The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  I opened my suitcase and took out my clothes, carrying them to the wardrobe in the corridor. I closed the door on the bedroom as I heard Julian lift the receiver. I hung up my suits slowly, then unpacked my washbag. Her voice was inaudible against the whirring of the bathroom fan. When I re-emerged, she looked up from her suitcase.

  ‘I reached Igor in the end. He’s told me the name of a good restaurant for Russian food, so we can all go there, I mean with your art historians, and Igor will join us later, if he can get away. Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all. Do you know where it is, roughly? Is it far?’

  ‘He said to take a taxi. I’ve got the address. Why don’t you get your friends to meet us there?’

  29

  It was snowing with conviction when we left for the restaurant and the ice that accumulated on our shoes in the few steps to the car melted into little pools on the rubber mats beneath our feet. Julian sat beside me, not speaking, looking out at the sparsely lit streets. She had opened her fur coat in the powerful warmth of the car heater and her hand lay on the seat, fingers as relaxed as a sleeping cat. Since I knew that this trip, the meeting with Igor, the hope of seeing Anatoli again were supremely important to her, I wondered how she produced this semblance of indifference. It suggested exceptional powers of self-control or of concealment.

  We left the city centre and were running along some kind of freeway beside the river. The water was frozen and snow lay on the surface, a glimmering silver band on our right. The taxi picked up speed, so that when we hit a rut we bounced over it with such force that my head hit the car roof a number of times. With great abruptness we stopped at a barrier and an armed guard appeared at the driver’s window. Some conversation in Russian produced a demand for money. Roubles proved unsatisfactory and only when dollars were offered could we proceed.

  Another few minutes and we drew up at a low building on the river front. In the entrance was the cloakroom where we left our coats, which were by no means the only items deposited there. Julian watched a couple ahead of us removing hats, gloves, scarves, fur coats, boots and galoshes. She pointed to the plastic bag the woman carried out of which she drew a pair of high-heeled shoes.

  ‘Look,’ she commented. That’s how you cope with the snow. It’s like school used to be. You have indoor shoes and outdoor shoes and a shoe bag.’

  I had been more interested in the cupboard behind the cloakroom attendant, which he had been closing as we entered. It contained rows of guns in their holsters.

  Henrik had already arrived. We found him installed at a table with three companions. He stood up and waved to us and even in the darkness I could see that his normally pale Dutch complexion was flushed. Conferences are well-known inhibition-suppressers, and I suspected that vodka had also been playing its part. We shook hands.

  ‘This is some place your friend has recommended, Nicholas. I brought along a few colleagues who I found in my hotel. I’m sure you’ve met Brian Simpkins, Kennedy Zankowitz.’ My extended hand was passed across the table from one to the other, each of them only appearing as a face, lit with striking chiaroscuro effects by the little candles on the table.

  ‘… and Dr Horndeane, you certainly know.’

  Minna was the last in my circuit. She did not proffer her hand, simply nodding at me curtly. I withdrew mine. I wondered what she was doing there. It was most unlike her to take part in jolly group outings in the margins of a conference. She was more likely to receive personal invitations to visit private collections inaccessible to anyone else, or to dinners with local politicians or celebrities. She smiled coldly, showing her tobacco-stained, crooked teeth and her eyes moved on to Julian.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said to her. ‘Why don’t you? I didn’t catch your name.’

  Henrik placed his hand on the back of the neighbouring chair in a proprietory way. ‘Yes,’ he said approvingly. ‘You sit there. And Nicholas over there.’

  In my memory the next few hours appear only moderately bad, because so much worse was to follow. At the time they seemed an endless purgatory. I was sitting between Kennedy, a fierce female academic from Ann Arbor, and Brian, a Yorkshireman from Edinburgh University. For the last thirty years he had maintained the role of working-class-boy-made-good, having to concentrate with ever greater determination on his accent and life style in the face of the indifference of the young, whose lives had developed beyond the categories he had known in his youth. Marxist art history had now fallen out of fashion, at least in the form he had practised it in the ’sixties. Indomitable, he now worked on technical analysis. Science would, he hoped, prove more certain than economics as a basis for interpreting works of art. I rather liked him.

