The White Russian

by Vanora Bennett

  So I’d bathed and dressed and come back to talk to Plevitskaya, as I’d planned.

  ‘No,’ I said, more firmly now, feeling proud that I was able to put aside the darkness of the night but be grateful for her concern all the same. ‘I’m not unwell.’

  The last thing I expected was that, a moment later, tears would have overwhelmed me, or that I’d be mumbling about Jean through chaotic sobs, or that she would be murmuring soothing little bird-noises, or hugging me, and wiping my face with a corner of her shawl, and murmuring, ‘T’en fais pas, ma petite; t’en fais pas. Tout se guérit dans la vie, même les coeurs brisés.’ (‘Don’t fret, little one. Don’t fret. Everything heals, even broken hearts.’) I’d never thought, not for a moment, that I could be so weak, or she so kind.

  After a while, when my tears had subsided a bit, and we’d found a napkin to replace the damp corner of the Nightingale’s shawl, and she’d run through the things people say about heartbreakers – ‘The boy must be a fool to want to break your heart’ and ‘Not that I know General Miller’s family, but everyone knows that boy has always been a loner; maybe he’s just not the type for love, or not ready’ – she added, very gently and sweetly, ‘And it’s more than just a broken heart with you, I know, because you are in grief, too …’

  There was a near-sob in her voice at that. ‘That is no surprise. Your grandmother was a wonderful woman; her death so unexpected. Even I find it hard to believe, I, who have seen so much suffering, when dear Constance was so full of life just a week ago. I am sorry she’s gone.’ She squeezed my hands in hers.

  Our glasses were empty. She picked hers up and waved at the waiter. I sniffed acquiescence.

  ‘Please tell me more about her,’ I asked, trying, with only partial success, to dry my eyes. ‘I so want to know.’

  She remembered Grandmother all right. She said they’d sat up all night talking, in New York when they’d first met – an instant rapport. ‘Kind, glamorous, beautiful, Constance,’ she reminisced with lyrical enthusiasm, applying herself to the second glass. ‘She was wearing a silver fox wrap, and I recognised it at once as one of Ours … a Russian fur. And so naturally we started to talk in Russian – she spoke wonderful Russian, you know – and before we knew it we found we shared the most important possible common interest, she and I …’ She sighed again.

  ‘Because she loved your husband’s boss, you mean? General Miller?’ I asked.

  She gave me an odd look – startled, I thought, for a moment, as her wide-open eyes met mine. But amused disdain quickly took over. ‘Vryad li,’ she said firmly, bringing down her eyelids and wrinkling her nose. ‘Surely not. What, that big dough-ball of a general and my elegant Constance, with her beautiful soul? Constance, who loved art? No, no. Unimaginable.’

  She sounded so utterly certain – and looked so appalled, too, by the idea of the General as Grandmother’s lover – that despite myself I nearly laughed. Instead I did a little half-shrug, half-bow, to signify my apologies for interrupting, and she swept on.

  ‘No, no,’ she breathed tragically, ‘it was nothing as banal as that. No. What bound me and Constance together, from the first, was this …’ She leaned closer, over the table, and her breasts, squashed against the tabletop, billowed out alarmingly. ‘We had both lost a beloved child,’ she whispered. ‘The strongest bond of all …’

  A tear cut a shining line through her make-up. Her shoulders were shaking. It didn’t look like the hammy overacting I remembered. My fingers squeezed hers.

  ‘I’d never had anyone I could talk with about my little boy,’ she muttered. Small individual circles of wet were landing on the table. Helplessly I squeezed harder. ‘I met my present husband later, you see. It wasn’t his child, and it was wartime, and there was so much grief, and nothing got better afterwards. And we Russians, well, these days, we each have our separate crosses to bear, and we suffer in silence. There was no one who wanted to hear my sorrow. But she understood, because she’d lost her daughter, too. She knew how grief felt …’

  She looked up. Her wide lips were trembling and their lipstick was smeared. But she’d forgotten her appearance.

  ‘She used to say, “Oh, Nadya, I know the pain you feel, the helplessness.” She was so sympathetic to me. It wasn’t quite the same for her, of course, because there was no death in her story, while my little boy almost certainly died, lost and alone, with no one to bury him. Still, her daughter was lost to her, as surely as my son to me, and the daughter had shut her out of the next generation, too. There are many kinds of exile …’

  She fixed those woeful eyes on me. I could see she’d forgotten, in her tale about herself and her friend, that she was also talking about my family and me. But I didn’t mind. Around the edges of her story, I was privately seeing the faint outline of another story: Grandmother holding Plevitskaya’s hands and thinking about me.

  ‘But we found a shared home in our suffering, at least. And she understood, oh, no one better, how much I went on dreaming of going back to Russia somehow, to find my child, alive or dead …’ Plevitskaya’s face became more animated at this prospect, but then she sighed. ‘But of course I couldn’t – can’t – because here we are in France, and there’s no way back, never will be. I know that. But how I appreciated Constance’s kindness, all the same. A good, good friend …’

  How magnetic Plevitskaya was. By now I’d forgotten to ask what Grandmother had said about me because I was realizing how very small my concerns were – my heartbreak for a man I hadn’t known a month ago; my nostalgia for a woman I’d only known as a child – next to Plevitskaya’s all-enveloping tragedy. Her pain, I could see now, was on a different scale.

