Midnight in St. Petersburg (21 page)

He leaned closer still. So did Inna. Their faces were nearly touching.

‘Do you know what Rubinstein wrote, about his origins?' he murmured.

She shook her head.

‘“Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew. Pianists call me a composer. Composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a Futurist, and the Futurists call me a reactionary. My conclusion is that I am neither fish nor fowl – a pitiful individual.”'

They both laughed.

‘So we're agreed,' Horace said briskly, handing her a bubble-like glass of Armenian cognac. ‘Auer's class would be a good club for you to belong to.'

‘But how would I ever meet him?' she whispered, sipping.

When she looked up, pink-faced, she could see the delight in his eyes.

‘Oh, he's a friend of Repin's, too,' Horace said airily, yet she could see what an effort it was costing him to sound casual. He waved at a waiter for the bill. ‘So Leman and I both know him a little. And Leman's written to him, this morning, asking him to dinner. You'll most likely meet him in the next week or two.'

*   *   *

Afterwards, while they were talking about what she might play, Horace took her for a saunter around St. Isaac's Square. They walked down to the gardens by the grey river to gaze at the tiny golden ship on top of the Admiralty spire (‘Like an English country church, only more beautiful,' he murmured). Then he said that, although he wasn't working today, he had to pick something up from the shop.

‘Oh,' Inna said, smiling into the fur of her collar, warm from the cognac and the plan. She felt so safe with him, so treasured. ‘I'd love to see Fabergé's.'

He bowed. She could see the pleasure in his eyes.

Fabergé's was round the corner, on Great Sea Street: a square stone shop front with carriages stopping outside to deposit silk-and-fur ladies with their uniformed gentlemen.

A uniformed doorman bowed as he ushered them through into the shop itself. Inside, gloriously dressed customers lingered over great glass-fronted cabinets in the shop, or talked to men in dark suits in French.

Inna wanted to stop and stare at them too, but Horace whisked her on, with the dignified adult courtesy that slightly overawed her, through a door to a much bigger room behind, where the craftsmen, gentlemen from Switzerland and France and England, in neat dark suits, sat at individual desks, looking through magnifying glasses at the unbelievably small and intricate
objets
they were working on. All round, smooth brass measuring tools gleamed.

He stopped at an empty polished mahogany desk and opened a drawer in it. Inside, she glimpsed tiny paintbrushes and small jars, arranged very neatly.

‘Aha,' he muttered, and picked something small out. ‘Here we are.'

He put the little bag he'd found in his pocket, glanced at Inna, and then hesitated.

But Inna couldn't restrain herself. She so wanted to see it all. ‘May we take another look at the shop?'

Smiling, Horace took her arm and led her back into the front of the shop.

The dark carpet on which the clientèle walked (in the indoor shoes they'd never had to take off, because they travelled everywhere by carriage) was so thick and soft you couldn't hear footsteps.

An imperious barrel of an old lady caught her eye. She'd got out of a carriage directly in front of them as they came in, Inna remembered. Now she was standing in the middle of the shop floor, eyeing the various jewellers as if picking her victim.

‘Ah, Monsieur Fabergé,' she said suddenly in a loud, deep voice, plucking at his neat, navy lapel, not bothering with greetings. ‘I haven't come to buy, I just have a question. Have you got any ideas yet for the design of next year's Easter eggs?'

‘Watch this,' she heard. Horace, ever diplomatic, had bent so his whisper would reach no further than her ear.

Monsieur Fabergé – slim, neat, thoughtful, fine-featured, bald on top, but with a fine grey beard above his striped shirt, dark waistcoat, and perfectly knotted sober tie – paused, clearly considering his options. He couldn't get away from her as she had his jacket between finger and thumb. He scratched his pepper-and-salt beard and pushed up his spectacles.

‘Well, dear lady,' he said solemnly. ‘It's a secret, but I know if I tell
you
that it will go no further. This year, we're working on
square
eggs.'

