Russian Winter (22 page)

“You know I’ve been trying to find out more about the origins of the amber suite. Trying to see how far back I can trace each of the pieces. It’s possible I might be able to go all the way back to whoever they were originally intended for—if it was anyone specific. It’s quite a challenge, and I haven’t been able to get much of anywhere yet, but most famous makers kept ledgers where they listed everything they produced, as well as the buyers. Lenore doesn’t seem to think we’ll
have much luck finding anything for the amber, but who knows? The Boston Public Library is good at requesting this type of information, and with so many archives online, I’m thinking we might be able to find something.”

“Really?” Grigori heard the eagerness in his voice.

“The thing is,
if
I’m ever able to find anything, I’m assuming it’s going to be written in Russian. In which case, perhaps you might be able to help me.”

“Certainly.” To think that there might really be some sort of confirmation…

“I wish I could read it myself.” Drew gave a little smiling shake of her head. “That Russian class I took was so awful!” She laughed. “What I really wanted to learn was Finnish. Even though my mother was born in Finland, she grew up here, and…I just feel sad not knowing the language. But of course it’s impossible to find a Finnish class, because what use is it to know Finnish? Anyway, when I couldn’t find a Finnish course, I took Russian instead, since my mother’s father was Russian. But I’m basically no good with languages.”

“Many people aren’t.”

Her eyebrows lifting, Drew said, “The teacher said I was useless.”

“I can’t imagine a teacher saying that.”

“Well, what she actually said was that ‘it’ was useless. There was no point in my continuing in her class, because it was useless.” She gave a laugh.

“My dear, it sounds like your
teacher
was useless.”

Drew smiled, and there was something lovely in the modesty of her face. Then she straightened her shoulders and, in a more businesslike voice, said, “Anyway, we’ll see if I’m even lucky enough to find any official records for the amber.”

“And if you do, are these things necessarily…unequivocal?”

Drew gave a little shrug. “They can be quite specific—how many of each style, and for whom.” She paused. “It’s amazing, when you
realize that the original amber set probably included even more pieces than these three.”

“Is that so?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. A full parure around that time would have meant a bracelet on each wrist, plus a ring and another necklace that unclipped to become a brooch. And depending on the era, some clasps and buttons, or aigrettes and hairpins. If not a tiara.”

Grigori tried to picture it. “And no one thought this overkill?”

Drew laughed. She told Grigori how amber of this kind, with once-living specimens preserved inside, had been the vogue in Victorian times, and that those who had the means would have specifically commissioned such jewelry. “Your piece is clearly nineteenth century. That’s when gems began to be inserted in open settings—much less heavy, you can imagine, than wearing all these things embedded in a solid foundation.” It was this sort of information, Drew explained, that she would be including in the supplemental brochure that she was preparing for the pre-auction dinner. Perhaps she hoped that if she reminded him, Grigori might suddenly have something to share with her. “Anyway, I’m still looking for anything else I can find out about the amber.”

Grigori pictured the vinyl bag, the handwritten letters, the black-and-white photographs. The hospital certificate with its Soviet insignia and some sort of serial number, and the time and place typed so firmly, you could feel the letters beneath your fingertips; where a name ought to be was just a thick black line and yet another address. Only a system so thoroughly bureaucratized could be so utterly dysfunctional.

He nearly smiled, to think what Drew might make of these things, though of course he couldn’t show them to her. He hadn’t even dared show them to Nina Revskaya. Well, yes, he had, long ago—or would have, had she given him the chance. “You’ve a lot on your plate here, don’t you?” was all he said now.

“I like it that way. With the research, it’s like an ongoing history course. I learn something new every day.”

Grigori felt something close to envy, wondering if he could say the same for himself.

“Actually, some of the things that have made the strongest impression on me haven’t even had anything to do with the auction itself.”

“Really?”

