The Age of Ice: A Novel (57 page)

She didn’t even know she had just chased away a dozen ghosts with one steaming-hot piece of bread.

I’d fallen in love with her.

• • •

I asked her to take me to the end of the island, the seashore. We got out of the Austin into a stiff breeze and a rumble of surf, we saw Kronstadt’s sleepless eye scrutinize the harbor. The Austin held us in the stare of its headlamps. Bugs or splatters of sea foam darted through the cones of
light. “Are you sure this is the place you wanted to see?” she said. “My shoes will get sandy!”

This
was
the place, and it still remained a raw beach line. I had stood here with Ivan Kuznetzov once upon a time. I went down to the very line of surf, until it almost licked my feet. I breathed. Once, twice. I breathed as if I’d never done it before. As if I only now woke up. I was the
Empire de Glace
and my permafrost was melting. The many layers that covered it, all the silt, humus, thatch, brickwork, masonry started to sink, lean, topple. Potholes. Avalanches. Mudslides. I whipped around. Elizabeth was halfway between me and the car, standing gingerly, as if on a small step stone. She had picked up a stick of driftwood. On its end she’d already managed to spear a band of seaweed. In her other hand she still held her piece of bublik.

“I am leaving tomorrow,” I said, throwing words out like brakes to make me stop before I ran into her.

“I know.”

Several avalanches joined into one. I fell into a widening sinkhole—onto my knees. Startled, she dropped the stick, the bublik. Maybe she wanted to help me to my feet. I caught both of her hands—the one that smelled of warm bread, and the one that smelled of sea rot. I may have wept into them, but only for a brief, brief moment. The other part of me that was still left standing was eagerly anticipating her withdrawal, fear—because no matter how I melted on the inside, the outside
had
to be the same old cold, all hundred and fifty years of it. She’d pull her hands away from my face, now—no, now. “I am very sorry,” I said, letting go. “I’d better go back to the hotel. I am not feeling well.”
That’s right, blame it on health,
the other part of me jeered.

She supported my elbow walking back to the Austin, and I prayed that the sleeve of my jacket was insulating enough. I was still cold, still miserable. A wreck. I feared that once we got in the car, she’d act like a child left alone in the presence of a sickly adult. Or she’d act motherly. I did not want her to pity me. “Are you feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes, yes.” I was so homesick. I ached for that small place of Russia between her hands—between cold sea and warm bread. That’s why I had to run—I could not have what I wanted and there was no point in torturing myself. When I saw a cabbie, after the Galernaya harbor, I made her pull over. I said she should go home, said I’d be all right. Everything was wonderful, thank you, and please accept my apology for the evening that was not as entertaining as one perhaps hoped.

She became angry with me. “Mr. Veltzen, this is quite unnecessary,” she argued even as I was climbing into the cab. “And unreasonable. I can perfectly well give you a ride! And I took a first aid course as a student!”

Angry was good. I liked it. I did not mind—remembering her this way. Because I could not have her. I was leaving and not coming back.

• • •

I loved her differently than Marie. Differently than Anna. Harder? That’s one way to put it. I loved her so that my permafrost turned into Swiss cheese; so that my glaciers slid into the sea; so that my Northwest Passage, frozen solid since time immemorial, opened up. I was like a mammoth, freeze-dried for a hundred thousand years, who now thawed, fleshed up, and managed to take his first steps. Just feeling this way should be more than enough for me, I thought, for decades to come. I did not need to see her ever again.

I was lying to myself.

Because no matter how much I praised the advantages of self-sustaining love, I kept moving pieces to get closer to her. My excuse? I was not arranging to meet her. I was still leaving it to chance, only improving the odds. I kept dealing with her father, the corrupt Germanophilic ultraconservative whom Lord Revelstoke kept advising me against.

I brushed away frustrations and setbacks. Consider an example: I wanted a foothold in Odessa, a major trade port and railroad hub, with arterials to Lemberg, Brest-Litovsk, Vilna, then Libau on the Baltic. Instead I was steered toward the lesser Sebastopol with its connections to the Russian inland. Still, I wasn’t pulling out of the game. By August 1913, I had returned to Russia to visit Crimea, where we were edging toward a deal with the local governor. The perks: a stay at the Russian Riviera, in Yalta, lavish dinners at the Hotel Russia, trips to “the Russian Alhambra,” i.e., Vorontsov’s (a lineal descendant of the Vorontsov who had brokered our expedition to the Arctic) palace in Alupka, and to Balaclava with its ancient Greek ruins and mementos of the past war with Britain.

