Olam Ha-Ba, cared for in death.” Nora paused, wondering how to tell the woman the rest of the story. “After Kefira’s heart stopped beating, after all her blood was on the ground, I hid behind the furnace, waiting for someone to find her body... Anton was the one to find her.” Nora stopped again, looked outside to the snow spotted mountains, the Siberian pines standing guard on the shore. “I felt under my hand a chunk of cement loosened in the wall. When Anton turned away from where I was hiding, I leapt out and used the cement to bludgeon him so that his blood pooled on the floor as well. And then…”
“And then what?” Asya forced out, her teeth grinding together, her eyes clamped shut.
“And then… I left.”