BERTA REALIZED, with a pang of disappointment, that Hershel wasn’t coming to her party. She was sitting at her dressing table while Vera pinned the last silk rose in her hair. He would be missing another party and she would once again have to make excuses for him and pretend it didn’t matter. A brief spasm of irritation crossed her face as she stared vacantly at the little porcelain box filled with hairpins.
“Madame is not pleased?” asked Vera.
“Uh?” She looked up briefly. “Oh no, it’s lovely. Perfect.”
“More roses perhaps?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s done, Vera. You’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.”
They paused to listen when they heard the first guests arriving downstairs. “Well, that’s it then,” Berta said. She rose with a sigh of resignation and checked her reflection in the full-length mirror. Not even the yards of chiffon and the girdle of beading at her waist could lift her spirits now.
On the way down the stairs she reminded herself that it did no good to be angry. It only got in the way of her duties as a hostess and made her party a miserable chore. And besides, she had no right to object. They had made their bargain a long time ago. In exchange for her lovely life Hershel had the freedom to come and go without question. He never stayed away for more than a few weeks at a time and he always came home greedy for her company. She never begrudged him his good works in the shtetlekh, until now, when he had begun to miss her parties. No one said anything of course, but she knew his recent absences were beginning to stir interest.
Downstairs, she pushed open the double doors leading to the parlor and fixed what she hoped was an optimistic smile on her face. Inside she found her first guests, the Tretiakovs, struggling to their feet to greet her. “My two early birds,” Berta said, meeting them halfway among the palms and ferns and heavily fringed furniture.
Aleksandra Dmitrievna kissed her first on one cheek and then on the other. “That’s just it. Who wants to be the first? Just for once I’d like to be a little late.” She looked pointedly at her husband, Aleksei Sergeevich.
“What difference does it make?” he grumbled, taking Berta’s hand. He had no patience for his silly wife. He was a short man with a moustache resembling a furry creature that had stretched out under his nose and died. He looked directly into Berta’s face and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Madame Alshonsky.” She liked Lenya and he liked her. It was an odd sort of friendship because they rarely spoke, at least not directly, but there were often moments like this.
“Doesn’t she look lovely, Lenya.”
Without taking his eyes off her, he said, “Of course she looks lovely. She always looks lovely.”This was not a compliment. Aleksei Sergeevich did not give compliments, as he saw no use for them. It was merely the truth as he saw it.
Aleksandra Dmitrievna and Berta had become friends since that day they met on the train to Mosny. Berta hadn’t lost Alix’s card but kept it as a memento and looked her up when she arrived in Cherkast. She thought their friendship would be an entrée into Alix’s world, but Berta soon found that the society in Cherkast was even more closed to Jews than the one in Moscow. In fact it was something of a mystery to Alix’s friends why the Tretiakovs socialized with the Alshonskys. They were Jews and, worse, Jews of an indeterminate origin. Hardly the social equals of the Tretiakovs.
When Berta realized that she wouldn’t be included in Alix’s set, she made up one of her own. In contrast, her circle was made up almost entirely of mongrels. Her guests were castoffs of the prominent families : disinherited black sheep, progressive thinkers, radicals, and artists. There was a Jewish textile mill owner and a few Jewish wheat merchants, but mostly their set was young, smart, and chic. This was the draw for Alix. While she was not young, she thought of herself as spirited and every bit as modern as Berta and her crowd.
Soon after the parlor began to fill up, Olga Nikolaevna, the painter, arrived with a new lover in tow. She was small with a pixie’s face and the first in their circle to wear her hair in a bob, which she secured by a satin headband and an ostrich feather. Her new lover was older than his predecessors and acted as if he were used to better company. Olga introduced him only as Valya and added in a loud conspiratorial whisper that he was extremely rich and had a wife and a whole herd of children.
Poor Pavla arrived next, looking grim and out of place. Everyone called her poor Pavla because her husband had been sent to Verkhoyansk, a remote outpost in eastern Siberia, for hiding a few SRs, social revolutionaries, at his summer estate. Now, in order to survive, Pavla had to sell off everything. Everyone pitied her, but no one wanted to spend much time with her.
Yuvelir arrived after that with a few of his friends and introduced them around as the new wave in poetry. Yuvelir was a poet, a vegetarian, and a hypochondriac and often complained about his cruel childhood to anybody who would listen. His family owned several mills in the region; he was poor because he refused to come into the business. He considered himself an artist and above the concerns of the material world, that is, until he had to pay the rent. Then he would go to his mother, who had money of her own and no qualms about supplying her son with all the material comforts he so proudly eschewed.
Mademoiselle Zuckerkandl and her brother, the writer David Zuckerkandl, arrived with Valentin Guseva, the son of the textile manufacturer. Valentin was pretty like a girl with a full feminine mouth, long lashes over dark eyes, and delicate fingers. They called him Her Majesty in school and he never got over it. Although it nearly destroyed his academic career, it also drove him to shooting, which is why he became a crack shot and famous all over Cherkast.
After that, a whole crowd of odds and ends arrived: a sculptor, a doctor and his wife, a minor composer, and the Rosensteins. When Berta saw the Rosensteins her hand flew to her mouth and she gave a little gasp. She had forgotten to tell them of the change in program. They had lost their daughter to consumption some years back and she thought they might not be comfortable with a séance. But Madame Rosenstein assured her that it would be all right. “We don’t believe in such things, my dear,” she said in her breathy voice. She was one of those hectic little women who spent their life seeing to the needs of others. “We’ve been invited to three this year already.”
Petr came in with a calling card on a silver tray. Since nobody in Berta’s set bothered with such formality, she picked it up with interest. It belonged to Marfa Gorbunova and she had written a message on the back: I must see you out in the foyer. Υour evening depends on it.
Madame Gorbunova had very definite ideas on how Berta could best secure the success of her evening. They all had to do with making sure that Madame Gorbunova was comfortable and her needs were met. After she introduced herself and her assistant, a correct little man named Monsieur Fevrier, she launched right into the list.
“First, I never see the guests before I perform a communion. Next, I’ll need a small table with a tablecloth and two candles. I’ll need two whiskeys, no water, no ice, and a linen napkin. In addition, I’ll need a comfortable chair and a small footrest that will fit under the table. A lap blanket of pure wool is essential and a little pillow for my back is preferable. Monsieur Fevrier will see to everything, but we will need to be shown to the communion room as soon as possible and provided with all my necessities.”
At first Berta was a little put off by this speech. She thought that since she had hired Madame Gorbunova for the evening, the medium would treat her with a certain amount of deference. Now she could see that she had been wrong. Since she didn’t want to jeopardize her party over a question of pride, she agreed to everything on the list and even showed them into the breakfast room herself.