The Age of Ice: A Novel (55 page)

The best thing about this discourse was the tickle of Elizabeth’s warm breath on my ear. I took a mouthful of the scandalous Kuzmin’s brandy. The man had good taste, at least as far as his alcohol was concerned. “You know them all quite well, do you not?”

“No.” She smiled cockily. “It’s just second-hand gossip. I’m not one of them. I’m part of the public. I am just a rich girl. A bureaucrat’s daughter. Arkady”—she turned to the critic Bespechny, switching seamlessly to Russian, “you should go and ask Akhmatova to read. She’ll oblige you.”

“I want to ask you something,” I said into her ear. The fluffy curls of her hair almost touched my lips.

“Oh yes?” She turned her head, her eyes stumbled into mine, and then shrank back. “I wanted to ask you something too.”

Before she could continue, the critic Bespechny rose. “Ladies and gentlemen! I suggest we all beg Akhmatova to indulge us. Anna Andreevna! Please! By popular demand!”

Scattered exclamations joined into a chant. “The gray-eyed king! The gray! Eyed! King!” On the far end of the long table, “the woman with
dark hair” got up and ascended to the stage. Smoothed the flat front of her black skirt. The gesture brought to mind something of a schoolgirl in a Greek tragedy. Aloof. Fragile. Self-absorbed and yet—disarming.

She read. I was not supposed to understand any of it. Maybe I didn’t. I only felt the screaming, offensive incompatibility between Russian and English, and a profound feeling of loss, a worldly sadness. Does the language we speak shape not only our thoughts but our personality? First you begin thinking in English. Then dreaming in it. Then you lose the sense of which language it is that you are dreaming in. One day you wake up and you are a different creature. You no longer understand certain things. Your previous self has been lost in translation. And then . . . you see a blooming lilac, a beautiful girl beside it, and there are a million reasons why you cannot speak to her in the language that is native to both of you, even if you want it so much . . . That’s what I felt. Maybe that is why that woman’s poetry was great.

Between the bursts of applause, between the ecstatic shouts of admirers, Elizabeth turned to me, her eyes glittering rapturously, her cheeks burning, and said, “One day, I will translate her. I will make her speak to you. I will make all of them speak to the world. I’ll give them voice beyond language!”

Another wave of chill rolled over me.

There was more verse after Akhmatova, then there was some performance piece called The Poem of Silence. Then a table dance. Everything got hotter. Louder. Blurrier. I could not hope for more from Kuzmin’s personal stash, so I abandoned all caution and attacked the Chianti. Elizabeth and the striking brunette were gossiping about me. The Diadya Vasya Bespechny was holding a match to my cigarette and elaborating, in his spittle-full French, that commedia dell’arte was in fact the most astute description of the Russian problem. “Because, you see, Pierrot stands for intelligentsia, intellectuals, Harlequin—for the masses, and Columbine—for Russia herself. She is enamored with the brute Harlequin and rejects the analytical and timid Pierrot, but in the end Harlequin will ravage and abandon her.” And I thought: If so, what does this peculiar friendship between Harlequin and Pierrot stand for? But I didn’t say anything.

Bespechny’s match was huge and sparkled like a Bengal fire. At his table, the talented Kuzmin stared, manipulating a cigarette, boredom on his face. Somebody was asking what I thought about Lord Byron. Somebody else was measuring my blood-red-splattered pant leg against their
much more splattered sleeve. Kuzmin approached and asked me
what my act was
and I answered, “Making refrigerators. What’s yours?” The poet twitched his high brow and pretended to be greeting—and urgently needing to join—someone at the other end of the room.

“Why are you doing this? Showing all this to me?” I asked her, again. And the Urchin Princess looked at me, so serious, and whispered, “Because all of this will be destroyed. In less than five years. Incinerated. Most of these people will be killed or starved or worked to death in camps. That guest book by the entrance
will
have become the Book of the Dead.”

No, she could not have said that. I am dreaming.

