The White Russian

by Vanora Bennett

  It was new for me to have had such a strong negative effect on anyone. Most men of his age, if they noticed me at all, did so with avuncular, or what they liked to call avuncular, affection; no one at college or elsewhere had ever responded with hostility, or felt threatened if I asked questions. It must be a sign, I thought, of how vulnerable this man felt below the grandeur of his carapace, and I was suddenly sorry.

  ‘Alas,’ he said, and his nostrils flared to white points. He was speaking very slowly and clearly, so as to make his point absolutely comprehensible. ‘I have few mementos. Few possessions of any sort. Like all my fellow officers, I left Russia with what I stood up in. I’m afraid mine is a life devoted to public duty, miss. I spend my days looking after the needs of my fellow countrymen in exile, and, when I’m not on duty, I spend my evenings looking after the needs of my wife and son. I have little time for other friendships.’

  ‘I understand … I understand. But please just hear me out,’ I said. I fixed pleading eyes on him. ‘You see, there’s something I think Grandmother might have wanted me to do for you …’ and I explained about how her last wish had been for me to find a person called Zhenya.

  ‘Last wish?’ he said faintly. He blinked, once or twice.

  Yes, I rushed on, hoping I’d found the right note at last, she had some things she wanted me to share with this Zhenya. There were the pictures she’d been buying – lots of them, in every room. And there were her jewels – not just the very big jagged modern ones she’d worn in recent years but also, I was careful to mention, some little Russian trinkets. A marble ostrich egg with a troika on top. A cigarette case. A sapphire bracelet. Things that she’d kept in a box for most of her life, and that must have meant a lot to her.

  I’d have given anything for just one little twitch of a muscle somewhere, especially when I told him about the Fabergé ornaments he’d once given her. Even if he wasn’t going to share his memories with me, I so wanted him to at least look touched, for a moment.

  But he didn’t look touched. He just looked down, so I couldn’t see what he was thinking. Then he steepled his fingers again.

  ‘Ah … and, since my name is also Yevgeny, you thought she might have been referring to me?’

  Putting out of my mind what Jean and Madame Sabline had told me about how common the name was, I said, ‘Yes.’

  He crossed the steepled fingers, making his hands into a clasped double fist on which he rested his chin. Then he looked at me. ‘In point of fact,’ he said, ‘what your grandmother always called me was “Miller”. Or, occasionally’ – and he did, for a moment, look genuinely sad about the eyes as he said this – ‘chubchik. A name from a song. It means forelock – and my hair has a tendency to fall forward at the front. It used to get me into trouble on parade.’ He blinked again. ‘So, while I appreciate your generosity in seeking me out, miss, I fear I’m not the Zhenya you have in mind.’

  ‘But that wasn’t all,’ I gabbled, ‘because there was something else, too. She wanted me to look after this Zhenya and do what she called “making amends” …’

  A flicker of what I thought was distaste crossed his face. ‘She told you that, did she?’ he asked. One eyebrow went up. ‘On her deathbed?’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ I stumbled. ‘She wrote it down …’

  ‘In a letter?’ he said sceptically. There was a challenge in his eye.

  Miserably, I shook my head, and explained.

  ‘I see. Blotting paper,’ he repeated. ‘Notes from her delirium.’ He stood up. ‘My dear young lady,’ he said, and he began his weighty walk to my side of the desk. ‘Surely you can see I’m not the man you’re looking for. Your grandmother could have no possible reason to want to “make amends” to me. We were old friends.’

  He smiled, but I no longer thought it was a charming smile.

  He was right beside me now. Breathing audibly, he put a hand on my arm, as if I were already moving towards the door and he were helping me. I let myself be propelled into motion.

  ‘Besides, those awful daubs …’ He was shaking his head beside me. His voice rose a notch. ‘By all those terrible young men, the delinquents of every degenerate race in Europe: Romanians, Catalans, Jews; Bolsheviks, one and all … I always told her she was a fool to spend so much time with them. I was perfectly frank about it. She wasn’t in any doubt about my views, I can assure you. She’d never have thought I’d want to be left any of their filthy nonsense.’

