by Irina Reyn
* * *
“Great news, my dear,” Regan says. Her voice seems grainy and far away. I jump up in bed, my mouth sandy, dry. I manage to separate myself from the white taffeta but not my corset. What time is it? My head feels like a bowling ball but fragments of memory are coming back. Yes, there was the ride home from Krysha. I was belting “When You Believe” with Pyotor, whose voice turned out an impressive Mariah Carey alto. I don’t remember the last time I had that much fun.
“What is it?”
“We heard the final word from Natasha’s Catherine historian. He says that sources assumed it was lost sometime before she actually became empress, but he agrees with Natasha that the other orders from that period are spoken for and the period matches. Plus we’ve got the catalogue from Wanamaker’s. I think we’re good to go.”
I leap up. “Really? Oh, thank God.”
“I know, right? It was cutting it close.”
I turn on the light to the cool hotel room, the tan sheets, tan wallpaper, elegant writing desk, a black bowl of lemons on the counter meant to remind guests of an alternate, civilized home. How beautiful it looks now, how safe.
“What an immense relief.”
“Better to have covered all our bases,” Regan coos. “Now we can go into that auction and not worry.”
I look at my watch. Tonight, I’m supposed to meet Igor at the new Bulgari store. I pour a glass of water, guzzle the entire thing, and stare at the invitation.
Gerri Halliwell and Igor Yardanov invite you to a special opening.
“Thank you, my dear. See you on Monday.”
I feel porous. I didn’t realize how the question of the Order was weighing on me, pulling me down. Reaching over to part the curtains, I am sprayed by the Moscow morning sunshine. To press my head against the pane of the glass, to absorb it most fully. For a long time, I don’t move. It feels so good, for a change, not to move.
* * *
Gerri Halliwell is strutting around in thigh-high boots, giving the impression of fellating the microphone. She’s wearing too much of everything but clothes, awash in makeup and bleached hair. Pale skin folds around her middle, her breasts are pressed into a bouquet of her leotard. An oversized replica of a chunky diamond engagement ring rotates behind her.
The Bulgari shop would be a strange place to meet with a client, but this is Moscow we’re talking about. Most of the crowd’s engaging in some kind of deal closing, the passing along of business cards. Women older than me lurk with sharp slits in their skirts, vertiginous silver heels that match their purses too precisely. All that effort reminds me of how American I truly am: Russians never tire of considering every detail of their appearance, from nail polish to pattern of stocking to shape of earring to shade of mauve.
“You’re from where? Sotheby’s?” a man asks me, screaming over the music.
“Worthington’s,” I correct him.
Igor escorts a tall brunette into the room, and the crowd parts as if for monarchs. The woman looks down at us all, regal and icy in her beauty. Her pouty lips and long, feathery tresses brush against an arm lightly entwined around Igor’s. A man I faintly recognize as a guest at a recent client dinner is whispering in my ear, “Is that Igor Yardanov?”
And we’re all a bit in thrall to him, that faint mole imprinted right below his eye, not an ounce of excess fat. He floats and pauses, kissing Gerri Halliwell on each cheek and shaking hands with Moscow’s mayor and a flock of Bulgari executives.
“Toast, toast,” the crowd chants, and the microphone is handed to him. I tune out his speech—something about being honored to partner with such a prestigious brand once again, opening another location in Moscow proves the city is one of the most cosmopolitan in the world—and wait the proper amount of time for the well-wishers to disperse.
“You missed the preview. And I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning,” I say when it’s my turn to step in front of him. The nervousness from our late-night meeting at Worthington’s returns. He really is unblemished, like a canonized actor in his prime. His gaze is unwavering. If Medovsky wants everyone else to feel relaxed in his frantic presence, Yardanov is the opposite.
He holds up a finger. Wait, wait. Until the flow of supplicants in front of Igor completely ebb and Gerri Halliwell stops singing and the flashes of cameras recede. The revolving diamond ring glints against the dimming crystal of the chandeliers. The lights are dimmed into nightclub mode.
