The Secret Books by Marcel Theroux

Author:Marcel Theroux [Marcel Theroux]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571281954
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

It’s a boy: Alexander Notovitch. The first of Nicolas’s line for several millennia to keep its foreskin. ‘Hello, little man,’ Nicolas says, but feels false and fatuous talking to something so inert. Fatherhood is not something he’ll ever be especially good at.

The labour was long: fourteen hours, and Anya has lost a good deal of blood. ‘He looks like you,’ she says, weakly. ‘Doesn’t he look like Nicolas, maman?’

Mrs Rozenfeld takes Nicolas aside. ‘Separate rooms for a while. I know young men have their needs, but give her a chance to recover.’

Nicolas wonders why she’s talking to him as though he’s some kind of Priapus. Okay, he’s managed to give Mrs Rozenfeld a grandson, but the feelings he has for Anya are, mainly, as soporific and comfortable as a night-time cup of cocoa; they don’t include the sort of electrical passion that would make such a warning necessary.

Anya stays with her parents for a while. The Rozenfelds can afford lots of servants; their household runs smoothly and luxuriously – much better for a nursing mother. Nicolas lives like a bachelor in his apartment and rather enjoys it. It’s big enough for two; for one person, it’s enormous. There’s more than enough space in the drawing room for the grand piano that Anya has lessons on once a week with Günther, a young music teacher from Vienna.

Middle age is descending on Nicolas quickly. Looking at himself in the full-length mirror, he hardly recognises the fat bourgeois staring back at him. An extra chin has appeared since Anya became pregnant. Office work and all that fine dining with Rachkovsky are the causes. He remembers himself in his glory days in the Balkans; so thin and wiry that he seemed to be able to curl up and nap anywhere. ‘You could fall asleep on a clothesline,’ MacGahan used to say admiringly. Must remember to call on Skobelev. He doesn’t want the general’s investigation to incriminate Rachkovsky, but on a personal level, he feels sentimental about Skobelev. He loves him, in a way. That anti-Semitism, it’s a historical artefact with men of his generation. It’s unexamined. Unthinking behaviour, as instinctive as holding a door open for a lady.

The telephone on the stand in the hall emits a steely ring. Only one person ever calls it. Nicolas tugs the rose-gold pocket watch out of his waistcoat. The digital display reads 22.45. Late to be calling. Must be urgent. Rachkovsky’s voice: ‘How soon can you be ready?’

‘I’m ready now.’

‘Go downstairs. I’ll be there in five minutes. I’ll explain on the way.’

He waits under the street light. A rain shower has come and gone. The city gleams as though it’s been enamelled. A streetwalker, unusual in this area, sees him in the lamplight, asks him for a cigarette and looks at him brazenly while he strikes a match and cups it from the breeze. He hears the wheels of Rachkovsky’s carriage as it turns the corner. Rachkovsky holds the door open. ‘Jump aboard. No time to lose.’

From the carriage window, the street lamp seems to trundle backwards, with its attendant prostitute.

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