“The person whose bag you have. The person who had those letters.”
Grigori realized that she thought he knew more than he claimed to. Well, of course. He had not told her that he did not know who, precisely, his “relative” was. “But you see,” he tried to explain, “I have reason to believe that the pocketbook belonged to Nina Revskaya. I’m quite sure it did.”
Wrinkling her brow, Drew asked, “But couldn’t it have belonged to someone else? And the letters, too.”
Just like Big Ears, incredible…Grigori felt a surge of impatience, while Drew, oddly calm, said, “I think we need to take one step at a time. Starting with what we know for certain. And that’s the fact that these jewels originally belonged to the Gershtein family.” She looked back at the photograph Grigori had given her. “What would you do if you were this man and owned this set of women’s jewelry that had been passed down to you?”
Grigori said, “Give them to my wife.” He pointed to the beautiful woman next to Gershtein.
Drew said, “Nina Revskaya told me she was an old friend, that they were very close. They were both dancers. Maybe—”
“No, actually,” Grigori corrected her, “Gershtein’s wife wasn’t a dancer. She worked for one of the government offices.” It was one of the few facts about her that he had been able to learn in his research.
Raising her eyebrows, Drew thought for a moment, and then said, “Well, in that case, this wasn’t his wife. She was…” Drew leaned back toward her desk to look at something she had written down on the blotter. “Vera Borodina.”
Questioningly, Grigori repeated the name.
Drew clicked on her computer, and a photograph emerged, as she moved her seat so that Grigori could see the image on the screen, a beautiful woman slouching against a barre in a ballet studio. The woman was indeed the same one in the other photograph. “Her name was Vera Borodina,” Drew said, “according to this archive.”
“But that’s not the right name.” Grigori felt momentarily dizzy. “No, you’re right, this isn’t his wife. This must be…someone else.”
“Vera Borodina.” Drew said it adamantly. She did not appear to see anything confusing about any of this. “Do you think the bag you have might have belonged to her?”
“No, no,” Grigori said gruffly. “No, because then that would mean…” But his mind was not quite working. “I’m sorry. I’m finding this confusing for some reason.”
Drew said, “Maybe Gershtein gave the pendant to Vera Borodina, and the bag you have was her bag, and those letters were written to her. Not to Nina Revskaya.”
Grigori thought back to what Katya had said when she first handed the bag over to him—that his mother had been a ballerina. “But—the poems.” He closed his eyes. “I’m going to have to think about this for a minute.”
“Maybe we should look back at the letters again. To see if they could have been written by Gershtein.” Drew did not look at all upset at the proposition. “And I should call Nina Revskaya, in case by some chance she knows any Gershteins in her husband’s family.” She paused. “But it seems improbable, doesn’t it? Do you think maybe her friend gave them to her? For safekeeping?”
Grigori realized that he was grinding his teeth. “I’m sorry, I need to get some air.”
“Are you all right, Grigori?”
“No. I’m not.” He turned to leave, but not quickly enough to miss the look on Drew’s face, of shock and hurt.
SHE ARRIVES HOME, her legs still quaking, to find Madame asleep in her chair, forehead on the table, the loud drunken rheumy snoring Nina has grown used to. Lola sits quietly on Madame’s big thick messy bun, pecking at the tortoiseshell comb.
Sitting there so smug. Viktor brought them. It was supposed to be a surprise. The meanness in her smile.
Nina wants only to grab her travel case and leave. It is my fate, she tells herself. There is no other way now.
She will take refuge in the Bolshoi, and from there go straight to the car that will take them to the airport. And then…But her hands are shaking, her whole body shaking. They find you and break your legs.
Surely she can do this, other people have done it. You can do anything you want with sufficient money, sufficient bribes. And your wits about you. She hurries over to the box where she keeps her valuables. Places the emeralds in her earlobes, catches the gold watch around her wrist. Glances over to make sure Madame hasn’t woken. Her fault, that Viktor went back to his old ways. Her fault; she is the one who told him, who turned him against her.
Leave this place. Leave these people.
