At home, late that night, wholly exhausted, curled up in the not yet warm bed, she asks Viktor why Zoya would marry Gersh, no matter her feelings for him, no matter her competition with Vera. “She’s such a social climber—at least she strikes me that way. What does she have to gain?”
From the hallway come the sounds of the man next door yelling at his wife in Armenian. “You know Zoya,” Viktor says, “how she gets worked up about things. She’s an organizer. A planner. It’s her job, she always loves a project. Maybe that’s how she sees Gersh.”
The wife screams something back, even louder than her husband.
“A project.” Nina recalls first meeting Zoya at Gersh’s, the big to-do she made over the tea and the chipped cups, as though nothing pleased her as much as a bit of a fuss. “But it’s such a bad time for him. I’m surprised she would take on a project like that.”
“Gersh says it’s because she’ll do anything to not have to keep living with her parents and sisters,” Viktor says. “But you know what a cynic he is.”
Nina’s thoughts land back at what Polina said: that Zoya would do anything to win Gersh back. Nina considers her own feelings for Viktor, the ferocity of her love, and has to conclude that really Polina is the one who, instinctually, without a second thought, without even knowing Zoya, put her finger on what is surely closest to the truth.
Viktor’s hands cup Nina’s face. “We’re so lucky. We were able to follow our hearts. Not everyone gets that chance.”
It’s true, the incredible luck of it, Viktor next to her in this bed, his warm palms against her face, thumbs stroking her cheeks. Just the smell of his skin can bring her exhausted body back to life, no matter how tired she is.
“But what about Vera?” she asks. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“If Gersh has his way, nothing different from what she’s always had with him. Only now it will have to be on the sly. I told him I’d be their go-between.”
Nina sighs, as Viktor’s hands move down her skin, thumbs stroking her shoulders. “As though it’s some child’s game.” The yelling next door has set the cat off, crying in the corridor. And though Nina’s limbs tremble with fatigue, and sleep calls heavily to her, she cannot stop from reaching for Viktor, wanting no space at all between them, just the movement of his muscles against hers.
BY THE TIME the “emergency” meeting came to a close, Grigori felt he might strangle someone. If he were not the department chair, if he were not quiet, slightly aloof Grigori Solodin, if he were anyone else, he might have sat this one out, or at least left early. But no, he had sat through the entire “emergency,” aware that at some point Drew Brooks would be in the same building, expecting him, looking and not finding him there.
The meeting was, in fact, a bit of an emergency, their first-choice hire for the new Slavic Studies slot having suddenly bowed out. They needed to find a replacement as soon as possible, had two other candidates to choose from—but of course Walter and Hermione completely disagreed on which one was better suited, and spent an hour and five minutes going back and forth about their respective picks. They loved meetings like this, the longer the better; why decide anything over the phone, or via e-mail, if you could hold a lengthy, contentious meeting instead? Grigori knew he was being hard on them, yet it was true, that was how they were, this was their life, what made them feel good, subcommittees and search committees and “emergency” meetings. Had they no one to go home to—Grigori grumbled to himself as he let himself into his own cold, dark house—had they nothing better to do? No sense of time passing, of how short life was, how quickly time sped by, especially when you calculated it (as Grigori often had, before Christine died) in broken toasters, or new coats of house paint, or Christmas cards indistinguishable from one year to the next.
He turned the thermostat up, put his coat in the closet, poured himself a Scotch. Drew, showing up to find his door locked, the book propped against it, or perhaps it had slid to the floor, like an old sinking tombstone…Well, Grigori told himself, probably she was glad not to have to talk to some old Russian professor; probably she was on her way out somewhere, meeting up with the boyfriend he had met at the ballet.
From his briefcase he took the page she had typed up for him—neatly, patiently, all the possible phrases he might look for in Russian describing the amber pieces and the jeweler who had made them. He turned on his computer, shifted the keys to Cyrillic. At first, typing in the name of the jeweler and a few key terms regarding the pendant, waiting for the search engine to whiz through its calculations, Grigori felt hopeful. A wealth of facts at his fingertips. But it quickly became apparent, as he tried yet another possible combination of words, in every possible Russian variation, that much of what appeared before him was repeated information, the same Web links over and over, so that there was really not so much at all.
