The Steppes of Paris (29 page)

I saw my happiness sail past and out onto the open sea. I was left, standing on a shore which bore a strong resemblance to a pavement, watching him disappear. He didn’t know I was standing in the neighbouring entrance watching him, that I had been standing there since two o’clock, waiting to see him go. Elena had inadvertently let me know his plane left that evening, but for these geriatric Slavs I know the evening can begin at four, and I didn’t want to risk missing my last chance of looking at my happiness.

So finally, a little before five, I saw the taxi arrive, the ugly driver go in to fetch him, and I saw him come out of the house, weighted down with his luggage, and supervise the driver as he piled it into the boot. I saw him run his fingers in nervous irritation through his curly hair as the driver incompetently tried to jam everything in, and I nearly cried out because that last sweet curl on the top of his head stayed crooked and, as he jokingly congratulated the driver on fitting everything in at last and turned briskly to open the rear door of the taxi, he looked so like a young boy playing at the importance of a man. The driver swung round dangerously in the narrow rue Surcouf, against all the traffic regulations, intending to set off again in the direction from which he had come. I was sure Edouard would see me as the driver rammed his bumper up onto the
pavement nearly at my feet. I crushed myself right back into the corner of my doorway, as thin as a blade, although actually I do not think I would have minded if he had seen me. For the last brief spurt backwards of the driver’s perilous turn, I saw him through the window. The taxi’s police number on the window near his head gave him a remote official look, as if I were seeing his face on a passport photograph or – a suddenly seductive thought – reported dead in a newspaper. He was looking straight ahead, already concentrating on his future, and that was how he vanished from my life; his face set resolutely on the route ahead but that little crest of curly hair still sticking up as if from recently rumpled sleep.

His was not the first departure I had watched in hiding from that doorway. I saw Anibal leave too, although then I was not spying on him in expectation of his departure, but catching him in the early morning together with the other woman whom I suspected he was bringing to Volodya’s apartment. I saw them go away together; Anibal handing her with his gangster’s elegance into their get-away car. I crossed the road right in front of their car. The friend who was driving it had to brake abruptly. I expect he would have pulled the window down or even leapt out to yell at me if Anibal hadn’t panicked and urged him to speed away. That was how I saw him as the car accelerated forward; hunched over the front seat in a cowardly panic, screaming at his friend to get him away from the terrifying monster called Irina Iskarov. I had no intention of intervening. I stood on the kerb, having finished crossing the road at my leisure, and I surveyed the pathetic spectacle he made quite calmly.

But Edouard’s was without any doubt the departure which wounded me the most, Edouard’s was the one which I believed might kill me. It could still kill me now. He was the youngest of all my tenants and he was the one I loved the most. I loved him the most
because
he was the youngest. My love for him was not only the love for a man but also for a boy, a child.

Thus the remainder of my life began, my mourning a gaunt incongruity amid the insolent radiance of the city in summer. Although internally dead, I carried on mechanically with my daily duties, so demolished I did not even notice the sequel there was to be. My dulled brain revolved around two topics
only: July and August as if Edouard were still there beside me – his constantly remembered company in the Tuileries and passing the Taverne Tourville and in my bedroom – and recapitulating again and again and again the wonderful winter we had shared.

To tell the truth, I was not really interested when he first telephoned about the flat. We had that Norwegian female settee selected by Varvara Stepanovna lined up, and it was only out of nostalgic curiosity that I decided I might as well look him over. I thought then that the apartment’s days as my love nest were over. I thought on the phone that he had bad manners. But when I saw him, I understood; he was so terribly young, of course. He hadn’t yet learnt any better.

I remember that dreadful day. I had such a disfiguring cold, it is still a mystery to me how he was straight away attracted to me. When I opened the door and saw him standing there, what with my flu and my shock, I really thought I might collapse. He looked so young and innocent, standing on my threshold. He had come to me, and I knew it was more than I could do to send him away. Young, physically ripe, and unspoilt; those were the characteristics which struck me first. His fresh pink cheeks and his particularly red mouth and, of course, his candid blue eyes; these were all virtues which I only distinguished singly later. But what was most astonishing, apart from the sheer unexpectedness of the encounter, was that so very soon I realised he was also captivated by me.

