Field of Mars (51 page)

Now enters a woman with reddened eyes, pausing at the gate, holding on to the stanchion for support, almost doubled over with the passion of her tears. She straightens, regains her composure, pats at her nose, and strides more comfortably to the door. Mina sees her coming.

Meets her there at the door, and now there are the two of them, these duped bedraggled spectres both with faces gone all to hell, tear-streaked, their perfect masks pulled by the cords in their necks, furrowed with sadness. Two women destroyed.

It is like a mirror. The stranger pauses there for a moment. A look of shock, of recognition on her face and Mina thinks . . . well, it explains so much, at least part of what had been happening over the last few weeks. This is all part of it, things begin to fall into place. Ahh . . . she thinks, this is the long-awaited
other one
.

The butler is hurrying to the door but she has beaten him. ‘Yes?' she means to say firmly, officiously. Already she is poised to close the door in the girl's face. Younger, blonder, and, looking at the dress, well, that's how she has recently spent the money. His money. ‘Yes?' She means to say it loudly, forcefully. A
yes
which really means no, but it comes out plaintively, more like
please
?

The stranger's lip trembles, is she going to cry again? ‘Is he here? I need to speak to him,' and even as she says it, knowing what the answer will be, and that she will not see him, not ever again. Defeated.

‘What is it that you want?' Mina replies, the voice a little stronger now, as the girl's eyes glaze over, her face beginning to turn away in misery.

‘I . . . I just wanted to see him, to tell him . . .' and the girl is suddenly staring at her strangely, an open—yes, damn it—beautiful face, and then she is falling, fainting right there on Mina's threshold.

Of course they carry her inside.

While the butler fans her—it is hot after all—she loosens the girl's collar, a flash of perfect skin that is flushed, and her sweet long neck fallen back against the silk pillows. Mina stands back and looks at her. Younger.

Almost as quickly the poor wretch comes around, realizes where she is, looks around the parlour with the expression of a wild beast. ‘Is he here?' Clutching her bag to her bosom, now all afraid.

‘No,' Mina says, the fight leaked out of her. ‘Bring some tea,' she calls out to Anna who is hovering in the archway. ‘No, he's not here,' she repeats and then she crosses through the gloom of the parlour to her cabinets. It is always dark this room, a real cavern. She hates the parlour, never uses it except when she's waiting for Sergei to return, and now, in the summer when it's cool and she can get a good breeze through the place. ‘No, he's not here,' she says, and her voice reveals much more than she wants. She finds a bottle and pours the girl a schnapps, and after a hesitation a little one for herself. The girl looks at it as if it were poison, refuses to drink until Mina knocks hers back. ‘No, you've missed him,' her own lip starting to tremble.

There is a noise from upstairs, the blasted machine. The door is open now, just as he left it, papers all over the floor. The girl stands, the schnapps goes flying, she sees the staircase and sets off for it at a run. It takes Mina a moment, and she doesn't get to her until the girl has reached the stairs with a gun in her hand.

As soon as Mina sees the gun she understands, and a wave of sympathy for the creature begins to build in her chest. Watching her, following her like a dog, as she moves through the upper rooms. Wherever he's stashed her, it can't be this good, and there is the most ironic pride she feels as they walk along, and the child gawks at the oil paintings, the chandelier, the carved doors, the ferns exploding from every recess, the thickness of the carpet. They are at the bedroom now and the girl stands there at the false bookcase watching the jabbering machine disgorge its coded message. The barrel of the gun wavers, droops.

‘No, he's gone. Gone to hell as far as I'm concerned. You'll probably hear from him, who knows when,' Mina says. She walks past the girl into her own room. Maybe she will change, go out. Start anew. It's no great tragedy after all. Actually, if one were to be honest, it's something she has been preparing for . . . for how long? Years. Since the first morning after, a little someone on her shoulder warning her the whole time that it couldn't last.

She pauses before the windows. She'd take off her clothes and get changed if it weren't for this girl lingering behind her.

‘Gone . . . gone where?' comes the little lost voice, as if
going
were a fantastical concept, something not taught in the conservatory. A obscene new word being learnt the hard way.

