White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Has something else distressed you?’

  ‘Well, yes, there is something.’ The perfect defence occurred to him. ‘I’m really missing my girlfriend in Leningrad. We didn’t have – well, we weren’t able to say goodbye properly. And of course she can’t write very easily. I just think about her all the time and wonder how she is. I heard a rumour that she was pregnant, so now I’m really worried.’

  ‘You weren’t able to say goodbye properly – what do you mean?’

  ‘She – ah – she wasn’t around when I left, I couldn’t find her.’ In fact, although he had defied the embassy official and run to the girls’quarters, Anya had been so deeply asleep that it had been difficult to rouse her. They had a conversation, he had explained, she had murmured a few words, but he doubted that in the morning she would have remembered anything.

  ‘But she knew you were leaving?’ Was this genuine concern, or did Kolya know that his story of acute loneliness was a lie and was probing for inconsistencies?

  ‘Oh yes, of course, she just wasn’t expecting me to leave when I did, if you see what I mean. At least, I suppose that was the reason.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps it was. But I shouldn’t be too concerned. In my experience, Russian girls have always got an eye out for their main chance.’

  ‘Oh no, Anya isn’t like that at all.’

  ‘They’re all like that, dear boy, you’ll find out.’ Alex was insulted at the implication and his face said plainly that he doubted the value of his uncle’s experience with girls of any nationality. ‘Oh believe me, Alex. I know what I’m talking about. I wasn’t always a member in good standing of the green carnation society. I was married for twelve years – it wasn’t much of a relationship, I grant you, but that wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Was your wife Russian too?’ The lingering bitterness with which his uncle had spoken roused Alex’s curiosity.

  ‘Yes, well, almost. A Latvian girl, they’re famous for their stupidity. I was twenty-six, already quite well off, and my mother nagged me constantly to marry, of course. Every old woman wants to be a grandmother.’ He selected one of the modern chairs, a low-slung construction of russet hide and chromium, and reclined, crossing his legs and smoothing out the already creaseless fabric of his fawn trousers. ‘She used to cut out the lonely hearts advertisements in the émigré newspaper, Illustriovannaya Rossia. There was one that obsessed her, I can see it even now …’ With one tapering, contemptuous hand he outlined a rectangle in the air. ‘A Russian girl from Latvia is lonely and would like to correspond with an understanding Russian Parisian and receive his photo. He should be under forty years old with a steady job and a taste for music and the arts.’

  ‘Not much to ask.’

  ‘So it appeared. So Mama actually wrote to this girl and told her where my shop was and invited her to call on me. Matchmaking all the time, even when she was at the other end of the country. So – to please her – we were married. And I discovered that the most intense loneliness in this world is to be found in a home where there is no communication.’

  ‘She was quiet, was she?’

  ‘On the contrary, she talked nonstop, every waking moment, about nothing. It’s a facility all women have. Fortunately business took me away quite a lot, but I didn’t know about myself then – at least, I knew somewhere in my heart, one always does, but it was only when the war came and I joined the army that I discovered my true identity. And so at the age of thirty-five my life actually began.’ All this was delivered with an emphasis so delicate it was as barely perceptible as the vermouth in their martinis, but Alex, while admiring the subtlety, resented the invitation to open the question of his own sexuality.

  ‘So you got divorced?’

  ‘Happily there was no need for that. The Germans came, there was a great flight of people from Paris, Mama wanted my wife and the children to come to her in Nice, but my wife had no gratitude towards Mama. Two women can never share the same kitchen, you know – not that Mama has ever known what a kitchen was, of course. And so my wife refused to leave Paris until the last moment, and then decided to go with our neighbours in their car. There were millions of people on the roads going south, and the German planes came over with bombs and gunfire – they were killed.’

  ‘How sad.’ This drop of politeness sank without trace into the arid atmosphere. Alex was chilled to the core of his heart by his uncle’s unfeeling recitation. In that instant he knew that he could not exist in Kolya Kusminsky’s elegant, bloodless, misogynistic world for much longer. Warmth and care were the oxygen of his spirit, women’s warmth and care. He felt that his being could not survive without them.

