Dancing with Bears (11 page)

She was going to
enjoy
making this one suffer.

The first time that the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma spent the night with Arkady, she came alone. The second time, she brought along her best friend Irina to help blunt his appetites. Nevertheless, when the pearly light of dawn suffused itself across the city and seeped through the windows of his apartment, the two ladies sprawled loose-limbed and exhausted upon the raft of his great bed, while Arkady was entirely certain that he could continue for hours to come.

Seeing their exhaustion, however, Arkady gently kissed both the dear women on their foreheads and, throwing on his embroidered silk dressing gown, went to the window to watch the birth of a new day. The smokes and fogs of Moscow had been transformed by the alchemy of dawn into a diffuse and holy haze that briefly made this thronged and wicked place appear to be a sinless city upon the hill, a second Jerusalem, a fit dwell-ing-place for the living Spirit.

He stood motionless, reveling in the presence of God.

After a time, Baronessa Avdotya stirred faintly and said, “That was… even better than the first time. I would not have thought it possible.”

Beside her Irina murmured, “I am never going to let a man touch me again. It would spoil the memory of this night.”

There were no words Arkady could have more greatly relished hearing. They stroked his vanity so emphatically that he had to fight down the urge to fling himself back onto the bed and show both ladies how much more he had yet to give.

“Why have you left us?” the baronessa mock-complained.He could hear her loving smile in her voice. “What are you looking at so intently?”

“I am watching the sun come up,” he said simply. “It struggles to rise above the horizon, and in doing so it makes the horizon seem to shift and move, like a sleeper’s eyelid when he strives to awaken. Yet though the enterprise looks difficult, it is inevitable; not all the armies in the world could delay it for the slightest fraction of a second.”

“You make it sound so profound.”

“It is! It is!” Arkady cried with all the certainty of a recent convert. “It seems to me that this is exactly like the merciful God trying to force His way into our night-bound, sinful lives—it seems so difficult, impossible even, and yet His will is indomitable and cannot be stopped. Darkness flees from Him. His light arises from within like the sun, and the soul is filled with purity, certainty, and serenity.”

“Oh, Arkady,” Irina sighed. “You are so very, very spiritual. But God does not enter into the lives of ordinary people in such a manner. Only for saints and people in books does He behave that way.”

Now Arkady flung away the robe and returned to the bed. He swept both women into his arms and addressed them by their pet names. “Ah, my beautiful Dunyasha! Sweet Irinushka! Do not despair, for God has found a way to break through the membrane separating Him from the mundane world.”

“Away, insatiable beast!” The baronessa pushed herself out of Arkady’s arms and then, when he did not move to grab her back, snuggled into them again. Irina rolled over weakly and touched her lips in a little pouting kiss to Arkady’s chest, though without any strength.

Now came the most delicate and important part of Arkady’s mission. “I was not always so vigorous, you know, nor so sure of God’s abiding love. Not long ago I was weak and riddled with doubt.” He paused, as if debating within himself whether to share with them a great secret. “My darlings! Do you wish to be as strong as I? To have my sexual stamina? That is nothing. That is the simplest thing imaginable. I can show you how it is done. But more importantly, you will feel the presence of the indwelling God as intimately as you have felt my caresses.”

“It sounds delightful,” Baronessa Avdotya murmured,“though improbable.”

“Invite me to your estate next weekend, when the baron is away, and I will bring what is requisite. We shall all three of us be made closer than lovers and stronger than gods.”

“I will come,” Irina promised. “But I must bring another friend with me—perhaps two—so that I can get some rest between your storms of lovemaking.”

“We’d best make it five,” the baronessa said.

It was that fleeting moment of golden perfection that comes in late September, which the Russians called “grandmother’s summer.” The parks and boulevards of Moscow drew lovers and idlers out from their houses and businesses. There were people boating on the river’s silvery waters. The view from the wooded heights of the Secret Garden was as picturesque as a hand-colored woodcut.

