My Sergei-A Love Story

During this tour, I always sat with Sergei on the bus. He read quite a lot, while I looked out the window or did needlepoint. It was new for me to spend time with him off the ice. He would sometimes come to my room and ask me to go for a walk, or to go with him for dinner. We didn’t have much money, so it was just to McDonald’s or maybe a pizza place. Sasha Fadeev was also on this tour, but Sergei still went with me.
       
Maybe he was just taking care of me. I didn’t know. He always helped me with my luggage and offered me a hand when I was stepping off the bus. But this was just the way he was. He also offered his hand to the next lady stepping off the bus. He was a gentleman, and I think maybe he learned this from watching Leonovich, who was the same way. Leonovich had always treated his partner, Marina Pestova, with respect. He believed that how partners got along with each other was as important as how they looked in practice. If everything was all right off the ice, everything would be all right on the ice, too. Leonovich, I think, was too kind to be a coach.
       
When we were in Los Angeles, Sergei and I went to Disneyland with Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova, who were married. It was just the four of us, and Sergei was very happy that day, in such a good mood, always laughing and being funny. He bought me some ice cream. A couple of times he hugged me after a ride, or put his arm around me when we were standing in line. He had never done this before, and it made me excited. This was a wonderful day for me.
       
The tour went to twenty-five cities and lasted a month. So many new experiences. In New York Tom Collins got us tickets for [I]Phantom of the Opera[/I]I didn’t think much about these little attentions. At least I don’t remember reading too much into them. A couple of times Sergei and I went to the movies, and we held hands during the show. I don’t know why that was such a big deal, since we held hands all the times on the ice. I remember how hard my heart was beating when he reached over and took my hand. Afterward I didn’t say anything. I just smiled at him. I never asked why he was holding my hand. All I knew was that it felt great.
       
I figured it was only because he was excited to be on this tour and was feeling so good that he did it. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. I assumed when we returned to Moscow, he’d go back to being the same way he’d been before.
, and beforehand we ate dinner at Sardi’s, which had all the pictures of celebrities on the wall. Another time Sergei and I danced together at a place with a jukebox, but not just the two of us. There were four or five of us dancing in a group. Sometimes, after we had skated and were waiting to go out for the finale, Sergei would hug me in the hallway, but never if someone was watching.

I didn’t think much about these little attentions. At least I don’t remember reading too much into them. A couple of times Sergei and I went to the movies, and we held hands during the show. I don’t know why that was such a big deal, since we held hands all the times on the ice. I remember how hard my heart was beating when he reached over and took my hand. Afterward I didn’t say anything. I just smiled at him. I never asked why he was holding my hand. All I knew was that it felt great.
       
I figured it was only because he was excited to be on this tour and was feeling so good that he did it. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. I assumed when we returned to Moscow, he’d go back to being the same way he’d been before.

Yet things changed after that tour. My mother, who adored Sergei, began to invite him to the house all the time. She loved how he played with our Great Dane, Veld. It was now easier for me to give him things, and even flirt with him a little bit if he was in the mood for it. It wasn’t like I was planning anything or had any great designs to capture his affections. Sergei and I never planned anything, ever, more than two days ahead of time. Especially about our relationship.
       
American women, I think, plan much more than Russian women. At least the Russian women who grew up in the seventies and eighties, before the breakup of the Soviet Union. American women have much more to plan for. Not only must they try to find a life partner who’s a doctor or a lawyer or businessman, but he must be good looking, too.
       
In Russia, everyone was more or less on the same level. There was very little difference between being rich and poor. So if you found someone you liked, or loved, the next question was only when the marriage would be. Not whether he could make a good life for you or was a suitable match for you. There was no need for elaborate planning. Today, of course, it is different, and Russian women know how to look for a good businessman with money to marry the same as Americans do. But I never had such notions in my head.

[center][B]A Holiday Wish[/B][/center]

For training purposes, it was now an Olympic year. I was sixteen, Sergei was twenty; and everything became focused on that single goal.
       
Our preparations began in June 1987, when we went to Sukhumi in Soviet Georgia for twenty days, which is where Marina started to create two new Olympic programs for us. Our support staff was larger than it had ever been. We had a special conditioning coach to oversee our running and lifting. We had a team of doctors who checked our weight every day and tested our blood several times a week by pricking our fingers. Heaven knows what they were looking for. We ate better food. The figure skating federation gave us caviar every day, which was high in protein and low in fat.
       
