Dancing with Bears (15 page)

Luckily, the others were clustered at the tiled edge of the pond cheering and cursing, and paid him no more than a quick glance-and-a-nod as he was introduced around. Several of the men had canvas water-bags at their feet. Now one untied the top of his and poured something into the pond. Bright ribbons of red and orange and yellow and green energetically looped and swirled beneath the surface.

Arkady leaned over the pond to get a closer look.

“Look out!” Yevgeny shouted as a needle-toothed goblin’s head burst from the water, viciously snapping at his face. Had not Yevgeny wrapped his arms about Arkady’s chest and hauled him back, he might well have lost his nose.

“What in heaven’s name was that?” Arkady gasped.

“Her name is Lulu,” one of the men said. He reached a canvas-gloved hand into the water and pulled out a red-and-orange eel which wrapped itself briefly about his arm before being stuffed back in its bucket. A blue eel with yellow stripes floated dead and ripped open on the surface of the water. Turning to his comrade, he said, “And I believe you owe me some money, Borya.”

“Do you eel, Arkady?” Yevgeny asked.

“No.”

“What a pity. Tell you what, let me know as soon as you’ve found an appropriate eeling pond, and I’ll send over my trainer with a bucket of elvers.” There was a sudden thrashing in the water and Yevgeny turned eagerly back to the fight. “Oh, well done!”

At dinner, Arkady managed to negotiate the soup course without incident. However, he had barely tackled his salad when the baronessa leaned over to whisper, “You mustn’t start with the outermost fork, silly. ‘Big spoon, little fork, tiny silver tongs. A fork for Sylvia, a skewer for her date, then little brother Pierre comes and cleans the plate.’ That’s how you remember.” Then a line of green-clad waiters whose bright stares identified them as serviles entered the dining room carrying platters and began serving out pink cuts of meat. Avdotya tapped on a water glass with her spoon: “Everybody, I want you to pay attention! I’m quite proud of the next course, and it’s a mark of the regard in which I hold you all that I’m serving it to you this afternoon.”

“Well, don’t be a tease, Dunyasha,” Yevgeny said good-humoredly. “What is it?”

“Why it’s me! I had my own flesh cloned for you today. That’s how highly I think of my friends.”

“That’s all very nice for the men,” a pretty young thing mock-pouted. “But I’d much rather have a taste of the baron. After all, if he can’t be here in person…”

A mischievous look came over the baronessa’s face. “Why, who do you think went into the consommé?”

Roars of merriment and applause lofted to the rafters.

Arkady stared down at his cutlet in horror.

At last the dinner was over. The women drifted to the back lawn to oversee the setting-up of lanterns, while the men retired to the veranda for cigars. There, Leonid Nikitovich Pravda-Interfax, who had genially introduced himself as a professional wastrel (but who, according to Yevgeny, was actually highly placed in the Ministry of Roads and Canals), said, “Irina tells me that you have a drug. One that,” he lowered his voice in a comically conspiratorial manner, “improves one’s performance in the saddle?”

“Oh, yes, certainly. But the sexual dimensions of the rasputin’s power are the least of it,” Arkady said, on familiar ground at last. “Spiritually…well, there are some who have taken it and literally seen God in all His glory.”

“Yes, yes, God is all well and good,” Leonid said. “But given the choice I’d far rather see Tatiana’s titties.”

“Or Anastasia’s ass,” one of his pals said to top him.

“Or Jennicah’s
je ne sais quois
,” said another, making it a game.

His companions snorted and guffawed.

Arkady flushed again, unaccountably embarrassed. These superficial and well-meaning young men were none of them trying to humiliate him, he realized. But simply by their being who they were and he being himself, the humiliation was inevitable. Which, in its way, made the experience all the more painful.

Mercifully, the baronessa reappeared. “Put out those foul-smelling things, and join the ladies outside,” she said. “We’re going to play lawn polo.”

Leonid came up to Arkady with a friendly grin. “You do know how to play, don’t you, Arkady? Well, then, we’ll simply have to teach you. I can lend you a pony, a lantern, and a trident.”

So it was that an hour later, Arkady found himself hiding in a guest bedroom while one of the baronessa’s servants sewed up the trousers he had split falling from his horse as he tried to spear a boar-shoat that had burst out of the shrubbery without warning.

