The first hall was filled with ancient firearms and weaponry, none of which really held her interest, but Anna moved dutifully from cabinet to cabinet, glancing at the exhibits and letting her eyes drift across the small information cards next to each. Her companions on the tour seemed to mainly comprise of about fifteen middle-aged Russian men and women that had been climbing down from a bland Intourist coach as her car had dropped her off. One man, however, seemed different, his suit tailored and sophisticated on his tall frame as he kept himself apart from the rest. Anna had noticed the guide giving the man a small smile and nod when she saw him, and for a moment had wondered if perhaps there was romance between them, but then dismissed the idea. Anna knew men, and a man like that would not look twice at a woman like the guide in her sensible uniform.
Bored with the exhibits, she moved around to the other side of the cabinet and studied him through the glass. For a moment or two she feigned interest in a pair of ornate pistols and then let her eyes slide to the left, through to where he stood. How old was he? Maybe forty? Perhaps slightly older? Not a bad age for a man, she concluded. His dark hair shone slightly in the light where it had been combed backwards above the worn skin of his face. His eyes flicked up and met hers, twinkling slightly as if he had known she was watching him, and they were a brighter blue than any she had ever seen. Her insides warmed as she looked away. The day seemed at once more interesting and, as she followed the guide into the next hall, she could feel the stranger’s gaze still on her, rising and falling with her walk. As she allowed herself a tiny secret smile, she wondered if the light was shining through her dress.
For the next forty minutes they carried on their secret dance, pretending ignorance of the other’s presence as the guide led the group through collections of carved gilt carriages, breath-taking sleighs and an array of heavily jeweled gowns owned by Catherine the Great and some less famous Russian Tsarinas, whole surfaces of faded fabric covered with priceless rubies, diamonds and emeralds.
Staring up at them, Anna wondered how a nation had given this elegance up, opting instead to become the mediocrity of the masses, and for a moment the dark stranger on the other side of the room was forgotten. How she would have loved to have lived in the grandeur of these palaces, fires roaring in the grates as winter turned the gardens outside into a frozen sculpted wasteland, inside a constant swirl of parties and witty flirtations to keep out the cold. She would have been queen of them all, andif not in title, then in beauty. She always was. Those days wouldn’t have been any different.
It was the final hall that held the Armoury’s greatest treasures though, the delicately painted and gold inlaid icon frames, pocket watches, and the pinnacle of the exhibition, the world-famous Faberge eggs. Moving from cabinet to cabinet, each display seemed more enchanting than the last. It was when she was gazing at one of the eggs, its intricate ebony and silver lid open revealing a perfectly detailed replica of the winter palace, tiny windows with lights inside hinting at a miniature world within still enjoying the glamour of the old regime, that the man came alongside her, his reflection filling the range of her vision on the glass like a ghost.
‘They are beautiful, are they not?’ His voice was low, speaking only for her, and although coated in the guttural Russian tones, his words were melodic and smooth.
‘Yes. Yes they are. Exquisite.’
He turned to her and smiled. ‘As, if I may say, are you.’ He held out his hand. ‘Gregori Ivanovitch. A pleasure to meet you.’
‘Thank you.’ Her lips hesitated over her married name, unable to let it out. ‘Anna.’
He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Anya. A Russian name.’
She didn’t correct his pronunciation, taking pleasure in the exotic sound of it.
‘Are you enjoying looking into our past?’ He said.
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ She met his confident gaze with one of her own, before taking a few steps to the side and looking back into the cabinet, knowing that he would follow her. ‘Are you with the group?’
He laughed, amused, the loud noise echoing slightly in the hush, as if he, like her, were born to fill this room. ‘No.’ He looked over to the huddled group on the other side of the hall. ‘No, I’m not with them. They are factory workers from Kiev on their first visit to our great capital.’ He leaned in to whisper to her. ‘If you stand close enough to them you can smell their awe and their fear.’ He chuckled. ‘As well as the stench of boiled cabbage.’
From the heat of his skin she could smell a hint of cologne. Not one she recognized, but warm and musky. She kept herself close knowing that he too would be drinking her scent in. ‘Why would they be afraid?’
‘I think maybe you understand very little about this country of mine.’ He looked across the room again and then back at her. ‘Sometimes invisibility is not such a terrible thing.’
Her finger, elegant and manicured, traced the outline of one of the exhibits while inside she brushed away his words. There was nothing worse than invisibility.
‘So, is this your first time to the Armoury too, Gregori Ivanovich?’ Her tone was light and playful. It would draw him in, she was sure, this routine being a game she had played out many times with many men. Where this particular version of the game would lead, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. Robert and the chill of her life with him were back at the hotel. In the here and now she was herself, or maybe not herself. She was Anya, something new, something more. She could feel the power tingling in her fingertips.
‘No,’ He shook his head. ‘I come here often to look at the pieces in this hall. I like to look at things of beauty to inspire me in my work.’ He looked down at her, those blue eyes twinkling. ‘I have what I think in your country would translate as a free pass.’
