Mademoiselle Iskarov came out of her reverie. “Of course, it should be black bread,” she said. “Not one of these stupid baguettes.” She took the bread from its paper and wrenched off two ragged chunks. Then she delved into the salt package and liberally sprinkled each chunk. She passed the bigger chunk to Edward and proceeded to munch contentedly on her own.
Edward went more slowly. In combination with the ferociously strong coffee, it tasted to him a pretty noxious mixture.
When the bread ceremony was disposed of, they sat and sipped their whisky. Mademoiselle Iskarov asked him about his job and he wanted to reciprocate by asking her about her job but he couldn’t think what questions to put to a Russian teacher. The questions he could think of, nothing to do with her work, seemed perilously indiscreet and intrusive.
Soon enough, an uncomfortable silence settled over them. To break it, Edward determined to overcome his unprofessional hesitation. He started to interview her.
“How long have you lived in France?”
Mademoiselle Iskarov looked astonished. “What do you mean? I’ve always lived here.”
“Always? Were you born here?”
Mademoiselle Iskarov bridled visibly. “Of course I was born here. Do you think I speak with an accent or something?”
“I’d hardly be the one to comment on it if you did,” Edward said conciliatingly. “No, you just seem so Russian; you know, your flat and what you’ve told me of your family and this bread business. I just wondered.”
Mademoiselle Iskarov shrugged and spread her palms helplessly. “Of course I’m Russian. It’s not just something you discard like a pair of stale socks, you know. We keep our traditions, our language.”
“I suppose you’re completely bi-lingual?” Edward asked.
“Of course,” answered Mademoiselle Iskarov. She smiled affectionately at something within her and explained, “Russian is my mother tongue. French was only my father’s tongue,” and she pulled a comically disparaging face.
“Your father was French?” Edward said. “But you’ve got a Russian name.”
“It’s my mother’s name,” explained Mademoiselle Iskarov. “My father walked out when I was still a baby and my mother changed my name back when she changed hers.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Edward said.
“My mother could,” replied Mademoiselle Iskarov. “Why should I be blighted by the name of a criminal?” She laughed, making fun of her own melodrama. “I like this name. If I ever get married, I shall call myself Madame Iskarov Something or Other.”
Edward couldn’t help being secretly startled that she should still openly consider marriage an option. She was definitely well into her thirties although now, sitting in the weak-tea light of the standard lamps, animated and chattering, she could pass for younger. The combination of her job, Mademoiselle Iskarov the Russian teacher, and the alienating fact that she was his landlady had led him to put her in the category of confirmed spinster. She evidently saw herself quite differently.
She lifted her heavy amber necklace and considered the glossy beads thoughtfully under the light. “I suppose you’re thinking I’ve left it a bit late to be talking about marriage?”
“Of course not,” Edward said. “People get married incredibly late nowadays,” and, promptly, both of them burst into embarrassed laughter.
“How old are you?” asked Mademoiselle Iskarov warily.
“Twenty-six,” Edward answered.
Mademoiselle Iskarov clapped her hand to her lips with a little shocked amused exhalation.
“Am I allowed to put the same question to you?” Edward asked.
Mademoiselle Iskarov considered him coyly. “Probably better that than me telling you to guess and you guessing awfully wrong. I’m thirty-six. Now tell me I don’t look anything like that old.” She kicked her heels coquettishly and laughed.
“I would have guessed early thirties,” Edward said honestly.
“That much?” Mademoiselle Iskarov exclaimed mock tragically. “I’m heart-broken.” She grew serious. “I don’t believe in the importance of age. My mother had magnificent love affairs till the end of her days. She was fifty-five when she died and she had more broken-hearted admirers at her funeral than most women could have hoped for in their twenties.”
“She sounds amazing,” Edward agreed.
“She was,” Mademoiselle Iskarov said fervently. “She was. And my grandmother, too, before she started to – And my Great-Aunt Elena. I was brought up entirely by Russian women. They made me strong and capable of standing on my own two feet. I think that’s why I find the majority of men somewhat weak and unsatisfactory.”
