Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [38]
An odd incident happened as they were preparing to cast off. A wraith-thin and albino-white individual emerged from the gloom and held out three packs of cigarettes, which Pepsicolova accepted wordlessly. The creature’s face was expressionless, his movements listless. He turned away and faded again into darkness.
“Who was that?” Darger asked.
With an irritated gesture, Pepsicolova lit up a cigarette. “Somebody. A messenger. Nobody anybody cares about.”
“You’d be healthier if you didn’t smoke so much.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
Pepsicolova stood and poled. Darger lounged back, watching her by the light of his lantern. When she leaned into the pole, he could not help noticing that she had quite a nice little bottom. All those months in the company of exquisite and untouchable women had made him acutely appreciative of the charms of their imperfect but (potentially) touchable sisters.
He had patted her on the fanny earlier chiefly in order to establish himself as the shallow and insignificant sort of man he was pretending to be. And she had arched her back! She had all but purred! Darger flattered himself that women rather liked him, but this Anya Pepsicolova had responded in such an extraordinary manner as to suggest deeper feelings on her part toward him.
Darger looked forward to getting to know the dear thing much better. For the moment, however, it was best to keep things simmering away on the back burner. There would be time for romance soon enough.
He just hoped that it did not break her heart when he inevitably had to move on and leave her in the lurch.
Dark waters lapped against the boat. Pepsicolova poled them deeper into mystery.
It was a Tuesday, so of course there was yet another tea party. Up and down the room, twin table-halves were set against either side of the dividing screen. Knots of men (never women, who understandably found the implicit comparison with the Pearls painful) clustered about the tables, vying for the attention of the beauties across from them, while serviles with madly glittering eyes watched for the least sign that a teacup needed filling. Occasionally, a gentleman succeeded in drawing a Pearl away from his competition, and the two stood apart, talking quietly through the screen.
Because they were indoors and because it was the custom here in Russia, the women did not wear veils. This made the Pearls feel daring, which lent a certain sauciness to even their least consequential remarks.
Zoësophia wafted from table to table, now drawing Russalka away from a young swain’s flattery that she was beginning to take too seriously, now subtly switching a retired general’s attention from Eulogia to Euphrosyne, so that each could later upbraid him for his inconstancy. Where the conversation was too heated, she damped it down, before a Neanderthal could descend upon the offender. Where it was listless, she enlivened it with an easily misinterpreted sisterly kiss upon Nymphodora’s dewy lips. By the time her circuit was done and Olympias rose to take over, the energy in the room had significantly intensified.
“Your baron glowers away anybody who tries to sit at your table,” Olympias said behind her hand.
“I know. It is terribly boorish of him.”
“But also very indicative of the depth of his feelings. As is the way your young artist—the one with the unfortunate mustache—refuses to be glowered away.”
“They are both overwrought. I fear that inevitably one of them will kill the other.”
Olympias assumed an expression of bored indifference. “There will always be more artists; they are interchangeable. Conversely, by all accounts, if the Butcher of Smolensk were the one to fall, it would be universally regarded as a act of high-minded civic spiritedness on your part.”
“You are a wicked, sinful girl,” Zoësophia said before drifting back to her table, “and when someday the vagaries of politics free us from the duke’s harem, you’re going to make some unfortunate man extremely happy.”
“Men,” Olympias called loftily