mauve brocade gown embroidered in diamonds with a high bosom and low-cut back. She embraced the richest couple in Lithuanian Poland, Prince and Princess Radziwill.
“You’re so good to come, Ariadna, and you, Madame Paleologue, on such a night. We wondered whether to cancel but dearest Grand Duke Basil absolutely banned it. He said it was our duty, yes, our duty. We’ve spoken to General Kabalov and he’s most reassuring…”
More gunshots. Zeitlin and the ambassador remained outside on the steps, peering into the night. Puttering limousines and whispering sleighs dropped off the guests. Diamonds and emeralds hung like dewdrops on the ears of the women who moved like animals in their sleek furs. Perfume vied with the biting cold for possession of the air. Zeitlin lit a cigar and offered one to the ambassador.
They were both silent. The ambassador, knowing how prices were rocketing and the secret police warning of imminent unrest, was amazed to find ministers and Grand Dukes at play on a night like this.
Zeitlin was lost in his private thoughts. He had lived through riots, demonstrations, pogroms, two wars and the 1905 revolution, emerging richer and stronger each time. Things at home were calm again; his uncharacteristic flash of madness and doubt was over.
Dr. Gemp’s injections of opium had restored Ariadna; the divorce was off; Sashenka was enrolled in Professor Raev’s classes; and Lala seemed calm and acquiescent. The only worry was Gideon. What was that scallywag, that
31
Gideon Zeitlin was on his way home, driven by Leonid the butler in the big touring car, the Russo-Balt, with two hundred rubles in his pocket. Cossacks and guardsmen had erected checkpoints around the official Liteiny cordon that guarded the General Staff, War Ministry and Winter Palace. But as Gideon crossed Nevsky, some workers threw stones at the car.
“Filthy speculator!” they shouted. “We’ll teach you to fleece the people.”
The stones drummed on the roof but Gideon, always slightly screwed even when sober, was not scared. “Me? Of all people? It’s my brother you want, you fools!” he muttered, slapping his thigh. “Drive on, Leonid! It’s not our car they’re smashing up! Ha ha!” The butler, a nervous driver at the best of times, was less amused.
They pulled up on Tenth Rozhdestvenskaya, a narrow street of tall new apartment buildings. Gideon leaped out of the car, tugging his coat with its beaver collar around his shoulders.
“I’ll be off then,” said Leonid.
“Hmm,” said Gideon, who had promised his wife, children and brother Samuil to spend some time at home. But he could not quite commit himself. “I’d like you to wait.”
“Sorry, Gospodin Zeitlin, I don’t like to leave the car out for too long,” replied the servant. “The baron said, ‘Drop him off and come home,’ and I work for the baron. Besides, the motorcar could get stoned by the workers and this is a beautiful machine, Gospodin Zeitlin, many times more beautiful than the Delaunay or—”
“Good night, Leonid, godspeed!”
Nodding cheerily at the doorman (while thinking, You informing Okhrana scum!), Gideon strolled through the marble lobby and caught the elevator, an Art Nouveau beauty of polished amber brass and black carving, to the fifth floor. The cognac and champagne he had drunk with Samuil rollicked through his body, making his heart burn, his bowels churn and his head spin. His wife Vera, mother of his two daughters, was pregnant again and he had spent all his meager earnings on dinner at Contant’s and games of chance. Oh, the tragedy, he chuckled to himself, of being born rich and growing up poor!
Once again his brother had bailed him out, opening his handsome teak strongbox to hand over the
“Oh, there he is!” said Vera, who was at the stove, in a shabby housecoat and slippers.
“That’s a fine welcome for a returning prodigal,” said Gideon, kissing her sallow cheek. “Me? Of all people!” Despite his bad behavior, Gideon was always amazed at how people treated him. He placed a colossal, hairy hand on her belly. “How are you feeling, Commander-in-Chief?”
How firm and tight and tidy and full of life her belly feels, he thought. It’s mine, the fruit of my seed—but who am I to bring another child into this pantomime of a life? The earth is spinning out of control…
Vera’s strained voice softened. “Good to see you, dear.”
“And you, and you!”
Then her weary face hardened again. “Are you eating with us? How long are we to be honored with your company, Gideon?”
“I’m here for you and the children,” answered Gideon so sunnily that anyone who did not know him would be convinced he was the best husband in Piter. Here, no one helped with his fur or galoshes. The apartment was messy and steamy with fat and cabbage, like a peasant’s place. Like many disorderly men who never tidy up anything, Gideon hated mess and he inspected the unwashed dishes, the unmade beds with their yellowed sheets, the piles of shoes and boots, the footmarks on the carpets and the crumbs on the kitchen table with accusatory fury. It was a handsome apartment, painted plain white with ordinary Finnish birch furniture, but the pictures were still not hung. “This place is a sewer, Vera. A sewer!”
“Gideon! We don’t have a kopek. We must pay the butcher twenty rubles or we lose our credit. We owe the doorman eight, we owe—”
“Feh, feh, dearest. What’s for dinner?”
“Kasha and cheese. We couldn’t get anything else. There’s nothing in the city to eat. Viktoria! Sophia! Your papa’s here!”
There was the thud of reluctant feet in heavy lace-up shoes. A girl stood in the doorway, peering at her father with sullen, muddy eyes as if he were a Martian.
“Hello, Papa,” said Viktoria, known as Vika.
“Darling Vika! How are you! How’s school? And that admirer of yours? Still writing you poems?”
He held open his arms but his darling fifteen-year-old daughter neither approached nor altered her expression.
“Mama’s very tired. She cries. You haven’t visited for a long time. We need money.”
Tall, olive skinned with lanky hair, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a dressing gown, Vika reminded Gideon of a censorious librarian. He could not get close to her.
“Where have you been?” the girl went on. “Drinking? Chasing women of easy virtue?”
“What a thing to accuse me of! Me? Of all people!” Gideon’s eyes fell. Even though his big mouth, dancing black eyes, wild hair and beard were made for grand gestures and belly laughs, he felt hollow and ashamed. Where did she get such a phrase as “women of easy virtue”? From that mother of hers of course.
“I’ve got homework to do,” said Vika, slouching away.
Gideon shrugged to himself: Vera was poisoning the children against him. Then he heard a cascade of light steps. Sophia, a dark girl with frizzy jet-black hair and eyes, threw herself into his arms. He stood up and whirled her round and round in her shabby nightshirt.
“Mouche!” he bellowed. “My darling Mouche!” That was Sophia’s nickname because when she was a baby she had resembled a mischievous fly. Now she was older, with black curls, black eyes and a strong jaw, she radiated energy just like her father.
“Where’ve you been? Is there a revolution? We saw a fight at the bakery! I want to be out there, Papa. Take me with you! How are your revolutionary friends? Did you see anything? I support the workers! How are you, Papa? Are you writing something? I’ve missed you. You haven’t been bad, have you? We hope not! We are very prissy here!” She wrapped herself around him like a monkey. “What are you writing, you old papa
He loved the way she called him “papa scallywag” in Yiddish and tickled his beard. “Shall we write something now, Mouche? I owe them a quick article.”
“Oh yes!” Mouche took his hand and dragged him into the study, where it was difficult to step without knocking over piles of papers and journals—yet the fleet Mouche dodged them all and pulled out his green leather
