Eighty Days Amber (Eight Days)

by Jackson, Vina

  It seemed that she had lost her violin.

  Then I recalled the unusual piece of music that she had elected to dance to. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The image on the old record that sat gathering dust in the rehearsal room in St Petersburg sprang into my mind.

  ‘You should play with us more often, Sum,’ said the curly-haired young man who she sat next to and who was barely looking at her at all, so focused was he on a short-haired blonde girl who sat across the room making eyes at Dagur.

  Slowly but surely, the cogs slipped into place in my mind. Sum . . . Summer. The amateur dancer was Summer Zahova, the sexy violinist who I vaguely recalled had made a splash in the US after posing nude for a concert flier. One of the rich men at a gig I had danced had invited me to one of her concerts after he had watched my Debussy set and expressed his surprise that a woman would strip to classical music instead of some predictable pop song. I reminded him of Summer Zahova, he had said.

  Then she said Luba, rolling the sound in her mouth as men tended to do when they wanted to sleep with me. Clearly my dance had stuck in her mind all this time, as hers had in mine.

  ‘There’s always Luba.’

  Curly-head looked up at her in surprise.

  ‘How did you know her name?’ he asked.

  Her face was flushed and she was stuttering a feeble attempt to cover up the real nature of our previous meeting.

  I stepped into the room and to her aid.

  ‘We met briefly in New York,’ I said. ‘I attended one of her concerts.’

  Along with relief, another expression flooded across Summer’s face. It was not just her voice that betrayed her. I watched with amusement as she tried to avert her eyes from my nipples, which were no doubt visible through the thin fabric of my dress and she squirmed into the sofa as my skin brushed against hers.

  She was clearly not much accustomed to hiding her emotions, though everyone else in the room seemed entirely oblivious to both her discomfort and her arousal.

  This game would be much easier to play than I had expected.

  I lifted a lock of her red hair and whispered directly into her ear, brushing my lips ever so slightly against her lobe as I did so.

  ‘I want to hear the story, about how you ended up in a place like that. And the man you were with.’

  ‘Dominik?’ she replied.

  Yes. That was his name, I recalled, as another stream of memories from that night at The Place came back to my mind.

  It wasn’t until later, when I left all of the love birds to it and returned to my room to crawl into bed, that I realised why the name Dominik made me feel as though a word was stuck on the tip of my tongue. Another memory was brewing inside somewhere, just waiting to bob to the surface.

  Dominik was the name of the British author who had written Yellow, the book about the red-haired Paris traveller that I had so enjoyed. I smiled inside. Surely it must be too much of a coincidence? But there it was on the cover. Dominik Conrad. I flicked through the pages again and then put the book down and fell straight to sleep. If I knew Viggo, Summer would still be here in the morning, and probably the morning after that.

  There would be plenty of time for investigation later.

  The following day I slept in for hours, revelling in having a bed to myself to stretch out in. Then I slipped on my bathing suit and padded down the long, winding wooden staircase and into the basement where I planned to spend the afternoon floating in the cool water.

  It would only be a matter of time before the violinist came looking for me, as I knew that she was still in search of her violin. Eric, the road manager who had been in charge of the equipment, had seen neither hide nor hair of it. I’d called him under Viggo’s instruction and he had been impatient and bordering on rude.

  I was drip-drying on the rocks when she appeared. It took her a few moments to notice me as her eyes darted all over the room, blinking to adjust to the low light and the strange decor. Our eyes locked briefly but she didn’t say anything, just headed straight for the cabinet where Viggo stored an array of old instruments pegged to the wall like insects trapped under glass.

  She stretched out her arm and stroked her fingers across the case. She was mesmerised by his collection of violins but the disappointment that hers was not among them was obvious in the hunch of her shoulders, as if she’d had all the breath knocked out of her.

  ‘He won’t mind, you know, if you want to borrow something. Will you play for me?’

