Hot Siberian

by Gerald A. Browne

  “You put him in his place.”

  “You bet I did. I iced him with a look, threw him a high shoulder, and left.”

  “Without making the mortgage payments?”

  “I had to get out of there. Either that or suffocate. Banks do me that way. I think I react negatively to the presence of so much cash.”

  “What bills did you pay?”

  “I had a nice late lunch at the Berkeley. I rather enjoy observing married female boredom, but not so much when they don’t have the pluck to do anything about it. There they sit, libidos squirming, while they put polite tiny bites into their tight tiny mouths.”

  Nikolai only half-heard her words, because he was mentally assembling her yesterday. He believed he had it. “How much did you lose?” he asked.

  “I got phenomenal cards,” she said, “for a while. Then it leveled off to just my winning my share of pots. We were playing stud and I’d get aces or kings but always open and everyone would fold on me, so few of the pots I won were large. It was maddening.” She sighed as though to erase that part of it and brought her mood up a notch. “I was a sport, though,” she said. “I didn’t bitch at all about the cigar smoking, nor did I even pretend to be shocked at the obscenities.”

  The five men she played poker with owned much of London. They were older, the sort who very likely had once put down their Pimm’s Cup No. whatever just long enough to shoot an ambling tiger from a well-appointed tree blind.

  “It was a bloody strange night,” Vivian went on. “What with my having to get up from the table to try to phone you every twenty minutes and all the good but second-best hands I was dealt.”

  “Did you lose it all? All forty-two thousand?”

  “And a bit more,” she said blithely, “counting the markers I signed.”

  “Shit!”

  “A description of me or just my luck?”

  Nikolai didn’t reply.

  Vivian took that as his answer. “You’re angry.”

  He sure as hell was. Perhaps someday, he thought, someone would invent a device that would allow the person on one end of a phone conversation to press a button and deliver an electric jolt to the person on the other end.

  “Don’t be angry,” she advised pointedly. “You’ve got no right to be angry. I blew the money, but it’s my affair.”

  She was annoyed. It would be painful for him, worse than anything, to have her miffed at him. He wouldn’t let it get to that. Softly, he explained, “It’s only that I hoped your making the mortgage payments and paying off all your other bills would get you out from under so much stress.”

  “What stress?” she said satirically. “Really, Nickie darling, don’t be upset. Don’t fret for a minute.”

  “Not me.”

  “And don’t be disappointed in old Viv, either. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Believe me, something will come up. As a matter of fact, I think it already has.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Archer came by a short while ago to commiserate and to make sure I hadn’t taken strychnine. Only stayed for a minute. It seems he left something on the hall table.”

  “Seems that he did?”

  “He did. At first, seeing that it was an envelope, I thought it might be one of his huge, timely checks, in which case, bless his heart, I would have torn it to shreds or scribbled ‘canceled’ across the face of it and returned it immediately, believe me. As you know, I’ve done both any number of times. However … are you still there, Nickie?”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “For a moment I thought we’d been cut off. Is this call being monitored?”

  “Possibly.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why? It’s so innocent. Anyway, the envelope is addressed by a German someone in Hamburg to a German someone in New York and sent by way of the Hindenburg on its last trip. It has the special Hindenburg stamp on it, and the paper is even a bit singed. It might be one of the few pieces of mail that wasn’t destroyed. Worth a bundle, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I’d think.”

  “But hell, Nickie, I’m not a collector of such things. I haven’t the slightest interest. More than likely I’d forget what it was and end up sharpening the point of an eyeliner pencil on it.Right?”

  Archer, gigantic-hearted Archer, Nikolai thought. True, he liked Archer well enough, close to well enough to consider him a friend, but wasn’t it evident that Archer encouraged Vivian’s squandering at every opportunity? Wasn’t Archer a veritable conspirator to it, often supplying the means and the ways? That being the case, Archer’s motive was also obvious: provide now and, through habit and necessity, become the legal provider later. Ironic as it might be, Nikolai told himself, he was being killed by friend Archer’s kindness. What steps might he take to avoid that? One thing came immediately to mind. It was something Nikolai had considered doing for the past year, but until now he hadn’t been in the right place at the right time. It was something that could substantially interrupt the cycle of dependency Archer had going, or at least take some of the momentum out of it. Never mind the logical reasons against, Nikolai thought, he’d heard them from himself before and now refused to listen.

