The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  “No luck?” the seaman asked, at sight of Josef's face.

  Josef, shaking his head, perched upon the end of Tanya’s mattress – van Heuten was sitting in the only chair in the room and had made no move to vacate it.

  Tanya lifted great, uncomprehending eyes. “Are we going to the house on the Herrengracht?”

  Josef hesitated. “Not yet my little one. There’s – a little difficulty.”

  The child frowned. “Are my cousins not at home after all?”

  “I – yes, but – they’re very busy. I – couldn’t get to see them today.”

  “Ah.” van Heuten’s eyebrows were raised sardonically.

  Josef ignored him. “I thought – we’ll wait till you’re better, little pigeon. Then you shall come with me.” Last hope. Sergei Anatov, surely, could not refuse the evidence of his own eyes.

  The shadow on Tanya’s fever-bright face lifted. “I should like that.”

  Josef pulled the medicine bottle from his pocket ransacked the drawer for their one spoon and gently poured the foul liquid into the obediently opened mouth. Pieter van Heuten looked on, eyes expressionless. When Josef had done playing nursemaid the seaman searched behind the chair upon which he sat and produced, with his habitual unpleasant grin, a bottle three-quarters full. “Here. You look as if you need it.”

  The spirit burned fiercely and hit Josef’s empty stomach in a flood of fire. He swallowed again.

  The Dutchman, still grinning, stood up and patted the chair in invitation for Josef to sit, then disposed himself comfortably at the foot of the mattress, one hand apparently accidentally resting upon the foot of the almost-sleeping child. “Tell Uncle Piet all about it.”

  The telling did nothing to ease Josef’s humiliation-fed anger – neither did the entire remaining contents of the bottle. Pieter van Heuten fetched another. Half-way down that one, “Shits,” he said unsteadily, breaking unexpectedly into a gloomy silence. “Shits the lot of them. Dutch, Russian, English – bloody Chinese for all I know.”

  Josef lifted an aching head. “Who are?”

  “Them in the shitting diamond business. Shits the lot of ’em. Rob an honest man an’ leave him dead any day of the shittin’ week.”

  Josef did his best to focus his glazed eyes, then shook his head with drunken deliberation. “No.”

  Van Heuten leaned forward belligerently, “What do you know about it, eh? Eh? Tell me that. What – do – you – know?” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of enormous, calloused hands.

  “As a – matter of fact—” Infuriatingly Josef found himself not quite master of his tongue; he knew exactly what he wanted to say, but, confusingly, the effort of putting it into words was almost beyond him. “As a – matter of fact—” he began again, obstinately, “I know a very great deal. A very – great – deal.” He thought deeply for a moment, then leaned forward gravely and confidentially. “What do you think I used to do in Kiev, eh? Answer me that. What do you think?”

  The Dutchman yawned prodigiously. “How the hell would I know?”

  Josef extended his right hand. His thumb showed the leathery burn mark that was the brand of his craft, scarred by the many times he had smoothed the hot solder into the dap and set firmly into its hot mass the stone to be ground and polished. “Have you never seen that before?”

  The Dutchman yawned again. “Never.”

  Josef’s eyelids drooped.

  Van Heuten, none too gently, nudged him and he almost fell off the chair. “Well?”

  Josef jumped awake. “Well what?”

  “What is it? The mark? What’s so special?”

  Josef told him, at great and rambling length. Half-way through the narrative the seaman went back to the bottle. But those strange eyes regarded Josef with every sign of sudden, rapt interest.

  * * *

  Josef planned very carefully his fresh assault on the Anatovs. This time he must make as certain as he could that nothing could go wrong. To this end he prepared the way by writing a letter – and cursed himself for a fool not to have thought of something so simple before. Surely the only possible explanation of Sergei Anatov’s behaviour was that he did not know the true situation. Who could blame him, if that were the case, for distrusting a stranger, a vagabond, who turned up from nowhere with no child and no proof of her existence? So Josef reasoned and reassured himself, resolutely ignoring misgivings. Tanya was getting better each day. Soon she would be able to go out. In his carefully worded, beautifully scripted letter he requested, politely, an audience with Sergei Anatov the following Friday afternoon.