• • •

Kuzmin was a sinister man indeed. He conspired to vex me where I was most susceptible to vexation. Was he unhappy with my refrigerator answer? He returned to our table with, “Lizzy dear, I’d love to talk to you, would you give me a moment?” Elizabeth could not conceal how flattered she was by his attentions. “Excuse me, Alexander, I’ll be right back,” and she let Kuzmin goad her away; he held one arm around her, in the air, just above the small of her back—for me to see, of course. For a long—plenty long—time they stood out of my earshot though not eyesight and conversed, he eyeing me all the while. She laughed. Then he introduced her to someone at his table, and another conversation ensued . . . I was getting annoyed, and the critic Bespechny’s philosophizing entertained me no longer. Blame it on Kuzmin, on the Chianti, and on the reckless reverie of the place, but I reached for Bespechny’s nose, took his wire-rimmed spectacles with both hands, and as the lenses started to fog—chilled by my fingers—I said, “Arkady, do me a favor, announce me. I shall perform
elemental magic
.” I was going to
show an act
to the annoying Kuzmin, in other words, the act that would make Elizabeth forget all about him.

Bespechny blinked his naked eyes at me, at his glasses. “You are a magician?”

“Why, yes. Go on, announce me.”

He still fingered the lenses of his spectacles, wet with condensation, when he stepped onto the stage.

I gave him the basics, he translated, embellishing. He was a good emcee. “Tonight only, in a onetime exclusive performance for the esteemed patrons of the Stray Dog, Alexander the Ice King shall turn
water into ice!” One by one the faces turned to me, the chatter petered out. “He respectfully asks that the public supply him with two objects—a lady’s scarf and a glass of water!”

I enjoyed Elizabeth’s full attention now, and Kuzmin stood forgotten, with nothing better to do than to stare at me with disgust. But Elizabeth—ah, I would have done any kind of magic for those eyes—so bright and childlike and . . . and just a tiny little bit—scared.

A scarf was easy—I chose a purple, silky item among the many that were offered. But a glass of water was harder to find. Someone—a volunteer—had to go to the lavatory. While waiting, I analyzed myself. I was somewhat drunk—but my imminent frivolity was perfectly safe. No one here could connect me to a Mr. Veltzen, a businessman on an official visit to St. Pete’s. No one but Elizabeth—and I looked again in her expectant, awed eyes. She would not take advantage of my indiscretion, would she? Because I was doing it for her.

The water finally arrived.
Now pay close attention to me, Elizabeth!
With one hand I held the glass out by the rim, swirled it, for good measure (where did I get all these passes from?), then draped a scarf over it.
Now.
My hand hidden under the scarf—which I fluffed in a move of distraction—I slipped two of my fingers into the water. Oh, the imaginary drumbeat of anticipation!
Now
. I looked around for one last time, smugly expecting their gasps, their cries of awe—

And saw: sitting in an ambush at one of the tables, studying me with utmost concentration—none other than the leonine Mr. Robert Greenell Wallace,
Times
correspondent.

Sauced British refrigerator magnate performs hand tricks at bohemian night spot
. My heart sank, my cold flared. I could not
afford
my elemental magic. In the intolerable silence, I put the glass down onto the floor. I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, not unlike the Poem of Silence that we listened to earlier tonight, my magic is just that—it’s nothing. Not magic at all. If you’ll . . . excuse me.”

I shoved the scarf into Bespechny’s hands and stepped off the stage; shouts of disappointment, boos, and jeers erupted as I went straight to Elizabeth. “I would like to leave now.” Her look was confused, disoriented, as if rudely shaken out of a dream, then upset. “I don’t understand,” she said, but she followed me between the tables, through the door, and out of the Stray Dog.

The night
had
been white. And short. The sun was rising eagerly like a
voice of reason. How could I have been so silly? I said, “I am sorry. I did not mean to offend anyone’s sensibilities. This was the most graceful exit that I could come up with on a short notice.”

She said, “What happened?”

We were up against the Austin now and she leaned on its flank, facing me. She hugged herself for warmth. She frowned.

What could I tell her? That I
could
have done it but changed my mind? “My trick did not work,” I lied. “I am but an amateur magician.”

She shook her head, as if not knowing what to believe. If it were up to me, I would have been kissing her right then, on that place above her ear where fluffy curls had wiggled out of the pinned-up bundle of her hair. On the cheek that those curls fell onto. On the lips, so red and so at a loss for words. But it wasn’t up to me. I took her hand by the tips of the fingers and barely touched my lips to her fingernails. “It was a wonderful night. You made me feel young again.”
What kind of drivel was that?
She withdrew the kissed hand, holding fingertips in a pinch. “Why did you write it, the Ice King?” she said.

