The Age of Ice: A Novel (14 page)

“Marrying is for geezers. And whoring is for losers. I have
ideals,
gentlemen,” Paulie proclaimed, but for some peculiar reason, his stare, suddenly sour, fell on me—and lingered, while his fingers pinched the strings of his guitar.

What
ideals
? But I was drunk so I let it all go in one ear and out the other. I drank rather too much during that time, as often as not in the company of Ivan Kuznetzov, in a tiny basement room he shared with one more aspirant, a room where a barrel stove ran so hot that the Latin quotes that hung all over the walls fluttered in the ascending streams of warm air. One night, Ivan’s roommate, quite intoxicated, babbled about Paracelsus, “the greatest magus and physician of all times,” and his four environs—fire, air, water, earth—and the creatures that live in each one.

It is simply a matter of symmetry, the student argued. For us humans, earth is our
terra firma
and air is our
medium
. We can’t move in earth, but we can walk
on
it, and we move in air, we breathe it. So, just as we humans walk on earth and breathe air, there should be
gnomes
who breathe earth
and walk on water,
salamanders
who walk on air and breathe fire, and
undines
who walk on fire and breathe water! And here I suddenly imagined Anna as an undine, meandering the path between two elements, in a strange world of fiery grasses swaying in the water-breeze, and I thought then that perhaps—in a fire, in a heated steam, in a bathhouse, a sauna perhaps, we could do it, I could make love to her, in an undine world . . . And I pictured it so clearly and vividly that I almost suffocated in the swell of my own heart. But then I thought: She’d never, ever agree to it. So I said,
What about ice? Can undines breathe ice?

No one could answer.

And then, as the night grew old, and the number of people in the room seemed to swell and shrink and then become uncountable, the gangly and bumbling Ivan Kuznetzov folded himself to kneel beside me and took my hand in both of his (I was half lying on a bed, sipping claret out of an earthen mug, focusing on the way the taste of wine reacted with the taste of the snuff packed between my gum and cheek). Ivan said, “I haven’t had a chance to thank you, sir. I do so now. You saved my life. If not for you, I would not be here.” Then he kissed my hand. The palm of my hand—he turned it over, reverently, as a Tarot card that foretold his fate. Then he sprang to his feet and rushed out.

Ivan’s kiss, planted right in the pit of my palm, where the heart line and the brain line swoop past each other, sent a sweet shiver down my body. Long after Ivan had gone, I kept staring at my hand while my heart and my brain argued, accusing each other of having enjoyed it.

• • •

Ivan’s friends finally found me a thermometer. For all I know it could have been spirited away from the academy’s laboratory of physics, and it was as big as Catherine’s scepter. I could barely hide it under my coat when I went to a brothel where I planned to perform an experiment on myself.

I did not visit just any brothel. I only trusted the Preobrazhensky-certified brothel, run by the respected businesswoman of humble beginnings, a former serf and now
Madame
Matryona Ilyinichna. Yes, my old Matryona.

I’d heard of her success, but hadn’t seen her since 1770. I certainly never visited her fine establishment, as a customer or otherwise. And there I was, nine years later, facing her just as if we were in the backyard of old. Both of us speechless, blank-faced. Then she said, “Please follow
me,” and ushered me to her sitting room: straight-backed arm chairs and couch, brass-framed mirror over the mantel, a bureau. She reached to help me out of my greatcoat, and I hastened to say, “Not now.” She sat on a couch in front of me. A dress of burgundy velvet, a string of pearls. A crown of golden hair. Her hands—with those prominent, laundress’s knuckles—were folded primly in her lap.

“You—and Savva—are doing well?”

“We are. How can I serve you?”

Why was it so hard to say, “I’d like to buy time with one of your girls”? When I did say it, she showed just the very faintest smile, replying, “Certainly. Shall I ring for one?”

Which embarrassed me nonetheless, and I blurted out, “I’d need her to be in a blindfold,” though I had not meant it to come out that way.

“Certainly.”

“Good.”

“May I stow your coat for you?”

“No.”

“Would you rather use me instead of—”

“No.”

She rose and glided to a tasseled cord hung next to the doorway. But when she reached for the cord, her hand was hesitant. “Alexander Mikhailovich, what are you hiding under your coat?”

“It’s of no concern to you.”

