The Steppes of Paris

by Harris, Helen

  Edward was wondering experimentally whether the dictum would apply to Irina when she asked him, apparently without opening her eyes, “Why are you looking at me like that, Edouard?”

  He answered flippantly, “Oh, just admiring you, I expect.”

  Irina’s eyes popped open. “You didn’t have an admiring look, let me tell you. You had that look as if I were a rare specimen of furry animal. You were observing the animal’s sleeping habits.”

  “Oh come,” Edward began unconvincingly.

  Irina interrupted him. “Please don’t just consider me as a geographical oddity for your journalist’s notebook,” she said with a display of rigid dignity obviously inherited straight from her aunt. “Remember I am a full person too.”

  Great-Aunt Elena bustled back in at this awkward juncture, bringing a dish of quenelles de saumon. Edward was glad of the excuse of his earlier dinner as the meal got under way, for it became clear that Great-Aunt Elena, in an effort to please the supposed tastes of her English guest, had prepared exclusively bland and stodgy dishes.

  At first, the conversation centred on her preparations.

  “I thought you would be homesick,” she explained to Edward. “I discussed with my butcher what might be appropriate and he suggested rosbif. But I knew it couldn’t wait during the concert so in the end I got escalopes de dindon instead. They’re quicker and I know that turkey is a traditional Christmas dish in England, isn’t that right?”

  “It’s very kind of you,” Edward thanked her feebly, forking a bit of tasteless pink quenelle around his plate. He was marginally put off to notice that Irina was eating this unappealing dish with a hearty appetite; he had imagined that someone who was such a superlative cook would have been more discerning. But she seemed to tackle whatever was put in front of her.

  “Have you been to England?” he asked Great-Aunt Elena politely.

  She shook her head. “But I feel I know England intimately,” she said. “You see, we had an English governess in Russia when we were children.”

  “Oh God,” Irina groaned rudely. “Miss Macpherson. Here we go.”

  Great-Aunt Elena ignored her pointedly. “Miss Macpherson. She was an admirable woman. She taught us to read and write, she taught us English, she taught us to play the piano and to sing. She was a woman of profound culture and,” she glanced defiantly at Irina, “great moral worth.”

  “Macpherson is a Scottish name,” Edward said tentatively.

  “Yes,” Great-Aunt Elena said, “Yes, she was Scottish. But she taught us the most beautiful pure English.” She sat a little straighter in her chair and recited:

  “I travelled among unknown men,

  In lands beyond the sea;

  Nor, England! did I know till then

  What love I bore to thee.

  ’Tis past, that melancholy dream!

  Nor will I quit thy shore

  A second time; for still I seem

  To love thee more and more.

  Among thy mountains did I feel

  The joy of my desire;

  And she I cherished turned her wheel

  Beside an English fire.”

  She spoke with an impeccable BBC World Service pronunciation but a distinct burring Scottish brogue.

  While she was in the kitchen frying the escalopes, Irina explained, “Miss Macpherson is single-handedly responsible for Great-Aunt Elena’s elevated view of the teaching profession. She thinks I’m carrying on a noble calling by dinning irregular verbs into the heads of my dear girls. Personally, I think Miss Macpherson must have been a terrible tyrant. She simply bullied them all into adoring her.” Absent-mindedly, Irina impaled another quenelle on her fork from the serving dish and set about chewing it. “You should see her in their photographs; bony, as straight as a soldier on guard duty, and with an expression –” she scowled ferociously into the middle distance. “They’re all brown old photographs, of course, but Elena told me she had flaming red hair, so red that when she let it down to go to bed, they would cry out, pretending they thought there was a bonfire in their nursery.”

  Over the escalopes, served rather disconcertingly with dumplings, the conversation moved to Edward and from Edward, by way of his flat, to Volodya.

  “Maybe we ought to give Edward Volodya’s writing desk?” Great-Aunt Elena suggested to Irina. “Since he’s a journalist.”

