Kirov took a pull under the other man’s scrutiny, wiped the neck of the bottle and returned it. He asked again if his new friend knew their hostess.
‘Yes and no. I come to Moscow on business and people lay on a dinner or take me along to a party. One way or another I get to meet everybody.’ Gvishiani spoke in a knowing way, implying that everything was understood. Kirov had a recollection that Alexei Kosygin’s daughter had married a man called Gvishiani. He wondered whether the dead premier’s son-in-law and this sleek Georgian were the same, then guessed not: this one was rich but had a home-grown look about him that hit his confidence when a woman like Yelena Akhmerova started spouting English.
‘So you’re here on business?’
‘Sure. Another drink? Sure. I run a few factories in Tbilisi — light industry, consumer goods, you know the sort of stuff. Every couple of months I come here to Moscow to wheedle a bit of co-operation out of suppliers or to kick arses. If I pull it off, then I get my deliveries on time and the workers don’t have to “storm” for the last ten days of the month to make up their quota.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘And if I don’t? What the hell, who cares?’
A voice said, ‘George, you are cheating! English! English! English!’
Gvishiani’s face flashed with anger, but he answered, ‘Apologies, Yelena … Helena … is difficult.’
‘No matter. That is not excusing,’ she replied archly.
‘I try more hard.’ And to Kirov he said, ‘And you, what do you do?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Yelena Borisovna invites all sorts: actors, queers, astrologers, apparatchiks — even KGB. Who can remember them all? Yelena isn’t prudent. She thinks that charm and glamour are a defence to everything. She puts people on show and exploits them. One day she will end up in prison.’
‘But not you?’
‘Me?’ Gvishiani answered the question with a simplicity that could have been modesty. ‘I protect myself by being kind to people. My motto is “co-operation”. It’s the Communist way.’
To show that the question did not bear serious consideration, Gvishiani let his attention wander. The two girls were still dancing, eyes closed, bodies swaying, their naked toes hooked into the carpet. A middle-aged Army General moved between them and, collecting one, slapped his abdomen up against hers and ground away to the music. Yelena Akhmerova stood on the sidelines and watched aloofly.
‘Guess who’s arrived?’ Neville Lucas said, coming from nowhere to stoop and whisper with his beery breath. He smiled innocently. His face was flushed and beaded with sweat. ‘Here, here, over here!’ He motioned to the figure behind him, and with an arm around her waist brought her forward.
‘Hello, Lara,’ said Kirov.
Lara was as he remembered — that is, not the Lara who a little while ago had left him, but the other one who had come to him, filled with a firm but nervous control, every movement a careful placing of her body as if she were dancing, the way she had been when he had taken her from the Bolshoi corps de ballet. It hadn’t occurred to him before that the separation of men and women, being in part a rejection of the recent past, carried with it the recreation of an earlier past. But maybe it wasn’t so surprising that people called up the past’s false certainties to pin the fleeing subtleties of the present. Tonight Lara’s fair hair was scraped back and pinned to emphasise the elegant bones of her face, and her make-up was heavy and dramatic, though in this place and company appropriate; he wondered if she had reverted to dancing — perhaps just come from the theatre? She wore a deep burgundy dress that clung where it should cling and fell where it should fall.
She said, ‘Hello, Peter, how are you?’
‘I’m well.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m well too. Excellently well. Here, darling,’ she said to her companion, a dark figure standing in the cigarette smoke, and, passing him the boa which was draped over her arm, she asked him to put it away somewhere. In the background a new rumba replaced an old one and the General still gripped his girl. I’ve seen this film before, Kirov thought. He was aware of the hotness of the room and the effects of that last drink with George Gvishiani. Strange, Lara’s facility for picking up the mood and translating it into dance for an audience. Where had he seen the film? Washington — watching late movies in a rented house in Bethesda. Rio de Janeiro as it appears in every B-movie that was ever made. Where is your lover, Lara? Your ardent Latin lover? We have invented a Moscow café-society and rediscovered Rio. Where is your amorous Latin?
Instead, Radek came forward. ‘Hi, Pete,’ he said and grinned with satisfaction. He had a new suede jacket draped over his shoulders and a white foulard wrapped around his throat.
Kirov must have said something next about not realising that Lara knew Radek because she became annoyed and said, ‘Oh, you introduced me to Pasha some time or other, at a party or the theatre; or perhaps it was some other occasion when you didn’t care enough to remember who was there. Are you going to get me a drink?’
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ said Neville Lucas eagerly.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ Kirov asked.
‘No, I prefer to stand.’ Standing, she could maintain her poise and distance; she could swing her head gracefully, pose it against the lights and nod to the people she knew. Smiling at Yelena Akhmerova, she enquired of him, ‘Has anyone else moved in with you yet?’
‘No.’
‘Really? Haven’t you found anyone dumpy, unattractive and old enough? I thought that women like that were not uncommon.’
The cruelty was clumsy and insincere, a thin mask for her own pain. He had never discussed Irina Terekhova with her and she was working only by inference and not information. Irina Terekhova was a small figure seen in a dim, snow-covered street, ugly and ragged with grief, she was the inexplicable change of mood that Lara had discerned in him. The Sokolskoye Incident and the woman with it were a part of the past and now unattainable. Uncle Bog with sympathetic brutality had suggested that, as a defector, it would be legitimate to have her killed. This, however, was said none too seriously, merely to shake Kirov out of his reflections. After all, the KGB didn’t do things like that any more.
‘I’m not living with anyone,’ he said.
Neville Lucas and Radek both turned up bearing drinks for Lara. She smiled with triumph and accepted both, throwing each one back quickly.
‘Steady on, girl!’ Lucas suggested.
‘I have a head for drink,’ she retorted.
‘Oh, absolutely! But leave some for the other customers, eh?’
‘Be quiet, Neville!’ she turned on him sharply. Then equally suddenly she gave him a long and sensuous kiss on the lips only to say, ‘There! Better?’ She reverted to Kirov, wearing her anxious smile and waiting for — applause? Her lips opened, but Lucas was touching his own and saying, ‘Good God!’ until the repetition faded and he shambled off to get another drink. And at that moment Kirov sensed the cone of silence and a stillness of gesture between himself and Lara. He thought: If I tell her I love her, she’ll come back to me. He stirred the emotion aridly. He checked his watch.
‘I have to go.’
‘Must you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ She paused and bit her lip so that for a second Kirov felt a flicker of tenderness towards her. ‘No one to go home to,’ she said with sarcasm. ‘How sad for you!’