Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  ‘Louder!’ the Professor was calling to them and she arched her back even more and sang out:

  Do you want to die before

  You know what it is to live?

  How much we are all missing

  What lies beyond so deep?

  Down here my love, so deep—

  At that point they were supposed to find an audience member and, grabbing their hands, encourage them to grope. When she and Gloriana objected, Khulchaev, like a hurt little boy, argued that it would get a great effect out of the audience. ‘Pick somebody pretty,’ he whined, ‘pick somebody you like—’ and of course, they all laughed.

  Well, they were getting paid, so … And of course it would get an effect. Maybe she’d be lucky enough to be standing next to a great producer when the bridge came around.

  She and Larissa had started to lie for each other. Contradicting themselves within minutes. The men that bought them drinks after the show seemed to like it too. They’d each tell bigger and bigger lies and then try to sustain it through the evening. They’d take on each other’s names, lure the men on with fables about the other one.

  Larissa had begun telling everyone that her friend Vera was a secret princess. An exiled princess, Vera decided. Dethroned because she’d had an affair with a village boy, a merchant boy. He was beneath her and her parents were enraged.

  A princess. Why not? It was better than saying what really happened, that she’d found herself pregnant and alone. The real prince had been a boy named Kliment. A timid prince with beautiful eyes whose father owned things; distilleries, blast furnaces, farms. And owned his son’s heart and soul as it turned out. Sent his men to intimidate her Aunt Varvara. Since the woman was a natural coward, it wasn’t all that hard.

  In the end his father had sent their driver to give her the news and, the price of clearing his conscience, forty roubles. The next morning she’d taken the train to Petersburg. The old driver couldn’t bear to look at her when they got to the station. And he had been the one who used to laugh at them, leave them in the bushes and go off and have a smoke by the lake. Now he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye.

  So she took the forty roubles and got rid of his baby in Moscow.

  Saying that she was a princess was better than saying that. So she let it stick. In the last production she had been singled out since, as the Queen of the Martians, she had been prominently featured. And now that the Komet was the latest discovery of the fast set, all the girls were being sought to grace the salons of the city’s elite. She had met Zinadia Grippius, and Blok, who looked at her like he was interested in maybe a little more than talk, and Anna Akhmatova, who had sat there all night with her legs crossed. Then there was the big night, when Diaghilev dropped in and made a beeline for Khulchaev, plied him with drinks, and soon they all piled off in his red-lacquered Renault en route to a more artistic rendezvous.

  Such was life in the theatre.

  She turned, rolled her head around and, as they tapped their feet through the bridge, took a sip of her steaming tea.

  She saw that Pyotr Ryzhkov had come in. Standing in the door talking to Izov. He’d vanish for days and then come around again. Now he was there with a package of brushes for Kushner. Free. They were samples, he said. Larissa made a face and pointed at Gloriana blowing her nose and waved him away, they were sounding so bad.

  … my heart is a post, a stable for my hunger …

  … I’m grazing, grazing, I’m just a cow, just a beautiful

  cow …

  She watched him as he went back into the bar and opened himself to the intense discussions of high finance that were overwhelming Izov, who, not knowing anyone he could trust, confided to Ryzhkov the fine print details of the great scheme. Izov’s ‘angels’ were plotting a complete renovation. There would be a new entrance; a portico with a ticket window, and dozens of new tables, custom-designed cups, plates, saucers and silverware. It went on and on, imaginary roubles mounting to the sky.

  When the girls asked about the dressing-rooms, the angels just looked up blankly. Khulchaev winced, he wanted the money for a spotlight, the Professor had asked for a better piano. There were so many priorities.

  ‘We don’t even have water back there.’ Larissa was so irritated at them that she had come up to their table, her fingers involuntarily adopting the cat-claw pose she had taught them all.

  ‘You can keep on taking water from the kitchen, what’s the problem with that?’

  ‘Why do you think people are coming to this hole? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Martians are all naked women in red paint, or what?’ But they couldn’t figure it out, ha, ha, ha.

