Fig and the Flute Player Read online

  Maisie moved forward to acknowledge the old man’s greeting and his apologies for not getting up. The priest was chanting in Russian, his deep-bellied voice resonated from the walls of the room as if from a sounding board.

  Then suddenly all that stopped and the old servant brought in the samovar and some little sweet biscuits, and everyone including the servant sat down and started chatting. They were seated in a circle round the ikon as if the tea and almond biscuits were part of the ceremony, a sort of love feast, the samovar humming away.

  Michael sat opposite Maisie, the ikon with its frame of beaten gold gleaming darkly, softly between them. They sat as if round a fire, warming themselves, eating their biscuits and sipping tea.

  They all chatted quietly, regarding each other, companions of this strange circle, with friendly, even loving eyes. Time seemed an irrelevance, suspended as it sometimes is in the night-watches, when a circle of friends may sit around a fire in the open, under the stars in some desert country. Only it was early afternoon in Brighton and there were no stars over their heads. Only the moulded ceiling with acanthus leaves and cherubim holding the chandelier above their heads.

  After they had finished eating and drinking, Denisov invited Maisie to examine the ikon. The priest made his farewells and left. Maisie opened her briefcase and took out reference books, a notebook and a small camera, and started making careful notes and taking photographs.

  The ikon was quite small. It might have been first used for private devotional purposes. It had a certain intimate quality about it. Maisie was instantly struck by its delicate harmony. The Virgin looked at the Child, and He at her. He clung lightly to His mother, sitting on His mother’s hand, leaning against her arm, quite upright and lively. The colouring was ochre, olive-green, gold-brown, black and umber. A gold glow behind the figures indicated the heavenly light from their nimbi. Both the Virgin and Child had a nimbus or halo, the mother’s of a warmer, solid glow, the Child’s more transparent, new, with a new-moon quality.

  The thing that held the viewer was the loving intentness of the gaze in the mother’s eyes, a serene, calm but wakeful gaze, as if an invisible thread hung in the look between them.

  The Virgin’s robe had a Byzantine appearance in the intricate repeating pattern of the cloth; but the faces of the two were un-Byzantine in their human and individual quality. It was a beautiful ikon. Maisie had no doubt that it was authentic, probably early twelfth-century and Russian. Maisie had enough stored knowledge to let her instinct guide her – she felt the uniqueness of this ikon. She did not doubt it was the Steppes ikon.

  Maisie worked silently for nearly an hour, Denisov watching her without one word. The old woman quietly cleared away the remains of the little feast. Michael and Menshikov talked in low voices like old companions who had known each other for many years – it was as if some alchemy had been at work between them.

  At last Maisie put her things away and closed her case. She looked at Denisov’s yellow old face, and smiled.

  ‘That’s all I can do for today,’ she said. ‘I shall have to do some research. Make some enquiries. Tomorrow I am going to Kiev to attend a conference, and I hope there I will be able to consult Professor Werner who is a world expert.’

  ‘We wish to trace all its journeys. We want to know the craftsman who made it. We want to discover its history as fully as possible. We wish the ikon to be authenticated in the interests of our cause. We are willing to pay well for your work, Dr Shergold, and we wish you to accept this first payment.’

  The old man held an envelope in his shaking hand. A little taken aback by this straightforwardness, Maisie thanked him and put the envelope in her case.

  Again the moth-like touch of old flesh as he kissed her. ‘Kiev, you say,’ said the old man in his tired voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maisie.

  ‘Ah,’ said the old man.

  PART TWO

  Kiev

  1

  MAISIE saw the lights of the airport runway pierce the night with fairy-like beauty as their plane approached.

  She took Michael’s hand. As they flew softly on to the runway he covered her mouth with his, and the kiss and the quivering landing became one thing. She thought of a painting she had seen somewhere of Leda and the Swan, the dark bird covering Leda’s white thighs. Who had painted it? Etty? Sometimes she wished the art historian in her would take itself off.