Because that’s what you called me
 . . .
No. Because that’s what I am.

Semyon the driver went around the car and opened the door for us. Hesitantly, Elizabeth climbed in. When she was seated, I followed her, saying, “Because it sounds better than the King of Refrigerators.”

She barely smiled. She suddenly looked exhausted. I still held hopes for a long, comfortable ride back to my hotel, extra time to mend my faux pas. But I was in for a disappointment. The Austin made two turns, a block or two between them, and stopped. “Well, here it is, the Hôtel d’Europe,” said Elizabeth. Unstoppable as Fate, Semyon went out to open the door. I did not wait for him. Feeling an exposed con man and a fool, I clambered out.

I had been so charmed by the Urchin Princess that I didn’t realize the Stray Dog was just around the corner from the hotel. When I was out of the car she said, “You wanted to ask me something, what was it?” Grateful for a break, I leaned in through the opened door. Yet what had seemed appropriate by the pond in the garden was fitting no longer. Still, I tried. “I—I wondered how I deserved this. This gift of a night.”
Ah, witless! Tasteless! Droll!

She scooted over on the seat. Her eyes, lips, cheeks—all came alive again, to give me that slightly ironic, playful, wiser-than-her-years look that I had first seen at the reception. “I need all the conversational English
practice that I can get, that’s how. Good-bye, Mr. Veltzen . . . Semyon—let’s go!”

I let go of the door because the car started moving.

• • •

The same morning, three hours later: completely undone, suffering heartburn and headache, I woke up to my servant Vinay’s pestering. “Sahib, a call on a telephone. A Mr. Wallace says he has a breakfast appointment with you.”

I hadn’t slept a wink, I was sure. I had been seething and roiling. Our sobering good-bye did not sober me enough. It was no obstacle for my desperate imagination.
What if  ?
Abandon all restraint and ask her hand in marriage! Whisk her to London, build a house around her, surround her with books to translate, dote on her, show her off, live happily ever after! Why the hell not? But what about—you know . . . To hell with it, I’ll just live with her as long as I can, and then shoot myself.—But the
other
thing.—We’ll work it out. Just as we worked it out with Anna.—Yes, and that destroyed her health!—We’ll come up with something else. I’ll—yes, I’ll give her opium. I will make her intoxicated and she will not mind my cold so much!

Who said I am a good man? Besides, my mind was falling asleep and its restraints were unraveling . . . Already I was introducing Elizabeth to a whole world of opium-heightened erotic experiences. Already she was begging for more . . .

And then suddenly Vinay was shaking me by the shoulder.
Mr. Wallace who?
All I knew now was that last night a beautiful, one-of-a-kind girl had showed me a glimpse of something special and I had botched it, which was just as well because most likely she merely wanted to be seen with an Englishman, that’s all. And I wasn’t one, really. A crying shame! A scuttled enterprise whichever way you look at it.

I was finally sober.

• • •

The leonine Mr. Wallace waited for me in the tearoom, feasting on morning news.
Paint bombs for schools,
read one headline in his stack of newspapers,
Charity ball terrorized
. I could attest to that one.

I came up to the table expecting the worst, expecting that in one form or another, Mr. Wallace would ask me,
Just what were you trying to do with that glass of water, Mr. Veltzen?
He said, “It’s a small town, I reckon, especially at night. I saw you in the Stray Dog yesterday. A commendable choice.”

I raised a brow. “You were there?”

He shook the life out of the newspaper and folded it. “Indeed I was. That place sums up all there is to know about Russians. The worthy and the ridiculous. The barbaric intellectualism, if I may say so. You demonstrated quite a gift for showmanship there, sir. I appreciated your ruse. That Poem of Silence
was
indeed an atrocity. Or did you intend to present an advertisement for artificial refrigeration?”

I let the waiter fill my teacup, catching my breath as he did it. I chose to ignore his question. “It’s a shame I didn’t notice you, Mr. Wallace. You should have joined me. I would have liked to be in your company so I wouldn’t be up alone against the assault of barbaric intellectualism.”

“Oh, but you were not alone! I didn’t want to interfere. Miss Elizabeth Goretsky is an absolutely delightful young lady. I am sure you had a jolly good time.”