The Steppes of Paris

by Harris, Helen

  “Volodya loved sausages, didn’t he?” Varvara Stepanovna reminisced. “I’ll always remember Borya and Elena taking Volodya and Ada and me to a German Bierkeller once, after a show, one of Volodya’s shows. And Volodya was so enraptured by their sausages, he ate a dozen in a row. Ada gave him such a telling-off!”

  “He didn’t especially like sausages,” Irina contradicted her. “You’ve got it muddled.”

  “I’m sorry, Irina,” Varvara disagreed. “But I think I’m right. I still remember Ada’s words: ‘Volodya, you are digging your grave with your teeth.’”

  “That cow!” Irina snorted. “I don’t want to hear what that cow said.” She delivered her trump card. “If he liked sausages so much, how come he never served them himself? You know he could make anything he liked.”

  ‘He’s dead, for God’s sake!’ Edward wanted to interrupt. ‘Who gives a stuff whether or not the man liked sausages?’

  Around him, the debate raged.

  “Sausages are a terrible bother to make yourself,” Varvara protested. “Nobody makes their own sausages in Paris.”

  “Excuse me,” Nikolai corrected her. “Princess Berberova made her own sausages. They were not, I have to admit, pinnacles of the gastronomic art, but they were home-made.”

  “He didn’t like sausages,” Irina insisted petulantly, like a child. “He didn’t, I’m telling you.”

  She stood up and started to gather the plates. “I wanted to remember Volodya’s birthday in harmony,” she said truculently. “Not squabbling over sausages.”

  She was gone so long fetching the dessert that Edward excused himself and went out to the kitchen after her. He found her with her head on her arms amid the debris of the kitchen table, crying furiously.

  “I hate it,” she burst out. “I hate it, and I hate you seeing it. I should never have asked you to stay to dinner. I should never have let you meet any of them. I know you’ll go off me now because I’m part of that.”

  Hard as it was for him to contradict her, Edward did his best. He patted her gingerly on the arm.

  But Irina dismissed him contemptuously. “There’s no need to pretend, Edouard,” she told him. “I’m not a little girl.”

  After dinner, as they sat in the living-room, Edward due to the number of people forced to sit on a pouffe, he writhed over the outcome. He had got himself into a situation where both staying and leaving would lead to even worse problems next time round.

  Varvara Stepanovna had latched onto him; he hadn’t heard her sad stories all before. As he struggled to see a way out of the cul-de-sac, he realised to his dismay that Varvara seemed to be telling him the story of her life.

  “I don’t know how old you think I am, Edouard,” she simpered, her cheeks flushed with the contents of her midget glass of liqueur. “An ancient old maid, I shouldn’t wonder, ha ha. But don’t forget that I was a gay young thing once too, you know. My youth was just rather different from some other people’s. Perhaps I didn’t have the same degree of frivolity some other people had, that’s all. You understand, I lived with my parents until they died. I was an only child and perhaps some people might say they cherished and protected me too much. I was born to them rather late in their lives; my mother was forty-three. So by the time I reached an age to go out and gallivant, ha ha, they were old people already. And, in any case, the way they’d brought me up, I didn’t really have the personality to go out and gallivant. You see, they were always very cautious. They warned me a great deal about all life’s dangers. They worried dreadfully. If I were late home, they’d think straight away that I’d been kidnapped or assaulted. The local commissariat de police actually forbade them to come in any more and report me missing. They worried especially about men; the ways they lured you, all the myriad tricks and traps. Really, I think I grew up perceiving men as a grave risk, ha ha; an untrustworthy species which might at any moment turn and devour you. You can imagine, it didn’t make for a great career as a flirt, ha ha. I was always on the look-out for those snapping jaws. My parents taught me there was one sure sign to watch for, though; the configuration of a man’s mouth. His eyes might be kind and gentle and adoring, but you could tell his true character by his cold, chiselled lips. Only I don’t know if you’ve ever tried judging the world’s character by mouths alone. The world is full of greedy mouths, cruel mouths, wicked mouths, mean mouths, but I never yet saw a mouth which was pure and saintly and good. Every man I met, my eyes would go straight to his mouth and I would see squishy, sensual lips or a narrow, selfish strip, which would distract me from his kindly brown eyes or his jovial red cheeks. I never found the perfect mouth. Though let me say that when I met you, Edouard, your mouth raised my hopes. Not for me, naturally, there’s no need to look so terrified, ha ha, but I felt sure you have the perfect mouth for someone.”

