Field of Mars (20 page)

‘I understand you wished to set up an anonymous account, and we have put through all the necessary papers. You have only to sign these documents. They are matched with a number and then this number is kept in another location. It is for our records only; also, in case of death, we require the name of a representative who would contact us in accordance with your estate. May I suggest a family member or some other trusted representative, a lawyer perhaps? So, if you could give us that information, then seal the envelope, take your key, and I'll return in a few moments, sir.'

Andrianov nodded his assent, the man slipped out into the hallway and left him to review the papers. He filled in a pseudonym at the bottom of the pages, sealed the papers, and pocketed the key; he had no intention of ever actually using the account. He waited in the office for a few moments longer and then went to the door. Rody was hovering a few doors away, chatting with an associate. He straightened and came back to the little office, took the envelope.

‘Now, I understand you have been referred to Baron Lavrik, and that he is to be your representative at our house?'

‘Yes, he comes highly recommended, himself,' Andrianov smiled.

‘An excellent choice, sir. A very distinguished man of wide experience. I will introduce you.' They walked deeper into the building. There was a sort of inner foyer, with a large pyramidal skylight that allowed sufficient light for several palms to flourish in an ornate marble planter in the centre of the room. A series of offices ringed the space, all windowed in frosted glass. They crossed the thick carpet and Rody knocked on one door. ‘Baron?'

‘Come . . . yes?'

‘Our new client,' Rody said, as he opened the door. Andrianov came in, smiling. The baron stood. He was somewhat older than his photographs, a man grown prosperous and of comfortable girth, deep into his sixties. A large beard that was carefully cultivated so that it gave him the appearance of a grandfatherly walrus. He wore a pince-nez that he tucked in his waistcoat pocket as he stood, simultaneously sweeping some papers into a folder, sealing it, extending his hand.

‘Gentlemen,' Rody said, as he closed the door behind him. Andrianov took a seat in yet another of the plush leather armchairs. Lavrik offered him a cigar, but Andrianov declined. For a moment the two men sat there smiling at each other.

‘Well, sir. As I am sure Dr Rody has advised you, we offer a full range of financial services here, investment advice, brokerage, international transfers and legal services throughout Europe. We also have relationships with sister houses, particularly in Paris, but also in Britain and lately in the United States . . .'

Andrianov waved him off, still smiling. ‘No, it's not about anything like that. My business affairs are quite in order, thank you.'

‘Ahh . . . Well, then, sir . . . how may I be of service?' Lavrik sat back in his seat, crossed his hands across his belly, preparing to dispense as much financial advice as was required. Still the smile.

‘I have come here to help you,' Andrianov said, in somewhat quieter tones. Lavrik's brow furrowed. ‘Indeed, I have been sent here by
Heron
.'

Lavrik's mouth opened, the eyebrows shot up. Andrianov raised a finger to warn him into silence.

‘I should tell you that I am simply a messenger, sir. I know nothing of your confidential business, I am a courier with only a single piece of information.' And he smiled again at the old man.

‘From . . . a
Heron
. . . you say?' Lavrik muttered, trying to assemble his features in an expression of innocent confusion.

Andrianov smiled. ‘I'm sorry, sir. This is no ruse. I am to give you the message, nothing more. What you make of it, what action you decide upon is your own business.'

Lavrik looked at him for a long moment, his frown growing. ‘Please, help me, sir. Have we met?'

‘If we have sir, I suggest it is to our mutual advantage to forget all about it.'

Another long pause.

‘Fine. Fine then.' The old man was waiting, trembling. The colour had drained from his cheeks. He looked nearer to death than ever. ‘He told me there was . . . an investigation, but I thought all that had been taken care of.' His hands were wiping the surface of his desk, as if trying to divine the future hidden deep within the grain of the walnut.

‘Honestly sir, I could not say.'

Lavrik nodded, sighed. His eyes were filling up, he fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at the corners.