I prayed, all the time he was away looking at the flat, that he wouldn’t want to take it because, if he did, I knew without any doubt what would follow. But at the same time, of course, I was desperate for him to take it, desperate for this, perhaps my last chance of happiness, not to evade me. I was already preparing all the reasons I would give, all the lies I would tell, why we had to let it to him.

When he came back, I wouldn’t let him see me again; one horrible glimpse of my raspberry of a nose and my albino rabbit eyes in the bathroom mirror had been enough to convince me that was the only possible solution. I thought it might intrigue and tantalise him also to be denied admission.

Once he was installed in Volodya’s apartment, I proceeded with exemplary restraint. I allowed three weeks and a day to
go by before I telephoned him and, even then, I invented some domestic pretext to make sure he suspected nothing.

Seeing him settled in Volodya’s interior did give me quite a turn. Of course, in the interim it had since been Giorgio’s interior, and Imre’s, and Anibal’s. Perhaps it was simply the shock of seeing someone new installed there once again and realising that the whole wicked business of plucking my pleasure from the circumstances created by Volodya’s untimely death was about to begin all over again. I had to sit down. I worried that the place was now simply too steeped in shadows for any more adventures to be possible there. The inhibiting ghosts literally over-populated the place. But I concentrated on Volodya; that was how I had originally overcome my scruples when the idea of exploiting his apartment first occurred to me. I knew Volodya would have been pleased that, as he was no longer there to care for me, his apartment continued to provide solace after his death. He would have been a bit jealous, certainly, but I found a little way of getting round this. Mentally, I would present my tenants to his inspection when I had them displayed on his bed. Only if they met with his approval would I proceed. Luckily, because Dyadya Volodya and I were in the essential ways so similar, he did not object strenuously to any of them. I knew he would like Edouard the best.

The sheer pleasure of Edouard’s proximity soon did away with my anxieties. I busied myself with all my domestic excuses for coming: light bulbs and tablecloths and keys. But really I was dwelling on the delightful details of his appearance which I was now noticing one by one: there was a sprinkling of freckles over his high-coloured cheeks, still a soft cushioning of puppy fat to his smile, and that curly hair which I already longed to rumple. I know this awakening appetite was mutual because he spontaneously invited me to stay for coffee and then subtly changed the invitation to whisky instead.

It might seem implausible to say it but when I left Volodya’s apartment that night, I know I was already halfway in love with Edouard. Over the next fortnight before our dinner, I must have thought of little else. The warming knowledge enabled me to cope more bravely with the increasingly gloomy aspects of
my existence: Babushka’s continuing journey into aberration, the burden of responsibility which I have to bear for her and Elena and, for Mama’s sake, for Nikolai Grigoriev; those turgid Saturday-night dinners, and over it all, the suffocating awareness that my time is running out, that if I am not able to break free and create a future for myself, this is all I shall have.

Our dinner did not actually go quite as well as I had anticipated. Babushka, bless her, cast a chill over it right from the start by refusing to greet Edouard and treating us both to an icily suspicious stare; before anything remotely deserving suspicion had even taken place! It infuriated me. Edouard seemed determined to play hard to get too. I don’t know whether it was merely boyish panic or a more calculated strategy, but he had the nerve to ask me at the outset if I had also invited other people. I was indignant. As if I would have gone out and bought that abominably expensive dress for “other people”; tidied the apartment from top to bottom and cooked all afternoon for “other people”! It took the atmosphere a little while to recover from that blow. Apart from anything else, I was disconcerted to discover that Edouard wasn’t entirely the sincere, straightforward person he appeared, that he was prepared to play hard-hearted games with me.

But in due course things did revive; we spent a most delightful evening. I knew it was too soon to expect a move from anyone so young and so British. I didn’t try to hurry him; I knew the quarry could be scared away. But I was disappointed, bitterly disappointed that he didn’t even kiss me goodnight.

