by William Boyd
Now, for the first time I felt a real small pang of worry: this request did seem to be the sign of some initial form of derangement or delusion – but she caught the look in my eye.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Ruth,’ she said. ‘But you’re quite wrong, quite wrong.’ She stood up out of her chair, tall and rigid. ‘Wait a second,’ she said and went upstairs.
‘Have you made Granny cross again?’ Jochen said, in a low voice, accusingly.
‘No.’
My mother came down the stairs – effortlessly, it seemed to me – carrying a thick buff folder under her arm. She held it out for me.
‘I’d like you to read this,’ she said.
I took it from her. There seemed to be some dozens of pages – different types, different sizes of paper. I opened it. There was a title page: The Story of Eva Delectorskaya.
‘Eva Delectorskaya,’ I said, mystified. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Me,’ she said. ‘I am Eva Delectorskaya.’
The Story of Eva Delectorskaya
Paris, 1939
EVA DELECTORSKAYA FIRST SAW the man at her brother Kolia’s funeral. In the cemetery he stood some way apart from the other mourners. He was wearing a hat – an old brown trilby – which struck her as odd and she seized on that detail and allowed it to nag at her: what sort of man wore a brown trilby to a funeral? What sign of respect was that? And she used it as a way of keeping her vast angry grief almost at bay: it kept her from being overwhelmed.
But back at the apartment, before the other mourners arrived, her father began to sob and Eva found she could not keep the tears back either. Her father was holding a framed photograph of Kolia in both hands, gripping it fiercely, as if it were a rectangular steering wheel. Eva put her hand on his shoulder and with her other quickly spread the tears off her cheeks. She could think of nothing to say to him. Then Irène, her stepmother, came in with a chinking tray holding a carafe of brandy and a collection of tiny glasses, no bigger than thimbles. She set it down and went back to the kitchen to fetch a plate of sugared almonds. Eva crouched in front of her father, offering him a glass.
‘Papa,’ she wailed at him, unable to control her voice, ‘have a little sip – look, look, I’m having one.’ She drank a small mouthful of the brandy and felt her lips sting.
She heard his fat tears hit the glass of the picture. He looked up at her and with one arm pulled her to him and kissed her forehead.
He whispered: ‘He was only twenty-four … Twenty-four? …’ It was as if Kolia’s age was literally incredible, as if someone had said to him, ‘Your son disappeared into thin air,’ or ‘your son grew wings and flew away’.
Irène came over and took the frame from him gently, gently prising his fingers away.
‘Mange, Sergei,’ she said to him, ‘bois – il faut boire.’
She propped the frame on a nearby table and started to fill the little glasses on the tray. Eva held out the plate of sugared almonds to her father and he took a few, carelessly, letting some tumble to the floor. They sipped their brandy and nibbled at the nuts and talked of banalities: how they were glad the day was overcast and windless, how sunshine would have been inappropriate, how it was good of old Monsieur Dieudonné to have come all the way from Neuilly and how meagre and tasteless the dried flowers from the Lussipovs had been. Dried flowers, really! Eva kept glancing over at the picture of Kolia, smiling in his grey suit, as if he were listening to the chatter, amused, a teasing look in his eye, until she felt the incomprehension of his loss, the affront of his absence, rear up like a tidal wave and she looked away. Luckily the doorbell rang and Irène rose to her feet to welcome the first of the guests. Eva sat on with her father, hearing the muffled tones of discreet conversation as coats and hats were removed, even a stifled burst of laughter, signalling that curious mixture of condolence and exuberant relief that rises up, impromptu, in people after a funeral.
Hearing the laughter Eva’s father looked at her; he sniffed and shrugged his shoulders hopelessly, helplessly, like a man who has forgotten the answer to the simplest of questions, and she saw how old he was all of a sudden.
‘Just you and me, Eva,’ he said, and she knew he was thinking of his first wife, Maria – his Masha, her mother – and her death all those years ago on the other side of the world. Eva had been fourteen, Kolia ten, and the three of them had stood hand in hand in the foreigners’ graveyard in Tientsin, the air full of windblown blossom, shredded petals from the giant white wisteria growing on the cemetery wall – like snowflakes, like fat soft confetti. ‘Just the three of us, now,’ he had said then, as they stood beside their mother’s grave, squeezing their hands very hard.
