Oh, Jesus, don’t do that!
“Before God, it is the truth,” she sobbed. “I can’t stand it when you look at me with hate and suspicion in your eyes!”
“Oh, baby,” Castillo heard himself say.
And then she was in his arms, sobbing.
“I think I will go see how they’re doing with the tree,” Pevsner said. “It might be wise to lock the door after I go.”
“We have just had our first fight,” Svetlana said. “And our first makeup, and our first you-know-what in my bed. Up to now, all the you-know-whats have been in your beds.”
“Baby, I’m really sorry.”
“I know. I can tell,” she said. “Can I say something?”
“You can say anything you want.”
“I know what it was, why you disbelieved me.”
“Because I’m stupid?”
“Because you are a man,” she said. “Like other men, insecure. When a woman throws herself at you, you are incapable of just accepting your good fortune. You don’t think you are worthy of what you are being given, so the woman has to have some ulterior motive.”
“What is that, Psychology 101?”
“It is the truth,” Svetlana said. “And I have something else to say. I am not a foolish woman. I am probably less foolish than any woman you have ever known.
“And like you, I have been trained to look for the worst scenarios. I thought about the worst scenarios before I put the toothbrush in the lock of your bathroom.”
“And what are the worst scenarios?”
“Actually, there were three,” she said, propping herself on her elbow to look down at him, which caused her breast to rest on his chest. “The first was that I was wrong about what I thought I saw in your eyes, and that you felt nothing for me.
“The second was your professionalism would be so strong that you would reject me no matter how you felt. That really worried me.”
“And the third?”
“That’s still viable, my Charley. You know what the chances are of our spending our lives together? You’ve never thought about that?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Castillo said softly.
“I don’t think there’s a chance in a thousand that we will be able to do that.”
“Okay. So what do we do?”
“I will pray. I have been praying. Do you pray, Charley?”
“Not in a long time.”
“That’s between you and God. My father never prayed either. He said that God knew his mind, so it was pointless. God was going to do with his life whatever God wanted to do.”
“I’m something like that,” Castillo said. “And if God is reading my mind, He knows how I feel about you.”
“So there is a tentative scenario we can run. We just put all the reasons we shall most likely not grow old together from our minds and pretend that we will be together forever.”
She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“Deal,” he said.
“You mean that?”
“I mean that.”
“Good. Then I will go with you to Buenos Aires and you will give me a computer just like yours.”
“I’ve just been taken,” Castillo said.
She nodded happily in agreement.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Anything, just so long as it’s not about money.”
“Actually, it is. How much money is in the accounts, the ones you memorized?”
“So that’s it. You’re a gigolo? After my money?”
“A lot more, I would guess, than the eight million you were willing to spend to throw the dogs a bad scent.”
“If I told you forty, fifty times that, would that make you happy? You want me to give you money, my Charley? Just ask.”
“I’m not in that league, but I’m not going to have to sell Max anytime soon to pay the rent. What I’ve been wondering about is that two million you asked for on the train.”
“Two reasons. You needed to hear a reason—right then—why we were willing to defect, a reason you would believe. And if you thought we needed money, you probably wouldn’t start looking for any that we might have.”
“One more question?”
“One.”
“Do you have any idea what it does to me when you rub your breast on my chest that way?”
She blushed, but then confessed: “Oh, I was hoping that would work!”
[FIVE]
The Great Room
La Casa en Bosque
San Carlos de Bariloche
Río Negro Province, Argentina
0915 1 January 2006
Charley had learned the night before that there were two celebrations marking the New Year. First was the family celebration, an enormous meal—there had been two roast geese on the enormous table, plus a suckling pig—starting at half past ten.
The meal itself had been preceded by Pevsner giving a lengthy prayer/ speech—not unlike Grace—in which he offered thanks to not only the Divinity but also to a long list of saints, only a few of whom Charley had ever heard of, for God’s munificence to the family—including the reuniting “now, of Svetlana, and soon, very soon, of Dmitri and Lora and Sof’ya to the bosom of those who love them” and for the “presence at our table and in our lives of Charley and Lester and Alfredo and János, who have lived the words of our Lord and Savior that there is no greater love than being willing to lay down one’s life for another.”
At that point, Svetlana had grasped his hand—not groped him—under the table, and he had looked at her and seen tears running down her cheeks.
Then they had moved into the Great Room where the Novogodnaya Yolka had been set up. Servants dressed as Father Frost and his granddaughter, Snegurochka the Snow Girl, danced to the music of a balalaika quartet. The balalaikas were of different sizes, the largest as big as a cello.
Charley was a little ashamed that his first reaction to this was to decide that Father Frost’s costume was designed for Santa Claus, the Snow Girl’s for Mrs. Santa Claus, and both had probably been made in China by Buddhists.
He was touched, and finally admitted it.
The children—Elena clutching Ivan the Terrible to her—sang several Christmas songs, following which Father Frost and Snegurochka danced out of the room, to dance back in a few moments later heading a column of servants, who deposited gaily wrapped boxes under the tree.
The children, Svetlana told him, would get their presents in the morning.
Charley at this point, possibly assisted by the champagne that had been flowing since they sat down for dinner, came to the philosophical conclusion that maybe the Russians had the better idea, passing out the presents at New Year’s rather than at Christmas, which was, after all, supposed to be a Christian holiday—meaning Holy Day—not one of gluttony under Santa Claus’s benevolent eye.
He shared this observation with Svetlana, who laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him.
At five minutes to midnight, everybody was out on the pier, trailed by servants carrying an enormous grandfather clock and pushing a cart holding half a dozen bottles of champagne.
The clock was set up, the hands adjusted, and at midnight began to bong its chimes.
Pevsner counted loudly downward from twelve.
As the last bong was fading, there was a dull explosion, which startled Castillo, followed by another and another and another.
He had been enormously relieved when the first of what turned out to be a fifteen-minute display of fireworks went off.
And enormously pleased when Svetlana had kissed him, as Anna was kissing her husband.
The celebration today was for what Pevsner described as “the people.”