Russian Winter (43 page)

She had not spoken to Lenore since the morning. But as the auction start time approached, it seemed the day’s excitement and stresses (the assistants at first hadn’t been able to find the extra chairs, and there was some small mix-up with the catering) appeared to have at last gotten to her. The lines of her forehead were suddenly prominent, deep worry marks between her eyebrows.

Now, though, as the clock prepared to strike four, Lenore straightened her shoulders and walked confidently to the shiny wooden auction block, where a laptop computer and two full glasses of water awaited her. And though she still held her mouth tight, the worry lines seemed to magically recede. Everyone else took their places: Mark, the stocky young gallery guard, at the top of the stairs, and Drew, along with a dozen other women and two men, all of them employees like herself, at one of the long banks of telephones at the front of the room. With such heavy interest, they needed everyone on. Drew had been assigned to a bidder in Florida, paddle number 201. He was an Argentinean who lived in Miami Beach—was, in fact, this very minute, lying on a towel on the beach, smoking a cigarette; even through the cell phone Drew could hear him taking a drag. “What’s the weather like there?” he asked, and Drew could tell from his tone that he knew about the freak snowstorm—one last brief dumping that quickly melted away—earlier this week.

“Not bad,” she said, defensively, thinking of her walk to the T with Grigori that morning, the pleasant breeze and open coats, Grigori’s hair curling from the humidity. “Spring’s almost here. Some afternoons it’s almost warm.”

As she spoke she glimpsed Grigori walking in, with an older, somewhat disheveled-looking man.

“Here it’s gorgeous,” the man in Florida was saying, taking another loud drag on his cigarette. “Lately it’s been too windy for my taste, but today, perfect.”

Drew could see Grigori looking for her. Leaning forward just slightly, so as not to call too much attention to herself, she reached a hand up above her head. It worked; he saw her, as she gave just the slightest twist of her wrist before running her hand through her hair. Grigori cocked his head at her, smiling, so that she glimpsed his dimple lines. Then she heard the small clicking sound of the microphone
coming on and looked up to where Lenore was adjusting the laptop computer. Behind her, the big projection screen lit up, a bright blue light.

S
ITTING NEXT TO
Zoltan, Grigori had to stop himself from looking back at Drew every minute or so. He had only a partial view of her, since she was seated all the way at the front wall, but he kept finding himself looking her way, perhaps to convince himself that she really did exist. With Zoltan he surveyed the rest of the room, the many people milling about, open catalogs in hand. Standing at one of the high round tables was a well-dressed young man with his arm around a woman in a tight sweater dress that stopped just below her buttocks. The way she clung to the young man’s arm, Grigori wondered if the two were there to bid for an engagement ring. Behind them, at the top of the stairs, a gallery guard—a young man looking very serious and yet somehow pathetic—stood stiffly, stockily, the sleeves of his suit jacket just a tad too long.

At the podium, the auctioneer was shuffling some papers. An attractive woman wearing a tight dark lacy knit sweater, she appeared to be in her forties, slender and French-looking, her hair pulled back in an easy knot. The room quieted down when, in a cool, smooth voice, she welcomed everyone and instructed them to turn off their cell phones. “Unless of course you are using them for bidding.” A faint, ambiguous accent—or rather, affect, like the announcers on the classical music station.

Grigori watched as the screen above her displayed a photograph of the first item: a pair of sparkly gold bangles. “Lot number one. Two twenty-four-karat gold bracelets inlaid with diamonds. I have a bid here now”—she was looking at her computer—“of ten thousand, looking for eleven.” She spoke quickly but smoothly, her vowels wide open, nothing slack about her. “Is there any advance over the ten
thousand?” A woman in the front row raised her paddle. “I have eleven to my right now, looking for twelve. Who will go to twelve?”

A young man at one of the telephones gestured, and when the auctioneer called out again, a very fat and somehow sloppy-looking man leaning on a table in a corner lifted his paddle. “Thirteen,” the auctioneer announced. “Are you all in all done at thirteen?” Grigori found himself leaning forward through the pause, until the woman in the front row raised her paddle. “Fourteen—in time….” The fat sloppy man kept coming back in immediately after the woman, nodding as the price quickly increased, until finally he just shook his head at the auctioneer. “Are you all in all done at eighteen?” the auctioneer briskly asked the woman in the front. “So it is. Sold to paddle 310.”