  She plunged precipitously at an adjacent table, which held one of Irina’s black and red lacquer trays of sticky cakes, and almost convulsively, she began bolting them very fast, one after another, into her mouth, cramming, plugging, punishing that vile offending orifice.

  Any remaining desire to stay demolished, Edward decided to make a virtue of his departure. If he left before anyone else, they would all of them see him going and safely reach the wrong conclusion about him and Irina. This was also the excuse he would use in justifying his exit afterwards to Irina.

  She followed him out into the hall, on the pretext of fetching his coat from the cupboard.

  “Why are you leaving so soon?” she whispered. “What’s the matter?”

  Edward whispered back: “I want all of them to see me leave.”

  Irina looked relieved. She nodded understandingly. “But you’ll come back, won’t you?” she whispered. “When all of them have gone?”

  She took his head tenderly in both her hands and, despite the open living-room door, despite the assembled listening ears, she administered a near-disabling goodbye kiss.

  Once out on the Avenue Duquesne, Edward told himself that he had not said yes or no. He had not committed himself. If, after a walk and a chance to clear his head, the idea of a return trip to the Cité Etienne Hubert appealed to him, then the option was open.

  He turned into the Avenue de Breteuil for a change and walked out onto the Esplanade des Invalides. In the dark, it looked especially big and bare; a vast, deserted drawing-room with its furniture of lampposts and benches, across which he made his way, a conspicuous trespasser. It brought home to him that, in all these months, he had got no closer to Paris than he had been in those early weeks when he had had nothing to do but walk. Thanks to his landlady, he had remained in a queer sort of cosmopolitan limbo; in Paris, but not of it, of Russia perhaps, but not in it, a place which, when you came down to it, existed only in the imagination of its absurd inhabitants.

  As he came out onto the quai and his feet, instead of turning left, back towards the rue Surcouf, instinctively turned right, in the direction of districts where there would still be life and things going on, he found himself wondering how he would remember his Paris period in years to come. Would he remember it at all, or would it have been submerged beneath years of stays in more exciting places? Would he remember his cold walks and his loneliness and the week he saw five films on his own one night after another? One thing was for sure; he would not remember the living, daytime geography of the city because he realised now he had never really got to grips with it. He had been immersed all winter long in another nocturnal geography, whose landmarks and inhabitants and customs bore no relation to any Guide Michelin. Would he remember Paris as a city of bulky women in fur coats, chirruping together in a sibilant language?

  He walked, enjoying the freshness of the night air, along the opposite pavement overlooking the river. At the corner of the rue du Bac, he witnessed a shouted altercation between an irate driver and a man in a grey raincoat almost invisibly walking his wife’s minute dog beside the kerb. Edward drew level with the dispute in time to savour their climactic shouts of “Imbé
cile!” and “Ordure!” In search of further Parisian scenes, he followed the quais right round to the Place Saint Michel, repeatedly giving the view ten out of ten as he walked. The rue Saint André des Arts was still brilliantly lit and wide awake. Edward enjoyed the spectacle of the strolling crowds and the half-intriguing, half-repellant window displays of the Tunisian cake shops. A man was suddenly ejected from the doorway of one of them, pursued by a minute Arab in a skullcap who screamed after him, “Il est interdit d’insulter les races maintenant! Understand? It’s forbidden to insult a person’s race nowadays! Forbidden! Forbidden!” His elderly customer, noticeably unsteady on his feet, staggered away into the shadows, mumbling insults not yet in Edward’s vocabulary. He caught the comments of a passing couple, though, a conservatively dressed, middle-aged pair, picking their way distastefully down the busy street after an expensive dinner off the Boulevard Saint Germain. It was the metallic carapaced wife who turned to her pudgy husband and commented acidly, “Des gagas comme ça, on devrait les abattre tous. Nutcases like that one ought to be put down.”