Igor pulls out his phone. “Bring it around,” he says.
I follow him outside where the air is fresh and bright with recent rain. The line at the velvet rope snakes around the block. A group of flashy women are being turned away by the bouncer and their cajoling and name-dropping is failing to gain them entry. Karaoke? one of them suggests to the others, resigned. They’re not getting in here.
Igor is leading me to a waiting BMW town car, one that looks like many of its neighbors, the streets clogged with unmoving, identical black bulletproof vehicles. The field of parked cars is so wide, it’s as though people dropped their cars off in the middle of the street and abandoned them.
“Why don’t we take the metro?” I suggest, but Igor finds the idea preposterous.
“Metro? Ty shto? What for?” He looks so offended that I give up, having long ago stopped arguing with my clients on the issue. In Moscow, if you have a car, you use it no matter that you squander years of your life in traffic. The whole point of massive wealth is the luxury of amnesia that you ever rode the metro next to people just like you, whose futures were equally drab once, whose clothes were bought at the same state-owned stores, who had only their pensions to look forward to. Miraculously, the car makes it down an entire city block before finally being stilled by traffic. I rack my brain for suitable topics of conversation, the intimacy that will earn me his trust. I settle on his parents.
“Igor, you never mention your family.”
There is a tranquility to Igor that contrasts with Medovsky’s frenzied nature, a self-contained ability to watch, to listen. In the car, away from the crowd, he appears to relax. He pulls at the knot of his tie.
“Why should I mention family?”
“I was just wondering how you get along. If they live here or in the States.”
“You are not first person to ask me this. Why is Igor Yardanov not married? That is thousand-dollar question.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that.”
Or did I? Igor, famous for his shifting array of beauties, never a repeating face, the rumor that he hires them for functions where he will be photographed.
“I like women. I’m not family man,” he says, annoyed. “What more do you need to know?”
“That’s not what I was asking, but okay.”
The car’s come to a complete stop; the driver lets out a series of terse blasts. I’m aware of staring at the same statue of some long-dead writer for twenty minutes now. Suddenly Igor says, “Let’s get out of here,” and we’re out of the car and rushing through a park. I’m trying to keep up in heels and the restrictive dress, past pensioners on benches and teenagers in punk attire peeling the skin of smoked fish and tossing beer cans on the ground. Packs of dogs that belong to no one follow our path with interest. The sun is still high in the air, and it occurs to me how rare evening is here this time of year, this land swabbed in eternal daytime. I can imagine Igor as a Soviet boy here once, with Medovsky, the two best friends with their satchels, their Lenin pins, the city crumbling inside yet orderly on the surfaces around them. The two of them racing after school just like this, socks pulled up to their knees.
“Wait, slow down,” I call after him, out of breath. The air is stinging my cheeks. I feel utterly free, the vista refreshingly clear. Maybe there was something in the Nadia night that woke me, a portal to a world I was overlooking. For the first time since Carl left, I can see beyond the two of us as individuals, the individuals the two of us thought the other was, each of us entrenched in where we came from and where we thought we were going
. If it weren’t for the heels, I’d run like this forever. And scream with joy.
Then we’re in Lavrushinskyi Pereulok in the magnificent courtyard of the Tretyakov museum complex. I’ve never paused to examine the actual structure of this grand edifice, but now I feel like a princess dropped into a Russian fairy tale. The red façade calls up ancient Rus’, a time of wood sprites and Rusalkas and witches roaming among enchanted birch trees. The intricately carved doors are beckoning us into a gingerbread house.
“Have you ever been here after dark?” Igor says with a wide smile, a boyish exuberance. “It kicks Worthington’s ass.” He holds my hand tighter in his and I feel that nauseous sensation of vulnerability that could be the thrill of forgotten desire.