  Pyotr came back and she looked away again. Looked down and tapped her feet to the music and then afterwards, thinking she couldn’t stare at the floor for the rest of her life, looked up and met his eyes until he left the room. Probably wanting to talk again, to ask more questions. Wanting to get her to go along with some big plan to cure all the ills of the Earth. And then afterwards, knowing he was out there waiting for her, she took her good time about putting on her boots. It made her furious. She started for the door but he was standing right there. She tried to make her eyes hard. ‘Good evening,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘Yes …’

  She settled there on one hip, staring at him, assessing him like she was trying to decide if he was the right colour to hang on the wall. Her princess look.

  ‘I thought, by way of apology, that—’ he started.

  ‘Apology?’

  ‘Well … yes …’

  ‘What do you have to apologize for?’

  ‘For putting you through—’

  ‘For making me think you knew what you were doing, you mean? For opening old wounds, for not being the friend you pretended to be? For all that, now you’re sorry?’

  ‘Let’s go outside.’

  ‘I’m not going outside with you. God knows where I might end up.’

  ‘Honestly, Vera. Really. Apologize. For all of it. Yes. And to tell you what’s happened. We’ve found him, the old one.’ He looked like he wanted to smile, but it manifested itself as a shrug.

  She stood there staring a hole right through his forehead. ‘What are you going to do?’ Her voice sounded shaky and distant, like it belonged to someone else.

  ‘We’ll watch him, follow him. Try to find the other one. Get more witnesses, make a case. Take it to the prosecutor. Finally we’ll arrest him. By that time it will be long out of my hands.’

  ‘Out of your hands.’

  That shrug again.

  ‘Well … so you’ve come to me to confess, then? You’ve discovered your errors and you know who you are at last, although you also say you are not in control of events? Your hands are too little? Not strong enough?’

  Ryzhkov looked at her, maybe buried somewhere under there was the hint of a smile, just a flicker, like a candle that could blow out any second. ‘I’m sorry.’ He tried not to shrug.

  ‘Yes, that was what you almost said …’

  ‘I thought that … I don’t know what I thought.’

  ‘Do you know what Irini will do when she sees me again? Do you think I feel happy about that? Do you think I want Yuri and his friends to come down here and break the place up because of me? Maybe break me up too?’ She let her eyes travel over his shabby suit. Not really up to the level of the embassy crowd she’d been seeing lately.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Ryzhkov nodded to her. ‘I’m …’ He started to apologize yet again and then just trailed off.

  ‘I know,’ she said, looking at him for a long moment.

  Ryzhkov put the empty glass back on Izov’s new bar.

  ‘Look …’ He was lost for words. He suddenly saw himself, standing there like some clown, clutching his hat in his hand. A profoundly foolish man, in his out-of-fashion suit, in need of a good haircut, his shoes scuffed and stained from standing on too many street corners for too many hours. Making himself into an idiot over a wom
an, a prostitute he’d first seen in the gutter, a crazy woman who associated with anarchists and addicts. He nearly laughed because he was the same, the same as her. A rat crawling through the same gutters, wasn’t he? He nearly laughed right in her face; a clown, a fool. Just get out.

  ‘So, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ she asked, but he was already going out of the doors. She followed him into the blustery street, trying to catch him. A real terrier. ‘All right, fine. I accept!’ she called out as he stalked down the rainy pavement. It stopped him and he turned to face her.

  ‘Yes. I accept. You’ve made your confession, although it’s a little short on information. Your motivation is not exactly clear. Nevertheless, we hereby … forgive you, Pyotr Mikhalovich Ryzhkov, alleged seller of brushes.’ She made the sign of the cross, blessing him.

  ‘“Verily, he has risen …”’ he bowed, surprised at the way he felt—lighter by a hundredweight, swollen with a swirling confusion that nearly made him choke. Smiling maniacally at her and at the same time, full of dread, because soon he would have to betray her all over again.