Into the small pot of cold cream in her makeup case she submerges her wedding brooch and diamond studs. The amber and her little malachite box she tucks into the toes of two thick wool socks, which she adds to her packed valise. Lola watches her quietly, and gives another peck at Madame’s tortoiseshell comb. The one with the tiny diamond flecks…Why, yes, thank you for reminding me. Nina marches over and lifts the comb from Madame’s bun. After all, these might come in handy. Lola gives a squawk. That preposterous survivor. “S’il vous-plaît!”
Despite a loud, drunken snore, Madame does not even lift her head. And only then does the thought occur to Nina.
You are NOT to touch my hair!
With sudden clarity, Nina touches that messy bun. Gently she begins to loosen it, carefully pulling apart the sections of grizzled hair. It does not take much searching. Nestled within a knotted clump she finds first one and then another of what she ought to have always known were there.
Soon she has found five stones, one of them quite big. Madame is snoring even more loudly now. Nina takes three of what might be diamonds, one of them shaped like a tear, another a yellow shade, and tucks them into her brassiere. Security, for later. The other two she leaves on the table for Madame to find. Then she pulls on her coat, grabs her valise and theater case, and hurries to the Bolshoi, where her ride to the airport awaits.
“WHY DO YOU ask?” Nina said into the telephone. The receiver felt especially heavy today, the weight directly absorbed by her knuckles.
“Because an amber pendant, bracelet, and earrings of the exact description of the ones in this collection, along with a brooch and hairpin, were originally purchased by Avrim Shlomovich Gershtein in Moscow in 1882.” Drew Brooks sounded different today, her voice almost shaky. “If that is a name in your husband’s ancestry,” she continued, somehow timidly, “it will allow us to be certain that indeed those pieces listed in the archives are those in your possession, and that the pendant is therefore of this same suite.”
Nina felt a horrible humming between her ears.
“Gershtein,” Drew was saying, slowly, as if Nina were impaired. She began to spell out the name.
Had Gersh given them to Viktor, or had Viktor bought them from Gersh? Nina could still picture Madame’s gleeful whispery little smile, Viktor wanted to hide them in my room, her feigned surprise at having given up a secret. What if Viktor had been hiding them for Gersh? Not for himself, not for Nina. What if they were from Gersh, for Vera?
“Ms. Revskaya?”
Nina had to close her eyes. Of course Viktor had not been “hiding” the amber from Nina but from others in the apartment, the way one places anything of value aside in a safe spot. Of course. But then why had he not told Nina about it? Probably he had meant to. Probably he would have, if Nina had been home when he first brought the amber back from Gersh’s. But greater issues had consumed them both: Gersh’s arrest, his sentencing, his transferral to the psychiatric prison…
The pain inside Nina’s chest was awful. If the baby was Gersh’s—only that would explain why Vera did what she did. Which would mean that she really had in fact visited Gersh at the prison camp. She must really have been alone with him, that was why Viktor wasn’t there, wasn’t with them, he was telling the truth.
Oh, Viktor.
Or was that how Vera had managed to visit Gersh: favors for Serge? Awful Serge, there on the sidewalk. Such hazardous providen
ce.
But no, because if the baby was Serge’s, then surely Vera would not have kept it. Unless, perhaps, she was not certain whose child she was carrying.
And yet, if the child was Gersh’s…
“Ms. Revskaya!”
Gersh’s baby, and Vera’s—and Nina had done nothing for him, just turned her back, hurried out of the hospital, left him there. When I knew his parents better than anyone…Viktor and I were his only connection to them.
“I’m going to hang up now and call an ambulance.”
“No. No need for ambulance. Please.” But she could feel her heart galloping, a horrible panicked feeling. Fate, it could not be helped. But oh, Vera. Dear Gersh. And Viktor…
“Are you really all right?”
“Please. Just wait. Let me…think.” But no, it wasn’t fate. How could she not have seen that? Serge right in front of her…Not fate but circumstance. Distrust everywhere, whispers and secrets. The world around her: little betrayals every day. Probably she had never fully trusted Viktor, not as she thought she had. Probably that sliver of doubt was always with her, lodged inside her, as it was inside everyone, about everybody else.