  Irina hesitated. “We could. But actually it’s not that good for writing on for long periods, you know; it tips forward if you lean on it too heavily.”

  “What did he do?” Edward asked. “Was he some sort of a writer or a journalist?”

  He saw a veil come down in front of Irina’s and Great-Aunt Elena’s faces. For a few seconds, both of them contemplated a past he could not share.

  Irina answered, “He had several professions; he was too clever to allow himself to be limited by any one. He was in the import-export business for a long time and he was also an impresario; he put on shows with an optimistic element, you know, singing and dancing and plenty of jokes. He liked people to have a good time. And he had a lot of other interests too: stamps, perfume, haute couture, gastronomy.”

  Great-Aunt Elena came out from behind her veil to add, “At the time he lived in the rue Surcouf, he was planning to set up an antiques business. He wanted to conquer the new world with the treasures of the old. He went into partnership with an American woman –”

  “That,” Irina interrupted, “was a fatal mistake, literally fatal. Really, I don’t know why you have to bring that up.” She turned to Edward. “Dyadya Volodya was the most kind and generous man, you understand,” she said insistently. “But frequently unlucky in matters of the heart. Certain sorts of women would take advantage of him.”

  Before Great-Aunt Elena could intervene with a rival version of events, Irina added teasingly to Edward, “You must beware the influence of his home.”

  “Enfin, Irina,” Great-Aunt Elena protested. “Edward’s far too sensible for that kind of thing; look at him. And in any case, poor Volodya suffered from a problem of disorientated people; he couldn’t accurately place others in the category to which they belonged. He had become confused by too many migrations. He couldn’t recognise the dangerous species. That couldn’t possibly happen to Edward.”

  “I don’t know,” Irina said mischievously. “Edouard’s going to travel the world for his newspaper too, you know. He’s only here in Paris for a year. He could quite easily develop the emotional problems of a disorientated person.”

  “Only here for a year?” Great-Aunt Elena exclaimed. “You mean you let the flat to somebody who you know is only going to be here for a year? Whatever did you do that for?”

  Simultaneously, both Irina and Edward volunteered, “It might be two.”

  Great-Aunt Elena shook her head in dismay. “I thought we’d agreed –”

  “Look,” Irina said, gesturing at Edward. “He seems fine, don’t you agree? So what’s the problem?”

  Courteously, Great-Aunt Elena agreed that Edward did seem fine. But, embarrassingly taking Edward as a witness to Irina’s fecklessness, she rolled her eyes heavenwards.

  The rice pudding she produced next was a fitting end to the pre-digested dinner; it was milkier than an English one and enlivened by a few pieces of candied fruit but still a near relative. Unenthusiastically, Edward manoeuvred it around his plate.

  Great-Aunt Elena, apparently intent on rebuking Irina for her rash behaviour over the flat, continued mercilessly. “Irina has the emotional problems of a disorientated person too, I believe. She doesn’t like Frenchmen, she doesn’t like Russians; she can’t settle for anybody, it seems.” She scooped up a bit of angelica and chewed it vindictively.

  Irina said something grumpily in Russian, which she translated for Edward as, “What a marvellous song; sing it all over again from the beginning.”

  “Italians, Hungarians, Brazilians,” Great-Aunt Elena went on. “Never anybody too suitable, too close to home. Africans, Chinese –”r />
  “I have never,” Irina said with frigid dignity, “had anything to do with a Chinese.”

  They all three started laughing, including Irina, but she added, “Anyway, I have Mama and you to thank, don’t I, for bringing me up such a sophisticated and cosmopolitan person that I can’t find satisfaction anywhere on earth. I’m following in Mama’s fine tradition; I’m sampling the fruits of the earth.” She concluded, with an unnerving mixture of flattery and spite, “We can’t all be as clever as you, Elena, and pick a saint like Borya first time round.”

  The teasing and bickering subsided as they scraped their pudding plates clean and simultaneously realised it was nearly one in the morning.

  Irina announced, “In eight hours’ time, I have to analyse Turgenev with my Terminale,” and she shuddered.

