Now they would have to wait. Of course, for a city, well, London, of course.
“For every man there are three cities,” Kostyka said, quotation marks in his voice. “The city of his birth, the city he loves, and the city where he must live.”
Elsa Karp was animated. “We loved the dinner parties, even with our poor English. Everyone so, brilliant. So clever, the way they, they make you talk.”
Band concerts. Bookstores. Eccentricity. The gardens! Kostyka’s face froze, he was almost in tears. This was, to Serebin, extraordinary, a paradox of human nature-there were people in the world who lived brutal lives, yet, somehow, their feelings stayed close to the surface.
The beef was taking too long to cook. The three of them peered beneath the dish and Elsa Karp adjusted the wick, but the flame remained pale blue and unsteady. Kostyka was annoyed. “Jean Marc!”
Jean Marc appeared from another room. A French aristocrat, a pure type that Serebin easily recognized-tall and slightly stoop-shouldered, with dark hair, his face vain and watchful.
“My homme de confiance, ” Kostyka said. Confidential assistant, but much more-the title meant absolute discretion, absolute fidelity, the sacrifice of life itself when necessary. He is armed, Serebin thought.
Jean Marc turned the wick up as high as it would go, but it didn’t help. “It lacks oil,” he said. “I shall call the waiter.”
Kostyka sighed, sat back in his chair, gave Serebin a certain look. You see? How it is with us?
By wireless telegraph:
17:25 16 December, 1940
Hotel Helvetia / St. Moritz / Suisse
Saphir / Helikon Trading / Akdeniz 9 / Istanbul / Turquie
Principal requires London confirmation here soonest
Marchais
18 December. The Geneva/Paris night express was almost empty, only a few passengers leaving Switzerland for occupied France. Serebin took a stack of manuscripts from his briefcase and, with a small sigh, for himself, for the universe, began to work. The Harvest would not appear for Christmas, but maybe it could be done before the New Year. New Year also needed a boost for morale, didn’t it? Of course it did, and their emigre printer was an angel sent from heaven, explicitly, Serebin thought, for the salvation of editorial souls.
Anyhow, he reminded himself, he liked working on trains. Here was Kacherin, “To Mama.” Oh Jesus. The man never gave up-this poor sweet lady cooked potato pancakes, sat in a chair by her sleeping son, three or four times a year. Love rhymed with above, also with stove, well, it almost did. But then, what the hell, this wasn’t The Resounding Shell, or any of the powerful Russian quarterlies. This was The Harvest, it had no Blok, no Nabokov. It had Kacherin and his sugar bun for mama. Who was Serebin to deny him his thirty-six lines? Fix it! Serebin went for the pencil, determined compassion burst like a bomb in his heart. Even in an imperfect world, bedizened didn’t have to rhyme with wizened.
The pencil hovered, and died in his hand. He had no right to do this. Use it as it was, or leave it out. But then, Kacherin’s dues paid for The Harvest, was it not just to include him? Not really. He put the poem aside-maybe in, maybe out, he would wait and see if they had room. And, if they didn’t, and Kacherin didn’t get published, he would at least get a banana.
Serebin carried a handsome check drawn on Kostyka’s Paris bank, but the shaking-by-the-heels hadn’t been easy. To Kostyka it was all the same, donating for Christmas baskets was no different than buying a lead mine, it was investment, and it demanded negotiation. How many baskets? What, exactly, was in these baskets? Serebin improvised. Cheese, a sausage, Ukrainian sweet bread, chocolate, every sort of festive delicacy. Kostyka looked grim. That was all well and good, but what about oranges? What about bananas?
Such things existed in Paris, Serebin admitted, but had to be obtained from German sources or on the black market-either way, very expensive. Kostyka didn’t care, these were now his Christmas baskets, and his Christmas baskets would have an orange and a banana. Understood? Agreed? For a moment, Serebin was afraid he was going to have to sign something, but Kostyka stopped short of that. So, they’d find a way to buy the fruit. They had better, Serebin realized, because Kostyka would not forget their contract and would make it his business to find out if the IRU had met its obligations.