  ‘What was he called?’ I asked softly, holding tight on to her hand. ‘Your little boy?’

  She looked straight at me. My eyes were used to the red-lit darkness by now. I could see her lips moving, as if in prayer.

  ‘Zhenya.’

  I felt myself go very still.

  A brief flicker of hope stirred in me. Could that possibly mean … Could it possibly be your child Grandmother wanted me to look after and make amends to? I asked her from somewhere deep inside my head. But I didn’t say anything, and, a moment later, when Plevitskaya began talking again, I was glad I’d waited.

  ‘Yes, Constance did me nothing but good, all the time I knew her,’ she said, and though I could still hear anguish in her voice, I thought I could also hear something steelier. She sat up, drawing back the billowing breasts. ‘God bless her.

  ‘But her tragic death has interrupted the last wonderful thing she did for me,’ she went on, and something smooth and prepared in what followed set me on my guard. ‘Maybe I have already mentioned that she was funding a gramophone recording of my voice? I hoped it would be a new lease of life for my career. Move with the times, she told me, and she paid for the use of a wonderful German Magnetophon. How happy she was to help me, and how happy I was to receive this wonderful help from my dear friend …’

  She eyed me. ‘But now it might never happen.’

  I stayed still and kept my face uncomprehending. I still so wanted her to be, for another few minutes at least, that comforting maternal presence, wiping away my tears. And I wanted to go away and think, in my own time, about her lost son being called Zhenya, and what that might mean. I didn’t want her to shake me down for money for her recording. But I could see it coming.

  She sighed. ‘When she died, I think the company took away the equipment from her apartment, and anyway the last payments have still to be made before the edit can be completed. I saw nothing at the apartment at her funeral.’

  She took my hands. Any minute now, I thought, feeling manipulated and claustrophobic at her touch, yet ungrateful too, she’ll just ask me straight out to complete the payments.

  Quickly, loosening her grip on my hands, I got up. I knew I probably would end up paying for that recording, but I didn’t want to be railroaded into agreeing to it now. I didn’t want to agree as a result
of the warmth I’d felt from her while she was wiping away my tears. I wanted it to be a sound decision, taken calmly.

  ‘So that’s something you’d like me to look into,’ I said – smiling, but with infinitely more distance than a few minutes before, ‘while I’m going through Grandmother’s papers? Of course I will. And now …’ I bowed my head again, trying to hide my disappointment behind at least a brittle imitation of politeness. ‘Thank you … but I must run.’

  But I happened to meet her eyes as I turned away, and was stricken by the panicky look of loss in them. Even if she was just manipulating my emotions to get me to pay for something, I could see she was also genuinely frightened of what lay ahead for her without that recording. And how kind – more than kind – she’d been.

  I patted her shoulder as I passed. I didn’t want to commit myself. But I didn’t want to leave her without hope. ‘Leave it with me,’ I said. ‘I’ll try and work something out.’

  31

  General Miller was tweaking the points of his moustaches. How tiresome the boy could be: dogged and repetitive, with that angry look in his eye.

  ‘So are you absolutely sure there are no secrets you should be telling me?’

  Miller patted the air down under his hands at waist height, as if smoothing down his son’s feelings and massaging them away. That had been all that was needed, once. For a moment, remembering, he felt nostalgia for the great simplicity of that time in the woods, when Jean had still been a skinny dark-haired urchin, soaking up that gesture with his great, burning, trusting eyes, pale as water, wanting nothing more than to believe everything Miller told him.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ Jean said now. ‘Just answer me.’

  Wondering rather uneasily if there were any way Jean could possibly have got wind of anything about his relationship with poor Constance, or even about the awkward visit yesterday from that girl, Constance’s American relative – but no, that would be quite impossible, surely – Miller twirled his moustaches and smiled his blandest smile.

  ‘I do wish, dear boy,’ he said, ‘that I could at least offer you a drink.’

  Because, if he were to tell the other news, the news his professional mind was concentrating on, which was keeping at bay everything he might otherwise have allowed himself to feel about Constance’s death, they’d want to raise a toast to the future, wouldn’t they? And a proper toast, too, not a damn glass of milk.

  ‘Father,’ Jean said warningly. ‘I can see in your eyes there’s something. Come on.’

  And so, in the end, he broadened his smile and began, ‘Perceptive of you, dear boy, because, as a matter of fact, I do have some rather exciting news …’ and he’d told him the whole story of the letter from Canaris, head of the Abwehr, offering German support to ROVS. The Germans behind us! Skoblin’s hard work repaid! All we have to do is satisfy the two agents who are on their way to Paris, right now, that we’ve thought everything through; there’ll be secret talks in the next few days and then an alliance against the Bolsheviks in time for the coming war – and, soon, Victory! The Future!

