“I suppose.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell me where.”
“How can you not know?”
“The fact is I don’t.”
“Oh. Well, it’s a villa. Facing the Tiergarten, just at the edge of Charlottenburg, on Schillerstrasse. The third from the end of the street. There’s a … I’ll have the coach lamps put on. When will you come?”
“I have a taxi waiting for me.”
“Soon then,” she said and hung up.
He got into the cab and gave the driver directions. “What part of Germany do you come from? ” asked the driver.
“From Italy,” Szara said. “From the Tyrol. Actually, we rarely speak German.”
“So you’re Italian.”
“Yes.”
“For an Italian you don’t speak so badly.”
The driver laughed and pulled away as the police car began to circle slowly around the Leipzigerplatz.
“Dearest!” She cried out in Russian. This was a different Nadia- affected, brittle. She threw an arm around his shoulders-her other hand held a glass-drew him close, and kissed him full on the lips. The kiss tasted like wine. ” ‘What ingenious devil has cast you on my doorstep?’ ” she said. The maid who’d shown him in curtsied, her starched uniform rustling, and left the room.
“And go iron yourself,” Tscherova muttered to her back as she drew the tall door closed.
“What sort of devil?” Szara asked.
“It’s from Kostennikov.
Szara raised an eyebrow.
“Come upstairs,” she said.
He followed her through rooms of oiled walnut furniture and towering emerald draperies, then up a curving marble staircase with gilded banisters. “Well you’ve certainly-”
“Shut up,” she whispered urgently. “They listen.”
“The servants?”
“Yes.”
Sweeping up the stairs in ice-colored silk shirt and pants, voluminous lounging pajamas, she called out, “Last one up is a monkey!”
“Aren’t you making it awfully obvious?” he said quietly.
She snorted and danced up the last few steps. Her gold slippers had pompoms on them and the soles slapped against the marble. She paused for a sip of wine, then took his hand and towed him into a bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them. A fire burned in a marble fireplace, the wallpaper was deep blue with white snowdrops, the cover on the huge bed was the same blue and white, and the carpet was thick, pale blue wool.
“Oh, Seryozha,” she said, her voice full of woe. A borzoi crept guiltily off a blue and white settee and slunk over to the fireplace, settling down on his side with the mournful sigh of the dispossessed and a single swish of his feathery tail. Then he yawned, opened his long, graceful jaws to the limit, and snapped them shut with a brief whine.
“Won’t they suspect I’m your lover?” Szara asked.
“Let them.”
Szara looked confused.
“I can have all the lovers, and generally strange guests, that I want. What I can’t have is spies.”
“They know Russian? “
“Who knows what they know? From my emigre friends they expect Russian, shouting and laughter. Anything political or confidential, keep your voice down or play the Victrola.”
“All this. It’s yours?”
“I will tell you everything, my dear, but first things first. Forgive me, but I do not know your name. That’s going to become awkward. Would you like me to make something up?”
“Andre,” he said. “In the French spelling.”
“Good. Now I must ask you, Andre in the French spelling, if you have any idea what you smell like.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been through hard times in Russia: little rooms, long winters, everybody terrified, and no privacy. I’m no shrinking violet, believe me, but …”
She opened a door with a full mirror on it and gestured toward the clawfoot tub within. “I lack nothing. You will find a sponge, bath salts, lavender soap or almond, washcloth, backbrush, shampoo from Paris. You may give yourself a facial, if you like, or powder yourself like a cruller from the Viennese bakery. Yes? You’re not insulted? “
“A long journey,” he said, walking into the bathroom.
He undressed, horrified at the condition of his clothing. In the scented air of the bathroom his own condition became, by contrast, all too evident. Still, when he looked in the mirror, he could see that he’d survived. A day’s growth of beard-was one side of his face still slightly swollen from the dive-bombing? — hair quite long, newly gray here, and here, and here, eyes yellowish with fatigue. Not old. Yet. And very lean and sharp, determined.
He ran the steaming water into the tub and climbed in. The heat woke up various nicks and scrapes and bruises he’d acquired in his travels and he grimaced. It felt as though he had a hundred places that hurt, each in a different way. He watched the water darken, added a handful of crystals from a jar and stirred them about. “That’s the spirit!” she called through the open door, smelling the bath salts. She hummed to herself, opened a bottle of wine-he heard the squeak of the cork being drawn-and put a record on the Victrola. Italian opera, sunny and sweet:
“I like this for a bath, don’t you?” she said from the bedroom.
“Yes. Just right.”
She sang along for a few bars, her voice, lightly hoarse, hunting shamelessly for the proper notes.
“May I have a cigarette? “
A moment later her hand snaked around the door with a lit cigarette. He took it gratefully. “Smoking in the bath,” she said. “You are truly Russian.”
The borzoi came padding in and lapped enthusiastically at the bathwater.
“Seryozha!” she said.
With his index finger Szara rubbed the dog between the eyes. The borzoi raised its head and stared at him, soapy water running from its wet muzzle. “Go away, Seryozha,” he said. Surprisingly, the dog actually turned and left.
“Yes, good dog,” he heard her say.
“When I’m done … I don’t have anything clean, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll get you one of the general’s bathrobes. Not the old rag he actually wears. His daughter gave him one for his birthday-it’s still in the box. Red satin. You’ll look like Cary Grant.”
“Is he your lover?”
“Cary Grant? I thought we’d been discreet.”
He waited.
“No. Not really. Nobody is my lover. When the general and I are together the world thinks otherwise, but we don’t fool ourselves or each other. It takes some explaining, but I can’t imagine you’re going anywhere else tonight, so there’s time. But for one thing I can’t wait. You really have to tell me why you came here. If you are going to ask me to do all sorts of wretched things, I might as well hear about it and have it done with.” She turned the record over. There was a certain resignation in her voice, he thought, like a woman who dreads a squabble with the butcher but knows it can’t be avoided.
“The truth?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“I’ve … Well, what have I done? I haven’t defected. I guess I’ve run away.”
“Not really. You have?”
