Hot Siberian

by Gerald A. Browne

  Upon his graduation from the “special school” at age seventeen, Irina guided him into Leningrad State University. She seemed to know exactly what his direction should be, and was insistent about which subjects he should take. Languages and business, especially English and marketing. He did extremely well, was encouraged by her and her conviction that he was extraordinary and all he needed to do to be successful was exploit himself. He graduated with honors. Then came six months of uncertainty, during which he needed Irina’s reassurance more than ever. Shouldn’t he do his two years of compulsory military service now? Nikolai wanted to, just for the change from studying the army would be, and because he was restless. Irina felt all that button-polishing ridiculous; the stiff-legged marching would be a waste of him. He’d hate it, she advised; he’d want out within a week. They flared at one another over it, had their most vehement argument ever the day Nikolai happened upon an official letter that announced his deferment. Although he’d never been examined the letter said he had extreme myopia and premature ventricular contractions: nearsightedness and a sometimes abnormal heartbeat. Nikolai was furious, shouted that he was going to get bifocals and have a pacemaker put in. He hurried off to the army recruiting headquarters, filled out the enlistment forms, and took a physical examination. That same week he received a letter from the army rejecting him for medical reasons—bad eyes and erratic heart. This army-or-not matter was settled two days later by another letter, saying that he had been accepted by the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, more commonly referred to throughout the Soviet Union with no less reverence as INYAZ. The notification came as a total surprise to Nikolai. He hadn’t even applied to INYAZ, had thought it beyond his reach. It was almost impossible for anyone without a lot of blat to be accepted. It was reserved for the nachalstvo, the peak of the social hierarchy. It was where the diplomats and translators and foreign trade officials were trained. How was it that he qualified for that league? Was it possible that it was fairness at work, that his excellent grades at Leningrad State University and the advanced courses he’d taken at the Institute of Economics and Commerce had been noticed? Or didn’t that complacent, rather victorious expression on Irina’s face tell him that she’d somehow had something to do with it. She was happy about his acceptance by INYAZ, but considering the importance of it she took it rather calmly, as though it was something she’d been anticipating all along. Nikolai put it to her. She admitted that she’d submitted an application on his behalf, but there was nothing more he could get out of her. Nikolai pressed to know what strings she’d been able to pull. She evaded with the nicest silent reply, like old times, cupped his face and gave him a kiss. They celebrated with a huge, indulgent dinner at the Astoria.

  Irina.

  Now there she was in the most two-dimensional form, photographed on a day of some past summer in a loose-fitting, delicately figured cotton dress with the arm of the father, Pyotr Borodin, around her, as though it had been coaxed there by the taker, his hand defining the slenderness of her waist. The father appeared annoyed, which was his normal expression, the only one that Nikolai could recall without having to search his memory. The father laughed when he was drunk but even then it was a laugh flavored with bitterness. The father never took more than a dutiful interest in Nikolai. For some reason he was incapable of showing sincere pride in the boy, and when quite young Nikolai stopped bringing his accomplishments home in his heart to the father. Only to the mother. Actually, these were not rare circumstances. In many Russian families the active caring was traditionally left to the mother. Nikolai learned early to be cautious of the father’s disposition. It was always simmering, ready to boil. The slightest thing could get him grumbling or ignite him into an argument with the mother, and many times it developed into shoving and wrist-capturing and arm-twisting, the sort of unequal and therefore awkward violence of man against woman. Why had the mother endured the abuse, the constant sour atmosphere? Why not a divorce? Was it her Slavic fatalism to accept her lot? There always seemed to be some never-mentioned secret that kept the marriage together while it kept it apart. That was even apparent in this photograph Nikolai had chosen to have in sight.

  He moved his attention six inches to the right for memories of a different quality, for Maksim Bemechev, the grandfather on the mother’s side, the former Fabergé work-master, teller of czarist experiences who in the dark of the bedroom he shared with Nikolai put so much of his life into Nikolai’s ears, always the romantic facets, such as how during the revolution the Winter Palace had been defended by the Peterburzhenkas, a battalion made up of the elegant young ladies from the best-blooded St. Petersburg families. Imagine.

