On her orders, the coachman drove very slowly along the Kuznetsky Most, while she looked from side to side at the various shops, hoping an idea would strike her. People on the footpath stopped to stare as she passed, for everyone knew the Countess Tchaikovskova’s white English horses, and now and then an acquaintance bowed or waved. Anne responded absently, her mind occupied elsewhere. A piano? A fur coat? A clock? A marble statue? Actually, now she thought of it, a marble bust of himself would have been a suitable present, but it was much too late to get one done – and of course since he would have had to go to sittings, it could never have been kept a secret. Jewellery? Well, it had the advantage of being obviously expensive, and Basil, like most Russians, liked wearing jewels.
‘Drive to Fontenardes,’ she told the coachman, who lifted his whip in acknowledgement. Fontenardes, the court jewellers, had a large shop at the end of the boulevard, where not only did they design and make modern jewellery, but also sold antiques: Russian, Oriental, Egyptian, Persian, and of course French – the spoils of the Revolution. It was a shop she liked visiting in any case, for there was an oddly informal atmosphere, generated by the affectionate way Russians regarded their jewels – almost as if they were pet animals, or favourite children.
When she went in, there was no one immediately to attend her. Monsieur D’Avila, the manager, was engaged in conversation with Count Razumovsky. He begged the Countess to excuse him, and invited her to sit down for a few moments until he was at liberty. Anne preferred to wander about the shop, looking at the various items displayed in glass cases, some of which were for sale, others simply exhibits – items of antiquity or curiosity.
Amongst the former, Anne was most attracted to a diamond necklace, and she stood in contemplation of it for some time. It was displayed all alone in its cabinet on a bed of dark blue velvet: a beautifully simple thing, the centrepiece being an enormous oval diamond of breathtaking size and quality. It was set in a frame of gold wires, in the centre of a gold chain; and to either side, at intervals along the chain, smaller, brilliant-cut diamonds were also suspended, hanging at the ends of fine chains like droplets of sparkling water gathered for an instant before they fell.
It was beautiful – simple and beautiful; and it would suit her perfectly, she knew. She imagined how it would look, with a décolleté evening gown, very simple, of white silk embroidered with gold threads. Yes! And then suddenly she remembered the Embassy Ball in Paris, so long ago, when Count Kirov had said to her that she ought to wear diamonds, and she had laughed inwardly at the very idea. How long ago it seemed! She hadn’t thought of him for a long time – consciously, that is, for sometimes he would invade her dreams, and she would wake with tears on her cheeks. She would dream of him, always just out of reach, turning away from her, perhaps, or glimpsed from the window of a speeding carriage; a hand stretched out, just beyond her grasp, and a sad, reproachful look. She would dream of Nasha, too, and Nasha would become Rose, cold and white and dead; her fault, oh God, her fault! In her dream old spectres were raised, old griefs relived. Her dreams were beyond her controclass="underline" sometimes she dreaded going to sleep.
She shook her head a little, to shake away the unwelcome thoughts, and as if in answer to that shake of the head, she heard his voice saying, ‘But yes, it would look very well. It would suit you entirely.’
I imagined it, she thought; and yet how real it seemed. She turned slowly, and he was there, standing just behind her, looking down at her with a painful intensity, as though it hurt him. I’m dreaming, she thought. And then she saw behind him the ravaged, one-eyed face of Adonis, emerging from the collar of the cavalry trooper’s uniform in which his stocky, muscular body was incongruously confined.
‘I would never have dreamed that,’ she said aloud. ‘It is you.’
‘It is you,’ he repeated, as if he hadn’t been sure until she spoke. ‘Anna Petrovna.’
‘Yes,’ she said foolishly. She stared at him, unable to think of anything to say. His face looked thinner and browner than when she had last seen him, almost three years ago; and she saw that there were some silver hairs mixed in with the soft brown. It touched her unbearably that he should have silver hairs, and she had to bite her lower lip for a moment. Time should not touch him. It wasn’t fair.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said at last. It was, at least, no more foolish than anything else she might have asked.
‘I’m on my way to Tula, to see Lolya,’ he said.
When Anne had left his employ he’d had no desire to search for another governess, so Yelena had stayed on with her aunt and uncle Davidov, sharing her cousin Kira’s education and regularly visiting her grandmother in Moscow. A young woman not yet out did not come much in Anne’s way, but she had seen her at a distance, passing in a carriage, or coming out of a shop. Once they had come face to face at a military review, Lolya in the company of her grandmother and one of Vera Borisovna’s elderly military beaux. Lolya’s face had lit up, and she had been on the brink of uttering a glad welcome, but the Dowager had frozen the words with a look before they reached the air, and hurried Lolya away with the hint of a pinch in her stiff, shiny fingers on Lolya’s arm. She had never forgiven Anne for calling her interfering, and above all, for marrying into the aristocracy and thus obliging Vera Borisovna to acknowledge her in her own friends’ drawing-rooms.
‘I called in here to try to find a present for her,’ the Count went on. He glanced around, but his eyes would only stay an instant away from Anne’s. He gave a rueful smile. ‘I come from Paris, where I could have bought any number of charming things; but foolishly I left it until I got to Moscow.’
‘You’ve come from Paris?’
‘Just this instant arrived. But what are you doing here?’
‘I live here,’ she said. There was no reason, after all, that he should know anything about her life since she had left him. It was far less likely that she would be spoken of in Paris than he in Moscow.
But he smiled, and all sorts of things inside her loosened and melted; her body obeying the atavistic commands, in spite of her sophisticated mind. Not dead, but asleep, all those old, lovely, painful things! Peace, heart – lie down. This is not for you.
‘I meant,’ he said, ‘what are you doing in this shop? Foolish!’
‘Oh – I came to buy a present, too.’
‘For whom?’
She didn’t want to speak of her husband to the Count. Reluctantly she said, ‘For Basil Andreyevitch. It’s his birthday next week. His fortieth birthday.’
Yes, he minded, she could see. ‘Ah, then it must be something special,’ he said lightly, looking away from her. ‘I had better not interrupt you.’
But I don’t love him, she wanted to cry out. Don’t shut yourself away from me! Don’t be distant!
She mustn’t, she mustn’t – and yet he was so much to her, he fitted so naturally into the place inside her that was his, always.
‘Please,’ was what came out, and a little fluttering movement of the hand went with it, which halted Kirov like a bullet through the heart. ‘Help me.’
He caught the hand; her fingers closed around his; their eyes met, and everything flowed between them, everything they felt, everything they had suffered, and would suffer. ‘Yes,’ he said in a low, passionate voice. ‘Anything -1 would do anything for you! You know that!’