“I see,” Edward said teasingly.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Mademoiselle Iskarov said sternly, “But I do. I exclude you, naturally, since I don’t know you, but my experience of men has on the whole not given me a high opinion of them.”
As he looked at her, tilting her chin defiantly towards him and twisting her right foot in a taut provocative circle, Edward suddenly, unmistakably sensed that her experience of men had been vivid, dramatic and extensive.
He was wondering when she might leave. To his disappointment, she accepted his offer of a second glass of whisky and as he reached out for her glass, he noticed on his watch that it was already half past eleven. He told himself, ‘Time, gentlemen, please’ and he decided that he would not offer another round when this one was finished. He had to admit that it was to Mademoiselle Iskarov’s credit, though, that he had no doubt at all she would undauntedly drink it.
A short while afterwards, she looked at her little gold watch bracelet, however, and gave a loud groan. “Oh no, I can’t bear it.”
“What’s the time?” Edward asked with studied indifference.
“A quarter to twelve,” exclaimed Mademoiselle Iskarov. “And at nine o’clock tomorrow morning I have to be back in that lousy lycée, face to face with my beloved pupils.” She pulled another extravagant face.
“Some time,” Edward said politely, “not now, you must tell me something about the lycée. I’m still pretty ill-informed about the French education system.”
Mademoiselle Iskarov seemed to mistake his politeness for a genuine desire. “Of course,” she said. “You must come round and have dinner. I’ve been meaning to ask you, in fact, ever since you moved in. But my time isn’t my own.”
She scrabbled around for her bag and her gloves and her silk neck scarf.
“That’s awfully kind of you,” said Edward. “But, really, I didn’t mean –”
“Now, please,” Mademoiselle Iskarov interrupted him. “Don’t be English. I really can’t stand that sort of thing.”
“But I know you’re incredibly busy,” Edward said. “I don’t want to put you to trouble.”
Mademoiselle Iskarov wagged her forefinger, now clad in a black leather glove, at him and declared in unusually accented English, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“Oh,” Edward exclaimed. “Do you speak English?”
“Certainly,” she answered, still in English. “But not infallibly.”
“Huh,” joked Edward. “To think I’ve been sitting here, labouring away in French all evening.”
“It’s good for you,” said Mademoiselle Iskarov. Promptly, she reverted to French. “So, when are you coming to dinner? Except we’re not just going to talk about the French education system.”
“When would suit you?” Edward asked helplessly.
Mademoiselle Iskarov thought for a moment or two. “Well, things always wind down a little towards the end of term,” she said. “The Christmas holidays start in just over three weeks. Nothing much happens in the last week of term. So why don’t you come not next Friday but the one after?”
“Um, the seventh?” said Edward, looking in his diary for appearances’ sake.
Mademoiselle Iskarov shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Yes, that’s fine,” said Edward. “Well, thank you very much.�
�
He called himself a couple of richly deserved rude names as he wrote the date in his diary; talk about asking for trouble.
When Mademoiselle Iskarov had left, he got ready for bed absent-mindedly. The novelty of having a visitor in the flat seemed to have changed it somehow. In his pyjamas, he went back into the living-room and had a look at it. Instead of imagining the room peopled by the numerous new friends he was going to make – dinners, parties – he found himself wondering about its earlier inhabitant – what had she called him? – Dyadya Volodya. What had he been like? Good taste in flats but, if Mademoiselle Iskarov was to be believed, poor taste in wives. What had he looked like? And, after his divorce from Aunty Arsenic, what sort of a life had he led here?
Thanks to the powerfully strong coffee, he couldn’t get to sleep. He thought over the way Mademoiselle Iskarov had talked about Volodya. He wondered whether their relationship had ever gone beyond that of uncle and niece, although he knew he was only speculating in that direction because it made the whole scenario more interesting. Most probably, Volodya had been a gloomy old Russian with a bushy beard and a taste for vodka. At least the flat’s tradition of alcohol consumption was being kept up.
