‘Later, I found out about Marina. She had decorated the house. Sergei just threw the money at her. He didn’t know what she was buying half the time. He loved her so much he gave her all he had. Then one day he opened his eyes and found himself living in a palace. He told me it was because he was just a merchant with money but Marina was an aristocrat and aristocrats had good taste. I asked him what “aristocrat” meant and he said, “Someone of good birth and breeding.”’
Dmitri paused for a moment, resting his head on the mantelpiece. My mind wandered to my father. He had filled our house with beautiful and unique things, but he had lost his wealth when he left Russia. Perhaps it was true what Dmitri said. My father wouldn’t have known how to be poor if he had tried. I remembered him always saying that it was better to go without than to settle for something of crude quality.
‘Anyway,’ Dmitri said, ‘Sergei hired me to help with his club and rewarded me well for my efforts. He told me that I was like a son to him and that, as he had no children of his own, Amelia and I would get the nightclub when he dies. The day I walked into the club and the clients greeted me as if I was as good as any of them, I knew I had achieved my goal. I was rich. I live in fine rooms in Lafayette. My suits are all handmade in England. I have a maid and a butler. There is nothing I lack. Except the essential thing. I tried to emulate what I saw in Sergei’s house and couldn’t do it. My ottoman, my mahogany chairs, my Turkish rugs do not sit together in casual elegance as they do in Sergei’s library. No matter how I arrange things, my apartment looks like a flashy department store. Amelia tried to help me. “All men are clumsy,” she said. But she’s only good with stuff that’s new and showy. That’s not what I wanted. When I tried to explain, she stared at me and said: “Why would you want your furniture to look old?”
‘Then one day you appeared, Anya. I watched you sip your first taste of shark’s fin soup, taking it all in your stride. In an instant I saw that you had exactly the essence…the element…that all of us, even Sergei, lack. You wouldn’t see it of course, to you it’s as natural as breathing. When you sit to eat, you eat calmly. Not like an animal expecting its food to be snatched away. Have you ever noticed that, Anya? How delicately you eat? And the rest of us, always shovelling our food down like we’re running off to war. This is the girl who is going to lift me out of the mud, I told myself. This is the girl who can turn me from scum into a king.
‘The day you first arrived in Shanghai, right after you lost your mother, you talked to me about a painting in Sergei’s library. Do you remember? It was French Impressionist and you told me how the frame made all the difference to the painting. I couldn’t see it until you formed a box with your hands and told me to look through your fingers. Later, the day after you lost your mother’s necklace, you walked with me to the gate and pointed out that the asters were just starting to bloom in the garden. Anya, even when your heart is heavy, you talk about small details as if they were the most significant things in the world. Big things like money you rarely talk about. Or when you do, you talk about them as though they were unimportant.’
Dmitri started to pace the room, the colour heightened in his cheeks as he thought of more and more ways I had impressed him. I still had no idea where he was leading with his story. Did he want me to decorate his home? I asked him that and he clapped his hands, laughing until he had tears running down his face.
He rubbed his eyes, then calmed down and said, ‘One day you got yourself lost in the world of my scum, and when Sergei came running half mad to tell me that, I went half mad too. Then we found you. Those pieces of shit had torn your clothes and scratched your skin with their filthy claws. But they didn’t manage to lower you to their level. Even sitting there in the prison cell, wearing nothing but rags, you managed to be dignified.
‘That night Sergei came to see me, crying so fiercely I thought that you had died. He loves you. Do you know that, Anya? You’ve opened a part of his heart that has been closed for a long time. If he’d had you, he never would have turned to opium. But it’s too late now. He knows he’s not going to live forever. And who’s going to take care of you then?
‘I wanted him to ask me to take care of you. But he was so protective of you, I was afraid he thought I wasn’t good enough for you. That no matter how wealthy I became, no matter how much he said he loved me, I couldn’t have you. That it made no difference what I wore or what I ate or to whom I talked, I would always be scum.
‘I searched the backstreets of the Concession trying to find pieces of your mother’s necklace. I was trying to be a man worthy of you. But the next day, as if by magic, you said you wanted to have dancing lessons with me. With me. My God, you caught me off guard with that request! And then I saw something that I had never considered before. Right there in your cornflower blue eyes. You were in love with me.
