Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

Ryzhkov tried to match up the doorways with the windows as he remembered them from the map he’d had Vera draw and from his memory of the view from the lane. The Iron Room was at the end of the hallway.

  It was where Lvova had begun her last night. ‘I’ve seen you before, yes?’ Vera said to the girl.

  ‘Nikki. I thought I’d seen you too.’

  ‘I worked here sometimes.’

  ‘That’s right, now I—’

  ‘Hey, what about the Blue Room, anyone in here?’ Vera interrupted. They had stopped halfway down the hall. The door was painted with blue clouds and little rays of sunshine. Down by the floor there was a landscape with ponies.

  ‘They just got in there and they’ve got it all night, I think.’

  ‘Oh, too bad. He’d love that,’ Vera said, pouting. ‘Here we are …’ The girl stopped before a door that was clad in metal plates. She had to lean against it to push it open.

  ‘Wonderful, you’ve been so sweet,’ Vera said and touched her fingers to the girl’s cheek.

  The room was long and wide. At one time it must have been a rather pleasant office. Now the windows were curtained with gauze and heavy blinds. The opposite wall had been decorated with implements of torture; everything was leather, metal, and curtained in black velvet.

  There was a series of chairs and trapezes that were suspended from the ceiling, and a leather-covered table with stirrups that looked like something one might find in a hospital. The carpet had been replaced with rubber matting in a circle extending six feet around the base of the table.

  ‘Do we have to make this look good too?’ Ryzhkov said dryly.

  ‘You’re the detective,’ she said, walking past him towards the table.

  ‘So this is where she was?’

  Vera only nodded. Ryzhkov looked around. There were a hundred ways someone could die in that room.

  ‘The small man was watching, I think. There’s always somewhere … back here.’ She reached down and pulled on a fitting in the wall. ‘Yes … In here.’

  Ryzhkov walked into what he imagined used to be a manager’s private washroom and closet. He felt on the wall for a switch and a dim red light came on. Halfway down the inside wall was a curtain and a high stool. A sliding window had been built into the wall. Ryzhkov sat in the seat and slid back the window. It gave him a perfect view of the table. Vera came into view, turned and looked at him. ‘You can hear everything too, right?’

  He looked up and saw that there was a fabric covered hole cut in the wall.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He sat there for a few moments more watching her standing there beside the table. The red light shone harshly on her cheekbones and the curve of her mouth. He knew that she was only looking at a mark on the wall, that she couldn’t see his face. She reached out and put one hand on the cold metal of the stirrup. ‘Time’s running out,’ she said.

  He felt his way out of the dimly-lit closet and back out into the centre of the Iron Room. ‘Any other special features?’

  ‘There’s a balcony. The small one could have been waiting out there. Or maybe they could have been doing it together, but … I don’t think so.’

  ‘She was killed in here, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So … then you saw the small one …’

  ‘… take her out and they went into the Blue Room … that’s why I stopped there.’

  ‘All right, let’s go.’

  ‘There’s someone in there now.’

  ‘That’s their problem.’

  ‘Hey—’ But Ryzhkov was already out the door and into the hallway, knocking on doors and calling out ‘Fire!’ in a panicky voice abandoning his American persona. Down at the lift he saw the hostess turn and look at him.

  ‘Fire!’ he screamed at the girl, and simultaneously threw his weight against the door to the Blue Room. He stepped back across the hall and ran against the door a second time and it exploded off its hinges. The room had been decorated like the inside of a cloud; a mattress had been sculpted like a giant puffy pillow, and stars and sunrays beamed down from lights that were concealed behind the draperies. On the cloud-bed a naked woman was reading to an elderly man who was masturbating. They both jumped up as Ryzhkov tumbled in to their room. ‘Get out,’ he said to the woman who dashed past him and collided with Vera. The old man shrank back against the headboard and cupped his hands over his genitals. Ryzhkov grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him across the room. ‘This whole place is burning down! Run!’ he screamed, and watched the man scrabble around for his clothing and make a dash into the hallway.