She tarried, the cord’s tassel in her hand. Her chin was tight when she looked back at me—and, holding her unblinking eyes fixed on mine, she slowly pulled the cord—

It dawned on me, finally. “Oh God, Matryona! Have I ever hurt you? What do you think I am about to do? And why are you letting me do it, if you think I am up to no good?”

Her countenance began to melt; her lips quivered—“I . . . no . . .”

The old despair reared its head; I grew angry at her and at myself, and I should have just left, but part of me whispered obnoxiously that now would be an excellent time to measure my temperature—precisely because I was so upset.

So I persisted. Leaning back in an arm chair in a tiny room, squeezing a thermometer in my hand, asking the girl in front of me to undress and flaunt herself. Saying
That will be all
sooner perhaps than she expected, rushing out past her, stuffing a banknote into her hands as she stood
hunched, her blindfolded head flitting like a bird’s, trying to hear what she could not see.

It was just as well. The next step of my experiment was to go to a barber—a bloodletter—on a track that followed Bernoulli’s and Boerhaave’s reasoning. This track of pure scientific inquiry into running liquids—blood in particular—and its relationship to bodily heat did not have to involve a detour to a tavern; but let us excuse the distraught experimenter. When I finally arrived at my destination, the butcher of my choice bled me (at my insistence) to the point of almost passing out. I then dragged myself out of his shop into the back alley, drunk and nauseated; I toppled into a mound of sooty snow punctuated with urine of dogs and beggars, and grabbed a handful of it—to compare the result with the thermometer reading. I hoped that the snow would melt in my hand, now that my blood, a quarter of it left (or so it seemed), was running faster along its circle, and thus rubbed (undoubtedly) against my blood vessels so much harder.

The snow didn’t melt. The thermometer stood at the freezing point of water, just where it had been heading in the brothel. I passed out and came to hours later, sans my winter coat and my thermometer. Did somebody steal them? Did any of it really happen? I don’t remember.

• • •

I do remember that shortly thereafter, pale and penitent, I was sitting in the salon of the grandmotherly Mme Ex-Governor, my relative and patroness since the times before Orenburg. “But some of your associations,” she was saying, “those
libertines,
darling, those
vivisectionists,
it hardly becomes a man in your position.”

I said, “Ma’am, my position is that of a career officer, now retired. I can’t help but feel—well, uprooted, ma’am.”

“But of course, my dear, of course you should feel uprooted. And I just happen to know the salve. Marriage, my dear, is the prescription. I can find you a perfect match. And don’t you smirk at me, young man, don’t you imagine that you are wiser than this old lady. My husband has just the same to tell you, just the other day he said as we supped: our darling Prince Alexander is floundering, he said, he needs a wife or a desk job in a collegium. Would you rather take the desk job?”

• • •

I kept having dreams of ice. A boy with a burning broom. I can’t scream—there is ice in my mouth. I’m Old Man Frost. Then one night I was standing by the window in Anna’s apartment, a window that looked upon
a busy street, with carriages and people, and lanterns rocking in their hands, feet and hooves kneading the same old snow—and my longing came upon me again, taking shape as it rose from the pit of my stomach to the top of my throat. “I wish I had snowy fields in my window,” I said.

There was movement beside me, it was Anna. She said, “Your brother is at peace. I wish you could understand.”

I said, “I’d like to go to the country, visit my estate.”

“I’d like to go with you,” she said. “You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

I said, “No.” Meaning
no, don’t go
and
no, I wouldn’t mind if you did
.

• • •

I made arrangements. The house in the countryside, in my inherited estate Nikolskoe, stood half shut down for the winter. I ordered the staff to liven it up for our visit. The butler did a decent job. The wallpaper and the plaster of the ceiling in the dining room had water marks, but the room was clean, the upholstery was refreshed, and there were plenty of candles. The supper (duck broth, puff pastry, and pickled plums) showcased the cook’s enlightenment.

Anna dressed up for the meal. Her cheeks were paler than usual, her lips redder. Her conversation was charming. Then, over tea she smiled coyly and said, “It is funny, Alexander, society; the younger generation is convinced that we are having an affair. The ladies smile at me knowingly, and nothing I say will dissuade them. And the older generation, the grandmothers pull me aside and say what a shame it is that such a prime bachelor as you goes to waste, and instruct me to bend your mind toward matrimony. I—I hate to keep disappointing both generations.”

