The Imperial Wife (28 page)

For the first time in almost a year, I Google
Young Catherine
. It takes some effort to retrieve the memory of how the book's publication stirred our household. It was a time of great tension, like right after a glass is flung from the table but before it explodes. It was a time when neither of us said what we meant, when we awaited the next piece of news with stilled hearts. Each day, reviews of the book were forwarded to us by Carl's agent, and they were mostly good and I tried to massage into Carl some sensation of joy. They praised the male author's insight into the emotions of a girl forced to adapt to a foreign culture, the disappointments of romantic love, the pressures from different factions and the way young Catherine adroitly navigated them. I read one of the more glowing reviews to him out loud but he begged me to stop, saying he couldn't even listen, and what did I think I was proving by reading each customer's online assessment?
(I'm not sure I even liked her all that much or wanted to follow an entire book about her. She was not as likable as I wanted her to be. The history stuff was slow going.)
Nothing, I'm not trying to prove anything. Even when his department chair called with the long-desired job offer, he wasn't thrilled.

The book's unexpected triumph unsettled Carl and he began losing sight of daily details even more than usual. Slips of paper fluttered about unorganized, items of clothing were professed missing, meals were forgotten. Just when I hoped that everything that arrived with the book's success would lend Carl the validation he'd been waiting for, he surprised me with an uncharacteristic shortness of his temper, his fruitless pacing, his rejection of all interviews and prizes. He took the job at Ditmas College but only after much convincing from me.

He would flare up without warning, on the subway, in bed, wandering through the Central Park Zoo. “My editor's already asking for the next book,” he would suddenly blurt out, apropos of nothing, koalas calmly blinking at us from wobbly branches. “What the hell am I supposed to do about that?”

“Honey.” I would try to soothe him, my arms around his body as if I had the power to eradicate his pain even when a part of me wanted him to stop his wallowing. “Just focus on this one. On enjoying this one.”

Even his agent called me on the sly. “Is it me or is he losing it? Talk some sense into him. It's a real shame to squander a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I've got authors like that. Can't handle success and their careers die on the vine. Tell him to call me.”

So again, I was forced into action. Late nights after work, between trips to visit estates and research potential inventory, I worked a second shift in service to Carl's exploding career. Translations accepted, e-mails answered, permissions decisions made, requests for blurbs rejected in Carl's name.

Hadn't my parents insisted that being an immigrant taught me to handle things, be the kind of person who has her life fully under control? How often has it been made clear to me that when you immigrate as a child, you cease being a child? You suddenly realize your parents are struggling while you're gaining in power. The new world makes more sense to you than to them, who are still dripping with the dew from the former life. You start to separate friends from enemies, dangers from safety, you start to understand the limitations but also the license granted to you as a foreigner.

Your parents begin relying on you in large ways and small until your competence is assumed. You become the person who sets up phone service, who negotiates directions with pedestrians, orders Chinese food, explains odd American customs like wearing green on St. Patrick's Day. Once you do it long enough, others start to depend on you too. In school, your less academically diligent friends expect you to know the homework assignments. Later, they'll assume you'll be the one to book vacations, walk up to the maître d' and ask about tables, host the bridal showers. And it gives you a tingle of power to take care of things for others, to be relied upon so completely. The world is an easily negotiated field of logistics to you, but to others it's a quicksand of unpleasant duties where impossible decisions must be made every day.

“You are so great at this, Tanyechka,” my parents said. An expert who so easily can figure out where to eat, how to take out a mortgage, find an accountant, an orthopedic surgeon, a lawnmower, a handyman, the proper dress for a birthday party.

“Don't worry, this is only temporary,” they said from their patriarchal perch of the Old Country. Once you marry the right man, he'll take over the responsibilities of handling, ease the burden of your competence. I said I didn't need any of those things—the American model is about the division of labor, not about the protector and the protected. There was Carl, who from outside was so perfect for the task, his family name thrusting him into the former category. What my parents didn't know was that he didn't mind my aggressiveness in the world. He preferred it.

Carl liked my booking restaurant reservations and vacations. “Two tickets, please,” I'd say at the movies, and he would linger back, allow me to take the tickets and lead us into the theater. He liked that I ordered food for both of us, organized our birthday gatherings, told him exactly what I wanted for a gift, surprised him on our anniversary. He tried to please me a few times in the very beginning, buying me a chrome watch or gifting me a subscription to a magazine I'd never read. But after a while, he was happy to give up the effort and allow me to manage the minutiae of our celebrations.

There was only one area in his life where he wanted no input, no direction. It was his one zone of mastery, and since I knew nothing about creative writing, barely wrote a thing apart from painting titles and descriptions, it was a relief to abdicate expertise, to allow him jurisdiction over his one circumscribed domain.

That novel.

He finally placed his completed manuscript on my pillow one evening as I was rushing to dress for the company holiday party. When I emerged from the shower, I could see the pile of paper neatly held together by leather string, a sprig of thyme plunged between its coils. It felt as though my husband had plucked out his own heart, wrapped it in a bow, and nestled it in the cotton of our bed. I was too afraid to lift it, to touch it. A quick perusal told me that there would be some heavy history right up front and that he had got some Russian expressions wrong.

“I want you to be honest,” Carl said. He was wearing a tuxedo, on his way to a fund-raiser for the Foster Children's Alliance. He was so elegant, so easy in tuxedos.

“Hey, did you hear me?” he teased, grabbing me on my way to the closet. His mouth tracing the hollow between my breasts, then playfully pulling away.

“I'll tell you the truth. I'm sure it'll be great.”

But I didn't want to talk about the book, the pressure of judging all those years of work. I hoped it would all somehow be resolved without me, that he would take command of his area of expertise and leave me out of it for once.

