Hot Siberian (25 page)

“I am here, Maksim Maksimevich,” Nikolai said aloud, because it seemed to him there was a question in the air of this enclosed space that deserved an answer. But he did not believe he needed to say more than that. The rest, why he was there, was known, he felt, had been witnessed all along and was approved of. He placed the sharp edge of the chisel on the seam of cement grouting that outlined the flat face of a certain rock in the wall. He struck the chisel with the mallet and the aged cement gave way easily. Within five minutes most of the grout was cut away. He used the chisel to pry at the rock, and it came out enough for him to get a grip. He worked the rock back and forth and at the same time applied pull and, as though knowing it eventually must, the rock surrendered suddenly and tumbled to the ground. Nikolai directed the flashlight into the small cavern that was now exposed.

There they were.

He reached in and got them one by one and placed them in the string net bag, counted them as he took them out. That there were seventeen was another thing that had been etched in his memory. When he had all seventeen in the bag he shone the flashlight in through the hole just to double-check. The light hit upon something else, the only thing that remained. He reached in and brought it out. A photograph, professionally taken. A photograph of a lovely woman, but not just a lovely woman—one who looked straight at whoever might look at her, ambiguously offering and challenging. Who was she? Nikolai had never seen this photograph before, and it didn't seem to him that Grandfather Maksim had withheld much from him. Grandfather Maksim must have put it in the wall along with the other things when he wasn't looking. Why? Was it another secret? Or had Grandfather Maksim foreseen this day and its circumstances and wanted to make known his opinion of the matter? Nikolai was convinced that was it when he turned the photograph over and saw handwritten with care and a special flourish on the back of it the date and name:

1912, Alma Pihl.

CHAPTER

13

AN ATTENTIVELY POSTURED KITTEN
.

From paws to ears two inches tall.

It was carved of gray chalcedony with glistening green eyes that were cabochon demantoids.

“Precious!” Vivian exclaimed, holding it at eye level on the flat of her palm and examining it all around. “Perfectly precious, isn't it, Archie?”

“I'd say,” Archer concurred with momentary enthusiasm, although seated where he was across the room he was too far away to judge the tiny figure.

Nikolai had assumed Archer would be around sooner or later, but not right off. While impatiently aiming himself all the way from Leningrad to Vivian he'd imagined these moments would be special and theirs alone, the sharing of a happy salvation followed by an intense celebration. However, when he arrived at Vivian's apartment the first touch he got was Archer's welcoming handshake, and then he had to settle for a proper kiss from Vivian rather than an appropriate one. He couldn't blame Vivian. He hadn't specified privacy. Nor could he blame Archer, really. How was Archer to know he wouldn't just be crowding, but crushing? Besides, Nikolai felt, Archer was genuinely amiable, glad to have him back, had missed him, said so, and punctuated his words with a couple of brisk pats on the shoulder. That was mainly why Nikolai hadn't taken Vivian aside and told her to get rid of Archer on any pretext. It would be offensively obvious, Nikolai thought. Worse, it might hurt. An alternative for Nikolai was to put off until later the surprise he'd brought, but it was impossible for him to be that composed about them. His satchel practically opened itself. The gray chalcedony kitten practically sprang out to Vivian's hand. What a pleasure it was to watch her unwrap it, to see her wonder turn to fascination, then to aesthetic respect.

She carefully placed the kitten on the long linen-runnered table that backed up the sofa, positioned it so it was in good light beneath the lamp. Its eyes gleamed mischievously. She hesitated, glanced from Nikolai to the satchel and back. It pleased Nikolai that she wasn't being presumptuous about it, was excited but not grabby. He gestured that she should help herself. She reached into the bag without looking, let her fingers feel and choose. What she brought out this time was considerably larger, wrapped as the kitten had been: wound like a mummy with strips of cotton cloth (an old sheet Grandfather Maksim and Nikolai had torn) and beneath those protectively cushioned with newspaper.

An oblong maple box, about seven inches by four inches. Vivian undid its hinged catch, opened its lid, and there, nestled in creamy velour and an exact indentation of its shape, was a bouquet of cornflowers and buttercups in a clear vase.

