The Eleventh Year (22 page)

She finally smiled. Only her lips smiled, not her eyes. Those remained still, like two black ponds. He knew that either he would have to speak or leave the hotel. He thought somewhat guiltily of Jamie. But this woman! She defied sexuality.

It was she who broke the silence. “Good morning,” she said. “Or is it still ‘good night'?”

He walked over to her, straightening his cravat. She began to laugh. “You've had a long session with a lovely lady,” she remarked. “So for you it is ‘good morning.'”

He felt himself coloring and smiled back.
“Touché.
And for you … ?”

She shrugged with a hint of something like regret. “In my country, no one goes to bed till dawn. And in the winter—for four whole months—there is virtually no sunrise.”

“I take it that you are a Russian, then. I am Paul de Varenne.”

“Elena Egorova.” She held out her hand, a man's hand, but smooth and white, with nails that were even, beautiful, and unpainted. He took the hand and brought it to his lips. Her fingertips smelled of musk.

“You are a guest at this hotel?”

“Not, like you, somebody else's guest. I have a room here, yes—my own!” She was laughing at him again, and he found her laugh contagious and a bit embarrassing. He wasn't accustomed to being seen in such fashion, except by Bertrand. There was no softness to
this
female.

“Are you against a man having
amours
?” he asked, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable in an armchair near hers.

“Never. These things amuse me.”

“But you're beyond them yourself….”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ahh…the man has not yet come to turn my head completely. I doubt, my dear sir, whether he will ever come. In the meantime, I look around me, I observe. I am observing Paris again, after eleven years of enforced absence.”

He noticed that her fur coat was out of date but said nothing. He asked: “You are a political exile?”

“You might say that. Like Prince Yussupov and the Grand-Duke Dmitri. And every other taxi driver in Paris. The French consider themselves impoverished by the war. Our country has vanished forever. My sympathy, therefore, is perhaps not as deep for your great countrymen as it should be.”

“You are speaking to a flying ace, Madame.”

“I beg your pardon, monsieur.”

Simultaneously they started to laugh. Then he stood up. “It would hardly be fair to leave you on such a note, to bore yourself to tears with
Le Matin.
Would you, instead, accept an invitation to drink with me at Le Boeuf sur le Toit?”

She stood up too, swinging her coat from her shoulders like a simple wrap. “Le Boeuf sur le Toit? I've never been there. What is it? The equivalent of our Aquarium, where gypsy girls dance while rich men drink champagne?”

“And nice girls never set foot inside the premises?”

“Of course not. Is it?”

“This is Paris, Madame Egorova. Our nice girls go everywhere. There isn't a girl in Paris who isn't nice. Some are too fat, others too stupid. But all are nice, I assure you. The intelligent ones haunt Le Boeuf, as I do. If you like black jazz bands, alternating with Mozart and Schumann? And Dadaist songs?”

“Da, da means ‘yes, yes,' in Russian. I
do
like. Jazz I know little of. But what I've heard has pleased me. So unlike Tchaikovsky!”

She had a sense of humor. He wondered about her. Where had she lived for these eleven years? Most of the Russian immigrants had left their country later and were more up to date. This girl—this woman—had come out of nowhere into the Ritz: a vision, an atavism. She took his arm and he led her to a waiting taxi.

Sex hadn't really entered his mind. He had seen her as he did rare works of art when he found them for Bertrand. Now, in the taxi, with her muscular thigh against his, he began to want her. But it was an odd lust, not at all like the one he felt for Jamie's soft, giving young body. He wanted to undress this phenomenon and penetrate her, in order to see what it felt like to possess a work of art, the Venus de Milo come to life.

In the bar she leaned across the table, drinking her gin, and she asked him who he was. “You don't,” she murmured, “look like the sort of man who works for a living.
De
Varenne. What are you? A prince?”

He smiled, vaguely annoyed. “In Russia there are princes,” he remonstrated. “In Paris, someone who isn't directly related to the king—or the emperor—is at best a Marquis. My elder brother holds the family title. Mine is only that of count. But should I have a son before he does, my child would inherit his title. Complicated, isn't it?”

“It's the French mind. In Russia everything is simple. It is either grand, totally grand—or nothing at all. That's why there was a revolution. Your revolutions don't ever seem to effect much change. The kings go, emperors replace them, and then come strange interim republics that thrive on its deputies and senators. I am a princess. My mother was a princess by marriage and a countess by birth. And I couldn't tell you which is the more exalted title of the two.”

