The White Russian by Vanora Bennett Read Free Book Online Page A

had been gazing out of Grandmother’s newspaper.
    ‘I’ve heard of her,’ I called, startled by the coincidence. ‘Let’s go listen.’ And the group wavered and coalesced around me in the hot dark and good-naturedly headed for the doorway.
    I don’t think any of the others were really in a listening mood. Winthrop and Bill got caught up in a discussion with the moustachioed waiter about whether a vodka Martini had any place in Russian life. The girls squeezed in next to them on the red banquette, laughing.
    So I went and sat down on an empty chair near the singer by myself. This place didn’t have the wistful charm of Madame Brodyanskaya’s. I couldn’t tell whether it really was full of escaped princesses and down-on-their-luck counts, as Hughie had once told me. My impression was that it wasn’t that full at all. Apart from my friends at the banquette table nearest the door, all I could really see was smoke and silhouettes, the occasional flash of glass and, in front of me, in the most interior corner, a large woman in a tight burgundy dress and a loose flowered shawl with jet beads, already well into her programme.
    The pictures had been flattering. The reality was older and blowsier and at least thirty pounds heavier. But she had a good pair of lungs on her, and a big, deep, swoopy voice. She sobbed her way through songs that you didn’tneed to understand the words of to know they were about heartbreak, and Cossacks, and wolves in the snow, and the tremble of greyish vines against the dacha window, and war, and partings …
    They were shamelessly sentimental, those songs, just like the candelabra at that last table lighting the singer and the balalaika player in the shadows by her side, but they brought a lump to my throat all the same.
    There was only a thin scatter of applause when she stopped and bowed. My friends didn’t stop their noisy talk, even for a moment.
    Blinking a little, the singer sat down at the candelabra table with her accompanist.
    I got up too. Perhaps it was just the gallantry of that shawl draped over her quivering arms. I wanted to pay my respects.
    Close up, I saw that Plevitskaya’s face was damp under the kohl-lined black eyes, and her grey-streaked black curls were gleaming. A huge Orthodox cross was dancing up and down against her heaving décolletage. Even against the lurid red and green décor you could see that she was sweating heavily.
    I’d thought she looked disconsolate, but as soon as she saw someone approaching she was suddenly radiant again. It didn’t matter that there were flashes of gold in her mouth. The smiles she was now giving her accompanist, who was also so lit up by the appearance of audience that he started kissing her hand, said, in the simplest and most joyous way imaginable, ‘Here I am. Here you are. Let me make music for you. Let me give you pleasure.’
    I liked them both at once.
‘Prekrasno … prosto divno …’
hewas saying, to her, but also watching me out of the corner of his eye, before adding, in English: ‘You are
won
-derrrful.’
    ‘Wonderful,’ I echoed, feeling something new opening up and my own tentative smile grow to radiantly joyful proportions as well. ‘
Wonderful.
’
    ‘But I already knew you would be,’ I added, with a heady flash of boldness, ‘before I heard you, because I think my grandmother has seen you in Paris. Countess Sabline …’
    I couldn’t have been more surprised at her reaction. Her eyes opened wider in a great melodrama of astonishment.
    ‘
Constance!
’ she cried, as if overcome. She reached for my hand, and held it very tenderly, and gazed into my eyes. ‘Can it be possible! You – my dearrr Constance’s granddaughter! Of course – your eyes! Everything! I see! My God! Sit, sit! Please!’
    Overwhelmed, I sat. ‘You mean … you
know
her?’ I whispered.
    But it took only a moment more, as my shock receded, to see that she wasn’t going to ask difficult questions. She wasn’t going to ask