  It was extremely late when Edward got back at last to the rue Surcouf, but the phone still rang twice. He didn’t answer it. It only occurred to him just as he was about to fall asleep, and it put a wry smile on his face, that Irina would doubtless deduce that he was off spending the night with someone else.

  He rang her late on Sunday afternoon and told her about his outsize walk, extending it by an hour or so as a safety measure. He could sense her smarting resentment. She said very little and what she said was sharp, shrewish. He had intended to invite her out to dinner that evening, to put an end to their hostilities, but naturally he didn’t now. He had to show Irina that nastiness would get her nowhere.

  Henry reappeared on Monday morning, tanned and good-humoured. He listened to Edward’s inevitably anticlimactic account of his week’s absence, and he laughed.

  “You mean the New Zealanders didn’t retaliate by dumping radio-active waste in the forecourt of the Elysée Palace? Chirac didn’t disembowel Giscard in a television duel?”

  Then he looked considerably more serious. He stirred his cup of Marie-Yvette’s truly terrible coffee, as if contemplating whether or not to drink it.

  “You’re not being stretched nearly enough, are you, Edward?” he commented. “Isn’t it about time we found something sensible for you to do?”

  Edward hoped fervently that, in his fifties, he too would develop a similar network of creases around his intelligently avuncular eyes.

  It was the prospect of a week away which enabled Edward to put up unprotestingly with two of Irina’s more wearing weekends. Henry’s “sensible thing”, which he came up with remarkably quickly, before the week was out, turned out to be at first sight pretty idiosyncratic. He wanted Edward to go down to Marseilles to do some spade work and fix up some interviews for a feature he was planning on Jean-Marie Le Pen and the rising National Front. “And while you’re down there,” he had added, “why not take a few days’ vacation in the Midi? Unless I’m much mistaken, you’ve got a fair amount owing, haven’t you?”

  Edward had wondered, although not for long enough to spoil the pleasure of the news, whether this was a real assignment or just a jaunt dreamt up by Henry out of the goodness of his heart to give Edward a break at the paper’s expense. Even if it were only that, he concluded, it was more than welcome. He felt a warm rush of affection for Henry Hirshfeld at the realisation that one could so easily suspect the man of such a deed.

  Bucked up by the prospect of a departure, even five or six hours on the train to Marseilles, he rang Irina from the paper the day he heard the news. He didn’t make a habit of ringing her from work. For a start, she was usually out at work too and, even though he was painstakingly careful never to call her by her name on the phone (thereby improving his image by letting people know he was involved with someone, but avoiding the embarrassment of anyone finding out who), he was well aware he was running a risk. There was nothing to stop Irina from starting to ring him there, and although there was nothing at all suspicious about getting the odd phone call from his landlady, he wouldn’t put it past Irina to raise suspicions, especially since Aurore, who frequently took incoming phone calls, was such a fertile breeding ground for them. It was Friday afternoon, Irina’s afternoon off. She answered the telephone very promptly and gave a little gratifying cry of pleasure at hearing Edward’s voice.

  “Guess what?” he said playfully.

  Not in the least playfully, Irina answered, “You’re leaving work early and coming over here to visit me.”

  “Sor-ree,” said Edward. “Don’t you remember I’m having dinner with the Hirshfelds this evening?” And, this time, the excuse was genuine. “I thought we were seeing each other tomorrow anyway. No, this is to do with me and work.”

  After a noticeable pause, Irina asked in what Edward thought was a quite unnecessarily anguished voice, “Where?”

  “What d’you mean: where?” he laughed.

  “Where are they sending you?”

  “Marseilles,” he said. “In ten days’ time. Isn’t that great?”

  “Marseilles?” Irina exclaimed. “But I thought – how long for?”

  “Oh, just for a week,” he said. “Though I may tack on a few days’ holiday. It’s a special assignment for Henry. I don’t think I ought to discuss it on the phone.”