‘Sergei himself took one look at us dancing together and he knew it too. He saw himself and Marina, thirty years earlier. I understood that when he taught us the bolero, he was giving you to me. Even he couldn’t stop what was happening naturally. History repeating.’
Dmitri hesitated there for I had risen out of my seat and was leaning against the window.
‘Anya, please don’t cry,’ he said, rushing to my side. ‘It wasn’t my intention to upset you.’
I tried to speak but I couldn’t. All I could do was make gagging sounds, like a child. My head was swimming. I had woken up expecting another normal day at school and suddenly Dmitri was telling me things I couldn’t grasp.
‘Isn’t it what you want too?’ he asked, touching my shoulder and turning me around to face him. ‘Sergei said we can get married as soon as you turn sixteen.’
The room seemed hazy to me. I was in love with Dmitri, but his sudden proposal of marriage and the way he had gone about it left me bewildered and uncertain. He had prepared for it, but his words had hit me like an explosion. The clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve and startled me. I was suddenly aware of other sounds: the maids sweeping the hallways, a cook sharpening a knife, someone singing ‘La Vie En Rose’. I stared up at Dmitri. He smiled at me through his bruised lips and my confusion gave way to a rush of love. Could it really be true that Dmitri and I were going to be married? He must have seen the change in my expression for he dropped to his knees.
‘Anna Victorovna Kozlova, will you marry me?’ he asked, kissing my hands.
‘Yes,’ I told him, half laughing, half crying. ‘Yes, Dmitri Yurievich Lubensky, I will.’
In the afternoon Dmitri announced our engagement, and Sergei came out to see me in my spot near the gardenia tree. He took my hands in his own, tears in the corners of his eyes. ‘What shall we do for a wedding?’ he asked. ‘If my beloved Marina was here…and your mother…what a time we would have!’
Sergei sat down next to me and together we looked up at the sunlight sparkling through the leaves of the trees. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on his knee. ‘I’ve been carrying around this poem by Anna Akhmatova because it touched me,’ he said. ‘And now I want to read it to you.
‘It was dawn when they took you. I followed, As a widow walks after the bier. By the icons—a candle, burnt hollow; In the bed-room—the children, in tears. Your lips—cool from the kiss of the icon, Still to think—the cold sweat of your brow…Like the wives of Streltsy, now I come To wail under the Kremlin’s gaunt towers.’
When Sergei read those words my chest tightened and I began to cry, an eruption of the tears I had held in for years, crying so sharp and painful that I thought my heart and ribs would burst with it. Sergei wept too, his bear-like chest heaving with his own secret grief. He put his arms around me and we pressed our wet cheeks together. When our sobs subsided, we began to laugh.
‘I’m going to make you the most beautiful wedding,’ he said, wiping the back of his hand across his reddened mouth.
‘I feel her in me,’ I told him. ‘And one day I know that I will find her.’
; That night Amelia, Luba and I draped ourselves in long satin gowns. The men put on their best tuxedos. We all squeezed into the limousine and headed for the Moscow-Shanghai. Because of the fight the night before we had closed the club. Everything had been repaired but closing for one night was good for publicity. It was the only night we had the whole place to ourselves. Sergei flicked on a switch, sending a waterfall of light onto the dance floor. Dmitri disappeared into the office and returned a few moments later with a wireless. We all waltzed around the dance floor to ‘J’ai Deux Amours’, balancing our champagne glasses in our free hands and trying to sing like Josephine Baker. ‘Paris…Paris,’ crooned Sergei, his face pressed to Amelia’s cheek. The light reflecting off his shoulders and circling his head made him look like an angel.
By midnight my eyes were beginning to droop. I slumped against Dmitri.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he whispered. ‘I think you’ve been worn out by too much excitement.’
On the doorstep Dmitri pulled me close and kissed me on the lips. The lushness of his mouth surprised me. The warmth of him sent tingles down my spine. He parted his lips, aroused, and probed my mouth with his tongue. I drank in the taste of him, sipping his kisses like champagne. Then the door opened behind us and the Old Maid yelled out. Dmitri stood back and laughed.
