The Imperial Wife

by Irina Reyn

  There were my clients, with their hundred-million-euro villas spread out over four floors, shimmering hot tubs right in the middle of living rooms framed by Grecian columns, the rooftop helicopter pad, Turkish spa, 1920s movie theater, a rooftop water slide curved into an infinity pool that gave the impression of falling into the Mediterranean. What a difference from where I grew up! And there were my parents in northern New Jersey, with their two-floor Colonial, their clunky but reliable Volvo from 1999, their gym membership where they snuck in as one another in order to battle senior citizens over empty pool lanes. They could never shed their Soviet tactics of self-preservation. They bought an extra packet of cookies for their friends if there was a two-for-one sale, logged on to their neighbors’ open-access Internet, and packed brioche rolls from Russian restaurants into their bags for the following breakfast. How could I reconcile the lucky, middle-class lives of my parents with these people in Monaco, who graduated from the same Soviet public schools, attended the same universities, but here they were with their villas and chunky Winston emeralds and private dancers flown in from Buenos Aires.

  How abhorrent my clients appeared to me at first. Women as foreign as aliens, wives confiding while condescending to me: Tanyechka, talk some sense into him, will you? Do we really need the headache of owning a yacht? Does my daughter really need Taylor Swift at her bat mitzvah when that Selena Gomez would do just fine? Do we really need a custom Lamborghini Veneno? How Carl laughed when I described the awkwardness of bumping into the singer George Michael in one of the bedrooms trying out a few sentences of Russian in preparation for a bat mitzvah concert.

  I take in the Côte d’Azur, the air’s orange sweetness and the magnificent view, pushing aside this image of Carl, his funny way of laughing as if only his mouth were involved in the act. He’ll be back soon, he’ll be back very soon. The tablet is open to the profiles of potential clients I’m here to meet—Medovsky’s buddies Oleg and David. Their rumored purchases at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, their trinity of homes in Moscow, London, and Monaco. Their photographs revealing thick necks, crisp collars, hair cropped close to the head. But my mind wanders.

  We pull up to a structure that seems to sink into its landscape, seems to be sculpted out of the very rock around it. The wide iron gates pull back to engulf the car into the complex.

  From what I hear, Medovsky paid five hundred million euros to tear down a perfectly luxurious villa and build a riad in its place. A Moroccan riad on the Côte d’Azur! Only my clients would think of something like this. The exterior is a plain fortress of mud-brick wall so you think you’re about to enter a modest, simple home. In the oligarch’s case, the riad’s is a useful structure for privacy, but the interior is far from modest.

  Stepping into the atrium, through the horseshoe arches and past the interior courtyard, I find myself in front of a fountain that looks suspiciously like a miniature replica of Rome’s Trevi Fountain complete with Neptune’s chariot with sea horses, the general Agrippa, and the papal coat of arms. The floors are lined with terra-cotta tiles etched with Hebrew, rather than Arabic, calligraphy. Lemon trees in full bloom garnish the voluminous red walls.

  I can barely take it all in when the doors swing open and in clicks a tall blonde, the kind who’s used to pausing a room with her entrance. She’s wearing a floor-length jersey dress speckled with flowers. Her neck is evenly bronzed and a gold clutch is tucked beneath her arm. I should have known Nadia Kudrina would be here.

  My former assistant is twenty-five years old and knows next to nothing about Russian or any other art history but her father is PYOTOR Oil chairman Arkady Kudrin, and many powerful men who do business with Kudrin have no choice but to consign with Nadia at Christie’s.

  She heads immediately for my cheek. “Privet, Tanyechka. How are things at Worthy’s?”

  “Great, Nadia. You?”

  “Normal’no. Too busy. As usual.”

  There’s no competition on any level with a Russian woman like this: hair ironed flat and combed over one shoulder, robust breasts in danger of escaping her Etro gown, a porcelain leg emerging from an impossibly high slit, unmarked face professionally applied. A pair of expensive sunglasses perch on top of her head. This is the woman whose Facebook profile photo shows her lying on her stomach in a purple lace teddy, heels crossed like daggers behind her, her head tilted to the side, lips glistening purple. Who posts languorous photos of herself on European bridges with men thirty years her senior. Who appears at art openings in head-to-toe fish netting, pens an advice column on how to oversee an armada of domestic staff in Tatler. Who’s been named by a British gossip magazine as the Russian Kim Kardashian.