  ‘So, finally having been revealed as a poor sinner, you must now do a great penance,’ Vera declaimed and came forward to take his arm. ‘I am a hungry woman. I am very, very hungry and I have to eat right now so that I won’t be full for our opening night. Have you prudently reserved your tickets?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

  ‘We could get something and walk over there to your place on—’ she said suddenly.

  ‘On Glasovskaya, the corner by the race track.’

  ‘All right, then,’ she said, smiling.

  He looked over at her, surprised. ‘All right?’

  ‘Or we can take a cab … if you’d rather take your time.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The evening is perfect. Well, not perfect, but almost. Well, yes, cold. Too cold by far. Dank outside, with a chill fog that coats everything with a layer of ice, suspending the grime of the city inside fragile transparency. As if they all have been dipped in glass for an instant; little glass houses, little glass people, automobiles, trams. The foggy breath of the ponies in their harness, the filthy smoke that is held close to the ground by the still frigid air. All of it mysterious, fearful, but entrancing and magical too, somehow.

  But all that is outside; inside is paradise: the first floor of the excellent Restaurant Mandusa, with high windows, candles, comfortable furniture and thick draperies to guard against the gloom beyond the walls.

  Sergei is in an expansive, triumphal mood. Something has gone very well indeed judging from his demeanour. He has been flirtatious, complimentary, even humorous. He is talking, talking, talking. It must mean money, she thinks. When he is like this it always means money. Perhaps peace hasn’t been so bad for business after all. She wonders if she should tease him, probe a little. But you can never really tell with Sergei. He can turn instantly, become a changeling—peeling away a layer of his personality like a dancer shedding a fan. Instead she smiles and listens to him run on about the exciting possibilities of electrification. Did she know that soon there will be ocean cruising vessels that run on electricity? There are already submarines, he says, quietly, as if this is privileged information that she is not supposed to know. As if this is a great military secret. All the great empires are at each other’s throats. It is a particularly good time to be in the munitions business. Boys must have their toys.

  ‘Oh, I know you don’t care for any of this, dear …’ Dear! She cannot help but giggle. And the whole evening is the same. He has overthrown her defences and reduced her to schoolgirl age. She is, frankly, amazed. For their evening he has reserved the best table. Kasimir and his most experienced waiters hover around them like expensively dressed crows. Sergei is so happy he even teases Kasimir about his daughter. How does he know Kasimir’s daughter, she instantly thinks. But it develops that it is only a child, born late to the old man and his younger second wife. Do all men attempt to have a second, younger wife? Yes, she supposes and smiles at their banter, secure in knowing, if not everything about electric boats, at least the most important things of all.

  The dishes will be prepared especially for them, Kasimir explains. In the kitchen they have already ordered anything you can imagine. Apricots from Greece, oranges from Spain, unpronounceable fish from Sweden. Everything freshly harvested and rushed to Mandusa via refrigerated express.

  Kasimir and the waiters vanish, except for one immaculately groomed Tartar who tops up her champagne after every second sip. While they wait Sergei spots someone he knows across the room, a smile, a nod, a wave. In a few moments the man comes over. Another industrialist, a German, something to do with wire. Her gloved hand is kissed, her bosom appraised. Sergei claps the man on the back. It all goes by her in a fog. His business, not hers.

  Tiny dishes are brought out. Exotic foods, snails, garnished with leaves from magical plants that are grown only in the Orient. She pushes the morsels around, smiles appreciatively, laughs. She spots Valina Chrasnova on the arm of her husband. They are having trouble, fighting these days, and Valina has been seeing a young major in the Life Guards. She has even hired detectives to follow her husband to and from his new mistress’s, but it might end well because the mistress is a silly fool and keeps asking for more and Chrasnov has no money to speak of, although he puts up a good show. But when Valina detours through the room to kiss her— a smell of roses, a touch against her powdered cheek— even then Sergei is glad to meet Chrasnov, a complete stranger with no business connections whatever. They have nothing in common, really, but Sergei even takes out his card to give the man. They stop for a while at the table, linger a little too long, not the best manners, but Valina is famished for a friendly ear, even if she can’t divulge anything there at the table. The plan is to meet for lunch on Tuesday. Another little kiss goodbye, and seamlessly another dish arrives. This is fish, splendid and tart, with lime and caviar dotted in some sauce they’ve dreamed up between absinthes in the back.

