The Horse You Came in On (15 page)

But she didn't for a second seem to hear him. She was holding the two halves of her biscuit aloft, one piece in each hand, staring at him. “Melshi,” she said. Then she answered his question: “Oreos and Snowballs.”

“Did you make them?”

“No. They're store-bought.”

Melrose selected one of the round, white cakes, thickly covered with gluey white frosting and shreds of coconut. One bite was enough. He set it down on the rim of a plate holding a selection of antique coins.

“Go on. About the names,” she said.

He scratched his head. “Of course, you're probably not Russian—are you? There are many people who aren't but who have these patronyms and diminutives. Although, as I said, you do find most of them in Tolstoy. Or Dostoyevsky.”

She watched him closely as she licked the icing from her Oreo.

Melrose had decided long ago that if you were in deep, the only thing to do was go deeper. “I once knew—well, he was my very best friend really—a Russian named Alexei. But the diminutive was Alyosha.” Jip was leaning back against the rack of old clothes. The stiff white gown rustled. “I was at his wedding. He was quite wealthy; it was a huge wedding. I got a piece of white cake in a small white satin box—”

“I thought it was only ladies got that.”

“Not in Russia. In Russia it's the men. In Russia, the men need the luck more.”

She nodded and divided another biscuit.

Absently, Melrose was turning the plate full of foreign coins beside his mug of tea. “But when I opened this box I found not a piece of wedding cake but a ruble and a note all folded up. It was a note telling me . . . no,
warning
me, to leave, uh, Leningrad right away and go to—” His eye fell on a stack of old postcards; one was of the Rockettes kicking out lustily, old babies in satin diapers, and he thought of the graceful Georgian dancers. “—to Georgia. Yes, I was to leave Leningrad and go to Georgia.” He tried to think of some reason for the ruble's being in the box but couldn't.

“Atlanta?”

“What?”

“Were you supposed to go to Atlanta or where?”

“No, no. I mean Georgia. The
Russian
Georgia.”

She nodded and set down the now-denuded biscuit beside the first one, also icing-less, and picked up another. He looked at the Snowball and continued: “It was winter.” The rack of clothes swayed behind Jip as she nestled into it. There was a ratty old fur coat behind the white gown. “I was provided with warm clothes and a sleigh. I seem to remember the coat I was given was Russian sable.” Looking into her Russian amber eyes, he wondered, should there be a woman in this sleigh?

“Who gave you the sleigh and stuff? Was it Alyosha?”

“Yes.” Ah, good! She was providing the background herself. “He was wealthy.”

“You told me.” She pressed the two halves of the licked biscuit together and replaced it on the glass plate. She took another from the stack. “Go on.”

“You have no idea how deep the snow was. Great mounds of it everywhere.” Melrose could almost feel the heavy, wet, fat flakes on his face. “It fell in . . . droves. We travelled for three days and three nights.” Things always happened in threes in stories.

“We?”

He had forgotten to add The Woman.

“A friend of Alyosha. A woman.”

“You met her at the wedding, I guess. Do you want more tea?”

“Yes, thanks.” She was an excellent audience. As the fresh teabag plopped into his cup and she added water from the pot, tepid by now, he went on. “She was Alyosha's sister.”

“What was her name?”

“Julie.” Where had that come from? “Julie” didn't sound Russian.

This was pointed out to him. “She doesn't sound very Russian.”

“Her mother was British.”

“But she's Alyosha's
sister
. So she must be Russian, too.”

“His half-sister,” said Melrose briskly. “But she's—I mean, she
had
been living in Russia her entire life. Is it important? She was stunningly beautiful. Her hair was very dark, and her eyes were like . . . the color of sand at sunset. In Arabia.” His mind drifted off to smooth and endless golden dunes, the red sun sinking behind them. . . .

She prompted him. “You and this Julie—then what happened?”

Both to stall for time and to ease his back, Melrose rose from the broken-springed chair and moved to some shelves containing bits and bobs of clothing—scarves, gloves, squashed-looking women's hats.

“Well? Go on.”