‘What is it that you do? Are you an artist?’ She looked once again at the fine wool of his suit. There was no smell of the death of the individual clinging to this man who she thought would be as at home strolling down Bond Street as he was here. He stood out against the backdrop of this modern Moscow as much as she did.
He pointed into the cabinet of priceless decorated eggs. ‘My great-great Uncle was Faberge’s assistant. He worked on many of the internal decorations for these creations. In fact, I think the miniature Winter Palace that you were looking at is one of his pieces.’ His voice dropped to a murmur as he stared through the glass into the past. ‘But, as there would always be with two great craftsmen, they had a falling out, and my great-great Uncle left Faberge and St Petersburg and came to Moscow to make treasures of his own. Come. I’ll show you.’
He led her to a smaller cabinet, less well-lit, pressed against a crimson wall. Anna peered inside and gasped. ‘They’re dancers!’ There were six female figurines within, each on an ivory pedestal, and gazing at them, Anna was intrigued by their detail and life-like qualities. One woman, her brunette hair piled high, twisted in a loose pirouette on the stand, the shape of the movement unconventional but natural as if she were dancing for no-one but herself. Pressing her face closer to the glass, it seemed to Anna as if there were a bead of sweat trickling down the dancer’s flushed face. Each of the others was equally detailed, but unique, as if they were photographs rather than china.
‘They’re magnificent.’ She breathed eventually. ‘The colours are so real. They don’t even look like china.’
‘They’re not. They’re made from a clay compound, a secret mixture that my Great Uncle developed.’
‘Why are there so few? And why are they over here rather than with the main exhibits? They’re far more beautiful than most of those things.’
‘His career was ended rather abruptly by death. He was murdered. I don’t know the exact story, so much of our history has been re-written or lost, but I know that the husband of one of his aristocratic models was executed for the murder, not long after the sixth doll was completed. He was rambling like a madman about magic and the Devil all the way to the executioner’s block. His wife went to a nunnery where she remained in s
eclusion until she died.’ He smiled slightly. ‘How lucky that we have killed God now, eh? No nunneries, no Devil. No magic. Not in Mother Russia.’
Anna looked at the dolls again and shivered pleasantly thinking about the story. There had been passion in Russia once at least, even if it seemed dead now.
Looking up at him, she raised a curved eyebrow. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Are you an artist?’
‘Of sorts. I am a doll-maker like my Great Uncle. I have a small showroom and studio on the old Arbat. I don’t pretend at his talent, but I have my own successes. Most of my clients come from the new aristocracy, the polit-buro and the KGB. These things allow me certain freedoms that perhaps aren’t extended to most of my comrades. Even in these times, people still appreciate things of beauty.’
The guide was ushering them out, and Anna and her companion walked in silence until they were back in the sticky heat of midday Moscow. As the tourists from Kiev were herded back onto their coach, she looked at her waiting driver with dismay, the shackles of her life closing around her.
‘Is he waiting for you?’ His breath tickled her ear, and she resisted the urge to tilt her neck and feel his lips there.
‘Yes. I’m staying at the Ukraine Hotel. I was going to get him to take me to Red Square before returning though.’
‘I could show you Red Square, if you like. We can walk from here along the river, and he can pick you up at the bridge later. Would you like me to speak to him?’
She smiled up at him. ‘I would like that very much.’
The driver stood tall as Gregori approached, and, watching them talking, it wasn’t long before Anna saw some folded notes exchanging hands. Always money, she thought. She would always be able to value herself on the money men spent to be with her. But maybe with this man it was different. He wasn’t as needy as the men in the club, as Robert, and that set her pulse racing. Not because of love or passion, but because of the thrill of the challenge. The need to subdue him. The driver got in the car and pulled out of the Armoury gates, and, smiling as she took the Russian man’s arm, Anna felt free.
Red Square was not what she had expected. She had thought to find something like the famous squares in London, with one central statue or feature and perhaps some gardens, but as with everything else in this city, she found it strange. The vast uneven area to the right of the walls of the Kremlin was paved with huge slabs of gray, like cobbles for a giant, one corner taken up by an imposing non-descript building that her new and more charming guide told her was GUM, the city’s largest department store. When she had asked to see inside, he had smiled and said that there was nothing to interest her within its walls, and after only a few minutes she knew he was right. It was more like a bland indoor market than a store, full of necessities rather than luxuries, and it reeked of the stale sweat of those that worked too hard for a living. He must have seen the displeasure rippling on her face, because they were swiftly outside again.
Passing Lenin’s tomb, and the long shambling queue outside it, they strolled towards the bridge.
‘And this,’ Gregori said, gesturing to his left as he brought them to a halt. ‘Is St. Basil’s cathedral; one of the most famous pieces of architecture in the city. It was built nearly five hundred years ago, and took five years to complete, the workers out in all weathers, several dying during their labour. Imagine spending so long on one project. How much dedication would that take? But it was worth it don’t you think? All art requires sacrifice.’
Anna stared up at the church that looked like nothing she had ever seen before. To her it was a garish mass of colour, too many domes for its small size, and each one and the area below it decorated in a different design with a different bright shade. There were candy-stripes and zig-zags, gold and red, too much for the eye to take in. To Anna it was like the Armoury guide’s make-up and hair; ugly from trying too hard.
