The Steppes of Paris

by Harris, Helen

  He gave Lyova a careful sideways look. His face was, if anything, distracted, clouded in smoke from one of the pungent cigarettes he had offered Edward as soon as they began walking.

  “When did you last see her?” Edward asked.

  Lyova shrugged. “Not for a while. You’ve been keeping her too busy, I guess.”

  “Listen,” Edward said precipitously. “I think there’s something you ought to know.”

  He acknowledged he came out of his version of events, delivered somewhat hastily over red wine on the terrace of the bar, better than he would have out of Irina’s. But he felt he was fair.

  “You see,” he concluded, “she seems to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick completely. There was never any question at all of this thing having a future.”

  He was relieved that Lyova continued to smoke tranquilly.

  Eventually Lyova shook his head with weary amusement.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to Edward.

  “I do worry,” Edward contradicted him, aware that he was exaggerating this worry in order to appear a more admirable person. He told Lyova, in a considerably censored version, about Irina’s threat of retaliation. “I’m afraid she may be thinking of doing something silly.”

  To his astonishment, Lyova gave a rich roar of laughter.

  “You mean suicide? Irina? Really, don’t worry!”

  “But you didn’t see the state she was in,” Edward protested, now defending his own abilities as a judge of human nature as well. “She was – beside herself.”

  Lyova crushed his cigarette butt in the metal ashtray. He took a large swig of his wine and sat back, crossing his arms.

  “Listen,” he began patronisingly as though, Edward thought crossly, he were just sixteen rather than twenty-six. “I’ve known Irina for seven years. She was one of the first friends I made here when I came out. She wanted it to be otherwise; I mean, more than friends only. She was terribly keen on me. But I was still genuinely married then. The West hadn’t yet corrupted my marriage along with everything else. By the time the marriage started to come undone, by the time Anna decided that an advertising executive was a more appropriate partner than an artist in the West, I knew Irina too well to want to be anything more than the best of friends. Irina bore this disappointment very bravely. She was at that stage – otherwise engaged. I think she saw the benefit to both of us of having a good, close friendship that was free from complications. You see, Irina lives under the tyranny of her imagination. For her, the distinction between what she dreams and what she does is none too clear. She won’t commit suicide. She’s just in love with the idea of it.”

  “Honestly,” Edward interrupted him, “she did seem dreadfully distraught.”

  Lyova stroked wisely at his beard.

  “I believe you,” he agreed. “From time to time this happens, inevitably. What Irina represents is the triumph of imagination over tedious reality. When reality insists on barging in, she is always deeply shocked and hurt. She really believes things which aren’t true in the least, you know. I don’t know if she has ever talked to you about her beloved Dyadya Volodya. She has? Well, to listen to her, wouldn’t you agree, she and Volodya were the perfect couple, scandalously more than uncle and niece. Complete rubbish. I met this Volodya just before his death and, believe me, there was nothing to it. A spoilt little girl humoured by an incurably weak man. Irina had made the whole thing up. It would be a comedy if it weren’t also a tragedy.”

  He took another cigarette from his battered Cyrillic brand packet.

  “You can fly away to Moscow with your mind at rest,” he concluded ironically. “Anna Karenina may be Irina’s favourite book but, I can assure you, she’s not about to compose a sequel.”

  He breathed out smoke loftily.

  “If you like, I can give you some names and addresses in Moscow. I know a woman there who’d love to make your acquaintance.”

  In his last days, Edward reflected that what had happened to him in Paris was the opposite of a plot. All the lurid dimensions which he had imagined lay behind Irina’s half-coloured-in life turned out to be only that: imagined. None of them, it seemed, had ever existed at all. The relationship with Volodya, which he had invested with such sinister overtones, was, if Lyova was to be believed, nothing out of the ordinary. So what had given him the idea? Was it only Irina’s wishful thinking? Or did he have a conventional imagination which meant that when something was wrong, he expected it to be the obvious? Whereas, in the case of the Iskarov family, it was something more submerged and subtle, which had eluded him. And her friendship with Lyova himself, which, Edward had been convinced, was much more than Irina admitted, turned out to be the most innocent of friendships. Had he perhaps wanted all these sordid things to be true because they made dumpy, chaos-saddled Irina seem a more spicy and wicked partner? On the other hand, could everything really be as bland as Lyova suggested? He began to suspect Lyova’s motives in playing it all down, in attributing everything to Irina’s over-active imagination. What lay behind Lyova’s eagerness to promote a cover-up? Although he did not intend or now expect to see Irina again, Edward could not suppress a slight, perhaps professionally inspired regret that he might not get to the bottom of this story.

  They held a small leaving party for him at the paper. Everybody, Monsieur Marchais included, went out for a celebratory dinner on Edward’s final day, toasted his destination and offered him a variety of jokey parting ideas.

  It was Aurore who, in innocent goodwill, delivered the most disturbing.

  “I hope you find yourself a gorgeous Slav girlfriend,” she declared. “A ravishing beauty of the steppes, and one day you will bring her back to Paris and introduce her to all of us.”

