The Steppes of Paris (22 page)

He gestured at the kitchen. “It’s hardly conducive – Anyway, I’ve got something on.”

“What?” Irina asked. “You didn’t tell me.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t I?”

“What about tomorrow?” Irina demanded. “It’s the last night.”

Edward pretended to check his watch. “I’ll call you,” he said. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m late.”

“Oh, do come,” she called after him. “Do, please, Edouard.”

And Katya and Solange took up a mocking chorus. “Do, please, Edouard. Please, Edouard, please.”

He came for dinner, to keep the peace. He was adamant
that nothing and no one would lure him into staying the night. Although, as things turned out, he had no need of this resolve because a ready-made excuse arrived soon after midnight in the shape of Lyova returning unannounced a day early.

Edward had been strongly tempted not to go back to Lyova’s flat at all. What persuaded him was Irina’s probable retaliation if he didn’t. For, however much below par she had looked in that dressing-gown, with kids crawling all over her, he could still conceive of her looking desirable in another context.

She seemed to have made a slight effort, although she did look very much the worse for wear. He had waited again until he got the all-clear that Katya and Solange were in bed and then he waited a little extra, just to be sure. It was after half past ten when he came in through the dark yard and climbed the staircase up into the yellow-ochre building. Irina opened the door immediately he rang, as though she had been waiting right behind it. She had dark circles under her eyes and her welcoming smile looked an effort.

After their rather perfunctory kiss, he teased her, “Glad it’s nearly over?”

She looked at him defiantly. “You know, I’ve really enjoyed staying here?”

“I know you have,” Edward answered. “Quite beyond me. In fact,” he lied, “that was part of the reason I didn’t spend much time here; I felt I was superfluous.”

“Oh no!” Irina exclaimed, falling so promptly for his ploy, he felt almost ashamed. She must be very tired. “Not superfluous, Edouard.” She cuddled his shoulder but then, with quite unexpected vitriol, she got her own back. She pulled a stiff, pained face, imitating Edward fending off children. “Just awfully English.”

They observed a delicate truce over dinner, which consisted again of a hurried trip to a
charcuterie.
Afterwards, they sat together on the sofa and Edward wondered how far he could let things go before Irina would assume he was going to spend the night there. At one point, it crossed his mind that even if they went the whole way, there was no reason why he should necessarily spend the night. It was at approximately that point that a thin wailing started in the girls’ bedroom. Irina left what
she was doing with insulting alacrity and hurried towards the wailing, calling soothing messages. Edward lay back on the sofa and wondered whether sex with Irina would ever be free of some form of familial disturbance. Wherever they were, it seemed, there would always be someone in the background whom she couldn’t quite shake off. The grandmother’s slippers would keep on shuffling, Volodya, the avuncular question mark, would continue to hang over them and, even in the neutral flat of a friend, she would acquire children who would wail at the crucial moment. There would always be someone who prevented them from finally letting go.

This thought had sufficiently deterred him from continuing that he was no longer so enthusiastic when Irina came back.

“A nightmare,” she explained briefly, before proceeding to resume.

Edward’s apathy only dawned on her slowly and she took even longer to give up. They were sitting, more than lying, in a position of arrested stalemate when they heard the front door open.

Both of them sat upright. Edward, even more than Irina, readjusted his clothes. They heard a low whistle and Lyova appeared in the living-room doorway.

“What’s happened?” Irina greeted him. “Why’ve you come back early?”

Lyova looked at them wryly. “I’m sorry to intrude. But Monsieur Lvov and I concluded our business agreement today over a splendid lunch and I caught the early evening train back.” He gave a brilliant smile. “My career as an artist of renown has begun. Let me find the vodka.”

While he was in the kitchen, Edward said, “I’ll be off,” but Irina exclaimed, “No, no, you must stay and drink to Lyova’s good fortune.”

When Edward hesitated, she grabbed his wrist and repeated, “You
must
.”

Lyova brought in what Edward and Irina had left in the bottle and three glasses, held in a cluster on his fingers. He deposited them all carefully on the low table and, as he poured, he asked, “How have my little devils behaved?”

