I was perplexed. After fifty years in practice I thought I had seen everything, but I had never before had a new patient enter my office offering me a photograph of herself in the bloom of youth. And I was even more unnerved when this patient, Natasha, a portly Russian woman of seventy or so, stared as intently at me as I stared at the photograph of a beautiful ballerina in arabesque pose, balanced majestically on one toe and stretching both arms gracefully upward. I turned my glance back to Natasha, who, though no longer slender, had coasted to her seat with a dancer\u2019s grace. She must have sensed I was trying to locate the young dancer in her, for she raised her chin and turned her head just a bit to offer me a clear profile. Natasha\u2019s facial features had been coarsened, perhaps by too many Russian winters and too much alcohol. Still, she was an attractive woman, though not as beautiful as before, I thought, as I glanced once again at the photograph of the young Natasha, a marvel of elegance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas I not lovely?\u201d she coyly asked. When I nodded, she continued. \u201cI was a prima ballerina at La Scala.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you always think of yourself in the past tense?\u201d<\/p>\n
She drew herself back. \u201cWhat a rude question, Dr. Yalom. Obviously you\u2019ve taken the bad manners course that is required for all therapists. But,\u201d she paused to consider the matter, \u201cperhaps it is so. Perhaps you are right. But what is strange in the case of Natalya the ballerina is that I was finished as a dancer before I was thirty\u2014forty years ago\u2014and I\u2019ve been happier, ever so much happier, since I stopped dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou stopped dancing forty years ago and yet here, today, you enter my office offering me this picture of you as a young dancer. Surely you must feel that I would be uninterested in the Natasha of today?\u201d She blinked two or three times and then looked about for a minute, inspecting the d\u00e9cor of my office.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a dream about you last night,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I close my eyes, I can still see it. I was coming to see you and entered a room. It wasn\u2019t like this office. Perhaps it was your home, and there were a lot of people there, perhaps your wife and family, and I was carrying a big canvas bag full of rifles and cleaning equipment for them. I could see you surrounded by people in one corner, and I knew it was you from the picture on the cover of your Schopenhauer novel. I couldn\u2019t make my way to you or even catch your eye. There was more, but that\u2019s all I recall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, and do you see any link between your dream and your offering me this photograph?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRifles mean penises. I know that from a long psychoanalysis. My analyst told me I used the penis as a weapon. When I had an argument with my boyfriend, Sergei, the lead dancer in the company and, later, my husband, I would go out, get drunk, find a penis, any penis\u2014the particular owner was incidental\u2014and have sex in order to wound Sergei and make me feel better. It always worked. But briefly. Very briefly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the link between the dream and the photograph?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same question? You persist? Perhaps you\u2019re insinuating that I am using this picture of my young self to interest you in me sexually? Not only is this insulting, but it makes no sense whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her grand entrance holding the photograph was loaded with meaning. Of that I had no doubt, but I let it go for the moment and got down to business in a more direct fashion. \u201cPlease, let\u2019s now consider your reasons for contacting me. From your email I know you will be in San Francisco for only a short time and that it was extraordinarily urgent I meet with you today and tomorrow because you felt you were \u2018lost outside of your life and couldn\u2019t find your way back.\u2019 Please tell me about that. You wrote that it was a matter of life and death.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, that\u2019s what it feels like. It\u2019s very hard to describe, but something serious is happening to me. I\u2019ve come to visit California with my husband, Pavel, and we\u2019ve done what we\u2019ve always done on such visits. He met with some important clients; we\u2019ve seen our Russian friends, driven to Napa Valley, gone to the San Francisco opera, and dined at fine restaurants. But somehow this time it\u2019s not the same. How to put it? The Russian word is ostrannaya. I\u2019m not truly here. Nothing that happens sinks in. I have insulation around me; I feel it is not mehere, not me experiencing these things. I\u2019m anxious, very distracted. And not sleeping well. I wish my English was better to describe things. Once I lived in the US for four years and took many lessons, but my English still feels clumsy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour English so far is excellent, and you\u2019re doing a good job describing how you feel. Tell me, how do you explain it? What do you think is happening to you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m bewildered. I mentioned I needed a four-year psychoanalysis long ago, when I was in terrible crisis. But even then I did not have this feeling. And since then life has been good. Until now I\u2019ve been completely well for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis state of not being in your life. Let\u2019s try to trace it back. When do you think this feeling began? How long ago?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say. It\u2019s such an odd feeling and a vague feeling that it\u2019s hard to pinpoint it. I know we\u2019ve been in California for about three days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour email to me was written a week ago; that was before you came to California. Where were you at that time?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spent a week in New York, then a few days in Washington, and then flew here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything unsettling happen in New York or Washington?