  Frankly drunk afterwards, Edward walked part of the way back to the rue Surcouf. He felt the decisive triumph of departure struggle with his usual feelings of helpless hostility between the dark apartment houses. How unyielding they looked, with their stone nipples, and their windows which he now, for the first time, saw looked vividly like architectural vaginas: long narrow slits with their narrow shutters forming prim labia on either side of them. He grinned drunkenly at the vision. The windows epitomised this prudishly exclusive female city. A vague depression settled over him as he walked, for he realised it could be said that he had failed here. The city had, not even on a grand scale, administered the first of the dents by which, he supposed, you eventually attained the battered cynicism of a Henry or an Arnold. If he could only view this Parisian dent as a battle scar, honourably acquired, then the time he had spent here would not have been only a setback.

  He thought of Henry raising his glass at the party and repeating once again, “Na zdorovye” and he concluded, with a rush of real affection for the man, that knowing Henry Hirshfeld had made his stay in Paris worthwhile.

  Irina

  I saw my happiness sail past and out onto the open sea. I was left, standing on a shore which bore a strong resemblance to a pavement, watching him disappear. He didn’t know I was standing in the neighbouring entrance watching him, that I had been standing there since two o’clock, waiting to see him go. Elena had inadvertently let me know his plane left that evening, but for these geriatric Slavs I know the evening can begin at four, and I didn’t want to risk missing my last chance of looking at my happiness.

  So finally, a little before five, I saw the taxi arrive, the ugly driver go in to fetch him, and I saw him come out of the house, weighted down with his luggage, and supervise the driver as he piled it into the boot. I saw him run his fingers in nervous irritation through his curly hair as the driver incompetently tried to jam everything in, and I nearly cried out because that last sweet curl on the top of his head stayed crooked and, as he jokingly congratulated the driver on fitting everything in at last and turned briskly to open the rear door of the taxi, he looked so like a young boy playing at the importance of a man. The driver swung round dangerously in the narrow rue Surcouf, against all the traffic regulation
s, intending to set off again in the direction from which he had come. I was sure Edouard would see me as the driver rammed his bumper up onto the pavement nearly at my feet. I crushed myself right back into the corner of my doorway, as thin as a blade, although actually I do not think I would have minded if he had seen me. For the last brief spurt backwards of the driver’s perilous turn, I saw him through the window. The taxi’s police number on the window near his head gave him a remote official look, as if I were seeing his face on a passport photograph or – a suddenly seductive thought – reported dead in a newspaper. He was looking straight ahead, already concentrating on his future, and that was how he vanished from my life; his face set resolutely on the route ahead but that little crest of curly hair still sticking up as if from recently rumpled sleep.

  His was not the first departure I had watched in hiding from that doorway. I saw Anibal leave too, although then I was not spying on him in expectation of his departure, but catching him in the early morning together with the other woman whom I suspected he was bringing to Volodya’s apartment. I saw them go away together; Anibal handing her with his gangster’s elegance into their get-away car. I crossed the road right in front of their car. The friend who was driving it had to brake abruptly. I expect he would have pulled the window down or even leapt out to yell at me if Anibal hadn’t panicked and urged him to speed away. That was how I saw him as the car accelerated forward; hunched over the front seat in a cowardly panic, screaming at his friend to get him away from the terrifying monster called Irina Iskarov. I had no intention of intervening. I stood on the kerb, having finished crossing the road at my leisure, and I surveyed the pathetic spectacle he made quite calmly.

  But Edouard’s was without any doubt the departure which wounded me the most, Edouard’s was the one which I believed might kill me. It could still kill me now. He was the youngest of all my tenants and he was the one I loved the most. I loved him the most because he was the youngest. My love for him was not only the love for a man but also for a boy, a child.

  Thus the remainder of my life began, my mourning a gaunt incongruity amid the insolent radiance of the city in summer. Although internally dead, I carried on mechanically with my daily duties, so demolished I did not even notice the sequel there was to be. My dulled brain revolved around two topics only: July and August as if Edouard were still there beside me – his constantly remembered company in the Tuileries and passing the Taverne Tourville and in my bedroom – and recapitulating again and again and again the wonderful winter we had shared.

  To tell the truth, I was not really interested when he first telephoned about the flat. We had that Norwegian female settee selected by Varvara Stepanovna lined up, and it was only out of nostalgic curiosity that I decided I might as well look him over. I thought then that the apartment’s days as my love nest were over. I thought on the phone that he had bad manners. But when I saw him, I understood; he was so terribly young, of course. He hadn’t yet learnt any better.

  I remember that dreadful day. I had such a disfiguring cold, it is still a mystery to me how he was straight away attracted to me. When I opened the door and saw him standing there, what with my flu and my shock, I really thought I might collapse. He looked so young and innocent, standing on my threshold. He had come to me, and I knew it was more than I could do to send him away. Young, physically ripe, and unspoilt; those were the characteristics which struck me first. His fresh pink cheeks and his particularly red mouth and, of course, his candid blue eyes; these were all virtues which I only distinguished singly later. But what was most astonishing, apart from the sheer unexpectedness of the encounter, was that so very soon I realised he was also captivated by me.