She swallowed her gin like a habitué, and he marveled: A woman who drank effortlessly, like a man. He admired her large hands, her broad shoulders. “I work for an art dealer,” he finally stated. He had meant to say, “I
am
an art dealer,” but somehow, this woman, because of her powerful presence, made him more honest. She had practically admitted her own poverty. “And you?” he asked.

“I? I am out of work. I am a fish out of the sea. What would Pushkin have said of me, Monsieur le Comte?”

“He would have said what he did to the fisherman: ‘Throw her back where she belongs.' But since that can't be, what will you do, Princess? Or are you one of the wealthy, lucky émigrés?”

“My funds are sadly running out. Yet I shall not cut patterns in a
maison de couture
for Madame Chanel or Monsieur Poiret. I shall not become a governess. Tell me, Monsieur le Comte, what do princesses do when their kingdoms shrink to the size of a green pea?”

The band was playing languorous freeform blues. She needed strains of Tchaikovsky, or at least of Igor Stravinsky in his
Firebird.
She
was
the Firebird. He sighed. “I am a count who works when he pleases, whose big brother helps to pay his debts. I'm afraid you've come to the wrong man for solutions.”

Her eyes were fixed upon him, appraising him. He felt embarrassed, wondering if she found him wanting. Then she remarked softly: “Not really. I could be a model, but not for rich, idle women clients at a
courturiers.
For a painter. Or—a photographer. And you might be exactly the right man to provide me with this solution.”

His heart sank. So she hadn't been looking at him as a sexual object but only as the means to an end. He was suddenly angry. She wanted to use him. And yet—she was right, of course. Chaïm Soutine would pay her great fees to pose. And he might pay Paul an agent's fee. He said a little ruefully: “Maybe so. You are indeed a remarkably beautiful specimen.”

“A specimen, my dear Count? I've been called many things in my life by many men. Never yet a ‘specimen.'”

And then she laughed. “You too are a wondrous specimen to behold. You are healthy and strong. If you were only your rich and better titled brother, I would proffer an invitation to my apartments. But alas, you are only good-looking. And as poor, probably, as I.”

He had never been so insulted in his life. She saw his face and her eyes softened. They rested on him, caressing him. He felt his anger ebbing away to the strains of the pianist Doucet's enchanting, light touch. “Your mistress is asleep?” she asked gently.

“My mistress is sleeping soundly at the Ritz. But that is hardly my concern. I am here, with you.”

“And I am glad of it.” Her marvelous eyes were like liquid fire, and the touch of her fingertips on his forearm was like a series of small electric sparks that thrilled him. The sun had come up over Paris, and he didn't want to leave the club. But she said, her voice husky with gin: “Now I shall be able to sleep. I have made my first friend in Paris.”

When he came back to the Ritz with her, she kissed him lightly on the lips, by the elevator cage, and whispered: “You and I can't be, Paul de Varenne. We are far too much alike. What you need is a wealthy woman. What I need is money. For money, as you well know, is the only power that matters.”

She turned away, and he remained dumbstruck as the cage closed behind her. Elena Egorova. He had completely forgotten what time it was, and why he was standing like a fool with bloodshot eyes at eight in the morning in the lobby of the finest hotel in Paris. Only when he heard, through the swinging door, the familiar voice of his brother's fiancée, Lesley Richardson, did he regain his wits. Like a guilty child, he darted behind a sculpted panel and hid there until she too had disappeared inside the elevator. And then he thought: Jamie! And he walked quickly into the sunlit morning.

G
rigori Popov stood arrogantly
in front of Paul, holding his riding crop in one hand and fingering its tip with the other. “I think I'm making you a splendid offer,” he stated. “One that I'm told you are in no position to refuse.”

They were in a small library of the Varenne apartment, Paul behind the small Empire desk with its inlaid mother-of-pearl top. He said, angry: “Who is it that told you so, Monsieur Popov?”

“Everyone of note in Parisian society. You are the wrong brother, Count. You are the one who needs the funds, and besides, horses are playthings to you, and the Marquis Alexandre neither understands nor cares anything about them.”

“Yet the château, since you're so well informed, is his. Shouldn't you bring
him
your offer, then?”

“Until he marries Miss Richardson, he needs my business to keep his estate going. So if you suggest it, as a horse expert, he won't turn you down.”

“State your business.”