The fact he took Edward’s presence so absolutely for granted paradoxically made Edward feel especially uncomfortable. He
didn’t like his unexpected liaison with Irina to be so publicly acknowledged. He wondered who else, for all her stress on secrecy, Irina might have put in the picture. And he didn’t like the image of himself he saw reflected in Lyova’s wry smile. Irina’s amusing aberration was not a role he relished.

At the beginning of March, Henry and Mai went away for a week’s skiing and Edward was left temporarily in charge of the paper’s Paris bureau. It was the most exciting moment to date in his work experience; hoping desperately for some story of epic proportions to break, he stayed in the office until all hours, much to the amusement of Marie-Yvette and Aurore who irritatingly made it clear in subtle ways that they believed they were keeping the office running. This didn’t stop them scooting off early every day as five o’clock approached. Edward stayed alone late in the empty office, willing the phones to ring or the telex to burst into chatter, bringing the news that would jump-start his career. He didn’t ring Irina once all week.

When the weekend arrived, and he realised the key week had gone by without so much as the suggestion of a story, he felt severely disappointed. It was in search of consolation that he decided on Saturday afternoon to go and pay a surprise visit on Irina. On the way, he began to feel guilt and remorse for his week-long neglect and he wondered whether he wasn’t going to walk straight into a mammoth Iskarovian sulk. A florist’s shop at the bottom of the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg suggested a remedy and, feeling distinctly self-conscious because he had never made a habit of buying women flowers, he went in to get a bouquet for Irina.

The choice of flowers was so manipulated by the crafty old assistant that he ended up with a much bigger, more flamboyant bunch than he had intended. He felt completely idiotic, toting it down the Avenue Duquesne, and he wondered what he would say if by some freak he walked into someone he knew. The assistant had asked a number of delving questions about
“Madame”
and then scientifically selected the flowers accordingly, and he couldn’t help thinking, as he shifted the sheaf from one arm to the other, that she really hadn’t done too badly. There was an encircling ruff of greenery and ferns and in the middle a whole assortment of various flowers which he couldn’t identify since, apart from the roses, he had no idea of the names of flowers, but pink predominated. As he turned into the Cité Etienne Hubert, he felt pretty confident that this bouquet would be a match for any sulk.

It only occurred to him in the hall downstairs that of course Irina might be out. The idea of trying to explain himself and his bouquet to her grandmother was so awful that he hung around for a minute or two, wondering how on earth he would deal with it. Abstractedly, he looked about at the lozenge-patterned tiled floor and the double glass doors of the
concierge’s
loge.
Would she know by any chance whether Irina was in or out? He considered the impenetrable net curtains and the angry handwritten notice Sellotaped to the doors, one in a long-running series. What made the inhabitants of Paris so professionally peevish? Rejecting any idea of turning to the
concierge
to help him out, he headed for the lift. With any luck, if the grandmother were alone at home, she wouldn’t answer the door.

It was answered by Irina. For a moment she simply stared at Edward with no discernible expression. He was preparing to thrust the bouquet at her, jauntily saying something like, “Hello, stranger” or “Long time no see” when her eyes distressingly gelled with tears and she exclaimed, “I thought you were never coming back.”

Edward jabbed the flowers at her jovially. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Irina pulled him into the flat and fell on him desperately. He had to hold the flowers out to one side while they embraced. It would be an awful waste to squash fifty francs.

“You don’t need to tell me,” she said, with quavering self-control, “where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing. I just want you to know I’m very happy that you’ve come back.”

“Irina!” Edward protested. “What are you on about? I didn’t get in touch for a few days because I’ve had a very busy week at work. I hardly think that calls for this kind of tearful reunion scene.”

Irina gave him an appraising look, her tears gone. “Ah,” she said. “Work.”

He realised with amazement that she did not believe what he said and, as she conveyed her wounded suspicion by lifting her chin and adopting an expression of obviously faked unconcern, he asked himself helplessly in what extraordinary scenario she was living.

She hung his coat in the hall cupboard, along with the furs.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked him, obviously still maintaining a major effort to keep calm.

“Sure,” he said.

He patted her placatingly on the bottom as he followed her into the kitchen.

