The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  “Valentina, you’ve had enough. Go to bed.” Popkov kicked her, but gently. He slid his boot over the straw and prodded her thigh as though she were a pig. “Get out of here,” he growled.

  “What did you give her?”

  “Give who?”

  “Tell me.”

  He paused, staring down at the straw. “A horseshoe. I polished it and”—she could tell he was embarrassed—“and wove ivy and berries through it.”

  Valentina thought it the most beautiful gift she could imagine. “Nothing for me?” she asked.

  He raised his black eyes to hers. “You’ve got my vodka. What more do you want?”

  She laughed then, and felt the world drifting in confusion out of her reach. “Mama and Papa are making me go to a Christmas ball,” she said, and closed her eyes. The darkness started to spin alarmingly, so she forced them open again. The wretched creature was watching her with amusement.

  “You’re drunk,” Popkov said.

  “Go away,” she muttered, the words slow and slurred.

  The next moment she was floating in the air, her hands and feet weightless. When she squeezed her eyes open a crack she saw darkness whirling around her like dust.

  “Liev, put me down.”

  But he ignored her.

  Dimly she was conscious of being carried into the dark house through the servants’ entrance, but her eyes slid shut and opened only when she was plonked on her own bed with no attempt at courtesy.

  “Liev,” she murmured, struggling to keep the ceiling from somersaulting on top of her, “I don’t think—”

  “Sleep,” he growled.

  “Spasibo, Liev,” she said softly. “Thank you.” But he had already left the room.

  PLAY FOR ME.”

  Katya was in her wheelchair and they were alone in the music room. Valentina’s head still throbbed at the base of her skull but at least she could turn it now without it falling off. Vodka, she vowed, would never touch her lips again in this lifetime. She’d cursed Popkov. Cursed his uncorked bottle. Cursed the way he had led out the horses the next day, whistling a jaunty folk song with no hint of a brain pickled in alcohol.

  “Please,” Katya said, “play something for me.”

  “I won’t be good today,” Valentina muttered as she lifted the lid of the piano. Just the sight of the keys, lined up and quietly waiting for her, loosened the tension within her.

  Katya laughed. “You’re always good, Valentina. Even when you say you’re bad, you’re good.”

  Valentina was unaware of what she would play until her fingers found the keys. From under them came the opening bars of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, the piece she had played for the Viking. Instantly she forgot there was a world outside. Aching head or no, her music professor would be proud of her as she balanced the melodic line perfectly against the left-hand chords, producing a pure cantabile legato in the right hand, feeling the music flow with each beat of her heart. Through her lungs. Across her shoulders. Down to her wrists and fingers.

  “Valentina.” It was her mother. When had she walked into the room?

  “Valentina,” Elizaveta Ivanova said again, “it’s time to start getting dressed for the ball tonight. You agreed to go, remember?”

  Valentina’s hands froze above the keys.

  Number 5 on her list: Obey Mama.

  Her hands sank down onto the keys in a harsh jarring chord. “Yes, Mama, I agreed.”

  Carefully she closed the piano lid and walked over to a small silver box on the table beside Katya’s chair. She removed a brass key from the box, returned to the piano, and locked it, then walked over to the window. She opened it a crack and tossed the key out into the snow. Without a word, she walked out of the room.

  VIKTOR ARKIN’S FACE WAS DISTORTED. ONE EYE SLID away into his hairline while his mouth stretched to the size of a wrench. For a second he stared at his reflection in the curved surface of the Turicum’s brass headlight and wondered what else in him might be distorted, somewhere deeper where he couldn’t see. It worried him how much he loved this car. It was dangerous. To love something or somebody that much—it created a weak spot inside you. He couldn’t afford weak spots. Nevertheless he smiled fondly at the gleaming blue curve of the front fender and ran a cloth along its graceful line.

  “A visitor for you.”

  Arkin looked around at the sound of Liev’s voice. The Cossack stood in the doorway. He looked amused. Not a good sign.