‘Who was the man in the brown trilby?’ Eva asked, remembering and wanting to change the subject.
‘What man in the brown trilby?’ said her father.
Then the Lussipovs edged cautiously into the room, smiling vaguely, and with them her plump cousin Tania with her new little husband, and the perplexing question of the man in the brown trilby was momentarily forgotten.
But she saw him again, three days later on the Monday – the first day she’d gone back to work – as she left the office to go to lunch. He was standing under the awning of the épicerie opposite, wearing a long tweed overcoat – dark green – and his incongruous trilby. He met her glance, nodded and smiled and crossed the road to greet her, removing his hat as he approached.
He spoke in excellent, accentless French: ‘Mademoiselle Delectorskaya, my sincere condolences about your brother. My apologies for not speaking to you at the funeral but it did not seem appropriate – especially as Kolia had never introduced us.’
‘I hadn’t realised you knew Kolia.’ This fact had already thrown her: her mind was clattering, panicked slightly – this made no sense.
‘Oh, yes. Not friends, exactly, but we were firm acquaintances, shall we say?’ He gave a little bow of his head and continued, this time in flawless, accented English. ‘Forgive me, my name is Lucas Romer.’
The accent was upper class, patrician, but Eva thought, immediately, that this Mr Lucas Romer did not look particularly English at all. He had wavy black hair, thinning at the front and swept back and was virtually – she searched for the English word – swarthy, with dense eyebrows, uncurved, like two black horizontal dashes beneath his high forehead and above his eyes – which were a muddy bluey grey (she always noticed the colour of people’s eyes). His jaw, even though freshly shaved, was solidly metallic with incipient stubble.
He sensed her studying him and reflexively ran the palm of his hand across his thinning hair. ‘Kolia never spoke to you about me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Eva said, speaking English herself now. ‘No, he never mentioned a “Lucas Romer” to me.’
He smiled, for some reason, at this information, showing very white, even teeth.
‘Very good,’ he said, thoughtfully, nodding to show his pleasure and then added, ‘it is my real name by the way.’
‘It never crossed my mind that it wasn’t,’ Eva said, offering her hand. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr Romer. If you’ll excuse me I have only half an hour for my lunch.’
‘No. You have two hours. I told Monsieur Frellon that I would be taking you to a restaurant.’
Monsieur Frellon was her boss. He was obsessive about employee punctuality.
‘Why would Monsieur Frellon permit that?’
‘Because he thinks I’m going to charter four steamships from him and, as I don’t speak a word of French, I need to sort the details out with his translator.’ He turned and pointed with his hat. ‘There’s a little place I know on the rue du Cherche Midi. Excellent seafood. Do you like oysters?’
‘I detest oysters.’
He smiled at her, tolerantly, as if she were a sulky child, but this time not showing her his white teeth.
‘Then I will show you how to make an oyster edible.’
The restaurant was called Le Tire Bouchon and Lucas Romer did indeed show her how to make an oyst
er edible (with red-wine vinegar, chopped shallots, black pepper and lemon juice with a roundel of cold-buttered brown bread to follow it down). In fact Eva enjoyed oysters from time to time but she had wanted to dent this curious man’s immense self-assurance.
During lunch (sole bonne femme after the oysters, cheese, tarte tatin, a half bottle of Chablis and a whole bottle of Morgon) they talked about Kolia. It was clear to Eva that Romer knew all the relevant biographical facts about Kolia – his age, his education, the family’s flight from Russia after the Revolution in 1917, the death of their mother in China, the whole saga of the Delectorskis’ peripatetic journeying from St Petersburg to Vladivostock to Tientsin to Shanghai to Tokyo to Berlin, finally, in 1924, and then, eventually, in 1928, to Paris. He knew about the marriage of Sergei Pavlovitch Delectorski to the childless widow Irène Argenton in 1932 and the modest financial upturn in the family’s fortunes that Madame Argenton’s dowry had produced. He knew even more, she discovered, about her father’s recent heart problems, his failing health. If he knows so much about Kolia, Eva thought, I wonder how much he knows about me?
