Hot Siberian

by Gerald A. Browne

  “What shall it be, to the country tonight or tomorrow?” Archer asked, pushing the mood up a notch.

  Nikolai looked to Vivian, who remained blank.

  Archer waited. “I detect at least a temporary disdain for the bucolic. What is it, a symptom of nouvelle richesse?”

  Vivian smiled weakly.

  Archer finished off his nearly cold tea. Nikolai would let this resolve itself. Whether it would be the country or London didn’t matter. What mattered was his proximity to Vivian.

  Indecision hung there. Finally, Archer said: “I know what we need. Just the ticket. A holiday.”

  “A weekend somewhere different,” Vivian said thoughtfully.

  “Why not a full-fledged holiday? A good long one,” Archer said.

  Vivian brightened, then dimmed. “Nick couldn’t get away on such short notice. He has his diamond business to look after.” She shrugged and smiled. “I’ll settle without sacrifice for a weekend.”

  Nikolai waited a beat, then enjoyed telling her: “I might be able to take some time!”

  “Really, darling? That would be wonderful!”

  “The Algarve,” Archer suggested. “I believe you once mentioned you’d never been to Portugal.”

  Vivian didn’t respond to the Algarve. “Perhaps Biarritz,” she said.

  “Glitzy,” Archer warned, “especially this time of year. But Saint-Jean-de-Luz is delightful and only minutes from Biarritz.”

  After a brief second thought Vivian for some reason vetoed Biarritz.

  “Wherever,” Archer said. “Let me look after everything. We could fly tomorrow, or even tonight. What do we think of that?”

  Nikolai wondered if it was what Vivian wanted. His getting away wouldn’t be a problem. He had his annual six weeks’ vacation coming. Vysotsky could take over for him, service Churcher. He’d have to call Leningrad, of course, let Valkov know. The only thing about this vacation idea that bothered him was that pronoun “we” that Archer had used. Was it the inclusive or that strange British objective “we”?

  CHAPTER

  15

  THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY THEY WERE IN MADRID. STAYING at the Hotel Ritz in a huge corner suite on the fifth floor. Archer, true to his word, had arranged everything, put his Westwind jet at their disposal, hired a limousine, and through some sleight of influence managed to get them quartered on such short notice in that great white palace of a hotel. The Ritz Madrid was so selective that it had at one time or another turned away the cream of Hollywood and the milk of Europe’s nobility.

  On Sunday Archer had phoned. “All comfy?” he’d asked. “Very,” Nikolai told him. “Just checking,” Archer said and clicked off.

  Now they had been at the Ritz for three days. The sun over Madrid was up and unchallenged as usual. A waiter in a tuxedo that actually fit him well and wasn’t yet shiny at the seat or elbows had brought a breakfast of plump, light rolls and coffee and tea and blackberry preserves in a silver bowl. The waiter’s appearance caused Nikolai to think how much he would dislike having a job that required the wearing of a tuxedo and patent-leather shoes all day. He expressed that to Vivian and she chalked it up to his socialist conscience using reverse psychology on him. She wondered if when Nikolai was old would he seek solace in Communism as most people did in religion? God, she hoped not.

  She didn’t have a stitch on, was in the sitting room, scrunched down on the sofa with her feet up and crossed on the low table. She slathered butter on a hunk of a roll, then blackberry preserves. A dollop of the preserves fell off and landed an inch or so below her navel. She left it there long enough for Nikolai to consider licking it off. She scooped it off with a finger and consumed it. With a chew of roll in her mouth out of nowhere she asked: “Do you like it here?”

  “You’re here,” was Nikolai’s reply.

  “I mean, don’t you find this place more than a bit self-impressed?”

  Nikolai shrugged impassively. “I know of millions who would say it’s decadent.”

  “I felt it the moment I stepped into that velvet-lined lift.”

  That hadn’t been apparent to Nikolai. She had seemed excited to be there. Might it be that she was blaming the hotel for her actually being bored with him? He asked her.

  She told him his question didn’t deserve an answer. She threw him two kisses and then examined the underside of her coffee cup, where as she’d suspected it said Limoges.