  “Where?”

  “In the yard.”

  Arkin folded his polishing cloth and placed it on the shelf before moving past the Cossack and out of the garage into the yard where darkness was just beginning to fall, laying shadows like dead creatures on the cobbles. On the right stood the stables and the coach house, in front of him a water pump and trough, but to the left rose an archway over a path that led around to the front of the house. Just beside the archway stood a young woman. She wore a headscarf tied tightly under her chin against the icy wind and a long belted coat that looked as though it had once belonged to a man. Her manner was awkward, a self-conscious dip of her head.

  “A friend of yours?” Popkov laughed and gestured to his own stomach, making a wide imaginary bulge over it.

  The woman was heavily pregnant. Even under the coat it was obvious.

  “Go and polish a hoof or comb a mane or something,” Arkin said, and went over to the woman. He greeted her cautiously.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m here with a message. From Mikhail Sergeyev.”

  Immediately he took her arm. It was thin and unresisting. He led her into the garage, where, out of the wind, her face relaxed and she gave him a shy smile.

  “I’m Mikhail’s wife, Larisa.”

  In that moment, something came undone inside him. All that he’d been keeping so tight and orderly in his head seemed to shift out of place. The way she said it, so simply, so proudly. I’m Mikhail’s wife, Larisa. Her hand resting on her swollen stomach. He recalled his mother saying the same. I’m Mikhail Arkin’s wife, Roza, her hand resting on her swollen stomach. Two weeks later she and the unborn child were dead from septicemia because his father had no money for a doctor. It happened on his ninth birthday. With a sense of something close to pain, he found himself wanting a child of his own, wanting a woman with a swollen belly that carried that child, despite all that he’d said to Sergeyev about families being a thing of the past. He smiled at her, shaken.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  She nodded. Her lips were pale, her eyes dark-ringed and anxious. “It’s Mikhail. He was hurt in an accident at work.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “His arm is broken.”

  He gave her a smile of reassurance. “It will heal quickly,” he said. “Mikhail is strong.”

  But he knew what it meant for them. No work meant no money. For food, for rent, for the baby. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his last three cigarettes and a few coins. It was all he had.

  “Here, give this to your husband.”

  She let him place his offerings in her small hand. “Can you spare it?”

  “Get him to Father Morozov’s church hall. There’s hot food there.”

  “Spasibo,” she whispered. “His boss gave him enough roubles to pay our rent.”

  “That’s unusual. Who is this man?”

  “Direktor Friis.”

  “Are you still working in the glue factory?”

  She shrugged. “Da. Yes.”

  He felt the fire in his gut kick into life, the one that burned to bring justice to this wretched city. One brass headlight. That’s all it would take. He could wrench it off the car and give it to her to sell. Enough to mean life for the new baby, enough to prevent its mother’s milk drying up from starvation.

  “He’s worried,” she said nervously, “about... the job he has to do with you tonight.”

  “Tell Mikhail from me not to worry. I’ll deal with it. Go home and rest. Eat s
omething.”

  “Spasibo.”

  “Good luck with the baby.”

  She smiled, a gentle hopeful smile. Slowly she set off back across the uneven cobbles with the rolling gait that belongs to a drunken man or a pregnant woman. Arkin watched her until she was out of sight, standing there in the wind. So the time had come. He felt a nerve start up on the edge of his jaw, and no matter how hard he tried to control it, he couldn’t. But he was ready for what he would have to do tonight.

  Nine

  JENS WAS NOT A DANCING MAN. HE’D COME TO THE DAMN ball to waylay Minister Davidov, for no other reason, but so far there was no sign of him. He lingered briefly in the Anichkov Palace’s opulent anterooms but their marble columns and lavish gilt moldings were hardly relaxing, so he took himself off to a salon where a game of cards was in progress.

