The White Russian

by Vanora Bennett

  ‘There! The stole, just a little lower, madame,’ the perfumed salesman sang, tweaking the near-transparent white silk oblong she had round her neck down over her arms. Plevitskaya noticeably relaxed as the offending portion of blancmange-like flesh, now modestly covered, disappeared from view.

  ‘Maybe’, she said flirtatiously, after another long consideration of herself, and a further chorus of praise from all around, ‘I should step outside and show this to my husband, too. What do you think, Monsieur Epstein?’

  There! I told myself. We must be wrong! Skoblin must be somewhere here, after all.

  The relief was tremendous. I’d go back to ROVS, and the General would be sitting with Jean, and there’d be laughter everywhere and—

  I was actually looking around, as though I’d suddenly see Skoblin hidden behind a newspaper on one of these genteel chaises longues, when I heard the salesman’s reedy laugh. ‘Poor man, waiting in the car all this time,’ he was saying. ‘Your husband is a patient man, madame – but the husbands of beautiful women have to learn patience.’

  The sheer outrageousness of that piece of flattery brought my attention sharply back to the group behind the screen, because I had a clear memory that there had been no one waiting outside in a car, and definitely no Skoblin. The street had been empty.

  If Plevitskaya was making out that her husband was here, just outside, then she was lying.

  The hurt, angry rage I’d felt earlier came closer.

  I needed to catch her in this lie. And I needed to do it right now, because I was also uncomfortably aware of the sound, approaching me from behind, of a pair of high heels clacking over the parquet. It was my saleswoman with my glass of champagne. There was no time to lose.

  Boldly, I put my head round the screen.

  ‘Aha, so it is you – I thought that was your voice!’ I said brightly, and moved forward to kiss Plevitskaya on both cheeks to establish, in the eyes of our audience, that we were friends.

  There was, however, no trace of the faintly friendly hesitation I’d sensed earlier in her; none of yesterday’s tearful fondness either. It was obvious she just didn’t want me here.

  When I went on, still brightly but with determination, the others all began to look a bit worried, too. ‘General Miller’s vanished, did you know?’ I said, keeping my eyes on her, aware of the awkward movements all around as the sales staff – now joined by a new six-foot beauty with a brimming champagne glass on a tray – started registering how uncomfortable this newcomer was making their client. ‘His men are all out looking for him. His son Jean’s gone to the rue Jasmin, not far from here. He thinks your husband was taking him there to meet some men from Germany.’

  Plevitskaya stuck out her chin as I eyeballed her. I could see she was going to fight. ‘Germany? No!’ she said, shaking her head vigorously but also giving me the sort of defiant smirk that someone always does give when they see a way of saying something that isn’t – quite – a lie.

  Something clicked inside me and the world went light and hot and red. I’d never dared openly confront a woman of my mother’s age before. But now I had the General in mind, with his whiskers and beard and pot belly – a flesh-and-blood elderly man under that fancy uniform, with many weaknesses and blind spots, for sure, but someone Jean loved, and Grandmother had, too. He was probably bleeding in a sack somewhere, while Plevitskaya blithely tried on gold dresses. It was overwhelming, how angry I suddenly was. I’d do anything to force her to tell me the truth.

  Plevitskaya, though, was giving her Monsieur Epstein a look that said, perfectly clearly: Please get rid of this annoying interloper. Throwing out one arm in a magnificent (if quivering) gesture, she told me, with a smile that now seemed utterly false, ‘My husband is here, as it happens; he is just outside in the car, waiting …’

  ‘No he isn’t,’ I said. ‘The street is empty.’

  And I pulled back the linen at the window to make my point.

  Plevitskaya stayed right where she was. But Monsieur Epstein looked down. So did the women. So did the girl with the champagne glass. They let their eyes follow my arm, pointing dramatically down to the empty kerb.

  For a long, embarrassed moment, Monsieur Epstein just wriggled like a butterfly stuck on a pin.