Simply being in the Kremlin, Surplus felt lifted above the day-to-day concerns of the groundlings in the city beneath him. It explained everything about those who governed from this high place: He felt himself not only physically but morally superior, occupying a higher, more spiritually elevated space, ethereal where the Muscovites were flesh-bound and sweaty, pure where they reeked of sausage and kvass. He shook his head in amusement at the whimsicality of these thoughts, but found he could not dismiss them. “Those poor fellows!” he thought pityingly, meaning everybody who had the misfortune to be ruled from this extraordinary spot.

It was also, he had to admit, good to get away from the Pearls for a change. Beauteous and charming as they might be, the Pearls were also— there was no denying it—intense. Indeed, they were growing more intense with each passing day on which they were not taken, with enormous pomp and ceremony, to the Terem Palace to stand at last, blushing and shy, before their new bridegroom. After which, he presumed, these seven virgins with their excess of book learning and lack of any prior outlets for their physical desires, would teach the duke precisely how terrifying such young ladies could be.

So it was with a bit of an edge in his voice that Surplus turned to the rotund and pompous bureaucrat—the eighteenth most powerful man in Moscow, the gentleman had boasted—with whom he slowly strolled among the ash trees of the Secret Garden and said, “We have been in Moscow over a month and still you cannot make this simplest of things happen?”

“I have given it my honest best. But what is there to be done? A meeting with the Duke of Muscovy is not something that happens every day.”

“All I wish to do,” Surplus said, “is to give the man a present of seven uniquely beautiful concubines, all of them graceful, intelligent, and desperately eager to please. Nor are they merely decorative and companionable. They can also cook, tat lace, arrange flowers, cheat at cards, and play the pianoforte. Not only are they pleasant to the eye and ear and—presumably—nose and hand and tongue, but they have been thoroughly educated in literature, psychology, and political philosophy. As advisors, they will be unfailingly frank yet subtle as only a Byzantine can be. Further, they are trained in all the social graces and the erotic arts as well. Never was such a gift more churlishly refused!”

“The duke is a great man, with many demands on his time.”

“I warn you that when he finally experiences the thousand delights of the Pearls of Byzantium, he will not reward you for having kept them from him so long.”

“You have your duty and I have mine. Good-bye.” Wrapping his dignity about himself like a greatcoat, the bureaucrat, whom Surplus now thought of as the single most useless man in Moscow, departed.

Dispirited, Surplus sank down on a park bench.

The Secret Garden’s portentous name was more suggestive than it perhaps merited, for it lay above and was named for the Secret Tower, one of the Kremlin’s two dozen towers, most of which antedated the Utopian era. As for why the tower was so named, there were many explanations. One was that it was the terminus of a secret tunnel into the city. Another said that it contained a secret well. The most plausible was that it was named after a long-demolished Cathedral of the Secret that once stood nearby. But which was the truth no man could say for there were no facts in Russia—only conflicting conspiracy theories.

Surplus came out of his reverie to discover, sitting on the bench beside him, a stocky and unprepossessing man in blue glass goggles.

“You seem unhappy, Ambassador,” Chortenko said. “May I ask why?”

His mood being foul, and seeing no reason to pretend otherwise, Surplus said, “Surely you, who are reputed to know everything else that goes on in this city, must be aware of what I have made no effort whatsoever to hide.”

“Yes, yes, these ‘Pearls’ of yours, of course. I was only making small talk. But you, I see, are far too direct for that. So I shall be blunt as well. It is impossible for you to see the Duke of Muscovy. No foreigner has ever been allowed into his presence. But if you will answer a few questions openly and honestly for me, I will arrange the impossible for you. And then…well, you will have as much of the great man’s attention as he deigns to give you.”

There was something about the quiet amusement with which the man spoke that made the small hairs on the back of Surplus’s neck bristle with sudden fear. But he said only, “What do you wish to know?”

“This book that was stolen from you—for there
was
a book and it
was
stolen—exactly what is it?”

“I cannot tell you specifically, for that is information which the Caliph’s political surgeons have locked my brain against divulging.” Surplus froze every muscle in his face and stared blankly into the distance. Then, with a sudden, spasmodic toss of his head, he said, “However, I am at liberty to say that it was intended as a present for the duke.”

“Then we are allies in this matter. Tell me, is this book very valuable?”

“Far more so than the Pearls of Byzantium. Indeed, it was the chief gift, and they only an afterthought.”