We’d begin each day with a morning workout before breakfast. We ran and lifted before lunch. In the afternoon we worked with Marina. Then we had another workout at 5:00 P.M., before dinner.
       
After a week at home, in July we went to a place higher in the mountains, Sachkadzor, in Armenia, so we could train at altitude. I always liked these training camps, even though we worked hard. It was pretty in the mountains, and on our days off we had a chance to go hiking or take picnics. We were there with a lot of different athletes—boxers and gymnasts and handball players—and in the hallway of the dormitory there was a big calendar that listed how many days were left before the Olympics, summer and winter.
       
It was a much more intense atmosphere than usual. All the skaters were there, not just those from the army club, and the coaches were always timing our runs. I was never any good at these races. My times were abysmal. Zhuk was there, too, but fortunately not as our coach. He still sometimes worked with us in an overseeing capacity, though, and one day I twisted my ankle badly when he had us practicing the quadruple split twist off the ice after I was already tired.
       
I told Sergei that anytime he wanted tea or coffee after dinner to come to my room, because I had an electric kettle. Or if he wanted to eat something sweet. He didn’t come often, but a few times he did, more to drink tea or eat a sweet than to see me. But it was a good feeling to be able to share these moments with him.
       
If I went to the market to get fruits, I was always sure to get something for him, too. Sergei was too lazy to go to the market, but sometimes he bought me ice cream in the afternoon, which was wonderful for me. We never went alone, however. Sergei always had older friends around him, like Sasha Fadeev. But it made me happy to be included.

[此贴子已经被作者于2003-9-10 17:19:51编辑过]

Sasha was short, very muscular, with strong legs and a strong upper body. His eyes were tiny; his lips were tiny; his hands were tiny. Everything about him was tiny. But he was very quick when he skated, and he used to jump like a rubber ball. He was very, very talented, but in my opinion he never fully realized his talent.
       
Off the ice, however, everything about Sasha was unbelievably slow and relaxed. If you asked him the time, you had to ask him three times.
       
“Sasha, do you have the time?”
       
“Huh?”
       
“Do you know what time it is?”
       
“Hmm?”
       
“What time is it?”
       
Then he would tell you. When you talked to him, he would be thinking about the last subject when you had moved onto the next one. He was also stubborn and independent. If everyone went into a restaurant and ordered one type of pizza, Sasha would be sure to order another type. He was proud to be different.
       
Yet he was always very, very kind. Sasha used to catch me furrowing my brow when I was listening to him or Sergei. I was so little that I looked up to everyone, and as I did this my brow became furrowed. He’d use his fingers to smooth the wrinkles from my forehead. Everyone did this to me. It got to be quite embarrassing.

The next training camp we went to was in Dnepropetrovsk, in the Ukraine, where we trained on the rink where Oksana Baiul learned to skate. That’s where, for the first time, we skated our Olympic programs. Because it was an Olympic year, the entire federation watched us to give their approval. I liked the free program Marina had made for us immediately, which was to a medley of music by Chopin and Mendelssohn. Marina told us we were supposed to be fresh and springlike, to skate as if we were looking at the blue sky from beneath apple blossoms. That’s why our costumes were sky blue, with sprigs of white flowers sewn over the shoulders.
       
The short program was from the opera Carmen: “The March of the Toreadors.” Many of the members of the federation thought it was too serious for us, that the music should be more romantic. Marina, ever the iconoclast, told us not to worry, it would be fine. Still, I couldn’t help but listen to the comments, and, like a good Gemini, I worried about this program one day and was confident about it the next. We changed the beginning many times before the Olympics, but kept the music. The program required us to act the part of toreadors marching before a bullfight, displaying all the beauty, grace, and pageantry of that passionate event.
       
We bypassed the early competitions held in North America—Skate America and Skate Canada—so the team doctors could monitor our health as closely as possible. The Soviet Union’s sports machine left very little to chance. That was okay. The goal, we knew, was the Olympics; and as the Games approached, everything became a little more stressful, a little more intense.
       
In mid-November we won an event called the Moscow News. Afterward there was an exhibition, and while practicing for this exhibition, Sergei caught his blade in a soft rut in the ice. While holding me aloft in a star lift, with my hands and legs fully extended outward, Sergei dropped me. The first part of my body to hit the ice was my forehead.
       
I didn’t feel any pain at first, then my entire head felt like it was splitting apart. Someone picked me up, I think it was Leonovich, and then I blacked out. I came to in the first-aid room, and I was driven to the hospital.
       