  ‘Ah, well, Monsieur Skoblin will no doubt have finished his paper and gone to buy another,’ he finally said with a nervous giggle. Given what he’d just told Plevitskaya about the husbands of beautiful women having to learn patience, he could hardly suggest, without insulting his client’s appearance, that her husband had simply got bored and gone off. Clearly trying to get his bearings again in this confusing conversation, he turned to his client and put a hand on her arm. ‘I suppose we have been a long time, you and I, chère madame …’

  I could see he was about to have me thrown out for upsetting his client, who was so close to buying that hideous gold dress. There was definite hostility in his eyes when he turned back to me. In all their eyes, in fact: the saleswomen looked as though they’d happily stick hatpins in me to make me disappear. For a cowardly moment, I almost let myself be distracted by the idea of these lovely creatures manhandling me out.

  Then, catching myself losing my resolve, I forced myself to be braver and look straight into Plevitskaya’s face. I read guilt in her eyes, but also a defiance that made plain she didn’t intend to tell me anything.

  Catching her other arm, and trying to stop my voice trembling, I pleaded, ‘If you know anything, I beg you to help. Jean is beside himself. He thinks the General’s been kidnapped by Soviet agents – that good man, who’s been so like a father to him.’

  Plevitskaya snorted, and – another proof of guilt, I felt – ignored the key word ‘Soviet’, which had made the rest of the audience catch each other’s eyes. ‘Ah, I can see you don’t know any of the people you’re talking about very well, mademoiselle – because our General is the father of the young man you’re talking about.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ I angrily corrected her. ‘He adopted him in the war, which is why I think Jean loves him more than most people love their fathers – because he saved Jean, back then, in some army camp in the forest in Russia. And so Jean would be distraught if anything happened to him. Surely you can understand this?’

  I paused, aware that the shop assistants were looking in puzzlement from one to the other of us. They didn’t know whom to believe. Be braver, I told myself. Be simpler. There’s nothing she can do to you, after all. Stop saying ‘Jean’s upset’ and tell them what you think.

  ‘I also believe your husband is part of a kidnap plot,’ I said loudly, ‘and I think you know about it.’

  Even Plevitskaya was gazing straight back at me now, with wide, shocked eyes.

  ‘Adopted him where?’ she asked.

  ‘I think near Kursk?’ I replied stupidly, before realizing this was just another diversion. She was trying to change the subject again. I shook my head, and tightened my grip on her, feeling the soft material of her dress crease under my hands.

  ‘That’s why I’m asking, please, Madame Plevitskaya,’ and I could hear now how imploring my voice had got, ‘to stop General Miller being kidnapped. If there’s anything you know, anything at all, then please …’

  I gulped. I wasn’t acting at all. That half-sob had just come out.

  ‘Zyzyrovka,’ Plevitskaya said into the lengthening silence. Her voice was flat. Then her eyes flickered, and she looked away.

  ‘I must find my husband,’ she said suddenly, as if she’d made a decision. ‘Monsieur Epstein, please.’

  Hastily, he undid the pins, and she went behind the screen. None of us could look at each other any more. The couture-house people weren’t going to help me, I could see – well, it had been naive to hope they might step in and clap handcuffs on her. I knew that, really.

  A few moments later, she emerged in a black-and-red flowery dress, doing it up as she walked past us, without a word to or a look at anyone. Her shoes were in her hand.


  It was only when she’d reached the door that I realized she was off, without even her jacket.

  ‘Hey!’ I called. The door slammed. I ran after her. But by the time I reached the street, she was already getting into a taxi. As luck would have it, there were no others at the rank. ‘Rue de Grenelle,’ I heard her say, swinging herself inside. ‘Number 79.’

  There was nothing I could do but stand in the midday sun and watch the taxi head into town.

  When, a few minutes later, another taxi drew up, the first thing I asked was, ‘What’s at 79 rue de Grenelle?’ I had decided to follow her there, and catch her with Skoblin.