  Hell, Vivian thought, Edith Wharton had believed that an hour of anything was enough. She stood up, brushed the crumbs from her breasts, and said: “Let’s get out of here.”

  Nikolai began packing. Vivian notified the two pilots, who were standing by. And at twelve minutes to two the wheels of Archer’s Westwind jet gave up their contact with the runway of the Barajas de Madrid Airport, climbed to twenty thousand feet, and was put on a northerly course. When Vivian had notified the chief pilot he had wanted to know where they’d be going. Vivian wasn’t sure and said so. The chief pilot explained he was required to file a flight plan. She told him, “Righto, make it Deauville.”

  But now that they were in the air she wasn’t really keen on Deauville. She gave both Nice and Monte Carlo consideration.

  Nikolai, meanwhile, appeared to be gazing out at the variegated patches of Europe below. Really he was trying to quell the disturbance he’d felt ever since he’d gone to check out at the Ritz. The cashier had informed him that everything was already taken care of. Nikolai didn’t need to ask by whom. He insisted there was a mistake, wanted to see the bill. The cashier obliged. Nikolai saw the itemized bill stamped pagado. He was furious. He explained why to Vivian, who was waiting there in the lobby. “Let it be,” she had said, her mind elsewhere. Nikolai’s upset was taking a long time to subside. Hell, he thought, he might as well have Archer adopt him.

  Vivian snapped apart her seat belt and walked forward to the control cabin. She informed the pilot of a change in destination and had the copilot place a call to Archer. Rather than arrive without accommodations.

  Two hours later the Westwind touched down at Echterdingen Airport in Stuttgart. Awaiting was a Mercedez-Benz limousine. Nikolai had decided he wouldn’t let these Archer things get to him and spoil their holiday. He knew he was no freeloader, and besides, wasn’t the bottom line the fact that Vivian was with him? He climbed into the Mercedes and just accepted the sixty-mile trip to Baden-Baden.

  At the reception desk of Brenner’s Park Hotel they were greeted with importance. The manager himself, a French sort of German very accomplished in suavity, showed them up to their fourth-floor suite. He waited with them until their baggage was brought, then, before departing, politely refused a gratuity.

  Vivian kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse all the way down. “Up Madrid,” she said brightly. “This is better, isn’t it, lover?” She went out on the balcony for a moment.

  Nikolai had the feeling that they had usurped someone’s resting place.

  “Dostoyevski used to stay here a lot,” Vivian said, returning, “So did all those horny Russian grand dukes.” As though those facts had influenced her decision to come there.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “No, only claimed that I have.” She went into the bedroom and approved of the bed, its expansiveness, two double beds pushed together. All in all the suite was luxurious, with its high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, silk-covered walls, and elegant nineteenth-century German furnishings of dark teak.

  Nikolai wondered if a grand duke had ever really occupied these rooms and done grand things. The possibility did make being there more interesting for him. He took off his jacket and tie and shoes and stretched out on the sofa. He’d known about Dostoyevski. The great writer had also been a loser. His novel The Gambler had been set here in Baden-Baden. He’d knocked it out swiftly to pay off his roulette debts.

  “Looks like you’re for a nap,” Vivian said, dropping into the deep armchair opposite the sofa.

  “Just close my eyes for a while.”


  “I’ll see to the unpacking.”

  Nikolai grunted his gratitude, took a deep, releasing breath, and began enjoying his nap.

  Vivian took a tangerine from the silver salver on the table. She peeled it and broke it into its sections before putting one in her mouth. She accidentally swallowed a seed and wondered if it might get stuck someplace within her. It was certainly more benign than other sorts of seed she’d swallowed, she wryly told herself. Her private world, she thought, giving a shape to her aggregate experiences. She was, she realized, in a self-appraising mood. Should she indulge it, question her personal ledger, or skip all of that and go directly to the inevitable conclusion that she did not know how right or wrong, good or bad she was because there was no way for her to make a bed-rock comparison? She could only measure, by imagination, herself against others. Any meaningful chastising or, for that matter, praising of her had to come from her. She was, she thought, like a sun basking in its own heat. What seemed best to her, seemed to fit the configuration of her soul, was to allow her spirit to have its way. Otherwise she was merely a performer, and there certainly was little honesty in that.