‘
America
,' Mina says. Unable to control her tears now, just the strange sound of the word has brought everything up again. ‘America. He didn't say so, but I can tell. He had the tickets sent to the dacha, so I wouldn't know.' She almost manages to laugh as she says it.

The girl moves on the parquet behind her. She has gone inside the forbidden room. Who cares? The jabbering stops and the sounds of the street come through the great open windows, a man with his cart and donkey walking along the embankment crying out that he has melons for sale.

She collapses in the windowseat, watches the poor man going along. No one will buy anything like that here. Everyone is out of the city anyway, everyone flown except the lost ones, the drunks, the prostitutes and addicts, the soldiers and the diplomats, all rushing back because of the emergency. Still, that doesn't affect the people on her street, here everyone but the dead is on holiday. From somewhere down on the Nevsky there is what she can recognize as a long drumroll, another regiment marching by. In the last days everything is suddenly being organized, gendarmes are coming around putting forms under every door. All the men are supposed to be giving their names and dates of birth. Sergei's notices have arrived and are still there on the table.

‘When did he go?' says the girl, a trace of urgency.

Mina cannot help but laugh a little. ‘This morning. He's sneaking out on his boat to Finland, there's a yacht club there that he owns, or subsidizes, or . . . he's a big benefactor, an
angel
. . . something. Then Hamburg, then Brest, and then . . . away. It was in code but I still saw the itinerary, they send that around whether you want it or not. He made all the arrangements with the porters about his steamer trunks, they were supposed to pick them up at his father's house so I wouldn't know, but he telephoned from here and they got the address wrong and came here first. A mistake.' She smiles now at Sergei's fallibility.

‘America. Are you sure?'

‘I know that's where he's going. Look. Letters. All from some bank in America. He was planning it for the last week or two. He has codes. Some of it is in code. But I always know where he is,' she says, her voice hard now, flinty. She will not cry again, that was it. The last time she'll cry for that bastard. The girl still has the gun out and while it is pointing at the floor, she might suddenly fly out of control, jealousy can do strange things. Jealousy can push you a long, long, way and in unusual directions.

‘He said that he'll send for me,' Mina informs her, and watches the girl's face, measuring how she handles it, how she deals with the revocable nature of Sergei's love, the passion that was supposed to last for ever vanished like the weakest summer breeze.

‘Could you put that away, please. He's gone. It won't do either of us any good.' The girl sinks into a chair, her future lost in the maze of the carpet.

‘I suppose if you love him enough, you could go after him, chase him across Europe. Perhaps if there's not enough wind, or some problem with his train connection, you could be together in Stockholm by tomorrow,' Mina says. Teasing, prodding. How hard will jealousy push this girl? Maybe she has hidden wells of strength, resources that will now suddenly surface, just as her own have. Maybe they should be thankful to Sergei for pulling the scab off their souls, making them both stronger.

Then all at once she understands the depth of the girl's dead expression. ‘Are you pregnant?' she asks as gently as she can.

The question brings a look of innocent surprise to the girl's face, a grimace that almost looks like a smile, and a supreme effort to hold back the tears, a pathetic gesture to protect her womb.

‘Why don't you give me that?' she asks, reaching for the revolver, an ugly thing, black and scuffed, the wooden handle held together with twine. How far can jealousy push this girl? She finally reaches out for the gun, the girl lets it go, their eyes meet, Mina puts it aside on the little table, and they embrace and the tears start all over again. Long sobs, and a moment when she can feel the girl trying to struggle out from her arms; that's her pride showing, not wanting to take anyone's charity, not wanting the pity. Well, she knows that feeling, Mina thinks. And then she surrenders and Mina has her face between her hands, like a mother herself. ‘I'll give you money. He left me money. I don't want his money, but you'll need it, won't you? I hate him. He's a bastard. You can come to Antibes. I know someone who can help you.'

The girl looks at her levelly for a long time, then over to the horrible little closet, a frown creases the young brow. ‘What has he . . . ?'

