Hot Siberian

by Gerald A. Browne

  Vivian had expected him to react more rationally. She’d done right in not sparing him the truth, she thought. Because the truth it was. Archer had happened to her at a time when she was especially tired of having to drag herself out of the cold waters of desperate straits. The stipend she had coming in every month from her trust was not enough, would never be enough, to subsidize her tastes and nature, unless she drastically changed both. Then, she felt, she’d no longer be herself, and that wouldn’t do, because she liked herself, she genuinely, thoroughly enjoyed being Vivian Holbert. It seemed to her that living right out on the very edge presented a far more engaging scene. So what if she couldn’t keep from gambling, was either mortgaged up to her nose or giving in to some irresistible reason why she should be. She was probably the world’s most charming borrower, could smile a checkbook out of the tightest pocket. A half hour after meeting someone she could have him lending. She somehow always managed to repay, a bit late perhaps or only a partial payment, but she was never a deadbeat, took pride in that. Money that came into one hand went instantly out the other, as though the condition of being ahead was painful for her. What was solvency, anyway? Just having couldn’t compare with the joy of spending. If ever asked what most gave her life its spirit, Vivian might have thought only a moment before replying: “Improvidence!”

  Archer wanted the marriage annulled but was somewhat wounded when Vivian so readily agreed to that. Through his solicitors, Archer offered her a generous settlement. “For the inconvenience” was how the settlement papers put it. She had only to sign to be set for life. Archer was certain she would, but she turned it down. It hadn’t, she said, been an inconvenience. As far as she was concerned what had been taken had been given, mutually. They were even.

  At that instant Archer began really loving her, wanted to undo all that he had undone, but he was a legal document too late and Vivian wasn’t one to retrace steps. She returned to spendthrifting and mortgage juggling, hocking and borrowing with renewed appreciation for such vicissitudes.

  Archer never understood her preference for profligacy. Nor did it make sense to him that she wouldn’t let him outright help her financially. Levitated by love, he opened substantial bank accounts in her name and had her notified. She didn’t refuse them, just put that money out of mind, let it lie fallow. Archer gave up trying to give her money. He also gave up asking her to remarry him. Eventually she would come around, he hoped. Meanwhile he devised an acceptable way to contribute to her well-being.

  Every so often, when Archer discerned the pressures on her becoming a bit much, he’d buy her a gift. Such as a precious, though homely, pair of Sèvres Rose Pompadour potpourri vases that had belonged to the infamous Madame la Marquise herself, valued at fifty thousand, or a rare English snaphaunce pistol circa 1590, or an antique silk Isfahan runner that was, dash it all, too long for any of her halls.

  Vivian always went through the nicety of declining these “gifts” for one reason or another. Didn’t need, wouldn’t ever use, couldn’t stand the sight of. And Archer always went through his obstinacy, refusing to take back. Thus they arrived at the accommodating impasse, with no recourse but for Vivian to dispose of them—in other words, to sell them.

  That was the routine they were now just about getting to the end of with the ugly Louis XVI petite table de salon.

  “It would be a shame to condemn it to storage,” Vivian said. “Don’t you agree, Nickie?”

  Nikolai had his glass to his mouth, so his yes sounded very hollow.

  Vivian closed the subject by moving the little table from its position of attention. “Shall we drive to the country tonight?” she asked the moment more than anyone.

  Her cat, Ninja, seemed to understand those words. He brought his slanted green eyes up to her, snaked his black-ringed tail slowly, and mewed just once as though saying, “Let’s!”

  “If we went down tonight we could rise early and do a bit of fishing,” Archer said.

  Nikolai told himself he should be used to this “we” by now, and anyway, it wasn’t really all that much of an assumption on Archer’s part, seeing that Vivian’s country cottage was situated in Devon, adjacent to Archer’s land.

  Vivian tried to forecast what would be her mood tomorrow. She decided fishing would be pleasant. As for tonight, however, if she didn’t have so much want for Nikolai, she’d almost wish it were her poker night. With the money from the ugly table imminent she’d be flush enough to pull off some uncanny bluffs.

  The telephone rang.

  It was Gareth, supernatural tout.