“So, that’s how fast it goes,” Zoltan whispered, and Grigori thought to himself, Yes, that’s how easily these things will be dispensed of, even that necklace that I thought meant something. That I treated as if it had some sort of power. When really it is just an object, to be picked up with a mere nod of the head. Gone at last, to anyone in this room.

“It is yours,” the auctioneer was saying into the microphone, already finished with the second item.

As the next few images appeared on the big color screen, people wandered in and out, and helped themselves to coffee, and stood around reading the addendum or flipping through the catalog. The man in the seat in front of Grigori kept track of every winning bid, writing the price in pen next to each item in the catalog. Next to him was a woman who seemed intent on a number of things, but each time bid just once before chickening out. At the bank of telephones, “Samantha’s bidder” kept gobbling things up, while “Brian’s bidder” popped in only now and then. Drew had not done any bidding yet, but Grigori kept looking over, to see if he might catch her eye.

She looked contemplative as she watched the auctioneer. Grigori
felt again, as he had throughout the day, an almost physical awareness of having been lifted past grief, and past so much other heaviness, by surprising and generous forces: the passage of time, of course, but also Drew and the auction, and Zoltan here, and, why, Evelyn too. He would have to tell Evelyn, of course, where his heart had led him. Already he sensed that she herself understood the truth of it—that the two of them were not meant to be anything more, together, than what they already were to each other.

It took close to an hour for the auction woman to come to the amber set. But at lot number 71, the amber bracelet, the projections overhead went blank. Just the empty blue void of a computer screen. “This item,” the auctioneer said, her voice calm and easy, “has been withdrawn.”

A disappointed sound came from some of the crowd. Grigori looked over to Drew, to see if she had known about this. The expression on her face told him no. “I assure you,” the auctioneer was saying, as a man in the front row stood up noisily and made his way out of the room, “that this was a last-minute occurrence. Otherwise we would have done our best to inform you in advance.” She took a long gulp from her water glass, and Grigori was impressed to see that her hands did not shake. He could imagine what it might feel like, to be in her position. Replacing the glass on the console, she said, “I’m sorry to report that the same goes for the next lot, number 72, the Baltic amber ear pendants. Those too have been withdrawn.”

A woman in Grigori’s row sighed loudly and stood up to leave, as Grigori wondered what these two withdrawals could mean. The auctioneer shushed some people who were whispering, and said that lot number 72A, the Baltic amber pendant, was still available. Projected onto the wall was that big reddish-brown bead in its wreath of gold. The trapped spider and its puffy white pouch looked enormous, and somehow enormously lonely, up there like that. Grigori felt his heart rush as the auctioneer opened the bidding.

Right away paddle number 99 went up—a white-haired man in a baggy sweater, standing near the first bank of telephones. When paddle number 176 immediately followed, number 99 popped right back up. This back-and-forth continued until the price had reached twenty-six thousand.

“Do I hear twenty-seven?”

From the bank of telephones, a bid came in. When the auctioneer asked for twenty-eight, more employees at the phones joined in, as if members of some club. This flurry continued until the price was at thirty-five thousand. The auctioneer called out for thirty-six.

For a moment there was nothing. But then, not far from where Grigori and Zoltan sat, in the group of seats to their left, a new paddle was raised. “Paddle 102.”

When the auctioneer asked for thirty-seven thousand, paddle 176 made a more tentative reach. But 102 held firm, even when 99 came back in and forced the figure up to thirty-nine thousand. When 102 went to forty, everyone turned to see who this headstrong person was.