  Nikolai shifted onto his side, put his back to the room. Apparently he was going for more than a mere nap. Vivian could hear the air going in and out of him. Sleep breaths.

  Her Nikolai, she thought. She was sure she loved him. There had been for her nothing consequential before him, she felt. He, him, his had been the true start of her. An igniting. Was that how it was, right in the momentum of one life or another the entrance of a mate for eternity? Was it a reward earned from past lives, a plateau reached, perhaps? She didn’t feel all that evolved. She did feel there were now heavens in her.

  She did the unpacking, then quietly went out and down to the lobby to make some credit arrangements. When she returned, Nikolai was still asleep on the sofa. She sat at the desk with her checkbook. It was a mess, scribbles and blank stubs. She had no respect for any level of bookkeeping, even as simple as hers. Usually, the mere sight of her checkbook repelled her, and she never bothered to open her monthly bank statements when they arrived in the mail, just tossed them into a cardboard box in the back of her hall closet or threw them out with the trash.

  Using hotel stationery, she listed the amounts she’d paid out to her creditors, added them up, and subtracted the total from three hundred thousand pounds. She still had over two hundred and ten thousand pounds. That is my balance, she thought, staring at the figure. Why was it called a balance? Was it because without it one would fall? Not her, she assured herself, she had her angels.

  She chose an evening dress, a simple figure-hugging silvery Donna Karan, bare on top, dependent on little more than a thread of a strap. Then the accessories, including open sandals with high slender heels, practically weightless. She laid her things out neatly on the bed, and, beside them, Nikolai’s evening suit and shirt and black tie and all. She wouldn’t awaken him until she’d done herself. She intended to stun tonight, be a killer.

  They had a leisurely dinner in the hotel dining room, then walked out into the fresh Black Forest night. A stroll at lovers’ pace down Lichtentaler Allee and up Friedrichstrasse brought them to the casino, an imposing white structure fronted by a row of eight columns thirty feet high and a wide portico that accommodated more than two hundred yellow-cushioned chairs. People of the evening were seated there in groups and pairs, chatting around their smoke, laughing into their cognacs. Both Vivian and Nikolai caused halted sentences, turned heads, as they passed by and entered the casino. They showed their passports and went into the main salon. “We’ll only watch,” Vivian said, leading the way deep into the large room. It was early. The roulette tables were not yet crowded. Nikolai and Vivian were drawn to the table that appeared to be the most active. They observed the play and the players for nearly half an hour, became acclimated to the subdued lighting, the elegant iniquity of the atmosphere.

  “Darling, play a little,” Vivian suggested.

  “I’d just as soon watch,” Nikolai whispered. He found fascinating the losings and winnings of such large amounts, the almost disrespectful lack of regard for money. For instance, the German gentleman seated nearest the wheel. He probably would have raised screaming hell had he found a four-mark error on his dinner bill an hour ago, and here on that last turn of the wheel he’d impassively lost a thousand.

  “My roulette angels seem to be telling me you’d be lucky,” Vivian said.

  “You play if you want,” Nikolai told her.

  She understood his reluctance. “Set a limit on yourself and see how it goes. Come on,” she urged good-naturedly, “we’re in Baden-Baden.”

  Nikolai didn’t want to be a killjoy. He purchased fifty chips worth a pound each.

  “What number should we play?”

  “Don’t think, just play the number that you seem told to play.”

  “What about your roulette angels?” He was amused.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re yours, aren’t they, not mine?”

  “We’re soul mates,” she said. “They’ll talk to you. But of course you have to listen.”

  He waited a moment, as though listening, then placed five chips on the place on the layout of the table that was designated ODD, thus betting at even money that the winning number would be odd. The spin was in progress. The wheel slowed. The white ball seemed to have a mind of its own. It fell into number 18 and as though dissatisfied there hopped out and went into the adjacent slot, number 29. Nikolai had won. The croupier paid him five chips.

