A rustle of tepid wind enveloped her. This weather forecasted a hot, wet summer. This thought took her back to a long-ago humid August in the countryside. Her grand-mère’s candles had gone limp, leaving a trail of wax tears on the wooden farm table. Hunting in the oak trees for birds’ nests of speckled blue quail eggs, the taste of Grand-mère’s cake perfumed with orange-blossom water. The hazy memory of her mother laughing in the orchard, kissing the fresh raspberry stains on Aimée’s small fingers.
A barking Westie on the pavement brought her back to the present, to the sun-dappled, rain-freshened street, the passersby. The ache of longing remained, the buried sense of guilt that she’d caused her mother to leave. Her mother had been an artist, a sketcher and painter, who probably saw the world through a delicate artistic temperament. Aimée could only guess that she had been too much to handle. Once, just once, she wanted to see her mother again. This painting led to her mother, she knew it in her bones.
And then Yuri’s battered face, his swollen tongue, filled her mind. Only a few hours ago she’d stood in bloody water and smelled that lingering floral note of muguet, lily of the valley, her mother’s scent. Her mother … Yuri’s murderer?
The light turned green. Horns blared behind her. She popped into first gear.
Le Zakouski, the meeting point, turned out to be part resto, part delicatessen—one red-ceilinged room with a glass refrigerator case crammed next to tables with red-checked plastic tablecloths. Old photos and bright paintings plastered the walls like wallpaper. Kiev kitsch circa 1967.
“You pay cash?” A woman’s round face framed by long, straight, platinum hair poked up from the deli counter. Early twenties, Aimée thought.
Nice greeting. Aimée nodded. “Marevna?”
“Take a seat. We open later for dinner.”
Aimée sat by the window, moving aside the red napkin holder. She set Piotr’s letter and the funny tube down on the red-checked plastic cloth and studied it for the first time.
La poste pneumatique, or “pneu,” had been in use until the mid-eighties, a system for delivering letters, télégrammes, or cards. These cylinders were propelled along tubes underground by compressed air or partial vacuum to post offices, which delivered them for a few centimes. At one time the National Assembly linked pneumatically with the Senate—a precursor to the intranet—via tubes under the Jardin du Luxembourg. She had childhood memories of watching her grandfather slip a pneu in the narrow slot at la poste. But she wondered why Natasha had kept this ugly gray metal tube. Aimée unscrewed the end. The musty smell of paper came out with rolled-up creased envelopes bearing forty-centime stamps. Circa 1920, she figured. The fat one was written in Cyrillic. Aimée put the few in French addressed to Natasha, and the one from Natasha’s scrapbook, to the side.
Marevna pulled up a chair. Sniffed. Her pink lipsticked mouth formed a moue of distaste.
“How much to translate everything?” Aimée pulled out her worn Vuitton wallet.
“You’re kidding, non?”
“I need the whole contents. I have to know what’s relevant,” Aimée said.
“Relevant? Father said you’re some volunteer at the nursing home trying to locate family back in Russia.”
So she’d checked. Aimée wondered again at the priest’s word, “cautious.” Suspicious, more like it.
Aimée took out the other slip from her pocket and showed her. “Valeria, the other translator, didn’t ask me questions. But Father said you’re better.”
Marevna’s long-lashed eyes blinked. “What your meaning?”
“You do a simple translation. We keep this between us.”
Aimée glanced around the deserted resto, the faded photos, the none-too-fresh tubs of orange salmon caviar in the cooler. Doubted Marevna earned much in salary or tips. “This now.” She slid a hundred-franc note over the table. “Two more like this when you finish. You interested or not?”
Marevna’s fingers clenched the hundred francs. “Deal.”
Smart. She understood.
Marevna untied her apron. Pulled out a pen and a notebook from her pocket, opened the rolled papers. A few moments passed. Only the ticking of a clock, the thumbing of pages. A slab of sun warmed Aimée’s arm through the window.
“Maybe I summarize, da? You looking for names and family in Russia?”
Aimée didn’t know what she was looking for besides a reason for Yuri’s murder. A clue to this painting. Or whether these old letters even led there. Two letters and several pages of writing on old, browned onionskin paper. Papers she’d stolen from an old Russian ballerina.
Far-fetched, maybe, but she couldn’t help wondering if Natasha had remained lucid long enough to contract the painting’s heist. Or more plausible that Oleg, Yuri’s wife’s son, had heard the stories and put it together. That’s if there was something to put together. She hoped this wouldn’t come back to bite her.
“Why don’t you just read?” Aimée said, trying to control her impatience. “You can write it up later.”
“Da, this from 1988.” She scanned a few pages. “He switches back and forth in time. What you say, not linear events?” Marevna read more.
Through the window, Aimée caught sight of a teenage boy straddling his parked motorcycle, smoking. Relishing every puff and blowing smoke rings into the air. She wished her fingers didn’t twitch for just one drag. Marevna was leaning forward, jotting down a word every so often. She was interested now. “Lucky for you. I study psychology.”
Aimée sat up. “Why?”
“Therapist recommends Piotr explain an old letter to his son, to—how you say—make his guilt be less? Make amends for past, yes, that’s better way to say. Do like an exercise in a journal for what he remembers. Write down as much as he can to flex brain muscles, prevent mental stagnation. For therapy.”
“Like a chronicle of his life?”
“Russians tell stories. That generation, like my great-grand-mère, that’s how they teach us about the past.” Marevna sighed. “Wars, siege of Stalingrad, all those things.”
“Piotr was born in 1898,” Aimée said. “How far back in his childhood does he go?”