Love is blind, p.23
Love Is Blind, page 23
“With thanks for your trouble, sir.”
He walked slowly back to the hotel pondering this duplicity. Another night—they should be safe, then Lika would reappear at Maloe Nikolskoe, toothache cured. He would wait a day and a half and return himself. Why would anyone suspect anything? Just more comings and goings amongst the constant comings and goings. And then guests would be arriving for the next weekend. He bounded up the stairs to their room, two at a time.
They stayed put all day, as Lika wanted. They ordered a lunch of forcemeat pirogi and a bottle of vodka. They drank too much and smoked cigarettes. They made love when they felt aroused. They chased flies round their room. They looked out of the window at the good people of Dubechnia passing by and speculated about them, making up stories. As dusk arrived they felt hungry again and ordered more Ukrainian champagne, blinis and pressed caviar. Then they extinguished the oil lamps and lay in bed in the darkness, holding each other.
“I’ll never forget these hours, here,” Brodie said. “Never.”
“Neither will I.”
“Our time in the Evangelical Society Hotel.”
“It’s been…” She thought. “Enchanted.”
Brodie decided it was time to make his declaration.
“You know I love you, Lika.”
“Yes. Yes, I do, my darling.”
“I want to spend my life with you. I can’t be without you any more. I can’t imagine ever being without you. We have to find a way to—”
“Stop! Don’t say any more, Brodie. It’s very complicated, my situation—you’ve no idea. Our situation is complicated as well. There’ll be times when we have to be apart—you know that.”
“Then we should uncomplicate it. It’ll be hard—there’ll be bad feeling and we won’t be forgiven. But you see what it’s been like these last two days together. Imagine if this was the way it always was—no hiding, no lying. Just you and me. Free.”
“It’s a nice dream, Brodie. Let me dream about it.”
They slept in each other’s arms under the soft eiderdown, facing each other, her head on his shoulder, knee to knee.
And then in the night he felt cold and reached for the eiderdown to pull it over him—and it wasn’t there. He opened his eyes to see a candle burning and beyond its halo of orange light stood Malachi Kilbarron.
Brodie knew he wasn’t dreaming. He sat up, his hands quickly concealing his groin. Malachi kicked the bed and Lika woke. She gave a little scream, covering her breasts with her arms.
“Well, well, well,” Malachi said, unpleasantly. “The happy couple.”
He stared at Lika and she avoided his gaze.
“Pretty as ever, my sweet,” he said. “Those lovely titties.”
Lika tore the sheet from under her and wrapped it around her body. Malachi turned to Brodie.
“I’ll see you downstairs, Moncur. In two minutes. Get your cock and balls into a pair of trousers. Make yourself decent.”
He strolled out of the room.
Lika could hardly speak. She seemed in a strange kind of shock, dry retching, coughing as she dressed as quickly as possible. They hugged each other before he went downstairs to confront Malachi.
“You know,” Brodie said softly, trying to calm her, “maybe this is for the best. Everything has to change now.”
“No,” she said in a small voice. “You don’t know Malachi. Everything will become worse now. Everything will be bad.”
Brodie kissed her and went to meet Malachi Kilbarron.
6
Lika had been right: everything was indeed worse than before, but in varying degrees. Sometimes it seemed, for a minute or two, as if nothing had changed. But then a remark would be tossed into a conversation, or a statement made, or a look deflected, that reminded him how life had been better before the awful discovery.
Downstairs that night in the taproom of the Evangelical Society Hotel, Malachi had sounded surprisingly reasonable as he had laid out his terms—his conditions for remaining silent. He was drinking vodka and didn’t offer any to Brodie. Brodie was aware of Philipp Lvov lurking in the lobby, also. Malachi said he wouldn’t tell Kilbarron—poor brother John—about this betrayal as it would destroy him. And particularly at this moment as he prepared for his inaugural concerts and the opening of his first season—and every reward attending on it—such a revelation would be devastating. So, Malachi said, condition one: the Brodie–Lika “affair” was over. Condition two: Brodie and Lika had to do everything Malachi told them. There was to be no independent activity or initiative, everything had to be referred to Malachi.