‘We are getting married, you know,’ he said to her. But she flashed her eyes at him and pointed with her sharp chin to the gate.
After Dmitri left, the Old Maid turned the lock and I made my way up the stairs, dabbing at the moisture Dmitri’s kiss had left on my lips.
The air in my room was oppressive. The windows were open but the maids had drawn the curtains when they turned down the bed in order to keep the mosquitoes out. The heat trapped inside reminded me of a greenhouse. Thick and humid. A drop of sweat trailed down my throat. I turned off the light and opened the drapes. Dmitri was standing in the garden, looking up at me. I smiled and he waved. ‘Goodnight, Anya,’ he said, and turned back to the path and disappeared out of the gate like a thief. Happiness bubbled through me. Our kiss had felt like a good luck charm, sealing our union together. I stripped off my dress and flung it over a chair, enjoying the relief of air on my skin. I padded over to the bed and collapsed into it.
The night air remained sticky and motionless. Instead of kicking my sheets off I managed to twist myself up in them, spinning a tight cocoon around me. I woke in the early hours of the morning, hot and irritated. Amelia and Sergei were arguing downstairs, every word as clear as two glasses clinking, so still was the air.
‘What are you doing, you old fool?’ Amelia was saying, her voice slurred by alcohol. ‘Why are you going to so much trouble for them? Look at all this stuff. Where have you been keeping it?’
I could hear the sound of cups against plates and cutlery being thrown on the table. Sergei answered, ‘They are like our…like my children. This is my happiest moment in years.’
Amelia let out one of her high-pitched laughs. ‘You know they are only getting married because they can’t wait to fuck each other! If they really loved each other they would wait until she was eighteen.’
‘Go to bed. I’m ashamed of you,’ Sergei said, his voice raised but calm. ‘Marina and I were the same age as Dmitri and Anya when we got married.’
‘Oh yes. Marina,’ said Amelia.
The house fell silent. A few minutes later there were footsteps in the hall and my door opened. Amelia appeared, a blur of black hair and a white nightdress. She stood watching me, unaware that I was awake. I shivered as if her gaze were a long, sharp fingernail tracing down my spine.
‘When are you all going to stop living in the past?’ she said in a low voice.
I tried not to twitch under her stare. I feigned a sleepy sigh and she retreated, leaving the door open behind her.
I waited until I heard the click of Amelia’s bedroom lock before slipping out of bed and going downstairs. The floorboards were cool against my burning feet and my damp fingers stuck to the balustrade. The air smelled of lemon oil and dust. The first floor was dark and empty. I wondered if Sergei had gone to bed too, until I saw the flickering line of light coming from under the dining room door. I tiptoed across the hall and pressed my ear to the carved wood. Beautiful strains of music floated from the other side. A lilting melody, so intense and intriguing it seemed to enter my blood and sting my skin from underneath. I hesitated a moment before turning the door handle.
The windows had all been flung open and an old gramophone was perched on the sideboard. In the dim light I could see that the table was covered with boxes. Some of them had been opened, spilling out paper stuffing so yellow and cracked that it crumpled in my hands. Towers of plates and dishes were stacked according to pattern. I picked up one. It was edged in gold and stamped with a family crest. There was a moan. I looked up to see the outline of Sergei slumped in a chair by the fireplace. I grimaced, expecting to see the noisome blue flame rise around him. But Sergei wasn’t smoking opium, and from that night on he never would again. His hand was hanging limply by his side and I thought he might be asleep. His foot was resting on the side of an open suitcase, out of which billowed something that looked like a puffy white cloud.
‘Dvorak’s Requiem,’ he said, turning to look at me. His face was shadowed, but I could see the haggardness around his eyes and the mottled blue of his lips. ‘She loved this part. Listen.’
I moved towards him and sat on the armrest of the chair, cradling his head in my arms. The music swelled around us. The violins and drums rose into a storm I longed would pass. Sergei’s hand clenched mine. I pressed his fingers to my lips.