I ended up staying for six days. I’d suffered quite a serious concussion. I lay there worrying about missing practice and the Olympics, and I was mad at Sergei because I thought this fall was his mistake. Then there was a knock on the door, and it was Sergei.

Once Maria and I were older, though we also helped in this wonderful project, and on the thirtieth the family decorated both the tree and the apartment. On the thirty-first my mother and grandmother would start to cook the Christmas meal, maybe fish, maybe duck. It was something different every year. I liked to help them cook. We’d make cold cuts and salads and cut up exotic fruits that had been saved especially for Christmas.
       
We always had a special bag under the tree, which we called the Santa Claus bag. My grandmother sewed this bag, which was red and white with a big white ribbon on top. It was beautiful. For a couple of days before New Year’s we’d slip presents into the bad until it was huge. No one was supposed to see you putting the gifts in, so it would look like the bag was growing, growing, growing. Then at midnight, after drinking champagne and wishing each other happy Christmas, happy New Year, we’d open the presents.
       
It was actually my parents’ idea to invite Sergei. I told them no, he wouldn’t come; he had his own friends. But I asked him anyway. He said he’d try to come, but it was still a surprise for me when he showed up. I thought maybe he’d sit with us for a while and then leave, but he ended up spending the whole night with us.
       
He was a little shy at first, because it was his first time with our family like this. It was just Sergei, me, my father, mother, sister, and grandparents. We had a lot of candles around, and everything was beautiful, because Christmas is the most beautiful holiday all over the world. For a gift I gave Sergei a needlepoint picture I’d done of a clown with a wide smile painted on, and little tears coming down his face, sitting on a bench feeding the birds. He was very happy and surprised. This needlepoint is still hanging in his mother’s apartment. But he protested at first, saying, “No, I don’t need a gift.” Probably because he didn’t have anything for me.
       
I don’t know where my mother got this idea, but she told us that at twelve o’clock exactly she was going to take an old plate and drop it on the floor, so it would break into little pieces. Then, before the twelfth toll of the clock, everyone had to grab a piece and dash off to hide it somewhere in the apartment and make a wish. If someone were to find this broken piece during the year, they weren’t supposed to touch it, or the wish wouldn’t come true. Even if one of us was cleaning the apartment, we had to leave the piece alone. So we had to hide them very well.
       
It was the first time my family did this. My mother dropped the plate at the first stroke of midnight, and we all scrambled to grab a piece and ran away. I don’t remember where I hid my piece, but I do remember what I wished. I wished I would skate well in the Olympics. And I guess it came true.
       
That year the European Championships were held in Prague. I still wasn’t in very good condition. Since my fall, I’d lost some weight and strength, and I was still having headaches. I wasn’t eating well, for whatever reason, and was nervous about everything. Sergei and I didn’t skate our best, but we won anyway. I missed something—a jump or a throw, I don’t remember—and I was so upset, as if I’d done something terrible. Sergei said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the Olympic Games yet. We’ll be ready in time.”
       
But at that championship it became clearer than ever to me that Sergei felt more responsible for me on the ice. I liked it very much. I’d always been a little nervous about whether he’d pay enough attention to training, but now that I wasn’t as strong as I should have been, Sergei had become stronger, more secure, more serious. I felt that despite my weakness, Sergei would take care of me. During the Europeans we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. Then, after we had won, we danced together at the banquet. It was a fast dance, but it was the first time I remember just the two of us dancing. Sergei never really liked to dance.

Then we went to Navagorsk for the final preparations before Calgary. The whole Winter Olympic tea, was there, and the doctors checked our blood pressure and weight every day. I was down to eighty-four pounds, having started the season weighing ninety. I felt okay, but I was very stressed out and tired. I couldn’t relax or eat properly. I think because all season everyone was so serious about the Olympics, because we kept being tested by the doctors, because the coaches kept telling us we had to be in the best shape of our life, I just assumed I should lose weight. The Olympics, I believe, are a year-long celebration of the nerves, and I was too young to understand what it was doing to my body.
       
I remember having lots of meetings at Navagorsk where team officials went through the schedule with us many times, and talked about the spirit of the Olympic Games. They told us about Canada, how we had to be a team, to help each other, be more friendly with each other, take care of our health—all this stuff. I don’t think anyone was listening. I didn’t like it, because they were taking up time when we could have been resting.
       