  “Let the ten ride,” Vivian said. “That is, if you feel told that you should.”

  He did and won on odd again. He picked up his original bet and his winnings of fifteen pounds.

  “See?” Vivian said and gave his ear a fast celebratory kiss that sounded to him like a minor explosion.

  Nikolai hadn’t done much gambling in his lifetime. For most of his years there hadn’t been either the opportunity or the time for it. In his youth he’d played cards with Lev and some fellows once in a while, but that was for the comradeship of it and the vodka they drank more than the few kopeks that were wagered. Soon after he was assigned to the trade mission in London he went alone to the races on three occasions, spring Saturdays when he had nothing better to do than satisfy his curiosity about what it was like. He went to Beverly and Salisbury and one night to Kingfield. Watched, altogether, nineteen races run, made four small bets, and lost all four, but seeing such handsome horses run was worth it. Since Vivian, he’d gone with her twice to her private gaming club, the Clermont, and spent more time at the bar than at the table with her. In fact, the second time he’d gone to the Clermont with her, while she was caught up in play he’d gone out and sat on a bench in Berkeley Square Park across the way for nearly an hour and hadn’t been missed. She came away claiming she’d broken even. He thought she was white-lying about that and he did the same by letting her think he believed her. On several nights during the past year he had lain in the dark feeling paired by touch with Vivian in her bed while she explained the rudiments of blackjack and baccarat, roulette and craps, wanting to share her interest with him. Every so often she’d stop and ask if he was listening and he’d umm-hmm for her and sometimes would even ask a question for her sake.

  Now he was fifteen pounds ahead at Baden-Baden and discovering how entirely different was the feeling of knowing the next bet he made would be his trying to win their money while betting their money. He sat out a spin and then placed ten pounds on the space designated 1st 12. The slot that the ball finally took rest in was number 6, making Nikolai a winner three times in succession, and this last time at two-to-one odds.

  He played on. At the end of an hour he had learned the game fairly well and was two thousand and some pounds ahead. Possibly, he thought, there was something to Vivian’s roulette angels, because never once during his hour of play had he allowed logic to influence him. Rather, it was as if he’d put himself completely
at the command (or was it whim?) of a determining force that sort of poked hunches into his head whenever it was pleased to do so. Those times when he lost it seemed that some force also determined that he should, for contrast, to keep the reaction to winning at its proper intensity. Vivian was with him all the way, pulling for him, encouraging after a loss, squeezing him one place or another after a nice win. Once during a relatively critical wager, Nikolai felt himself getting an erection and could only partly attribute that to Vivian. Strange, he thought, and wondered what other such recesses were in him that he’d never been aware of.

  The wheel was again spun.

  Nikolai was suddenly indecisive about which play he should make and how much. The force that had been providing him with guidance seemed to have deserted him, or at least was no longer paying attention. He believed in the number 6 but the number 14 was more of a possibility but 23 was perhaps better. He hadn’t known such ambivalence until now. He took it as an indication that he should quit while he was ahead. He skipped three turns and then told Vivian, “You play.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “No, please, you take over.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I feel.” Also he felt selfish. Vivian had shown marvelous patience, especially for someone who so enjoyed wagering. He relinquished to her his two thousand in chips and plaques and stood behind her chair. By how much his neck and shoulders and arms now relaxed he realized how tense he’d become.

  Vivian’s play was swifter, more decisive. Her wagers were spread out over the layout of numbers, and seldom did she stop placing chips on various lines and intersections of lines until the croupier announced there could be no more bets. Nikolai told himself he wouldn’t mind if she lost the entire two thousand that had required so much emotional energy for him to win.

  However, she didn’t lose. The plaques on the table in front of her piled up. At one o’clock Nikolai was happy to have her back with him when she turned to him, looked up, and said, “Let’s make it an early night.” An attendant was summoned to accompany her to the cashier, who exchanged the hard pieces of plastic for banknotes, a thick sheaf. Twenty thousand pounds.