The lady blinked as she assimilated his words, and let go. Bowing, Fabergé moved on. ‘You're the soul of discretion, I know…' Inna heard him saying. ‘Promise me, now…'

Not a muscle of Monsieur Fabergé's face had betrayed him. But Horace was smiling broadly, and Inna had to look down at the dark carpet so no one would see she was laughing too.

‘That will be all round town in an hour,' Horace breathed. ‘Just wait and see.' But she already could, because, as the doorman helped the old lady back into her coat, she was still muttering, ‘Square eggs! Well, I never!'

*   *   *

Inna could have stayed for hours longer. But soon the doorman was back at their side, saying the cab Horace had asked for was waiting. Once inside, on its scuffed leather seats, watching the streets move by, and the officers in their braid turn back into salesmen and hawkers, a silence fell between them.

Inna felt, a little awkwardly, that the silence might be her fault. Perhaps she'd committed some error of taste or judgement that, in her inexperience, she wasn't even aware of. Horace had an important job, after all. She might have taken up too much of his time. Perhaps he hadn't liked it that she'd wanted to gawp at the grand customers. Or perhaps he'd wanted her to look at his work (but his desk had been so very bare?). Now he looked a little distracted, as if he might be worried about getting back to work. He was sitting very straight on his side of the banquette.

How foolish Yasha had been to think Horace might have taken advantage, Inna thought suddenly, turning towards him, trying to get him talking again.

‘I don't know how to thank you,' she said. ‘You've been so kind.'

But she felt his answering nod had embarrassment in it, so she stopped and looked out of the window, uncertain how to proceed.

It wasn't until she was getting down from the cab that Horace, looking startled, clapped his hand to his pocket and started digging about inside it.

She turned from the street to wave goodbye to him, and smile, hoping she hadn't bored him; hoping he would kiss her hand, at least.

But instead he pressed a little package into her hand.

‘It's to bring you luck,' he said quickly, not quite meeting her eyes; then he nodded the driver on before she could respond.

The cab was already creaking off across the Hay Market when she got the midnight-blue suede bag open. It was the one he'd been looking for in his desk.

She drew in a quick breath. Why, this was at least as generous as any of the things he'd been saying that his Hungarian teacher friend did for his pupils …

Inside the bag was a tiny Fabergé charm: a silver violin on a chain.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was late evening by the time Yasha got in. He walked into the kitchen, hoping to see Inna before she went to bed. And there she was, sitting between the mistress and Monsieur Leman. They'd been talking for hours, he could see that, and had got carried away. The supper was long gone cold and the greasy dishes, still littering the table, had been forgotten. There was a pile of music on the table, some of it held open with spoons and glasses. They were choosing something. Leman had been singing, in his cheerfully out-of-tune voice, tapping along in time with a spoon. He could hear the children fighting noisily in a bedroom.

He didn't like the hush that fell when they heard him come in.

‘Look, Yasha,' Madame Leman said. She held up what seemed to be a little chain.

‘What is it?' he said. His voice sounded gruff and suspicious, even to his own ears.

‘It's nothing really,' Inna said quickly – too quickly, as if she felt guilty.

‘It's the Fabergé jewel Horace gave Inna,' Madame Leman said, smiling so widely she seemed to Yasha almost to be baring her teeth. ‘Isn't it pretty?'

He'd gone down to the workshop quite soon afterwards, not bothering with supper, and was working off his resentment by planing the great stretch of a cello's back, putting his whole back into the energetic movements. Around him, screeds of wood shavings flew to the floor.

‘I've got the keys.' He turned round. Inna was standing in the doorway. ‘It's late. I told them I'd lock up.'

A part of him was appeased by the idea that she'd come down here specially to look for him. She couldn't go up to the attic any more, now Madame L. had got her sleeping downstairs. Not without inviting questions. So here, in the workshop, was probably the only place they could meet unobserved.

‘Leave them,' he said gruffly. ‘I'll do it. I've got stuff to finish.' Turning his back, he pounded away at the wood. ‘Kremer's driving me crazy. I have a new pamphlet to write. And I've no time, no time for anything,' he said, desperately, and far too loud. ‘I shouldn't be doing this at all. I shouldn't be keeping the bourgeois in musical playthings. No. I should be out there, doing what my heart tells me, leaving all this behind. I should … vanish into the night and leave you all behind.'