  Conversation with either of them was impossible, because of the noise of the band. We were close to the dance floor, but even had we been placed much further away, in one of the remoter corners, we would have been little better off. Both Henrik and Minna, I noticed, made an effort to defeat the noise and talk to Julian. One or other of them was whispering or shouting into her ear most of the time. I smiled apologetically at my neighbours and watched the other diners.

  Next to us was a Mafia family party, two older women and several younger ones as well as the men. Elsewhere there was a preponderance of males and most of the women were very high-grade tarts, judging by their beauty and the elaborate frottage of their dancing. It seemed to me an odd place for Igor to have recommended to Julian to dine: a cross between a Mafia joint and a trap for foreign businessmen. Minna, Julian and Henrik had their backs to the performance that succeeded the dancing and so missed almost everything. With admirable masks of detached, academic interest Brian and Kennedy were watching the three tumblers whose erotic acrobatics were eliciting continuous applause. When they had finished, the diners showed their approval in an even more positive fashion, throwing folded paper onto the stage, while the clapping became rhythmical.

  ‘Good God, it’s money,’ Brian said, to no one in particular. This was presumably a Yorkshireman’s idea of madness. Then, after watching even more closely, ‘They’re dollars.’

  The applause lasted five minutes, until the tumblers finally withdrew. The band continued to play while an assistant hunkered round the floor, carefully gathering up the money. A girl, dressed in an imaginative version of Georgian costume, was circulating from table to table. She wore a long skirt and a tight, embroidered corset embracing her midriff and supporting a generous bust, which was covered, just, by a white blouse. She nursed a basket beneath this voluptuous shelf of flesh and it was as much as to admire her fine breasts as to examine what else she was offering that so many men acknowledged her approach and bought a rose or a packet of cigarettes from her. I watched her nudge Henrik, who at first took no notice. He turned his head to find her swelling mammaries at eye level. His expression was comic. Seduced by his own surprise, he admired a number of items from the basket. Finally, he selected a knife, with a slender blade and sharply pointed end. Once the beautiful vendor had departed he seemed at a loss with what he had done. I saw him present his purchase to a bemused Julian.

  The audience renewed its attention to the food. This consisted of small plates of smoked fish, tomatoes, caviar, parsley, Russian salad, pickled cucumbers. From time to time a waiter would remove one of the dishes and replace it with another. Out of boredom I helped myself to more herring. Julian, I noticed, had piled her plate with caviar, which she had not yet touched.

  My head was giving warnings of an imminent migraine; the familiar squeezing sensation pulsed at the back of my neck. I could not leave without Julian and she would not go without seeing Igor. I felt in my inner pocket for my tablets, as the dancers took to the floor again. Henrik leapt up and bowed to Julian. The rest of the evening was a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and violent, inharmonious noise, which could have been inside or outside my head. I made no attempt, after the onset of the migraine, to turn my neck to speak to my neighbours. All I could see was Julian’s pale face in front of me, with
Minna’s turned towards her. Beyond her, I recall a beautiful prostitute, tall and blonde, caressing her own body as she danced around her client.

  At some point another troupe of performers took the stage, men in Cossack tunics and boots and women in a Disneyland version of Russian costume which ended at the waist, below which a G string and some shreds of gauze substituted for traditional petticoats and aprons. There was a great deal of stamping during this performance which confused me further, so that I did not see the arrival of the Uzbek until he was well into the room. He crossed the dance floor, escorted by the maitre d’hotel and several bodyguards. Halfway to his table he noticed Julian. He did not stop to greet her, but sat down alone, immediately next to the dance floor, with his bodyguards behind him. Without a word from him, food and drink were placed speedily on his table, and with the deliberation of the greedy, he put a selection of zakuski on his plate. Not until he had tossed back two glasses of vodka and started on his meal did he send over to Julian.