‘Oh, he's in trouble. Selling everything he can. To hell with the loss. He's trying to put all his money in Brazil or Dublin, or . . . Chicago . . .' She reels off the exotic names. ‘Selling at a loss, for a man like Sergei, that's trouble.'

‘I thought so,' she says, eyes wide. Just a child, Mina thinks. Doesn't she know that's what men like Sergei do? They get in trouble, that's part of the attraction, she wants to scream. Then they go down and we go down with them. ‘What did he promise you, did he give you anything?'

The girl shakes her head.

‘There's not much of his, here. You can look around. If you find something you can have it, if you want. I don't care,' Mina says. It surprises her, actually, how little it hurts.

‘What about all that?' the girl asks, looking back at the machine which has suddenly stuttered to life. Outside the military band is louder, the drums pounding as the men lustily play their way down the long boulevard.

Mina shrugs. ‘I just wish I could turn it off. There must be some way.' She stares at the jittering keys, the long curl of paper that has piled up on the floor. It looks like it could catch fire at any moment. Stupid thing. ‘I thought about calling the police and giving them all this. Maybe they could make some sense out of it. Maybe they could catch him at the station. Jail might be good for Sergei, don't you think? But now I think I'm going to burn it all instead.'

‘Because of him, of what he did?' the girl asks, her eyes wide. Such an innocent, she is. The kind of girl who would never burn her lover's property, would probably not even be able to tear up one of his letters.

‘Yes, of course I'm going to burn it! Certainly, I'm going to burn it
all
. You can see what's happening, can't you. He was involved in all this somehow. He did it and it's all come undone and he did it here . . . here in my house. When it all comes out, they'll say that I helped him, they'll come here and arrest me! Yes, I'm burning it.' She is laughing. The Lilac Fairy in Chains, the newspapers will scream. How absurd.

The girl is looking at her, Sergei's itinerary in her hand. She looks into the secret room for a long moment. The tears are all gone now, and she faces Mina with a long cool look. A little taller when she is not slumped over sobbing and thinking about suicide. Maybe the trace of a smile. She holds out her hand for the gun. ‘I have to give this back,' she says. ‘To someone, a friend.' Then, yes, a little smile to reassure her; it's so touching, she must have had to go out, find someone she knows and borrow the pistol. It's so operatic.

‘You can come back here. If you need help,' Mina says, crossing the wide bedroom and picking up the filthy thing, two fingers dangling it like a rotten fish on its way to the bin. ‘There's plenty of room, and I meant what I said about Antibes,' she says. ‘Sometimes blessings are where you least expect them. You can visit there and even have the baby, if that's what you want. It's lovely. Right by the sea.' And she looks into the girl's beautiful eyes; there's no reason to hate her, none at all.

Why not do something good in the world, reach out with your wand and make someone's life better for a change? ‘In a few days I'm going to turn all this over to the agents and they can send me the cheque when it's settled, so don't take too long to make up your mind.' She goes over to her wardrobe and stares for a moment at the treasures there, takes out one of her boxes of jewels, grabs the first thing that comes to hand, a bracelet. Rubies. He gave it to her in Venice.

‘Take this,' and when the girl reacts, she pushes it on her. ‘I don't need it. I'm never going to wear these again. Sell it, you'll need some money, yes?' Sergei's women all develop a taste for fine things if they didn't have it in the beginning, she knows that much about women.

‘Take it, and don't be a fool.' She drops the bracelet into the girl's handbag. ‘Don't ever be a fool again.'

FORTY-EIGHT

She told him all about it. Interrupting and cutting through his rage and his worry when she came through the door. Handed him the itinerary she'd been given. Still stunned by it all, really. He was silent, looking at her finally, and then setting the papers aside rather formally, uncreasing them because after all . . . they were important.

He held her for a long moment and she felt his head against her chest, the hair in her fingers. Nothing would ever erase it, she thought. She could always have that. Just that. Then she took his arms away because there was no time and they both knew it, locked the door behind her, paid the man an extra two roubles to leave him alone, and then went out to get food.