He cursed Mademoiselle Iskarov for keeping him awake. There was no doubt about it, the woman was a menace. It was funny, when he had first met her, when she had that cold, she hadn’t really seemed to him at all threatening. She had seemed, if anything, slightly to be pitied; so swamped by life and its miseries. Restored to health, she was quite definitely a woman to steer clear of. He resolved not to pursue the acquaintance any further than he had to. He tossed on the wide, empty bed. He wondered how much action it had seen in the days when Volodya slept there.
His social life, if you could call it that, consisted of Henry’s and Mai’s invitations. The third time he went to have dinner with them, he had begun to feel a little pathetic and uncomfortable and he wondered whether he ought unfailingly to accept. Maybe they were only including him out of pity and he would actually go up in their estimation the day he couldn’t come. Otherwise, he was getting nowhere. He had struck up a conversation with a young German journalist on a press trip to the construction site of the new Cité des Sciences at La Villette and the German had given him his business card. (Edward’s weren’t yet printed.) After letting a respectable week go by, Edward telephoned him and Dieter, sounding somewhat startled, agreed to meet him for a boozy lunch. That was all very well but it didn’t solve the problem of the unending series of empty evenings nor bring any female company his way. Over lunch, Dieter volunteered the information that he was married with eighteen-month-old twins, as far as Edward was concerned the ultimate definition of a domestic nightmare. The ringed eyes and muzzily weary look which Edward had singled out on the press bus as the signs of a prospective fellow-carouser were thanks to the twins. For the rest of their lunch, he worried that Dieter might invite him home for a meal but, luckily, all he did was apologise that his wife was far too busy to entertain. He seemed obscurely puzzled by Edward’s approach as if all his capacities for social contact were exhausted.
Edward spent more time on his own than ever in his life. For all that he lived in a classically Parisian house and went to work at the city’s bustling commercial centre, he was effectively as excluded as if he were living in a different city entirely. The indignity of it bothered him nearly as much as the loneliness. If he couldn’t cope with Paris, how did he imagine he would have coped with Peru? The ready answer, that in Peru the shutters would have gaped open on avid faces, didn’t satisfy him. If he were as self-sufficient as he fancied, then he ought to be self-sufficient anywhere. Simultaneously, as he searched for an instrument to prise open the city’s shell, his dislike for it increased because it was making him appear a wimp in his own eyes.
Because of all this, he did not feel quite the dread he had anticipated when the Friday of Mademoiselle Iskarov’s dinner invitation arrived. If nothing else, it was one evening filled. She hadn’t told him a time at which to come so, at about seven o’clock, he telephoned her to ask when he should show up.
The telephone rang for so long he wondered momentarily if he had somehow managed to get the day wrong and she was out. But at the last moment, just as he was about to ring off, she snatched up the receiver and answered, “Allo?”
“Hello, it’s me,” he said, “Edward Wainwright. I was just ringing to ask what time I should come over?”
“Oich!” gasped Mademoiselle Iskarov. “When I heard your voice, I thought for a minute you were ringing to say you couldn’t come. I would have wept; I’m making you such a wonderful dinner.”
Edward, rather taken aback by this candour, stammered, “Oh, gosh, don’t go to any trouble.”
He heard what he termed an “Iskarovian snort”.
“I shall be disappointed,” Mademoiselle Iskarov told him playfully, “if you continue to act the proper English gentleman with me.” And when Edward, now quite at a loss, didn’t straight away answer, she said, “When d’you want to come over? When would suit you?”
Edward looked across at the elderly carriage clock on the bookcase which was a handsome oddity but hard to decipher. “I could be over there in about half an hour if you like. Or –”
“No, no, my God,” cried Mademoiselle Iskarov. “I’m up to my ears in butter. Give me at least an hour.”
“OK,” said Edward, mentally adding, ‘Why ask?’ “I’ll be there between eight and half past.”
He imagined he heard a last flustered gasp just before the receiver slipped too quickly from Mademoiselle Iskarov’s buttery fingers.