  He thought for a moment Irina was laughing at him; making fun of his top-secret assignment which couldn’t be discussed on the phone. But her high-pitched laughter was directed at herself. She explained: “I thought this was it; they were sending you to Marseilles for good.”

  “Christ, that’ll be much further than Marseilles, I hope,” said Edward.

  He didn’t know whether to be pleased or perturbed that his departure was already so much on Irina’s mind.

  He agreed to her arrangements for Saturday, although he could hardly pretend that they were to his liking. Their evening together was to be prefaced by yet another visit to Great-Aunt Elena. Now the novelty of the Russian milieu was wearing thin, Edward found the lengthy afternoons closeted with endlessly reminiscing females, frankly, pretty tedious. It was true that, every now and then, their stories did throw up some gem, some weird historical insight which, remembering Irina’s jibe, he might or might not jot down later in his notebook. But, by and large, he simply found them depressing. He felt in sympathy with Irina’s outbursts of impatience: so much grief, so many losses. Behind them, across Europe, they had left, if they were to be believed, pastel-coloured mansions, other better furs, serious jewels and close relations. Edward was not sure when another aspect of the family had struck him. As they sat here in Paris, painting their past in recollection pink, these women were all palpably strong and stout and, in keeping with their Parisian environment, tending to the predatory. But their menfolk had all fallen by the wayside. It was when he noticed this that Edward knew for certain he had no regrets that his days in Paris were numbered.

  They found Great-Aunt Elena somewhat below par. Varvara Stepanovna was at home with flu, and Elena seemed slightly at a loss without anyone to order around. She suggested busily that the three of them went for a walk in the Parc Monceau before their tea. Although it was an unpleasant day, with a raw wind scouring any area of exposed skin, and the complexions of the Parisians and the stone façades both the same washed-out, end-of-winter grey, Irina agreed readily. When Edward pointed out that it wasn’t a very nice day outside, she retorted that exercise was always beneficial.

  He had walked countless times now along the gold-tipped black railings of the park, which formed one side of the Boulevard de Courcelles, but he had never yet been inside. It was, not surprisingly, pretty empty and as they walked at Great-Aunt Elena’s processional pace along the wide gravel paths, he thought how Iskarovian it was, and how appropriate Irina and Great-Aunt Elena looked, bundled in their furs, and stepping with the same intrepid tread over the crunching gravel. He had noticed before the enjoyme
nt with which Irina wore her high-heeled boots. Once, when they were undressing, he had teasingly persuaded her to keep them on till last and even though in the end she had grown indignant and protested, “I suppose next you want me to do circus tricks with a whip?”, to start off with she had enjoyed the game and had admitted that she was exceptionally fond of her boots. They gave a welcome boost to her otherwise undeniably short, round shape and she strutted in them, acquiring straight away, Edward felt, an additional ingredient of seduction. Now, of course, he had Great-Aunt Elena’s black lace-up shoes between them to prevent him from properly enjoying the spectacle. She had held out an arm to each of them as they set off down the Boulevard de Courcelles and, even though Edward felt incredibly self-conscious about walking through Paris like this, she had maintained her firm grip.

  Because they walked so slowly, and because Irina and Great-Aunt Elena had lapsed into one of their prolonged exchanges of chirruping, he had a good chance to look around the park. He suspected that, in summer, you wouldn’t find here the poseurs of the Jardin du Luxembourg, with their tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles and recherché periodicals. It was a park for old ladies in black astrakhan coats, old gentlemen who raised their wilting hats, and possibly fey children escaped from an Impressionist painting with hoops and sticks. There was something overwhelmingly arch and toy-like about the park. Even the paths had names; the one they were walking along was called the Avenue Ferdousi. Near the entrance stood a fake domed temple and, not far off, a small fake aqueduct. Edward was wondering facetiously whether the hillocks in the neatly manicured green lawns were the product of deliberately coy landscaping or huge mutant moles which were running amuck under this enchanted garden when he heard Irina break into French to say, “Well, I think we should drop the subject anyway. It’s dreadfully boring for Edouard.”