The Past #2
“So you do have a plan for him?”
A little of Valya’s old roguishness bolted through her. “Of course.”
Later, right before the Grand Duke’s visit to the Moulin Rouge, Valya spoke to the assembled girls (all the invited had come) in her heavily accented French.
“Make the money through tips. Only if it would not cause any difficulty can you look inside a pocket or a purse, and only if the patron is inebriated or otherwise occupied.”
“The Russian grand dukes and princes spend lavishly,” added Svetlana. “They tip banknotes, gold coins, gems…whatever they have on hand. Your work is to win that tip on your own talent and merit, which we know each of you possesses in spades.”
“Can we give them a little incentive, if the work is difficult to come by?” asked Mila, by far the most outspoken of the group. “A strong drink or two, perhaps?”
“Only if it comes in the form of encouragement,” responded Valya.
“Including carnal encouragement?” Dasha, the most vulgar, asked casually.
“If you like,” Valya said unemotionally. It was a seedy and classless business, but her daughter had taken them there. Besides, it wasn’t Valya’s body on offer.
This was the only way to end her daughter’s intrigues, her schemes, and take vengeance on the Grand Duke.
To return to her fortune-telling. So Valya allowed it.
First at the Moulin Rouge, then at the balls and soirees at the Grand Duke’s palace, where they now lived rent-free alongside his family, unquestioned even by his wife.
It worked for a time—until it did not.
Autumn 1899
Her daughter’s visit to the Grand Duke’s country estate of Chateau de Rêve changed all.
When Svetlana returned to their rooms, white-faced and trembling, Valya knew something had gone very wrong. Her anger, the distance between them, dissipated.
She wheeled in a large copper tub and washed her daughter in lavender- and lemon-scented water.
Svetlana sat in the tub, unspeaking, her knees pressed tightly to her chest, as if to make herself as small as possible.
Valya touched her bare shoulder gently, afraid she would break.
“Did something happen, Sveta? With the Grand Duke?”
He is growing persistent, Valya, she had said a few weeks before.
“Did he touch you?” Valya tried again now. The entitled bastard, believing he owned everything, everyone, even her little girl. She wanted to kill him.
But Svetlana only stared emptily in front of her, saying nothing.
The very next day, it was confirmed—as far as Valya was concerned.
The Grand Duke showed up early in the morning, smiling widely, clasping Svetlana by the waist possessively, lustfully, regardless of the servants or his family.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said in French, like a wolf with his teeth out.
They took a carriage to rue Daru, clattering to a stop at a building—a house, by the look of it—located across from the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, where Valya and Svetlana sometimes went for Sunday service and an occasional wedding or funeral.
Svetlana turned a questioning look at the Grand Duke; Valya waited for the inevitable.
All cheating husbands gifted their mistresses houses to continue their illicit affairs in secret, undisturbed, strangely sanctioned by the same disapproving society.
Men like him thought they could buy what they wanted. Sadly, Svetlana only reinforced this.
The Grand Duke alighted from his carriage, offering her a hand. Valya clambered down after them. The building looked the same as any other on the street, though it was only several floors in height, denoting its private status.
“What is this?” Svetlana asked, with a gleam in her eyes that enraged Valya.
Payment for services rendered, she almost said. Her daughter wanted to have her cake and eat it, too.
“It was my town house. Now it is yours to do with what you will.”
“And in exchange?”
Valya heard the tiny tremor in Svetlana’s otherwise bold, confident voice.
That wolfish smile again, and the Grand Duke lowered his mouth onto hers.
“Is this an agreement, a formal promise?” Valya asked, fully aware she was ruining the moment, and reaching deftly for what she knew of property transfer in France.
He pulled his lips from her daughter’s long enough to toss a nod in her direction.
“I shall expect a deed, sir, through all the proper channels.”
“Whatever you need.”
The three of them knew this building was really for Valya.
A gift to appease her. Though Svetlana tried to prove she was beholden only to herself, everybody—including the Grand Duke—knew nothing was done without Valya’s express approval.
She could have refused it, yet she did not.
Her daughter would still do as she pleased.
So would she. Her first act as the new owner was to repaint the building, outside and in.
It would be a tearoom. As much as she wanted to open a coffee shop, tea had a more intimate association with the old country, the samovar being an entire experience, a different, more exotic way of drinking the same beverage available the world over.
By day, it would be a tearoom; by night, her consulting business for anybody wishing to glean their fortune in a coffee cup, or through any other divination method they desired.
Valya was a businesswoman first. It was why she named her tearoom Samovar.
A Few Months Later
At the unmistakable sound of retching, Valya dropped the coffee beans she had been sorting and scurried from her new tearoom’s kitchen down the hallway to the lavatory.
Her daughter was on her knees, hunched over the toilet, with sick all over her face. Svetlana wiped it away and clenched her jaw. She did not meet Valya’s gaze.
“How far along are you?” Valya asked without ceremony. She had seen several symbols in the coffee grounds the last few weeks that hadn’t made sense: a cabbage, a tomato, a bunch of carrots. Now she understood.
When applicable, vegetables were a sure sign of bounty and fertility.
“Eight weeks,” Svetlana said quietly.
But before Valya could ask her questions, a knock resounded.
Their eyes shot to each other. It was after midnight.
The tearoom was closed, their fortune-telling clients long gone.
Valya tossed a clean towel to Svetlana. “Clean yourself up. I shall go see who it is.” And give them a piece of my mind.