  Mere photographs, Nikolai thought.

  The mother, the father, the grandfather.

  Tomorrow he would pay them a visit. Now, however, he continued moving about the apartment, testing this sense of detachment on various things, things that belonged to him and that he belonged to. What had happened? Was this the price of absence? Had time, with its sharp ticking teeth, chewed away at his affiliation? If this wasn’t home, where was? London? Anywhere in the presence of Vivian seemed to be the true answer.

  He tried phoning her again and this time did not invent any excuses for her. She knew he would be calling. She knew damn well he would be worried if she wasn’t there to receive his call. She was out somewhere with Archer, Nikolai presumed.

  He lay on the bed, switched on the lamp that was clamped to the bedpost. A large woven basket beside the bed contained numerous past issues of magazines and newspapers. The Pravdas, the Octobers, and the Literaturnayas were on top. The London Times, France Soirs and Playboys were concealed beneath. Nikolai reached into the basket without looking. What he wanted was tucked down along the side of the basket. It was reassuring that his hand knew precisely where it would be. He brought up Custine’s Eternal Russia: The Marquis de Custine’s Accounts of Royal Times. An edition in original French that he’d had since he was eleven. He’d found it at the Prince Alexander Menshikov summer palace in Gatchina, in that sealed-off, slighted room which became his secret place. The book had been among a mildewed pile of hundred-year-old silk damask draperies. Nikolai thought it might be the sort of book that was forbidden, so he’d left it there, and the next time he came he brought what he needed to clean it. Its covers were warped, its pages dotted with acidity, and some pages were so stuck together they had to be carefully peeled apart, but it was a fine book. There was gold leaf on its edges, and the scarred leather of its covers healed beautifully when rubbed with mink oil. At first Nikolai valued this book mainly because it was something he’d found, but soon he came to cherish it for its contents, the inquisitive count’s observations of the self-indulgent life in Russia during the 1800s. Nikolai read and reread it so many times he knew most of it by heart.

  Now, however, it was hard in his hands and, it seemed, not nearly as precious as when he’d last picked it up. An old priceless possession had turned into a mere book. He opened it randomly: the description of a court ball to celebrate the nameday of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on July 23, 1839. He went through a few paragraphs to see if the words were still his dear acquaintances. They refused to speak to him. He was, he thought, getting what he deserved. He placed the book down, clicked off the lamp, and lay there thinking about how long he should wait before he again tried to reach Vivian. After half an hour he got up, put on some jeans and a light sweater, and went out to get away from the phone.

  He went a block over to Bolshoi Prospekt and headed south, walking briskly as though he had a destination. At two-thirty in the morning the streets were empty, except for an occasional car. It was that time when not movement or people but the structures and surfaces alone were the city. Nikolai was glad he’d decided to go out. Leningrad was his, would always be. Halfway across the Tutskow Bridge he paused, leaned on the rail, and looked down at flickers on the flow of the Neva. The river was high, he saw. There must have been a lot of rain recently, and even though it was May th
ere would still be melting upstream. He could remember May floodings. He fixed upon a spot about fifty yards upstream and a bit off to the right and believed he wasn’t more than a couple of yards off from where he and Lev used to ice-fish, always with success. They’d yank the rather small, wet silvery fish up through the hole and watch them freeze stiff as crystal within a minute. He had read somewhere, and always thought of those fish when he wondered if it was true, that freezing was a warm way to die. When other ice-fishermen who weren’t even getting a nibble asked Nikolai and Lev how it was they were always so lucky, Lev would claim it wasn’t luck, it was romance, and Nikolai would explain that the Neva had promised them her love. Now, here he was wondering if he’d ever ice-fish the Neva again. What would Vivian think of ice-fishing? Archer would probably liken it to taking meat out of a freezer. That might also be Vivian’s opinion, he grunted.