He had ordered coffee for them both and an eau-de-vie for himself. He offered her a cigarette from a bashed, silver cigarette tin – she took one and he lit it for her.
‘You speak excellent English,’ he said.
‘I’m half English,’ she told him, as if he didn’t know. ‘My late mother was English.’
‘So you speak English, Russian and French. Anything else?’
‘I speak some German. Middling, not fluent.’
‘Good … How is your father, by the way?’ he asked, lighting his own cigarette, leaning back and exhaling dramatically, ceilingward.
Eva paused, uncertain what to tell this man: this complete stranger who acted like a familiar, like a cousin, a concerned uncle eager for family news. ‘He’s not well. He’s crushed, in fact – as we all are. The shock – you can’t imagine … I think Kolia’s death might kill him. My stepmother’s very worried.’ ‘Ah, yes. Kolia adored your stepmother.’ Eva knew all too well that Kolia’s relationship with Irène had been strained at the best of times. Madame Argenton thought Kolia something of a wastrel – a dreamer, but an irritating one.
‘The son she never had,’ Romer added.
‘Did Kolia tell you that?’ Eva asked.
‘No. I’m guessing.’
Eva stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ she said, rising to her feet. Romer was smiling at her, annoyingly. She felt that he was pleased at her sudden coldness, her abruptness – as if she had passed some kind of minor test.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ he said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m meant to be chartering four steamers from Frellon, Gonzales et Cie. Have another coffee and we’ll sketch out the details.’
Back in the office Eva was able to tell Monsieur Frellon, with complete plausibility, the tonnage, the timing and the ports of call Romer had in mind. Monsieur Frellon was very pleased at the outcome of her protracted lunch: Romer was a ‘big fish’, he kept saying, we want to reel him in. Eva realised that Romer had never told her – even though she had raised the matter two or three times – where, how and when he and Kolia had met.
Two days later she was on the metro going to work when she saw Romer step into her carriage at Place Clichy. He smiled and waved through the other commuters at her. Eva knew at once this was no coincidence; she didn’t think coincidence played much part in Lucas Romer’s life. They exited at Sevres-Baby-lone and together they made their way towards the office together – Romer informing her he had an appointment with Monsieur Frellon. It was a dull day, a mackerel sky, with odd patches of brightness; a sudden breeze snatched at her skirt and the violet-blue scarf at her throat. As they reached the small cafe at the junction of the rue de Varenne and the boulevard Raspail, Romer suggested they pause.
‘What about your appointment?’
‘I said I’d pop by sometime in the morning.’
‘But I’ll be late,’ she said.
‘He won’t mind – we’re talking business. I’ll call him.’ He went to the bar to purchase the jetons for the public phone. Eva sat down in the window and looked at him, not resentfully but curiously, thinking: what game are you playing here, Mr Lucas Romer? Is this a sex-game with me or a business-game with Frellon, Gonzalez et Cie? If it was a sex-game he was wasting his time. She was not drawn to Lucas Romer. She attracted too many men and, in distorted compromise, was attracted herself by very few. It was a price beauty sometimes exacted: I will make you beautiful, the gods decide, but I will also make you incredibly hard to please. She did not want to think about her life’s few complicated, unhappy love affairs this early in the morning and so she took down a newspaper from its hook. Somehow she didn’t think this was a sex-game – something else was at stake, some other plan was brewing here. The headlines were all of the war in Spain, of the Anschluss, of Bukharin’s execution in the USSR. The vocabulary was scratchy with aggression: rearmament, territory, reparations, arms, bluster, warnings, war and future wars. Yes, she thought, Lucas Romer had another objective but she would have to wait and see what it was.
‘No problem at all.’ He was standing above her, returning to the table with a smile on his face. ‘I’ve ordered you a coffee.’