Melrose poked his hand into a white fake-fur muff and thought of Julie. Julie Christie! That was where the name had popped up from! Driving through the snow with that heavily mustached actor in
Dr. Zhivago
. “Julie was wearing a cape with a hood outlined in ermine. She had a muff. There was a gun concealed in it.” He looked out of the corner of his eye to see how this news was being received.

Fairly well, for she had stopped eating and wore an expression of mild alarm.

“You see, Julie was running away from the KGB. Or what had been the KGB. Things have improved now,” he added vaguely.

“What did Julie do? Why were they chasing her?”

“They claimed she'd killed—your telephone's ringing.”

She looked over her shoulder. “It's just for my aunt.” As if she were pursuing a line of thought apart from Melrose's, she added, “She's not my real aunt.”

“Oh? Then how did you come to acquire her?”

Enough of real life. “Who did Julie kill?”

“The husband of a woman very high up in the government. Madame Vronsky. That's who she was accused of killing, at least. No one was sure. Except she trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Naturally, it was a dark secret. But she knew she could trust me.” He looked down to see his hands were still in the muff. He was glad no one had come into the shop.

“So did they catch her?”

“No. But you're getting ahead of my story,” he added, rather too impatiently, considering he himself was so far
behind
he had no idea what these Russians were up to.

“You still haven't said why Alyosha told you you had to get out of—where was it?”

Where? Oh, yes. “Leningrad. That was only clear to me much later. Don't jump ahead so much.” Melrose rubbed his forehead. In his mind's
eye he could picture it: the great frozen wastes; a line of black trees, the beginning of a wood, across the horizon; the purple shadows. Was it dawn or dusk? A band of pale pink hung like a scarf above the distant trees. And he saw himself (and Julie) gliding along in the sleigh over the silent snow, as the sun slowly rose. And then, looking at the pavonine splashes of light thrown by the green and blue insets in the shop windows, he thought, But this is wonderful! And he thought of Joanna the Mad, sitting there in the Jack and Hammer and talking of the job of writing as completely mechanical. Ah, surely she was wrong. It had nothing to do with the hard, greasy machinery of life. Oh, it was work, yes, but the work of gathering dews in a teacup or riveting stars to the moon.

“Well,
that's
glory for you!” he exclaimed.

“Huh?”

Melrose had forgotten momentarily where he was. “Sorry. Just a little Alice in Wonderland. I got carried away.”

He got up to stretch and visit a small cupboard of what appeared to be brightly colored and carved little animals. He picked up one painted as brilliantly as the macaw with a long snout and shingled tail. Armadillo? Iguana?

“We drove in the sleigh for what seemed days, but of course was only a few hours. Suddenly, the horses whinnied and stopped. Something had slithered across their path. I just caught a glimpse of something very small, running. It had a tail.”

“A rat? Baltimore gets a lot of rats.”

“No,” said Melrose. “This is Georgia in Russia we're talking about.”

“I guess there are rats in Russia.”

“Look, I said it
wasn't
a rat.”

She nodded.

He replaced the armadillo or iguana. “Julie grabbed my arm and said we might have just seen one of the fabled
trotskitoskis
of the Russian steppes. They are a sort of animal, something like a small fox, said to bring luck to anyone whose path they cross. ‘Trots' for short.”

“Did the trot bring you luck?”

Melrose was pleased with himself for having thought up the trot. “Wait and see.”

“I have to wait and see about everything.”

He had to admit, his story was laden with detail. But wasn't that what it was all about? He frowned. He wasn't sure. Ellen's story had practically
no
details except a few pieces of furniture and this Sweetie person waiting for a letter to slip through the door. He stood idly fingering the old lace and satin and tulle gowns, heavy with pearl insets and tiny,
iciclelike beads and wondered if his story was too heavily embroidered, too weighty with ornament.

“Anyone at the ball could have been the dreadful Madame Vronsky.”

Her eyes opened wide. “
What
ball?”

“The fancy dress ball.”

“You didn't say there was a fancy dress ball.”