Then we were given our Olympic uniforms. I got boots for the opening ceremonies, but they weren’t my size, so I saved them for my mom. This happened to me all the time. The skirt and jacket they gave me to wear were huge, so huge that not even my grandmother could tailor them to fit me. I looked terrible in them. I was always so jealous of the Canadian and American teams, because they always had sizes that fit even the tiny girls. Meanwhile I was wearing these big ugly things that made me look like a bag lady.
       
As the day of departure neared, everyone began giving me advice. They were all so worried about me because I was so young and tiny. It was driving me crazy. “Did you ever read this book?” someone I barely knew would ask. “Maybe you should read this book.” It got so crazy that after all the waiting, all the hard work and training, when the day finally came to leave for the Olympic Games I didn’t want to go. I missed my mother so much. We’d been training in one facility after another, and going from one competition to the next, and I felt almost like I’d been taken from my family against my will. It really surprised me, but all I wanted was to stay at home with my mom.

我最近才找到这个网站,还在游览各条消息,才看到这里,知道你们都没有原版 My Seigei.

你们需要我帮你们在美国买英文版,然后邮寄给你们吗?  我可以帮这个忙,我也是超级G&G迷呢,愿意帮帮大家.请版主们定夺.现在出版的简印本好像才5到6美元一本.我可以打听一下价钱,如果你们需要的话.

Alexeifan

楼主，辛苦了。我买到了一本中文版的，一直很想看到英文版的。
好久没更新了，热烈期待ing...

Calgary
       
On January 27, 1988, we flew to Montreal, spent the night, then took a morning flight to Calgary. Sergei held my hand the entire plane ride. It’s strange, but it didn’t mean anything to me. It was just nice, and I was a little proud to have his hand on mine. But I was so focused on myself, so consumed with the thought of the Olympics, that it didn’t say anything to me about his feelings. I should have been in heaven, but I was quiet and withdrawn, thinking only of our training. Maybe that’s why everyone was so worried about me and always giving me advice.

After picking up our credentials, we drove to the nearby town of Okotoks. It was more than two weeks before the opening ceremonies, but our coaches wanted us there early to get accustomed to the time change. It was a quiet town, and we stayed at the Okotoks Inn, a cute, small hotel. It was very cold, but there wasn’t a lot of snow. Townspeople came to our practices every day, which presented some problems. It’s tough to have people clapping when you’re trying to work on an element. Practice isn’t supposed to be a performance. You’re concentrating, then another skater makes a jump and suddenly there’s a burst of applause. I found it very distracting. But the people were certainly nice, and the first day one of the spectators gave me a doll.

Sergei’s twenty-first birthday was on February 4, and they presented him with an ice-cream cake after the morning practice. Elena Valova gave him a card that showed a stork bringing something in a blanket, and when you opened the card you saw it was a bottle of liquor. He could now legally drink. For luck, Sergei wore a gold chain around his neck with a horseshoe charm, and I gave him a pendant with the Calgary Olympic symbol on it to wear on this chain. I was nervous about giving it to him, and afterward everyone teased him: Whooo, Katia gave something to Sergei. But it made me happy when he wore it.

The ice dancers arrived in Okotoks a week after we had, and Tatiana Tarasova, who coached the team of Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin and would one day coach Sergei and me, brought me some gifts from my parents: chocolates, a letter, and a picture of them with my sister, Maria. And caviar. When athletes from the Soviet Union traveled, we always carried extra caviar, and it was invaluable when bartering for Levi’s, music tapes, or cash. But in Calgary we didn’t have any caviar to trade, because when the team officials gave it to us, they opened it. They wanted us to eat it for the protein.

We moved into the Olympic Village on February 8, which was beautiful and very well laid out. Each time w went in we had to go through security, and they checked our bags carefully, which took a long time. It took forever if we were on a bus. Also, all the women athletes had to go through sex control, to make sure we were really women. They took a little scraping from the inside of your cheek, examined it in a lab, then gave you a card that said you had passed.

Sergei got a bad stomach flu and a fever the day we moved into the Village, and he became so ill that he couldn’t skate for two days. The speed skating doctor put him in his own room to tend to him. It was scary for me. This doctor, whose name was Viktor Anikanov, wouldn’t let Sergei eat anything for two days. Sergei was so pale that I was worried he wouldn’t be able to compete. But by the third day he’d recovered and was fine.

About the only thing I was eating was cheesecake. The cheesecake they served in the athletes’ cafeteria was the best I’d ever tasted, and every day that was my meal. I ate salad, too, and maybe yoghurts and fruit. But no meat. Nobody told me not to eat meat, but I’d decided on my own that I was not going to eat it. In fact, everyone was telling me to eat this and this and that too, worried that I was too thin, and it was driving me crazy.