She asked him about M. Frellon and Romer assured her that M. Frellon couldn’t be happier about this propitious encounter. Their coffees arrived and Romer sat back, at his ease, liberally sugaring his express, then stirring it assiduously. Eva looked at him as she re-hung her newspaper, contemplating his dark face, his slightly smirched and crumpled soft collar, his thin, banded tie. What would one have said: a university lecturer? A moderately successful writer? A senior civil servant? Not a ship broker, for sure. So why was she sitting in this café with this perplexing Englishman when it was something she had no particular desire to do? She determined to put him to the test: she decided to ask him about Kolia.
‘When did you meet Kolia?’ she asked, taking out a cigarette from a pack in her handbag, as casually as she could manage and not offering him one.
‘About a year ago. We met at a party – someone was celebrating the publication of a book. We got talking – I thought he was charming–’
‘What book?’
‘I can’t remember.’
She continued her cross-examination and watched Romer’s pleasure grow: he was enjoying this, she saw, and his enjoyment began to anger her. This wasn’t some pastime, some idle flirtation – her brother was dead and she suspected that Romer knew far more about Kolia’s death than he was prepared to admit.
‘Why was he at that meeting?’ she asked. ‘Action Française, for heaven’s sake: Kolia wasn’t a Fascist.’
‘Of course he wasn’t.’
‘So why was he there?’
‘I asked him to go.’
This shocked her. She wondered why Lucas Romer would ask Kolia Delectorski to go to an Action Française meeting, and wondered further why Kolia would agree, but could find no quick or easy answers.
‘Why did you ask him to go?’ she asked.
‘Because he was working for me.’
All day in the office, trying to do her work, Eva thought about Romer and his baffling answers to her questions. He had abruptly ended their conversation after this declaration that Kolia was working for him – leaning forward, his eyes fixed on hers – and which seemed to say: yes, Kolia was working for me, Lucas Romer, and then announced suddenly that he had to go, he had meetings, my goodness, look at the time.
In the metro on her way home after the office had closed, Eva tried to be methodical, tried to put things together, to make the various extraneous pieces of information mesh, somehow, but it wasn’t working. Lucas Romer had met Kolia at a party; they had become friends – more than friends, obviously, colleagues of a sort, with Kolia working for Romer in some unnamed capacity … What manner of work took you to a meeting of the Acti
on Française in Nanterre? And at this meeting, as far as the police could determine, Kolia Delectorski had been called out to answer a telephone call. People remembered him leaving in the middle of the main speech, delivered by Charles Maurras, no less, remembered one of the stewards coming down the aisle and passing him a note, remembered the small upheaval of his departure. And then the gap of time of forty-five minutes – the last forty-five minutes of Kolia’s life – to which there were no witnesses. People leaving the hall (a large cinema) by the side entrances had found his twisted body in the alleyway running along the cinema’s rear, a thickening lacquered pool of blood on the paving stones, a serious wound – several heavy blows – on the back of his head. What happened in the last forty-five minutes of Kolia Delectorski’s life? When he was found his wallet was missing, his watch was missing and his hat was missing. But what kind of thief kills a man and then steals his hat?
Eva walked up the rue des Fleurs, thinking about Kolia, wondering what had made him ‘work’ for a man like Romer and why he had never told her about this so-called job. And who was Romer to offer Kolia, a music teacher, a job that would put his life in danger? A job that had cost him his life? As what and for what, she wanted to know? For his shipping line? His international businesses? She found herself smiling sardonically at the whole absurdity of the idea as she bought her usual two baguettes and tried to ignore Benoit’s eager responsive smile to what he took to be her levity. She became solemn, instantly. Benoit – another man who wanted her.
‘How are you, Mademoiselle Eva?’ Benoit asked, taking her money.
‘I’m not so well,’ she said. ‘My brother’s death – you know.’
His face changed, went long in sympathy. ‘Terrible, terrible thing,’ he said. ‘These times we live in.’
At least now he can’t ask me out again for a while, Eva thought, as she left and turned into the apartment block’s small courtyard, stepping through the small door in the large one and nodding hello to Madame Roisanssac, the concierge. She walked up the two flights of stairs, let herself in, left the bread in the kitchen and moved on through to the salon, thinking: no, I can’t stay in again tonight, not with Papa and Irène – I shall go and see a film, the film playing at the Rex: Je Suis Partout – I need to have a change in routine, she thought, some room, some time for myself.