“Very well. I am a horse trainer. I possess a quantity of Russian trotters that I managed to bring over with me when I left my country, because I was wise enough to rent the hold of a ship while there was still good money in my pocketbook. You see, I escaped with my funds almost intact. But to date I have not yet found the sufficiently flat expanse of land that I need, so that its climate, the odor of the atmosphere, and the general appearance might remind my horses of the Russian steppe. In Beauce, however, the fields stretch out to the horizon, and the animals would become acclimated. Behind the park lie open spaces ideal for racing. This means that my animals would stand a far greater chance of winning races than if I trained them in some other region. And I would make certain that if one won, the fact became known that it had been trained on the Varenne estates.”

“And you would pay me well?”

“Of course. I am a fair man. The horses shan't disturb you, nor the Marquis. And with his coming wedding and the elections…he may not even have the time to visit his country home.”

“I shall consider your proposal and bring it to the attention of my brother,” Paul said tersely.

When the other had departed, Paul scratched his chin thoughtfully. In a few weeks Alexandre would formalize his engagement to Lesley. He had to act now, to make sure that his own livelihood was protected. Alex would have Lesley's trust and his own solid earnings, but he, Paul, would only possess a meager salary from Bertrand de la Paume. He decided that he would accept, in his brother's name; Alex hardly ever went to the château now that he had been asked to run for the Chamber of Deputies in November, when he was also going to be married. Popov had done his research effectively. It hardly mattered, then, whether Paul asked for Alex's permission.

Paul took the pen and dipped it into the inkwell, and began to write: “Dear Monsieur Popov,” he said as he wrote: “You have persuaded me that your idea is a valid one. I have spoken to my brother. Your horses shall be welcome on our property.”

A
s preparations
for her wedding began in earnest, Lesley felt for the first time since coming to Paris that she was alone. Alexandre's fine profile was like the reminder of their love-making at Beauce, something gentle, a bit old-fashioned, graceful but yet awkward. She watched him as, solicitous, he pulled chairs out for her, took her hand at dinner, murmured in her ear. He was part of Paris, part of an era gone by. The crowds that thronged colorfully around them on the boulevards weren't like Alex. And yet she didn't feel she belonged to them either.

Truthfully, Alex was only a partial cause of her alienation. Another cause was Jamie. They had come to Paris to be together. But since Jamie had met Paul, the two girls had hardly spent any time together. Lesley allowed Charlotte to hover over her like a watchful bird of prey, and she listened as wedding expenses piled up for her father. The old Marquise had written to Lady Priscilla, enjoining her to trust her with all preparations for a magnificent trousseau. The young woman listened and let Charlotte's voice numb her growing unease. Jamie was moving out and planning to rent a small apartment with Paul.

“He's never going to marry you,” she had said cruelly. “Don't you see he's no better than Justin? They're the same kind!”

Jamie had shaken her head. “Paul's been very honest. I know he doesn't want the legal bonds of marriage. But I want to be near him. I want to take care of him, to sleep close to him….”

“And what about Martine du Tertre? She was practically his wife before the war. Look what's happened to
her.
She lives like a recluse on rue de la Pompe, she hasn't combed or washed her hair in months, she wanders through her house like an old, abused ghost.”

“Martine isn't Paul's responsibility. He never made a commitment to her.”

Jamie's stubbornness was appalling. She didn't want to listen. Even when Bertrand told them that Martine had died in her sleep, her frail bones showing beneath her soiled nightgown, a bottle of whisky lying empty on its side by her bed with its stained satin sheets, Jamie's chin remained solidly impassive. Lesley sat at the table, her own hands trembling, with pain for the discarded woman, with anger at Paul. How could one remain cold to such a tragedy?

But Jamie wasn't cold. She was afraid. Paul needed a woman's youth and vitality. If she didn't go with him now, he would go elsewhere to seek his pleasure. “Marriage isn't important to me,” she whispered to Les. “You know I don't care about formalities. But I care about love, and this is a risk I have to take.”

Lesley wondered then what risk she herself was about to take by plunging now into a union with Alexandre. Was there danger with this brother too? Alex was so decent, so kind—But he was also troubled. He'd been scarred by his mother, by Yvonne, by the war and his injury. Would she be strong enough to help him?

She thought of the enormous wedding, of the international smart set that would attend, eclipsing her in the glow of their own wealth and power. It wasn't Lesley's wedding Charlotte was planning so carefully; it was a celebration of her own status. Nobody really cared about Alexandre, about his small, red-haired bride. They wanted to see the setting, the splendor, the amalgamated richness that would gather. They would come for glamour, and she asked herself if this was really why she, Lesley, had come to Paris.

Maybe Jamie was right. Maybe, after all, it made more sense to love outside the bonds of society. She'd run away from home because people expected her to behave in a certain fashion, and now she had traded the dictates of Fifth Avenue for those of Alex's mother.