He makes a phone call and the red doors spring open. A chiseled man, every starched detail in place, bars our way. “This is Sergei,” Igor says, and the man appears to bow only with his eyebrows. He has silver-white hair and a dancer’s physique, the proud neck, regal head, muscular legs. The tuxedo, white silk bow, cravat, cummerbund, all fit him perfectly. He steps aside, the two men exchanging a particularly long glance. A hallway explodes with light, then another, then the one after that. The three of us are alone in the temple of Russian art.
The Tretyakov Gallery’s selection anoints the canon of Russian art; it’s the final arbiter of what’s truly national and what is foreign. My favorite galleries display portraits of the female rulers of the country—the plump figures of Empresses Anna and Elizabeth, regal in their flaring skirts. There’s Empress Anna standing stiff and erect, wrapped in ermine and surrounded by the attributes of her power. Nearby, Empress Elizabeth stands ornate and resplendently bejeweled, the fun-loving twinkle in her eye. Then the portrait that appeared on Carl’s book cover—young Catherine the Great as grand duchess, the Order of Saint Catherine pinned to her side. I like the future queen’s direct glance at the viewer, the intelligence inscribed in her long, oval face. I’m smarter than all of you, it seems to say.
“Amazing, isn’t it, that this object can still exist, that this two-dimensional thing can be touched,” Igor says. I think he’s referring to the Order. His hands are light on my shoulders, the tendrils of his odorless breath spiraling close.
“Remarkable.” I feel a surge of triumph. The Order is real. The Order is hers. I can focus on directing it where it wants to go. And what it wants is to be reunited with Catherine.
We walk from room to room, the Nikitin portraits of Empress Elizabeth, the paunchy belly and weak, empty gaze of Peter III upon coronation, the Antropov portraits of Catherine the Great in her prime, the lively one where she wears the ermine cap shaped like a tidal wave, wields an intimidating scepter, and the more stately image, where she sits in profile, a Greek goddess on her throne. We pause before the Torelli ones, Catherine the Great dressed like Minerva surrounded by muses. One could never accuse Catherine of being underrepresented. The queen knew the importance of marketing herself.
Igor stops, gestures to the wall. “How can you say her Order doesn’t belong among all these people of her court? Picture it right here in the middle of the room for all to see.”
“It would be perfect.” My clients are wily, I must remember that.
“Then we must work together to make it happen.”
I can feel the excitement in him too, energy vibrating off his skin. We’re stopped before Shibanov’s Celebration of the Wedding Contract, showing the rite of joining Tatar peasants in matrimony. I’ve always loved the painting for the rich color and detailing of costume. But it’s the bride in the center that strikes me now, her body central in the frame, controlled by male hands.
I’m aware of Igor’s grip on my forearms. A steel pincer holding me in place. Up close, his skin smells of wooded musk, a sanded piece of new furniture. A scent of menace. I pull him toward me in a single movement, run a finger across the smoothness of his jaw, the cleft of his chin. I think he might take the opportunity to kiss me, but when he doesn’t move, I kiss him. The sensation of being single returns in a flash: fear and risk and blind, foolish hope, the feeling of needles pricking at my skin, the throbbing at the back of my throat. The new persona required for a kiss, the peril of believing in that persona once the kiss is over. The yielding and jabbing and play of it, the suspense about its choreography. Everything buried, forgotten.
The way he looked at you.
I realize that the barest of lips met mine before they were withdrawn and when I open my eyes, Igor is farther away than before, a face set square. Mortified, I fixate on the Shibanov painting, examine the woman at its center, her face stony as she faces her inescapable fate.
“That was a mistake. I’m sorry.” I feel like a seeded shame is worming its way inside my belly. “Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive,” Igor mutters. But his response is not a moral reluctance or hesitation of temptation. It’s empty of charge, of any yearning.