Not fate but simply inevitable.
Drew said in a pleading voice, “Really, I would feel better if you’d let me call a doctor.”
“My nurse will be here very soon. She comes at five.” Nina could hear how weak she sounded.
“Well…all right.” Drew sounded fearful. “But please call me if you need any help before your nurse arrives.”
With what energy she had left, Nina said, “Yes. Good-bye.”
ALL AFTERNOON GRIGORI tried to understand. If what Drew suggested was correct, then the man whom he had thought his father might be another man altogether. The composer Gershtein. And the woman he thought was his mother…But then why did Nina Revskaya have two of the amber pieces? And why had she acted so oddly toward him? Not to mention what she had said in the News 4 interview, about the amber being from Elsin’s family. Why would she have said that, if it was not so?
Perhaps Viktor Elsin had not told her the truth—that the beads had been given to him by (or taken from?) Gershtein. Or, no, maybe it was Gershtein himself who gave them to Nina Revskaya, maybe he was in love with her. But no, not with that other, beautiful woman leaning into him in the photograph, and his face lit with love…
Already the rush of thoughts and suppositions had caused his head to pound. Grigori took some Tylenol and went to his desk, to read, yet again, the original letters—the ones he had for so long believed to be written by Viktor Elsin. For one thing, there was the “please forgive me,” at the beginning, which Grigori had always supposed to be from some marital spat. And that “big net so wide and inescapable”—which he had often pictured like the spider’s web in that other, final, poem. Well, perhaps that might be a bit of a stretch…. But what about this, the same image as in “Night Swimming”:
…refuge under a tree. And then the ground was damp and you worried you wouldn’t get the sap out of your skirt. I can still smell the pine needles, winter hidden in them, cool and delicious, the checkered shade of those branches.
Grigori did not need to see the “Night Swimming” poem in front of him to hear the echo of that letter: Patchwork shade, pine needle carpet, ocher-resin drops of sun. The air hums…
Surely it was the same hot bug-filled summer day. The shade gone from “checkered” to “patchwork,” and the same pine needles. The “ocher-resin drops of sun” surely recalled the tree sap:
I sometimes think, that is what I live for, days like that, perfect. But of course there was the tree sap staining your skirt. That tawny resin, slow-motion tears, as if the tree itself knew the future.
Of course lots of people described drops of liquid as tears. A poet, Elsin had in “Night Swimming” turned the sap into “drops of sun.” Just as in his very last poem, where he referred to “that bright jewel the sun” and “ancient tears, like hearts, harden”—all of which, Grigori was certain, revealed Elsin’s view of both the sun and the sap as amber…. The amber, framed in gold. What the letter called “little drops of sunshine.” There was poetry in that letter. Perhaps nothing outstanding, but it made sense that a poet—the poet Viktor Elsin—had written it.
Then again, the letter was so sad, its reference to “the future” so dismal…. Elsin would have had to have written it after something bad happened. The arrest of his friend Gershtein…Wasn’t that what that last poem referred to, the “Pitiless wind” and “rattling hazelnut tree: Encore, encore!” A musical reference, surely, as in “Night Swimming”: “the air hums…Unseen, the nightingale, too late, thrums its stubborn song….”
Grigori realized he was holding his head, fingertips pressed into his scalp. As if the pressure, the grip of his fingerpads, might release some new insight. He considered the way the letter had been signed, “Yours and yours alone”—how could Gersh have signed a letter that way if in fact he had both a wife and a girlfriend? Then again, people did not always write the literal truth. Especially in a letter of apology.
The checkered shade of those branches and the pine sap staining her skirt. Whose skirt? Could there have been more than one woman there? Or two couples—the ones from the other photo, the dacha photo, including whoever had taken it. The impossible perfection of that summer…
Stop, Grigori. Remember what Drew said: start with what you know.