“You are my creatures,” Malachi said, straightforwardly. “Got that? My creatures henceforth and until I tell you that you are released. And you will do my bidding. Understand?”
Brodie could only agree to the terms and Malachi went away, leaving instructions. Lika was to return to Maloe Nikolskoe in the morning. Brodie was to wait the day out and return in the evening.
Brodie felt he had to ask a question.
“How did you know? How did you know we were here?”
Malachi smiled.
“I recognized your handwriting on the telegram. The way you do your ‘C’ and your ‘R.’ I thought—hello? Brodie Moncur’s sending us a telegram from Piter about Lika’s teeth. Funny. Then I looked at the stamp. Dubechnia. It wasn’t difficult to find you.”
All so simple, Brodie thought. If only he’d asked the postmaster to write the telegram…
What did change was John Kilbarron’s attitude. Malachi had said he wouldn’t tell him but Brodie felt Kilbarron was suddenly noticeably cooler towards him. Just a nod of the head when they met and he seemed to want to keep his distance. But, on the other hand, nothing appeared changed between Kilbarron and Lika. She sat beside him at meals; she slept in his bed at night, or so Brodie assumed. He calculated further that Malachi had probably said something vague to his brother—along the lines that Brodie was not to be trusted—hence Kilbarron’s froideur. Brodie survived on the margins for a few more days as guests came and went. There was another dinner up at the big house but Brodie wasn’t invited this time—only Kilbarron, Malachi and Lika.
Because of the pressure they were under he only dared risk a few snatched conversations with Lika. She seemed calmer.
“He doesn’t know,” she said. “I’m absolutely convinced. But he’s on edge, tense, because of the concerts. In fact he’s being quite sweet to me.”
For the first time in their relationship Brodie regretted that he and Lika had to converse in a second language. His good French wasn’t quite good enough to make clear the nuances of his suspicions. Surely Lika sensed something, he asked. Has he said anything about me? No, she replied: “ Il est absolument comme d’habitude.” It wasn’t enough. And Lika’s reassurances were also troublingly bland. “I’ve seen him like this before. It’s always the same when he prepares for big concerts.” But Brodie wasn’t reassured. Their shared language was at variance.
Three days after the Malachi confrontation Brodie walked past the cottage and could hear Kilbarron practising—Brahms, he recognized, the “Paganini-variationen.” The technique was flawless but he could tell at once that the piano was slightly out of tune and, before lunch as they gathered in the dining room, he mentioned this.
“It’s fine,” Kilbarron said. “It serves its purpose. Doesn’t bother me.” He looked searchingly at Brodie and Brodie wondered again what it was that Malachi had told him, sensing Kilbarron’s orchestrated concentration of his antipathy.
“Are you all right, Brodie? Fit and well, I hope?” There was something taunting and sneering about his enquiry—not concern.
“Yes. Very well, thank you.”
“Good. I want you to go back to Piter tomorrow. I know my programme now. I’ll be coming back for first rehearsals soon. Feather-light on the treble octaves. Feather-light, mind.”
“Of course. But tomorrow—are you sure?”
“Yes. First thing. I want everything ready. Tip-top.”
He turned brusquely and walked away. Lika had come into the dining room and he took her hand and led her out. For Brodie that confirmed everything: Malachi had concocted and told his brother some story or other that reflected badly on Brodie. Brodie Moncur was no longer in the inner circle—he was being banished from Maloe Nikolskoe.
* * *
—
Brodie couldn’t sleep that night—trapped in a delicate balance of indecision and misgiving. It would be his last night at Maloe Nikolskoe, he assumed. His mind was alive, running through possibilities, probabilities, the future, what to do—and where in the world would he and Lika go? He left his bed as dawn approached, dressed and packed up his few belongings.
