Quiller Balalaika

'Why can't you leave him?' I asked her.

She looked down, then up again, but not at me, looking around her in the half-dark: the only light was from candles burning in Tiffany glass bowls on the little tables, so that the scene was a kaleidoscope of fragmented images – the bright outlines of bottles, the sheen of bare shoulders, the glimmer of eyes in shadowed faces, some of them turned to watch Antanova. They seemed to be mostly artists here, gathered together with friends after curtain-down to bemoan their performances and seek the comfort of immediate rebuttal – but darling, you were marvellous!

'I can't leave Vasyl,' Natalya said, her eyes on me now, 'because he would have my brother killed.'

The man in the corner near the bar was one of the people watching her; I'd locked on to him when he'd come in here, less than a minute after we had. He could be an admirer, like the others, or could be simply standing there with one foot hooked over the bar stool enjoying his lust at a distance. Or he could be one of Sakkas' henchmen.

'Tell me,' I asked Natalya, 'about your brother.'

She countered this. 'How long have you known Vasyl?'

'Only a few weeks. We just did one brief deal.'

'You will do other deals with him?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'He doesn't leave much room for profit. And of course one can't protest.' I gave it a beat. 'He hasn't got my confidence, and I certainly don't have his. You can speak freely.'

Her dark eyes were glistening. 'There are so few things I can do freely, and that is why I've told you as much as I have, even -' she shrugged, and the small silver bells on the fringe of her stole shivered with sound.

'Even though I'm a stranger.'

'Yes.'

'Don't let it worry you.'

Taking a breath she said, 'My brother – his name is Marius – was with Vasyl almost from the time he came out here from England. You know Vasyl is a British national?'

'So I gathered.'

'My brother was already in the mafiya, and introduced him to all the right people. He -'

'The right people in the mafiya, or the government?'

'Both. Vasyl impressed him enormously, as he does everyone, and in a short time Marius was offered what he called the "honour" of becoming his chief aide. I didn't know Vasyl then; I only knew that Marius was getting in deep with the organization and making enormous money.' With a shrug: 'It didn't worry me; Moscow was changing overnight, the streets filling with Mercedes and Lincolns and Ferraris, new clubs opening up, Western clothes and cosmetics and music flooding in. But then the killings began, and the ordinary people of the city were given an idea of how ugly the mafiya was, behind all the opulent extravaganza. And I started worrying about my brother.' Taking another deep breath, 'And then about a year ago, last winter, he introduced me to Vasyl Sakkas at a very exclusive party.'

In the silence I said, 'Not your favourite day to remember. Natalya, don't look directly at the man standing at the end of the bar with his foot on the stool. Just glance across him when you next look around.' With her eyes still on mine she said, 'Very well. No, it was not my favourite day. Even before we parted company that night I knew that Vasyl hadn't just fallen for me – he wanted to possess me. At first I think I was flattered, even proud. I knew from what my brother had told me that Vasyl Sakkas was a powerful man, one of the most powerful men in Moscow.' Looking around her: 'He came to watch me dance, with an enormous entourage of bodyguards, and escorted me home to my cramped little apartment in Povaskaya Ulica. He gave me sables, diamonds, and a brand new BMW. It's all right, I know that man – he's just one of my followers, that's all. He never comes up or pesters me.'

'Fair enough,' I said.

'And then I was invited to Vasyl's house for the first time, to dine with him alone. And you know what happened? I woke up two days later in his enormous baroque bed, still groggy from whatever drug I'd been given, though the truth didn't occur to me right away. There were three private nurses looking after me, and a doctor came twice a day to question them about my "progress". They said it was some kind of food poisoning, because two of the staff were also taken ill. And you know? I believed it. So did my brother Marius.'

'And what did your brother Marius feel about your having woken up in Vasyl's bed?'

With a shrug: 'He knows I have affairs. I think maybe he was rather pleased that his boss favoured me, and that I was responding.'

'But were you? I don't want to -'

'No. I refused, the first time Vasyl made a serious pass. I think maybe I wanted to hold him off just to see what it felt like, to show a man as powerful as he was that he couldn't buy me – at least not instantly. Maybe it was that, I don't know. But it must have angered him, even though he never shows anger.'

'No?'

'Just cruelty.'

Two men came in, blunt-faced, hoods, letting the door slam shut on its spring, walking to the bar in step, hands in the pockets of their coats as they stared straight ahead of them.

'When did you start thinking it hadn't been food poisoning?' I asked Natalya.

Her mouth twisting with bitterness: 'Pretty soon. He made me stay in bed until the doctor said I could get up, and then -'

'For a few days? A week?'

'Maybe a week. By that time it was driving me crazy that I couldn't go to the theatre – I was already a soloist. I told Vasyl they could fire me; work isn't that easy to find, even at my level. He didn't listen. Then I saw the whole picture.'

A bald-headed man in a velvet smoking jacket and gold-rimmed glasses came out of the room behind the bar and nodded, motioning the two hoods inside.

'The whole picture,' I said.

'Yes – I could go back to my work, but I would live in Vasyl's house now, permanently. I would be there when he wanted me, when I wasn't performing. I would be his kept woman. His white slave, if you like.'

'He didn't put it like that.'

'Of course not. He says very little, Vasyl, but nobody ever mistakes what he means.'

'How did your brother feel about this?'

'May I have another drink?'

'The same?'

'Yes.'

I got our girl over and ordered more Canada Dry.

'I think Marius saw it as a very good situation developing all round. I seemed to accept Vasyl, and Vasyl seemed to be bringing me into a totally new life-style, like a waif out of the snow. I didn't want to worry my brother at that stage; I knew I was trapped in something I couldn't escape, so I decided to make the best of it, just keep on with my work and cope with the other half of my life as it came.' Hands flat on the table suddenly, her eyes becoming intense: 'Although that's not putting it well. The whole of my life is my work, it always has been. So maybe that was why I found it easier to accept the other things. I don't know.'

The door behind the bar opened and the two hoods came out, one of them tucking an envelope into the double-breasted coat. The man in the gold-rimmed glasses asked the bartender for a drink as the hoods walked in step to the door and a Hari Krishna acolyte came in, snow on his saffron robes and tonsured head. One of the hoods made a quick movement and the acolyte doubled over with a cry of pain as they went on out, one of them laughing, letting the door slam.