  “What a treat to see you here.” I try to sound genuine but I’m instantly on my guard. Nadia always manages to make me feel like the help she is always hiring and firing for one of her global homes. “Your last sale was pretty impressive. I really love those Chagalls you got. Congratulations.”

  “The synagogue ones, you mean? The rare oils?”

  “I love the stained glass of the Vilna one.”

  “It’s the one always singled out in press. But the others are more interesting, no?”

  “I actually prefer the one that’s singled out.”

  I’ve detested Nadia since she first set foot in Worthington’s dressed inappropriately in a white Hervé Leger bandage dress and strappy gold pumps for her first day of work as a summer intern. The girl was everything I dreaded, a lithe, sexual creature, an entitled exhibitionist posting pictures of herself dancing at some Art Basel party or on a yacht in the Maldives or at Reese Witherspoon’s wedding. Her very presence announced her as Nadia Kudrina, enfant terrible, fulfilling her global Russian destiny, and no one would stand in her way. When she left the company, I was relieved, assumed Kudrin whisked her away to an internship in fashion or public relations. Except Nadia emerged as the head of Russian art at Christie’s and her first auction, a terribly uneven selection from her father’s personal collection, raised fifteen million dollars. “The one that got away” is how Marjorie referred to her in my presence. A rueful glance at me as the one who stayed.

  “It’s a mess out there, isn’t it? Are you still managing to pull together auctions? I barely unloaded that Serebriakova for six mil.”

  “Actually, I’ve got a great Nesterov for the fall,” I say.

  “Oh, Nesterov.” Nadia takes out a compact, does a quick assessment. “I know the one. Overcleaned, right? After the restorers were done, nothing left of the original.”

  “And Grigoriev.”

  “The one that’s not an oil?”

  I’m so angry, I decide to take the risk. “And, of course, the centerpiece lot. Catherine the Great’s Order of Saint Catherine. It’s authentic. We’ve got it confirmed.” That is at least partially true.

  Nadia looks up from the mirror. “Oh? And where did that come from? How come I haven’t heard anything about it this late in the game?”

  “Trust me, you will.”

  A trio of men in hooded dishdashas gesture for us to follow and I eagerly line up behind them. This may be my first moment of triumph with Nadia Kudrina.

  “Anyway,” Nadia says, swaying behind me, “I am surprised you’re even here. I thought I left a message with your assistant, to save you a trip. Maybe it slipped my mind.”

  “That’s thoughtful.”

  “Tan’. It’s like you don’t believe I’m sincere. I respect you. There might just not be enough business for both of us. That’s a fact.”

  We’re being guided down elaborate open galleries, past the steamy door of the hammam, through sumptuous rooms filled with treasures—vases, tapestries, European masterpieces, rugs—underneath the coffered wood ceilings and drooping lanterns. Palaces like this terrified me at first, but now I appreciate the treasures independent of their owners. We step out onto a garden the size of a city block, through a snakelike trellis, past olive groves and lemon trees, and before a set of gold double doors. We’re bidden to take
off our shoes and slip on silk babouches.

  My first impression is the rose flash of illumination, a room exploding with light. Women wearing elaborate caftans with silk strappy heels and heavy chandelier earrings. Dashing between them are the black spots of occasional tuxedos. The women call out to Nadia, fold her into their circle. I’m free of her, but then there’s that moment at a party where you’re aware of being very much alone. The klezmer band launches into a new song and, at its head, I recognize the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman.

  When I enter parties like this, my initial instinct is to flee, but now I slap the widest of smiles on my face and look approachable. I kiss familiar, nameless people on the cheek, compliment the women on their appearances. I raise myself to my full height and stalk to the bar. But once there, I’m intercepted by a chalky face topped by a beret. It grimaces at me with a wide pair of black-rimmed eyes. Its painted red lips seem to be murmuring something. I try to move away from its mouth but the crowd at the bar pins us together. The sound resembles muzh. Muzhmuzhmuzh, the creature is mouthing.