  To his enormous, if hidden, relief the uniformed footman who opened the door to them at the appointed time made no demur, but stepped back, his expression frigid, in invitation to them to enter. That hurdle crossed, Josef breathed a little easier – right to the last moment he had more than half-expected to be turned away. Tanya, pale now with the aftermath of illness and transparently beautiful as a small angel, clung to his hand as if to her hope of salvation as they entered the great house. With a lack of deference that amounted to outright insolence and deflated a little of Josef’s fledgling optimism, the servant led them up the sweeping staircase, past the magnificent drawing room to another set of double doors further along the ornately decorated landing. The footman knocked, and a peremptory voice bade them enter.

  “The man and the child, sir.” The footman’s face was wooden.

  “Thank you, Brazanov. You may go.”

  The man bowed himself out, leaving behind him a silence that bred foreboding and started a faint, sickly tremor of nerves deep in the pit of Josef’s stomach. Tanya might have been a small alabaster statue; she stood still, scarcely breathing, her pain-filled eyes fixed upon the man who sat behind the vast mahogany desk. The room was furnished as a study, a comfortable, expensive masculine retreat. A fire burned brightly in the big fireplace. The heavy draped curtains shut out the darkening afternoon, and in the shadowed winter room Sergei Anatov’s bright hair caught the glint of flame and reflected it red-gold. As did Tanya’s.

  Josef opened his mouth to speak.

  “No.” Anatov held up an imperative hand. “You are not here to speak. You are here to listen.”

  At the sound of the harsh voice the child flinched, physically. Josef tightened his already vice-like grip upon her hand.

  Sergei Anatov stood up and walked around the desk, then leaned upon it surveying his visitors. In his hand he held a piece of paper which Josef recognized as his letter. He lifted it, his eyes cold.

  “Perhaps we should begin by getting something absolutely clear. I have no intention whatsoever of being blackmailed by a cock and bull story into accepting this – child – into my household or my family. Is that understood?”

  For a moment, Josef could not speak.

  “I cannot imagine that you could truly believe that I would allow myself to be taken in by this pack of lies—”

  “No!”

  “—this pack of lies, I say,” the man continued evenly. “My distant cousin and his family—” the chill eyes flickered very briefly to Tanya’s stricken face “—his whole family – were killed, tragically, when their house caught fire and burned down.”

  Josef gaped.

  “Now you come to me with this fabrication, besmirching the family name – my family name – with sedition and filthy Jewish lies, and expect – what? That I should welcome you with open arms? Recognize the child as—”

  Josef found his tongue. “Recognize her? That, surely, is the word, yes. Just look at her.” Josef thrust the silent Tanya forward. The man’s eyes flicked to her and away.

  “Do you take me for a fool? Of course I see the resemblance. Who would not? A bye-blow, no doubt. A bastard, taken from the streets of Moscow to further your schemes.” He gave a small, caustic laugh. “Didn’t you know my cousin Alexei? He was notorious—”

  “He was the best friend I ever had.”

  There was a moment’s silence. The uncharitable, assured eyes ra
ked Josef from toeless boots to uncut, shaggy hair. “Oh, really? You expect me to believe that? Come, now.” The tone was deliberately, quietly offensive. “I’ve already told you that I’m no one’s fool. It will be easier for us both if you simply realize that there is absolutely no point in your persisting in these outrageous lies.” He paused. “Perhaps I should explain something. If your purpose is, through this little impostor, to lay some claim to her libertine father’s estate, then your efforts have been for nothing. You’ll both be sorely disappointed. The estate has been confiscated—” the chill eyes looked for a moment directly into Josef’s own “—in payment of debt. There’s not a rouble, not a blade of grass left. Now let me make something else plain. Unless you retract this – this lunacy—” he struck the open palm of his hand with the letter in a sharp movement that belied his apparent calm “—in writing, you’ll get not a guilder from me. I must tell you that when first I read this my reaction was to have you arrested.” He paused, allowing the words to sink in. Josef watched him, expressionless. “However, having now seen the child and knowing too well my cousin’s – regrettable – reputation, I might be willing, in charity, to offer you a small sum. I would not have it said that I allowed my cousin’s bastard child to starve. However, on one thing I insist. Not a penny will you receive from me until you admit in writing that you have fabricated here a pack of lies.”