She had traded Priscilla's conservatism for Alex's.

A
lexandre received
the letter in his office and sat, perplexed, rereading it. It came from the maître d'hôtel in Beauce. Alex had not gone frequently to his country domain, these last few months, and so he was bewildered. The man wrote that he had reached his wits' end with the destruction of the property, that if the Marquis Alexandre did not come immediately to set the situation straight, he and the entire staff would quit.

What
destruction? Alex rang for his secretary and asked her to check the files on the Beauce property. Had anything out of the ordinary occurred? Had his mother, perhaps, ordered a transformation of the gardens, or had she wanted to build a new wing? The architect would have had to come to him for approval, as he, not Charlotte, was the legal owner of the château.

But the files revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Alexandre was unnerved. “Hold all my appointments,” he told the woman who served as his secretary. He jumped into the car. The Bugatti Royale, of metallic blue, was easy to handle, like a racehorse, on the open road to Orleans. He pulled up to the gates of the château, and as he opened them, something unpleasant struck him about the grounds. The young shoots of the new trees recently planted had been eaten away. The attractive lawn in front of the main house seemed barren in patches. Suddenly anger came over him in a hot wave. The flowerbeds were all trampled, the begonias and sweet peas mangled spots on the brown earth. He began to run, leaving the car untended, its door still open, his eyes filling with tears of fury. He had been coming to the château of his ancestors for his entire life, and he felt the odd tie of a man to his land, a sense of binding. The devastation before him enraged him.

He pounded on the front door, and the maître d'hôtel opened to him, his old face haggard. He sighed with apparent relief: “Ah, Monsieur le Marquis—”

“What's going on, Armand?”

“It's Monsieur Popov and those horses. One hundred of them—”

“What are you telling me? Who is Popov?”

The elderly servant sighed again, the breath emerging from him like a tired sob. “The horse trainer. We thought—Monsieur Paul had led us to believe—that there would be, at the most, fifteen of them. There wasn't nearly enough room for them in the stable, so we had to put the rest up in the hothouse, piling the rare plants in the corners and building new stalls for the excess animals. The grassland at the back was not sufficient for their grazing needs. He let them out into the park. You should see what they did! Destroyed the work of hundreds of years of landscaping—killed off the new trees and shrubbery—”

“I saw, Armand, I saw.” Alexandre sat down, placing his head in his hands. An immense weariness descended on him. He thought he had gained a glimmer of understanding. “Where is this Popov?” he demanded.

“In the study, drinking the Varenne brandy.”

“Bring him here. Now.” Alexandre wondered at his strange calm. Whoever Popov was, Paul, his own brother, whom he had in some way managed to support all his life, lay at the heart of this betrayal. He looked up and saw a thick-set man with a large mustache striding in, holding a riding crop. “Monsieur le Marquis?” he was saying.

“Yes. You will at once tell me what you're doing on my property. You—and your hundred horses.” The rage lay in control, white like molten metal. The key was in the handling of this intruder.

“But monsieur—surely you are well aware of all this! The Comte Paul, your brother, long ago told me of your explicit permission to board my horses on his—on your—domain. I have paid him. Since you are in possession of my check, you have no reason to be so perplexed.”

Brazen arrogance. For a moment the desire to throttle this man almost blinded Alexandre. He restrained the impulse, but the cords in his neck began to stand out, and he felt himself redden. “You must be joking,” he whispered.

The other laughed, hitting his muscular thigh with the tip of his crop. “Joking about my money? No, indeed.”

“But I have never heard of you and have never seen your check.”

The man raised thick black brows. “The Comte Paul—”

“How much? How much did you pay my brother?”

“Twenty thousand francs.”

Alexandre felt his jaw tightening, and he clenched his fists. He sat down once more, carefully. “Twenty thousand francs. Well, Monsieur Popov, where is your legal contract? You can't possibly have one in your possession. This château doesn't belong to my brother. It belongs to me, and I don't recall having signed any papers allowing you and your—animals—to occupy my grounds. By law I could have both you and my brother sent to prison for many years. You see, I am an attorney. But since this is also, unfortunately, a family matter—” He had to stop himself. “I shall merely throw you out this very minute. You will pack your bags, pack up your precious Thoroughbreds and get out of here as fast as your legs can carry you. You will see to it that no Varenne ever hears from you again, so long as you live, which won't be for very long unless you do exactly what I've ordered!”

“The money I've paid—”

“I repeat:
You will get the hell off my property,
Monsieur Popov!”