Oh,
when
would it grow late enough for the orgy to begin?

When the operation was complete, the Pale Folk undid the straps holding the woman down on the gurney. She sat up. Then she stood. She did not rub at the crude sutures on her newly shaved head. One of the Pale Folk walked unhurriedly toward an archway at the far side of the room, and she followed it without question.

She was one of them now.

Two more of the Pale Folk entered the room carrying another prisoner slung from a pole, this one bald as a mushroom and scrawny as an orphan. His mouth was gagged, but his eyes darted wildly about, and when he was dumped on the floor and his hands and feet untied, he strove to escape so vigorously that it took a dozen of the Pale Folk to subdue him and strap him down onto the gurney.

Koschei had watched the dehumanizing process with somber interest. Now he asked, “Where do the raw materials for this operation come from?”

“They are tribute from various of the underworld tribes,” Chernobog said. “People who were caught thieving, or strangers who trespassed into their territories. The tribes rid themselves of a difficulty and receive five packs of cigarettes for their trouble. The underlords increase their army of obedient slaves by one. And the world is relieved of the presence of another scoundrel. Everyone benefits.”

Svaroži
č
nodded toward the doorway, and their guide led them onward.

They were taken to a high-ceilinged oval hall, bright with lantern-sconces. Its walls were covered with tremendous panels on which faded painted schematic maps of all the continents of the world. Beneath, tables had been set up circling the room, where the Pale Folk worked tirelessly and without passion, their motions smooth and unhurried. One would open a crate of cigarettes and dump its contents on the tabletop. Those standing there carefully opened and unfolded each package and passed the packaging to the left and the cigarettes to the right. Those to the right tore open the cigarettes one by one, letting the tobacco fall onto shallow trays that were whisked to the right and replaced when they grew full. The shredded papers fell to their feet like snow. At the next group of tables, first one and then another powder was sprinkled upon the tobacco by ashen-skinned figures wearing cloth masks over their mouths and noses. Beyond them, yet more Pale Folk poured the mixture into bowls. The bowls were passed on to further workers, who were given fresh papers and proceeded to roll new cigarettes. These were given to others who grouped them in bunches of twenty and then—the circle having reached its beginning—folded the packages around them again.

A crate of the re-rolled cigarettes was hammered shut. The new recruit joined in with several other Pale Folk, to carry it out the same door through which the crate had originally entered.

“Is this not the human condition?” Koschei asked. “An endless circle of meaningless labor joylessly performed deep underground, as far from the eye of God as it is possible to be. These lost souls are fortunate they are no longer self-aware.”

Svaroži
č
nodded and piously rubbed the side of his head, where ancient scars commemorated an operation not entirely unrelated to the one just now performed by the Pale Folk. “Oblivion is preferable to awareness without God,” Chernobog agreed. “Yet I do not envy them their fate.”

“Nor should you, nor do I, nor would any man capable of better. By being so sinful as to get themselves in such a fix, however, these poor dead souls proved themselves worthy of nothing better.” Koschei turned away, dismissing their memory. “I believe it is time that I met these underlords.”

“Yes,” Chernobog said. “They are quite eager to meet you as well.”

Since Pepsicolova was uncharacteristically late, Darger had struck up a conversation with a tobacco factor to pass the time. The fellow was guarding a pile of crates in the basement corridor immediately behind the Bucket of Nails.

“The tobacco is brought in on wagon trains from the Ukraine by Kazakh traders,” the factor explained, “and rolled into cigarettes and packaged here in Moscow. My purchasers have several times tried to screw me into selling them the tobacco loose. But I tell them: Why should I give up the money? Do I look like the kind of dupe who would let silver flow into somebody else’s pockets?”

“Is there really such profit to be made from so impoverished a clientele?”

“Trust me, sir, there is. These ragamuffins and tatterdemalions may look half-starved to the casual eye, but they have all the money they need for those pleasures they deem essential. Nor is tobacco the least of it. I know for a fact that they buy various addictive and even poisonous substances as well, in bulk, and indeed there are rumors of underground farms where psychoactive mushrooms are grown upon beds of human manure. And yet some of them have the nerve to come up from their bolt-holes and beg on the streets and underpasses. Feh! They may not have the creature comforts of those who live above them, but neither do they sweat and toil as needs must decent folk such as you and I. Their lives are squalid but indolent, and they consider the attendant filth a small price to pay for the sybaritic ease of their existence.”