He knew the letter had been written by someone, to a woman he loved. If it were Gershtein, that would explain the mournful tone, of having lost someone—the woman he did not marry, the beautiful one in the photograph. That could make sense.
Could the letters have been sent from prison, was that why they were so remorseful?
Our dear V. says you might take a friendly jaunt together. Lucky we are, to have such friends! But please, dear—only if the weather is clear. And don’t forget to bring ID. A song keeps running through my head, the one about the husband missing his wife like a wave misses the shore—over and over again. That’s how I miss you.
A friendly jaunt. Grigori had never troubled himself much with who “dear V” might be—so many names started with that letter, it was pointless to try to guess. What struck him now, though, was a new possibility: that the V stood for Viktor Elsin. And then there was the one sentence Grigori had long wondered about: Don’t forget to bring ID. An odd, probably pointless warning, in a time when no one ever left the house without their papers. ID would have been a given, as automatic as a wallet in your pocket. No need to state it outright. Unless it was code for something more particular. In which case “only if the weather is clear,” too, began to sound like code. Grigori closed his eyes, overwhelmed, his head still pounding.
Both possibilities made sense to him, now that Drew had brought Gershtein into the picture. He certainly did sound like a man caught in some way, a man banished or punished. But the poems—they were Elsin’s. About that, at least, there was no doubt.
A thought came to Grigori, an odd one, but he stopped to consider it. Might Viktor Elsin have read the letters and borrowed the phrasing?
No. Impossible. He was a poet, he didn’t need to pilfer from others’ correspondence.
But they were the same images. Or, if not quite the same, similar…
Similar enough to create a hypothesis, to write a paper that was given an A. But did that mean Elsin had stolen from Gersh? The poems were certainly different from his others. But not so different as to indicate that they had be copied…And why would he ever do that?
Maybe he hadn’t meant to do it. But he had read the letters—delivered them, perhaps? As an emissary to the prison?—and the images remained in his mind. After all, this was his closest friend….
Or maybe he hadn’t read the letters at all but had been present, with Nina Revskaya, who was such close friends with that other ballerina. And so Gershtein too had been there, two couples, at the dacha, at the river, taking refuge from the sun under a pine tree.
; Grigori realized that he was chewing on his lip. Taking a long, slow breath, he tried to calm himself. But he could not stop, and found himself looking again at the photographs he had taken back from Drew, his own photographs, which he knew so well, and that he had been so relieved to show her. He tried to reimagine it all, rewrite the story in his mind—though really he didn’t look like Gershtein any more than he looked like Elsin, or Revskaya or the other woman, for that matter. Well, his chin looked a bit like Elsin’s. But then his eyes—they definitely had something of Gershtein in them, he had to admit. And his mouth, wasn’t there something in Vera Borodina’s mouth that was exactly like his? And his cheekbones—so much like Nina Revskaya’s.
He nearly laughed at the idea, four parents now, instead of just two. Six, if you counted Katya and Feodor. His dear parents, the most real ones of all, whom he sometimes, just every now and then, wished he might see again. Well, then what did the past matter? His life was here now. Drew was here, had been right next to him. And he had stomped off.
Grigori looked at his watch. Though it was after five, he quickly reached for the telephone, to try calling Drew at work. When her machine answered, he left an apologetic message—but it wasn’t enough, he knew that. He felt suddenly desperate. Turning to his computer, he found the telephone index for the Boston area. Though there were three Drew Brooks in the city of Boston, only one was not listed as part of a couple. Grigori immediately dialed that number.
Drew’s voice came up on the answering machine. At first Grigori’s heart sank, not to have reached her. But at least, he told himself, he now knew that this was the correct number, the right Drew. His Drew. Checking the address once more, Grigori put on his coat and went to find her.
CYNTHIA DROPPED HER purse and her nurse’s bag and hurried over to Nina. “Sugar, you look awful.”
“Then my look is how I feel.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Did you call the doctor?” Cynthia had already reached out to take Nina’s wrist in her hand, and began to check her pulse.
Russian Winter Page 38
