The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [48]
Stevie reached out and took Irina’s tiny hand, cold despite the warm tea glass. ‘Irina, it’s a terrible time, the waiting. It will take an enormous toll on you, and on your husband, and on Vadim. I’ve seen it before. You must be gentle with yourself. And most of all, remember that Anya was taken by criminals and that they are to blame for all of this. There was nothing you could have done, and it has nothing to do with being angry about a small thing like your nails.’ She gave Irina’s hand a tiny, reassuring squeeze.
‘It’s the way of the world. All things coexist: manicures and earthquakes and burnt toast and nuclear bombs and red balloons and civil wars. Does that make sense?’
Irina nodded and lit a cigarette. She sat back into the sofa, turning her face to the ceiling so that the tears in her eyes could not escape.
‘She is so precious to me, Stevie.’
Stevie wanted to get to know the family as much as possible before negotiations with the kidnappers began. It would help predict how each member would react and how much they could handle. Potential problems or disagreements could be warded off well before the critical hours. It would also help the family trust the negotiator.
One person and one person only had to be elected to deal with the kidnappers. It should not be a member of the immediate family because they were too emotionally involved. It was also vital to present a totally united front. Any dissent detected by the kidnappers would open windows for experienced ones to demand more, and for inexperienced ones to panic and perhaps kill the victim.
Stevie was frightened at the prospect of being even partially responsible for Anya’s safe return. She would feel a lot better once Constantine Dinov arrived to take over.
‘Do you want to hear her play?’ Irina got up and put a new disk in the CD player. ‘Anya recorded this in the summer. It’s the melody from Adagio in G minor—Tomaso Albinoni.’
Stevie and Irina sat smoking in the pale daylight as a violin began to sing of fathomless longing as plaintively as any human voice. It was as if Anya was there in the room with them, speaking to them, telling them of all the things she felt and dreamed and still wanted to do and see.
Backlit by the winter light from the window, white snakes of smoke curled in the air above their heads, writhing in exquisite agony with every note drawn from the invisible bow. They expressed all the things that the two women had no words for.
____________
Stevie tumbled, literally, into her hotel room. Her Slavic virus had made her slightly light-headed and Irina’s whisky tea seemed to be wrestling it with vigour. The velvet curtains had been drawn but Stevie pulled them back. She wanted to watch the snow spiral out of the sky.
She had never seen such flakes, the size of a baby’s palm.
By the orange light of the street lamps, it seemed like the snow would never stop falling. It ought to have felt like Christmas, with sleigh bells and singing and cinnamon biscuits shaped like angels and stars. But tonight, in Moscow, the interminable fall that covered everything in white felt like an erasure. It was obliterating and obscuring—white, as black, impenetrable. It was burying everyone alive, imposing silence. Each snowflake absorbed the words, the noises, swallowed them, left nothing. Like evil. Stevie wondered if it would ever be summer again.
Melancholy and a weeping nose were bad signs. Stevie ordered room service—vodka, black toast, and Salade Russe, for one.
When in Russia . . .
Her grandmother made Salade Russe on every Sunday after October the twentieth, the date she claimed as the day the ‘indoor season’, as she called it, officially began: diced carrot, potato (boiled, waxy, hard), peas and a mayonnaise dressing, the odd gherkin if she was feeling particularly spry.
Stevie