“But where do they obtain the money to pay you?” Darger asked.

“Who knows? Perhaps they deal drugs or sell their bodies to those depraved enough to desire them. Occasionally I have been paid in antique silver coins, doubtless from caches hidden belowground in times of trouble and never recovered by their rightful owners. It matters not to me, so long as the weight is good.”

The factor consulted his pocket-watch with just a hint of worry. “Whatever can be keeping my contacts? I have never known the Pale Folk to be late before.”

“That is the fourth time you’ve checked your stem-winder since we began talking. Are you pressed for time?”

“It is just that I have an appointment for which I would not care to be late.”

“Surely you can explain the circumstances.”

“Unfortunately, she is not the sort of lady who accepts explanations.”

“Ahh! I understand you now—this engagement is of an intimate nature.”

“Indeed,” the factor said glumly. “Or was.”

“Well, there is no problem here, then. I know the bartender at the Bucket of Nails and he will happily store your crates for a small desideratum. Come! I will help you carry them in.”

The factor consulted his watch again. “I should still be late, however, and believe me my tardiness would cost me dearly.” Then, with a touch of yearning in his voice.“Perhaps you would be willing to—no, of course not. It was irresponsible of me even to think of it.”

Darger’s instincts kicked in immediately.“I?! I am no longshoreman, sir! Nor am I a day-laborer to be hired off the street. I made my offer purely in the spirit of Christian charity.” He spun on his heel, as if to leave.

“Stay, stay, sir!” the factor cried. With sudden decisiveness, he quickly began counting out bills from his wallet. “You seem a decent sort. Surely you would be willing to help out one who is caught in the throes and tangles of something very much like love?”

“Well…”

“Thank you, sir. Your name, sir?”

“Gregor Saltimbanque,” Darger said. “Of the Hapsburg Saltimbanques.”

“I could tell that you were a gentleman, sir,” the factor said, pressing the bills into Darger’s hands. Then, over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in two hours—three at most!”

The carpenters were finally done with their work. Surplus poured them each a shot of vodka and together they toasted the new spiral staircase to the embassy’s roof and the equally new cupola at its summit. Zoësophia, he could see, was pacing back and forth, restless as a panther, behind the screen at the far end of the room. But as the Neanderthals would not let her cross to this side of it until all strange males were gone, that did not much concern him. “I shall instruct the treasurer to give you each a bonus of an extra day’s pay,” he told the workmen. At which good news, they all cheered him so heartily that he had to bring out the bottle again for a second and then a third round of toasts.

When finally Surplus had seen the men to the door, Zoësophia came sailing out of the women’s quarters, the Neanderthals retreating from the lighting a-flash in her eyes. “As your treasurer,” she said, “I am not going to pay a bonus to carpenters for a job they have already been paid for and that should never have been contracted for in the first place. Further, and also in my capacity as chief financial officer, it is my duty to inform you that we are out of money and living on several lines of credit, which are secured by property that has already been mortgaged three times over.”

“Which is precisely why I am so open-handed. Let once our creditors see us pinching pennies and they will lose faith in our financial stability.”

“Stability? We are living in a house of cards, ready to collapse at the least puff of wind, to which
you
have added a perfectly useless cupola!”

“Darling Zoësophia, you wound me grievously. Only let me show you what I have done and I am certain you will agree that it is money well spent.”

Zoësophia’s glare would have stunned a basilisk. “I doubt that very much.”

“Come with me and I promise that you will like what you see.”

He led her up the new staircase, and into the cupola at its top. There, he let down the trap and secured it with a latch.“So that we are not disturbed,” he said. Then he swept out a paw. “Is not Moscow beautiful from this vantage?” A mesh screen embroidered with colored wires in a pattern of green and yellow aspen leaves and fire-red feathers enclosed the cupola, allowing them to see with perfect ease while protecting them from prying eyes. The sun was sinking low in the sky, painting the clouds with oranges and purples that coming from any lesser artist than Nature herself would have seemed garish and obvious. Looking across the rooftops, they could see the Kremlin canted up out of a ramshackle sea of buildings, like a great ship just beginning to list before going under.