Frustrated, Grigori typed yet another phrase in Russian and braced himself for the slew of unrelated information that would now litter his computer screen. Mostly other auctions or antique dealers, and lots of Russian Web sites. As for the house of Anton Samoilov, Grigori found nothing like the mark books Drew had described. When he typed in anything about archives or family logbooks, he instead found all kinds of unrelated people by that name listed, while a separate, irritating box kept popping up on top of everything else, flashing on and off, with the words, Are you a SAMOILOV? Find other SAMOILOVs on FamilyTree.com. Free 24-hour trial.
Clicking on the corner of the box to make it disappear, Grigori could not help recalling the first time he had truly considered the idea of a family history, when he was a young boy newly arrived in Norway. His teacher had given an assignment: Go home and write out your family tree. Grigori had at first taken on the project with excitement, drawing a not very lifelike tree and listing all he could from what Katya and Feodor told him of their parents and their parents’ parents, the sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles. But their information—the precise details he craved—was not nearly as complete as he had hoped. He began to wonder again, as he did every so often, about those other parents, his birth parents. Though his adoption had not been kept secret from him, each time Grigori asked for more information about who those other people had been, his parents simply said they did not know.
And so, as he questioned his mother that evening about her and Feodor’s ancestry, and added the information to his artlessly sketched family tree, Grigori had felt that it was just a story, one that in reality had little to do with him. “What’s wrong? Why do you look that way?” Katya asked, and when Grigori told her his feelings—that he could not help but wonder, could not help but feel shut out from his own original lineage—closed her eyes and gave a decisive nod. Then she stood and went into the bedroom, and brought back the stiff vinyl pocketbook. “You’re a big boy now. And really this belongs to you.” It contained, she added, the only information they had been given: a hospital certificate, some letters folded together into a small square wad, two photographs tucked in between them, and a few other odds and ends. No identity card. No name. Still, here was proof of an actual woman, his mother, who had indeed existed, had given him life. She was a dancer, Katya said, a dancer with the ballet—that was all the information the nurse had been able to tell them. That and the fact that the dancer (here Katya’s face was long, her voice grave) had not survived.
THE NEXT DAY, Nina returns home from visiting Mother to find Vera sitting at the wooden table. Across from her, seated proudly in a bird-soiled dress, clucking disapproval, is Madame.
“Men today,” she says. “They have no manners. No one holds the door for a lady. No one helps you with your coat.” Shaking her head so that the big natty bun moves back and forth, the tortoiseshell comb flashing its tiny embedded diamonds. She doesn’t seem to notice Nina. “A country of boors. No wonder my heart has stopped beating.”
Vera looks thinner and paler than usual. When Nina tells her hello, she looks up, but Madame hasn’t heard. “As for that woman, she can
’t hold a candle to you, I’m sure. Here, dearest, have some more tea.”
Even Viktor’s mother, then, can’t help but be attracted to Vera.
A loud, desperate squawking issues from Madame’s room. And then, as if the bird understands what she is saying: “S’il vous-plaît!” Lola, angry at being left there in her cage.
Only then does it occur to Nina that Viktor might not want Vera to witness this—Madame in her ancient dress, flaunting her patrician past. Vera, though, sitting so still, doesn’t seem to even notice. Her eyelashes flutter when she wipes a few tears from her cheeks.
“I know how you feel,” Madame says, her voice suddenly soft. “I know how it is to lose the one you love. I lost my husband. I had everything taken from me.”
Vera looks so frail, those narrow shoulders, the sad slant of her neck…. Nina goes to her and embraces her, tells her, “It’s going to be all right.” But now Madame, too, appears to be crying. “He gave me these,” she says with a sniffle, gesturing to her neck at the short strand of plump pearls she always wears. “They came all the way from Japan. Sea pearls, from oysters.” She lifts them from her neck, and Nina can see that the string is rotting. Already a few of the pearls have shifted.