‘You don’t like it, do you?’ He asked, and she shook her head, honestly.
‘I think it’s too much. It all jars on the eye.’ She paused. ‘It stands out in all the wrong ways.’
Gregori didn’t seem to take offence at her comments, but laughed gently. ‘That is because you are not Russian. In the West you can only see what is obvious. You look for obvious beauty and never test your vision by looking closely. It is all too easy for you.’ He raised his hand, pointing at the shapes and colours of the church. ‘To me, this is a glorious symbol of all that is mysterious and misleading about Russia, in the old days and now. Its symmetry is not easy to detect, nor it glory immediately apparent. Because you are a foreigner, you cannot see past its mixture of dissonant shapes and colours but if you could you would be able to discern the intrinsic harmony, the clever design, and the beauty of the streamlined contrasting contours and the cathedral would leave you as breathless as Faberge’s eggs did.’
She smiled at him, almost absently. Why did all men want to teach her? Improve her. Imprint their mind on hers as if she were a blank canvas to paint on and own. Because it’s part of the game, that’s why. The power struggle. What will win, brain or beauty? She already knew the answer to that; it was the men that didn’t.
‘Tell me, Anya,’ his voice was thoughtful, ‘what do you see when you look at Moscow and her people?’
For a moment, she let her eyes wander around the square, at the soldiers and the queues to see the corpse of the long dead leader that had brought them to this stale existence, and the others that scurried from work to home or back again, all dark overcoats and hunched shoulders. ‘I see equality of the lowest level.’ She couldn’t keep the disdain out of her voice and he smiled.
‘Very good.’ He stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, the silk thin between them and her naked skin. ‘Now tell me what you don’t see. Tell me who you don’t see.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She could feel his chest against her back, and she wondered if touching her was sending the same electric tingle through him that it was through her.
‘Look again. Is this what the capital city in your England would look like? This mixture of people?’
She stared, lost for a few seconds, and then his meaning dawned on her, and she sucked in the hot, muggy air. ‘Oh, I see. I think I see….’ She turned to him. ‘There are no black people. No ethnic people at all.’
‘Who else?’
She could feel herself flushing, as her mind scanned back through her memories of her experiences here. ‘There are no disabled people. None.’ She turned to look at him, confused. ‘How can that be?’
He smiled. ‘Equality comes at a price, Anya. The weak and those considered inferior aren’t allowed in the city. Not in the greatest city of the Soviet Union. Maybe in Kiev or Siberia. But not Leningrad or Moskva.’ He drawled the last syllable of the Russian word, and despite herself Anna was fascinated. She stared out at the moving people, for a moment her over-whelming sense of self forgotten.
‘So what happens to all the disabled people that come from here? Born deaf or blind or with something like cystic fibrosis? Surely there must be some native to the city. I can’t imagine parents banishing their children so easily.’
Gregori smiled again, his teeth straight and white against his weathered skin. ‘Ahh, so you have a sharp mind under that beautiful face.’ He moved away and started leading her slowly to the bridge where her car would soon be waiting. ‘Now you just have to learn to see my city properly.’ He put his arm around her shoulder as if she belonged to him. ‘You look around and you say you see equality. But you know as well as I that true equality cannot be. It is a veneer, a pretence. Perhaps not for everyone. Maybe for those poor, exhausted workers that we saw back in the Armoury the dreams of Lenin are reality. But existence for the rest of Russia? For the passionate artists that litter our history and still must exist today? To see their lives you need to look for the things that move in the corner of your eyes. The blackmarketeers. The whores and the pimps. The whole communities that live beneath Stalin’s great Metro net
work. Those are the truly alive Moscovites.’
She frowned slightly, a wisp of hair blowing against her face. ‘It all sounds a little ugly to me. I don’t think those are my kind of people.’
‘Oh, Anya.’ He whispered. ‘You’d be surprised. One day you will learn that there are so many more interesting things than beauty, and that beauty and ugliness are sometimes so close they are indistinguishable.’
This time it was she that laughed; a flirtatious throaty sound. ‘Ah, but then there will hopefully be an obliging plastic surgeon ready to fall in love with me and literally save face.’
He raised an eyebrow, his own smile soft. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I wonder how you would live without your beauty.’
‘I don’t intend to find out.’ She paused. ‘What do you mean there are whole communities under the Metro?’ Ahead a black Zil pulled to the curb of the road and her driver stepped out.
Gregori kept his voice low, as if even he, with all his elusive debonair charm and Polit-Buro privileges, was still a little afraid of the power of the system, the big brother of the KGB. ‘Where do you think all the people who refuse to be equal live? Those that don’t want to be, or can’t be, worker ants of the state?’ He pointed downwards. ‘They’re under our feet, pretty Anya. The gypsies, the hermits, the political refugees and the eccentric artists that seem to like to be free, all tucked away in the old tunnels and boiler rooms and bomb shelters, living in tribes. Scurrying like rats in and out through the ventilation shafts at dusk and dawn. Invisible and yet alive. Fascinating, isn’t it?’
Mister October - Volume Two Page 13