  Between her hello and ta to Gareth, Vivian issued only a couple of impassive mmm-huhs. But as soon as she hung up she whirled with her big smile and exclaimed: “The maiden is no longer a maiden! She paid eight to one!”

  CHAPTER

  4

  THE DECISION WAS MADE IN FAVOR OF GOING TO THE COUNTRY that night, as Archer had suggested. Archer also moved that they make the trip together in his Rolls. It would be great fun, he said. They would indulge in a bit of banter on the way, and besides, Paggett had just yesterday restocked the bar and if he, Archer, rode alone he would be drinking alone and that invariably led to his drinking too much.

  “Poor Archie,” Vivian cooed and went to him, and he lowered his head to receive her peck of a kiss where his hairline had once been.

  Nikolai wasn’t opposed to riding with Archer. He foresaw Vivian sitting between them, sharing herself to that degree, but, after some miles and the effect of a drink and a half, choosing him to snuggle against.

  “I think we should go in two cars,” Vivian said.

  Archer insisted nicely but he gave in when Vivian closed her eyes and shook her head, which he knew meant her mind was unswayably set. He said at least they could follow each other down. Just in case she had some trouble with her old Bent was his excuse. Vivian could hardly deny that, and Archer, having achieved what he felt was his best possible position in this matter, left to go to his townhouse on Chester Terrace to sort out a couple of things. He’d be back in a jiff, he said.

  Archer wasn’t halfway down the stairs on his way out before Vivian and Nikolai were into a kiss. Having not really kissed since the night before they were both feeling deprived. Vivian embraced with both her arms and all her strength. In her four-inch heels she was equal in height to Nikolai, so her pelvic mound didn’t have to reach, just press and perform. Her enjoyment was inspired by the fact that it had taken so little of her effort to cause him to become so hard so quickly. With her eyes closed she felt a bit whirly in the head, and when their mouths separated and she stepped back abruptly, she was breathing as if she’d just run up a hill. The space between them represented their quandary.

  Should they do it now or later, go at it or wait?

  They would double-bolt the door. They would ignore Archer’s raps and honks. In the cave of their privacy they would undo, they would feed, feast, layer the air with their wants and havings, and float the intermissions with just some part of each other, perhaps only toes, kept in touch.

  But if they did now, as much as they felt, it would take a torturous effort to rise and go around midnight, and although traffic on the road might be lighter then the drive would be reduced to a mere drive, an epilogue rather than a part of it. As well, such intense voluntary holding off was a not unenjoyable sort of torment.

  Nikolai removed his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt on his way into her bedroom, where he’d been allocated the top drawer of her dresser. He placed the tie in his drawer and decided against changing completely. He hung his suit jacket in his part of her walk-in closet and found a pair of his loafers among her half-hundred or so pairs of shoes on the floor. She was organized enough with her clothes and other accessories, but her shoes were always a satin, peau de soie, calfskin, suede, patent, and silk brocade scramble. Nikolai used his forefinger in place of a shoehorn to get into his loafers. He put on a cotton knit sweater and was ready. No need to take along a razor, toothbrush, and such
. He now kept spares of those there at her place in the country, as well as here.

  Vivian in the meantime changed into an easier, amply cut dress of white cotton. She shoved its sleeves up to her elbows, and after considerable grumbling and digging in the closet she surrendered some of her height to a pair of flat, special-heeled Italian driving shoes.

  “Better pee now if you have to,” she told Nikolai.

  He did.

  Ninja, know-it-all cat that he was, awaited them downstairs at the front door. They went out to Vivian’s Bentley. Ninja, like a child or dog finding satisfaction in being first, jumped up and in. Unlike the average cat, Ninja liked riding in a car. He sometimes stretched out across the top of the facia, dividing his hauteur between the driver, the passenger, and the road ahead. Most times his spot was on the rear window ledge between the stereo speakers, where he wrapped his tail around himself, tucked his head down, and was a black-and-gray furry mass being blasted.