  As soon as I asked her to play, all of her hesitation seemed to dissolve and she reached eagerly into the cabinet, caressing the instruments until she found one that suited her. It was out of tune and badly in need of repair, but the look that filled her face as she played was hypnotic. It was no wonder that Viggo had wanted to add her to his collection.

  She was a striking woman anyway, but as soon as she picked up a violin she fairly radiated. She closed her eyes and her lips parted ever so slightly, highlighting the sensuous curve of her mouth.

  I moved closer, entranced by her melody and the way that she had responded so readily to my request. Had a virtual stranger asked me to dance for them, I would have bridled at the idea, but she was as eager to please as a puppy and I could not help but imagine the possibilities that her innate pliability brought to mind.

  When she finished her tune and removed the violin from her chin, I kissed her.

  Her response was so eager that I nearly laughed.

  I took her by the hand and led her up the stairs to Viggo’s bedroom. He probably wouldn’t have minded if I had taken his new pet away for an hour or two to my own bed but seeing as they had only had one night together, it seemed churlish of me to steal her so soon.

  The sound of water running and Viggo singing softly reached my ears. He was in the shower but had left the bathroom door open.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, approaching the door to the en suite. ‘Let’s wish him good morning.’

  Introducing Summer to our sex life proved to be no chore. If anything, life as part of a threesome suited me to a tee. I had begun to find Viggo’s lovemaking less adventurous, and Summer added a little extra spice. She had the highest libido of any woman that I had ever known, but with it an eagerness to please that was almost intoxicating.

  When we were together, I amused myself by holding her head onto Viggo’s cock and watching the strange way that her wetness increased the more I ordered her around, and I could not help thinking of Dominik, the man who had made her dance.

  Summer seemed happy enough, but I felt instinctively that Viggo and I were both too mild for her. I was content enough to pull her hair or rake my fingernails down her back, but that was all the violence that I was comfortable dishing out and Viggo was a softie through and through beneath his outward bravado. Sometimes after our lovemaking bouts I caught her looking pensive and melancholic, as if she was missing something. Perhaps she was missing him, her man, as I still missed Chey.

  The sex we had was actually pretty torrid, but somehow I always felt as if I was a spectator and taking my cues from unknown observers as we thrashed together wildly in Viggo’s vast bed (and a variety of other places as all three of us were partial to sudden improvisation . . .), limbs akimbo like a three-headed spider caught in a net, never quite a single beast but an amalgam of lusts, desires and athleticism. Summer revelled in being at the centre of our scene, a die-hard exhibitionist who relished the gaze we cast on her, both as Viggo fucked her or as she went down on me and abandoned herself to pleasure. And the twinkle in her eye as we both serviced his beautiful cock was a joy to behold, her tongue brushing against mine, our lips melding as we took him in turns. But it always felt like something of a game, an entertainment that was heartless and lacking in tenderness. But so much fun . . .

  Still, our three-way relationship also gave me more time to myself. More time to read, more time to swim, more time to explore the long, green stretches of Hampstead Heath. And Summer’s presence gave the press something new to latch onto, s
o I worried less about my picture appearing in the paper. That was her problem now, not mine.

  Summer never spoke about Dominik. Nor did she ask me exactly how I had ended up travelling from a stage in New Orleans to Viggo’s bedroom in Belsize Park. It was as if there was some unspoken agreement between us to ignore the past. Perhaps she thought I might be ashamed of my history as a stripper. Viggo was by far the chattiest of the three of us.

  She was soon roped into touring with Groucho Nights, the band who had opened for Viggo and the Holy Criminals at the Academy, and then I barely saw her at all, as all of her days and nights were crammed with rehearsals.

  So when I saw that dark head of hair and recognised the profile of his face lit up by the stage light just a row in front of me at their opening show at the Cigale concert hall in Paris, I was unsure whether Summer even knew that he was in the audience.

  I was still not even certain that Dominik the dance master was also Dominik the author, but my suspicions were confirmed when he was accosted in the dressing room by a couple of young local journalists who wanted to know what a serious writer was doing backstage with Viggo Franck. Research for his next novel?