  Some weeks passed. His former teacher urged him to begin classes in jazz and American tap, but Alex was unwilling to let go of his classical dream. He entered one jazz class; it was not to his taste. Afterwards in the showers the regulars traded gossip of new productions and rumours of auditions in an atmosphere of desperate, petty rivalry which disgusted him.

  Few answers to his letters arrived. A small ballet company in Lyons asked to see him and he set off full of confidence. Faced with the reality of grimy, ill-equipped studios, low wages and a claustrophobic company riven by rivalry, he performed below his best. A position was offered none the less, but he refused it.

  Then the telephone rang in the apartment early one morning. ‘Mamasha is in hospital,’ Kolya informed him, hastily knotting his tie as he walked through the apartment to get his suitcase. ‘I’m going now, I’ll call Etienne and you must go to the shop and do the following things – get a paper and write them down. On my desk in the office is my diary, just call everyone who has an appointment today and tomorrow and put them off. You know where the telephone numbers are. Then in the middle left-hand drawer is a small cash box with some dollars in it – take them to the bank, the Sociétée Générale, the book is under the box. And then if you have reached everyone just shut up the shop and leave a notice saying the owner is absent for a few days on family business. Otherwise stay for the day to explain. OK? Got that?’ Alex had scarcely nodded when Kolya ran out of the door, his coat flapping about him as he struggled into it.

  In the empty shop he sat in his uncle’s chair making telephone calls; one appointment, the four o’clock, entered in Cyrillic simply as ‘Gotz’, had no counterpart in the Roladex of numbers and so he was obliged to wait until the afternoon. After a few hours of idle reflection the notion formed in his mind that if Grandmère were dying Kolya would try for the last time to have her to himself. He called his ally, Miss Partridge, but she was out.

  Gotz proved to be a soft-bodied man of about forty with dark, curling hair that receded at the temples but fell forward over his nose as soon as he removed his grey hat. He was a Russian-from-Russia, but with an air of assertive wellbeing which suggested he was of good standing at home and accustomed to the West.

  ‘You must be the nephew?’

  Alex greeted him in his own language and Gotz’s wet, dark eyes flickered curiously.

  ‘I am, yes. I have to apologize to you – my uncle can’t be here, an illness in the family. I did try to reach you …’

  ‘Kusminsky has no family – ah, of course! The mother! Not serious, I hope?’ Gotz’s whole face became mobile with interest.

  ‘I don’t know, but then she is almost eighty …’

  ‘Eighty at least, I should say. I met her once, years ago. What a life she had, eh? We can’t imagine it now. Kolya left yesterday?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘So he can’t have arrived yet – it is Cannes, isn’t it? No, no – Nice, I remember. Well, I’ve a lot to do in Paris this trip, I’ll give you a call before I leave and see if he’s back. Give him my best wishes, eh?’ He settled his hat on his head once more, pulling the brim down sharply, then left with a spring in his step as if he had received good news.

  Alex ran down the steel mesh shutters and, before he left, tried Angela Partridge’s number once again. She was there, and immediately confirmed
his anxiety. ‘Dear boy, they think it’s a stroke. She’s come round but she’s dreadfully weak and of course there’s always the risk of another one. I thought you were both coming, fool that I am. I should have spoken directly to you. Get the train, you’ll be here when the sun comes up.’

  The clinic was on a promontory outside the city, overlooking the sweep of the Baie des Anges and the sparkling sea. Alex took a taxi directly there from the train station and arrived as the white-robed nursing sisters were settling the patients after their breakfast. Grandmère was alone, lying almost flat in a small side ward, with an oxygen cylinder against the wall near the bed and a monitor with several dials and a screen at hand on the other side. The old woman was the livid colour of an antique waxwork, her blue, distended veins snaking down her neck and arms, her flat chest rising and falling with each hoarse breath.

  Shyly he asked one of the sisters, ‘Is she conscious?’