  The slow fire of Josef’s anger was building. “Never!”

  The man stood up. “Then there is nothing else to be said. You’ll get no second chance from me. Go back to whatever hole you crawled from and ponder the rewards of good sense—”

  “The rewards of treachery, you mean.”

  For one still moment violet eyes met brown with the faintest spark of acknowledgement flickering beneath steel-cold determination. In that moment Josef knew this was no case of an honest mistake. “A melodramatic word, I always think. And, unlike most Russians, Mr Rosenberg, I am not much given to melodrama. It will get you nowhere.” Anatov turned away. “Enough. Will you leave of your own accord, or do I have you thrown out again?”

  Josef clung to the shreds of his self-control, his concern now to get Tanya away with no more hurt. “We’ll go,” he said tightly, adding more in defiance than hope, “But you’ll hear from us again.”

  Fair, assured eyebrows raised. “I think not. At least – not until you’ve swallowed your pride, written your retraction and come begging for the charity that is the only thing you’ll get from me.”

  With enormous restraint in deference to the presence of the child, Josef refrained from telling him, bitterly and inventively, what to do with his charity. With no word he turned and strode to the door, towing Tanya with him. In the doorway he almost cannoned into the elegant woman he had seen on his first visit.

  “Sergei,” she asked sharply, “what on earth is going on?”

  “Nothing to worry about, my dear. A little unpleasantness—”

  For the first time the woman caught sight of Tanya. “Good God!” she said faintly.

  Josef saw his chance to plead Tanya’s case again, this time perhaps to a more tender heart. “Madam – please – I beg you. The little girl is daughter to your husband’s cousin who died in Kiev last year. She is quite alone in the world—” New hope died still-born. There was not the faintest flicker of warmth or sympathy on the woman’s face, just, somewhere almost hidden, a shadow of pure relief quickly masked, before she turned from Josef to look to her husband.

  “A pack of lies of course, my dear,” he said quietly. “Though, as you can see, the child is undoubtedly Alexei’s – a bye-blow sired God knows where. It is an ill-conceived attempt to extort money.”

  Madame Anatov looked again at poor Tanya, distaste and dislike written clearly upon her attractive face. “What are you going to do with them?” She spoke as if neither Josef nor Tanya were in the room.

  Her husband shook his head. “Nothing. They’re leaving. They know better than to come back.”

  Josef saw a flicker of doubt in the woman’s face. She looked at Tanya again and this time he saw, as clearly as if she had put it into words, the reason for her concern; no woman could be happy to see in her own house a child who was the living image of her own extremely attractive husband. A small, unpleasant thought was born.

  Anatov joined them at the door. “I asked you to leave.”

  For the moment there was nothing left to say. With what dignity he could muster, Josef took Tanya’s hand and turned from the pair, marching down the splendid staircase stiff-backed, aware of their eyes upon him. In the hallway below a manservant waited, beneath his veneer of impassivity a hint that there would be nothing to please him more than for Josef to make trouble.

  In a moment they were out in the street, enveloped in a soft, blowing rain that could not disguise the tears that glistened on the child’s face.

  * * *

  That night, morosely, Josef sat in the dirty, ugly little room that had become home and stared into space, silent, comfortless. Three times he had refused the bottle that Pieter van Heuten had proffered. Now he did so again, with an impatiently shaken head.

  Van Heuten shrugged, tipped the bottle to his own mouth, not for the first time. “Face it, Josef. You handled it all wrong.”

  He spoke in Dutch. Josef understood enough to grunt angrily in reply, but so far gone in depression was he that he could not be bothered to speak.