She was, Grigori noted, the only black person in the room, middle-aged and skinny, her mouth set firmly yet somehow serenely. Grigori was mortified by the thought that swept through him—that she did not look like the sort of person to have the money to bid like this, or even to be at this auction. A racist thought, horrible. Just because she was black, could she not bid at a jewelry auction? But no, that wasn’t it at all, Grigori realized with a strange, perplexed relief. It was not her skin color but her clothes. Most of the people here wore silk scarves and fitted blazers, stylish heels and clean, unscuffed boots, but this woman was wearing nursing shoes. Those bright white fake leather ones with the thick laces. And her coat was a shiny pink rain jacket sort of thing. Nor did she have paddle 99’s scientist-type look. Even the auctioneer’s smooth, calm expression became slightly skeptical, or perhaps just surprised, as the woman steadfastly raised her paddle.

A
T FIRST
D
REW
wondered if she might be a shill. Not that such things took place at Beller—at least, not that Drew had ever known of. But the way the woman in the pink vinyl coat suddenly jumped in, and kept raising her paddle, so adamantly, while the man near the telephones briefly fought back, a look of shock on his face, made Drew wonder. From her seat at the bank of telephones, all Drew could see was the raised arm, a thin dark female hand and a bright pink sleeve. No, this was no shill; this person was in it to win.

Other than that, there was not much drama for the rest of the auction. The man sunbathing on Miami Beach did not win any of his bids, and his tone through his cell phone when he said good-bye seemed to blame Drew. By six o’clock all of the snacks had been eaten up and some of the women who had come together in groups, just to have a look, had left to go shopping at Prudential Center. Drew kept glancing over to see if Grigori was still here or if he and his friend had left. And then at last the auction was finished, and everyone stood and stretched and prepared to make their purchases.

Drew wanted to say a quick hello to Grigori, just shake his hand, feel his palm on hers. She stood and looked for him, momentarily losing him in the crowd. And then she heard her name, and Lenore saying “Yes, just one moment, she’s right over here.”

Drew turned to see the woman in the shiny pink coat approaching her, her hand outstretched. Only then did Drew see and recognize her face.

“Miss Brooks, nice to see you again.” That slight accent, as Drew reached out to shake her hand.

That was when Cynthia explained Nina Revskaya’s request, about whom the amber was to go to, and that she had with her here a guarantee from the bank, and a letter for Drew—as well as a second letter, for Drew to pass along to Grigori Solodin.

S
INCE
D
REW HAD
said it might take an hour or two for her to finish up, Grigori decided in the meantime to accompany Zoltan back home. A leisurely but energizing walk to Kenmore Square, the air refreshingly mild, and though Grigori wished he might have said something to Drew before heading out, he had seen for himself how busy she was, knew she would understand why he had not hung about trying to get in a quick word or two.

Outside, evening was just beginning, the sky ahead of them pink with sunset. “I wonder how it feels,” Zoltan asked, “to give up something that way. A collection one has spent one’s life amassing. And then in a matter of hours it’s broken up forever, all these disparate people hurrying away with their booty. What used to be yours.”

“I imagine,” Grigori said, “it might feel quite good. To be rid of something you’ve had enough of. It’s the reason I’ve never really collected anything, I suppose. The burden of it.”

In truth he had felt, for a brief moment, when the woman in the pink plastic raincoat won her bid, that he might cry. Not so much because he wanted the necklace back, as because of what it represented, those two unfortunate people who, whether or not they were his true parents, had paid the most exorbitant price of all—for living out something illicit, when really they were just living out their lives.
Each piece has its own little world inside. They remind me of the dacha (all those insects!) and the sun in the late evening, the way it would just drop right into the lake.

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Zoltan was saying. “Although I myself find it hard to give almost anything up.”

Grigori said, “I think it would become oppressive, having a collection, having to always add to it, and take it with you no matter where you end up—no matter who you become. Even when you’ve grown out of who you were before.”

“Hearing you say this,” Zoltan said, “it occurs to me that I
am
a collector in a way. Of my own life. I’ve kept a journal since I was sixteen, and here I am at age seventy still adding to it, not to mention reading it, carrying all these volumes around with me, cherry-picking this and that out of it for my memoir.”

Grigori thought of the little diary in his pocket, Drew’s grandfather’s, and the translation he had typed out this morning. “You’ve reminded me of something wonderful that happened today. A discovery of sorts. I think it may have even led me to a new project.”