  Dominik was clearly embarrassed by the attention and brushed them off. He hid himself in the corner, looking distinctly uncomfortable and nursing a bottle of mineral water. I approached him later and handed him my phone number with a seductive smile. He didn’t call, but then having seen the way he watched his flame-haired violinist as she dominated the stage, I never really expected him to.

  Weeks past, most of them spent alone in the big house as Summer was touring and Viggo was busy with his various musical commitments, which only occasionally required my presence.

  I had oceans of free time to waste and I spent much of it thinking of Chey, wondering where he was now, whether he was okay. But it wasn’t just Chey who consumed my thoughts. I couldn’t help my mind wandering to the mysterious dark-haired writer, Dominik, and the passion I had seen shining clearly in his eyes.

  ‘Are you still on your extended vacation, Luba?’ Madame Denoux asked me. It was mid-afternoon in London, and the colours of spring were returning to the nearby Heath. It must have been early in the morning in New Orleans, which hinted that this was not just a courtesy call. Madame Denoux seldom left her bed until midday unless she had a very good reason to do so. I briefly imagined I could smell the magnolias and hear the flow of the Mississippi down the phone line.

  I was sitting outside a Jewish patisserie on Golders Green Road savouring lemon tea and a plate of small cakes, just like the ones I remembered from my childhood in the Ukraine. I’d jogged all the way here from Belsize Park, up Haverstock Hill and Hampstead High Street, puffing my way up all the small hills and dips. Even though I was no longer dancing regularly, I tried to maintain my physical fitness. My vanity was stronger than my passionate distaste of formal exercise.

  The leisurely downhill pause here was my reward. I was reading Dominik’s book for the second time. Now that I had come across him, my fascination was growing, as was my interest in his relationship with Summer. I was now totally convinced that the character of Elena in his book was based on her. There were too many similarities, not only in the way he repeatedly described Elena, and not just her features, but also her body in the most intimate of ways. It felt a bit like a detective tale meticulously separating the fiction from the reality. He’d been extremely clever crafting his story, but now that I’d come to know her, and to a lesser extent him, I had no doubts.

  ‘It’s no longer a vacation, Madame Denoux. It’s fast becoming a way of life.’

  ‘Good for you, young lady . . .’ She paused. ‘So, totally happy, then?’

  In truth, I’d long come to the conclusion that I wasn’t the sort of person who knows what happiness is. There was always something missing. A man. A place. An unfocused emotion. Something.

  ‘At peace,’ I finally said.

  ‘Good,’ Madame Denoux said. ‘It’s just that we’ve had a wonderful offer for your Tango piece from a very wealthy benefactor’ – she never used the word ‘client’ – ‘and although he knows from the current edition of the catalogue that you are no longer available, he is very insistent.’

  The Tango had always been my favourite set. There was something primal about it and about the music I would dance to, and the nameless partner I had performed it with had so reminded me of Chey.

  An unexpected wave of nostalgia hit me, bringing back to me the first time I’d tried the dance and my initial excitement about the whole affair. Like a fire rushing through my insides. Putting Viggo and all the others, men and women, since that day into a poor perspective.

  Yet I still wasn’t sure if I could go through with it, after I’d vowed never to do that type of dance again.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Madame Denoux asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I stuttered, returning to reality.

  ‘The pay involved is unheard of. You could afford another few years off with it, you know.’

  ‘It’s never just been a question of money,’ I reminded her.

  ‘I realise that. You are an artist, Luba. It’s just a terrible pity that—’

  I cut her short. She knew how to play me like a violin. I wouldn’t be talked into it so easily, I swore to myself. I would think it through and make my decision carefully, although there was a part of my soul that now yearned to be on a stage again and hear the audience gasp as I moved, and feel the river of lust washing down my veins, kindling that terrible fire I feared had now been extinguished.

  ‘I’m not saying yes. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘That’s just great,’ she replied. ‘You have my number. In your own time, let me know. No pressure . . .’