  I was shocked at how different he’d suddenly sounded. It was enough to erase the feeling I’d started out with, that this man would have fitted in beautifully with my family – because now I could see he wouldn’t, not at all. After all, the way they talked never sounded like the vicious shouting I’d sometimes heard rebroadcast from Germany, denouncing entire races as degenerate. Even if Aunt Mildred did occasionally also say things about Jews that went against what I’d found out for myself at college, even if I knew that our college mixed-race summer-school programme had been wildly radical, and not something to be talked about overmuch with my family (for these things were delicate, and moved forward only a little at a time, and evolution was better than revolution), why, even Aunt Mildred could also be relied on to say that everyone knew that those people – the ones in power in Germany now – were no better than thugs.

  Or perhaps it was really me he was so angry with, even if it was the degenerate peoples of Europe and their decadent daubs that he was barking so furiously about?

  Perhaps he also regretted having allowed himself that burst of rage, because, after a quick glance at me, he went on, in a more neutral, explanatory tone, with some of the charm I’d been impressed by earlier returning to his manner, ‘We became very different from each other, with time, your grandmother and I.’ He opened the door. ‘People do change, as they grow older. But at least, when we met again in Paris, we were both old and wise enough to know how different we were, and accept the limited ways we could still be friends, given what life had made of each of us.’

  I was outside now, in the corridor. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you for your time.’ I bobbed my head, feeling choked, and turned stumblingly away. I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  26

  It was only when I pushed open the door at the end of the corridor that I realized I’d gone the wrong way. I wasn’t in the courtyard I’d come in from. I’d reached the big front office of ROVS. At four big desks, three solid young men in elaborate uniform (though with patches at the elbow) were clacking away at typewriters. In one of the two armchairs in the window, which had stuffing coming out of the armrests, a man in late middle age was reading a newspaper and underlining bits with a red pen.

  I thought, quite wrongly, that if I just tiptoed past they might not even notice me.

  But of course I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I hoped. They all turned round and stared.

  Then the older man, the one in the armchair, rose to his feet, clicked heels, and said, in quiet good French, ‘Mademoiselle?’

  How different this man was from General Miller, and not only because he had a normal civilian suit, slightly worn, on his slender, average-height frame. This man stooped slightly, and his hair was thinning on top. He was the kind you’d always know would listen to what you said. He had attentive eyes, the kind that took you in carefully as you were speaking. As soon as he’d heard enough of my mumbled explanation – about staying upstairs, being Grandmother’s relative, having called on General Miller to pay my respects, and got lost on my way out – this man bowed deeper, smiled and, after the usual formalities, said, as affably as anything, in his quiet, amused voice, ‘So, poor old General Miller got confused about showing you the right way out, did he?’ laughed a little, just long enough for one or two of the secretaries to join in, in a way that made it perfectly clear their laughter was at General Miller’s expense, not mine. ‘Let me show you out. I’m his number two, General Skoblin. And I can be relied on to know the way to the front door.’ And, with a smile, he held it o
pen, and handed me out into the ROVS front lobby.

  Feeling much better now, I let him slip courteously ahead of me towards the next door, too, which I could see would open into the apartment building’s main hall, and I’d be back on the stone stairs up to Grandmother’s apartment one floor up.

  I glanced around. This was exactly the front lobby you’d expect of a hard-up organization: a black-and-white tiled floor, a hat stand, coat hooks, and a table containing lots of piles of leaflets in Russian, on cheap flimsy paper. A bookshelf behind the table contained tired-looking books, perhaps available on loan to callers, as there was an exercise book and a pen on top. And there was a pile of newspapers, too, with a mug containing change beside it. The newspaper’s title was the only bit of all this reading material that I could read, since it was given on the masthead in French as well as Russian: La Pensée russe or Russian Thought.