“I think you should put the flowers in water first, though,” he said.

He almost wished he hadn’t come. Ever since that distasteful episode at Lyova’s, he had taken advantage of the additional distance he felt from Irina to remind her at every opportunity of how temporary all this was; how, come the summer, he would almost certainly be on his way. It seemed to be producing the opposite effect to the one he intended; Irina clung onto him more and more every week. Even though it was already plain that once she had made her point, this afternoon was going to turn out the way he had hoped, this further evidence of Irina’s dependence on him depressed him terribly. He wondered, as he watched her piling a dish with sufficient little sticky cakes for a junior school, whether he wouldn’t be wiser to begin to disengage now.

She carried her overloaded tray into the living-room and served him with exaggerated care. She sat down in an armchair close enough to his to touch tips of shoes, should it be
appropriate, and she said, “So what kept you so busy at the paper?”

He told her about the Hirshfelds’ skiing holiday (well, that she could check up on easily enough at the
lycée
), and his consequent new responsibilities. He didn’t tell her, since it seemed to undermine the whole story, that in the end nothing had come of them; that he had sat for five days beside a silent telephone and that when Henry reappeared on Monday, he would have nothing in the least impressive to report to him.

Irina listened politely. “And this weekend?” she asked, with patently feigned nonchalance. “Are you busy this weekend too?”

“Well, it looks as though I’m here, doesn’t it?” Edward teased her.

Irina’s eyes narrowed just slightly. “I meant the rest of this weekend,” she said impatiently. “What are you doing the rest of this weekend?”

Since he clearly had the upper hand here, Edward thought it fairly safe to suggest, “Well, I thought maybe we could go out and do something together tonight?”

“I can’t,” Irina snapped.

Her ferocity took him aback.

“Why not?” he asked.

Instead of the haughty explanation he expected, about some other more suave escort, she answered mournfully, “Varvara Stepanovna and Nikolai Grigoriev are coming to dinner, curse them.”

He managed to play down his disappointment pretty well, he felt. He supposed it had been a bit arrogant to roll up at the front door at five o’clock and just assume Irina would be waiting for him. But it was irritating that she should be busy on a Saturday night with such a mundane chore.

“On a Saturday night?” he objected. “Why’ve they got to come to dinner on a Saturday night?”

Irina looked resentful. “They always come on a Saturday night,” she said. “It’s a tradition. It goes back to before Mama died.”

“But Irina,” Edward protested. “What d’you mean? We’ve been out together almost every Saturday night for the last two months.”

“That’s the whole point,” Irina answered bitterly. “They’ve been grumbling, saying I’ve been neglecting them because of the high life I’m leading. And so, this week, when I thought you weren’t coming any more, I rang them and I said to come over tonight. Such lovely fun.”

“You mean normally they come over here every Saturday?” Edward asked aghast. “But what excuse have you been giving them for all these Saturdays in a row when you’re suddenly no longer available?”

Irina’s smile forewarned him. “Not every Saturday,” she said. “Just maybe once or twice a month. But, you understand, every Saturday it’s a possibility, especially if they didn’t come the Saturday before or the one before that. One or other of them will ring me without fail on Thursday or Friday, not to invite themselves straight out, of course, just to sound me out. Great-Aunt Elena comes too, if she’s free, but she’s not such a no-hoper as those other two and she has things of her own to go to quite often. She’s not coming tonight. But she’s been ringing me much more ruthlessly than Varvara or Nikolai, on their behalf, telling me how sad and lonely they are and how I really should make the effort, whatever’s occupying me.”

“But what have you been telling them?” Edward insisted.

Irina drew a coy little circle with the tip of her shoe. “I told them different things on different occasions,” she said evasively. “The first couple of times, I was very vague; I just said I was busy, I had something on, without going into any details. They didn’t fish for any because of course they promptly imagined I’d met some ideal, respectable man who might do them all the huge favour of marrying me. Only, naturally as time went by, their imaginations started to run short of material and they started to ask me all sorts of questions about this implausible person. Well, you can imagine how difficult it was, having to bear the burden of their expectations when I knew full well there was nothing of the sort to look forward to. So sometimes I said I had an invitation to dinner from some teacher or other at the
lycée,
sometimes I said I was being taken out by a man I’d met recently, and sometimes I did say I was seeing you.”