  Vivian was saying: “I’m going to call Archer and urge him to take back this Hindenburg letter. But I doubt he will. You know how he is. That, of course, will leave me no recourse but to quibble over a price for it with some scroungy stamp dealer. Come to think of it, I know of one on New Bond.”

  “I’ll tell you what to do with it,” Nikolai said.

  “What?” Surprised he had a suggestion.

  “Get into a taxi, go to Archer’s flat, don’t say a word, just leave it on his hall table.”

  “Don’t be daft! I’ve accounts to pay. There are the mortgage loans. I owe four bookmakers.”

  “Trust me, do it.”

  A skeptical grunt from her, and some hums and sibilant mumbles as she carried on her inner argument. Finally, she asked: “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “Hurry, lover.” She hung up before she could change her mind and he picked up his business case and left his office before she could call back.

  CHAPTER

  12

  HE WAS COMMITTED.

  He went down the stairs and out the main door of the talented ballerina’s mansion. He glanced down the wide gravel walk to the gate that gave to Fontanka Quay. A car was stopped in front of the gate, a bright red car, a convertible with top down. As he proceeded down the walk, Nikolai realized that it was a Mercedes-Benz 450SL. It had to be the car of someone of the nachalstvo, someone who was above giving a damn about being obvious with such a privilege. Nikolai saw the back of a blond female head on the passenger side and then, from beyond her, like a jack-in-the-box, up came Lev. Too anxious to bother with the door, Lev vaulted up over the side of the car with Nikolai’s name coming so joyously from him it was like a victory cry. He charged at Nikolai and caught him in a two-armed hug that squeezed out Nikolai’s breath. Nikolai returned the hug and the elation. They kissed on the lips, a brief man-to-man kiss.

  “I haven’t seen you for a hundred years,” Lev said, grinning.

  Nikolai came right back with: “I see you at least every day.” Then he stemmed the mood by indicating the red Mercedes at the curb in an absolutely forbidden zone. “But tell me, why did you choose a car such as this? If you had to steal a car, why not a nice invisible gray Zhiguli?”

  “You like this car?”

  “No,” Nikolai kidded.

  “If you want this car you can have it. I can give it to you legally.”

  “Don’t shit me.”

  “I bought it yesterday from a Georgian who drove it up from Tbilisi loaded with oranges. He fucked me on the price, but money is shit to a good Communist, right? Isn’t it beautiful?” They were beside the car now, and Lev ran his hand over the perfect finish of the rear fender. It was as though he’d touched the girl, for at that moment she
turned bright-faced to him, her eyes pleading for attention. Her name was Kecia, and when during the introduction Lev said her name she swished her heavy blond hair back from her cheeks as though proud of her looks, wanting to present them entirely. She was Finnish and could not have been more honestly pretty. Her clean face glowed as if just washed in a cold stream. She spoke no English and very little Russian, but, Lev explained, she had ways of making herself perfectly understood.

  “Get in, we’ll go for a ride,” Lev said, opening the passenger door.

  “What do you have to do today?” Nikolai asked.

  “Nothing disagreeable.”

  “Can you run me out to the dacha?”

  “Sure.”

  Nikolai thought that Kecia would climb into the narrow space behind the seats. She was slender enough to make it only a tight squeeze. She surrendered the passenger seat to Nikolai, but then got in on top of him. He spread his legs and she sat on the merest edge of the seat with her buttocks fitted tight into his crotch.