He stepped outside. Not even the kitchen staff were stirring and no smoke rose from the brick chimney in the farmyard. He walked up the path by the lake in the nacreous light, glad of his hat and overcoat. This was the track that Lika would take to the ash-tree pool. Out of sight of the house, it curled its way round the farm buildings and disappeared into a wood of silver birch. In the leaf-linked darkness of the wood there was an eerie silence, as if Brodie were the only breathing creature alive in the landscape. He stepped out of the gloom into the lacy light of dawn, confronted by the swelling contours of a harvested wheat field. At the side of the field was a two-horse reaper-binder, its reel-slats damp with dew. Brodie glanced at its gearing and wheels and chains, marvelling at the solidity and heaviness of agricultural metal. Somehow this machine cut the corn and miraculously laid the stalks behind it in tied sheaves. He’d seen them at work on the bigger farms of Liethen Valley.
Brodie looked around—he was entirely alone in the thinning dawn light and felt he was in a painting by—what was his name? —the one he had seen in Varvara Vadimova’s apartment. “Dawn at Nikolskoe”…The wheat field’s empty acres undulated easily to the fringe of trees. The wheat had been cut, the sheaves stooked then carted away, winnowed, and the rest used to make a hayrick somewhere. The stubble glittered as if dusted with frost in the angled early-morning light—maybe more magical machines would be brought for harrowing, he wondered. The field harrowed, left, then ploughed up before the winter frosts made the ground iron-hard and—
Brodie froze.
A hundred yards away a young deer was eating the green shoots of emerging grass growing between the stubble. Delicate, nervy, it would eat for a second or two then look up sharply and scan the field, alarmed for a second. Then, all well, it would resume eating—then repeat the process. Brodie stood motionless. The deer looked up and turned its head to him. If he didn’t move or make a sound he would be registered as just another immobile feature in the landscape. For long seconds the two of them held their positions, the deer constantly looking up, seemingly staring straight at Brodie. Brodie rigid, staring back. The deer seemed a thing of absolute perfect natural beauty, he thought, quiveringly alive, both fragile and athletically graceful on its slim legs, its pelt glowing like caramel as the first rays of sun hit the wheat field. Why would anyone want to shoot a creature as beautiful as that, Brodie found himself wondering? A wood pigeon made its husky fluting call from the birch wood and suddenly—perhaps some scent of human on the breeze—the deer was off, leaping away in great bounds until it reached the safety of the trees and disappeared. Brodie felt both oddly stirred and shriven by the encounter. He had been perfectly still but the animal had sensed something was amiss and had bolted. The moment seemed freighted with symbolism—but a symbolism that was lost to him. An omen, then, perhaps—a bad omen.
Brodie turned and walked solemnly back to the house. The staff were stirring now—a clatter of pans, the gong of a ladle on a pot coming from the kitchen in the yard, the dogs barking at the cocks crowing. In the empty dining room he asked a sleepy serving maid for a pot of coffee and confirmed that the trap that he had ordered would be there in half an hour to take him into Dubechnia to catch the Petersburg train. He realized, with a sudden whelm of chagrin, that he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Lika.
7
Brodie did exactly what Kilbarron asked. He spent a day on the new concert grand—the Steingraeber—now set firmly on centre stage, the ballet season over. He retuned the piano, then worked on every hammer-head with his needles and hammer-irons, and weighted the treble octaves with his thin sheets of lead—an operation of elaborate precision—so that the tiniest pressure delivered by the brush of a finger would produce a clear, true note. With his miniature India-rubber bellows and his own mixture of dry lubrication—a concoction of talc, graphite and, his special touch, finely ground molybdenite from Norway—he dusted the rollers and the key bed. The piano was ready, perfectly set for Kilbarron’s touch. It wasn’t the ideal instrument for him, as the old Channon had been, but it was close. He would be pleased, Brodie hoped.
As he was leaving, the manager of the theatre showed him the proof of the poster announcing the Kilbarron Season. Here were the details of the inaugural concert. First up was Kilbarron’s own composition—“Der Tränensee—Tondichtung für grosses Orchester.” Then Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, then Balakirev’s “Islamey.” A heavy evening for Kilbarron—bravura stuff, but exhausting—but designated a night to remember, clearly. He might have to retune at the interval, he realized. Kilbarron had asked for three full days of rehearsal with the orchestra—there was a lot at stake.
