Hot Siberian (21 page)

11

AFTER ONLY THREE HOURS NIKOLAI CAME ALL AT ONCE
awake.

His very first thought, as though it had been crouched there on the front of his mind awating the instant of his consciousness, was that he should get back to London. He would not go into the Almazjuvelirexport office and see Valkov, not even let Valkov know he'd been in Leningrad. He would just get on the first plane out any way possible. He could use his trade-mission
blat
for one of those seats Aeroflot always holds aside for the
nachalstvo
, the big shots. Hell, he
was
one of the
nachalstvo
, just not so highly favored. He would bribe, promise to bring back next trip to whomever he had to twenty pairs of Porsche-type sunglasses, and just as many Japanese digital talking wristwatches. It wouldn't matter to him that someone might have to be bumped off the flight. He would go the long way, change planes or even lay over in Helsinki. He would …

When he was on his feet and moving around his emotional balance was better. And by the time he was done in the bathroom and had drunk a couple of glasses of hot tea he'd recovered to the extent that he chose from his closet an average Soviet suit and unmistakably Soviet accessories, which was his way of telling himself that he'd decided to go about this day in Leningrad as originally planned.

When he was outside on Bolshoi Prospekt he didn't see an available taxi, so he started walking and kept on in the direction of his mother, father, and grandfather. The day was abnormally clear for early morning, colors were intensified, the edges of everything sharp. It was not the sort of light that contributed best to the beauty of this city. Along his way Nikolai went in at a shop for a round loaf of that blackest bread called
chorny
and a wedge of strong yellow cheese. From a street vendor he bought a bouquet of pink carnations that were on the verge of wilt but the best of the bunches. He crossed over the Neva again for about the twenty thousandth time in his life and continued on down Maly Prospekt to Smolenskoye Cemetery.

He couldn't be sure of the hours, because they were always being changed, but when he saw the first gate was open he knew the others would be. He went in at the fourth gate and walked down the wide graveled lane, feeling the press of the countless stone crosses and stars on each side. A
dyedushka
came from the opposite direction. Nikolai noticed the old man's trousers were soiled by fresh dirt at the knees.

To the end of that lane and up a short way of another and on the left was the seven-foot-high symmetrically carved and smoothed hunk of blue-black rock with his last name cut into it. It stood for the whole Borodin plot, which was rectangular, its perimeter defined to the inch by a black wrought-iron fence topped by forbidding spears. Similar to the fences for privacy in the Belgravia sections of London, Nikolai thought. He entered the plot and stood above the polished horizontal slab that marked the place of his mother. He wondered what he should think. Was he feeling what he should feel? It was difficult for the living to know what the dead might expect of them when the living know the dead should not be able to expect. Whatever, one thing he felt for certain: he had been remiss in his visits here. It had been two years. He placed the carnations across the etched word
IRINA
and mentally apologized for their limpness. Wasn't it for his own sake that he wished now he'd brought a plentiful bouquet of yellow day lilies, the pale lemon, freckled-throated ones that he wouldn't ever forget had been her favorite? Also, he should have brought more food, better food, and, despite the early hour, at least a demi of vodka. It wasn't really an insult that he hadn't, he told himself. He took an old front page of
Izvestia
from his business case and spread it on his mother's slab. He placed the bread and the cheese on the paper and then sat on the end of her slab. The morning sun was getting through the leaves of the overhead maple branches in irregular splashes, bright helpful countermeasures. He gazed at the five-pointed Soviet star that was etched above her name and believed that it rather than a cross was what she would have wanted etched there, given the choice. Her apparent Communism would be, to her way of thinking, the most valuable thing she could leave him. Nikolai couldn't picture her in the packed ground beneath him down there in a box. The way she must look by now was beyond his acceptance. Bones and clothes and hair. He glanced to the next grave, the slab of his father, and that triggered a reenactment as the facts and his imagination had it assembled, condensed by reiteration and time gone by.