‘We never stop missing them, do we, Anya?’ he said. ‘Life doesn’t go on like they tell you it does. It stops. Only the days go on.’
I leaned over and ran my hand over the white object in the suitcase. It was silky to touch. Sergei tugged the lamp cord and in the brighter light I could see that I was clutching folds of fabric.
‘Take it out,’ he said.
I lifted the material up and saw that it was a wedding gown. The silk was old but well preserved.
Together Sergei and I laid the heavy dress out on the table. I admired the beading, and the swirls on the embroidered bodice reminded me of the spiralling suns of Van Gogh. I was sure I could smell the fragrance of violets lingering in the fabric. Sergei opened another suitcase and removed something wrapped in tissue paper. He laid the gold crown and veil at the head of the dress while I smoothed out the skirt. The train was trimmed with blue, red and gold satin bands. The colours of a noble Russian.
Sergei gazed at the dress, a memory of a happier past in his eyes. I knew what he was going to ask me even before he said it.
Dmitri and I were married shortly after my sixteenth birthday, amidst the heady fragrance of a thousand flowers. Sergei had spent the previous day searching out the city’s finest florists and private gardens. He and the manservant had returned with a car loaded with exotic florals and cuts on their hands. They had transformed the entrance hall of the Moscow-Shanghai into an aromatic garden. Duchess de Brabant roses with their double-cupped blooms filled the air with a sweet raspberry scent. Clusters of canary-yellow Perle des Jardins, with a fragrance like freshly ground tea, burst out from their glossy dark green foliage. In amongst the voluptuous roses, Sergei set elegant white calla lilies and lady’s-slipper orchids. To this intoxicating mix he added pewter bowls piled with cherries, spiced apples and grapes, so that the overall effect was one of complete sensual abandon.
Sergei led me into the hall and Dmitri turned to look at me. When he saw me in Marina’s wedding dress, a bouquet of violets in my hand, his eyes filled with tears. He rushed to me and pressed his cleanshaven face to my cheek. ‘Anya, we are here at last,’ he said. ‘You are a princess and you have made me a prince.’
We were a stateless people. Our marriage meant little in the eyes of the endorsed church, or the foreign and Chinese governments. But through his connections, Sergei had been ab
le to find a French official willing to act as a celebrant. Unfortunately, the poor man’s hay fever was so bad he had to stop every few sentences to blow his inflamed nose. Later, Luba told me that the official had arrived early and upon seeing the beautiful roses had rushed towards them, inhaling their perfume like a thirsty man drinking water, although he knew the flowers would make him sick. ‘It’s the power of beauty,’ she said, smoothing my veil. ‘Use it while you can.’
While Dmitri and I exchanged vows, Sergei stood beside me, with Alexei and Luba a step behind. Amelia sat aloof by one of the false windows, looking like a carnation among the roses in her frilly red dress and hat. She sipped champagne from a fluted glass, her face turned towards the painted blue sky as if we were all on a picnic and she was admiring some other view. But I was so happy that day that even her peevish rudeness amused me. Amelia couldn’t stand not being the centre of attention. But no one rebuked her or made comment. After all, she had dressed up and come. And for the little affection we could expect from Amelia, that seemed enough.
After we had taken our vows, Dmitri and I kissed. Luba marched around us three times carrying an icon of Saint Peter, while her husband and Sergei cracked whips and shouted to keep evil spirits away. The official concluded the ceremony with a sneeze so strong that one of the vases toppled over. It smashed onto the floor, sending a scented river of petals floating towards our feet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he apologised.
‘No!’ we all cheered. ‘It’s good luck! You have frightened the devil!’
Sergei prepared the wedding feast himself. He had arrived at the club’s kitchen at five o’clock that morning, with armloads of fresh vegetables and meats from the market. His hair and fingers were tinged with the aromas of the exotic herbs he had ground to present before us a banquet of eggplant caviar, solyanka, steamed salmon and dviena sterlet in champagne sauce.
‘My God,’ said the official, his eyes ogling the food. ‘I was always grateful to be born French and now I find myself wishing I were a Russian!’
White Gardenia Page 12