  Finally, on the back of the door that the quiet number-two general was fumbling with, was the little room’s one note of colour: a poster, also in Russian, but in vivid reds and yellows this time, with big, swirly lettering.

  I couldn’t help smiling when I saw that the poster was of Grandmother’s singer friend. ‘Plevitskaya!’ I said in recognition.

  General Skoblin turned around. He looked extremely surprised. Pleased, too. ‘You’re reading what’s on this poster? You speak Russian?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘Oh! No, I just recognized her picture. She’s terribly famous, isn’t she? The Tsar’s Nightingale. I heard her sing once, in New York. And I believe she was my grandmother’s friend, too …’

  The effect of my vague compliments was startling. Thank God, this time at least I’d clearly said something much more right than I’d known, for his quiet bureaucrat’s face was positively lit up with pleasure.

  ‘Yes, she’s a wonderful singer,’ he agreed warmly. Then, with pride, giving me a little conspiratorial look, as if he wondered how I’d take the news, ‘And she’s my wife, also …’

  That did surprise me. He looked much too quiet and correct and upper-class for the blowsy, self-willed female I’d met. I couldn’t imagine them together.

  But you couldn’t ever quite tell with foreigners, I reflected, so I opened my eyes wide and congratulated him effusively on his showbiz-star wife, and enjoyed the way we bowed and bobbed politely at each other for several minutes more.

  ‘Do’, he said eventually, straightening himself, ‘call on us if you get a moment. My wife would be delighted.’ He dug behind some of his Ruritanian braiding for a card and handed it to me. ‘We live out of town, but we would be delighted to welcome you if you could arrange a visit to our home,’ he continued. Then, as if the thought had just struck him: ‘Or she will be singing here in Paris twice this week. Tonight, in fact, and tomorrow. You would be most welcome if you were able to join us there …’ Taking back the card for a moment, he scribbled a restaurant name on the back, and a couple of dates.

  I couldn’t refuse, and anyway, I didn’t want to. After the awful failure of my attempt to make friends with General Miller, I wanted at least to walk out of this office having made some sort of step forward. And this was what I had.

  I hadn’t thought much about Plevitskaya, except to notice that she was probably a fraud in claiming Grandmother’s friendship the first time, and, the second time, that she was definitely drunk on Grandmother’s brandy. But perhaps I’d been wrong to write her off completely. If she had a serious husband, she couldn’t, surely, be quite as dubious as I’d found her. Perhaps she had really been friends with Grandmother. Perhaps, if I could talk to her properly, preferably when she was sober, and maybe in French rather than in her terrible English, she’d tell me more.

  Nodding more thanks to the charming second general, I slipped away.

  27

  Jean

  When I parked on the rue du Colisée at four o’clock, I saw Evie walking along the road back to number 29. She was carrying a travel guide-book in her hand and wore a thoughtful, faraway expression. The sun had brought out a few freckles on her nose.

  They’d laughed at me at the station café at dawn, all the tarts and drunks, for looking so happy. I hadn’t minded their lewdness, for once, their tawdry gestures and filthy words. It was kindly meant. I’d hardly slept all day for thinking of her. And even this first glimpse of the woman who now meant everything to me, tall and fair and swaying, with no idea how beautiful she was, was making me smile and catch my breath. I could almost smell that scent, which she’d told me was Chanel. I was already imagining the next kiss, not so far away, once we were upstairs and alone again: her breasts against my chest, the slow slide of hands over rumpled cloth and then skin, the sinuous twining of legs …

  I whistled like an Apache through the cab window. Looking offended, she spun round, but when she saw it was only me grinning at her, her face softened, and when I growled, Apache-style, ‘Carry your book, lady?’ she laughed out loud.

  I could do nothing but smile back, like a fool, wondering at her eyes and those freckles on her nose. Everything I’d always known about the world I was permanently shut out from had stopped applying. There was just this moment, this afternoon gold, this smile, and two of us inside the same magic bubble, full of the same wonderful uncertainty.