  “What’s with you?” someone asks, because what must I look like? Frozen, wide-eyed. All I can see is the red mouth, elaborately outlined. But then it’s moving away from me and toward a woman in a long silver gown who’s stuffed most of a Pomeranian into a Gucci clutch.

  I notice there are more of these white-painted men on stilts and unicycles, bending over to tap guests on their shoulders, drawing them into elaborate pantomimes. Mimes. For God’s sake, they’re only mimes. I try to still the rattling in my rib cage and pretend to enjoy their pranks. I can already imagine Medovsky’s wife, Lena, in that brittle way of hers, saying, “But the Soltukovs had a skating rink and penguins! We can’t let them throw the better party.”

  A glass of pink champagne is eased into my hand and I wander outdoors by the pool where the laser light show is streaming neon onto the Olympic-sized pool and groups of people lounge on cushions under caidal tents. A few of the guests are watching the interplay of light, and I press between them for a view. A pair of tightrope walkers are traversing a taut string over the pool, stacked Louis XIV chairs balanced on top of their heads. This is exactly the kind of lunacy Carl would be fascinated by.

  In those days before the book, he would invent day trips for us to Roosevelt Island, to the Cloisters. Inside a basket he packed for us, I would find the strangest things: hummus and sliced turkey bacon, dried currants and shaved ginger and pitted olives. I loved his wacky lunches. When I prepared our meals, they were carefully compiled, a sandwich, a vegetable, a dessert. Practical and composed.

  It was that afternoon at the Cloisters that I told him I would take the job. If I don’t step up, who would do it? I was the best specialist in a burgeoning field, a field increasingly littered with fakes. Who else will separate the authentic from the forgery? Who else will see to it that Russian art has a future, that the world so wary of Russian politics won’t be suspicious of the Russian market?

  “Sure, if you love it,” he said, as I knew he would.

  Follow your passion, live your dream, all those heady American myths. I loved that Carl believed them all.

  “My job’s so safe now.” I was thinking out loud. “That’s why I’m not sure. But it’s finally the step up in the company I’ve been waiting for. It’s my chance to be a vice president.”

  “But do you love your job like I love teaching?” He made the question sound so simple. “I can’t even tell how much you like what you do. You’re always stressed. I can only imagine how much more stressed you’ll be after you take this job.”

  “Being the head of a department’s no joke. You’re really expected to pull off these insane auctions. And all that travel. But it’s an opportunity that won’t come by again.” I pause, consider, and decide to plunge ahead. “Anyway, it’s not like we can afford to turn it down, right? We don’t even know if Ditmas will hire you.” Carl looked crushed. He took one more bite, then put his sandwich aside. There was the twinge of regret but I wasn’t used to the role of breadwinner; there was no room in Russian culture to accommodate it. Each week, my parents asked, “Did Carl get job yet?” and I was never brave enough to say I earned for the two of us.

  The Monacan sky has not fully darkened over the Medovsky compound, the smudge of color still a vivid purple. Among the tables laden with food, I catch sight of my client, and next to him are Oleg and David, easily recognizable from their online photos. Before them is an elaborate presentation of shashliki in the shape of a dartboard. They slide the meat off with their teeth, then use the skewer for target practice.

  “Gentlemen,” I say, hands light on the backs of their chairs.

  “Tanyechka, welcome.” Medovsky kisses me on both cheeks, exuding genuine pleasure. He is springing with good spirit, the fabric of his Italian shirt already wrinkled, his hair escaping its pomade and poking in every direction. His is a messy energy, the kind that relies on women to contain it. Still, I forget how much I like him, his warmth and eagerness to provide pleasure for everyone around him. He’s also Jewish, and there’s this link of outsider culture between us—to Russians, we’ll always be considered Jews, not Russians.

  “Sash, thanks so much for hosting me in this marvelous place. And what a good cause.”