‘The message is this,' Andrianov said. ‘On Sunday next you are to be prepared for a carriage to arrive at your residence, this to occur at nine o'clock sharp in the evening. You will be taken the Niva Club where you have a reservation for dinner. At some point in the meal you will be asked to join a Mr Petrov from Odessa. There is no such person, it is simply a coded phrase. If you do not hear those exact words, you are to refuse, finish your meal and return home. But when you do hear the invitation, you are to go with whoever gives it to you—'

‘Mr Petrov? Odessa?' Lavrik repeated.

‘From the Niva you will be led through the kitchens to a second carriage and from there to a boat which is waiting to take you first to Finland, and from there to Berlin. Accommodations are already arranged for you in Berlin. Where you go from there is entirely your business.'

Now Lavrik's mouth had fallen open, ‘Is that it? I'm to simply . . .
leave
?'

Andrianov smiled most sympathetically. ‘As I said sir, I am merely the bearer of the message, but apparently there is some imminent danger. Mortal danger? Legal danger? Really, excellency, I know nothing of these affairs. I am in no position to say.' He shrugged. ‘If I may suggest, it might be best if tomorrow morning you have your man telephone that you have suddenly been taken ill and use the intervening days to put your affairs in order, draft whatever documents you require in order to access your holdings while you are abroad. I'm certain that here your firm can perform all the necessary—'

‘I'm to leave?' Lavrik said again, helplessly.

‘That is the message from
Heron
, sir.' Andrianov stood up, preparing to exit.

‘Just a moment.' Lavrik's voice had risen in panic. ‘Please . . . my daughter. She has to go with me, she can't be alone. We have to go together. Can you ask . . .
Heron
if we can go together?' The old man had come around the desk now, his fingers had reached out to pluck at Andrianov's sleeve. Desperate.

Andrianov smiled, grasped the man by the shoulders to steady him. ‘I'm sure that would be acceptable, excellency.' And then leaning closer to the old man, so his words were only a whisper, something like a brotherly intimacy, shared between comrades at war, a parting prayer for encouragement, ‘Remember, Baron. We are brothers of the Sacred Guard. We always take care of our own.'

As he left through the foyer he saw Rody again. He bowed to Andrianov, smiled. ‘I trust everything has been concluded to your satisfaction, sir?'

‘Yes,' Andrianov said, taking the man's hand in a hearty handshake. ‘I could not have put it better myself.'

SEVENTEEN

. . . given us a supreme truth of vision that rubs our nose in the verities of this modern age!

‘Ha!' laughed Dmitri, showing off the newspaper. Izov was so impressed he snipped it out and put it up on the door as if it were an ikon. That was the kind of thing they were saying about ‘Khulchaev's Theatre'. It didn't matter that it was only in the pages of the
Gazette
.

Scandalously appropriate . . . more shocking than a tour of the lowest depths of our city, this insane pastiche mirrors exactly the nausea of modern life . . . Engulfed by flowered dancers made-up to resemble aborigines from some distant planet, hypnotically abused, the audience discovers the bliss that can only come through a protracted flagellation . . .

And there was more, much more in this vein. From the pages of Russian Standard, usually a respected paper:

Not pleasant, but necessary . . .

Unaccountably, Vera thought, Dmitri Khulchaev's shows had become wildly popular. People with real money were starting to show up; he'd bought himself an entire new wardrobe. He walked around in a red waistcoat and the tightest trousers she'd ever seen on a man who wasn't a hussar or a ballet dancer. Now that he was successful and starting to take credit for everything that was done at the Komet, all he really wanted was for people to owe him, to be in awe of his genius.

Their newest show was entitled
Long Nightmare
. The Komet girls rehearsed their steps, a slow processional in waltz time—the devil's dance—that wandered among the tables. For the performances Kushner, their designer said they would be painted up as skeletons.

She thought the music was good but
Nightmare
was proving to be a supremely pessimistic event since Bulgaria had recently gone down to defeat in her idiotic war against Greece, Serbia, and finally Rumania. Thousands of young men, not to mention innocent women and children, had been dying like flies even as the idea for the play had been hatched and the girls assigned their steps—chests out and arms held just so, one-two-three, one-two-three.

