Hot Siberian (30 page)

What then might he do for her, and therefore do for himself, that would at least assuage if not cure?

Had Vivian not been Vivian but an ordinary sort, a visit to the jewelers, to Collingwood or Garrard, would have been regenerating. A Burma-ruby-and-diamond necklace would have been just the ticket to getting her down the road in the direction of being cheery. And quite possibly a sable from Fendi to knock around in might have been the what else needed to get her within one good carry-me-up-the-stairs drunk of destination.

But not Vivian.

She wouldn't even allow Archer to buy her something ugly that she could sell. He showed up at her door with a pair of Louis XIV marine barometers. Worth fifty thousand if a penny. Vivian didn't answer her bell, poked her head out her second-story window, saw him and the hideous valuables his chauffeur was carrying, and refused to let them in. No amount of pleading by Archer could persuade her. He left the two barometers on her doorstep. So did she. They weren't there the next morning, and she phlegmatically assumed that someone, most likely the trash collector, had lugged them off.

Vivian wasn't being intentionally perverse. She just wasn't the same Vivian without Nikolai, and for the time being she didn't feel like trying to be. Life was punishing her and she was struggling with the issue of whether or not she deserved it. How much easier, much better, it would have been if Nikolai had stuck around and confronted her. They could have had a good healthy relationship-cleansing fight, thrown a lot of verbal punches and counterpunches, accusing hooks, jealous jabs, threatening lefts and demanding rights. Perhaps they might even have carried it a bit further than a shouting match, really wrestled and clawed it out and dealt with it and not been deprived of the making-up enjoyments.

Instead of this miserable frustration.

She had phoned Nikolai's Leningrad apartment, which was where she believed he would most likely be. The Russian operator told her that Nikolai's instrument was out of order. I hope so, because mine surely is, Vivian thought. His office in Leningrad had refused to be helpful, recited a string of Russian that made her feel more helpless. When she had phoned his London office her calls were relayed to the embassy, where a human answering machine told her: “Mr. Borodin is not in. Do you wish to leave a message?” Again and again. Vivian phoned there so many times one day that she felt a nuisance and resorted to placing a tissue over the mouthpiece and disguising her voice. Grasping, she had also tried to reach Savich in Moscow. He was a delightful worldly man, she thought, he would be helpful, he was Nikolai's boss and would know his whereabouts. She got through three secretaries but not all the way through. She left her number.

Having hit all those dead ends, she went to the Soviet consulate and applied for a visa. All the red tape, filling out an application form, supplying three signed photographs of a specific size, the brief, personal interview, even the booking of a flight at the Aeroflot office on Piccadilly was unduly difficult for her; the effort seemed to be across the grain of her mettle. Her approved visa came by post. That same afternoon she went to Hyde Park, helped herself to a folding chair from the Park Department shed, and chose a spot way out on the lawn, as removed as possible from everyone. She was there only a few minutes before a vagrant approached her and begged a shilling, and two young boys with string wound around their fists ran to her and wanted to know if she'd seen where their kite had fallen to. She pointed in any direction to have them gone.

She bent over and lowered her head. Her heavy, straight hair fell forward. She swished it freely back and forth so that when she sat up it completely covered her face. Now she had her public privacy, the insularity she was entitled to. She imagined a succession of irrelevant things before coming to the fantasy of a high-flying-bird's-eye view of herself—a speck of a person treading to keep afloat in a lake of green—and that brought out from one of the most frequently used gates of her memory that fragment of time when she had last seen her mother alive far out alone in that cold lake in Scotland.

I'm not going under, Vivian vowed, no matter what. She would have her mourning, a period of awful, aching missing. She was already in it, but she wouldn't wallow any more than she would flounder. Nor would she resist it all that much. This was a debt. Unlike the sort she so habitually incurred. This was a karmic debt, a trial she owed her existence from a previous lifetime. It was entirely up to her whether or not she paid it, and in what coin.