The lining of the lid was imprinted K ΦAБEPЖE, K. Fabergé, and centered above that was the double-headed Russian eagle, the imperial emblem. With extreme care Vivian lifted the bouquet from its place. The vase and water part of it was carved of a single piece of clear rock crystal in such a way that the vase appeared to be two-thirds full. The stems of the flowers were set down in the “water,” touching bottom as they would had they been real. The blossoms were flawlessly enameled and had pistils of diamonds.

Vivian knew she was holding something rare and valuable. Her eyes savored it but her hands seemed relieved to be responsible for it no longer when she returned it to its box and placed the open box on the table alongside the chalcedony kitten.

“My Gawd!” Vivian gasped, reaching again into the satchel. “Nickie, love, how many such things have you brought?”

Nikolai shrugged, acted blasé. It was going well, he thought, and, as it turned out, it was good that Archer was on hand. The spontaneous impact might be more effective. He'd kept an eye on Archer for a reaction, but, so far, nothing. That didn't mean Archer wasn't worked up inside. Archer would probably keep on sitting there with a crossed knee pretending to be unmoved, but Vivian's delight was obvious, impossible to ignore.

One after another Vivian removed and unwrapped the contents of the satchel. She lined them up categorically on the table.

Three carved stone animals, counting the kitten. Three vases of flowers. Three carved stone figures, each about five inches tall: a soldier of the Imperial Escort, a dancing Muzhik, a traditional English John Bull. Two
bonbonnières
enameled sky blue over a sunburst-patterned guilloché ground, chased with gold and bordered with diamonds. A tiny desk clock of translucent strawberry red. A pair of miniature frames, enameled pale pink, studded with rubies.

Vivian knelt upon the sofa, her front to the back of it, her elbows on its crest. Her eyes scanned the seventeen objects. Impressed and perplexed, she asked: “Where in ever did you get them?”

“From an old friend,” Nikolai told her.

“He had them stashed away?”

“For years.” Which was, of course, true. The various workmasters at Fabergé, in the spirit of professional camaraderie and pride, often presented one another with pieces of their work. These had been given to Grandfather Maksim by Hollming and Aarne and Nevalainen and Armfeldt and by his mentor, Wigstrom. In 1917, after the Revolution and the formation of the Committee of the Employees of the Company of Karl Fabergé, or, to put it more accurately, when Fabergé quality came to an end, Grandfather Maksim had left the firm with these objects in his possession. He thought of them as valuable to his heart. The Bolshevik government would have considered them merely valuable, just so much gold or silver that could be melted down. Thus, Grandfather Maksim had to keep his owning of them a secret. Somehow, throughout all the years and changes, he'd managed always to have a good enough hiding place for them. Nikolai didn't know whether or not even Irina knew they existed. He believed she probably did, but he never mentioned it to her in case she didn't. Looking back upon it, Nikolai thought there was something wryly amusing in the possibility that both he and his mother had been conspirators without ever knowing it. As for his father, Nikolai had always felt that withholding this information from his father was the same as keeping it from that abstract menace called “the authorities.”

Vivian spun around, animated with her surmise. “You smuggled them out!” she whispered as though there were risk of being overheard. “How about that, Archie? Nickie smuggled them out.”

Nikolai had never heard the word “smuggled” said so sibilantly and with such drama.

“Clever fellow,” Archer said.

“Damn right!” Vivian seconded possessively.

Nikolai soaked it up without showing it. Vivian was right, though, about the smuggling. The Soviet government now considered Fabergé items to be works of art and wanted them in its museums, or at least on the mantels and desks of its most privileged officials. To be caught taking anything Fabergé out of the country was a serious offense, a form of profiteering,
spekulyatsiya
, the very thing Nikolai had warned Lev about. So going out through customs at Pulkovo Airport in Leningrad had been more than an incidental squeeze for Nikolai. Before getting in line he'd gone into the men's restroom, appraised his image in the mirror, and decided nothing about him looked suspicious. Fortified with that assurance, he attempted to neutralize his mental state, to trick himself into believing that the satchelful of contraband, which really was a swift trial and the rest of his life at hard labor, wasn't on the end of his arm and that the trip ahead was just routine. Waiting on line he'd slouched, yawned a couple of times, blinked sleepily. When it came his turn the customs official just matched his face flesh with the photograph face in his permanent passport, smacked a page with his red stamp, and motioned him on. Concern for naught, Nikolai thought; his casual manner had worked. He would never know that his satchel would have been looked into had the usual second customs official not been summoned to take an emergency phone call from his wife of a week, who needed to tell him how much she was waiting.