Serebin returned to work. He had a story from Boris Balki, called “Tolstoy’s Lizard.” This was good, and definitely in the winter issue. Balki was an emigre who worked as a barman at a Russian nightclub, the Balalaika, up in the tough Clichy district. He didn’t much like Balki, who he found ingratiating and sly, and always up to something, but he wrote clean, steady prose. “Tolstoy’s Lizard” was a retelling of a true story about Maxim Gorky, who habitually followed people, secretly, in order to use them in his fiction. That was nothing new, Balzac had confessed that he did it all the time. Gorky, the story went, had once followed Tolstoy in the forest of Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy had stopped in a clearing to watch a lizard lying on a rock. “Your heart is beating,” Tolstoy said to the lizard. “The sun is shining. You’re happy.” Then he became sorrowful, and said, “I’m not.”
The train slowed suddenly, then jerked to a stop. Serebin looked up from the manuscript. Now what? They were only twenty minutes from the Kontrolle at Ferney-Voltaire, certainly not scheduled to stop at some village. Serebin peered out the window but there was only the dark station and the frost-whitened fields of the countryside. He put the manuscript aside and opened the door of his compartment in time to see three men in suits, speaking German in low, excited voices, hurrying toward the end of the car. Two of them carried small automatic pistols, barrels pointed safely at the floor. Gestapo? What else.
When they left the train, Serebin followed them to the door, stepped cautiously outside, saw that a few other passengers had done the same thing. Up beyond the locomotive, at the far end of the station, he could see flickering orange light. Serebin took a step along the platform, then another. Somebody said, “What’s the problem?” Nobody knew. Slowly, they all walked toward the fire-nobody had said they couldn’t.
Just beyond the end of the platform, an old Citroen had been pushed across the track and set on fire. Why? The three Germans returned, pistols now put away. One of them waved the crowd of passengers back toward the train. “Don’t worry,” he said in French. “Go back to your seats, please.”
“What happened?”
“As you see.” He laughed. “Some idiot threw a match in the gas tank. They’ll have to wait for it to burn out before they can move it.”
“Sabotage?”
The German, still amused, shook his head. “ Folie, ” he said, and shrugged. French madness. Who could say what these idiots might do next?
By post:
Drake’s 8 Grosvenor Square London S.W. 1 18 December, 1940
The Right Honourable the Baron Kostyka Hotel Helvetia St. Moritz Switzerland
Sir:
I write at the direction of Sir Charles Vaughn to offer our most sincere regrets that your name was erroneously omitted from the club’s published list of members for the year 1940. You may be sure that this oversight will be corrected on the 1941 list.
Sir Charles hopes you will accept his personal apologies, and that you will agree to be his guest for dinner as soon as you are able to return to London.
Yours most respectfully, J. T. W. Aubrey Secretary
Come home, all is forgiven.
27 December.
The Parisian French had a grand passion for institutes, where people were known to be clever, and well- dressed, and subtly important, their offices located in fine, antique buildings in the fancy neighborhoods. The Institut National de la Recherche Petroliere was a champion of the breed, the windows looked out over the bare trees of the Jardin du Ranelagh, just across from the Bois de Boulogne, on the majestic border of the 16th Arrondissement. “We interest ourselves in numbers here,” Mademoiselle Dubon told Serebin. “Economics. We don’t actually touch the filthy stuff.” Her smile was tart and sunny, as was Mademoiselle Dubon.
From the moment they met, in her office on the top floor, Serebin thought of Mademoiselle Dubon as a nun. Of a certain age, she was conventionally dressed for business, a somber suit, a green scarf hiding her neck, but she wore nun’s eyeglasses-delicate, gold spectacles, her fair hair short and severe, her rosy face innocent of makeup. There was, as well, a certain biting innocence in her manner-all sins known to her, and all forgiven. At least in the