If it is possible to be frozen in one’s chair while melting on the inside—that was my condition.

She lowered her gaze. “When you walked into my home in Orenburg . . . You were so unlike the man I knew you to be. Helpless . . . as if you were lost. And I was terrified of how I felt because it was a sin—what kind of woman would feel like this when her own husband lay there on his deathbed? But now I think, it was even earlier, I am afraid. It was that winter in Velitzyno, when I was pregnant, and you kept seeking my company just to quench your boredom. When you were so arrogant and careless . . . and desperate—ever since then I was in love with you. A very small love at first—I kept fighting it, I did, but it just wouldn’t go away, and now—by now it is so big that I’m approaching the end of my—of my—ability to cope with it.” Tears came to her eyes.

Oh, the terror! But before I could speak, she composed herself and continued, “A lady friend of mine, Baroness Mimi d’Anglairs, tells me there are men who do not favor women . . . and I can see how Ivan, Mr. Kuznetzov, adores you. Is Mimi . . . is it true about you?”

Now—could it get more tragicomic than this? I hid my face behind my steepled fingers. “No, it is not. Can’t you tell? The only reason I hold back and do not court you is that I cannot marry you.”

I expected she’d ask why.
Is this because you proposed to the poor Marie Tolstoy and she promptly fell ill?—No and yes.—Is this because I am your brother’s widow?—Yes and no.
I expected a long and painful trading of words, but she just said very evenly and firmly, “Then don’t. You do not have to marry me to be with me.”

She threw a defiant glance at me, and then, letting out a small sound of exasperation, fled the room.

By God, Alexander, do not do it!
But I did, I went after her.

Her bedroom was dark, but she was there; she had thrown herself on the bed. I knelt beside her. A creak in the floor, a sob, a sigh. She shifted and her dress made a feathery, dry sound. “I am not just your brother’s widow. I am a living, breathing woman who has dreams, and passions, and—”

“Shh.”

She sat up. “For years I’ve cared, and worried, and tried to fix whatever had been wrong between you and your brother, and I’ve respected whatever had been right. I’ve done my best to be your brother’s wife, then widow. But I can’t do it anymore!”

I found and squeezed her hand, then let go. “Is my hand cold?”

“Yes.”

“Very cold?”

“Very,” she said. “Are you all right?”

I hugged her knees, stuffing my arms full of her petticoats, and hid my face in the folds of the fabric. “I am going to ask something of you. I am going to ask you to come with me. And most of all, I beg you to trust me—if only just this one time—please, just follow me.”

• • •

Shall we, my dear memory, shall we hold hands now and go back to that place and time, and revel in its waters once more? I had made arrangements in the bathhouse. Enough hot water to bathe the whole Preobrazhensky regiment. Enough steam to see little more than the reddish
glow of a stove and pale yellow halos of candle flames, and hazy outlines of wooden walls, benches heaping with the softest sheets I could find, and my best effort—a tub, a clawfoot tub, filled to the brim.

She was hot. I could see tiny beads of moisture on the back of her neck, and I tried to touch her clothes as lightly as I could while undressing her—her bodice, then her stays, then her skirts—and several times I thought I’d pass out, from an overflow of emotion. I could not laugh or talk, and I was short of breath. Now in her shift, she glanced at me and walked over to the bench; before she sat down and pulled off her stockings, I rid myself of my outer clothes.

Perhaps she expected me to sit down by her side, instead of stepping into the tub and submerging myself. Perhaps there was a tinge of surprise in her eyes, yes, as I went under and surfaced a little while later. A surprise and a smile—a smile that was prepared to flee.
Please, don’t flee.
Please, my love, let me now take your hand into my wet palms, and draw it in, and hold it right at the boundary of air and water, and kiss it, fingertip by fingertip, and then pull gently, pull you in by your hand that I, a sea monster in a whirlpool, now own; let me sink you into my depths—your beautiful caravel, your wrist, arm, leg—and learn how your dark hair clings to your forehead when wet, and how the white sail of your shift floats up to your breasts; and discover the shape of your thighs, and the size of your navel, and the last thing I’ll ever say will be,
Let me know if you get cold
.