These are dreadful days. It is as if my life stopped the day he drove away, yet I am still perversely, quite against my will, alive regardless. I am alive for the fulfilment of a purpose which transcends me. For I myself, ex-Irina Iskarov, am finished. I received one blow too many in the delicate region of the heart and this time I shall not recover. Never again another lover, never again another afternoon sailing aboard my ghost ship from the rue Surcouf. I remain alive for one reason only and it is not a reason which can be spoken publicly.

After the dinner, I was a little desperate, I admit it. I was worried that Edouard’s failure to kiss me goodnight signalled
some serious impediment which I had not yet uncovered. (Maybe the English disease?) I telephoned him sooner than was sensible, on the very next Monday. I invited him to come to a concert, any old concert; today, I cannot even remember any more what the music was. It was the slimmest of pretexts of course. My only aim was to set eyes on him again as soon as possible. As a means of deflecting suspicions, both his and my dear family’s, I made it the least seductive occasion I could possibly imagine; a concert in the Russian church, and I dragged Elena along too for good measure.

Naturally, no progress of any significant sort was made that evening. But my purpose was achieved to the extent that Edouard did seem to relax a little about the prospect of our acquaintance and Great-Aunt Elena, the old flirt, took such a shine to the well-bred young Englishman that her suspicions melted like her favourite English fudge.

From then on, I felt considerably more confident. It was only a matter of time, it seemed, until Edouard was won over, and my days went by in a glow of happy anticipation.

How harsh it is to recall that happiness from the perspective of my sorry present. Harsh, but it seems I cannot help it. I keep reliving that time again and again for weren’t even the bad bits a thousand times preferable to this state of affairs?

Without telling me, he went home to England for Christmas. And I had been looking forward to our spending it cosily together in a deserted Paris! It reminded me again how very young he was; going home to his Mummy and Daddy for the holidays. Only when he came back, it seemed it hadn’t been like that at all.

We met immediately, unable to stay away from each other, and united in our miserable Christmases behind us and our isolation in that stone-cold Paris January. I sensed then that we were on the verge of fulfilling my dearest desires. But because I didn’t want Edouard to get a mistaken impression of me, I deliberately delayed that last sweet course. I knew it would drive him wild, and that was all to the good. Only to my amazement, the dear naïve chap misunderstood my tactics. He thought that because I hadn’t invited him to somersault straight into my bed at the first available opportunity, I wasn’t interested in him after all! I was really rather dismayed by his
interpretation. It took us only a short time, though, to recover from this upset and, within days, we were one.

Oh, my little boy, you were beautiful in bed! You didn’t know you were beautiful and that was probably the greatest part of your charm. As you reared above me, perfect and pink in every detail, preparing to possess me, I assure you, you were Grecian in your perfection. And your enjoyment of me was so wholehearted, so wholesome; the glee of a child at play or once, forgive me, the image did come to me, a pig at truffles. For me, who had long become used to sexual complications, your simplicity was the height of pleasure. I was released by it from the obligation to feign, to simulate, to tailor my pleasure to the other’s design. With you, Edouard, I was more satisfied than with anyone ever.

The memory arouses in me another irrepressible craving for sweet consolation. Although I know I will find Babushka in the kitchen, defending the fridge and the cake tins from my ravenous attacks, I must go there. Must. Now. Babushka doesn’t seem to understand what it is which is driving me to these bizarre feasts of
mille-feuilles
and
crème
caramel.
It is biological, but she doesn’t seem to see that. Or if she does, she is pretending that by not seeing it, it will go away. Well, it won’t. It is all very well, she and Elena going on and on at me about how fat I am growing, how unbecoming it is, and how, unless I diet, I will never find a husband now. They won’t be able to keep up this prudish pretence for very much longer. I will burst. Yes, that’s it; I will burst!

I do wonder sometimes how Edouard would feel if he found out. Probably panic-stricken, and even more panic-stricken now it is too late for anybody to insist on a common-sense remedy. Do not worry. In one respect, I am really quite happy, you see. All my life, I have hated common sense, and now, at last, I have the opportunity to do something which flagrantly contradicts it. I am turning what was a fantasy into real flesh and blood.