  After an hour he was content to pocket a handful of roubles and promissory notes. He enjoyed gambling. But he was wary of it, too. He’d seen what it could do to a man. He’d sat at a card table with a man who put a revolver to his forehead in the middle of a game and blew his brains out. And once on a station platform he’d embraced an old friend who was being carted off to ten years in Siberia for taking part in a conspiracy. The man had risked everything on an intrigue at court to oust Grand Duke Vladimir from control of the army. He’d gambled and lost.

  Yes, Jens liked to gamble, but he picked his moments. Tonight was one of them.

  FRIIS, I DIDN’T EXPECT TO FIND YOU HERE.”

  Jens was surprised that Davidov sought him out among the crowd, but it made the first step that much easier.

  “Good evening, dobriy vecher, Minister.”

  They greeted each other with a formal incline of the head, not exactly a bow but close. The minister was a saturnine creature with heavy eyebrows, and after the clash the other day in the meeting over the tunnel funding, there was a certain frigidity in his manner. He was wearing an elegant tailcoat with a stiff white waistcoat and collar but had the look of a man with his mind set on things other than enjoying himself. Nevertheless his cheeks were florid instead of their usual ash gray, and Jens wondered how much good French brandy he had already consumed.

  “Good evening, madam.”

  Jens bowed over the hand of Andrei Davidov’s wife, a small, fluttery middle-aged woman in a violently purple gown. She smiled a lot, as though to make up for her husband’s solemn face.

  “What a lovely evening,” she beamed. “My goodness, how I love to see you gentlemen looking so grand.”

  The place was thick with military men in dress uniform. Elaborate braid and colorful shoulder boards strutted the grand rooms as young soldiers vied with each other to attract the flutter of a fan from one of the young ladies. At social events in St. Petersburg the army officers dominated the room, magnificent in their white or blue or scarlet uniforms, the Hussar Guards always the most splendid and the most arrogant. It was the army that had made Russia strong, and they never let St. Petersburg forget it.

  The master of ceremonies, in powdered white wig and tight red breeches, struck the marble steps three times with his golden staff to announce yet another new arrival.

  “Do you dance?” Madam Davidova asked Jens, her head tilted to the side like a hopeful sparrow.

  Jens’s stomach sank. He glanced at Davidov.

  “Go ahead,” the minister urged. “Not a dancer myself.”

  “I’d be honored, madam,” Jens responded with a gallant bow. As he offered his arm to escort her toward the dance floor, he said casually over his shoulder, “Davidov, a word or two later, if you don’t mind.”

  Davidov’s eyes narrowed, but his wife chirped, “Of course you will, won’t you, Andrei?”

  Jens turned to his dance partner with new respect. He smiled. She smiled back.

  THEY DANCED A MAZURKA. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE ENERGETIC dances that gave him the shudders, a set of eight couples weaving inexplicably between partners. Finding the right path among the sliding steps was worse than threading his horse through a forest in the dark.

  He was concentrating so hard on the fast tempo that he almost missed the pair of deep brown eyes staring at him from across the room. He stumbled. Apologized to his partner. But when he glanced back, the dark eyes had gone, lost amid a swirl of elegant coiffures and a shimmer of silk. He recalled a striking impression of a long pale neck, a delicate line of cheek, and a white dress with high white gloves. The images had vanished in the crowded ballroom, but he’d recognized those eyes. And he intended to find them again.

  DON’T WASTE YOUR BREATH, FRIIS.” ”Minister Davidov, I suggest you listen to what I have to say.”

  “More money. That’s what you’re after. More funds for the bloody sewers.”

  Jens found a tight smile. “I’m not here to talk sewers.”

  “What then?”

  “Land.”

  The minister expanded his narrow chest. “I’m listening.”

  “The population of Petersburg is increasing at a rapid rate, as we both know. The result is a severe housing shortage. So the cost of a house or apartment in the center of the city is growing exorbitant.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “Yet there are many vacant plots. Scraps of scrubland in the poorer areas and on the outskirts of the city that are available for a few hundred roubles. But no one wants them.”