  He couldn’t say those phrases himself without skipping through the whole necessary-evil phase of war – planning, advances and all the rest of it – and straight on to imagining himself watching a vast, familiar, yearned-for panorama fade into twilight, and the tremendous satisfaction of smelling the moss and melancholy of a summer nightfall, where he belonged. The scent of the pines. A great hurrah.

  But he couldn’t say the phrases to Jean without a twinge of nervousness, either, because the boy had his own bookish views, learned from all those night courses he’d been on, no doubt, and those writers he was currently following around, which no doubt he’d grow out of in time – it was all a question of age and maturity, surely. But still, the boy and he didn’t always see eye to eye on the really important questions, and the last thing he wanted, with something as important as this, was some foolish quarrel.

  So he was already shaking his head and smiling warningly even before Jean began to speak, while his young eyes were still threatening and his fists clenching and unclenching, before he’d even got out that first ill-considered yelp: ‘What – you don’t really mean you’re going to make a deal with the Nazis?’

  Because, really, what could a boy know of high politics?

  Jean

  So this was the secret. Not a love affair, or not only. This was what Father and Skoblin had been muttering about the other night. I shouldn’t be half this shocked. I should have guessed. They’d been angling for some sort of support from Germany for years. I’d just never thought for a moment that they had a hope in Hell. I should have been paying more attention.

  For one appalled moment, I told myself that what Father was saying, with that foolish don’t-oppose-me-dear-boy smile clamped on his face, must surely have been Skoblin’s idea – or anyone’s, anyone’s, except his.

  And then, before I could stop it, a mental picture of Evie imitating Father with a Hitler salute and the mocking words ‘Herr Schickelgruber’ flashed into my mind. She’d been right, then. Odious, vile, smug … but right. The thought made me hot with rage and cold with humiliation all at once; and, at the same time, filled me with a new protectiveness towards Father, who shouldn’t be mocked like that; who, though misguided, was a good man, deep down.

  With an effort, I put her out of my mind, knowing I could never speak to her again.

  Or I tried. Because she was still lingering there, like an unquiet ghost, which meant that for a moment I actually thought of arguing against Father’s plan on principle.

  But then the hopelessness of it struck me. It would mean nothing to Father that I found the notion of that German alliance morally repulsive. He simply wouldn’t hear if I started telling him what my friends, just out of Berlin, had been telling me – which, in my mind, I’d coalesced down to two or three images. Triumphant yobs in uniform picking out their victims; a bowed old man going down under their fists here; a window smashing into a thousand pieces there … Or Schickelgruber himself, spitting and howling at a crowd of fools under a giant swastika, turning that gentle land of music and philosophers and students into a brute wilderness where the bully-boy was king.

  What was the point of trying? Father would just start going on about boys not understanding high politics, or talking lyrically about the power he saw in those displays of brutality: the number of tanks, the number of feet marching … I couldn’t believe that was the heart of it, for him – not really – because I also knew that his real motivation – the strength of his yearning for that long-ago peacetime home I’d never known – was, genuinely, something I couldn’t understand. I could only imagine how strong it was, because of what he was prepared to do to get it back. For me, as an exile, imagining how Father felt about home was all working backwards – as if by seeing a shadow I could draw a picture of the object that had cast it. But, since I was tied to ROVS out of love for this stubborn old fool, I’d just have to try to understand his point of view, and tailor my counter-arguments accordingly.

  So, when I said, ‘Don’t do it,’ I tried to put my horror and anger aside, and keep things simple. I told him all the practical reasons I was frightened. I tried to appeal to his love.

  I asked him: didn’t he worry about all the rumours that Skoblin had a hand in the last kidnapping? I asked: what if his number two was a double agent for the Bolsheviks? And I said: what if this was a Red ambush?

  But when I saw the coldness in Father’s eyes, I saw that this was hopeless, too, and stopped, because he’d started again. If I can’t persuade my son to work with me, I must have faith in my other friends, he was saying. Skoblin is a good man. Skoblin is much maligned. We are old, old comrades, together since Constantinople and the camps. It’s dishonourable to think he might betray me in the way you suggest. I trust him absolutely.

  There was no point in arguing. I knew from past experience that neither of us would change our minds. I let it wash over me. I’d heard it all before.<
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  But it seemed worse today, our obstinate non-agreement – much more claustrophobic and depressing than usual. I didn’t let myself think of Evie – or not exactly, not more than I needed to resolve that I wasn’t going to betray Father like that again or expose him to her ridicule. But I was aware that what seemed so much worse was that, for the past few days, I’d believed there might be something else for me beyond the loneliness of living at one remove from all this. And now that was all closed off again, and there was just this, again, like prison gates clanging shut.

  ‘I mean,’ I said dispiritedly, ‘don’t do it without telling me, at least. Please.’

  For some reason, that seemed to reach him. I could see his eyes smile. Perhaps, for once, he’d heard the unspoken declaration of love that was always in my voice. At any rate, he nodded and touched me briefly on the shoulder with his big hand.

  ‘Do you know yet when the meeting will be? And where?’ I went on. ‘Can I take you?’