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing. Just the usual jet lag. Pavel had several business meetings, and I was alone to explore. Usually I love exploring cities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this time? Tell me exactly what you did while he was working.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn New York, I walked. I . . . how do you say it in English? . . . looked at people? People watched?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, people watched.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I people watched, and I shopped and spent days visiting the Met museum. Oh yes, I am certain I felt good in New York because I remember that, on one beautiful sunny day, Pavel and I took a boat trip excursion around Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and I remember we both felt so wonderful. So it was after New York that I started going downhill.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTry to recall the trip to Washington. What did you do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI did what I always do. I followed my usual pattern. I visited Smithsonian museums every day: the Air and Space, Natural History, American History, and, oh yes, yes! There was one strong event when I visited the National Gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened? Try to describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so excited when I saw a huge outside banner announcing an exhibition on the history of ballet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, and what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as I saw that banner, I rushed inside the gallery, so excited that I pushed and forced my way to the front of the line. I was looking for something. I believe I was looking for Sergei.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSergei? You mean your first husband?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, my first husband. This won\u2019t really make sense to you unless I tell you some things about my life. May I present some of my highlights? I\u2019ve been rehearsing a speech for days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concerned that she was about to go on stage and that her presentation might use up all our time, I responded, \u201cYes, a brief summary would be helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo start, you must know I absolutely lacked mothering and my lifelong feeling of lack of mothering was the central focus of my analysis. I was born in Odessa, and my parents separated before I was born. I never knew my father, and my mother never spoke of him. My mother hardly spoke of anything. Poor woman, she was always ill and died from cancer just before I was ten. I remember at my tenth birthday party . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
After my mother died, her twin sister, Aunt Olga, took me to St. Petersburg and raised me. Now Aunt Olga was a kind person, and she was always good to me, but she had to support herself\u2014she was unmarried\u2014and she worked hard and had little time for me. She was a very good violinist and traveled with the symphony orchestra much of the year. She knew I was a good dancer, and about a year after I arrived, she arranged for auditions, where I performed well enough for her to deposit me in the Vaganova Ballet Academy, where I spent the next eight years. I became such a good dancer that, at the age of eighteen, I received an offer from the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater, where I danced for a few years. That was where I met Sergei, one of the great dancers and egotists and philanderers of our time and who is also the great love of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou use the present tense? Still the great love of your life?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bristling a bit at my interruption, she said, sharply, \u201cPlease let me continue. You asked me to rush, and I\u2019m hurrying, and I want to relate this in my own way. Sergei and I married, and, almost miraculously, he and I managed to defect when he accepted an offer with La Scala in Italy. After all, tell me, who could live in Russia in those years? Now I must discuss Sergei\u2014he had a leading role in my life. Less than a year after we married, I was crippled with pain, and the doctor told me I had gout. Tell me, can you imagine a more catastrophic illness for a ballerina? No, there is none! Gout ended my career before I was thirty. And, then, what did Sergei, the love of my life, do? He immediately left me for another dancer. And what did I do? I went quite crazy and almost killed myself with alcohol and almost killed him with a broken bottle and I slashed scars on his face to remember me by. My aunt Olga had to come to take me from the Milan psychiatric hospital and bring me back to Russia, and that\u2019s when I started the psychoanalysis that saved my life. My aunt found one of the only psychoanalysts in all of Russia, and even he was practicing underground. Much of my analysis was about Sergei, about getting over the pain he gave me, about quitting alcohol forever, about ending my parade of shallow affairs. And maybe about learning how to love\u2014love myself and love others.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I improved, I attended the university, and in music studies I soon found out, to my surprise, that I had talent for the cello, not enough to perform but enough to teach, and I have been a cello teacher ever since. Pavel, my husband, was one of my first students. The worst cellist I ever saw, but a wonderful man and, as it turned out later, a very smart and successful businessman. We fell in love, he divorced his wife for me, and we married and have had a long, marvelous life together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVery succinct and wonderfully clear, Natasha. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I say, I\u2019ve been rehearsing it in my mind many times. You see why I didn\u2019t want any interruptions?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I understand. So now let\u2019s return to the museum in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I\u2019m quite sure now that Sergei was my agenda, my secret agenda when I entered the exhibition. And I mean secret even from myself. The love of my life doesn\u2019t necessarily mean my conscious life. You, a famous psychiatrist, should appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMea culpa.