  Great-Aunt Elena was reluctant for them to leave. “No coffee?” she protested. “No petit digestif?”

  She kept hold of Edward’s hand in both of hers when they shook hands at the door. “It doesn’t matter you’re only going to be here for a year,” she reassured him earnestly. “We shall still treat you as a member of the family so long as you’re living in Volodya’s apartment. I’ll telephone you to make sure you’ve got everything you need. And maybe you can come over here from time to time and talk English to me. I’ll look after you better than Irina.”

  Irina was uncharacteristically silent in the taxi on the way home. Edward said little either, browsing through some of the odder images of the evening: the grandmother’s journey; the Scottish accent of a woman long dead incongruously preserved in Great-Aunt Elena’s poem; Volodya failing to recognise a poisonous species of American woman and, in his gastronomic fervour, consuming her, with fatal results. He reflected drowsily how many of the evening’s participants were in fact dead, yet how tenaciously they kept their places among the living.

  Eventually Irina said, “I suppose you’ve had enough of my family now to last you the whole year.”

  “Why d’you say that?” Edward asked.

  Irina gave a single hard laugh. “Isn’t it obvious? Who, in their right mind, would put up with such a performance all year round? And you’re so much in your right mind.”

  “I found this evening very interesting,” Edward said feebly.

  “Interesting!” Irina repeated bitterly. “Yes, I suppose for you it was interesting.”

  They both stayed silent to appreciate the drive across the Pont des Invalides. The taxi entered the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg. Edward briefly enjoyed the novelty of driving companionably between the dark shuttered apartment houses.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to be taken home first?” he asked Irina. “You’re sure you don’t mind if he drops me off first?”

  Irina shook her head. “You’re sweet,” she said bleakly.

  The taxi pulled over opposite the rue Saint Dominique.

  “Well, thank you again,” Edward said a little awkwardly. “I did enjoy this evening.” He extended his hand, uncertainly, to shake Irina’s. She didn’t even reach forward to take it. She raised hers in an offhand little wave. “Au revoir, Edouard,” she said limply. “We’ll be in touch.”

  He looked after her as he waited for the lights to change so he could cross the boulevard. Huddled in her furs, Irina was a gloomy but unmistakably a romantic figure as the taxi bore her away.

  Henry and Mai’s party, for the “holiday season” as Henry put it, for the “fêtes de fin d’année” as Marie-Yvette put it, was on the last Saturday before Christmas. Although there were still a couple of working days before the public holiday, Marie-Yvette and Aurore were both treating themselves to the following week off and as Edward overheard them discussing the party in the office, he got the impression that it was going to be quite an occasion for letting one’s hair down, comfortable in the knowledge that most of them wouldn’t have to face their colleagues for several days afterwards. He would have liked to ask them for further details – Henry’s party was a hardy annual event – but it seemed undignified. From what he could hear, it sounded as though it would be a fairly smart event; there seemed to be a good deal of dressing-up on the cards. But from his three months’ exposure to Parisian females and their propensity for dressing themselves up at the slightest excuse, he acknowledged wryly that this was not a reliable indicator of the smartness of the party. He noticed also that no one made much of its being Christmas. At first, he wondered if this were out of polite consideration for Henry’s Jewishness, not that that seemed to consist of much more than a wicked sense of humour and knowing where the best restaurants were. Then he realised it was general; Christmas in Paris didn’t seem to have the obscene quality of a sexless orgy which it had in England. There was a welcome lack of spray-can snow and piped carols. Monitoring the office conversation over the last couple of days before the party, and noting the absence of commentary on who was going to give what to whom, on who was going to eat which of the series of monumentally tedious meals at whose house, Edward decided that Christmas here had a non-committal cosmopolitan flavour to it, which he rather approved of.