Because the boys were living on a different floor from the girl skaters, I didn’t see Sergei as much as usual. I was rooming with Anna Kondrashova. Once in a while I’d bump into

Someone was standing outside with a bag of fur hats that they wanted to give to all the girls. Because I was the only one they could find, they gave the hats to me. They asked me to pass them out. We were leaving the next day, so I started going around the dorm looking for people, but everyone was out. I had all these hats, and I felt so alone.

For most people, the Olympics were a place to make new friends. Anna Kondrashova, for example, found her husband at the Calgary Games. She fell in love with an athlete from Estonia who competed in Nordic combined. It’s why she wasn’t in our room very often. Every night she would go out, go walking, so she might meet someone and have a good time. But she was twenty-three.

Sergei, too, made lots of friends at Calgary. But I was too shy. Besides, who would I go make friends with? Hockey players? It’s unimaginable. Maybe if I were to have found someone sixteen years old like me, we could have found something fun to do. But I was too timid to even go out of my room, for fear that people would ask me what I was doing or where I was going. I wouldn’t have been able to answer them. I enjoyed the actual skating, and was proud of what we accomplished, but it was a long and lonely time for me.

We flew home on a special plane that made four stops along the way and took twenty-one hours. We’d land, get out, go to duty free, buy some more drinks, then load up again. The whole plane went crazy, absolutely crazy. I was probably the only person, including the pilot, who didn’t drink anything during the trip. It was February 29, a leap year, and Raisa Smetaniana, the medal-winning cross-country skier, had her birthday on that day, so everyone celebrated the whole way home. We were totally exhausted when we arrived back in Moscow, and a lot of people met us at the airport, bringing us flowers and making speeches.

When I showed my Olympic gold medal to my father, he did the same as he did with all my medals. He put it in a huge glass goblet and filled it with champagne. Then he’d pass this goblet around for everyone to drink from. That’s why all the ribbons from my medals are stained.

My father was very proud of me. Once Sergei and I started winning championships, he eased off his criticisms, though he couldn’t stop himself from saying something about our costumes every time. “Maybe you shouldn’t use this color,” he would comment. I didn’t take him so seriously anymore. I had my coaches, my choreographer, and my Sergei who would tell me whether something looked good or not. But because my father was an artistic person, he felt he had to say something. He’ll always have his opinion, and I’ve now learned to accept this.

A Time of Change

        To celebrate the gold medal, my parents took us to visit Yegor Guba, a friend who raised minks and furriers. He lived on the Volga River, two and a half hours north of Moscow by car, and many Russian figure skaters knew him. He was friendly and generous with his time, and in the summer he would take us swimming and water skiing in the bay of the river. If we wanted to catch fish, he would set out traps for them to swim into—pike and carp, very silvery and shiny, sometimes perch. It wasn’t sportfishing. It was like going to the supermarket, because Yegor knew where all the fish lived.

        We spent four or five days at Yegor’s, snowmobiling, taking saunas, resting, and talking and eating. Sergei came, too, and I at last felt we had celebrated our gold medal together. Then we had to return to Moscow and begin training again for the World Championships, which were held that year in Budapest. It was weird. My feeling was that we had done something so special, and now I was drained emotionally, and I couldn’t believe we had to go back on the ice again.

        The Olympic year is a very trying period, and most athletes have problems afterward, sometimes for as long as a year or two. It just knocks you off track. I came down with the flu as soon as I got to Budapest, and they were giving me pills and feeding me warm milk. When the time came to skate at the Worlds, I fell on the triple salchow throw during the free program. I couldn’t hold the landing. Elena Valova and Oleg Vassiliev took advantage of the mistake and skated very, very well to win for the third time, which was nice for the, because it was the last time they were competing before retiring from amateur competition. Elena was so happy, crying and smiling at the same time. She was a very strong-willed person, always having to tape her leg before she skated, always competing in pain. Even though I was upset at my mistake, I could appreciate their joy.

        The other thing I remember about that competition was the final girls’ practice before the free program. Debi Thomas and Katarina Witt were skating to the same music, Carmen, and Katarina, coming off her Olympic triumph, was in unbelievable shape. She felt so relaxed in practice that she brought a camera onto the ice with her and had somebody take her picture in her bodysuit. Then she did something that shocked me.