  The woman approached, her long starched skirt swinging, and leaned over the tiny body. ‘Maybe. I thought she heard me when I came round to see if she wanted something to eat. She did speak yesterday, after a fashion. Madame, your grandson is here to see you.’ There was no response. Her hand, its rounded fingers red and roughened from scrubbing, reached for the old woman’s wrist; after a few moments she leaned forward and pressed the bell above the bed.

  Alex heard rubber-soled shoes running along the corridor. Two more nuns entered and between them moved the oxygen to the bedside and fixed the mask over the patient’s face. Next a doctor burst through the door and ordered Alex to wait outside.

  It was there that he encountered Kolya an hour later, striding purposefully down the corridor. Anger flashed through his uncle’s pale eyes, but he covered his annoyance at Alex’s presence by lighting a cigarette and said nothing until the doctor emerged from the room, pulling his stethoscope from his ears.

  ‘Another stroke,’ he confirmed, ‘more serious, much more serious. One can never be certain, but I think we may be close to the end. Her condition deteriorates all the time.’

  They sat with her, the two men on one side, and a nun on the other, silently watching the needles flicker on the dials. The air was overheated and had a sickly tang. Sounds and movements of breath had almost ceased. Alex felt compellingly bored, and berated himself for this inappropriate response. He fixed his eyes on the body beneath the blankets, trying to imagine the bones clothed with ripe, strong flesh, free-flowing blood in the veins and skin glowing with health, the skilled limbs confidently accomplishing their tasks.

  In an unexpectedly sudden movement the nurse got to her feet and searched once more for a pulse, then again pressed the overhead bell. This time only the doctor came.

  ‘She has slipped away from us,’ he told them, and Alex noted that the doctor was also annoyed, as if Grandmère had purposely outwitted him. Kolya seemed to shrink inside his jacket, and the other man touched him lightly on the upper arm. ‘There was undoubtedly extensive brain damage; you would not have wished for anything else. It was a merciful end for her.’ The words triggered tears. Turning away from then, Kolya groped for his handkerchief and for a moment it seemed as if he was going to vomit.

  Instead, Alex saw his uncle’s fists clench and open again several times. His spine slowly straightened although he was trembling with the effort of mastering his emotions. When he spoke, his voice was not at first controlled; he stammered a few syllables, whispered, then almost shouted.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The doctor, used to expect bizarre behaviour at the onset of grief, replied in level tones. ‘There can be no doubt at all. All the signs of life have ceased – it is finished now.’

  ‘Can’t you …’ Kolya’s eyes seemed about to burst with the effort of containing his feelings.

  ‘There is nothing more to do.’

  Kolya stepped towards the bed, paused as if he were afraid of falling, then leaned down and began to gather the small, limp form into his arms. The nurse unobtrusively unplugged the leads which still connected the body to the monitoring equipment. As he embraced his mother a horrible liquid sound escaped from her lips, the last breath squeezed from the slack tissue of the lungs by his embrace.

  As instinctively as a cat, Alex leaped back at the noise, but his uncle began to murmur soothing nonsense, as if quietening a baby.

  ‘There, beautiful angel, it’s all right, everything’s all right. You won’t get cold, angel, I know you hate to be cold. Tropical flower, little white orchid, the cold isn’t for you. You like to be warm. I know, I know. And beautiful, so beautiful. Beautiful white dress, oyster silk-satin, pearls like a bride …’ He picked disdainfully at the edge of the hospital nightgown as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Everything you like, little white orchid, we’ll take care of you.’ He felt for one of her hands and pressed it to his chest.

  The doctor moved towards the door and, seeing Alex transfixed by the tableau, touched his arm to get his attention. They left the room silently, the nurse sweeping after them.

  Despite the heat, Kolya insisted that his mother should lie in state at home. It seemed that he had planned the honours in the greatest detail beforehand. Alex was ignored as soon as Etienne arrived from Paris with a young man who was a window-dresser at Galeries Lafayette. The grimy clutter of the villa disappeared behind lavish swags of silk and potted palms. Since the table was too rickety to support the coffin it was raised on trestles and planks disguised by more drapery and banked by orchids.

