While she was waiting, she suddenly realised that the phrase she had prepared would not do for a telephone conversation. ‘What sudden blizzard from Siberia?’ Petya would ask. ‘What sort of way is that to talk? And why should I do anything with you, madam?’
To bolster her courage, she opened the Japanese ivory cigarette case that she had bought at the station and lit the first papirosa of her life (the pakhitoska that Masha Mironova had once lit up in fifth class at school didn’t count – back then she hadn’t had the slightest idea that you were supposed to inhale the tobacco smoke). She propped her elbow on the little table, turned slightly sideways-on to the mirror and narrowed her eyes. Not bad, not bad at all, interesting and even rather enigmatic.
‘Doctor Lileiko’s apartment,’ a woman’s voice said in the earpiece. ‘With whom do you wish to speak?’
The smoker was rather disconcerted – for some reason she had been certain that Petya would answer. She rebuked herself sternly. How stupid! Of course, he didn’t live alone. His parents were there, and the servants, and possibly even some brothers and sisters. In fact, she didn’t really know very much about him: only that he was a student, he wrote poems and spoke wonderfully well about the beauty of tragic death. And also that he kissed a lot better than Kostya Levonidi, her former future-fiancé, who had been decisively dismissed for being so tediously positive, reliable and humdrum.
‘I’m a friend of Petya, Pyotr Terentsievich,’ Columbine babbled in a highly trivial manner. ‘A certain Mironova.’
A minute later she heard the familiar baritone voice with that enchanting Moscow drawl in the earpiece.
‘Hello? Is that Mrs Mironova? Professor Zimin’s assistant?’
By this time the inhabitant of the stylish hotel room had pulled herself together. She breathed a stream of dove-grey smoke into the bell mouth of the telephone apparatus and whispered: ‘It is I, Columbine.’
‘Who did you say?’ Petya asked in surprise. ‘So you’re not Mrs Mironova from the faculty of Roman Law?’
She had to explain to the dimwit.
‘Remember the arbour above the Angara. Remember how you called me “Columbine”?’ and straight after that the phrase she had prepared on the way fitted in perfectly. ‘It is I. Like a sudden blizzard from Siberia I have come to you. Do with me what you wish. Do you know the Hotel Elysium?’ After that resounding word she paused. ‘Come. I’m waiting.’
That got through to him! Petya started breathing rapidly and speaking in a thick voice – he must have put his hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Masha, that is, Columbine, I am absolutely delighted that you have come . . .’ he said rather formally. It was true that they had been on formal terms in Irkutsk, but now this way of talking seemed inappropriate, insulting even, to the seeker of adventures. ‘Yes, indeed, just like a sudden blizzard out of nowhere . . . No, that is, it’s simply marvellous! Only there’s no way I can come to you now. I’m resitting an exam tomorrow. And it’s late, mama will pester me with questions . . .’
And he went on to babble something absolutely pitiful about a failed examination and the word of honour he had given to his father.
The reflection in the mirror batted its eyelids and the corners of its mouth turned slowly downwards. Who could have imagined that the guileful seducer Harlequin had to ask leave from his mummy before setting out on an amorous escapade? And she suddenly regretted terribly the fifteen roubles that she had spent.
‘Why are you here in Moscow?’ Petya whispered. ‘Surely not especially to see me?’
She laughed – it turned out very well, with a slightly husky note. She supposed that was because of the papirosa. So that he wouldn’t get above himself, she said enigmatically, ‘The meeting with you is no more than a prelude to another meeting. Do you understand?’
And she declaimed two lines from one of Petya’s own poems:
That time back at the arbour, foolish little Masha had whispered with a happy smile (it was shameful to recall it now): ‘This must be true happiness.’ The visitor from Moscow had smiled condescendingly and said: ‘Happiness, Masha, is something quite different. Happiness is not a fleeting moment, but eternity. Not a comma, but a full stop.’ And then he had recited the poem about the line and the full stop. Masha had flushed, torn herself out of his arms and stood at the very top of the cliff, with the dark water sighing down below. ‘Do you want me to write that full stop right now?’ she had exclaimed. ‘Do you think I’ll be too frightened?’
‘You . . . Are you serious?’ the voice in the telephone asked very quietly. ‘Don’t think that I’ve forgotten . . .’
‘I’ll say I’m serious,’ she laughed, intrigued by the peculiar inflection that had crept into Petya’s voice.
‘A perfect fit . . .’ Petya whispered incomprehensibly. ‘Just when there’s a vacancy . . . Fate. Destiny . . . All right, here goes. I tell you what, let’s meet tomorrow evening at a quarter past eight . . . Yes, at a quarter past . . . Only where?’
Columbine’s heart began beating very, very fast as she tried to guess what spot he would choose for the tryst. A park? A bridge? A boulevard? And at the same time she tried to calculate whether she could afford to keep the room in the Elysium for one more night. That would make thirty roubles, an entire month of living! Sheer folly!
But Petya said: ‘Beside the Berry Market on the Marsh.’
‘What marsh?’ Columbine asked in astonishment.
‘Marsh Square, it’s near the Elysium. And from there I’ll take you to an absolutely special place, where you’ll meet some absolutely special people.’
The way he said it sounded so mysterious and solemn that Columbine didn’t feel even a shred of disappointment. On the contrary, she felt that same ‘endless thrill’ again very clearly and realised that the adventures were beginning. Perhaps not exactly as she had imagined, but even so, coming to the City of Dreams had not been a waste of time.
She sat in the armchair by the open window until late at night, snuggled up in a warm rug, and watched the dark barges with their swaying lanterns floating down the Moscow river.
She was terribly curious about what these ‘absolutely special’ people could be like.
Roll on tomorrow evening!
Cleopatra’s final moment
When Columbine woke up on the vast bed that had not, after all, become the altar of love, the evening still seemed a long way off. She lounged on the downy mattress for a while, phoned down to the ground floor to have coffee sent up, and in celebration of her new sophisticated life, drank it without cream or sugar. It was bitter and unpalatable, but it was bohemian.
In the foyer, after paying for the room and leaving her suitcase in the baggage closet, she leafed through the pages of announcements in the Moscow Provincial Gazette. She wrote out several addresses, selecting houses with at least three storeys, in which the flat on offer had to be at the very top.
She haggled for a while with the cabby: he wanted three roubles, she wanted to give him one, and they struck a deal for a rouble and forty kopecks. It was a good price, taking into account that for this sum the driver had agreed to drive the young lady round all four addresses, but the newcomer in town still paid too much anyway – she was so taken by the very first flat, right in the centre, in Kitaigorod, that there was no point in going any further. She tried to buy the driver off with a rouble (even that was a lot, for only fifteen minutes), but he was a good psychologist and he crushed the young provincial’s resistance with the words: ‘Here in Moscow a man might be a thief, but he still keeps his word.’ She blushed and paid, but insisted that he had to bring her baggage from the Elysium and she stuck firmly to that.