        When Debi started to play her music, Katarina began skating to it. She was doing her movements from her program to Debi’s music, and everyone watched only Katarina. The judges, the other skaters, the coaches. Debi didn’t know what to do. Katarina had this air about her that said, I’m in the mood to skate right now, and I don’t care what anyone thinks. She was doing her triple loop, even though she didn’t have it in her program. Of course it’s not right to act this wat, and I felt sorry for Debi. But this, after all, is sport, and Katarina has a champion’s mentality. She knows how to win, and in my opinion, she won the gold medal right there at that practice.

        In order to ease the disappointment of losing the World Championships for the first time in three years, I decided to buy myself something nice to wear for the banquet. I don’t know what got into me, but I bought a miniskirt, one with a flared hem that was very much in style, and a blouse to match.

        I was very, very shy about wearing this outfit to the banquet. But I did it, and I was proud of myself. Sergei saw me and just said “Wow.” That helped. I began to understand that in order to get attention, I had to wear something nice, maybe even something a little sexy. Andrei Bukin hung around me all the time at the banquet, and so did Christopher Bowman. Lots of boys did, in fact. Sergei didn’t say anything, but it was clear to me that he didn’t appreciate it when other boys have me attention, just as I didn’t appreciate it when other girls were around him. If he would go to another girl to talk or to dance—and it was obvious he was popular with the girls—I would also go to another boy.

        After the World

In Love

        I didn’t eat properly in the fall of 1988. I suppose I was trying to lose some of the weight I’d put on as my body was maturing. My guess is I wasn’t getting enough calcium in my diet, but whatever the reason, I suffered a stress fracture in my right foot, which was diagnosed in November.

        My father had driven me to the hospital, and he wouldn’t talk to me the whole way home. I was crying, very upset. My foot was already in a cast, and I remember thinking that I shouldn’t have said anything about it, that I should have just kept skating with the pain, which was endurable. That’s the way my father made me feel. The cast would stay on for a month, then it would be another four weeks before I could get on the ice. It put the entire season in jeopardy, but this time off the ice ended up being a very important period of my life. If I had been healthy, I wonder if things would have turned out as they did.

        I began studying English two days a week with a tutor. I had forgotten everything I’d learned in school, and even had to memorize the letters again. But this was the international language, and I knew it was something I had to do. With my injury, I now had the time. My mother had two grammar books she had saved from when she’d studied English in school, and they helped me a great deal. I had also made a friend in California, a man named Terry Foley, who had sent me a pair of gold earrings after we won the gold medal. He was an engineer with McDonnell Douglas, and during the summer he had come and visited us in Moscow with his three daughters. I wrote him letters a couple of times a month in English, and he would send back my letters with corrections. This, too, helped me to learn.

        Sergei either visited or called me every day. Sometimes he came over to dinner, and once I made him a cake. I began to think of myself as someone special in his eyes. My cast came off in mid-December, but the foot was still too painful and weak for skating. Marina told me that ballet exercises were good for rehabilitation, and I went to Navagorsk to work with her on them. I also lifted weights, swam, and practiced lifts with Sergei. He, of course, was also skating and used to run through the new program Marina had created for us by himself.

        I went down to the rink to watch him one day in late December. It made my heart ache to have to stand on the side while Sergei skated through our program without me, and silly as it sounds, I worried every day that he might suddenly decide he was not going to wait for me to get healthy and would choose a new partner.

        “You look so sad, Katuuh,” he said to me, skating over. “So, you’d like to skate?”

        “Of course I’m sad. Serioque, you’re jumping so well, and when I finally get on skates, I won’t be able to jump even two inches off the ice.”

        He smiled his wonderful, warming smile. “Come on. I’ll give you a little ride.” And with that he lifted me in his arms and skated me all through our program. It was like flying, and my heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it. It was better than being well.

        We invited Sergei to join us again for New Year’s, which we were spending this year up at the Volga River home of Yugor Guba. Sergei said he didn’t know whether he would come or not. I bought him a bottle of grapefruit liqueur for Christmas. I was so shy, and I thought I’d get him a good bottle of liqueur. It was called Paradise, and came in a green bottle with birds on the label. I found out later this was really the kind of gift you’d give a girl, since it was a sweet liqueur with only 17 percent alcohol. But I didn’t know. I was just excited to do it.

        On the morning of the thirty-first, my parents drove to Navagorsk to get me, but Sergei said he was going to celebrate New Year’s with Alexander Fadeev instead. So I was quite upset. I wouldn’t show him my tears, though, and gave him my little gift and kissed him on the cheek. I could tell he was happy I did it.

        We arrived at Yegor’s in the middle of the afternoon, and, still upset,