And then a pleasant surprise: Vice Minister Goretsky invited me to stay at his villa west of Alupka. His daughter was there. This was pure chance, I reasoned, I had not orchestrated it, so I had all the rights to enjoy the opportunity. I buzzed with anticipation.

• • •

When I saw her again, she was—once more—different. We met haphazardly, in the driveway of the villa. I was arriving, she was going out. She
was accompanied by two young women and a pack of young men. She reacted to me with the briefest
hello
and continued on her way.

I thought another greeting would follow later, but none did. We exchanged ten words at most—always socially. She seemed absorbed in managing and manipulating her circle of male admirers (dashing naval officers and idle millionaire sons) and female accomplices (two friends she’d brought along from St. Petersburg). She appeared less sophisticated and more oblivious to the world; like every one of her youthful friends, she was tanned and vigorous, and she dressed, as they did, in white—light French dresses and sun hats. She looked, in other words, the part of a spoiled rich girl, the high bureaucrat’s daughter she had once announced herself to be.

They were doing what they were supposed to do: tennis lessons, swimming lessons, giggly sessions of bicycle riding; all that play of young skin and muscle, so infused with an invigorating smell of youthful pheromones, so full of sweet, innocent lust . . . Driving around in long, sleek, shiny American automobiles, taking trips to listen to a band in Alupka, or to watch a sunset, or for no reason at all. While
I
was supposed to observe these proceedings from the terrace with a club soda or from the lawn with a croquet mallet in my hand. To sit under a white parasol and read the
Daily Telegraph,
to discuss yet another Balkan war with the neighbors and frequent the room with a telegraph apparatus for my
very important
business messages.

So goddamn what? I
had
come here to get another eyeful of her, nothing more, had I not? I didn’t need to compete with those youngsters—I was a lost cause by definition. No, I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t jealous. Of course I was. But I used jealousy to train my love, like a new foxhound, let it sniff blood and then force it to heel until I commanded it otherwise.
Watch,
I would say,
this is what would be happening for the first decade or two if you married her and left her dissatisfied
.

Then something transpired. Some friction, some release of heat. The girls must have let the boys feel as if I was a contender. The millionaire sons and dashing officers began to size me up. Engage me in conversations. Elizabeth’s girlfriends began to flirt with me. They were putting together an evening party for “neighbors and friends” at the villa—a sure sign that somebody wanted to get close to somebody else.

That party. At one point the orchestra broke into a verse out of “Rule Britannia,” followed by a round of applause “for our honorable guest, Mr.
Alexander Veltzen,” followed by a champagne toast. Elizabeth, featuring a charming décolletage, asked me for a dance. I said I hadn’t kept up with the latest fashions in dancing. “Fine,” she said. “I’d rather talk with you than dance. Shall we?”

At the terrace, velvety darkness reigned, roses overwhelmed with their profusion and fragrance, clematis and grapevine provided cover. What could be more conducive to—

She said, “Mr. Veltzen, I find you absolutely infuriating. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Obediently.

“Because I can see that you are interested in me. I know it. That time on Vasilievsky Island you practically chased me away, when I could easily see you wanted to tell me something. And now suddenly you are back. You are back yet you just keep—hovering! What have you come for? To sit in the sun with a newspaper?”

She was once again contradicting my every expectation. Yet I was certain I could keep this interaction pleasant and civilized. I did not intend to have another episode of uncontrollable emotion like the one I’d suffered at the shore of Vasilievsky three months ago. “I am sorry if I am bothering you. I can leave if you tell me to.”

“Oh please, Alexander, I don’t suppose you misunderstand me. Why would I want you to leave? I asked Papa to invite you, did I not? Do I have to come in and tell you that I am in love with you?”

She
 . . .
what? Dear Lord, now I’m in trouble.
She looked at me triumphantly. A fearless smile, shining, joyful eyes. No trace of bafflement. Instead, almost condescension: you poor old myopic Englishman, you can’t even see what’s within the reach of your own hand!

I heard myself grunt and clear my throat. She had me! “Elizabeth . . . well, the truth is . . . simply put . . . I don’t know what to say to this.”

She cocked her head. “Oh, really? I don’t believe you. I don’t think you believe yourself either!”