  It was only when the driver answered, with a scratch of the head, ‘The Soviet embassy, mademoiselle; is that where you want to go?’ that I finally gave up.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I need to go home.’

  37

  Plevitskaya sat very still in the taxi until, after it had crossed the pont de l’Alma and turned along the Left Bank, down the tree-dappled quai d’Orsay, she bent down and put on her painful shoes.

  She wasn’t watching the traffic, or the glitter on the Seine, or the fishermen on the banks, or the bateaux-mouches.

  If it all goes wrong, go to the Soviet embassy and ask for the crab salesman, she was repeating to herself, inside her head.

  Well, now that the American girl’s interference had prevented her from establishing her husband’s alibi, it had all gone wrong.

  But still, this taxi journey was the last one in the world she wanted to be making.

  She shut her eyes, feeling sick, when she thought of the crab salesman. No, it was unbearable to think of his reaction …

  She could hardly bear to think of her husband, either, who wasn’t even aware yet of how wrong it had all gone, so would be turning up at the gare du Nord in an hour, as planned, as part of the group waving General Kutyopov’s daughter off on a train ride. She winced as she imagined how he’d be expecting her to join him there, so they could go on making a show in front of the others of having been enjoying a jolly day out together all the while, and talking loudly about their purchases from Monsieur Epstein.

  It would only be when everyone started asking, ‘But where is your wife, Nikolasha?’ that he’d begin to guess. Then he’d have to get in his own taxi, and head with all haste towards embassy-land and, later, she supposed, the hold of the freight ship Maria Ulyanova. But even this was in doubt, because what if someone had already had the wit to get the police out to the gare du Nord to arrest him?

  She felt sicker still when pictures of the inside of the Maria Ulyanova, chugging through grey waters to Leningrad, started crowding into her mind. Would they have to see Miller again, in there? Would he look at them, from above his gag and bound hands, with eyes full of hurt and hate? Or, and now she began to feel really sick, might they all end up gagged and bound, she and her husband just as tightly as Miller, and all being delivered, at the other end, in the same van marked ‘bread’ or ‘milk’ to the Lubyanka? When she called to mind the crab salesman’s quiet eyes, anything seemed possible.

  That she could ever have hoped for today’s project to fail now seemed unimaginable. That she could ever have wanted to be sent back to Moscow felt insane.

  She laced the fingers of her hands together, and squeezed them tight to stave off panic.

  She’d thought she might search for her son if she got home to Russia, hadn’t she? But what if he’d been gone for years, just as she had? What if he’d emigrated?

  It had never occurred to her, until today, that he might have left too. Never, until that damn girl had started talking about Miller, and about his son – whom she was so clearly in love with – and Plevitskaya had remembered Zyzyrovka, where she’d lost her son …

  ‘What’s that you say, madame?’ the taxi driver asked.

  It was only then that Plevitskaya realized she must, without intending to, have muttered the place name out loud.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. And then, ‘No! I meant, I was saying, let me out here. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going on.’

  A moment later, she was standing alone on the pont Alexandre III, with its exuberant art nouveau lamps, cherubs, nymphs and winged horses, with its foundation stone somewhere far below the waters which had been laid by the last Tsar, long before he’d known he’d be murdered. She watched the taxi she’d just been sitting in dwindle and disappear, too, into the distant heat haze beyond the shining glass of the Grand Palais, and wondered what to do with the freedom she was taking, and which tomorrow to choose.

  38

  Evie

  I failed, I told Jean, as soon as I arrived back at ROVS. She knows. I found her. But she got away.

  I failed, too, he told me.

  All he’d found had been a piece of paper skewered on a railing in the rue Jasmin – a torn-off bit of the German letter his father had been carrying around for days.

  The entire Russian community was now mobilizing. But this didn’t help a bit.