“You what?” Edward exclaimed. “I thought all this was supposed to be top secret.”

Irina laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t say anything which could give the game away, to use your favourite phrase. I made it sound as if, you know; our new young tenant, all by himself in Paris, it’s rather a bore, but I feel I ought to extend the hand of friendship.”

“And you think they believed you?” Edward asked.

Irina bridled. “Of course they believed me. Why shouldn’t they believe me?”

Edward hesitated. He had come upon one of those fault lines between fact and fantasy which riddled the Iskarov universe. Tread upon it at your peril.

‘They shouldn’t believe you,’ he wanted to tell her, ‘because it’s the most see-through story I’ve ever heard. Why do you always imagine things which are glaringly obvious aren’t visible to the naked eye, simply because you don’t want to acknowledge them?’

Instead he answered rather lamely, “It doesn’t sound all that convincing to me.”

“Oh no?” Irina challenged him. “You mean they think I’m having a love affair with our tenant, a boy ten years younger than me, and that I’m parading him in front of them; bringing him to Sunday lunches and to concerts right under their noses?”

Edward laughed at her unkindly. “But Irina,” he said, “you
are
.”

Her glare stripped his smile like a blowtorch.

“If you think it’s so visible,” she retorted furiously, “if you think it’s so obvious that I would do a thing like that, then please stay to dinner tonight and see for yourself how very wrong you are. You can say whatever you like, behave as indiscreetly as you wish and, I can assure you, nobody will harbour the least suspicion.”

“No thanks,” said Edward.

Irina changed tack unexpectedly. “Well, what are you going to do if you don’t stay to dinner? You said yourself you’ve got nothing else planned; you were expecting to spend the evening with me.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Edward said. “I’ll find something.”

He imagined what that something would in all likelihood be; the cinema and more vinegary Nicolas plonk.

Irina glanced at her watch and stood up in a bustle of indignation. “You’ll have to excuse me anyway,” she said. “It’s nearly six o’clock and I have to make dinner.”

Edward followed her into the kitchen. Even if he didn’t stay for dinner, he didn’t want to go off, leaving her in a huff. He watched her at work for a while, trying to keep up a conversation on innocuous topics. It looked as if she were creating one of her
chefs-d’oeuvre
: three intricate courses of pastries and sauces and creams. He had to admit that his eventual capitulation to stay for dinner was due primarily to what he saw taking shape on the kitchen table.

Nikolai Grigoriev posed the only possible problem. Varvara Stepanovna, got up in a dinner-dress of black and white lozenges which reminded Edward in its immense expanse of the entrance hall floor, was familiar with Edward’s supposed place in the scheme of things. She was in any case patently naïve. But Nikolai Grigoriev, a rather frail but dapper old dandy in his early seventies, whom Irina had described as her mother’s “last attachment”, seemed to Edward pretty speedily to smell a rat.

He perched on the rim of one of the deep armchairs as if he were scared he would otherwise never be able to rise out of it again. He measured Edward with piercing pale blue eyes and cross-questioned him about his activities with an arthritic wit.

“So Paris is just a staging post for you, then?” he quipped.
“En
route
to the
tristes
tropiques
?
”

He did his best to subdue his quivering suspicions; his stiff neck kept swivelling alertly from Edward to Irina and back, but it was obvious he was hoping anxiously not to catch any collusion between them, not to spy any grounds for his suspicions.

When they moved to table, despite his frailty, he offered Babushka his arm to lead her into the dining-room and, despite her vagueness, Babushka rose alertly to her feet to be led. They formed a delicately anachronistic pair. Following behind them, Edward was bemused yet again by the bizarre universe he had got himself into and, for the time it took to shuffle behind them to the table, he found himself yearning to be out of it.

Varvara Stepanovna said, “Remember, this was Volodya’s favourite dish,” when Irina brought in the main course.

Irina gave her a withering look. “Of course I remember. Why do you think I made it today? Do
you
remember it’s his birthday?”

Varvara and Nikolai exclaimed.