Heart of Iron (9 page)

The club could rival any of the imperial palaces in the number of chandeliers, candelabras, and score of other contrivances blazing light. It seemed that the Northern Star had one mission — to banish every scrap of darkness and shadow — and it succeeded admirably. Even Jack’s long, narrow countenance, usually hidden by his hat, was cast in stark relief. I could admire the austere hollow of his cheek, like that of an ancient saint. I thought my mother would approve as we entered the club, arm in arm.

In the main hall, as large as any ballroom I had ever seen and probably quite capable of serving as one, the light was dazzling. Men and women spoke and mingled in the excessive illumination, some sitting at the small round tables, others in armchairs and on sofas positioned invitingly in the alcoves of the ornately decorated walls. Soft music was playing, and I had to squint to discern four musicians and their instruments on a small stage at the far end of the hall. Two violins, a cello, and a flute complained about something beautiful and sad, and the music served as a fine counterpoint to the low hum of human voices, tinkling of Champagne glasses, and occasional burst of soft laughter.

“How do you like it?” Jack whispered.

“It’s very bright,” I said.

He took my words as a cue, and led me toward one of the niches in the wall, to an unoccupied table framed by two chairs. I sat down and waited for my eyes to adjust to the somewhat lessened light. A waiter stopped by our table to deposit a bottle of Champagne in a silver ice bucket, a pair of flutes, and a plate of hors d’œuvre, which I found quite welcome. I had forgotten to eat dinner.

Jack leaned back in his chair and drank. His gray eyes searched the crowd and seemed troubled, and I hoped my questioning had not upset him. It is with a small amount of shame that I confess my concern was not indicative of the goodness of my heart but rather worry that if I upset him, he would be less forthcoming with answers.

He nodded at a few men who walked past our table and they nodded back, but showed no inclination to stop and chat. I thought it rather strange that people did not seem to speak to anyone but their immediate companions, and precious little mingling was occurring.

“How peculiar,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve yet seen people change tables or move to talk to someone else.”

“It is by design,” Jack said. “People come here to enjoy a social setting where one is not compelled to interact with one’s fellow men. I find it refreshing.”

I shook my head and laughed. “If one wants to be quiet, then why leave one’s house?”

“As you can see, most come here with their friends. It’s a good way to be alone in a crowd.”

I wanted to say that being alone in a crowd seemed to miss the point of both crowds and solitude, but bit my words back. After all, how would I make Jack like me enough to tell me his secrets if I argued with his every word? I was certain my mother would be proud of my feminine deductive abilities if she only knew.

My self-congratulations were cut short due to the sudden cessation of music which distracted me. I watched as several men wheeled around a piano, and moved it to occupy the stage the four musicians had just left. The mahogany piano gleamed, and its white keys were so bright in the blinding light they seemed to fuse together into a single strip of pearly radiance. They seemed pure light, with an occasional dark gap of the black keys. The smell of burning wax added an almost religious atmosphere to the proceedings.

The men also brought around a chair in which the pianist was already sitting — I thought that it was someone crushed with age or disease, and assumed the upcoming performance would likely be more about honoring the unfortunate than actual entertainment. Imagine my surprise when the figure in the chair raised its stick arms and rained its fingers onto the keyboard in an avalanche of sound, cascades of loud clear notes filled with both passion and precision.

“Bravura” was the only way to describe the performance. All conversation and laughter ceased, and even the waiters dawdled with their trays, reluctant to move for anything as mundane as delivery of drink and food. Even I was enraptured.

My own relationship with music had always been uneven and fraught with doomed romance, much like any good novel. Despite a string of teachers and a variety of instruments from clavichords to flutes, I showed no proclivity toward musical performance whatsoever. My fingers got entangled in themselves and my breath came out ragged and wrong. I could not hit a proper note if my life depended on it. All this was, of course, a cause of bitter disappointment to my mother, who herself was quite an accomplished, albeit infrequent, piano player, and who remembered too acutely it was her skill at the piano that had initially enchanted my father. It took both Eugenia and Miss Chartwell reminding her rather cynically that what I lacked in musical education I more than made up in titles and impending wealth to console my dear mother.

