None of them matters. None of them. I have higher things to consider.
Yes, it’s been a cold, rainy summer in our cold, rainy city. Jerome said the only way Peter could get people to come and live in this marsh of frost and mud was to make it illegal for any builder to work anywhere else in his empire, from the Baltic to the Pacific. That, I can believe.
There’s no one in my gallery now — the marble statue of Poseidon and these five pictures are no big crowd pullers, even if one of them is a Delacroix — so I stand up and walk over to the window, to stretch my legs. You don’t think Margarita Latunsky is going to sit still for seven hours flat, do you? The cold glass kisses the tip of my nose. Wall after wall of rain, driven up the Neva from the Baltic. Past the new oil refinery built by Deutschmarks, past the docks, past the rusting naval station, past the Peter and Paul Fortress over on Zayachy Island where I first met Rudi, over the Leytenanta Schmidta bridge, where many years ago I used to drive with my politburo minister, sipping cocktails in the back of his big black Zil with the flags mounted above the headlamps. Come now, there’s no need to act surprised. Remember who I am! There was no harm done, his wife was happy enough lying on a Black Sea beach with her limpid children. She probably had young goaty Cossack masseurs queueing up to ply her below the shoulder blades.
I turn my back to all that, spinning on my heel, and do a mazurka across the slippery wooden floor. I wonder, did they do that when Empress Catherine was in charge here? I can imagine her, maybe in this very room, dancing a few steps with the young Napoleon, or cavorting with the dashing composer Tolstoy, or titillating Gingghis Khan with a glimpse of the royal calf. I feel an affinity with any woman who has powerful and violent men sucking olives from between her toes. Empress Catherine started life as a lowly outsider, too, Jerome told me. I whirl, and spin, and I remember the applause I used to get at the Pushkin Theatre.
I gaze into my next conquest. Our next conquest, I should say. Eve and the Serpent, by Delacroix. Loot brought back from Berlin in 1945. Head Curator Rogorshev was saying how the Krauts want it all back now! What a nerve! We spend forty million lives getting rid of their nasty little Nazis for them, and all we get out of it is a few oil paintings. I’ve always had a soft spot for this one. It was I who proposed Eve be our next heist. Rudi wanted to go for something bigger like an El Greco or one of the Van Goghs, but Jerome thought we shouldn’t get greedy.
‘Go on my dear,’ urges the snake. ‘Take one. Hear it? “Pluck me,” it’s saying. That big, shiny, red one. “Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.” You know you want to.’
‘But God,’ quotes Eve, putting out feelers for an agent provocateur, clever girl, ‘expressly forbids us to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.’
‘Ah yessssss, God... But God gave us life, did he not? And God gave us desire, did he not? And God gave us taste, did he not? And who else but God made the damned apples in the first place? So what else is life for but to tassste the fruit we desire?’
Eve folds her arms head-girlishly. ‘God expressly forbade it. Adam said.’
The snake grins through his fangs, admiring Eve’s play-acting. ‘God is a nice enough chap in his way. I dare say he means well. But between me, you and the Tree of Knowledge, he is terribly insecure.’
‘Insecure? He made the entire bloody universe! He’s omnipotent.’
‘Exactly! Almost neurotic, isn’t it? All this worshipping, morning, noon, and night. It’s “Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise the Everlassssting Lord.” I don’t call that omnipotent. I call it pathetic. Most independent authorities agree that God has never sufficiently credited the work of virtual particles in the creation of the universssse. He raises you and Adam on this diet of myths while all the really interesting information is locked up in these juicy apples. Seven days? Give me a break.’
‘Well, I see your point. But Adam will hit the frigging roof.’
‘Ah yess... your hairless, naked hubby. I saw him frolicking with a fleecy little lamb in a meadow just this morning. He looked so content. But how about you, Eve? Do you want to spend the rest of eternity noncing around with a family of docile animals and a supreme being who insists on choosing a name like “Jehovah” to keep you company? I don’t think so. Adam might be pissed off for a little while, but he’ll change his tune when I show him bronze-tipped arrows, crocodile-skin luggage and virtual-reality helmets. I think that you, Eve, are destined for higher thingsss.’
Eve looks at the apple, a big cider apple hanging in the golden afternoon. She gulps. ‘Higher things? You mean, Forbidden Knowledge?’
The snake’s tongue flickers. ‘No, Eve, my dear one. That’s just a smoke screen. What we’re really talking about here is Desire. Care for a cigarette while you think my proposal over?’
Footsteps echo down the stairs. I sit down, resuming my sentinel posture. I would die for that cigarette.
In walks Head Curator Rogorshev and the Head of Security, a troll with a face that always seems about to pop and splatter bystanders with gobbets of cranium.
‘I thought we could approach the Great Hall by way of the Delacroix. Such an underrated little treasure!’ Head Curator Rogorshev turns to me, tracing the inside of his lips with the tip of his tongue.
I simper like the virgin he likes me to be.
‘I’ll have to have all these fittings sniffed for explosives.’ The Head of Security snorts in once and out once, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
‘Whatever. I know how the French ambassador loves to point at things with his stick.’ They walk on. At the door the Head Curator turns, blows me a kiss, points to his watch and mouths ‘six o’clock’. Then he flexes his index finger like his itty-bitty hard-on.
I flash him a look that says ‘Oh yes, oh yes! Stop before I explode!’
He trots after the security man, thinking, ‘Ooh, Head Curator Rogorshev, you cunning rogue, you master of seduction, another female of the species caught in my web.’ The truth is, Head Curator Rogorshev is a master of only one thing, and that is the art of kidding himself. Look at him! That shock of shiny black hair? I glue it on myself every Monday. There will come a time, not long from now, when he will see whose web he has been stuck in during the last year. And so will the Serious Crime Police Squad.