Chortenko pursed his lips and then tapped them thoughtfully with one stubby forefinger. “Perhaps my people can aid in its recovery by finding the man who stole it from you. He is a foreigner, after all, and hence extremely noticeable.”

“His name is Aubrey Darger, and he was my secretary. But I must tell you that the book itself is useless without…” Surplus’s face twitched and contorted as if he were struggling to find a phrasing allowed by the thought-surgery. “Without certain information that he alone possesses.”

“Curious. But I imagine that information would come out easily enough under torture.”

“If only that were so! I would wield the whip myself, after what that dastard has done. But for much the same reason that I cannot be more open with you about…certain aspects of the matter…it would be a pointless endeavor.” Surplus sighed. “I wish I could be of more help. I don’t imagine the little I’ve told you suffices to warrant a meeting with the duke.”

“Not at all, not at all.” Chortenko consulted a small datebook and then made a notation. “Come to my house a week from Tuesday, and I’ll take you to him.”

Darger followed his guide into the undercity.

Anya Pepsicolova was, of course, an agent of the secret police. But Darger did not hold that against her. Indeed, that was the entire point of this charade—to get the attention of the powers who actually ran Muscovy and, ultimately, convince them that he had something they desired.

Something they would be willing to pay dearly for.

Rulers were notoriously stingy with those who did them favors, of course. So in order to receive an appropriate reward, a silent partner would be required. Somebody highly placed in the administration. It was Surplus’s job to find that individual, just as it was his to ostentatiously display the bait.

The Bucket of Nails’ kitchen opened on a long corridor. Through some of the doors lining that corridor could be glimpsed butchers, dishwashers, mushroom cultivators, gene splicers, and the like. These were the lowest levels of the working class, people who were grimly holding on to the very edge of subsistence, terrified lest they lose their grips and fall into the abyss of joblessness and penury.

They rattled down a metal staircase which seemed ready to collapse from age into a lower level where the lichens and bioluminescent fungi dwindled almost to nothing. Where two corridors intersected, a legless army veteran with a patch of tentacles growing out of one cheek sold oil lanterns from a blanket. Pepsicolova threw down a few rubles, and the man lit two lanterns with a sputtering sulfur match. Their flames leapt high and then sank down as he trimmed the wicks. Pepsicolova handed one to Darger.

The metal parts of the lantern seemed flimsy and its thin panes of glass ready to break at the tap of a fingernail. “Aren’t these a fire hazard?” Darger asked.

“If Moscow burns, it burns,” Pepsicolova said with a fatalistic shrug.

She led him down a second steep and endlessly long metal stairway to a vast and shadowy marble-walled station room. There, long concrete piers lined an underground river whose waters were as black as the Styx. “This is the Neglinnaya River,” Pepsicolova said with a touch of melancholy. “The poor thing has been trapped underground since forever.” A handful of gondoliers ditched their cigarettes into the water at their approach and waved lanterns urging the newcomers toward their crafts. But Pepsicolova ignored them. To one end of the pier was a small skiff. She climbed in, and Darger after her.

An odd incident happened as they were preparing to cast off. A wraith-thin and albino-white individual emerged from the gloom and held out three packs of cigarettes, which Pepsicolova accepted wordlessly. The creature’s face was expressionless, his movements listless. He turned away and faded again into darkness.

“Who was that?” Darger asked.

With an irritated gesture, Pepsicolova lit up a cigarette. “Somebody. A messenger. Nobody anybody cares about.”

“You’d be healthier if you didn’t smoke so much.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

Pepsicolova stood and poled. Darger lounged back, watching her by the light of his lantern. When she leaned into the pole, he could not help noticing that she had quite a nice little bottom. All those months in the company of exquisite and untouchable women had made him acutely appreciative of the charms of their imperfect but (potentially) touchable sisters.

He had patted her on the fanny earlier chiefly in order to establish himself as the shallow and insignificant sort of man he was pretending to be. And she had arched her back! She had all but purred! Darger flattered himself that women rather liked him, but this Anya Pepsicolova had responded in such an extraordinary manner as to suggest deeper feelings on her part toward him.