  She looked around in surprise, for she had not seen him come in, then went over to sit with him. I was in a dream-like state in which people can materialise without explanation, so I accepted that this gross figure must be the Uzbek. Who else could he be? I was struck by the relationship between them. I had assumed that he would show a patronising, avuncular attitude, encouraged by Julian’s submissive behaviour. I saw that she had lost the remote expression she had worn most of the evening; her face was expressive and lively. She was listening to him, not looking at him directly. He spoke rapidly, without pauses, gesturing with his hands on the table. She raised her eyes to his face, regarding him directly. Her reply was as long as his speech. She answered authoritatively; there was no subservience. They looked more like partners than patron and client.

  Eventually, she rose and came back to us, leaning across to me, saying, ‘Shall we go, Nick? You look dead beat. Igor won’t be coming.’

  30

  ‘I’ll be back before dinner,’ I said, to the pile of hair on the pillow, when I left the following morning for the start of the conference. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  The meetings evolved in the way of all conferences, with a special post-Soviet, Slavic tone. A Russian academic made a long opening speech. There was a break for coffee, which gave one a chance to compare the list of invitees with those who had actually turned up. The count was quite good. Curiosity had triumphed over the fear of crime and the Russian climate and there were enough eminent academics for them all to feel that they were at an event of appropriate importance, and enough of the scholarly masses to make the thing well attended. The organisers were satisfied, which is more than can be said of those participants who had economically booked themselves into the cheaper hotels. However, this sort of discomfort is part of the conference experience and grumbling about it leads to bonding over the coffee cups and much more besides.

  I saw Henrik, red around the lower eyelids. I could not have looked much better, though the migraine was over.

  ‘I thought vodka was supposed to be hangover-free,’ he said, as we stood together in front of the coffee urn.

  ‘Perhaps it was the combination with the Georgian wine,’ I suggested.

  ‘Possibly. However, before the effect hit me, it produced some remarkable insights to add to my paper for this afternoon. I was working on it at three this morning. You got a copy? Be sure to come to listen to my new ideas.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  I took the cafeteria-style lunch which was arranged for us, attended Henrik’s reading of his paper on Rubens and Marie dei Medici and, after the tea break, dropped into the session for the scientific specialists. I often thought of Julian and wondered what she was doing. When I returned to the hotel, I found a note for me in our room.

  I’m out this evening. Enjoy your dinner. See you when you get back. J.

  She must have spent the day trying to get in touch with Anatoli. Perhaps she had achieved this already. I imagined the effect of their meeting on him. The demands of a woman you have fallen out of love with are profoundly irritating, as I knew from my negotiations with Emily. But perhaps Anatoli had not fallen out of love with her. His absence might have been compelled, not voluntary. According to Julian’s story, Anatoli had left her to return to Sveta, whom he had encountered by chance in Paris. As I thought over what she had told me, I realised it was an entirely subjective account. She had seen someone she took to be Sveta, and had interpreted Anatoli’s reaction to her in the light of what she knew. His disappearance from her life had not followed immediately on that incident and might very well have no connexion with it at all.

  I imagined now, not the irritation of facing a past companion, but the joy of being reunited with a lost lover. His gain would be my loss, his joy my pain. I was forced to imagine life without Julian. I set off to my conference dinner in a bad mood.

  You can imagine the worst and still not think it will happen. So I had done nothing by my anticipation to protect myself from the alarm I felt when I returned from dinner, pushed the card into the door of our room to find it unlit. I examined the room carefully for a sign that she had returned while I was out In the bathroom her jars of face creams were marshalled in neat rows. In the wardrobe her clothes hung, emanating only the faintest trace of her scent. Beside her bed lay a magazine and her spectacles. Nothing had changed.

  She must have left.

  I put on more lights.

  I switched the television on to CNN for two minutes, then, unable to concentrate, I turned it off again.

  I emptied my briefcase on to the desk and sorted through the papers I had accumulated in the course of the conference.

  I studied the following day’s programme, which included a special meeting with the curators of paintings at the Hermitage.