\u201d I found her soft jabs rather charming and enlivening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI forgive you\u2014just this once. Now to my visit to the exhibit. They showed a lot of early Russian posters from the Bolshoi and the Kirov, and one of them, hanging near the entrance, was a stunning picture of Sergei flying like an angel through the air in Swan Lake. It was somewhat blurred, but I\u2019m sure it was Sergei, even though his name was not given. I searched for hours through the entire exhibition, but there was no mention of his name, not one single time. Can you believe it? Sergei was like a god, and yet his name no longer exists. Now I remember . . . \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? What do you remember?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou asked when I first began to lose myself. It happened then. I remember walking out of that exhibit as though I were in a trance, and I\u2019ve not felt like myself since.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you recall searching also for yourself in the museum? For pictures or mentions of your name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember that day very well. So I have to rebuild it. Is that the right word?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand. You have to reconstruct it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I must reconstruct the visit. I think that I was so shocked by Sergei not being included that I said to myself, \u2018If he was not there, how could I possibly be included?\u2019 But perhaps in a timid way I did look for myself. There were some undated photos of La Scala\u2019s Giselle\u2014for two seasons I played Myrtha\u2014and I do remember peering so closely at one photo that my nose touched the photograph and the guard ran over, glowered at me, and pointed to an imaginary line on the floor and told me not to cross it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems such a human thing to do, to look for yourself in those historical photos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what right did I have to look for myself? I repeat\u2014I still don\u2019t think you\u2019ve registered it. You\u2019re not listening. You\u2019ve not grasped that Sergei was a god, that he soared above us in the clouds, and all of us, all the other dancers, gazed upon him as children upon a majestic airship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m puzzled. Let me summarize what I know so far about Sergei. He was a great dancer, and the two of you performed together in Russia, and then, when he defected to dance in Italy, you chose to go with him and then married him. And then when you got gout, he promptly abandoned you and took up with another woman, at which point you became extremely disturbed and slashed him with a broken bottle. Right so far?\u201d<\/p>\n
Natasha nodded, \u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter you left Italy with your aunt, what further contact did you have with Sergei?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNone. Nothing. I never saw him again. Never heard from him again. Not one word.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you kept thinking about him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, at first when I heard his name mentioned, I\u2019d obsess about him and had to bang my head to knock him out of my brain. But, eventually, I blotted him from my memory. I cut him out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did you great harm, and you cut him out of your memory, but last week you went into that National Gallery exhibit thinking of him as \u2018the love of your life,\u2019 searching for him, and then grew outraged that he had been overlooked and forgotten. You can see my confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, yes, I understand you. A big contradiction, I agree. Going to that museum show was like performing an excavation in my mind. It\u2019s like I blindly struck a massive vein of energy that has now come spewing out. I speak in a clumsy way. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n
When I nodded, Natasha continued, \u201cSergei was four years older than me, so he is now about seventy-three. That is, if he is alive. And yet I cannot imagine a seventy-three-year-old Sergei. It\u2019s impossible. Believe me, if you knew him, you\u2019d understand. In my mind I see only that young beautiful dancer in the poster sailing forever through the air. Have I heard from him? No, not one word from him since I slashed his face so long ago! I could find out. I could probably find him on the Internet, perhaps Facebook, but I\u2019m afraid to search.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfraid of?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost everything. That he\u2019s dead. Or that he is still beautiful and wants me. That we\u2019ll email and that the pain in my breast will be unbearable and that I\u2019ll fall in love again. That I\u2019ll leave Pavel and go to Sergei wherever he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou speak as though your life with Sergei is simply frozen in time and exists somewhere and that, if you revisit it, everything\u2014the mutual love, the soaring passions, even the youthful beauty\u2014will be exactly the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo true.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas the truth, the real-life scenario, is that Sergei will either be dead or look like a seventy-three-year-old wrinkled man, most likely grey- or white-haired or bald, possibly a bit stooped, possibly feeling entirely differently from you about your time together, perhaps not thinking very kindly of you every time he looks at his scarred face in the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk that talk all you want, but at this very moment I\u2019m not listening to what you are saying. Not one word.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time was up, and as she stepped toward the door, she noted her photograph on the table and started back for it. I picked it up and handed it to her. Putting it back into her purse, she said, \u201cI\u2019ll see you tomorrow, but no more words about this picture. Basta!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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