  ‘I’m scared of landings,’ Michael said, ‘that made it better.’ Maisie laughed and kissed him again sweetly.

  Another smaller Russian aeroplane flew them quietly over the Ukrainian steppes to Kiev.

  ‘Welcome to Byzantium,’ he whispered in her ear. She was surprised. What had made him say that? The words should have been hers.

  Later that night as they lay in bed, she asked him why he had said it.

  ‘I just felt it,’ he said. ‘It came into my head.’

  She could feel him smiling in the dark. ‘You’re lovely,’ she said.

  ‘So are you. Ever so lovely.’

  She switched the light on. They were both slippery with sweat.

  ‘Can’t you settle down?’ He looked tired, deep circles under his eyes. She was remorseful.

  ‘I’ll try. Wasn’t it beautiful, flying over the steppes and – everything?’

  ‘I thought you meant making love.’

  ‘That too.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his wrist-watch on the little table; was it really still the same night?

  ‘Come back to bed, you’ll get cold.’

  Maisie picked up the cotton shirt he had been wearing from the chair and put it on, mopping her body with it. Then climbed back into bed.

  ‘Take that thing off.’

  She took it off and threw it out of the bed.

  ‘You’re tired.’ She began kissing his fingernails, fingers, wrists.

  ‘Dead tired.’

  But before they slept they made love again. Though she pitied him for his tiredness. Then they fell asleep. Falling. Just as they were, tangled in each other’s arms and legs, like soldiers fallen on a battlefield.

  Maisie woke first. It was still dark, but she sensed it would soon be light. Patiently she lay completely still until the slow light began to seep into the room. This room which held her sleeping lover; who slept as if drowned. She turned her head very slightly so that when the light got stronger she would be able to make out his features.

  Lapped now in light – the look around the nose and mouth reminded her he had once been a boy. But also sleeping there, something she was afraid of. A wilfulness of its own, a looking inward to its own dark centre. And the black hair and eyebrows – he came from a different tribe. Leo had been of her own tribe. Michael was other. Strange, she had only lately become aware of this, of his darkness. Strange. It was as if he was changing from the man she had first met.

  She could never grasp him, have him for herself. Only if she killed him now, as he lay sleeping. But she would not destroy him, for she already loved him in another way as well – dispassionately. Perhaps it was another part of her that loved him like that – loved him for himself and saw the child and the old man in him and wanted him to be free. It was her dark self that wanted to swallow him. She knew this.

  Her scrutiny woke him. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Hallo, Maisie.’

  Gently she put her fingers over his eyelids and closed them.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ she said. ‘It’s not morning yet.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Michael, his eyes still closed. ‘Listen.’ They could hear the sound of the radio, someone was getting up and moving about behind the thin walls.

  ‘I don’t have to turn up until three o’clock for the reception.’

  ‘We’ll stay in bed until three o’clock, then.’ And he went straight back to sleep.

  Maisie slithered gently out of bed and went to the window, wrapping herself in the bed-cover. They were on the fourth floor and their room was at th
e back of the hotel, looking over an enclosed space, a kind of courtyard. Everything was covered with a thin sprinkling of snow. Birds hopped in the solitary leafless tree. It looked iron-cold. Who said the first day of Creation wasn’t like this? Iron-cold. Leafless. Before God had practised with everything else. Just a tree trying to live in the bitter cold and trying to give shelter to small birds who wanted to survive in this new-made world.

  Even as she watched, it began to snow. First a flake or two. Then more and more. She drew back the lace curtains and watched until this other curtain of incredible purity hung from the sky. Maisie watched it for several minutes before she turned away, half-hypnotised.

  Quietly, she sat on the floor – there was no comfortable chair – and opened her briefcase.

  Sitting there on the floor, she realised there was something about the room. It was an odd shape, small but high-ceilinged, giving the feeling that the room had been turned on its side. The hotel itself was nineteenth-century, and its large rooms had been partitioned off and adapted to its modern use.