  There were a lot of people already in the ROVS front office, and every hour brought more. The growing cast of characters wouldn’t have been out of place in a Chekhov play. Men in uniforms, both the absurd imperial kind and the blue salopettes of Parisian workers, or in sombre suits; women in darned black European clothes or peasant headscarves, young, old, older, ancient … It was uproar. There were people rushing in and out, crying or shouting, some muttering darkly to whoever was next to them, some striking their heads in gestures of elaborate despair, some covering their eyes, some phoning (though it was beginning to seem to me that the entire Russian community of Paris was already here). Yet none of them were achieving a darn thing. It was true I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and might be missing a nuance here or there. But I didn’t need to. I’d never seen such a parade of uselessness.

  In the small back room, which had been Skoblin’s office, a particular type of despair was being addressed with vodka. Thank God, I thought – numbly watching mournful old men troop through the main room, one by one, on their way to the bathroom – that Jean never drinks.

  Jean had got the secretaries ringing around every single place any White Russian had ever been to in Paris and beyond, in case, by some chance, General Miller had shown up there.

  But no helpful information had come back from the Russian aristocratic estates – from Kovalyovsky’s house at Meudon and Prince Troubetskoi’s at Clamart, and even Petrovka, down near Marseilles, home of the Tian-shansky family – or, for that matter, from Madame Sabline’s old people’s home in the château which I’d once visited with Jean, or the host of other places with connections to Russia. Jean called the newsrooms of Latest News and Renaissance, the two biggest Russian-language papers, but they hadn’t heard anything either.

  No one had seen the General.

  It was only when the delegation that had been seeing someone important off at the station thronged in, too, that one fragment of news about Skoblin filtered into the room. He’d briefly appeared on the station platform, looked dazedly around the group for a moment, said his wife was feeling unwell and he had to go to tend to her at the nearby café where he’d left her, then walked straight off towards the taxi rank. No one had seen him since, either.

  The only result of all the telephone calls was that, one by one, people from all the various Russian organizations showed up at ROVS.

  Jean and I sat, watching them mill about, in the dusk. Finally he lowered his forehead on to his hand.

  ‘I should be doing something,’ Jean said. He was pale. Well, he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. But his voice was oddly bright and conversational. ‘Not just sitting here helplessly, watching events unfold. But I have no idea what.’

  ‘Call the police,’ I whispered. ‘You’ve got to.’

  Jean shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t help,’ he said. ‘The French police can’t understand foreigners – unless they’re very definite ones, maybe, like Americans.’ He looked at me. ‘But we Russians, well, we’re
just ghosts to them. They can’t pronounce our long names. We don’t even have proper passports. And they know what an unlucky lot we are. Of course they steer clear. We’re no good for cops who want flesh-and-blood people, with beginnings, middles and ends – people who leave evidence.’

  ‘Well, change your luck! Don’t give up! Get them some evidence, now!’ I hissed. ‘We need to talk all these idiots round! Show them the evidence and make them agree you can call the police, because there still might be time to get your father help – but only if you hurry.’

  He looked at me. I could see he didn’t know what I was talking about.

  ‘Didn’t you say you were always on at him to leave a note in his desk, saying where he’d gone?’ I asked.

  He nodded, looking utterly forlorn. ‘But he didn’t,’ he said.

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I shook my head.

  ‘Perhaps you just didn’t look properly,’ I whispered determinedly. ‘Perhaps you missed it. Which would be a pity, because if you had a note in your hand, signed by him – saying he was heading to the rue Jasmin with Skoblin to meet men he’d been told were German agents, but suspected it might be an ambush and Skoblin might be in cahoots with Moscow; and if it also told the reader to call out the police if he didn’t come back by afternoon – well, then, the police would have to do something, wouldn’t they?’

  I opened my bag, pulled out a notebook and a pen and passed them over.

  After a moment, he took them, and began to write.

  It was a few more minutes before he slipped off to search his father’s room again.

  When he came back in, to what by now was the almost complete darkness of the front room, he announced his return by switching on the electric light.