  The window was in front of him. He could see where it had been repaired. Painted clouds covered all of the window frame except where the new wood had been inserted. Slowly, as if in a dream he walked towards the window and undid the latch. He pushed the window open and leaned out. On the ledge there were glass fragments, a sprinkle of sawdust the glaziers had left behind. No blood. No marks on the sill. No fingernail scratches on the wall. No traces of a struggle. Almost no traces of the crime, just a window that had been repaired before the weather changed.

  And now he saw, halfway up the wall, a smudged, nearly invisible palm-print, left on the glossy paint when someone must have braced themselves against the wall, leaning out to see what was happening in the street below.

  He felt his throat tighten, almost as if he were choking. Managed to control it, looked at the hand-print and finally held up his own hand to blot it out. He couldn’t, not quite.

  ‘You’re really running out of time, now,’ Vera said.

  She was standing there at the threshold; from somewhere she had found another bottle of champagne and was cradling it against her chest. She turned and looked at someone Ryzhkov couldn’t see coming down the hall. ‘I think he must have had a little too much to drink—’ she said just as Yuri came through the doorway.

  ‘Madame Hillé likes her clients to have some manners—’

  The Blue Room wasn’t very big and the floor was soft and lumpy. He met Yuri as he rushed forward, colliding in the centre of the room with a knee that missed and an uppercut that just bounced off. Then he was suddenly spinning around with Yuri’s heavy hand on his shoulder. He tried reaching for his knife before he remembered that he hadn’t brought it along in his formal clothes, and then something flashed beside his ear and there was a high-pitched ringing that came from everywhere and nowhere.

  He was in and out of consciousness after that. The hallway was a red and black blur. He found himself seizing on the details, as if noticing the seams in the carpet, the filigree on the lampshades, would help him regain his balance. An old naked man was cursing him, and the first thing he saw closely enough to appreciate was the heavy newel post at the bottom of the stairs. How did he ever get down so quickly, he wondered. And from a long distance away he could hear Vera’s voice— ‘Yes, these Americans are very direct, but as far as imagination goes …’

  And then they were outside, stumbling on the courtyard stones. He kept trying to find his non-existent knife, and through it all came the sound of Vera laughing at him.

  ‘And don’t come back,’ he heard Yuri calling from a great distance.

  Out on the street it was suddenly too complicated to figure out the history of their escape. He sat there on the limestone and looked up; Vera was walking along the kerbing, in a kind of dancing, skipping pattern. Balancing on one foot and then hopping to another, singing to herself. She had the champagne in both hands and when she got to where he was sitting in the gutter she slowly poured it over his head.

  ‘I’m anointing you, I’m washing your sins away …’ He tried to stand up, spin around and find Yuri again, but his feet slipped and he fell back down to the cobbles. His face was stinging and he shook his head so that he could see more clearly. There wasn’t much to look at, the empty street and Vera as she tipped the bottle up, took the last drops on her tongue, and then flung the bottle high over her head into the night.

  ‘Now, you’re all grown up,’
she said and reached down and touched his bloody cheek with her light fingers. She was a silhouette against the lights, behind her the street stretched unbroken in the distance. There might be no one else on earth but the two of them. The reflections in the street cast an eerie watery light on her. She was smiling at him, beautiful. Somehow beautiful and terrible all at once. He was suddenly afraid of her, afraid and chilled to the bone. She looked like death come alive, like an avenging wraith, like a woman capable of anything he might imagine.

  ‘So, now you’ve seen what they do with little lost girls in Petersburg. Now you know the rules of the game, eh? Who comes out on top, who gets to sleep in the wet spot.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Think how much you’ve learned!’

  Vera seemed genuinely happy at his progress, like she’d discovered a puppy that had finally figured out the purpose of a newspaper. She was looking around at the deserted street.

  ‘Yes, now you know, Mr Paintbrush … Now you know about everything.’

  TWELVE

  Mina Pohnlinskya rehearses in her dreams. Well, she has always made good use of her extra time. A fanatic, a perfectionist, her teachers said. It was the mask that hid the frustrated girl; frustrated at her inability to perform the combinations, all the many steps, leaps and poses that made up the complex choreography. Angry and ashamed at her own weakness, at her awkwardness, her lack of endurance. To advance, to get ahead, to get a solo, she had always been the one who worked harder. She had rehearsed even after her body had succumbed to fatigue. In her sleep, dreaming until things came out right.

