It was only when I pushed open the door at the end of the corridor that I realized I’d gone the wrong way. I wasn’t in the courtyard I’d come in from. I’d reached the big front office of ROVS. At four big desks, three solid young men in elaborate uniform (though with patches at the elbow) were clacking away at typewriters. In one of the two armchairs in the window, which had stuffing coming out of the armrests, a man in late middle age was reading a newspaper and underlining bits with a red pen.
I thought, quite wrongly, that if I just tiptoed past they might not even notice me.
But of course I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I hoped. They all turned round and stared.
Then the older man, the one in the armchair, rose to his feet, clicked heels, and said, in quiet good French, ‘Mademoiselle?’
How different this man was from General Miller, and not only because he had a normal civilian suit, slightly worn, on his slender, average-height frame. This man stooped slightly, and his hair was thinning on top. He was the kind you’d always know would listen to what you said. He had attentive eyes, the kind that took you in carefully as you were speaking. As soon as he’d heard enough of my mumbled explanation – about staying upstairs, being Grandmother’s relative, having called on General Miller to pay my respects, and got lost on my way out – this man bowed deeper, smiled and, after the usual formalities, said, as affably as anything, in his quiet, amused voice, ‘So, poor old General Miller got confused about showing you the right way out, did he?’ laughed a little, just long enough for one or two of the secretaries to join in, in a way that made it perfectly clear their laughter was at General Miller’s expense, not mine. ‘Let me show you out. I’m his number two, General Skoblin. And I can be relied on to know the way to the front door.’ And, with a smile, he held it open, and handed me out into the ROVS front lobby.
Feeling much better now, I let him slip courteously ahead of me towards the next door, too, which I could see would open into the apartment building’s main hall, and I’d be back on the stone stairs up to Grandmother’s apartment one floor up.
I glanced around. This was exactly the front lobby you’d expect of a hard-up organization: a black-and-white tiled floor, a hat stand, coat hooks, and a table containing lots of piles of leaflets in Russian, on cheap flimsy paper. A bookshelf behind the table contained tired-looking books, perhaps available on loan to callers, as there was an exercise book and a pen on top. And there was a pile of newspapers, too, with a mug containing change beside it. The newspaper’s title was the only bit of all this reading material that I could read, since it was given on the masthead in French as well as Russian: La Pensée russe or Russian Thought.
Finally, on the back of the door that the quiet number-two general was fumbling with, was the little room’s one note of colour: a poster, also in Russian, but in vivid reds and yellows this time, with big, swirly lettering.
I couldn’t help smiling when I saw that the poster was of Grandmother’s singer friend. ‘Plevitskaya!’ I said in recognition.
General Skoblin turned around. He looked extremely surprised. Pleased, too. ‘You’re reading what’s on this poster? You speak Russian?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Oh! No, I just recognized her picture. She’s terribly famous, isn’t she? The Tsar’s Nightingale. I heard her sing once, in New York. And I believe she was my grandmother’s friend, too …’
The effect of my vague compliments was startling. Thank God, this time at least I’d clearly said something much more right than I’d known, for his quiet bureaucrat’s face was positively lit up with pleasure.
‘Yes, she’s a wonderful singer,’ he agreed warmly. Then, with pride, giving me a little conspiratorial look, as if he wondered how I’d take the news, ‘And she’s my wife, also …’
That did surprise me. He looked much too quiet and correct and upper-class for the blowsy, self-willed female I’d met. I couldn’t imagine them together.
But you couldn’t ever quite tell with foreigners, I reflected, so I opened my eyes wide and congratulated him effusively on his showbiz-star wife, and enjoyed the way we bowed and bobbed politely at each other for several minutes more.
‘Do’, he said eventually, straightening himself, ‘call on us if you get a moment. My wife would be delighted.’ He dug behind some of his Ruritanian braiding for a card and handed it to me. ‘We live out of town, but we would be delighted to welcome you if you could arrange a visit to our home,’ he continued. Then, as if the thought had just struck him: ‘Or she will be singing here in Paris twice this week. Tonight, in fact, and tomorrow. You would be most welcome if you were able to join us there …’ Taking back the card for a moment, he scribbled a restaurant name on the back, and a couple of dates.
I couldn’t refuse, and anyway, I didn’t want to. After the awful failure of my attempt to make friends with General Miller, I wanted at least to walk out of this office having made some sort of step forward. And this was what I had.
I hadn’t thought much about Plevitskaya, except to notice that she was probably a fraud in claiming Grandmother’s friendship the first time, and, the second time, that she was definitely drunk on Grandmother’s brandy. But perhaps I’d been wrong to write her off completely. If she had a serious husband, she couldn’t, surely, be quite as dubious as I’d found her. Perhaps she had really been friends with Grandmother. Perhaps, if I could talk to her properly, preferably when she was sober, and maybe in French rather than in her terrible English, she’d tell me more.
Nodding more thanks to the charming second general, I slipped away.