I returned his mouth to where it began its journey. “I think you missed a crucial biographical detail right here.”

“Seriously, tell me. Have I got any talent?” He flipped me onto the bed, hair falling diagonally over the tip of his nose.

“You definitely have talent,” I murmur.

“I mean it. No joke. You'll tell me, right?”

The bridge of that nose was burnished pink by the sun. And how could he not have talent? It was times like this I was reminded of how easily he slipped into the coils of my projections.

“Of course I will,” I said, losing myself in the way he looked at me, suffused with all that adoration.

By the time I close the Web browser at the Urban Writers Space, the praise for Carl reverberating through my head, it's midnight. The offices are dark, empty of people. There's no way I'm returning to an empty apartment and another anguished night.

Luckily the time translates to eight in the morning in Moscow, a respectable start to the workday. Scrolling down my phone's history, I find the right number. Igor Yardanov picks up on the first ring.

“Good timing, Tanyechka. I just landed at JFK.”

*   *   *

The company allows us to sneak high-profile clients into Worthington's after hours, but there's still something illicit in entering the dark monolith of your corporation at one in the morning. Considering how many billions are cloistered within these walls, the act of penetration is made surprisingly easy. A single revolving door is kept open, the two security guards on duty trust you and never check in your guests.

Igor and I breeze by one of my favorites from the overnight shift—Juan—who blows me kisses. “That one is a special lady, my friend. Cherish her,” he calls after us. Igor looks bemused, his hand on the curve of my back. He's a man accustomed to entering empty buildings in the dead of night, of being whisked by security to spots available only to him. In a cashmere sweater and shoes that make no noise on the parquet, he glides toward the elevator with the nonchalance of an employee.

“I imagine you are adored by many men,” he says.

“Juan's nice to me because he doesn't have to live with me,” I joke.

Igor looks down at me from all that height, that curved precision of his features. “I'm sure he is very, very sorry about that.” And my heart springs forward.

On the floor, I lead him past dark galleries—a collection of Jewish artifacts consigned by an old Philadelphia family—past my and Regan's cubicles and into the viewing room. I flip the lights, aware for the first time that the room is windowless, carpeted, and I'm alone with this man. The fake Burliuk is occupying the same lowly position on the floor, its face turned to the wall as if in shame.

“Why don't you have a seat? I'll bring it out at once.” The back of my knees are clammy with sweat. “The consignor was very strict about who can touch it, but I've got the clearance from our president to name you as a serious buyer.”

Looking behind me, I see his spread legs in that fine Italian wool, arms crossed behind his head. He smiles. “Good call.”

I stride past offices of individual specialists, surrounded by the proof of their obsessions. Their desks mirror mine—digital printouts of Chinese porcelain or rhinoceros horn carvings on Robert Chen's desk or Iranian calligraphy on Liliane Goncourt's. Once we were all having a drink together after work and I asked them if they were ever bored of their specialties. Didn't they feel hemmed in by the narrowness of their expertise? Didn't they too long to break free, to start over, to swap fields?

“Beautiful,” Igor says, when I return with the Order on the velvet tray. His fingers are unnecessarily brushing mine, neither taking the object out nor giving it up. “I can feel it was truly hers.”

“Can you?” It slips out, a hopefulness. I almost say,
Me too.

What about you? Liliane shot back at me. Do you like being a Russian specialist? I didn't know how to answer. Why did I take the job if I fantasized every day about having nothing to do with anything Russian? I wanted Russia's hold on me to loosen, for it to be merely an ominous country growing only more ominous on the other side of the world. But Carl never understood that I know more about Russian art than anyone in the world, and there's a responsibility to make sure the world does not misinterpret the Russian intention, that it is correctly understood.

I find myself lecturing to Igor, a long string of information he probably already knows. “The Order first left the country in 1926. The Soviet Union was in a financial crisis after the revolution and Stalin was desperately trying to obtain any foreign capital he could. The royal jewels were his most valuable commodities. An American diamond merchant bought it and displayed it at Wanamaker's in 1935. Imagine Catherine the Great's regalia on view at a Manhattan department store. That's where my client's grandfather saw it.”
At least we hope it belonged to Catherine
, I think but don't say.

“Interesting, yes. I imagine many valuable things were allowed to leave Russia this way.”

I look away, quickly. “Can I ask what you would do with the Order if you won it in the auction?”

He pulls me down on the couch next to him, a man who likes people to inhabit the spaces he expects of them. “I know what you are worried about, Tanyechka. Trust me, I am good man, not like Medovsky and the others.”

“I'm not implying…”

“I made money honest way, by making smart financial decisions. I want to give this back to my country. It is most important to me that the Order is viewed by the people. It is our heritage.”

“Oh. Well, that's great, that's exactly where I would love it to go.”

“But I want it to be in museum, for people to see the history of Russia. This belonged to the greatest empress in history.”

It's not easy to maintain professional decorum in your workplace at this hour. There's no Regan to rescue me now, no phone calls to offer diversion. Just me and a man who might be carrying a gun, or worse.

“I have met with Nadia Kudrina at Christie's but I would never consider working with an amateur like her. What I see in you is the proper intentions, a clean heart.”

He is pressing all my buttons. I'm embarrassed to feel a flush of gratification suffusing my cheeks. “Thanks for saying that. You know Nadia Kudrina is hardly an expert in the field.”

“Exactly. You are the only specialist to trust.”

The hairs on my arms are pricked, at attention. A rarefied aura of privacy surrounds us, the unrelenting tick of the Sotiau mantel clock. It seems like the perfect time to broach the subject. “You say you're a good man. Should I assume you're active in philanthropy?” I choose my words carefully with meaning.

His eyes never leave mine, steady, unblinking. “Surely you must know I am one of Russia's premier philanthropists.”