With her frame of mind a notch improved, she went home. She canceled her chase to Leningrad, dropped her passport and visa into an everything drawer, undressed, and lay nude on the sofa with one leg up on the fat back of it. A shamelessly exposed, solitary position. In the gloaming of the London day with only the perpetual strains of the city for accompaniment she considered options and potentially therapeutic impulses. Such as opening another shop, a different approach this time, a place jammed madly with all sorts of worthwhile, charming junk for which she would charge outlandish prices. She would serve cheap wine to customers and act the obsessed collector so in love with every item that letting anyone purchase something was almost out of the question. (She'd soon tire of that.) Tomorrow she might benefit from being packed to the chin in warm mud like some tropical frog or having her hair cut too short. She could go platinum, had always wanted to. (Changes might be in order, but not self-destruction, not even to that extent.) She could become a female Gareth, a medium tout. Gareth didn't have a corner on being blessed by racing angels. She'd noticed in that morning's paper that in the 4:10 at Doncaster there were only five horses entered. A perfect race for angelic touting. Something must have influenced her to notice that. (Maybe she should try to chuck that way of thinking. Anyway, limit it.) She could drive down to Devon, purposely speed, and get a summons for it on the way down. Wake up early and have a big brekker, smoked kippers perhaps, surely some splits. The jam she had there, excellent raspberry she'd put up with Nikolai's help last summer, but she'd need to get the scones and the cream and everything would be closed in Pennyworth. Besides, shouldn't she go to the bank tomorrow and arrange a mortgage? (Not yet.) Shouldn't she remove Nikolai's things from her closet? (Positively not yet.) Why was it that for the second time since Baden-Baden that Irish punter she'd encountered three years ago during the March meeting at Cheltenham had come to mind? Matty “the Boy” Flynn. Why was it she was able to picture his face so clearly, fast smile, windburned complexion, slightly crooked lower front teeth? Said he'd been a priest way back. On the boat coming over he'd won twenty-some thousand at poker. What a devil! It had been at the bar of the Cottage Lake that, simultaneously, Matty's eyes had taken her and his voice given her a twenty-to-one winner. (As her taste had then it would still find him too much the dandy.) Not so long ago she'd read somewhere and thought it just so much scientific bull the theory that love was merely the brain overdosing on dopamine and norepinephrine—she'd memorized those substances, thinking they could be put to use during table talk. Well, if there was any truth to it, perhaps they knew of something—an injection?—that worked as an antidote. (She wouldn't take it even if they did. Not yet.) If, farther down the road than she'd be able to see now even if she were standing tiptoe on the peak of Mount Everest, lonely push came to lonely shove, wouldn't she remarry Archer? (She was too fond of him to ever do that to him.)

Night had come. The lamp on the table behind the sofa was one with an old beaded pull chain. She extended her foot, felt around with it, and tried to get the pull chain between her large and second toe. After five minutes of trying she managed it. Illumination brought the room back to being the room. With only her and her moping in it.

She got up so quickly she was a bit light-headed on her way into the kitchen. She found the particular cookbook she'd bought with good intent last year at Hatchard's and split it open to the place she'd marked with an old unopened Harrods bill. She read the recipe for blinis aloud three times. It didn't seem difficult. Blinis were nothing more than a sort of pancake. If she'd realized they were this simple she would have had a go at making them long ago. Mother Russia, she thought, you're about to be exposed. She got out everything that was called for. Except for the buckwheat flour. She didn't have any but assumed regular flour would do. She would be well organized, not have to stop and search her cabinets for something as she usually did. She lined up the utensils and ingredients on the counter in the order they'd be used.

Before beginning, she went to the study for her compact disk player and powerful little speakers. Brought them into the kitchen and put them on the counter opposite. For inspiration and company she chose the “Polovtsian Dances” from
Prince Igor
, by Nikolai's great-great-uncle Alexander Borodin, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. She turned the volume way up, so loud it seemed to claim the air and contribute to making her kitchen microcosmic.

One of the early sections of the piece, a whirl of woodwinds, was, Vivian thought, perfect accompaniment for her whisking of the egg and the milk, and as she went along the music was like a personal underscore for the various motions required of her hands, all the way to the spooning of the batter onto the hot surface of the butter-greased iron skillet.

Vivian's spirit was sailing as she watched the circles of batter cook. Blinis were one promise she could check off her past-due list. See? Their upsides were beginning to texture with little bubbles exactly as the recipe said they would. Vivian flipped the blinis over and saw that their cooked sides were burned black. How could that have happened? She'd been standing there watching them every second. She hurriedly threw the overdone blinis into the trash container beneath the sink, got them out of sight, making it easier for her to pretend that the next batch was the first. She should be allowed that much of a handicap, she thought. After all, she
wasn't
Russian.