Despite all that, I quite enjoyed music as a listener, and I could not have been happier sipping my Champagne and discreetly tapping my foot under the cover of my bell skirt in tempo with the music.

Jack smiled at me. “You seem to enjoy the music.”

I nodded. “I do.”

He looked sly, almost impish. “Notice anything unusual about the player?”

“Not as such,” I replied. “Unless you consider being carried around in a chair unusual.”

“That’s because he does not have legs.” Jack seemed to enjoy his grisly words.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“And no head,” he added, laughing openly. “Look.”

The music stopped and while the applause still hung in the air, the stagehands approached the pianist’s chair and swung it around. There was laughter from those in the know and a drawn-out “ooooh” from the rest of the audience. The pianist was nothing but a stout metal can, the size and shape of a small water barrel, with two long jointed metal arms attached to it. Each arm ended with a set of ten unnaturally long and flexible fingers.

“That’s cheating,” I said.

Jack laughed. “Still quite a marvel of ingenuity, isn’t it?” he said. “It is quite impressive how much mechanical and engineering talent is gathered in this city and what things they can achieve.”

I inclined my head, agreeing. He was right. There was a sense of vibrancy and invention, of novelty: the submarines that popped up in the middle of Neva had been growing larger and sleeker lately; newspapers reported on new railways and the creeping expansion of St. Petersburg’s many newly constructed factories. There were rumors of increasingly successful airship flights. Maybe it was enough, I thought, enough to make up for the plain-clothed policemen and silent disappearances.

Jack looked at the crowd, as if searching for someone. I drank my Champagne and waited politely, half listening to the human musicians who resumed playing on the stage. A tall, regal woman caught my eye as she walked past our alcove, her hand resting in that of a slender man who seemed to be her senior by a few years.

The woman turned to regard Jack with a long and apparently disapproving look. “Mr. Bartram,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Jack stood and introduced me to the woman, a Dame Florence Nightingale. Her taciturn companion was Mr. Sidney Herbert — an Englishman, but he quickly informed me his mother was Russian, from the Vorontsov family. He even greeted me in Russian, and I responded in kind, noticing he was only slightly rustier with the language than I was after months spent in St. Petersburg.

While Mr. Herbert and I exchanged pleasantries, Jack and Dame Nightingale entered a fierce whispered argument. She leaned over the table, hovering above his chair like some sort of vengeful angel dressed in a gray two-piece silk dress.

I would’ve eavesdropped, but Mr. Herbert distracted me quite effectively, occupying my attention by asking me about the subtler points of declension of female nouns ending in “ch” and “sh,” and I got so flustered as to completely forget I was supposed to be listening for Jack’s secrets.

My linguistic embarrassment was thankfully cut short when Dame Nightingale pointed her very straight nose at me and smiled, her dark eyes boring into me as if I were some curious thing she happened to come across during a nature excursion — she looked like one of those overly healthy individuals who called their walks “constitutionals” and had an extreme interest in the out-of-doors, vegetarianism, and other ways of artificially extending one’s life, not really caring whether it was God’s intent or not.

“Hello,” I said, trying to keep the hostility I felt out of my voice. “Are you in St. Petersburg for the upcoming season?”

She laughed and shook her head slightly, offering no further response. Instead, she launched an offensive of her own. “Mr. Bartram tells me you are one of those curiosities, a woman they are attempting to educate.”

“Quite successfully,” I said.

She waved her hand, dismissing my words as if they were mere child’s babblings. “Of course. I myself once had interest an in medicine — nursing, to be honest. Thankfully, I had parents who cared about my wellbeing and friends who dissuaded me from such foolishness. It is not a woman’s place.”

“Your queen would beg to differ, I am sure,” I said.

Dame Nightingale snorted rather loudly. “What nonsense. Her Majesty is most concerned with the recent trend of women abandoning home and hearth, as well as their duty to their fathers and husbands. I’m sure she would not at all approve of your little… excursion into the male realm.”