For once, her daughter didn’t argue. She only nodded.
“Where is she?” the Grand Duke demanded in Russian as soon as Valya had opened the door.
Unsurprising, as it was much more suited to argument than French.
His eyes blazed with a burning rage that singed even her, a seasoned, experienced woman used to men spinning out of control and paying them no heed.
“This is not a good time,” she said, blocking his way. “We are about to retire.”
“Fuck your time! I can come here whenever I please. This place is mine. Mine, do you hear me, old woman?”
Valya ignored the insult. “No, you transferred this property to me. Shall I show you the deed we both signed in front of the notary? You may also inquire with the land registry office. Suffice it to say, this property belongs to me, and you are trespassing.”
“Yours! Ha! I can take it all away.”
“Under French law, you cannot.”
“I can do anything I please in this town,” he said, like all entitled rich men from the dawn of time to poor working women like her.
His eyes shifted behind Valya, to Svetlana, who had appeared in the doorway.
“Is that why you’ve been so preoccupied?
” His voice was now quiet, yet it simmered with heat, with a boundless rage.
Preoccupied? Valya assumed her daughter had been with the Grand Duke during her nocturnal absences.
But she was aware Svetlana was desired by many men.
“You will keep your temper under control, sir,” Valya said calmly, while wondering what the hell was happening.
It would help her plan if the Grand Duke was going mad.
“Temper?” He flared up before whipping his head back to Svetlana.
“You have been busy spending my fortune, and that of my friends. What kind of temper do you expect me to have when I find out that in exchange for my generosity you have been stealing from me to add to the fortune in gifts I have already bestowed on you, hmm?”
Valya froze. How much did the Grand Duke know? “Not from you, sir.”
But he didn’t seem to hear. He had lunged at Svetlana—grasping her by the throat. “I know all about it! Admit it, you snake of a woman! You sorceress! You thief!”
“Let me expl—”
“I could kill you right here, you ungrateful little bitch!”
Valya unfroze and rushed to the wrangling pair, pouncing on the Grand Duke and managing to push him away from her daughter.
He was panting, spittle dribbling down his chin, his eyes crazed with rage. “I will leave you with nothing, you bitches. I will take everything back, the money, the jewels, this place. All of it, do you hear?”
Svetlana had been knocked down to her knees, looking utterly miserable and too pale. Her gaze on Valya said, Do something. Protect me. Protect it—her.
As clearly as Valya had seen she would have a daughter, she now saw she would have a granddaughter.
She finally had a place to call her own, a home, a real one, with a family she would do anything for.
A family she would kill for. No one would take any of it away from her, least of all this horrible man, from his horrible family that had killed her beloved.
But she knew the Grand Duke’s threats were all too real—the police, all of Paris, were in his pocket.
She also knew if she told the Grand Duke her trump card, she might never see him again, might never finish her plan to avenge Ivan Morozov.
The decision floated before Valya like a specter, yet she had already decided.
The snake in her coffee cup made sense for more than one reason now.
She would use her trump card, her psychic intuition and her divination knowledge her only power against this wealthy man with his treasure trove of threats and bribes and corrupt dealings only ever aimed to ruin women like her and her daughter.
Valya reached for her waist, for the belt with the Grand Duke’s dagger she had started to carry since the hated man had returned to town.
She unsheathed the dagger and handed it to the stunned Grand Duke, blade facing down.
“This was your father’s. I am giving it to you as a gesture of peace between us.
” She was cleaning her hands of revenge, of her vengeance.
For the sake of her family, her granddaughter.
Valya knew he would not use the dagger. Not after what she was about to tell him.
“And in exchange, you will do nothing.” She infused her voice with foresight, with knowing, the fortune teller in her having made out something in the hazy future of tomorrow.
“Peace! Why would I need that?” A laugh—a chilling, ugly sound. “The entire city is at my disposal.”
“Not for long.”
He stilled.
“The revolution will change everything, including you, your family, and your fortunes, at home and abroad, from Petersburg to Paris.”
“Yes, there is talk of revolution. But they are saying it will be small.”
“The first might be small, but the second will change the world as we know it. You will lose everything, everyone. You will be left with nothing. Be nothing.”
His face went ashen; if not for the pulsing purplish-blue vein in his forehead, Valya would have thought he had turned into a marble statue. “I don’t believe you.” But his voice came out weak and tremulous, filled with awe, with undisputed belief.
“Regardless, you best return to the homeland if you don’t wish to lose all.” Valya took a step toward the Grand Duke. “I see death in your coffee cup, I always have. And if you do not leave Paris, never to return, you will die.”
He stumbled back, his face paling even further, to the brittle chalk white of an old woman’s hair.
Aging in minutes. His mouth worked, but nothing came out.
He pressed against the door, dagger uselessly dangling from the hand at his side, as if Valya and Svetlana were a pair of witches about to curse him.
Then he turned the doorknob and fell back into the street, down which he broke into a run.
“He will be back,” Svetlana said behind her.
“Maybe.” Valya watched the Grand Duke’s figure retreat down rue Daru as she had once watched the men who had killed Ivan Morozov retreat down the Arbat. “But we bought ourselves something we didn’t have before—time.”
“Which won’t matter if he returns.”
“Which we cannot do anything about, Svetlana.”
“He said he wanted to kill me.” A beat of silence. “Well, Valya, I wish we could kill him.”