“An occasion such as this—is quite unusual—an ambush of sorts, I might say—” There I was, mumbling. She threw me off balance, she really did! Perhaps English words were just a play to her? Perhaps they didn’t weigh as heavy as their Russian counterparts?

She smiled again, narrowed her eyes. “Let me describe the occasion. A beautiful summer night in the delectable Russian Riviera, and a young lady whom many find attractive is confessing her feelings to you. Would
you choose to punish her for her earnestness? Would you give nothing in return, not a single word of acknowledgment, not a single—kiss?”

Even as she stepped toward me, a singular thought darted through my mind like a little furtive fox—and all the preparations, all the roses and grapevines and velvety skies began to look so blatantly contrived—“Elizabeth? Is some kind of game involved here? A bet perchance?”

She made confused eyes and mumbled, “I don’t understand what you mean. What bet?”—and slipped yet closer to me, just as I felt a flash of anger—or lust—I could see she was lying—I could just see what was about to happen, and I thought, my cold waxing,
I am going to hurt you, I want to and I will punish you for doing this to me
—and I scooped up her head by the neck and let my other hand wrap around her pliable waist, and I stamped my mouth across hers, then gathered her lips like berries off a plate and proceeded to consume them, and the rest—the rest happened exactly as I thought, with the flashes of light, with idle millionaire sons and dashing officers, and loyal girlfriends springing from the greenery, from roses and trellises, to observe the utterly un-Englishman-like behavior their precious liar Elizabeth had elicited from that stuffy,
hovering
foreigner, to document it with their fancy new Leica photo-camera; all of it happened just the way I feared, except for one thing.

Elizabeth did not push me away in frigid terror. Nor did she slip out of my hands to laugh at me. Her lips and tongue were marvelously soft, wet, hot, and kept searching—somewhat frantically—for the best place of my mouth to nestle in, as if to hide from the scrutiny of her own sidekicks. And by the time we broke our—very public—kiss and she pulled back, now profoundly embarrassed, blushing and paling, lipstick smudged; by the time she whispered, “I’m so sorry,” and ran away, I was so beyond paying any attention to the eager eyewitnesses, that all their studious cheer and canned exclamations left their hearts and minds and slinked into velvety darkness behind trellises and roses.

The Urchin Princess did not feel my cold. Oh, what a
world of difference
it meant!

I began making plans even while still standing on that terrace. Find her. Tell her you love her. Forgive her. Propose to her. Kiss her again. In general, do more of this kind of kissing. Marry her no later than October—here, for better weather. Then leave for a sweeping honeymoon—Mediterranean, Middle East, Singapore, Australia, America. Show her the world. Could I be any happier!

But nothing worked as planned. Not from the very first hour of my new life. I looked everywhere for her that night but failed to find her. By morning doubts were already eroding my flawless plan. First of all, we barely knew each other, what with our two and a half dates, and no respectable lady should ever be brought before a marriage proposal that early. Then there was the issue of her father. I’d have to deal with him—and what if he was against my happiness? And then—what if her practical joke went deeper, what if in fact she did not fancy me at all? And by the way: what would be the fate of that photograph, showing us in a clinch and kissing? Could it be used to compromise me? Her?

The reality turned out to be even more unyielding. In the morning Elizabeth absolutely refused to see me and was said to be leaving. So I used one of my business telegrams as an excuse to put everything on hold and return to London. I needed time to think.

• • •

I am almost done. My story is already circling the drain but it’s not quite over. From England, I wrote a letter to Elizabeth and she replied. Soon we established a semblance of courtship via mail. I put the word
love
on paper—she reciprocated with a close-enough synonym. I succeeded in bringing up the delicate circumstance of an investment deal with her father, and she took no special notice. I managed to broach the subject of making her a Mrs. Veltzen in some agreeable future and she did not reject me. And yet . . . I kept asking her if I should probe the ground around the vice minister, to stage the big disclosure, but she kept holding me off until she’d “prepared” Papa. Because I no longer knew Russian life well, and because we communicated by mail alone, and I wanted her too much—I accepted everything she told me: and if one were to see through her eyes, nothing in Russia was straightforward, all lovers were star-crossed. Life teemed with existential obstacles, logistical difficulties, and senseless drama. As an Englishman, I was not expected to understand it, she claimed, so I just had to accept it and go along with it.