An argument, probably no more vehement than any of their others. After the argument (she always recovered from them quickly) the mother at her desk about to write him, Nikolai, a letter. Only the three words “My dearest Nikolai” got out of her pen before the revolver point-blank in the father's hand sent the bullet into the back of her head. Then on that same piece of paper the father wrote, “I have just killed my wife,” just that, no reason, nothing else before putting the muzzle to his right eye and firing.

Going through the reenactment was for Nikolai prerequisite to being there, but he no longer dwelled on it. Besides, he was not there to hurt or hate but to celebrate his ancestors, to make up for the past two Easters when it had been impossible for him to observe tradition.

He tore a piece of bread from the loaf and broke off a chunk of the cheese. It was the less-expensive, strong sort of cheese that rats and mice are particularly attracted to. Nikolai liked it. He hadn't realized how hungry he was. He ate almost half the loaf and a good part of the cheese. Dropped some of each on the slabs of his mother and father. He did not forget his Grandfather Maksim, never would. He moved to the far corner of the plot, where his grandfather's slab was located, although he was not a Borodin. All of his grandfather's people, including Grandmother Lilya, were among the half million World War II dead buried in the mass graves of Piskaryov Memorial Cemetery. They had died in the Nazi siege.

Nikolai paid tribute to Grandfather Maksim with one of countless recollections: an afternoon at the dacha in Komarovo, lying naked in the grass, ants making them squirm and slap while the sun warmed them and Grandfather with eyes closed, reliving, recounted some of the pleasant times he'd had during those years right after the Revolution when he had tried to live in Paris. He had worked for Cartier for a while. He had almost married an American, but he missed the boat, literally—got to Le Havre three hours after the
Ile de France
had sailed. No matter, the woman was shrewish and evidently had no patience. But Maksim thought he would have made a splendid American.

Nikolai smiled as he reheard Grandfather Maksim saying that. He went back to his mother's slab to decide on what he would sing. Instead of a song he hummed a theme from Stravinsky's
Petrouchka
. It was, he felt, perfect for now, especially the first Shrovetide Fair part, so gay and sprightly. His mother used to hum fragments of it unconsciously. So that was how he did it now as a finale to his respects. He hummed quietly and then louder, and then feeling the spirit he la-dadada'd and otherwise imitated the instruments full out, even the drum part.

The melody was still in Nikolai's head when a half hour later he arrived at his office at the headquarters of Almazjuvelirexport. Originally this branch of foreign trade had been situated in Moscow, and like all other Soviet involvement with diamonds it was kept at the lowest possible profile. However, twelve years ago, the Politburo had felt it would be more comfortable if Almazjuvelirexport was removed from the immediate political neighborhood. It seemed there were still some old Party fundamentalists around the Kremlin who were rubbed the wrong way by anything so historically capitalistic. Whenever they wanted to exemplify progress being made in the wrong direction they got going loudly on diamonds, associating them with the likes of Catherine the Great, whom they always referred to with emphatic delight as Catherine the Whore. To illustrate their contention regarding diamonds they used such decadent magazines as
Town and Country
and
Vogue Française
, paperclipping those pages which displayed photographs of wealthy Western women so weighted down by diamond necklaces, earrings, and often even tiaras that they could hardly hold their heads up. Also in those photographs were the men of money, the exploiters themselves. Were they not wearing their women and therefore the diamonds? Never mind that the selling of this commodity to the West was substantially beneficial to Soviet economy. Social purity was more important than profit, the Party dinosaurs said.

Few agreed. Nevertheless it was an embarrassing bother having always to put up with this outdated and impractical point of view. So Almazjuvelirexport was relocated in Leningrad, where it ran just as smoothly and that much more unobtrusively. It occupied the entire extensive wing of a mansion that had always been painted a peach shade. The mansion, built in the baroque style of Rastrelli in the 1800s, had been a gift from a Romanov prince to his ballerina mistress, in appreciation, no doubt, for her outstanding performances.