  Lev started the car, gave the accelerator pedal a couple of pumps to make the tachometer needle jump all the way around into the red and to cause two appropriate roars. He dropped the gearshift into first and made the cobbles scream as he pulled away, did an immediate U-turn, and sped alongside Fontanki Canal. At the first major intersection, Nikolai expected they would continue straight on, which was the correct way to go, but Lev took a right. That put them on Nevsky Prospekt, Leningrad’s main thoroughfare. Traffic was sparse in all eight lanes, with about as many buses as cars. The gray elephantine buses lumbered along, possessive of their own side trail, while the cars moved tentatively, as though fearful of making a mistake. In their muted colors the cars seemed embarrassed to be cars, and, indeed, to Lev’s red Mercedes they were merely easy obstacles that might as well have been standing still as he darted past and swerved around and squeezed between them. In the distance where Nevsky Prospekt ended, the lancelike gold spire of the Admiralty was reflecting the sun. Although in years past Nikolai had seen it so often that he no longer noticed it, he appreciated it now and was proud of it. Lev braked suddenly at a pedestrian crossing, not more than six feet from a gray-uniformed militsioner in his assigned spot in the middle of the thoroughfare. He was a young policeman but experienced enough to know that when he saw such a car he should pretend he didn’t. His eyes raked across the red Mercedes and its passengers without showing the slightest interest, and even when Lev chose that moment to put a cassette in the player with the volume loud, the policeman pretended not to notice. The pedestrians were a different matter. Many stopped and stood to take in the car, to let its happy bright red splash into their day. It caused them to nod and smile, privately confirming secret convictions. There were, of course, the envious too, visibly angered by the sight of it. For both sorts Lev spun the volume of the speakers even louder, and Nikolai knew it was not coincidence that the music being played was from Cabaret:

  “Money makes the world go round,

  The world go round

  The world go round.

  Money makes the world go round …”

  Part of Nikolai wanted to scrunch down and be unseen, but even if that had been the greater part of him, it was impossible, prevented by Kecia’s occupation of the space he would need for scrunching. She understood none of the words being sung, and so, innocent of their significance, was just enjoying the sound of them, letting their spirit get to her shoulders and her head.

  The Mercedes went on being a scarlet dervish among the slow, drab traffic along Nevsky Prospekt. At Gogola Street Lev swung an illegal left with no protest from the militsioner stationed there. Two blocks over and a half block up Mayorova Prospekt they turned into an alley and came to a stop within the range of several sour-smelling garbage cans. Lev reached down and dug in under the edge of the car’s floor mat. Not at all circumspect about it, he separated several U.S. twenty-dollar bills from a sheaf of foreign currency. He folded the twenties and slid them into his shirt pocket, then got out and went up the wide concrete steps that served the rear kitchen and delivery entrance of the Hotel Astoria. Seated to one side on the top step was a middle-aged man badly in need of either more beard or a shave. His eyes were sunken and sleepless-looking. The jacket and trousers he was wearing were from two different cheap suits and were baggy, badly soiled, buttonless. Nikolai scrutinized the man and took him at once for a stukach, a snitch, an informer for one of the government police forces. What gave the man away was his shoes. The stukachi never completed their disguise by wearing bad shoes.

  Lev passed right by the stukach and entered the hotel’s kitchen. Nikolai decided if the man already had something to tell his benefactors there was nothing that could be done about it. Might as well ignore him. He thought to while away the time he’d tell Kecia about this hotel, the Astoria, how it was Leningrad’s best and was where Hitler had planned to stay when the city surrendered. But then Nikolai remembered Kecia didn’t speak his language, and he didn’t speak enough of hers to relate such things. Kecia stood up to stretch and give Nikolai’s lap a rest. She leaned forward against the frame of the windshield. That put her tight, shapely buttocks level with Nikolai’s eyes and well within range of his bite. He amused himself by debating with himself whether it should be her left or her right. Very tempted, he clicked his front teeth together, mentally delivering a nice little erotic snap. His imagination enjoyed the playful ouch that would undoubtedly have evoked.