  Van Heuten continued expansively, in the mongrel tongue he and Josef shared. “These diamond people – I told you – they’re farts. Won’t give nothing. You have to take, Josef, my friend. Take. The man’s frightened, you say, to be associated with the girl’s father? Use it. Frighten him more. Take him—” van Heuten reached into thin air with his hand and grasped an imaginary object “—and squee-eeze him.” The huge hand closed, graphically slowly into a fist.

  Josef shook his head. “He doesn’t strike me as being the type to be – squeezed – as you put it. He’s a man of wealth and influence. God knows what he might do if I tried to make trouble for him. Always supposing that I could.” He went back to his gloomy contemplation of the wall.

  “But he did offer you something?”

  “Charity.” Josef spat the word.

  The seaman shook his head in exaggerated wonder. “Charity, you say? Well, God’s teeth, what’s wrong with that? You can afford to be that choosy? Get something from the pig—”

  “No!” Josef’s fist smacked the table, almost waking Tanya, who was asleep in her corner, her face still swollen and tear-streaked. She stirred and murmured. Josef, with an effort, lowered his voice. “No. To accept his terms – to fall in with his lies simply to save his face means branding Alexei’s daughter bastard for the rest of her life. I won’t do it. I swore she should suffer no more – swore that she would live again, safely, securely. She needs love and happiness—”

  “We all need that my friend.” The words were sardonic, but Josef ignored them.

  “She needs healing! What chance would she have living on the charity of a man like that? God only knows what might become of her.”

  “What chance has she anywhere else?” The Dutchman walked from the dark window where he had been standing, to where the child slept and hunkered down beside her. Josef watched him. “Pretty, pretty little thing,” the seaman said, and reached a hand.

  Something in his eyes stirred the hairs on the nape of Josef’s neck. “Don’t touch her,” he snapped.

  The broad, hairy hand stilled for a fraction of a second and unfriendly eyes flicked to Josef’s face. Then the man continued his arrested motion, tucked the thin blanket beneath Tanya’s chin and straightened, shrugging. “My friend, you’re on edge. What you need—” he lifted the bottle high “—is a drink.”

  This time Josef drank, long and deep. The Dutchman, grinning, waved an inviting hand and Josef took another swig, felt the rough liquor course down his throat. Van Heuten lifted his head and drank with relish, smacking his lips. “Josef,” he said,
his voice oddly confidential, “tell me something.” He watched Josef for a long moment. “You say you know diamonds.”

  Josef nodded grimly. “For all the good it does me.”

  There was a short and somehow significant silence. Josef glanced up. The light eyes were upon him, speculative and crafty. “I was thinking more, perhaps—” the Dutchman said in careful Russian, “—of the good it might do me.” He stood up, swayed a little. It came to Josef that the man was perhaps more inebriated than was immediately apparent; though when he spoke his voice was steady and his words unslurred. “Come. I show you something. Something beautiful, to cheer you. And then, well, we’ll see. Perhaps you help Piet, eh? Perhaps you know a way—” He jerked an imperative head, “I show you. Come.” He picked up the guttering candle from the table and led the way to the door.

  Curiosity impelled Josef to follow the man, his shadow flickering giant-like upon the running walls, out into the passage and up the narrow dark stairs, past doors behind which voices were raised and children cried. Josef started as a stray cat, disturbed at their passing, suddenly shot from the darkness through his legs and away down the stairs. A few steps on he averted his eyes from the half-dismembered rat that had been the animal’s meal. Jovial with drink, Pieter laughed loud and unpleasant, and slapped his shoulder.

  “You’re too finicky, my friend. Like a girl, eh? Me – I like this place. Wouldn’t live anywhere else. I could be a rich man – oh, yes, as God is my witness I could – you’ll see – I could live anywhere. In a palace. Yes. A palace. But I like it here.” Laughing uproariously now he fiddled with his key in the lock of his door. The key never failed to astonish Josef – no one else in the building had such a refinement, nor even thought of it. He followed the other man into a foul-smelling room that was lair-like in its filth and chaos.