  ‘My usual partner?’ I queried.

  ‘Absolutely. That will be a cast-iron guarantee.’

  ‘Out of curiosity, you know, what would be the location?’

  I didn’t particularly want to perform in Amsterdam again, or in London now that I lived here. It would have to be somewhere else.

  ‘It’s a small port called Sitges, just half an hour south of Barcelona, in Spain.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and hung up the phone before she could push me further.

  I swept up the last crumbs of the cake with my fingers and put Dominik’s book back into my small running backpack.

  The walk downhill was always faster than the uphill jog. Viggo’s mansion was empty, an eerie silence travelling through the many rooms. I went to mine and took a long, cleansing shower. Swaddled in a fluffy bathrobe, I collapsed on the bed and returned to the book. Although I knew what happened in the final chapters, I felt as if I was rediscovering the story and characters from a new perspective altogether.

  Once I turned the final page I went online. I wanted to find out if Dominik had published any other books. He hadn’t. Neither did he have a website of his own, but I discovered quickly that there was a page for the book, and him, on his publishers’ site. It featured no further information about Dominik or another novel, but my eye was quickly caught by a schedule of promotional appearances, most of which had already taken place – bookshop signings, festivals, readings. The final one listed was the one that caused me to smile. Call it fate or coincidence, but he was due to visit Barcelona for something called Sant Jordi in a few days’ time.

  Madame Denoux quickly picked up the phone.

  ‘That was fast,’ she remarked. I could picture the smile of delight spreading across her face, as if she knew what I was going to say.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. And I gave her the date. It was either then or I wouldn’t get involved.

  ‘Nothing is impossible, my dear. I’ll have the arrangements made within a few hours. I hope you’re in shape.’

  ‘More than ever.’

  My heart was running faster. I had the old Luba back again. And if I was honest with myself, I was unsure whether it was because of the prospect of seeing the enigmatic Dominik or being fucked in public by Tan
go again.

  9

  Dancing on the Heath

  Sant Jordi turned out to be my idea of heaven.

  Almost.

  The Ramblas north of Plaza Catalunya were lined on each side with stall after stall displaying books and flowers. I breathed in deeply, savouring the very particular scent of roses and pages. A hotchpotch of Mediterranean life floated on the soft breeze as passers-by of all ages, couples old and young, paraded through the busy avenues boarded with trees. Everywhere I looked women were carrying deep-red flowers close to their chests to protect the petals from the pushes and shoves of the teeming crowds. Seen from a distance, the whole city appeared to be bleeding in unison, bright spots of colour blooming against their hearts like gun-shot wounds, as if Barcelona had been taken down by Cupid’s arrow.

  If it weren’t for the sheer number of people that filled the thoroughfare and the tourists who walked slowly enough to drive a person to distraction then it would have been a perfect day. But I’d soon had enough of standing and queuing in the hot sun, listening to the various writers’ fans drone on or watching the ruder types barge to the front, thumb through books and throw them disdainfully back down on the pile right in front of the author whose face inevitably fell until the next smiling devotee appeared. Writers must either have terribly brittle egos or develop thick skins quickly. At least a dance was temporary and imperfections in form or errors in timing faded quickly from the viewer’s mind. I was grateful that my artistic infelicities were not immortalised in print for evermore.

  I finally spotted Dominik, but the queue for his stand was long and moving even more slowly than some of the others.

  It seemed that I was not the only woman who had related to his heroine and become curious about the man who created her. Lingering at a neighbouring stall I took a few moments to observe him chatting with one of the many female readers who waited for him. She was slim with long dark hair piled high on her head and tendrils hanging loose that gave her a gypsy-like appearance, particularly in combination with her sandals and thin, loose cotton dress. When she bent down to invite him to sign the title page of the book that she had just purchased, I noted that her dress was terribly low cut and her full bosoms threatened to tumble out in front of him. Dominik was clearly aware of her display and he smiled at her with a strained expression on his face and averted his eyes at the earliest possible opportunity.