  Sergei rejoices in the food. He has plans, and he wants to share them with her. Plans! Beyond all that, beyond the plans and the schemes, he is thinking of spending more time abroad, but he wants her to come along. Move out of Petersburg altogether? Oh no, nothing so drastic. Petersburg will always be home, but … sell the little apartments in Paris, get something bigger? Would she like that?

  Well who wouldn’t? Move into something bigger in Paris? To be closer to Antibes would be one great advantage. Away from the endless court politics and the gossip of the capital would be another, she couldn’t care less for Rasputin and Alexandra and all that. It’s a world that is closed to her anyway, no royal blood in this soap queen. The Parisians are a better crowd on the whole, and besides anyone who is anyone interesting visits there for at least part of the year.

  ‘What about Vienna?’ he muses between bites.

  Her mouth falls open, it is clear that this is all a dream. Vienna is nice, she says. Indeed, a beautiful, civilized city. But she thought he didn’t like the Austrians? For a moment she thinks she’s gone too far.

  ‘I like everyone, you know that.’ His smile is tight. Yes, he likes anyone who can get him a little further down whatever road he’s decided to travel, that’s really what he means.

  ‘If you would enjoy Vienna, Sergei, I’m sure I could find something to do there,’ she breathes sweetly. In fact she knows no one in Vienna. And they never sold Lilac soap there. But he smiles tenderly, takes her hand and for a moment his gaze travels around the room. Two of Kasimir’s boys take the plates away. The pheasant arrives. She once more gives a master class in how to pretend to eat while actually consuming nothing. Sergei doesn’t mind, or even notice. Once more he is off on the electric theme again, electric ships, electric aero craft, he says, eyes wide. The future is limitless. It is an opportunity, ripe for the picking. It is like a golden apple hanging from a golden branch. It will go to whomever reaches for it first. She laughs, not having any idea what he is talking ab
out. Maybe he has a speech to give soon, maybe he’s using her to polish up his personal philosophy.

  There is a chamber orchestra on a low stage at the centre of the room and Sergei asks one of the boys to take a request—the Fairy Dance, the theme from her triumph. Everyone brightens at the famous melody. Those closest to them turn to her and nod. No, they have not forgotten, perhaps they never will forget. At the end the maestro bows to them and she gives a discreet nod. There is applause. Everyone is looking at them. Sergei kisses her hand. Looks deeply into her eyes.

  Dessert is shaved chocolate over a lemon torte that Kasimir orders from Krafft’s. She cannot help but eat it. Afterwards there is dancing in the ballroom, and they turn about the floor. Her head is a little light from the champagne and the bliss of it all. Yes, a perfect evening. With Sergei’s lips against her cheek, his assured steps leading her as she glides, like a beautiful flower spinning on smooth water, round and round, laughter and diamonds.

  She finds herself in his Renault, freshly back from the garage and brought out for the evening, warmed by a little heater that is cleverly built into the passenger compartment. His lips against hers, they float up the steps and directly upstairs.

  He has her before they even reach the bed, and she is on fire and together they twist there like two wrestlers straining against each other, a tangled, stumbling, lovedance, that ends with him gasping and laughing— ‘… wanted to do that all night …’ With his teeth against her collarbone, and her fingers clawing at his shoulders. She’ll have his child. They’ll send their daughter to school in Vienna, or Paris, or … it doesn’t matter. She’ll be a good dancer like her parents. The music is still swirling around in her head. Her hair has come undone, sheltering their faces in a shimmering private garden, and she falls apart, kissing him like a starving woman.