“Your old friend …” Vivian said.

“What about him?”

“I take it he wants you to sell these Fabergé things for him.”

“No,” Nikolai told her. “He doesn't need money.”

“What then?”

“He gave them to me.”

“Outright just gave them to you?”

“Yes.”

“Incredible.Don't you find that incredible, Archie?”

“Phenomenally generous,” Archer replied.

Vivian studied Nikolai. He felt transparent. She seemed to be reaching a whole string of conclusions. “Are you being truthful?” she asked.

“Entirely.” Nikolai immediately regretted his choice of word. Only a fine line separated honesty and omission. He just didn't want to go into the details of Grandfather Maksim and expose all those feelings, at least not now. They would give the situation a different emotional color, be obstacles for Vivian.

“Your old friend must have made some stipulations,” Vivian said.

That brought to Nikolai's mind the photograph of Alma Pihl that Grandfather Maksim had included in the cellar cache. Alma Pihl, Fabergé designer and Grandfather Maksim's grand passion. It wasn't until Nikolai had become an adult and himself ignited that he was able to translate the erotic qualities of Grandfather Maksim's tone whenever he'd spoken of Alma Pihl. The hesitations to review pleasures, the throaty grunts of reminiscence—all such things were, retrospectively, obvious clues. So now it seemed to Nikolai that by the Alma Pihl photograph Grandfather Maksim was communicating his presentiment that when the time came for Nikolai to put this precious trove to use, a passionate love would be involved and Nikolai shouldn't hesitate. Was that not a stipulation? He told Vivian: “The only condition was that I do with them whatever I want.”

“And what,” Vivian asked, “do you intend?” She felt she knew but needed to hear.

“For you to have them.”

Her reaction was important to Nikolai. It would be telling, he thought. Worse would be if she went through the charade she used when Archer gave her expensive ugly things, refused and reluctantly gave in to having no recourse other than to suffer accepting and selling. If that was what she did she'd be putting him no higher than Archer's level, Nikolai reasoned. He'd be disappointed and would kick himself for having overrated his standing with her. On the other hand, if she just accepted, plainly, happily accepted, it would be a positive admission.

Vivian remained silent. She seemed to be equivocating. Actually, she was prolonging her sense of occasion, the sweet fragility of the moment. She extended an imaginary line between her eyes and Nikolai's eyes and told him seriously: “I'll sell them, you know.”

“That's the idea—solvency.”

“Fair warning.”

“Consider me warned.”

She rose from the sofa. “Archer,” she said without looking at him, “either put your hands over your eyes or at least try to refrain from playing with yourself.” She went to Nikolai as though magnetized, her mouth right to his mouth, her body clamped against his and struggling to get closer. A long kiss of the sort that feeds and gathers on its lack of shame. When they broke from it they had to step back abruptly, betraying their bodies.

“No one has ever given me anything so valuable,” she declared ambiguously. She began pacing to the far edge of the rug and back, symptomatic of her happiness. Her cat, Ninja, appeared and began paralleling her moves. Nikolai sat. His legs had been kissed out from under him and his arousal was showing. Simultaneously, like a mass outweighed, Archer got up and went to the table that held the Fabergé objects. He looked them over. “If they're authentic Fabergé they're worth a small fortune,” he said.

Nikolai took silent exception to the word “small,” although he realized that coming from Archer it was relatively true.

“Of course they're authentic Fabergé,” Vivian contended without missing a step, and then, hardly missing a syllable, “How much would you say they're worth?”