She didn't give up. Not until around midnight. Borodin's
In the Steppes of Central Asia
and his Nocturne for String Orchestra from Quartet No. 2 were with her all the while, over and over. She blamed everything, ingredients, recipe, stove, skillet, before getting around to herself. The making of blinis was an unmerciful little trick, she decided. Someday she'd have another go at it. She turned off the stove and the Borodin and left the mess she'd made. To clean it up now would be tantamount to being beaten
and
enslaved.

She took a shower, scrubbed her skin red with a loofah, especially her breasts and belly where batter had splattered and caked. While she was drying she was pierced again with wondering what Nikolai was doing and thinking right then. She pinched off her imagination, didn't let it dilate and hurt her with detail. Nikolai wasn't laughing, wasn't touching anyone, wasn't having an easier time of it than she, she mentally recited.

Ninja came sneakily around the doorjamb. He looked up at her aloofly with his huge, mustard-colored eyes, turned his head away momentarily, then to her again. His tail lost its hook, straightened up.

Vivian knew his feline tail language. “I love you too,” she told him, and at once thought what a drastic shade of difference there was between “too” and “also.”

Ninja came to her, brushed her lower legs with his head, flank, and tail. Marking her as his with the humanly unsmellable scent of his pheromones. He kept on with it, slithering furrily between her ankles and around. She nearly tripped as she stepped over him and went into the bedroom to get her iridology monocle from the tray on her dresser. She looped its delicate platinum chain over her head and returned to the bathroom, where Ninja was now postured sphinxlike near the bidet, awaiting her next resort.

Attached to the wall at the edge of the main mirror was another mirror, a round one about eight inches in diameter. It was extendable in an accordion manner. It also magnified. Vivian put it to use whenever she had the patience and inclination to be more precise with her makeup or the courage to closely appraise the condition of her facial pores. More frequently she used it for self-diagnosis.

She pulled the mirror to her, adjusted it to suit the light, and with her face close to it brought her magnifying monocle to her right eye. There then was the ten-times-two-times image of her gray iris about the size of a poker chip. The first different thing she noticed about it was that it was glintless. Not even a flicker of mystery or mischief in it. And there was some blue showing through, which she could only interpret as overactivity of her unhappiness potential. She winced, then mentally shrugged and said: What the hell do you expect? She rated the density of her iris at about two and a half. Not bad, considering, although in the three-o'clock area nerve rings were quite pronounced and between nine and twelve o'clock were some squiggly fibers which indicated a borderline-to-serious malfunction in her animation and life center. Otherwise she saw no critical discolorations or signs of trauma. Her heart and lungs and bowels and downstairs department were apparently doing well. She'd be willing to wager, however, lay a thousand to one, that less than a week from now if she again examined that same iris there'd be a wispy whitish swirl at five o'clock, a sure giveaway that her libido was complaining.

She clicked off the bathroom light and got into bed. Her body was sleepy but her mind wasn't. Ninja jumped up on the bed and settled against her hip. Small comfort. Vivian combed through the fur along one of his haunches with her fingertips. He turned on his purr, so emphatic a purr that it was close to a growl. Things could be a hell of a lot worse, Vivian told herself. Nikolai could have left her for another woman instead of merely because of the way she was.

With the speed of thought she ran time and events back to that last night last week in Baden-Baden. What if she hadn't gotten up and allowed herself to be pulled to the casino? Supposing she'd lain there awake all night fighting it? Possibly, unlikely but possibly, she might have fallen asleep without realizing it and the next thing she'd have known her feet would have been reaching to find Nikolai's legs, putting skin to skin for reassurance the way she nearly always did when she was returning to realities. Nikolai would be with her now. She'd still be solvent. Nikolai mattered. But as far as the money was concerned, what difference did it make whether she blew it all in a two-hundred-thousand-pound lump or frittered it away a pittance at a time? That's what she would surely have done, bet and squandered it away. Soon enough it would have gone to zero. Admitted, she had committed a foolish romantic gaffe, but hadn't Nikolai overreacted? Loss of money, no matter what amount, wasn't reason enough to be wasting all this precious together time. She'd tell him that.