The idea of her labouring to create an elaborate dinner for him was somehow quite unexpected. He hadn’t thought of her as someone who would gladly get to work in a kitchen. He wondered whether she was also a good cook and what she might be cooking for him. He got dressed slightly more smartly than he would have to go to Henry and Mai’s.
As he walked over to the Cité Etienne Hubert, as well as the pleasant anticipation of a good meal, he felt a faint childish triumph; like the smug passers-by bustling along with their bottles of wine and bunches of flowers and caricatures of baguettes, he was on his way to a rendez-vous behind the mean metal shutters.
Mademoiselle Iskarov swept the front door open, giving a jaunty parody of a gracious society hostess. “Ah, good evening, Mister Wenwright. Do come in.”
“Ooh good,” Edward said. “Are we going to speak English this evening?”
Mademoiselle Iskarov spread one upturned palm in an exaggerated your-wish-is-my-command gesture. “If you desire.”
She had certainly made an effort, Edward noted. She was wearing an imposingly chic pink dress which gave an initial impression of being a shiny metallic sheath but as Mademoiselle Iskarov moved, it displayed an expensive ability to dimple and fold along with her, clearly suggesting every asset beneath it.
Edward admired this effect from behind as Mademoiselle Iskarov led him across the hall to hang his coat in a walk-in cupboard. It was remarkably clever, really; all the dress seemed to consist of was four long triangles of fabric, two front and two back, plus two sleeves, yet its repertoire of shimmering and clinging was quite amazing. Edward supposed it must be the creation of some ultra-fashionable Parisian designer; he frankly didn’t remember Mademoiselle Iskarov being anything like as elegant as she looked this evening. He appraised her covertly while she opened the cupboard, reached for a hanger for his overcoat and tried to clear a space for it inside. He was tickled to notice, just quickly, that the cupboard was crammed with a convincingly Russian collection of substantial fur coats and solid boots. Mademoiselle Iskarov held the coat hanger out to him. Edward decided that he wasn’t quite sure about the colour of the dress. He certainly wasn’t used to women wearing such an uncompromising shade of pink; a very bright, tough, grown-up pink, he thought, no relation at all of the soft, little-girl pink of Rosie’s favourite track suit. It seemed to him a somewhat dicey combination with Mademoiselle Isk
arov’s auburn hair.
He remembered, belatedly, the small box of chocolates in one of his coat pockets and he had to fumble for it as Mademoiselle Iskarov held his coat on the hanger. He was slightly annoyed that she didn’t make the effort to seem more pleased, just taking the box matter-of-factly and putting it on a nearby chest. Maybe she was already preoccupied with something else because she announced, “Now we have a little ceremony to go through; you must meet Babushka.”
Edward remembered his previous visit to the flat; he remembered how he had become conscious of the voice holding forth from the unseen room and how he thought he had seen a grey blur of movement as they passed the half-open door. He actually wasn’t sure that he wanted to meet Mademoiselle Iskarov’s grandmother.
But she led him across the hall, pausing at the door of the same room to whisper, Edward worried, perfectly audibly, “Don’t be concerned if she says anything unusual.” Without elaborating, she walked into the room, announcing clearly as she went, “I’ve brought a gentleman to meet you, Babushka.”
For the first moment after he entered the room, Edward couldn’t actually see the grandmother amid the cluttered quantity of cushions and pouffes and padded settees; she was herself just another unobtrusive rounded object among them. When he had distinguished her, he wondered with slight dismay what medical condition had made her quite so uniformly round: her small rotund body and her circular face, surmounted by a perfectly spherical bun, were one thing, but even her hands and feet were swollen, inflated-looking, and hung somehow helplessly at the end of her limbs.
Mademoiselle Iskarov went on in the same over-articulated voice. “He’s the new tenant of Volodya’s flat, remember? Mister Edouard Wenwright from England.”
The grandmother looked back at them absolutely blankly. There was no sign on her aged face that she was even aware of their presence.
Just slightly louder, Mademoiselle Iskarov continued, “You can speak English to him, Babushka. He’ll like that.”
The Steppes of Paris Page 7