Drew paused, seemed to be remembering. “One time we were auctioning porcelain, all kinds of beautiful things, tea sets and vases and figurines. A good portion of what we had that time had come from one person, a woman whose mother had collected little porcelain tchotchkes. Some of them were quite sweet, actually, little animals, swans, rabbits, things like that. I was with the assessor when they went through the mother’s collection, and each piece had a bit of masking tape on the bottom with a name on it. There were three names, I still remember them, Anne and Lise and Clara. The ink was very trembly, you could tell that whoever wrote it—the woman who had died, the mother, I suppose—had had a tremor in her hand. I never found out who Anne and Lise and Clara were, but I imagined they were granddaughters or nieces. They weren’t the name of the woman who had brought the figurines in, and all I could think about for weeks and weeks was that the girls those pieces were intended for never got them. That the woman’s will wasn’t followed through.”

Grigori wondered aloud, “Do you think the writing might have been from before that? That maybe the woman who had died was Anne or Lise or Clara? Maybe they had eventually all been passed along to her.”

“No, the tape was new, I could tell. You know how it gets dry and yellowed after a while.” She seemed to be remembering. “What moved me most was just seeing the names on the masking tape, in her
handwriting—the aunt’s or grandmother’s or whoever she was. I kept picturing this old sick woman knowing she was going to die, going through her things, deciding which of them she wanted to give to Anne or Lise or Clara. She had written each name out so purposefully.”

Embarrassingly, Grigori felt tears coming to his eyes. He was recalling Christine, on a horrible autumn day two months before she died, going through everything with him, writing lists of things she wanted to give to Amelie, and college memorabilia she wanted to donate to her sorority, and then, most horrible of all, taking the time to describe for him the sort of funeral she would like to have.

“I didn’t mean to tell such a depressing anecdote.” Drew lowered her gaze. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, no, please, I’m the one who should apologize. I’m keeping you from your work.” She was leaning lightly on her forearms, with one leg reaching forward so that her foot was just past Grigori’s ankle. Feeling all at once that he had stayed too long, Grigori stood and pushed in his chair.

“Again,” Drew Brooks said abruptly, following his cue and standing, “if you think of anything I might include in the supplemental—”

“I can check to see if I have anything.” He heard how brusque his voice sounded.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Drew said quickly. She shook his hand and, before letting go, added, “Sometimes it’s surprising what people find.”

“N
OW, WHO EXACTLY
are you?”

She asked him in Russian, aware that she was smiling—just a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth—at how shy the young man looked, standing there in the front vestibule. A boy, in a way, still in possession of a youthful lankiness. Thickly curling hair from
the humid day. In a low voice he began to speak, ducking his head slightly as if in effort to not be so much taller than Nina.

“My name is Grigori Solodin.” Diffident, he hung back behind the glass door that Nina held only partially open; clearly he did not expect her to recognize the name. “I believe you and I…” His hesitation, his deep eagerness. He believed, he managed to state, that he and Nina might be related.

Puzzled was what she felt. No clear idea, not even a guess, of what he could mean. Yet already she had begun to tremble, that sudden weakness that arrives with terror. So really she must have known, she told herself afterward. Perhaps Grigori Solodin, too, sensed this. There came a rush of words, so painfully eager. “I was born in 1952, in Municipal Hospital Number 3, Moscow.” He named a date in May, waiting only a brief moment to see if it held any significance for Nina. But Nina could not react other than to be stunned by the fact of this young man before her, bending down now to take from his backpack a large envelope, unclasping it. “Here, I can show you the certificate. It lists a home address.” He blurted the address even as he was pulling the document out.

That was when Nina understood, clearly, who this young man must be. Her entire body trembled now as she said simply, firmly, “You are mistaken.”

His blinking eyes, his desperation as he reached again into that big envelope. “You see, I have other evidence of our connection, if you’ll—”

“I’m not the person you want.” With that she pulled the door shut, her heart racing, and turned to hurry up the stairs.

It was a week later that she received the letter—a “cursory explanation,” the young man called it—requesting that he be allowed to show her more precisely what he meant. What was the worst that might happen, he asked innocently, if Nina simply took the time to
examine what he had to show her? But of course she could not look. She had escaped all that once already, could not willingly place herself back there again. Holding a match to the pages—two of them, handwritten, one atop the other—Nina watched the retreating edges take the flame. The letter dropped into the kitchen sink, where it became a curling brown flower, shrinking and spouting fire, and then a single great burst of flame, until nothing was left but fragile gray skin crumbling in the basin.