  Vivian keyed and started the Bentley, a black sedan which in another year would be out of its teens. The car’s three previous owners had gotten the best out of it, and Vivian after the first year of diligent care had become indifferent to its various mechanical ills. The car could burp and shudder, smoke and stall all it wanted, she decided, it would get not one penny more of costly sympathy from her. Evidently, the car had conceded to her attitude, as for the past two years it had been running as if in its prime. She pulled the Bent out to the archway of Loundes Close and let it idle there. Within a minute or two along came Archer in his Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. Beaming, he waved out at them and lifted his drink in a salute to their fealty, their having waited for him.

  A quarter hour later both cars were through with the traffic of London proper and westbound on the M4, the Bent leading the way. Nikolai reached into a cardboard carton in the backseat and got a compact disk, just any one of about thirty that were there, all equally favored. He didn’t look at its label, let it be a surprise when he inserted the disk into the player and out came the group Weather Report doing “Corner Pocket.” Perfect for the moment: happy, brassy, percussive, honest moving music. He turned the volume up and glanced back at Ninja between the rear speakers. Ninja’s ears were twitching in time with the beat and his whiskers were vibrating.

  Archer, following at an unsafe distance, had his driver flick the Rolls’s headlights, so as not to be altogether excluded. Each time Nikolai turned and looked back or Vivian glanced into the rearview mirror, those headlights spoke brightly for Archer. Nikolai didn’t mind, really. Archer was Archer. Well-meaning, not really over-the-nose, just very British. He had an irrepressible streak of generosity that was unusual for a wealthy person. Most of his sort were penny squeezers. And certainly Nikolai couldn’t blame the man for loving Vivian. That would be like blaming himself. The only strong criticism he could make was that Archer had once had her and been fool enough to lose her.

  Nikolai reached over and gently slipped his hand beneath Vivian’s hair. He knew how much she liked having the back of her neck touched while she drove. And the lobes of her ears. She smiled, pleased with him, as his fingertips moved on her skin. She remained profile to him, intent on driving.

  Nikolai took her in.

  He thought how each time she came into his eyes she brought love, more love. It wasn’t, the way he saw it, love that was only assimilated by him, used like fuel. Rather it was love that also accumulated, mounted up. Sometimes it was the sort of love that he could neatly arrange, comfortably compile. More often it was love flooded in, shoved in, heaped in every which way, so much that he was sure it surpassed his bursting point.

  He was reflective as he looked at her now, recalling the first time he ever saw her. Even then, in that initial momentary impression, she must have occupied some of his emptiness, that space in him that he had, until then, disregarded, at least never given honest attention to.

  On an afternoon a year and four months ago.

  At Sotheby’s on New Bond Street.

  In the high-ceilinged main auction room.

  The sale being conducted that day featured Russian works of art, icons, objects of vertu. Nikolai was there only as an observer with a personal interest. The atmosphere of the auction room struck him as solemn, suitable for the auction itself, which was a sort of capitalistic rite. A few chairs out of three hundred were vacant, but Nikolai chose to stand at the rear of the room and follow the sale with a catalogue. Colored photographic slides of the auctioned items were projected on a screen. It was all done in a hurry for some reason, perhaps, Nikolai thought, to help spur impetuous extravagance. As for those in attendance, from Nikolai’s point of view they were just the backs of so many heads. The auctioneer behind the raised lectern recited the litany of money, while a split second later than his voice the electronic calculator above displayed the pounds sterling of each bid converted into dollars, marks, francs, and yen. A silver-gilt-and-shaded-enamel desk set by Maria Semyenova, circa 1910, was fought over and finally won for six thousand pounds by someone identified only as paddle number fifty-three.

  Next came the Fabergé items.

  A night-table clock of gold and silver enameled rose pink over a guilloché ground attributed to Fabergé work-master Michael Perchin, St. Petersburg, 1900. It sold for twenty thousand pounds.

  A nephrite-and-diamond imperial presentation box bearing the monogram of Czar Nicholas II, made by Fabergé workmaster Henrik Wigstrom, St. Petersburg, 1900. It went for forty thousand pounds.

  A jeweled gold photograph frame surmounted by the Russian imperial eagle, enameled powder blue over a guilloché ground, containing a photo of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, made by Fabergé workmaster Johan Victor Aarne, St. Petersburg, 1911. It brought twenty-three thousand pounds.

