On the table were pots and pans and a tub of flour and a sack of dried fruits of an unfamiliar kind and something wrapped in foil and a pair of candlesticks Sergei had not seen before; and as he stood gazing at all the abundance, he felt an odd, sweet, powdery tingling in his nose, at the roof of his mouth. “When I was a child,” he said, “my mother used to put up these big glass ornaments around the house during the holiday season. There were some red ones, I think, and also blue ones. They reflected candlelight beautifully.”
“Well, maybe we too could get some,” Anna said. “Now, could everyone please leave, I need the space. Oh, and Serezha, bring over the radio, would you?”
After she was left alone, she stood still for a long minute, inhaling the delightful scent of cinnamon. It was a bit like sliding down a hill on a sled, which she suddenly remembered doing as a little girl—faster, faster, a marvelous sensation of freedom ripping through her hair, through her chest, the snow winking in the air like tiny crystals of pure light. The radio announcer crisply informed the city that it was now two o’clock in the afternoon; then music began to play. At once aware of the time—Two already, and I have so much to do—Anna flew about the kitchen, mixing, and stirring, and sifting, and the music burbled along, quiet and light as a stream, until she found herself listening, singing a little under her breath as she worked.
2
HE ENTERED THE CITY in the first-class compartment of a luxury train. He liked the smooth efficiency of trains—the compact sparkle of the built-in ashtrays, the even processions of lamps along the ceilings, the soft window shades that kept out the light and the noise, allowing him to fall asleep among dismal eastern plains with bumps of graying villages and stretches of forbidding forests and wake up on a distant horizon dotted with pretty castles on gentle hills, soon to be ushered to a front-row seat in a smoothly choreographed dance of dignified train conductors and baggage handlers with round golden buttons on their starched uniforms, and limousine drivers vying with one another for the honor of delivering him to his hotel—all the easy trappings of civilization, which fit him like a well-tailored tuxedo and which he had rather missed during his year in that barbaric, if curious, country.
His wife would already be waiting for him at their suite. They had agreed to rendezvous in the city of their not-so-distant honeymoon for a pleasant holiday spell. It was drizzling when he arrived. From the limousine window he watched the elaborate shop displays splash onto the wet pavements of the boulevards with shimmering red and golden spills of light, the ornaments of the Christmas season, just over, still arranged in glittering symmetrical designs behind glass—pyramids and roses and garlands made of gilded fir cones and lacquered toy beasts and pink angels whose white wings were lavishly sprinkled with fake sugar.
These trite symbols of a happy childhood bored him.
A fine jeweler’s window attracted his waning attention, and, remembering, he asked his chauffeur to stop for a minute. Inside, he produced from his inner pocket the cheap red matchbox, which he had kept as a souvenir in its own right, a reminder of his fascinating little sojourn in the illicit bowels of that other city, kindly arranged by a local acquaintance who supplied the embassy with musicians. He watched in wry amusement the hesitating eyebrows of the jeweler, then pushed the matchbox open.
The jeweler’s face altered, his eyebrows returned to their places.
“Ah,” he breathed, “magnificent, magnificent! And unmistakable, of course, but let me just check to make sure… Ah yes, here it is, the master’s trademark, see this filigree detail, he alone in this city could—”
“They are from here, then?” he said, surprised and a little disappointed. “I was led to believe they were of Eastern provenance.”
“Oh no, monsieur, they were made here, no doubt about it. If you like, you could visit the place itself, it’s very near. Of course, he passed away two decades ago—a whole generation of secrets and skills vanished, a real tragedy! His son runs the business now.”
“Thank you,” he said, closing the matchbox.
He gave the new address to the chauffeur. The second shop was even more splendid than the first. A respectful clerk asked him to wait and disappeared into the opulent velvet depths, emerging a moment later with the elderly proprietor. The man allowed himself a few well-contained raptures. “Ah yes, I remember these well, he made only seven pairs,” he gushed softly. “See the hint of the lyre shape, so unique, so enchanting? Where did you happen upon these, monsieur, if I may be so bold as to… Oh, is that so? How interesting. Yes, I daresay my father’s creations were always popular among their nobility. In fact, one of these pairs was sold to a celebrated composer from over there—Igor Selinsky, one of my father’s most loyal customers, you’ve heard of him, perhaps—”
“Indeed,” he said politely.
He declined an offer to take a look around the shop, thanked the proprietor, and left. Back in the shadows of the limousine, he mused about the mysterious paths traveled by objects and men, the invisible threads linking lives over and over. He knew, of course, that the earrings could not have been the Selinsky pair—some destitute countess’s most likely, as that fool of a boy had told him—but the tentative connection struck him all the same. Stretched out on the plush backseat, absently watching the brightly lit boulevards give way to the soft, exclusive darkness of quieter streets in the fashionable embassy district, he thought about the Selinsky performance he had attended many decades ago, and the odd, tearful, raw feeling that would not release him for some time after, as if he, an established young diplomat with brilliant prospects ahead of him, had gotten something wrong, had missed something important—
Even now, the recollection struck him as uncomfortable, and ever so slightly he prodded his thoughts along. In the smoothly gliding glow of the holiday illumination, he imagined his third wife, younger by twenty-three years, shrieking with excitement as she turned her head this way and that, gazing at her dazzling reflection in the mirror. He imagined telling her that the earrings were two, no, three hundred years old, estate jewels held by the illustrious Selinsky family for many generations and worn in turn by both wives of the genius—or no, better yet, by some dark and secret passion of his life—and smiled at last, and asked the chauffeur to hurry.
Afterward, they would go out to a nice dinner, of course.
He had not had any decent champagne in a while.
PART SEVEN
NEW YEAR
“WELL, AND THERE YOU HAVE IT: a year wasted. Might as well not have lived through it at all. By the way, did you hear why he isn’t coming?”
“Afraid of being arrested, someone told me. Word is he was—come closer, come closer—he was at the head of a plot to overthrow the government. Funded by the West, you understand. But the authorities got wind of it, and canceled the concert.”
“Nonsense, I heard he caught a cold on the border. The cold became pneumonia, so he had to go back. They say he took one breath of his native air and cried like a child.”
“Of course he cried, ours is a mystical land, one feels a special, soulful purity here—no other place like it, saints still walk among us… He probably kissed the ground, too—”
“Oh, stop with that sentimental tripe already! The truth is, our Ministry of Culture didn’t offer him enough money. Couldn’t match his fees, you know, so he weaseled out of it at the last minute. I hear his new lady friend is quite young.”