Misha Kushner, a wild man who worked through the night, stopping only to sleep with Larissa who was mad for him, Jew or not. Unshaven, unwashed, she didn't care. He was her little dose of reality, Vera supposed.

She'd tried to warn Larissa about Kushner, that he was crazy, that he was dangerous, but the girl was blind, a fool for her new lover. What made it worse was that he was the very worst kind of Bolshevik, authentically sprung from the land, raised in a seamy ghetto somewhere in the Ukraine. Overeducated and burning with his commitment to art and truth. Fine, fine, but where was the future in that, even if he was right? Being right didn't have anything to do with it; St Petersburg was built on the corpses of thousands of people who had been
right
.

‘Louder!' the Professor was calling to them and she arched her back even more and sang out:

Do you want to die before

You know what it is to live?

How much we are all missing

What lies beyond so deep?

Down here my love, so deep—

At that point they were supposed to find an audience member and, grabbing their hands, encourage them to grope. When she and Gloriana objected, Khulchaev, like a hurt little boy, argued that it would get a great effect out of the audience. ‘Pick somebody pretty,' he whined, ‘pick somebody you like—' and of course, they all laughed.

Well, they were getting paid, so . . . And of course it
would
get an effect. Maybe she'd be lucky enough to be standing next to a great producer when the bridge came around.

She and Larissa had started to lie for each other. Contradicting themselves within minutes. The men that bought them drinks after the show seemed to like it too. They'd each tell bigger and bigger lies and then try to sustain it through the evening. They'd take on each other's names, lure the men on with fables about the other one.

Larissa had begun telling everyone that her friend Vera was a secret princess. An exiled princess, Vera decided. Dethroned because she'd had an affair with a village boy, a merchant boy. He was beneath her and her parents were enraged.

A princess. Why not? It was better than saying what really happened, that she'd found herself pregnant and alone. The real prince had been a boy named Kliment. A timid prince with beautiful eyes whose father owned things; distilleries, blast furnaces, farms. And owned his son's heart and soul as it turned out. Sent his men to intimidate her Aunt Varvara. Since the woman was a natural coward, it wasn't all that hard.

In the end his father had sent their driver to give her the news and, the price of clearing his conscience, forty roubles. The next morning she'd taken the train to Petersburg. The old driver couldn't bear to look at her when they got to the station. And he had been the one who used to laugh at them, leave them in the bushes and go off and have a smoke by the lake. Now he couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

So she took the forty roubles and got rid of his baby in Moscow.

Saying that she was a princess was better than saying that. So she let it stick. In the last production she had been singled out since, as the Queen of the Martians, she had been prominently featured. And now that the Komet was the latest discovery of the fast set, all the girls were being sought to grace the salons of the city's elite. She had met Zinadia Grippius, and Blok, who looked at her like he was interested in maybe a little more than talk, and Anna Akhmatova, who had sat there all night with her legs crossed. Then there was the big night, when Diaghilev dropped in and made a beeline for Khulchaev, plied him with drinks, and soon they all piled off in his red-lacquered Renault en route to a more artistic rendezvous.

Such was life in the theatre.

She turned, rolled her head around and, as they tapped their feet through the bridge, took a sip of her steaming tea.

She saw that Pyotr Ryzhkov had come in. Standing in the door talking to Izov. He'd vanish for days and then come around again. Now he was there with a package of brushes for Kushner. Free. They were samples, he said. Larissa made a face and pointed at Gloriana blowing her nose and waved him away, they were sounding so bad.

. . . my heart is a post, a stable for my hunger . . .

. . . I'm grazing, grazing, I'm just a cow, just a beautiful

cow . . .

She watched him as he went back into the bar and opened himself to the intense discussions of high finance that were overwhelming Izov, who, not knowing anyone he could trust, confided to Ryzhkov the fine print details of the great scheme. Izov's ‘angels' were plotting a complete renovation. There would be a new entrance; a portico with a ticket window, and dozens of new tables, custom-designed cups, plates, saucers and silverware. It went on and on, imaginary roubles mounting to the sky.