  I prayed, all the time he was away looking at the flat, that he wouldn’t want to take it because, if he did, I knew without any doubt what would follow. But at the same time, of course, I was desperate for him to take it, desperate for this, perhaps my last chance of happiness, not to evade me. I was already preparing all the reasons I would give, all the lies I would tell, why we had to let it to him.

  When he came back, I wouldn’t let him see me again; one horrible glimpse of my raspberry of a nose and my albino rabbit eyes in the bathroom mirror had been enough to convince me that was the only possible solution. I thought it might intrigue and tantalise him also to be denied admission.

  Once he was installed in Volodya’s apartment, I proceeded with exemplary restraint. I allowed three weeks and a day to go by before I telephoned him and, even then, I invented some domestic pretext to make sure he suspected nothing.

  Seeing him settled in Volodya’s interior did give me quite a turn. Of course, in the interim it had since been Giorgio’s interior, and Imre’s, and Anibal’s. Perhaps it was simply the shock of seeing someone new installed there once again and realising that the whole wicked business of plucking my pleasure from the circumstances created by Volodya’s untimely death was about to begin all over again. I had to sit down. I worried that the place was now simply too steeped in shadows for any more adventures to be possible there. The inhibiting ghosts literally over-populated the place. But I concentrated on Volodya; that was how I had originally overcome my scruples when the idea of exploiting his apartment first occurred to me. I knew Volodya would have been pleased that, as he was no longer there to care for me, his apartment continued to provide solace after his death. He would have been a bit jealous, certainly, but I found a little way of getting round this. Mentally, I would present my tenants to his inspection when I had them displayed on his bed. Only if they met with his approval would I proceed. Luckily, because Dyadya Volodya and I were in the essential ways so similar, he did not object strenuously to any of them. I knew he would like Edouard the best.

  The sheer pleasure of Edouard’s proximity soon did away with my anxieties. I busied myself with all my domestic excuses for coming: light bulbs and tablecloths and keys. But really I was dwelling on the delightful details of his appearance which I was now noticing one by one: there was a sprinkling of freckles over his high-coloured cheeks, still a soft cushioning of puppy fat to his smile, and that curly hair which I already longed to rumple. I know this awakening appetite was mutual because he spontaneously invited me to stay for coffee and then subtly changed the invitation to whisky instead.

  It might seem implausible to say it but when I left Volodya’s apartment that night, I know I was already halfway in love with Edouard. Over the next fortnight before our dinner, I must have thought of little else. The warming knowledge enabled me to cope more bravely with the increasingly gloomy aspects of my existence: Babushka’s continuing journey into aberration, the burden of responsibility which I have to bear for her and Elena and, for Mama’s sake, for Nikolai Grigoriev; those turgid Saturday-night dinners, and over it all, the suffocating awareness that my time is running out, that if I am not able to break free and create a future for myself, this is all I shall have.

  Our dinner did not actually go quite as well as I had anticipated. Babushka, bless her, cast a chill over it right from the start by refusing to greet Edouard and treating us both to an icily suspicious stare; before anything remotely deserving suspicion had even taken place! It infuriated me. Edouard seemed determined to play hard to get too. I don’t know whether it was merely boyish panic or a more calculated strategy, but he had the nerve to ask me at the outset if I had also invited other people. I was indignant. As if I would have gone out and bought that abominably expensive dress for “other people”; tidied the apartment from top to bottom and cooked all afternoon for “other people”! It took the atmosphere a little while to recover from that blow. Apart from anything else, I was disconcerted to discover that Edouard wasn’t entirely the sincere, straightforward person he appeared, that he was prepared to play hard-hearted games with me.

  But in due course things did revive; we spent a most delightful evening. I knew it was too soon to expect a move from anyone so young and so British. I didn’t try to hurry him; I knew the quarry could be scared
away. But I was disappointed, bitterly disappointed that he didn’t even kiss me goodnight.

  These are dreadful days. It is as if my life stopped the day he drove away, yet I am still perversely, quite against my will, alive regardless. I am alive for the fulfilment of a purpose which transcends me. For I myself, ex-Irina Iskarov, am finished. I received one blow too many in the delicate region of the heart and this time I shall not recover. Never again another lover, never again another afternoon sailing aboard my ghost ship from the rue Surcouf. I remain alive for one reason only and it is not a reason which can be spoken publicly.

  After the dinner, I was a little desperate, I admit it. I was worried that Edouard’s failure to kiss me goodnight signalled some serious impediment which I had not yet uncovered. (Maybe the English disease?) I telephoned him sooner than was sensible, on the very next Monday. I invited him to come to a concert, any old concert; today, I cannot even remember any more what the music was. It was the slimmest of pretexts of course. My only aim was to set eyes on him again as soon as possible. As a means of deflecting suspicions, both his and my dear family’s, I made it the least seductive occasion I could possibly imagine; a concert in the Russian church, and I dragged Elena along too for good measure.

  Naturally, no progress of any significant sort was made that evening. But my purpose was achieved to the extent that Edouard did seem to relax a little about the prospect of our acquaintance and Great-Aunt Elena, the old flirt, took such a shine to the well-bred young Englishman that her suspicions melted like her favourite English fudge.