There was shouting and applause from the couple of dozen in the west hall. Nina jumped to her feet and embraced Mrs Tabidze, then, streaming with tears and grinning broadly, ran to Theodore’s arms. Petrovsky made a confused re-announcement of what had just been made public and the company cheered, renewed their applause and proposed and drank toasts. One of the drinkers, a burly bearded man in a short bottle-green jacket and white trousers, immediately afterwards clapped his hand across his mouth and made off towards the lavatories at a lurching trot. Then things quietened down for a time. Successively, two middle-aged ladies, each the wife of an official, were taken at a smart pace through their pasts, presents and futures. General attention wandered; after emotional farewells, or in one case after being hauled upright and supported from either side, several people left. When the second lady had been dismissed there was a pause, and the entertainment, already languishing, seemed about to cease altogether. At last Commissioner Mets put up his hand and was accepted.
The fortune-teller had run into a small difficulty in that her acquaintance with her new customer was recent and slight, though it certainly included the fact that he held an important and therefore sensitive post; banter, the obvious recourse, would not do here. Hesitantly at first, consulting the cards a great deal, she told the Commissioner that he was a man of wide knowledge, refined taste and steady judgement, that he showed total dedication to his job but was always extending his horizons in new directions, and other things no self-respecting bureaucrat could demur at. When the talk turned to the inevitable difficulties along the way and the patience that would in time resolve them, someone gave a great yawn, but the next moment Mrs Tabidze turned up a card, looked at Mets and gave a sharp exclamation of surprise. She was not hesitating now; it was just that the words would not come.
‘Those difficulties we were speaking of,’ she said. ‘Are some of them… is one of them exceptionally severe?’
‘Yes,’ said Mets in a neutral tone, sitting forward in his chair with his hands pressed together.
‘In fact, would a stronger word be more appropriate? Quandary? Dilemma? Crisis?’
‘Yes. Well, in a way, in a manner of speaking.’
‘And has it presented itself recently? Very recently?’
‘Somewhat recently.’
Mrs Tabidze turned up another card and stared at it for some time in silence. Without lifting her eyes she said slowly, ‘Then I have to tell you that within a comparatively short time, certainly no more than four weeks, the situation will have resolved itself in your favour. You will have achieved success.’
‘How satisfactory. Thank you. Thank you very much.’
‘I’ve never known her to behave like that before,’ said Tatiana Petrovsky to her husband. ‘It’s as if she really had seen something in those cards.’
‘Oh, old Agatha’s a marvellous actress.’
‘I don’t think it’s that, or not only that. There’s something funny going on here.’
Alexander had had a poor evening: no real chance to show off, irritating conversation with parents, and now boredom with no end in sight. He was weighing the merits of getting sonorously drunk against those of denouncing the company as rotten with credulity and superstition before storming off to bed (quicker, for one thing) when Sonia Korotchenko passed him on her way to the vacant chair at the baize-topped table. He made no sound but gave a start that scraped his foot on the stone floor. If asked at any previous stage, he would have stated with total confidence that she had not turned up at the party. Where was her husband? Not in sight, or not completely or identifiably; a pair of trousered legs and the crook of an elbow on the far side of a nearby pillar might quite well have been his. Several voices asked more or less loudly who that woman was, meaning the one now seeking (with some determination, to judge by the set of her bare shoulders) to have her fortune told.
For a moment Alexander considered withdrawing as quietly as he could. It was impossible, no, but it was most unlikely, that she should not know he was there, far from impossible that within a minute she would tell of or otherwise reveal, as it might be by diving at his genitals, something he would on the whole prefer should remain undivulged, and quite certain that parts at least of this risk would be removed if he should prove not to be there after all. And yet – the limelight was always the limelight, whatever colours it showed one in, and the sort of things she did were apt to lose heavily in the telling. He was finally decided to stay by Mrs Tabidze’s expression of restrained disquiet coupled with having heard from his parents something of what she knew about the lady in the low-cut muslin dress – the same, he was nearly sure, that she had twitched so unreluctantly over her head on her previous visit to the house. It could well be her only garment if when at home she went about naked all the time instead of just when receiving visitors.
After thoroughly shuffling and cutting the pack Mrs Tabidze put it out as before and glanced at the top card on each heap. Alexander could see her chewing at her lips and hid a grin. After a false start she said rather hoarsely,
‘When you were very young you made a long journey. You and your mother and father came from-’
‘I don’t want to hear about the past, I know about the past.’ Mrs Korotchenko sounded as if her mouth and lips were dry. ‘Tell me about the future.’
‘Very well… You will have a long and happy married life. You will continue to be a source of strength and comfort to your husband. Over the years, you- ‘That’s the sort of thing that happens to a lot of people. Isn’t anything going to happen to me that never happens to anybody else? And shall I never do anything? Surely I shall do something, however trivial, that nobody else has ever done?’
The wooden phraseology, the loud, grating, uninflected voice seemed to add to the impression made on the audience. Unbelievably, they fell silent, except for the continued frenzied coughing of a hugely fat, pop-eyed old character whose frilled shirt lay open to the navel. The cards clicked loudly in Mrs Tabidze’s hands. Coming to the last one of a heap, she sat still for a moment and turned it over. What she saw, or the interpretation she put on the sight, made her spring to her feet and grunt with an astonishment much more acute than that shown over Mets’s fortune a few minutes earlier. In years of acquaintance Alexander had never known her behave so excitedly before. Mrs Tabidze looked up, became aware she was standing and sat down again in some confusion.
‘I could have sworn I’d…’ She paused and collected herself, blinking rapidly. ‘Forgive me, all of you – the cards spring their surprises on occasion. Now… my dear, I have good news for you. Soon, you will perform an act of great virtue, of great courage and humanity, an act for which your name will live in praise. And this will be soon. Within four weeks. No, sooner than that,’ she added, looking momentarily troubled again, but went on with all her usual firmness, ‘The performance is at an end. Thank you for your attention.’
Mrs Korotchenko rose almost as quickly as Mrs Tabidze had done and, looking to neither right nor left, marched away and into the spacious corridor that ran the breadth of the house. When, after leaving it long enough not to court suspicion, he followed in her track, it appeared that he had also left it long enough for her to disappear. She was not to be found in the east hall nor anywhere within sight in the garden. On his return he saw that the chair beside the pillar was empty, and so he never knew whether its occupant had been Korotchenko or another.
13
The original (or perhaps just the former) picture of the male parts on the Korotchenkos’ fence had been blotted out with some dark paint or stain and another, executed with rather more dash, laid on top. As he approached the house on foot, having left Polly at the stables on the Northampton road, Alexander wondered whether there were not dozens, even hundreds of such drawings sited there one under the other, the work of successive afternoon-visitors regularly blotted out at the husband’s decree or the wife’s whim, yet in a sense still there. Alexander half-remembered a Latour-Ordzhonikidze aphorism according to which each of our lovers adds something to us which no subsequent experience can efface. He wondered what Mrs Korotchenko was going to turn out to have added to him.
No new information on this point was immediately available. As on his previous visit, the door was not shut, his ring at the bell went unanswered. Inside, he moved a few paces along the tiled floor in the passage, looked through the glass door to his right and saw nobody, looked to his left and saw somebody, the same somebody as had been leaning against a wall before. This time she was sitting at a dining-table instead but of course was naked