“They should be restrung,” Nina says. “I can find someone—”
“I will not remove them. Pearls must be worn, or they lose their color.” Proud jut of her chin. “I never take these off.”
Nina says, “It’s just that it looks like you might lose some pearls—see?” She reaches out to where the string is visibly deteriorated, but Madame flings up her arms.
“You are NOT to touch my hair.”
In the bedroom, Lola squawks. “S’il vous-plaît!”
Nina pulls her hand back, looking to Vera for support, but she has shed more tears and is wiping at them desperately. The quick, small movements of long, smooth white hands. Petersburg affects, Grandmother would have said: little flurried gestures, a prideful tilt of the head. Madame, looking past Nina, tilts her head at Vera, narrows her eyes as if suddenly recognizing something. She lifts her lorgnette and squints into it. “You look like Sonia.” New tears emerge from her eyes. “Her very coloring. Here, have some more tea.”
During the following weeks, Vera often accompanies Nina back home from rehearsal or after performances, to wait for a message from Viktor. Though her Achilles is improved, Vera has been dancing less than usual, until her injury has fully healed. The rest of her time (apart from sleeping, at Mother’s apartment) is spent here at Nina’s, since Viktor’s messages from Gersh are often impromptu; Vera never knows when Gersh might find himself suddenly free of Zoya, and summon her. At the table with Madame, she plays cards and sips tea, while Madame reminisces, or counts the silverware, or bosses slow, weary Darya, or declares herself without a pulse. Vera seems not to find this anything more than slightly odd, but Nina can’t help being aware that now there is one more person who knows about Viktor’s lineage.
“Zoya’s supposed to be leaving for Katovo this evening, for a show tomorrow,” Vera explains one afternoon when Nina has arrived home to find her there at the table with Madame and squawking Lola. Darya is in the kitchen down the hall, angling for a stove on which to prepare their supper. “Viktor will tell me when it’s safe to go over there.”
Nina wonders if Vera might perhaps, somehow, come to enjoy her new status as the “other woman.”
Lola is poking at something propped on the table. Stepping closer, Nina sees that it is a framed photograph: two young women, with a young man in between them. “I’ve never seen that.”
Madame looks annoyed to have to share it with Nina, too. “Here I am,” she says, “with my sister and brother.” As she says it, her face changes, softens. The young man, looking older than his sisters, is tall and slender and wears some kind of uniform. The girl to his left is equally slender, with dark, almond-shaped eyes that look away slightly, while the girl to his right gazes straight ahead at the camera, with what looks to be the beginning of a smile. Looking more closely, Nina realizes that this girl is Madame. But how does that happen, she wants to ask, as childish as it sounds; how does a girl like that, with bright smiling eyes, turn into this other person?
Madame is pointing at the other girl. “Sonia,” she says, and her voice sounds different, almost an echo.
“She’s very beautiful,” Nina says. As if to show agreement, Lola pecks at the glass, and then at the shiny frame.
“Yes, she was, as well as talented. We’re a good family. Strong bloodlines—lucky for you. Your children will have that, at least.”
At first she thought it was her imagination, but now Nina acknowledges the truth: Madame’s insults have become worse. Ever since meeting Vera.
Pretending not to notice, Nina says, “Your brother was quite handsome.”
Madame nods, and her eyelids droop as if to prevent unwanted visions. “Now you’ve met my family.” Her voice is soft. “Killed. Replaced by boors. The Armenians next door…”
Vera reaches over to pat Madame’s hand, as Madame so often does for her. Feeling suddenly in the way, Nina goes to lie down on the bed.
“Viktor’s been at the office since early this morning,” Vera says, as if aware of Nina’s feelings, trying to include her. “The office” is that of the magazine where Viktor is the poetry editor.
“They work him so hard,” Madame says, and sighs loudly. “At least they’re sending him to France next month. All my dresses were made there.” She nods toward Nina. “It’s a shame he won’t be taking you along.”
Nina pretends to ignore this, though really these trips, to places she has never been, pain her. It isn’t just the separation; she hates not being able to picture, in her mind’s eye, just where Viktor is. At least when he travels to places like Peredelkino, or the cities where Nina herself has toured, she can, in the moments when she most misses him, imagine him there.