  Where he had been perturbed before, Nikolai was now fascinated. He felt affiliated to all these precious things: the card cases, snuffboxes, tiny enameled Easter eggs, stickpins, and other items born out of the old Fabergé workshop.

  Lot number 152 was next, the auctioneer announced.

  It was the reason Nikolai was there.

  The mouse.

  The photographic slide of it was projected. A tiny white mouse in a crouching position, perfectly carved out of chalcedony. Its eyes cabochon rubies, its silver ears and tail set with diamonds. The bidding on it began at ten thousand and went rapidly up. “Twelve thousand, thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand,” said the auctioneer, his eyes and hand as well as his voice acknowledging the raised paddles, the bidders, left, right, and center. Nikolai was proud. The room felt changed to him now, brighter; the very air of it seemed to contain a familiar old glee. At twenty-five thousand the bidding slowed. Nikolai noticed that down near the front the paddle in the hand on the end of an arm sleeved in lively blue was held insistently, dominantly aloft. Until it was no longer challenged and the auctioneer said, “… fair warning … thirty-four thousand … down it goes at thirty-four thousand,” and conclusive as an exclamation point the little block of hardwood that served in place of a mallet in the auctioneer’s hand was smacked down sharply.

  The woman in blue got up from her chair, sidled out the row, and came down the center aisle. Nikolai immediately saw she was beautiful, and as she came closer he felt even that was an understatement. The way she touched him off, heightened his senses, he was, in only a moment, able to appreciate much of her. Her straight brown hair of a length that just cleared her shoulders was healthily heavy, and moved with her. Her hair parenthesized her strongly structured face and fine features, her complexion of pale olive, her wide-set eyes with an oriental hint to them. She was tall and not embarrassed by it, not at all hunchy.

  Nikolai took her to be a wealthy British woman, the thoroughbred sort, most likely the occupant of a certain branch of a branch in the genealogy of some noble tree, Lady somebody. He told himself that it wasn’t her beauty that compelled him to follow her out to the corridor. He did have another reason, which had just occurred to him.

  He wai
ted for her to finish at the cashier’s counter. She would have passed right by him if he hadn’t politely intercepted her. He didn’t beg her pardon or anything trite as that. “You bought the mouse” were his first words to her.

  “Yes,” she said warily.

  “Would you allow me to see it?”

  “It was on exhibition here for three days,” she said coolly.

  “I missed the exhibitions.”

  An almost imperceptible lift of her chin told him that was his tough luck, but then, as though suddenly realizing a different path, she warmed a notch to ask: “Are you interested in purchasing it?”

  “Might I please have a look at it?”

  “Are you by chance a dealer?”

  “No.”

  “A private collector, then.”

  He smiled at that, and she took it as a positive reply. She removed from her handbag the little hinged maple box that bore the Fabergé stamp on its lid. She opened the box to reveal the carved white chalcedony mouse resting in the creamy silk bed of its exact indented impression. She offered it along with another question. “Are you perhaps a Fabergé expert?”

  “Somewhat,” Nikolai replied with polite modesty. He very carefully removed the mouse from its box. It was truly tiny, only about an inch and a quarter from nose to tail. He placed the mouse on the flat of his palm and held it at eye level, as though allowing the mouse with its rubies to get a better look at him.

  “Possibly,” she said, “you’ll be kind enough to give me your opinion on its authenticity. You know how it is with Fabergé—so much has been faked, and so nicely faked I might add, that one can’t help but be leery.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “Well, I just put out thirty-four thousand for it, so what I think ought to be evident.” She was not quite successful in concealing that she was on unsure ground.

  Nikolai took out his ten-power magnifying loupe and examined the mouse. On the underside of its tail, precisely where it should be, he found the Fabergé hallmark, the Cyrillic initials KΦ(KF), and next to that the stamped mark showing the head of a girl in profile wearing the Russian headdress called a kokoshnik, which conveyed that the piece was made in St. Petersburg, then the numerals 88 that stood for its silver content of 88 zolotniki, close to pure. Last were the Cyrillic letters MB (MB), the initials identifying the Fabergé workmaster.