I glared. “Surely a woman who is capably ruling two countries… ”

“… is especially sensitive to the demands a male sphere of activity puts on the female constitution.” Dame Nightingale smiled unpleasantly. “Besides, Her Majesty has a husband. And you…?”

“I do not,” I said, feeling as if it was Aunt Genia’s will that animated my lips. “And I would prefer to not have one. If I were audacious enough to dare compared myself to an English monarch, Queen Elizabeth would be my example.”

“A spinster.”

“No man’s chattel.”

Dame Nightingale grew bored with me, and turned to eye Jack. “Is that what you like then?” she inquired. “A complete lack of femininity?”

“I’ve never felt particularly attached to abstract attributes,” Jack said earnestly, and I managed not to laugh. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait for the season to start so Eugenia would be here and could meet Jack. I thought the two of them would enjoy one another’s company.

“I see,” Dame Nightingale said icily, and again leaned over the table, planting both hands firmly next to our nearly empty hors d’œuvre plate, in a pose that struck me as almost comically at odds with her expressed views about propriety and femininity. I had to stifle another giggle as Mr. Herbert kissed my hand and murmured he was charmed, truly, and was looking forward to meeting my aunt in December, for he had heard so much of her keen political mind. I responded in kind, assuring him she would most certainly be delighted to speak to one who served another great empire, all the while straining to hear Dame Nightingale’s whisper. I was especially curious because, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack draw away from her, his back against the wall. I only caught the end of her words, but that was enough to seal my dislike of her forever.

“Just remember, Mr. Bartram,” she hissed, “who your true friends are and where your loyalties lie, and any trouble could be avoided.”

I felt sick to my stomach when Jack whispered back, “Yes, madam. I always remember.”

The next day, the sky drizzled and grayed. The river, visible now through the bare branches, black — as if drawn by the same hand that had executed the Crane Club’s ink paintings — against the pale enamel of the weeping sky. I idled in bed until Anastasia exiled me from my bedroom because she needed to sweep, and cleaning waited for no one.

As much as I enjoyed the music the night before, the events had left an unpleasant deposit deep in my soul, like the dregs that settle in a glass of seemingly acceptable wine, spoiling forever one’s appetite for it. Dame Nightingale was surely the cause of the dirty murkiness that clouded my spirit that morning.

I peered out the window, and was somewhat consoled to see the rising cigar smoke and the wide-brimmed hat, the black umbrella and a black glove holding it aloft, a wide cloak flapping in the wind like wings. At least, Jack did not hate me; I found the thought comforting.

He looked up just then, and, well aware it was too late to conceal I wasn’t looking, I smiled and waved. He waved back, turned, and walked away abruptly. I wasn’t sure then whether to feel pleased or insulted. I settled on calling Anastasia and asking for tea and breakfast — thick slices of bread, loaves so rich and golden, their crust as fragile as March ice on the river, butter, slabs of cheese.

I drank my tea, sweet and strong and hot, and read the newspaper as a diversion — it had been weeks since I read anything other than a textbook, and soon enough the next quarter would start, plunging me into more human anatomy and Newtonian fancies. But by God, I was going to read the newspaper that Sunday.

I skipped over the news from abroad, unwilling to relive yesterday’s irritation with the English, and let my eyes travel over the black newsprint describing the construction of Trans-Siberian railroad. The article was accompanied by several daguerreotypes of smiling freedmen standing next to gigantic piles of dirt, with horses and mules dragging rails in the background.

It was only when I got to the last page that my tranquility was subsumed by indignation and anger: in a single paragraph, the newspaper reported a breakin and subsequent fire at the Crane Club. No one was hurt, however the cases containing all the engineering marvels of which Chiang Tse was so touchingly proud had disappeared. It was especially puzzling since the cases were heavy and made of glass and metal. Additionally, they had been bolted to the floor and the article mentioned that when the police examined the burned out ruins, they came to the conclusion the bolts had been ripped out, damaging the floor previous to the fire. There were no suspects, and no one — neither the newspaper nor the police — seemed especially concerned with this convergence of vandalism, arson, and theft.