  ‘It’s early,’ she said, hastily. ‘Marie-Thérèse will still be in the kitchen …’

  And then she blushed, deliciously wordless, and we both looked at each other, knowing.

  Impossible though it seemed that she could feel like this about me, too, there was no other explanation for that blush.

  ‘Apéritif?’

  And so we went to the café at the end of the road, me carrying her book. Our hands had brushed as she passed it to me. Even that touch of skin took my breath away.

  The café was empty but for two men on the terrasse, both with cheap suits, bad skins and pudding-bowl haircuts, hunched over a chessboard, muttering. I could see they weren’t French. They had a faintly Slavic look about them; big cheekbones and short noses, pale eyes. But I barely glanced at them. I had no eyes for anyone but her.

  We sat at the next table. When I ordered milk, so did she.

  The waiter returned with our drinks and two beers for the neighbouring table. I was half aware that the men at it hadn’t been talking about their chess game but about a cargo at Le Havre. Now they fell silent and reached for their drinks.

  When I laughed at the white moustache on her upper lip, she giggled and licked it off with a pink tongue.

  ‘You don’t think you’ve got one too?’ she laughed at me. There were golden flecks in her eyes. I could smell Chanel … I put a hand on her knee, under the table. I couldn’t resist. She drew in a small, astonished breath, and looked at me in a way I couldn’t quite read. She didn’t move my hand.

  But, a moment later, she did glance sideways, and I saw that, without my having even noticed, there was another man sitting down right next to us with the chess players: a market trader wearing an apron. He gave me an expressionless glance out of pale eyes. Then he and the chess players nodded at each other and mumbled greetings. Evie’s nose wrinkled. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I smell crab. Not good with milk.’

  When we got up, she put her hand in mine for a moment, as if it went there naturally.

  We walked out, and back along the pavement towards the building. ‘Were they from your father’s office?’ she asked. It was only then that I realized the men had been talking Russian.

  ‘No one I knew,’ I said, and reached for her hand, rejoicing in the feel of her skin against mine.

  We’d read all the Russian correspondence from Father to her grandmother, so there was no real need, any more, to go to her apartment. There was no point, either, in hoping to be alone there, since her housekeeper wouldn’t go away for at least an hour, until after I was supposed to pick up Father and take him home before I started work.

  But I had no idea what else to propose. Going anywhere that took us away from the relationship
between our relatives – which had been secret, maybe, but at least between equals – would put the social differences between the two of us in sharp relief. I couldn’t try entering her world and taking her somewhere grand. I didn’t have the money. Should I take her to a movie? Or to eat in some dive in Montparnasse, where the artists were? Or out dancing?

  ‘Would you like’, she said, and the pressure of her hand on mine grew pleasurably stronger, ‘to go with me to a Russian restaurant called Tsarkaya Okhota?’

  I laughed out of sheer relief.

  I squeezed her hand back. I turned sideways and, overcoming the inexplicable shyness that my desire had shackled me with, almost dared meet her gaze.

  She was laughing back at me from under her eyelashes, as pleased as I was to have solved the problem.

  In the car, on the way, grateful now for the need to look at the road, I said, ‘How did you even know that restaurant existed?’

  ‘There’s a singer who’s going to perform there tonight … Someone I saw in New York, who told me she was Grandmother’s friend. I thought you and I could eat together … and then, after you’ve gone to work, I could stay and listen to her, and maybe have a proper chat with her …’

  ‘Skoblin’s wife,’ I guessed, enjoying making the unlikely connection and feeling our worlds join up by another small silver thread. ‘Nadezhda Plevitskaya.’

  I felt her nod beside me. I could almost hear the shimmering of hair. ‘The Tsar’s Nightingale …’ she agreed. Then the unnerving, if exciting, silence fell again.

  I parked within sight of the soaring cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, of the glittering mosaic and the three spires, each topped by a small gold dome, and the front porch topped by another small gold dome, and on top of each gold dome, another delicate Orthodox cross. You didn’t have to be a patriot to feel a sudden rush of pride in your Russianness.