“Did you ever...” he finally asked her, “...you know. I mean, with your friend Buddy?”
A long pause. His imagination trembled. “You men,” she said after a few seconds, “the way you...” and he heard the hint of a low chuckle. A long sigh followed. “Once or twice,” she said finally. “It was back in college. It was years ago.”
“Excuse me,” Evgeniy said to each person whose elbow he jostled, “pardon me.” He moved as swiftly as he could through the crowd without disrupting them too terribly, without drawing too much attention. Surely what he’d seen wasn’t what it seemed. Surely the man following his wife wasn’t... Surely the man from Yalta wouldn’t dare to... Evgeniy had been able to excuse that indiscretion, an isolated mistake, but he could not condone this, not abide such, not here in his own town. No, this was untenable, this was...
They didn’t speak after that, and soon Catherine’s breathing settled into a regular pattern. He listened to her for a few minutes, then realized he would be unable to sleep himself. He went downstairs, put on the Ornette Coleman CD, and sat down on the sofa to stare at the air-conditioning vent and the painting over the mantel and the pocketbook on the chair with her Palm Pilot within.
What was the name of that painting? he asked himself again, and this time it came to him, a conversation years ago, emerging from some tucked-away place in his memory. Twin Passions Twined, she’d called it, remarking to Philip that it was like them, wasn’t it? like love should be? She wrapped her arms around him in the memory, they kissed, they... but no comfort in remembering that embrace tonight. Other thoughts intruded. She’d actually painted it in college, hadn’t she? And who had the purple swath represented for her then? What had she written down in her Palm Pilot for tonight — “Dinner w/friends”? “Dinner w/Miriam, Alex, etc.”? “Dinner with Buddy”? What was listed for the evening a few nights back when she had claimed she was going to Target and Borders?
It was at the theater that Evgeniy first saw Gurov with his own eyes, but this was not his first awareness of the other man, despite his many attempts to suppress that knowledge. Looking back over all that had happened, Evgeniy realized that he had likely already lost Anna in Yalta, or even before, and he was ashamed to have arranged a witness to his own humiliation.
Yalta was his wife’s first holiday in the two years since they had been married. She had grown up in Petersburg, and he knew that moving to the provinces had been an adjustment for her. He had sensed that she was sometimes restless with their surroundings, restless with the days that he spent away from her while at council and the evenings he spent building relationships to ensure a successful career. He imagined her staring all day at the gray fence opposite the house, or chasing idly after that pesky little dog she loved so, and he felt responsible for the drabness he had begun to see in her eyes.
“Why don’t you take a trip, my darling?” he had asked her one evening when she complained of not feeling well. “A change of scenery will invigorate your spirits. You could travel to Moscow, maybe, or to Petersburg to see your sister. Or someplace new. To Yalta, perhaps. You might enjoy some time at the coast. You can stay for two weeks or a month or even more.” And though she had been hesitant at first, she had eventually acquiesced. A trip was planned for late summer. She bought some clothes for her journey, a new beret, a new parasol as well. Even the preparations seemed to return some glimmer of light to her soft gray eyes, and Evgeniy felt his own spirits relieved as well. At the end of her stay at the coast, he might come down personally to fetch her. They could spend a few days together. It would be a second honeymoon.
The week before her trip, he had summoned Zhmuhin, the hotel porter, to his office. Evgeniy found Zhmuhin a despicable person in many ways. The man was gaunt and angular, with a bent nose, and Evgeniy had often sensed something smug and sneering beneath his show of truckling diffidence. Plus, Zhmuhin perennially mispronounced Evgeniy’s surname as “Dridirit” — intentionally, Evgeniy believed. But Zhmuhin also possessed the keen eye and discretion necessary for his post. He was precise in his tallying of new arrivals to and departures from the town, encompassing in his recognition of small details. It had even been rumored years before that Zhmuhin was an outside agent for the Okhrana, the imperial police, and though the idea had quickly been dismissed, Evgeniy had often wondered at the possibility and as a result continued to cultivate some familiarity with the other man. As if recognizing this, Zhmuhin sometimes dropped his pretensions around Evgeniy, and too often took advantage of being treated as an equal.
After the porter had settled into one of the wing chairs opposite the mahogany desk, Evgeniy offered him a glass of cognac, asked him about who had checked in most recently at the hotel, laughed that Zhmuhin was always at the hotel, always so much work, and didn’t he ever need a holiday? And when Zhmuhin replied that he arranged to go to Petersburg each May and November, the former in honor of the emperor’s birthday and the latter to commemorate the dowager empress, Evgeniy commented that such respect was very noble, wondering beneath his words if the man’s trips to the capital might have more to do with some duties for the secret police.
“But perhaps you would also like to take another type of holiday, and sooner,” continued Evgeniy. “Perhaps somewhere warmer, perhaps to a coastal climate? Perhaps to Yalta?”
A sly smile emerged at one corner of Zhmuhin’s lips. “And why would I choose to go to Yalta?” he asked, tugging at the lapels of his gray porter’s uniform. “Is there some specific reason for such a trip?”
“I have always said that you are a clever man,” replied Evgeniy. “That you are intelligent beyond your position, and such you are.” He gestured as if doffing a hat to the porter, though he wore no hat at the time. “You are correct. It is my wife. I have decided to send her to Yalta for a holiday herself, and I would like for you to go as well.”
Zhmuhin’s smile vanished. “That sounds little like a holiday, Mr. Dridirit,” he replied, enunciating the last word. “To carry bags and open doors. I can do these things here. And you yourself have servants for such tasks. Send them along instead.” He started to rise.
“You misunderstand. Please sit, please,” said Evgeniy, careful to maintain his cheer, lacing his fingers together. “That is not at all what I’m asking. Even here you are too wise for such duties, I have always thought you so. No, I do not wish you to accompany my wife but to attend to her at a distance. You have a watchful nature, everyone knows this. I simply want you to keep such a watch over my wife while she is away.”
Zhmuhin’s eyes narrowed. He returned to his seat.
“What need is there to keep a watch over your wife?” he asked. “When I look at your wife, I see a grown woman who does not need a guardian. Don’t you agree, Mr. Dridirit?” That sly smile had returned, and Evgeniy detected some hint of salacity behind the porter’s comments. He chose to ignore the man’s studied insolence.
“Before our marriage, my wife was surrounded by her family in Petersburg,” Evgeniy replied instead, “and here she enjoys my guardianship, of course. Certainly she is a grown woman, but I have discovered that she is so young still in many ways, simple in her thoughts and her amusements, a naïf. Often I have called her my baby bird, merely a term of endearment, you see, and yet it is appropriate in so many ways that I had not intended... “He stared down at the blotter on his desk, at the inkwell and the calligraphy pen, the papers, his political responsibilities — another world in which his wife would surely be lost, and he treasured her all the more for that. “This is her first time away on her own, you see, and perhaps I fret over her well-being too much.”