  He continued on across the river and along the quay, and as he passed close to Nicholas I, larger in bronze than he’d ever been in life, it seemed that his legs were telling him that he did have a destination. He went through the Gorky Gardens and after another two blocks turned onto Gevtsena Street, which before the 1917 Revolution and all the renaming that occurred with it had been Bolshaya Movskaya Street. Nikolai stopped and stood across from number 24. A four-story granite-and-limestone building of considerable size, a hundred and fifty years old. Its blue-gray slate roof was interrupted by three sharp eaves of Gothic flavor. On the ground floor there were wide entrances on the extreme left and right with four large arched store windows in between. On the floors above there were altogether thirty-three windows of identical size. The building was unlighted inside, deserted, making it all the easier for Nikolai to visualize it again as it had been in the early 1900s. Grandfather Maksim’s descriptions came back to him almost verbatim:

  There had been no garish sign. No need for one. The place was what it was, and those who should know it knew. Affixed to the wall immediately outside the entrance on the far left was a discreet brass plaque. Engraved upon it in Cyrillic was the name K. Fabergé, and above, also engraved, was the imperial double-headed eagle, the great warrant mark of the royal family. Two attendants served at the entrance. Their manners were as impeccable as their white jackets and gloves. They were swift to assist, to hold a bridle, assure the step down from carriage to curb for, in this instance, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and her granddaughter, Grand Duchess Olga. The mother of the Czar accompanying the daughter of the Czar. Their well-being watched over by two formidable cossack escorts. The Empress, a woman proud of the kindness with which her years had treated her, is dressed in a most recent pale green linen ensemble by Worth. The seventeen-year-old Grand Duchess wears all white, as she is required to do throughout each summer. A modest ankle-length dress of layered lawn, as simple as possible. Her white straw hat has its wide brim pinned up in front, and it is decorated there by a pale pink silk rose. The cossacks wait within hearing range as their two royal responsibilities enter the realm of Fabergé. The Dowager Empress is the epitome of confidence, amiably haute, as though bettering the air she moves through. After all, she was for many years the very Empress of wherever her steps fell. For the young Grand Duchess this visit to Fabergé is an occasion, an adventure. Although it is her first time here, she feels that she knows it well from all she has heard said about it. Only rarely is she allowed outside the confines of the Winter Palace, and, of course, never alone.

  The room they enter is large, about fifty feet long and half that wide. The high ceiling is painted the softest possible blue, the walls are beige, and the angle where the walls and ceiling meet is tempered all around by a rather frivolous repetitive floral border done in pastel orange and pink and gilt. The floor is a dark hardwood laid so precisely in a herringbone pattern that hardly a crack is discernible between the boards. It is so waxed and buffed that it veritably reflects.

  “Bonjour, messieurs,” the Dowager Empress greets everyone in the room at once, letting it be known that this time she prefers all conversation to be in French. The sales staff in chorus return her greeting. Out from behind the showcase at the far end of the room comes Karl Fabergé himself. He has just the week before turned seventy-six, but he is still quick and bright. He is bald from forehead to nape. His full beard is white, as is the hair that flows back from his temples. He hurries forward but he is not obsequious.

  The Dowager Empress expresses her fondness by addressing him with his patronym, Carl Gustanovich. They have known and liked each other for many years. Fabergé is also acquainted with the Grand Duchess Olga from her having happened to be present numerous times when he personally brought items to the Winter Palace for her father’s, the Czar’s, choice or approval.

  And how is the Czar?

  It seems he has a cold, only a slight cold, caught no doubt from overheating himself during one of his strenuous hikes.

  The Czarina?

  Very much concerned as usual about Czarevich Alexis but otherwise well. She has sent her regards and her appreciation for that year’s Imperial Easter Egg. She is intending to write a personal note.

  Will the family be staying in Tsarkoye Selo for the summer?

  Anywhere else has not been mentioned, the Dowager Empress says, so she assumes they will. She herself will spend July and perhaps even August at Pavlosk, which she has always enjoyed more. Besides, her privacy is still important to her.

  There is a little more of such obligatory conversation. It is brought to a close by a deep inhalation not quite a sigh, by the Dowager Empress. Fabergé does not ask if there is something special he might show them for he believes that might sound a bit pushy. He simply gestures to his right, then to his left, and questions with his eyes, in this most discreet manner asking what of his merchandise they would prefer to view, jewelry or articles of fantasy?