  Sudden sounds of water-pipes and ablutions in other rooms could be heard, and Maisie could still hear the sound of a radio. If she strained her ears she could almost catch what the newsreader was saying. It sounded like something going on in Bashkir.

  Shipwrecks, famine, earthquakes, bloody wars and coups. They streaked the world with misery and blood.

  All that mattered to her was this one man, his sprawled shape under the light-as-a-feather duvet. One of his feet was sticking out of the cover and she resisted taking it in her hand, holding it. He filled up her mind and her imagination.

  Very quietly she took her papers and notes and a couple of reference books from her briefcase. She was working on some notes about Andrei Rublev. If there was time, she might be asked to give a paper. But it would be towards the end of the conference. One or two people had been asked to prepare papers to be given if there was time or if anyone dropped out.

  When Michael stirred in his sleep, she stopped writing and watched him. Dark stubble on his chin made him look older.

  After a time she went back to her notes.

  When he did awake, she wasn’t aware of it, and he had been watching her writing for some time before he said, ‘If I don’t get up I won’t get any coffee. And if I don’t get any coffee the day won’t happen. It’s as simple as that.’ And he leaped out of bed in a ferocious display of fake energy.

  Maisie laughed and kissed him and put away her papers, as he dressed with unfussy, spare movements. As he shaved, she said, ‘It’s probably too late for breakfast, let’s go out for coffee.’

  As they went out into the corridor a girl passed them, a plain little chambermaid, round-shouldered, almost hunchbacked, carrying a pile of linen.

  ‘Do’braye oo’ tra,’ said Michael turning round to her. He was practising his Russian. The girl broke into a huge, beautiful smile, showing big teeth.

  ‘Do’braye oo’ tra,’ she replied, clutching the pile of linen close to her.

  Another older woman sat impassively at the head of the stairs as if waiting patiently for the end of the world. Maisie put their room key into her dreamily outstretched hand. Would all the keys be finally gathered in before the Apocalypse? It was doubtful.

  As they went out of the heavily grand main doors into the freezing air, Michael turned up the collar of his coat and put on the Russian hat that Maisie had bought for him at the airport. She nearly told him how wonderful he looked in it but the words wouldn’t come. She found she couldn’t say these easy things to him. It was something to do with a sort of magical loss of power.

  They were getting their bearings, standing at the top of the hotel’s flight of granite steps. It was still snowing, but not heavily now.

  Two young women turned to watch them, the young man and the woman in her red coat with a long swirling skirt almost brushing the ground – a striking-looking pair, standing at the top of the great flight of steps as if on a stage, arm-in-arm. They were unaware of the rest of the world. And obviously foreigners. A pair of foreigners in love.

  Maisie’s clothes did make heads turn in Kiev. She always wished that everyone would dress in beautiful clothes so that she wouldn’t be noticed, but she wouldn’t give them up for anonymity in spite of her reticence. She used clothes as a way of cherishing herself. At least, that was one of the ways she cherished herself through the quiet years after Leo. And she had the habit of dressing well.

  They made their way to the Kreshchatic. They chose a dim corner of the cafe and sat down at the starched white-clothed table to have their coffee. Instinctively they made for a table where they could be only with each other – they did not want to sit by the window and watch the citizens of Kiev go by.

  ‘Are you glad you came?’ she said.

  ‘You know that,’ said Michael, smiling. ‘I’ve left everything and followed you.’

  ‘Left your music.’

  ‘Yes, my work.’

  ‘How will you live if you have left your work?’

  ‘You will keep me.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked firm and solemn.

  ‘I’m teasing you, Maisie. I’ve brought plenty of money.’

  ‘Do you make much money with your music?’

  ‘Sporadically. When I do make money it tends to be a lot, and it keeps me going. And it dribbles in from the records. And I write a bit for music magazines – odds and ends like that.’

  ‘Have you let people down coming with me?’