Almazjuvelirexport had sixty-four employees there, although it could easily have done as well with half that number. Ostensibly it was set up to operate as would any corporate entity, with a corporatelike management hierarchy and the right to make or break deals on its own. There was, of course, no issuing of stock or dividing up of profits. In effect, the only shareholder and profit-taker was the Soviet state through its Ministry of Foreign Trade. Thus the Minister of Foreign Trade, Grigori Savich, was ultimately responsible for determining how Almazjuvelirexport went about its business. If anyone had a measure of autonomy it was Savich, and although Almazjuvelirexport was but one of the sixty-some export-import organizations in his charge, he seemed to take a special interest in it.

The head of Almazjuvelirexport functioned like a chief executive officer. He had the final say-so on all day-to-day matters and he reported to no one but Savich. He was Feliks Valkov, a forty-five-year-old Party man. Although aggressively ambitious, Valkov had a lot more push than pull, and that would limit him. He wasn't even remotely related to anyone on the upper power level, nor did he have that rare and almost priceless circumstance of a “close friend up there.” His best high connection was the one he had with Savich, but it wasn't the sort that would ever take him up. In fact, his tie with Savich seemed only to serve for business; apparently no tight personal knot had developed over the years of their association.

Valkov's educational background was only adequate. There was no “special school” or Institute of Foreign Languages in it. He had qualified for Moscow State University, where his major studies were geology and marketing. He got the most he could from the extra English courses that he took, and he was otherwise conscientious in learning to speak that language well. But he had no way of getting out of serving his two years in the army. His first professional job was as a geologist, one of many with the task of locating deposits of strategic minerals. He brought early attention to himself by helping to find much-needed cobalt deposits in the Urals and in Krasnoyarsk Territory. His knowledge of geology naturally embraced gemology. He was assigned a supervisory position at the diamond-mining installation in Aikhal. Never once was he heard to gripe about the Siberian remoteness, the extreme winter cold, or the merciless summer mosquitoes. After nearly three years he was advanced to an administrative spot at Aikhal. Then he was instrumental in vastly improving the quality and output of Aikhal's diamonds by insistently advocating changing over to electronic cutting and polishing machines. To make sure he was right he spent a lot of time learning firsthand all he could about the cutting and polishing process, and he got to be very chummy with several of the more experienced cutters. In 1975 he was put in charge of the Aikhal installation. The state couldn't have done better. During Valkov's six years Aikhal didn't have a single major setback, in fact it had hardly any problems at all. Valkov was as strict as he had to be with the personnel, got rid of the chronic bitchers while he scratched the backs of the essential skilled workers, particularly the cutters.

His outstanding account of himself at Aikhal got him the Almazjuvelirexport appointment. It was a huge step up. Valkov relished the recognition, but what delighted him more and what anyone in his place would have considered the real reward was the privileges. The spacious apartment and chauffeured Zil limousine. The dacha on the Bay of Finland, the permanent passport and unrestricted foreign travel. At last, the quality life he deserved, he thought. What it also meant was a happier and, therefore, a more sexually cooperative wife. He had married Yelena while he was in charge of the Aikhal installation. She had detested the place, likened it to Siberian exile. Numerous times she threatened to flee. Valkov was constantly having to placate her. She wasn't the sort of woman who would tolerate mistreatment. Untypically, she didn't have the fatalistic attitude that made most Slav women accept their poor lot. The majority of Slav women resented it, perhaps, but not outwardly or actively, when a Russian male spewed such things as “Women are more useful than equal” or “A woman has no soul, only vapor.” Yelena Valkova was not the sort to take that, would never be. She was different. For one thing, she was beautiful. Not hefty from a too starchy diet as most Soviet women, but tall and slender. No doubt her beauty had a lot to do with shaping her outlook. Beauty had the right to demand, she believed, and she wasn't at all modest about how important it was to her that she
have
things. Yelena was driven with wants. What she certainly
didn't
want, however, was a child. Nor did Valkov. During their eight years of marriage she'd had six abortions. She didn't bother Valkov with them. They were her problem. She just went and had them. Having six abortions wasn't that unusual but it did put her just slightly ahead of the average number for Soviet women of child-bearing age.