That night, when Viktor arrives home and Vera, with visible relief, has gone around the corner to Gersh’s, a funny thought comes to Nina. She says it aloud, an hour or so later, when Madame has gone back to her room and shut the plywood door. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d been sent to spy on us.”
Viktor laughs, setting his clothes neatly aside, readying himself for bed. “Quite a mole she’d make!” Then comes a long sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I were her.” He slides under the covers, gives a dramatic shiver. “If you’d done that to me, Nina. Gone off with some other man instead of me.”
Nina raises her eyebrows. “You know perfectly well the worry was the other way around.” Though she trusts Viktor’s love for her, at times it takes all of her strength not to wonder—about whom he meets, whom he sees, during the long days that he is not with her, and what he does on the nights that she is dancing. After all, Nina knows how attractive he is to other women, and the extent to which he is fueled by that attraction. As she joins him in bed, pulling herself quickly under the covers, she puts her feet on his shins, trying to keep warm.
“I’m sleeping with an icicle,” he says, with mock surprise, and Nina wants to say something funny back, but she is too tired, and then she can’t help it, she is already tumbling into sleep.
LOT 62
18kt Gold Women’s Miniature Dress Wristwatch. The goldstone dial with baton numerical indicators, enclosing 17-jewel manual-wind movement no. 263996, oval 18kt white gold case no. 9138 FA, lugs set with two tear-shaped rubies, push crown at back, hour markers three rubies and logo, completed by a 18kt gold mesh band, lg. 7 in., 34.7 dwt (without movement), Audemars Piguet. $4,000–6,000
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a few years, first in Norway and then in France, Grigori’s imagination found much inspiration in that shiny vinyl pocketbook. Youthful fantasies about who his birth parents might have been turned his father into a sort of Robin Hood and the ballerina a secret partner in his do-good crimes—but then Grigori entered the lycée and his fantasies were of the redheaded girl in
the schoolyard, his energies focused on his studies, careful explications de texte written laboriously on regulation graph paper, his penmanship compact with concentration. His main goal was simply to blend in, to find his own clutch of friends to smoke with after class, to swap LPs and sneak into the cinema with. He answered to “Grigoire” and, mimicking his classmates, wore a knit pullover tied casually over his shoulders. And then, just when it seemed he had mastered that persona, his parents announced the move to the United States.
There he became skilled at yet another language, dove back into his studies, focused on where he might be offered a scholarship to college. When it came to musing about his birth parents, such flights of imagination stopped altogether. There were more important activities: Grigori learned to drive a car, made weekend trips to New York City, and, most incredibly, found himself with a girlfriend, a perky brunette also on the chess team. He graduated from high school, went to college. Then, during his second year at the university, he was suddenly called back to Tenafly. His father had had a stroke, to which he would ultimately, two years later, succumb. At home with his mother, having made daily visits to Feodor immobile in a hospital bed, Grigori retreated to the bedroom where he had spent only two years, his heart now charged with a pain he had not known before. It was too awful, seeing them like this, his father incapacitated, and his mother suddenly so much older. Without consciously considering what he was doing, Grigori went to the closet where he had, after first arriving here from Paris, stashed the old vinyl purse.
He took it out, opened it, removed the contents, and laid them out on his bed, like a museum display, or a surgeon’s tools. He looked at them, wondering about the hands that had once touched them. But his old curiosity was no longer there. He did not reread the letters (which he basically knew by heart), though he looked again, somewhat passively, at the people in the two photographs. Then he sat down on the bed—and felt something jut into his hamstring. He stood up to see that he had taken a seat on top of a corner of the pocketbook. He wondered what could have poked him. His hands on the outside of the bag, he felt along the vinyl until he came to a small bulge, then put his hand inside to see what was there. The interior of the bag was lined in a satin-like material—but now Grigori noted a rip at the top of that side, just under the seam of the vinyl. The tear was small; he had to turn the bag upside down and worry the object out like a mole through a tunnel. And there it was, a gold chain and, hanging from it, framed in matching gold braid, a big wedge of amber.
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