‘Please,' she whispered, from just behind him. ‘Don't be so angry. It's a lucky mascot, that's all. It's nothing special to him. He works for a jeweller.'

He felt her hand on his shoulder. Tentative though her touch was, he felt it burning through his skin.

He stopped planing. He didn't look round, though; just blew at the wood in the sudden quiet to get the shavings away, and made a point of feeling the curves that he was beginning to bring out in the cello's elegant back.

‘What do you need a lucky mascot from Fabergé for anyway?' he said after a while, hating himself even as he spoke. And then he remembered that nincompoop of an Englishman, all togged up in his white gloves and gold watch-chain, all bows and scrapes and imperial flim-flam; and old, old, with grey in his hair and pushing forty. Yet there he was, taking her swanning round the fleshpots, turning her head.

He
could never give her a jewel.

‘He wants me to play for a friend of his,' Inna said. She was almost whispering, but Yasha couldn't help hearing the damped-down excitement in her voice. ‘He wants me to meet a music teacher. And if
he
likes me he thinks he might teach me, and get me proper papers, because apparently he's got pull with the people that give them out. And that's what we got so excited about at supper, why we got all the music out, because if he
can
, why then…'

Yasha's head was still spinning from all the ‘hes'. But he turned a little, just enough to look at her over his shoulder without dislodging her hand, and he saw her eyes beseechingly on him. And suddenly he understood what she was excited about, and it
wasn't
that stupid little violin which she hadn't even put on, any more than it was that old idiot of an Englishman Englishmanovich, with his eager-to-please smile. No, this was about finally getting her permanent residence papers, and in a dignified way, too, through music. He'd been unfair.

He took a deep breath.

‘… you'd be in,' he finished for her.

*   *   *

‘I want to stay,' she whispered, in what seemed a different lifetime, though it must only have been a few minutes later.

He pushed her back, liking the way her hair was all mussed up and her body, utterly yielding under her skirts, was moulded to his. His own body was all nerve endings, all desire.

He didn't know whether she meant ‘stay down here in the workshop for a while longer', or ‘stay in St. Petersburg'. But he did hear the unspoken ‘with you' that went at the end of either idea. He could see that thought in her eyes.

He blew out a long sigh. He wanted her to stay, too. But he released her. It almost hurt to step away. ‘Go,' he said. ‘Go and practise.'

*   *   *

Yasha watched her practise like a demon all week. When any of the Lemans were around, she'd fret with them about her programme, or ask Leman endless questions about this Auer, whom it turned out he knew a bit. And whenever Yasha came across Madame L., she was fretting about what to cook on Sunday night, which was when old Auer was going to show his face, just casually, for supper.

All week, too, Yasha had to struggle to remember that jealousy demeaned him. It wasn't easy to force himself out of the house before or after work to chase Kremer's papers, or to tell the brothers that they'd just have to put off their meeting till next week, whatever the rabbi had written yesterday about Beilis, because this week he was busy with something else. However hard he tried, though, it was almost unbearably tempting to fall into the despicable cycle of feeling jealous, then hating himself for it, then being furious that his passion for his other, secret work was being dissipated by all this sitting around fretting about Inna, which he'd promised himself he wouldn't let happen.

But somehow he kept the jealousy at bay because, between those long blinding volleys of tiny notes, and all that fretting, she'd come down to the workshop and tell him, in a hasty whisper, whenever no one else was around, that she was so grateful he understood. She'd say that she needed those papers more than ever now, and then she'd drop her eyes and come to a confused halt. And he'd smell flowers on her hair and imagine the brave green glow when she lifted her face up to his, and think if she
did
get the papers then they could really start to imagine being together for a long time.

But when she did look up, he could tell, she'd already be thinking about playing again, and how did he think the Prelude had sounded last night? It was all so confusing, so he'd just squeeze her hand back, kiss her, and whisper, ‘You sound beautiful. You
are
beautiful. You'll play beautifully.' And hope.