He had lunch with George Vere at the Imperial Yacht Club. The walls were heavily overhung with clustered photographs of yachts and yachtsmen, trophies and pennants. The tables were crowded and the style was French—crisp white napery, ostentatious “good” service, by tail-coated waiters. During lunch Brodie came to realize that, actually, he liked Vere—he had an easy smile and that Englishman’s feigned air of polished self-deprecation and absent-mindedness that, in fact, just failed to entirely disguise a shrewd and observant mind.
“Are you all right, Moncur?” he asked after their first course. “Bit under the weather?”
For some reason Brodie felt the need to unburden himself of his problems.
“An affair of the heart,” he said. “I’m in love and it’s not going well.”
“Do I know the young lady? No need to tell me, if you don’t want to.”
“She’s not Varvara Vadimova, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“Well, that’s a bonus. But I’m no use to you on that score,” Vere said.
“I’m experiencing feelings of impending doom,” Brodie said. “I have this horrible, growing conviction that everything is going to turn out very badly and I don’t know what to do.”
“Funnily enough, that’s exactly my state of mind when I wake up every morning.”
Brodie had to laugh.
“I assume she’s married,” Vere said.
“No. But there is another man in the picture.”
“Well, seriously, anything I can do to help,” Vere said in a genuinely kindly way. “If things get really bad, just let me know, if you want.”
* * *
—
There was a quiet knock at his bedroom door. Brodie was reading Lady Dalcastle’s gift of Swinburne’s poems, musing over the lines, thinking that Swinburne was a bit florid and verbose and wondering if he was too rich a dish for his current mood. He closed the book, called “Come in” and Kyrill’s smiling face appeared.
“A boy has delivered a note, sir.”
Brodie took it from him. It was from Lika.
“We are coming back,” it said. “Write to me at Poste Restante, General Post Office, window 43.” It was unsigned.
“Is there a reply for the boy?” Kyrill asked.
Brodie fished in his pocket for some kopeks and handed a few coins over.
“With respect, sir, this is too generous. Ten kopeks is enough for a boy.”
“You decide, Kyrill. Buy yourself a drink with the rest.”
“You’re extremely kind, sir.” He was about to withdraw then paused. “We enjoy having you here, sir.”
“Thank you, Kyrill.”
Brodie immediately wrote to Lika.
Malaya Morskaya, 57
23 August 1899
My darling Lika,
It’s perhaps too risky to try to meet at the moment, but let us make plans to leave Piter as soon as we can—perhaps after the first concert. I have plenty of money and will withdraw the cash from the bank so we’re properly ready to travel. We can go anywhere—Paris, Buenos Aires, New York. Just let me know and I will organize everything. Once this concert is over—and the money begins to flow in—Kilbarron won’t care about us any more.
I love you, my darling.
Your Brodie
On the Monday following he went to his office at the theatre as usual. He could see the orchestra arriving for what must be the first rehearsal. Could Kilbarron be back already? They were professional musicians hired on contract for this New Russia Symphony Orchestra, as advertised. There must be over a hundred, Brodie calculated—Kilbarron wanted huge volume, apparently. But there was no sign of the maestro himself; Brodie assumed he must be somewhere in the building, however. An hour later in his office he could hear the orchestra tuning up—now Kilbarron must be there, conducting from the piano. He wandered down backstage but found the door to the amphitheatre locked. He tried another, also locked. He went to find the manager—an amiable fellow called Ardeyev—and told him that, mysteriously, all the doors into the theatre were locked. The man looked abashed.
“Yes, it’s Maestro Kilbarron’s instructions, sir.”
“I understand. But I work for Maestro Kilbarron. He will need me for the piano.”
“I think a new tuner has been employed, sir.”
Brodie took this in. The exclusion was becoming a totality.
“All the same, I would like to hear the rehearsal,” Brodie said.