  The men are rising to greet me, pulling me a spare chair, loading my plate with grilled lamb. I should be glad for the opening; all I have to do now is run the pitch on the steam of all this goodwill. But I’m still shaky from the mimes, as if they were warning me of something. Muzhmuzhmuzh. Nadia steps out onto the pool area, surveying the scene, probably preparing a predatory lunge in our direction. I feel my heart zipping again. There’s no time to reel them in, to close any deal.

  “This is not only a beautiful woman, but an extraordinary art specialist,” Medovsky is saying about me. I can hear him praising my eye to his friends, my graduate degree, my learned expertise. Magic, he calls my ability to put forth the most interesting of auctions, items culled for historical importance and also the kind of items not easily found elsewhere. But all I hear behind me is the advance of the stunning twenty-five-year-old Nadia and it seems to me that I’m being annihilated in her wake. Her heels are meant to stamp me out, make me irrelevant.

  (“Does he have another woman?” my mother asked, delicately. “He’s definitely cheating,” said Alla. “You don’t want to admit it, but it’s the most obvious answer.”)

  I interrupt Medovsky’s eulogy with a hasty fanning out of the catalogues, pointing out the most interesting of the lots, chattering nervously about the Order of Saint Catherine, about Larionov, Nesterov, and Archipenko, and even the fake Shishkin from Ramsdale. I’m engaging in an amateur’s trap, displaying an overeagerness that will distance the men from me, but I can’t stop. Nadia’s aura of sickly bergamot is advancing into our space, consuming us all with its aggressive scent. The men sink deeper into their seats, clicking off. In vain, I try to slow down, to bring them back around with my usual tactics.

  “Oleg Alexanderovich, do you own a home nearby?”

  But it’s too late: Nadia is bending over them with her jerseyed breasts and long strands of highlighted hair, her gold snake cuffs gripping her upper arm, and they awaken to her presence. She may be no art specialist, but she knows how to hold attention. They bid me to sit down, step aside, enjoy the show. Relax. Life is not all work, is it?

  “Hey, Tan’.” Medovsky pulls me aside. He’s annoyed. “We save our business for tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I say, shaky.

  He taps me in the direction of the party. “For God’s sake, at least go enjoy yourself.”

  I don’t know where to turn. Slashes of neon dance across my skin, Céline Dion is singing “If You Could See Me Now” either over a very clear loudspeaker or in person somewhere beyond the lemon groves. The mimes are undulating around me, obscuring me in the final hours before dusk.

  * * *

  Saint-Tropez by helicopter is a blur of land and water. We’re e
scalating ahead of the clouds, shredding through them one at a time. The engine’s too loud, the seat belt is flimsy. The dips and jolts of the cabin are wild and erratic. This was not what I had in mind when Medovsky suggested we do business, but you don’t argue when you’re being led up to the rooftop helicopter pad, and eased into an open door of a whirring chopper.

  Of course, now I wish I’d had the courage to opt out of this little trip. After assassinations, polonium poisonings, acid attacks, and murders of journalists in their lobbies, the next most popular method of wreaking vengeance on enemies in this dangerous world is tampering with victims’ transportation. How many times have I received the ominous news that a client was shot while getting into his armored car in Luxembourg or died in a private jet crash or simply “expired with no known cause”? How many times have I received phone calls from brand-new widows to cancel the preempt or to suddenly ask me to fly out to estimate estate property?

  Outside there’s sky, immense and vacant. In the tight compartment, my legs brush against the bare, sculpted calves of Medovsky’s mistress—what’s her name again? Milla? Malvina? A fair-skinned, red-haired, freckled thing—as she flips through photographs of opulent estates. The stout Realtor with a short, no-nonsense haircut, her neck zigzagged by layered gold necklaces, has been talking the entire time in frilly, pattering Russian. Once in a while, we bend down to earth to circle a property the size of a town in New Jersey.

  The Realtor continues, “A professional dance studio can easily be installed if we build into the atrium. And you said you liked fish? An aquarium would be on point right now.”

  “If we could just do a quick perusal of these other lots,” I interrupt, pushing forward the auction catalogue, but the mistress has her head against the windowpane, asking, “Is that fountain the Florentine one pictured here?”