  The Dowager Empress decides and steps to the showcase on her left. She hangs her parasol by its mother-of-pearl crook on the gleaming brass rail that is fixed to the upper front of the glass-topped case. Grand Duchess Olga does the same with her less elaborate parasol. Now their hands are free to indicate whatever of these lovely objects catches their eyes. Grand Duchess Olga is granted her grandmother’s permission to remove her white gloves so that she might better know the shape and texture of those things which strike her fancy. The first she asks to see is a bonbonnière, a sweetmeat box, circular, less than two inches in diameter. It is gold enameled with a guilloché surface, translucent pale blue and white with diamonds around the edge of its lid and a sapphire at its thumbpiece. She has come to choose a name-day present for her younger sister the Grand Duchess Marie, who is thirteen. However, she fears this tiny box may be too expensive. For three months she has been saving her seventeen-ruble-a-month allowance, which is determined at the rate of one ruble for each of her years. She tucks an errant wisp of her blond hair back in under the band of her straw. Her blue-gray eyes are livelier than usual as they scan the selection of beautiful objects in the case. Numerous guilloché enameled clocks, frames, bell pushers, perpetual calendars, all sorts of things from precious hatpins to jeweled tcharki, vodka cups. The moment that Fabergé senses even her slightest special interest in an item he quickly brings it out. Not in eagerness to make the sale, rather to share the appreciation, for there is nothing offered here that is not finely, tastefully made and that he is not proud of. Grand Duchess Olga examines a gold case meant to contain ball programs, and she is especially fascinated by an elaborate fan. The fan is about twenty inches long, its handle a combination of etched rock crystal and pale yellow and white guilloché enamel over gold finished off with rose diamonds and pearls. Three silk tassels dangle from the handle, and the fan part is a voluptuous gathering of white ostrich feathers. She slowly wafts the air with the fan, does quick fluttering movements with it. Its ostrich feathers respond with quivering. They bend and flow. She is amused, and so is her grandmother, who nods and forecasts that soon, darling Olga will be of an age to forsake the plain and enj
oy the grand.

  The Dowager Empress is not along merely as chaperon. Even when she was Empress she always enjoyed a visit to Fabergé. She examines several objects, including a miniature frame of green and rose gold done in a moiré pattern of white enamel. It might do, she says, for a snapshot she has of the Czarevich taken aboard the imperial yacht, the Standart, last fall. Yes, she believes the frame is exactly the correct size. She asks who it is by and is told workmaster Maksim Bemechev.

  “Lovely” is the word that conveys to Fabergé that it has been chosen. He places it aside.

  Finally, there is the gift which was their purpose for coming. What shall it be for Bow Wow?—as Grand Duchess Olga calls her sister. Maria loves tiny lemon drops, places them one at a time to melt beneath her tongue. All right then, Grand Duchess Olga settles on the yellow bonbonnière that she first looked at. No matter that it means having to sacrifice several future monthly allowances.

  Meanwhile, in other areas of that building at 24 Bolshaya Movskaya Street, more new Fabergé things are being thought up and made to come true. On the second floor, seventy-five craftsmen are busy at their work benches, and on the third floor, a hundred more. The high benches they sit at are oddly shaped, constructed with individual recesses which permit each worker’s arms to rest on the bench surface without his having to hunch. Steady hands are necessary to do such fine work, steady hands, concentration, and constant pride. There is minimal talk. The goldsmiths are heating and shaping the precious metal, chasing it with various intricate motifs. One slip of a chisel will ruin a piece they have been working on for days, and they know there is no way to get by with even a slight mistake. Every bit of their work will be closely inspected. They hold the piece they are working on up level with their eyes. For the time being, the piece is all there is, each detail a challenge, an opportunity to excel. Without breaking concentration they feel into the slinglike pouches that are nailed to the edge of the bench to find the particular tool they need. Many of these goldsmiths are less than twenty years old, outstanding apprentices. This same scrupulous attitude prevails with the setters, the finishers, the assemblers, from the most experienced professional to the youngster who for the past year has been an artelchik, a general cleaner, and this is his very first day in his own assigned seat at a bench.