I follow Igor’s gaze toward Sergei flitting in and out of the gallery in the crispness of his suit. He is carrying a wide array of items across his arm: a coat, a tray of amber beverages, a candelabra. He is preparing for a party about to launch. As he passes, he measures Igor with his eyes. It’s in the particularity of the collusion between them that is visceral, bodily. There’s an invisible string that connects them that I didn’t feel between Igor and the latest brunette at the Bulgari store. A turning of a key inside me yields to a click. I think of the rotating cavalcade of long-haired women. I think of the laws in Russia banning homosexuality, but really they’re not so new. Homosexuality is always a target of the utmost disgust here and, law or no law, it will probably stay this way. My exhilaration is fading. I’m ensnared in a secret I never needed to hear.
“Nothing to forgive,” Igor repeats carefully. He’s back looking at the Shibanov, hands clasped behind his back. “Just let me have a real shot at the Order in the auction. That’s all I ask.”
I sense the oily mechanics of manipulation, a forced complicity. “Someone else is interested.”
But he’s back to being Igor, charming, graceful, flirtatious, but this time with an undercurrent of warning. He probes in his pockets and emerges with a pack of cigarettes. “I’ve already helped you solve that problem. I hear the Order is not authentic. Have you ever met Natasha Mikhailovna at the Hermitage? A lovely older woman, real Soviet variety, slightly bitter. Can you blame her? Poor seventy-eight-year-old lady works with men like me every day and barely makes two hundred rubles a month. I’ve ordered her a monogrammed Bottega Veneta tote. You can imagine. She is over the moon. What is it to her if the Order is real or not real?”
Through gritted teeth, I say, “How generous of you. But it’s authentic. It’s been proven by experts beyond Natasha.”
“Tanya, Tanya.” His voice is softer, as if we finally made it to the precipice together, and our only viable route is down. I can almost swear the tone of his voice is confirming my hunch. He’s gay, an unthinkable thing for an oligarch to be.
I’m being eased down the stairs toward the exit. The first of the hired staff, young, leggy creatures dressed as 1920s flappers, are stepping through the threshold pushing trays of china and heavy glass. It is yet another party to which I was not invited.
“You see what is at stake, don’t you?” Igor moves aside to welcome the women and snaps them toward Sergei. When they are out of earshot, he lowers his voice. “I am putting my very reputation in your hands as you are putting yours in mine.”
“There’s nothing I can do. I can’t manipulate an auction. Our calls are recorded.”
“Let’s not be starting from scratch as if we just met each other. Don’t forget, if I get the Order, a check will be immediately wired to your mother-in-law. New York Children’s Foster Alliance, yes? We are good in business, you and I.”
Deals like this are made all the time at the higher levels of Worthington’s. When clients are wealthy or powerful enough, contracts are broken for their sakes, binding confidentiality agreements a
re ignored, enhanced-hammer deals mean the seller waives all commissions. In the gallery’s gardens, I remind myself to put the entire thing in perspective. The decision has been made; only my marriage matters, not an auction. Carl and his family will be grateful; it will be a new beginning for us all. But as I walk to the Tretyakovskaya metro station, a tendril of doubt is worming its way inside, circling, before dissipating again in the red glow of a Moscow night.
Catherine
JUNE 1762
“Matushka, matushka,” a voice repeats. Catherine protests on the fringe of sleep, trying to remember where she is, what circumstances she is entering. A quick glance around the room confirms that it is Alexis Orlov, her lover’s brother, inside her private chambers at Peterhof, where her husband has practically imprisoned her. She notes the worn paisley chair by the window, the outdated curtains, the dead empress’s gold easing stool, that particular quiet of an underused palace. The empress insisted on bringing all her furniture when she changed residences, not noticing when chairs arrived broken, amputated of legs.
“What is it?”
Alexis’s face is either blanched of color or overly powdered but his eyes are inflamed. The entire thing is too intimately close to her own, projecting a spray of spittle on her cheek.
“Matushka, the time has come. Everything is ready.”
“Today? Right now?” The sun barely tipping over the sky, and her mind is still glued to the confusion of horses, the voluptuous ride of it, then death. Her dreams lately are a series of fragmented scenes in which someone gets hurt.
Alexis is trying to hurry her along with a steady drilling of words. “The time to act is now. Right now. Passek. He’s been arrested.”