  From the apartment, the young men brought a portrait of Lydia costumed in a romantic white tutu for Les Sylphides, which was erected at the head of the coffin, with photographs, stage accessories and yellowed newspaper reviews in an album displayed at the sides.

  An argument broke out – the only disagreement Alex ever witnessed between Kolya and his lover – over the appropriate headdress for the corpse. Kolya favoured the jewelled cap she had worn as Salome, with rows of pearls over the forehead. Etienne recommended a kokoshnik, the traditional Russian crown, set with pearls and diamonds, with a veil over the face. After a day of waspish silence during which the casket remained closed, Madame Sedova arrived from Cannes and called on the patriarch of the cathedral to mediate. Pointing out that Salome, although the role in which La Kusminskaya conquered the West, was also a pagan temptress responsible for the martyrdom of a saint, he ruled in favour of the crown. Kolya assumed an air of indifference and the casket was opened.

  Bouquets soon crammed the room, wilting in the heat, and a sophisticated stereo system played Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6. An extraordinary crowd of people passed through the villa; most of them were strangers to Alex, although many had clearly been dancers once and others were as obviously marked as devotees of the art. Kolya’s own circle was strongly represented, the slender, deeply wrinkled men and women in exquisite clothes gossiping together with as much animation as was seemly before setting off for lunch or dinner.

  ‘Must be a marvellous aperitif, paying one’s respects to the dead. Seems to give’em all a healthy appetite – my God, how the French love their stomachs.’ Angela Partridge flapped her mock-ivory fan for emphasis. She showed emotion only in two spots of colour on her cheeks and a tightening of her throat when she spoke. Rudely disregarded by Kolya, she had retreated to the kitchen with Alex and the maid to preside over the samovar. ‘I hope Lydia’s enjoying this circus, wherever she is. If it’s as hot as this in the cathedral they’ll all keel over like guardsmen.’

  Soon they stood again in the perfumed interior of the cathedral, where sonorous hymns echoed in air that was now warm although the full heat of June blazed outside. Alex forced himself to the coffin side, determined this time not to cede one duty to his uncle, but he could not look at her face. The skeletal hands had been arranged around a garnet crucifix and a pair of old worn satin point shoes lay against the paper lace of the interior.

  Back in Paris again the sense of drifting grew upon him. There was no post, not even refusals in reply to his le
tters. The leaden routine of his days continued and Alex embraced it, eager for anything that would prevent him dissolving into anonymity. Angela Partridge called upon him, carefully presented as ever in a silk afternoon dress and mended stockings. She brought an old grey office folder containing signed duplicates of La Kusminskaya’s most famous stage portraits, and more of Grandmère’s sketch maps of her house. ‘I promised I’d explain these,’ the Englishwoman hissed, under the impression that they would be overheard.

  ‘Uncle is out,’ he reassured her.

  ‘It simply tortured her that she hadn’t anything to leave you. They sold everything years ago, of course. She said Kolya would always look after himself, but she was desperate to do something for you. So what this is here she pulled out the largest diagram, executed in purple ink – ‘is the ground plan of the house, and that’ – she pointed to a spidery star at one edge of the paper – ‘is supposed to be the location of the safe where all her jewellery was kept. Including the famous necklace Orlov gave her, which she’s wearing here in this picture. So, dear boy, all you have to do is go back to Russia and find it, dynamite the wall, pick the lock and you’ll have a king’s ransom in diamonds.’ They laughed unsteadily, moved by this last manifestation of Lydia’s faith in the material world.

  Alex redoubled his efforts to find work, rising early to take classes and sitting all afternoon at the lapis lazuli table with a sheaf of freshly printed photographs and a list of names and telephone numbers copied from the studio notice board. They were not enticing prospects. Dancers were needed on a Caribbean cruise ship. There was an audition for a provincial tour of the musical Hair. At Evian the cabaret director at the Casino was looking particularly for tall boys. He wrote letters, then tore them up. He went to auditions, arrived late, behaved insolently and ensured that he received very few offers of work. The life of glamour he had always wanted seemed to be unattainable. Kolya was increasingly irritable and Alex anticipated daily his insincerely regretful announcement that it was time for them to part company.