  “Because they’re in the bloody slums.” Davidov snorted out a coil of cigar smoke. “If you want to go off and live packed into a filthy shack with ten other families, feel free. But don’t expect the rest of us to follow you.” He started to move away.

  “Some of those areas won’t be slums much longer.”

  The minister stopped. Turned back. And Jens knew he had him.

  “People always want houses. But at the moment the wealthy only want to live where there are shops, restaurants and, more importantly”—he paused, making Davidov wait—“modern hygienic sewers and water supplies.”

  He watched the minister’s eyebrows lift. “Go on.”

  “Modern bathrooms. Modern kitchens. These are made possible by the tunnels I am building under the city. And it means that a plot of land, worth nothing one day, can be worth a small fortune the next.”

  Davidov’s thin lips stretched into what was meant as a smile. “You’re right.” He drew on his cigar thoughtfully. “Damn you, you’re right.”

  “Who is the person,” Jens asked softly, “who controls which tunnels are excavated into which areas? Who is the person who knows which parcels of land will therefore rise in value?”

  Davidov placed sinewy fingers on Jens’s wrist, gripping hard.

  “You do,” the minister said in a hoarse whisper. “You bastard.”

  JENS FOUND HER.

  The chandeliers in the ballroom glittered in the tall mirrors, turning them into golden worlds within worlds. The young girls in their first season in St. Petersburg society wore white. Like lilies. Delicate and untouched. They stood together in small clusters with fragile smiles. Nervously they fingered their long white gloves and gazed with doe eyes at the young bucks who strutted for their benefit. Those whose dance cards were not yet filled with the names of captains and lieutenants stood close to the windows and fanned themselves with a languid motion as though too hot to dance.

  Jens lit one of his Turkish cigarettes, leaned an elbow on a bronze statue of a seminaked javelin thrower, and watched the dark-eyed girl. She was dancing. The orchestra went from mazurka to polka to polonaise, and she went from blue uniform to scarlet to green without pause, but he noticed she never danced with the same man twice. She moved well. That was what struck him first. The graceful way she held her shoulders and head, not stiffly erect like some of the girls, but in a smooth flow to the rhythm of the music. Her spine made him think of a lithe young cat, smooth and supple, her feet neat and light.

  “I’ll introduce you if you’d like. I know her mother.”

  “Madam Davidova,” he said as she popped up at his side,
“what a pleasure to see you again.”

  “You’re staring at her.” She tapped him sharply with the ivory handle of her fan. “She is too young for you. I hear your taste is for older women.”

  He gave her a long look, tucked her arm through his own, and led her onto the dance floor for a waltz. “You dance well,” he said as they glided around the room.

  A flush of pleasure rose from her bosom up to the heavy pearl and amethyst necklace at her throat. Her bird eyes twinkled up at him. “She doesn’t look happy.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Liar! Ask her to dance with you.”

  He found himself liking this woman. And she was right: the girl’s face possessed a solemn expression that scarcely varied from partner to partner. She seemed to listen to what they had to say but added little herself. Only now and again did she dart a look up at them with her large brown eyes suddenly animated, as if they had said something that caught her interest. Jens found himself wondering what kind of comment would catch her interest.

  “Time to interrupt them, I think,” he murmured to Madam Davidova, “if you’re sure you don’t object.”

  “Not at all. It’s ages since I’ve had the pleasure of a waltz with a dashing young officer.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him in anticipation, making him laugh.

  He guided her over to where the girl was moving in the arms of a lieutenant, and Madam Davidova immediately broke into introductions.

  “My dear young girl, this is Jens Friis.” Madam Davidova turned amused eyes on Jens. “Valentina is the daughter of my dear friend, Elizaveta Ivanova. The two of you have much in common, I believe. You’re both enthusiasts of”—she hesitated for no more than a quiver of a second, adding a sparrowlike twitch of her head—“of stargazing.”