  Always it has been so.

  She rehearses now for her reunion with Sergei, to make it perfect. No—to make it beyond perfect—divine. For three days now the telephones have been ringing; people begging for appointments. Invitations, telegrams, Sergei from Vienna, Sergei from Warsaw, Sergei from Riga. Boys delivering special sealed letters, pouches that are constantly arriving. Porters waiting on stand-by. The maids have dusted the library—she never uses it. There are fresh flowers. The cook has gone out early to order necessary provisions. A week he has promised her. An entire, glorious week.

  She rehearses what she will say to him, what he will say to her. The first kiss after being apart for far too long. What they will eat, what they will do.

  She has bathed again, gone to Basia’s and been coiffed, plucked, waxed and scoured. All in the service of beauty. Beauty eternal, always fragile and ephemeral, always the loser in the battle against time and gravity.

  Well, she hardly needs to worry, she is not yet thirty and still radiant as a virgin. Everywhere she goes she is Pohnlinskya, the Lilac Soap Goddess. Often simply Lilac. Men, soldiers, boys and grandfathers, women and even their infants recognize her.

  She did it on the cusp of meeting Sergei. Took the soap money. A fortune, and alone it would have been enough for her to retire. Thus, when they met she was able to face him as something like an equal. Perhaps it was the challenge that attracted him, to take a famous woman, a woman of means, and bring her into his stable. Perhaps he saw her as a great trophy, merely one more superb jewel to add to his crown. In those years every girl wanted to land Sergei. Every girl wants him still.

  Once, when she’d got tired of one more gawker tripping over themselves trying to back out of her way, interrupting their shopping in the Passage arcade, he whisked her out of the building and the next day bought the Lilac brand from Zhukov and took her face off the packages. That was when she knew he loved her.

  But often times, if she were going to be truthful, she misses all that attention. Of course it was a famous image, Pohnlinskya and her little fairy fan in a clean sunlit glow, dressed in the whitest of white. An indelible portrait and yes, there are plenty who still remember, when she goes out to shop or to see the circus. Everywhere, really.

  At Basia’s all the women know what’s coming. You can only keep a secret so long. Maybe tonight it’s a special occasion, a birthday, a party at Countess Sophie’s. Tomorrow it’s something even more splendid, a christening, a recital, a theatrical opening. She attends Basia’s salon and the atmosphere is heavenly. Right away the girls there notice her exhilaration—she could not conceal it if she tried. An afternoon in the salon is an afternoon of cosseted luxury. A triumph of maternal understanding and unspoken conspiracy, a secret realm for women only and the occasional homosexual couturier—the only kind of man capable of understanding the minutiae of feminine allure. All of Basia’s staff are endlessly supportive and, for something that, let’s face it, can engender such anxiety—the adjustment of fashion and cosmetics—they are remarkably carefree. Everyone is smiling, with little thimbles of konyak delivered to your room on a pink tray.

  He will be here on the Tuesday, he has telegraphed. In the morning arrives a fresh batch of cables. Some are for his eyes only and they are taken upstairs to a table in the library. The others—for her—are brought by Anna to wherever she might be in the great house. She rips them open and follows his progress across Europe. Sergei busy with this, busy with that. Sergei dashing quickly to Berlin; in Paris for an extra day.

  Oh, Paris! How lucky he is, the bastard. She is jealous, she will make him pay. But he does, he pays for it all. Even though she has her money, which she has carefully hoarded for … for some undreamed disaster, he has paid for this fantastic residence, Luxe, on the Morskaya, and he has given it to her! It’s a love-present for her, his big bouquet on the finest street in the city. Yes, he was a little disappointed that she hadn’t taken number thirty-two right across the street, but she had wanted the sunny courtyard and the cold façade. Just like a ballerina, he’d laughed. Oh, his laugh!