As for Solodin’s most recent letter, Nina still had not answered it. Even now there really was nothing to say, just Go away, please, leave me be. That palpable wanting, his need to know—the very opposite of Nina. Perhaps she might explain it to him that way, very generally, nothing personal:
Like many of my compatriots
,
after Stalin’s death
…Or,
My whole generation, with the wool pulled over our eyes…
Or,
Being disabused of so many misconceptions…It is simply overwhelming
.

Already Nina had had the blindfold torn off, that bright painful light. Why hunt for anything more? The truth of this man, no longer young. Nina knew enough of his convoluted story; there was no reason to hear him out. Already she was plagued by memories, more of them each day, images so vivid, it was as though she were back there again, instead of here in her wheelchair by the drafty window, wearing her woolen dress and cotton tights and soft fuzzy slippers from L. L. Bean. She sighed. Even a year or so ago she wouldn’t have worn such slippers in the presence of another human being. They were a mauve color, of artificial fleece. Tama had given them to her, a few Christmases ago. At the time Nina had been appalled, at what they stood for and at how Tama must see her: an old woman with no need, on most days, for any more serviceable sort of footwear.

As if on cue, a cold throb overtook her joints. She closed her eyes and waited for its grip to release. Such betrayal, after so much of her life spent strengthening herself, constant exercise to ward off injury.
A life so centered around routine that Nina still felt at ten o’clock each morning the nag of knowing she should be at her position at the barre. All those years of stretching and strengthening and limbering up. In the end none of it had helped.

The end. Though she might use such language, she really did not see this as the end. No, it did not feel like the end at all. Not with this thorn, Grigori Solodin, still in her side. Though hopefully the auction would take care of that. And then something good: Shepley was coming to visit. Not for two months yet—not until April—but April really wasn’t so far away (although the icy air coming through the open slit of the window made it seem otherwise). He had called the other night, said, “What’s this I hear about a major auction of a certain famous ballerina’s jewels?”

“How do you know this?” She was surprised; surely there couldn’t be much interest beyond New England.

In fact there had been an article in the
L.A. Times
; Shepley clipped it and mailed it to her, a single column, not very long, but it was news nonetheless. “I’m proud of you, Nina,” he had told her on the telephone. “It’s extremely generous of you.”

“Well, you know I never wear them. They live in a vault.”

“Yes, but I also know how you are when it comes to these things. You’re possessive—like me.” Shepley laughed, the soft, self-effacing sound Nina loved. “We’re the same, you and me, because we can’t help ourselves. We can’t help falling in love with beautiful things.”

A
UGUST
1950. P
RECIOUS
days of tomatoes, of big green cabbages. Air close and steamy, like a breath. The four of them drive past the outskirts of the city, along yellow dirt roads, in the brand-new car Viktor has purchased. It was even posted in
Pravda
: “V. Elsin, poet and Esteemed State Artist of the RSFSR, and P. Lisitsian, soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre, each bought Pobeda automobiles.” The car
bumps along in a cloud of dust, past locals tending their gardens and kolkhoz peasants threshing barley. Beyond are pine-covered hills, and copses of birch and alder. Tall grasses line the road, and already the air smells oniony, of weeds and reedy flowers. And then they are in the forest, pine groves all around. At a partial clearing, bordered by a high fence and rusty gate, is the dacha.

“Straight out of a folktale,” Nina says, looking up at the steep roof edged in gingerbreading, and the small windows framed with wooden shutters, curtained with bits of white cloth. It is the second summer that she and Viktor have owned this little cottage, with its old furniture and worn wooden floorboards. Most other dachas in this village are owned by the Literary Fund, doled out to writers on a merit basis—which is how Viktor first came to stay in this one, off of one of the most secluded roads. But he wanted to be able to visit whenever he chose, and to invite whomever he pleased, and so last year he managed to purchase it. Other writers have even settled here full-time.