  ‘Yes. There was a recording session tentatively fixed up in London – but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.’

  ‘I know.’

  But she wondered if she would have given up the conference for him. It was a real question in her mind.

  ‘Would you have dropped all this – and come with me to New York or wherever?’

  ‘How do you know my thoughts?’

  ‘Because my mother is a witch, I told you, and she has taught me some of her secret powers. You will never be able to think anything without my knowing it. So be careful what you think.’

  There was a little vase on the table with two red carnations in it. He pushed it towards her.

  ‘Well? Would you have given it up?’

  ‘I would give up people for you.’

  ‘Yes, but other things. This conference.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Why talk about it? I asked you to come, and you came. And we must be happy and not question each other.’

  ‘All right, Maisie. Rare beast.’ He kissed her fingers. ‘What shall we do now?’

  ‘Don’t pull the petals off!’ He was plucking the red petals from one of the carnations and dropping them on the tablecloth.

  ‘I’ve already done it,’ he said. He had pulled the head off a whole flower and had a handful of petals.

  ‘You’re a vandal, Michael. A destroyer. A—’

  He scattered the petals over her hair and paid the bill.

  ‘Come on,’ she said as they went out into the street – she was shaking the red petals out of her hair. ‘I’ll show you Kiev.’

  ‘Come on, then. Show me.’ He put his arm round her and kissed her.

  ‘Well, I’ll have to go back briefly, to the hotel – but we’ve got an hour or so.’

  ‘What will you take me to? Churches, I suppose – there seem to be a few.’

  ‘I’ll show you the best thing of all in Kiev.’

  ‘Come on, then, show me the best thing.’ He tightened his grip, squeezing her thin shoulders. ‘I know what it is. It’s Maisie Shergold. The best thing in Kiev – my beautiful, sexy Maisie.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll show you the next best thing.’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Michael.

  ‘Yes, well, after that.’ They were, it was true, by far the best things in this splendid, glorious city. She longed to put her arms round him, hold him forever close to her. Closer.

  But she started to run, pulling him, her skirts flaring out, threading through the passers-by. The
y raced down the street, which was as wide as a river, tree-lined, bare-branched against the giant grey buildings; they were flying past everyone, running out into the road to avoid the people and back on to the pavement to avoid the traffic. Then they were leaping up broad steps to a park.

  Suddenly Maisie stopped and pointed down.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she said, out of breath. ‘Have you ever seen such a sight?’ They were looking down from Maisie’s chosen vantage-point, on the Dniepr.

  ‘It looks like the sea,’ said Michael. ‘You would think it was the sea. I’ve never seen a river like that. I really thought it was the sea.’ Another sea came into his mind; the grey-green, silver-crested sea of his boyhood, leaping with fish.

  The great swollen river looked alive. It looked like a live thing. A wonderful, shining, powerful creature that sometimes leaped and danced and sometimes lay as still as a sheet of steel, and now heaved and swelled and rippled its great body.

  Behind them lay the city with its golden domes and tall modern buildings, and below them, across the great expanse of water, the power stations and chimneys of industrial Kiev, and then beyond, the Black Steppe reaching out to the horizon, as if drawn by a dark finger against the sky.

  People stood along the embankment of the river and stared into the water – as if it were a god, or might be the home of a god.

  ‘I’d rather look at a river than a cathedral,’ said Michael.

  ‘I’m getting cold,’ she said.

  ‘Come against me, then,’ he said. He stood behind her and folded her inside his coat. ‘That’s better. Lean against me.’ She leaned back against him, his body and the river, the sky and the domed city behind them all rocked together in her perceptions.

  ‘Different gods here,’ he said. ‘The older gods of water and forest and earth.’

  ‘The older gods are in the cathedral too,’ said Maisie, ‘at least the mother goddess. The Russian Mother of God is the Mother from which everything in Nature flows, all fruitfulness – and to which everything returns. Mother of God, Bogoroditsa is the Russian word.’