  I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty. Late for the end of a conference dinner; such evenings were usually over by ten or half past. I had lingered, deliberately drawing the evening out, afraid of what I would find, or not find, on my return.

  At length I undressed, showered, sat down again with a paper on my knee, simulating the act of reading by passing my eyes along the lines of typescript. I managed not to glance at my watch for five minutes at a stretch. It was uncanny how the desire to look at it became overriding at exactly the same interval. So I watched the minute hand pass the seven, the eight, the nine, and all the way round to twelve thirty. I promised myself to go to bed at one o’clock. It was five to one when the door opened.

  She came in exhausted, dragging her coat behind her like a dead creature. She tossed it onto the bed and said, ‘Oh, Nicholas,’ as if she had forgotten my existence. All the husbandly instincts, of reproach, concern, indignation, to which I had no right, rose in my throat and died away. I could not afford them.

  ‘Ah, Julian,’ I said in a professorial way, as if I had only just recalled that she might return to share my room and bed. ‘How was Anatoli?’

  All her usual vivacity had evaporated; I had never seen her so cast down. She sank on to the end of her bed gracelessly, her knees apart.

  ‘He won’t see me.’ She was talking to herself as much as to me. ‘I tried all morning on a private number that Igor gave me. I went to his office. I’m sure he knows I’m here. I just want to speak to him face to face for five minutes.’

  I felt enormous pity for her and for myself too. I stood up and gently rubbed her bowed neck.

  ‘Oh, dear. Poor you.’ I could see her face in the mirror opposite us. Even though it was drawn with misery, she had not lost her startling looks. If anything, she looked more beautiful than ever. No tears, she never lost control. ‘Perhaps you have to give up, Julian. He doesn’t need you. He’ll have to look after himself. And well tackle looking after you in a different way.’

  She looked up, pushing back her dark hair. ‘I need your help, Nick.’ For a second I thought this was an appeal for emotional support. ‘You’ve got to see Anatoli for me.’

  I sat down again. ‘No, no. Be reason
able. How can I possibly do that?’ I did not point out to her that it was as if I sent her to plead with Emily to come back to me. It was not just that I was reluctant to do it, though I was, it would be ineffectual.

  ‘But you must. Don’t you see? He won’t meet me, but he won’t be expecting you. You can take him by surprise. You can explain to him.’

  ‘No, Julian.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. Listen. Igor has a meeting with him. He set it up for me. Not in his office because I can never get beyond the secretaries and security men, but in a bar. So you can just go up to him, sit down beside him and talk to him.’

  ‘So could you.’

  ‘No. He wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t even let me sit down. If I came in, he would walk out. I realise that now. I think I still hoped, when we arrived in Moscow, that I would be able to talk to him. I can see, after today, that it’s hopeless. But I still want to warn him.’

  I was searching for other ways out. ‘What did you say to the Uzbek last night? You seemed very matey, the two of you. Couldn’t you just tell him to leave you alone. And to lay off Anatoli too for that matter.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Nicholas, this isn’t a game.’ She lifted her head and her tone altered. ‘Naturally I told Dyadya that Anatoli wasn’t with me any more. But that isn’t the point. He needs warning. You must see go and see him.’

  ‘But what on earth do you want me to say? Just think about it, Julian. The situation is ludicrous.’

  I knew at that point I had agreed to do whatever she wanted and that nothing I could say would make her see the absurdity of it. She was obsessed. I misinterpreted the nature of her obsession, but I recognised the state of mind.

  ‘You must tell him that it’s time to leave Moscow. His life is in danger here. You can tell him what has happened to me, to us. You can speak with first-hand experience. Here in Russia they solve these questions with a gun. Hundreds of bankers have been shot in the last two or three years. He must get out. He must come to London. He has plenty of money and property there. He doesn’t have to live here to make money. He knows all this. He’s planned for it for years. He must understand that now is the time to do it.’ She stopped speaking for a moment; then she finished, ‘You can tell him he doesn’t need to see me. I’m not expecting him back.’