In his mind, he had seen the sleigh pull up at a huge stone mansion from which music floated. Balalaikas. Clear as crystal. “Sorry. Well, it was going on when our sleigh pulled up at the house. A big house.”

“Have you got to Georgia by now?” She seemed very forgiving of his springing this ball on her, especially as it followed on the heels of the trot.

“No. We were near the steppes.”

“Of the house?”

“No, no. The Russian steppes. You know.” Of course she didn't; neither did he. That was Siberia, anyway, wasn't it?

“This house was very grand. It had its own stables, even its own chapel. Julie slipped away from the ball, evading Rudolf—he was one of the sons of this wealthy family, and she was having a bad time of it with him. He was actually a
count
and she was engaged to him. But she didn't want to marry him. Anyway, she told me she had slipped away from him and that she had to meet someone outside by the chapel. I stood on the terrace watching as her white cloak disappeared around the little path that circled the chapel.” Melrose heard the dozen long-case clocks chime. It was eleven o'clock! He'd been here well over an hour. “And that's when I heard the shot.”

Jip jumped slightly. “What shot? What happened?”

“Rudolf had followed her. He shot Julie.”

“No!”
In her distress she upset the plate of Oreos. Her tone was full of bitter disappointment when she said, “That's not
fair
.”

“Life,” said Melrose sententiously, “isn't fair. That's just in books.” But her face had paled so much and her amber eyes were full of such distress, he added quickly, “She didn't
die,
for heaven's sake.”

Jip turned her head and the colors of the Tiffany shade washed over her hair. She put the hat back on, as if she wanted the big brim to hide her. Then she lowered her head, pleated her skirt with her fingers. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded strained. “I thought it was like that girl in the churchyard.”

The mood had changed considerably. Perhaps it was simply the fact of the unseen dangers that one had to face that upset her. “The girl in the churchyard.” He sat down again and asked for another cup of tea. “I
understand someone visits the grave of Edgar Allan Poe every year. And takes brandy or champagne and some flowers.”

She nodded. The big hat seemed too heavy now for her head. “My aunt thinks he's crazy. I don't think he is. I think it's very nice to visit somebody's grave and drink champagne. It means you're not forgotten.” Her tone and glance suggested she herself might have been.

“It certainly does,” said Melrose. “It certainly does. Though Poe would not be forgotten, anyway, would he? Because of his writing.”

“It's not the same.” She picked up her cup, didn't drink, set it down. “What happened to Julie?”

“She married a corsair. They live in Minsk. This trunk that the young woman purchased—did you ever look inside the trunk after Beverly Brown bought it?”

“But she was shot!”

“Not fatally. Did you look inside the trunk?”

She chewed her lip, debating her answer. “Will you tell anyone?” She had risen to lift the shawl from the bird cage.
Squawk
.

“Tell? No. I can keep a secret.” Melrose was sure that she knew something.

“No, you can't.”

“What?”

She resat herself and inspected the small pillar of ruined Oreo biscuits. “You weren't supposed to tell anyone Julie's secret.”

Julie's secret? What was—oh, drat! He searched for an explanation for his betrayal of Julie. “Not while she was
alive,
I wasn't.”

“She is. She married somebody and lives in Minsk.”

Melrose racked his brain. Then he smiled. “Not she,
Julie
—she, Madame
Vronsky
. Whose husband Julie killed accidentally. Probably Julie worried that Madame Vronsky might seek revenge.” How he could pull chestnuts out of the fire!

Jip appeared to be chewing this bit of information over with one of the discarded chocolate biscuits.

And Melrose returned to the secret he had sworn himself to keep. “Tell me about this trunk.”

Suspicion of his methods seemed to fight with regard for this romantic stranger. “I wasn't supposed to look in it, but I did. It was full of old clothes like petticoats and blouses that were stained, and a lot of them torn. Why would anyone want them, I wonder? There were just a lot of old clothes and some sheets and stuff and a few books.”

“Did you see this so-called Poe story in it?”

She frowned. “I don't remember. There were pages of writing, and old books that looked like the sort we keep records in—” here she looked
back towards the counter—“but I don't remember anything else.” She shrugged.