  Lev came out of the hotel, followed by two kitchen workers in white carrying sizable cartons, which they put in the car’s trunk.

  “Picnic,” Lev explained as he got in and started up.

  It was a two-hour drive to the dacha, most of it over a shoulderless black-topped highway that passed through Kronstadt. The final five miles was a country road heaved up and deeply rutted in many places by the previous winter’s severe cold and melt. Familiar landmarks told Nikolai the distance yet to go, and when they passed through a grove of tall white birches grown so naturally straight and evenly spaced they appeared to have been planted to measure and carefully tended, he knew the next thing that would please his sight would be the dacha.

  Situated on a slight grade, it was rather bashfully set back beneath two enormous pines. A house of wood, reminiscent of those built in Russia as far back as the sixteenth century. The wood of its siding, shingles, eaves, and framing was left entirely bare to defy the elements for as long as it could. By now it was weathered to a golden color with streaks of black. Only the knots had remained immune. As though in an attempt to make up for its plain vulnerability, every inch of every surface and angle was repetitively embellished with carvings and cutouts, geometrics and scrolls. A two-story gingerbread house.

  It wasn’t locked. The dachas located in the more fashionable Komarovo area were frequently broken into, but such a thing was unlikely here. Nikolai hadn’t been to the dacha since the first week of the previous September, and it was exactly as he’d left it. They went around and opened most of the windows and shutters, gave both floors of the house an airing. Kecia swept without raising a lot of dust. Lev took the cushions outside and beat them vigorously against one another, brought them back in all plumped and ready to give comfort. Nikolai turned down the beds, theirs and his. He’d spent a lot of his younger years enjoying this house but not nearly so much of his maturity, and over the past six years, since assignment to London, he’d hardly been there at all except to check on it. He felt the same change in his attachment here as he’d felt in the Leningrad apartment. It was as though the dacha had become impatient with him, lonely, angry, and he’d had a falling out with it, and only an extended time together might repair the schism. It was only a house, he told himself, but as he went down the stairs the creak of a tread that he couldn’t remember ever having not creaked took exception.

  He and Lev sat on the porch with a bottle of raspberry brandy. They drank from inexpensive stemmed glasses. The sun was still above the trees that edged the clearing. Kecia had
removed her clothes and was now down at the stream leaping from the smooth gray exposed belly of one rock to another. She appeared entirely caught up in her ballet au naturel, but every so often she paused, put a hand to her brow like a visor, and squinted up to the porch to verify that she wasn’t being ignored.

  Lev and Nikolai raised their glasses to her and drank some of the eau-de-vie. Like a vaporous specter lurking within the delicate raspberry personality of the clear liquid was a potency that transformed their stomachs into little hells and immediately ran molten through all the tributaries of their bloodstreams. Nikolai blew out a long whistling breath, like a safety valve letting off excess heat. Not being able to hold his alcohol well was another change. Back in the days when he and Lev had been on the run together a half-dozen of these brandies would have been nothing, but not now. He wouldn’t even try to keep up drink for drink with Lev.

  “Remember when you were into Finns?” Lev said.

  Nikolai remembered.

  “How superstitious most of them were? Well, this one believes the most enjoyable love is made when her head is to the north.”

  “Does she carry a compass?”

  “No, but she has an amazing sense of direction.” Lev grinned. He remained pleasant when he said, “She will go home next week, or surely the week after. She hasn’t even mentioned it yet but I can feel it with her.”

  “Perhaps this one will come back.”

  “No, she won’t come back, but neither will she forget.” Lev said it as though he considered it an even trade. “Are you still with that English lady?”

  “Vivian.”

  “I know her name. I wanted to hear it from you. The way a man says a woman’s name when he’s far from her is as much as a confession.”

  “And what did I just divulge?”

  “That most of your heart isn’t here.” Lev tilted his face to the sun, which was still too bright for his eyes to remain open. “Why is it the same sunlight feels so different here in Russia? It seems to contain more benevolence. Has it ever struck you that way?”