  Then on Tuesday he arrives. First, there is the commotion at the foyer, the doors are thrown open, his gay hello! She calls out and … flies, floats down the staircase into his arms. The kiss, not at all what she had rehearsed. A quick wet, hard, pressure on her mouth, modestly restrained because behind him comes a stream of porters, sent by the brokers at the station who manage his trunks. The remaining baggage will be coming in all week long, since some of it is on different trains following him around Europe, some of it still waiting in his private car.

  While the minions go about their chores she joins him in the parlour. He notices a few things, the new fabric on the chairs, the flowers. And his smile!

  His packets, his correspondence and telegrams are stacked exactly where he likes them. He leafs through the pile while she has some refreshments brought up to her bedroom.

  The boudoir is gigantic, designed for lavish recreation followed by sound sleep. Large windows on the southern side that open on to the courtyard, heavy drapes to keep out the white nights, a fringe of trees that soften the high wall that separates the courtyard from the block of residences on the corner. An ornate back gate off the lane so that piles of firewood can be delivered. The firewood is only for the servants or a particularly chill autumn day like this one, because Mina always goes to France in the winter. A month from now she’ll have closed up the house.

  The servants potter continuously. She waits. They circle each other. How was Sofia? How was Wien? What about Oslo? And Paris … I’m so jealous. She pretends to slap him, it ends in a little kiss.

  While they wait for their own special time, he goes about his business. There are telephone calls to make, but he has arrived in the afternoon, and therefore can return only two or three. Some urgent problem at his Saratov plant; a senior manager has died during his tour. The man was valuable to his entire operation. One of those rare finds; a self-taught engineer a veteran from his father’s years at the helm. He tells her about him with genuine grief—oh, the old fellow was too kind to the workers by half, not really one for maximizing efficiency, but what she may not realize is that it was this old fellow’s improvements to the basic design which enabled the Saratov valve model number four to take over the market for high-pressure fixed piping! Of course recruiting a replacement for this unique individual must become a priority. Sadly the funeral was nearly two weeks
ago.

  The food has come up, some cakes and a bottle of white stripe champagne. Mina has arrayed herself seductively on the chaise and awaits his presence. Thank God she is not a woman who hovers.

  They talk about things, it comes out in disorganized snatches. Fragments gathered from their time apart—the relative conditions of his trip, unforeseen encounters, the status of old friends. Much of what he was doing he cannot talk about. She knows this, she has long ago accepted that she does not know everything.

  What Andrianov talks about is his cover, his excuses. He says nothing of the artillery that he diverted to Serbia, nothing about his meeting with Fox in Vienna, Apis in Belgrade, nothing about the Plan. He watches her as she laughs at his witticisms. She can see he is tired and pouts sympathetically as he puts the telephone down with unconcealed relief. Tired, yes, but not too tired. He smiles at her direct gaze; soon now, a night with the delightful Mina.

  He has given her everything but marriage. There is no wife, and she does not even have the semi-official status of mistress to a great man. She is something else; a kept woman, a girlfriend, an unmarried wife, a lover. Something modern and vague. It has been that way for five years now. An eternity. What hurts most is the time apart, the lure of motherhood, and having to manage the awkward architecture of her life as a single, yet very much attached woman, which for a girl as attractive as Mina is … difficult.

  People expect things of her, people expect things of a genuine star as she was until Sergei plucked her off the stage and erased her from the soap cartons. It wasn’t so bad—well, by then Nijinsky and that crowd were all the rage. You had to be able to jump over mountains and bend your body into the kind of poses you might find on an Egyptian wall, there was no classicism and very little beauty, and she’d had enough before it all started. Enough frustration and enough perfection.

  She saw the same relentless drive in Sergei when they met. It was like two dynamos who are finally linked to the same wires. He never tried to pretend that he was not obsessively concerned with riches, with success, with … whatever he was obsessed about at the time. Yes, to his credit, at least he was honest about it, and she has always assumed that soon, one day next week, next month, or sometime maybe in spring, that he will mellow; lose at least some portion of his all-consuming drive to be … to be whatever he is trying to be … and then he will finally ask her.