  He wore a tie, as a precaution, and arrived punctually half an hour after the time Henry had said, bringing a gift-wrapped box of marrons glacés. Mai, who opened the door to him, accepted it with a little giggle of amusement, “Oh, Edward, so traditional!” and while he was idiotically wishing that he had had the wit to bring something else instead, steered him down the picture-hung corridor, exclaiming, “Henry wants you to meet somebody here. Let me introduce you right away before I forget.” Following her, Edward felt slightly ruffled; surely he wasn’t such a pathetic figure that even his boss felt obliged to introduce him to single women? The now familiar living-room was already fairly lively with an intriguing assortment of guests, of whom he recognised only Marie-Yvette and Aurore, and an Indian couple whom he had met there once before at dinner. But the person Mai was enthusiastically steering him towards was not a woman.

  “Arnold,” she said to a large sun-tanned man, who was stooping, a look of forced attention on his face, to listen to the Indians. “Meet Henry’s new colleague, Edward Wainwright.” And to Edward, she added, “You may talk about work. Arnold is your man in Kabul.”

  With a whisk of silky Oriental fabric, she spun away to answer another ring at the front door, and Edward urgently tried to remember all he knew about Arnold Elgood. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t very much because Arnold, presumably relieved to be rid of the Indians, started to question Edward vigorously about himself.

  He regretted afterwards, when they had been separated by the party, that he hadn’t had a chance to put a few questions to Arnold about life in Kabul and maybe make a good impression on him. But the next arrivals turned out to be a couple, old friends of Arnold’s, and the three of them plunged across the room towards one another with cries of recognition and delight.

  Edward fell back on Marie-Yvette and Aurore. Marie-Yvette had made only a slight concession to the party, changing her perpetual jeans for a pair of black leather trousers and weighting her, Edward thought, singularly unsexy ears with a pair of immense, apparently scrap metal earrings. But Aurore was a vision; she was wearing a striking turquoise and navy jumpsuit, finished off with unbelievably high-heeled turquoise shoes and what looked like turquoise kitchen foil electrifying her hair. Edward would have paid her a compliment if she hadn’t introduced a thickset West Indian man, standing beside her looking distinctly resentful and ill-at-ease, as her fiancé. The four of them stood and spoke stiltedly until Mai bustled over again, exclaiming, “Alors, Monday to Friday, nine to five isn’t enough for you lot? Aurore, come and tell my friend Madeleine what she should know for her holiday in Martinique.”

  Idling across the room in the hope of refilling his glass, Edward came face to face with the Hirshfelds’ daughter Dinh. She was standing by herself in the middle of the animated crowd, surveying her parents’ party with an expression of serene aloofness. Both faintly embarrassed, she and Edward rather wooden
ly wished each other “Bonsoir”.

  ‘Great,’ Edward thought sarcastically. ‘First the secretaries from work, now the boss’s infant daughter. I’m really doing well here.’

  Without any loss of dignity, Dinh offered to refill his glass for him. “What are you drinking?”

  When he answered, “Scotch”, she wrinkled her small nose disdainfully.

  She brought him back an exceptionally strong measure and, at a loss for anything else to say to her, Edward asked, “Have the school holidays started yet?”

  “Of course. The lycée broke up on Thursday.”

  At the mention of the word lycée, Edward realised the girl must be a fair bit older than he had imagined. Simultaneously, a more complex thought occurred to him.

  “Do you go to the same lycée where your mother teaches?”

  Dinh nodded. A tense, defensive look came over her face. But Edward’s next question was obviously not what she expected.

  “Do you know the Russian teacher?”

  She frowned in puzzlement. “The Russian teacher? I don’t do Russian.”

  “Mademoiselle Iskarov,” Edward volunteered, reproaching himself fiercely for what he was doing.

  Dinh still frowned. “I don’t know all the teachers. It’s a big place.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Edward said hastily. “I was just wondering.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dinh added. “There is one foreign lady there. She’s quite fat and fierce-looking.” She blew out her utterly smooth cheeks and glared at Edward grotesquely.

  Appalled, Edward stared at her; it couldn’t be. Renowned as little girls were for nastiness, he simply couldn’t believe they considered Irina “fat and fierce-looking”.