As he sips at his glass full of sadness,

His señora, his passion, his madness

Dances a tango—revenge turned to art.

Every blow of her heels is a stab at his heart.

Klim rose.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Lubochka and headed across the terrace to the countess.

What is she doing here? he wondered. Is she waiting for someone? Or maybe she came with someone else?

Nina turned her head, and her black fan fell out of her hand and hung limply from her wrist on its thin velvet ribbon.

“Good evening,” Klim said and bowed.

His pulse beat faster. Will she slap me across the face? Or will she laugh at me, recalling my threats to fire her?

“Good evening,” said the countess.

Her gray-green eyes looked calm and impenetrable. If she were angry or annoyed at him, Klim was confident that he would know what to say. He would come up with some joke or droll phrase. But Nina was looking at him as if she had never seen him before. Maybe she did not recognize him?

“Are you dancing tonight?” asked Klim.

To his joy and amazement, she silently gave him her hand, and he led her to the dance floor.

“It’s an Argentine tango,” said Klim. “You should stand closer to me.”

“Like this?” Nina looked into his eyes for a moment, moved closer, and Klim felt her light breath on his neck.

“Yes, that’s right.” He placed her hand on his shoulder and took her gently by the waist.

“So, what do I have to do?” she asked.

“Just follow me.”

They danced, and he felt the hard touch of the rings on her slender hand, the warmth of her thigh through the silk of her skirts, the tense muscles of her back, and something else: the intimate seam of a shift beneath her dress under his shameless, tingling fingers.

The singer sang about impossible happiness. Klim looked at the woman in his arms, and his heart froze with the inspiration and foreboding of something huge and inevitable.

When the tango was over, Klim stepped back and bowed. “¡Gracias, señora!”

What now? Should he invite Nina to his table?

But she did not answer. Next to them, there was a tall, sturdy man with a shaved head, about forty-five years old.

“Nina Vasilievna,” he called to her respectfully, using her patronymic. “We need to talk.”

“Sure.” She turned to Klim. “Excuse me.”

They left, and Klim returned to Lubochka.

“Do you know who that gentleman was?” he asked.

“Everyone knows him,” she snapped. “It’s Mr. Fomin, the chairman of the city’s Provisions Committee.”

The plate in front of Lubochka was full of grapes, torn off from the bunch but not eaten. She took one of them and squeezed it with her manicured fingers. Slipping from her grasp, the grape rolled under the table next to them.

Lubochka waved to the waiter. “The check, please.”

Klim looked around the terrace for Nina, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“We’re going home,” Lubochka said. “I have a headache.”

5

All the way home, Lubochka lectured Klim.

“You do realize that Nina is trying to hook you, don’t you? She’s been wearing nothing but mourning dress for three years, and now, suddenly, she’s out at a restaurant, dressed from top to toe in her finest finery. I told her yesterday that we were planning to go to the Oriental Bazaar, and there she was.”

“Why are you so angry with her?” Klim asked in surprise. “It was me who invited her. I just wanted to make amends, and your friend was happy to accept it.”

The melody of the tango was still spinning in Klim’s head. His whole arm from his elbow to his fingertips still retained the vivid and treasured memory of what it had been like to hold Nina.

Lubochka narrowed her eyes, and her lower lip trembled as it used to do in her childhood when she was about to cry.

“Don’t be fooled by Nina. She owes you money.”

The cab turned to Ilinskaya Street and stopped by the mansion with its marble bears. Klim jumped into the dust warmed by the heat of the day.

“Why are you back so early?” Marisha, the cook, asked as she opened the front door.

Ignoring her, Klim walked past into his father’s office. Up to now, he hadn’t bothered looking too closely at the papers he had inherited. Everything related to finance was a bore as far as he was concerned.

He deftly twisted the dials of the vintage American safe and took out a black binder filled with bonds, promissory notes, and contracts. A familiar name caught his eye—Vladimir Alekseevich Odintzov.

Five years earlier, Nina’s husband had borrowed twenty thousand rubles from Klim’s father at seven percent interest. Count Odintzov had mortgaged his flax-spinning mill, and there were all the necessary proofs of the validity of the transaction—a notary’s signature, a seal, and the stamp duty. The payment was due on October 1, 1917.

So, it was true: Nina was interested in Klim not for his personal qualities but for his inheritance. He had let his imagination run wild and had now been brought back to earth with a bump.

2. THE GENTLEWOMAN

1

Klim stopped going to theaters and restaurants and now spent all his time at his bank and lawyer’s office. His father had left him a little under three hundred thousand rubles, and to tie up his affairs in Nizhny Novgorod, Klim needed to sell his securities, exchange his rubles for foreign currency, renew his leasing contracts, and arrange for payments to be wired straight to Buenos Aires.

When Klim got home at night, he would go to the servants’ quarters to ask who had visited Lubochka during the day. He hoped against hope that Nina might have tried to make contact with him—after all, she needed to sort out the money she owed him. But Nina never came.

Occasionally, Klim took out the promissory note written by her husband and examined it. Maybe he should go and ask her how she was planning to pay? It was a large sum, and the due date was close.

He found out where she lived, and several times he passed by Nina’s house at Crest Hill and peered through the stucco-framed windows. He returned none the wiser, fretful and full of self-doubt—a sensation that was quite unusual for him.

How had this young woman managed to get under his skin in this way? Klim knew nothing about her. One emotion would follow another: first rapture, then morose bewilderment, and then outpourings of wounded self-esteem. Can it really be that she doesn’t care about me at all?

At night, vivid fantasies kept him awake. He imagined Nina in the same glittering dark blue dress with the low neckline that attracted his lascivious gaze. The more Klim put things off, the less confident he became of having any success. And in any case, he asked himself, what possible success could he be thinking of? He would be leaving soon, and Nina would remain in Nizhny Novgorod. He should stop tormenting himself and leave it to the lawyers to deal with Nina’s promissory note.

2

Klim was in his father’s office, flipping through the documents filed in the binder. A fly buzzed against the window. The church bells called the local parishioners to mass.

“You have a visitor,” said Marisha, knocking at the door. She gave Klim a business card that read “Countess Odintzova.”

All thoughts about bonds and promissory notes flew out of Klim’s head.

“Please, let her in,” he said, dropping the binder into the drawer.

However, it was not Nina who entered the office but a burly elderly lady in a black lace dress.

“Please call me Sofia Karlovna,” she said, offering Klim her hand.

He shook it, trying not to reveal his disappointment, and then collected himself. This isn’t all bad, he thought. This lady must be a relative of Nina’s, and she might provide me with some very valuable information.

Sofia Karlovna sank into the armchair and fixed her blue eyes on Klim for what seemed a long time.

“You inherited a promissory note signed by my son,” she said finally, “but my daughter-in-law, who is responsible for the payment now, has got herself into a very bad situation.”

“What’s happened?” asked Klim, alarmed.

Sofia Karlovna took a deep breath. “Since the start of the war, we have been impoverished. Our workers and horses were commandeered by the army, and there is nobody to work our fields. My daughter-in-law met the chairman of the city’s Provisions Committee, and he convinced her that she should restore our old flax spinning mill in Osinki.”

Klim remembered the man who had accompanied Nina out of the restaurant and the deep fold in the nape of his neck like the slot in a piggy bank.

“So, what can I do for you?” Klim asked.

“Nina does not have the cash,” said Sofia Karlovna, “and she wants to ask you to delay the repayment of her loan. Mr. Fomin went to the capital to get her a state contract for tarpaulin goods for the army, and Nina hopes that she’ll soon be able to sort things out.”

“What kind of deferment is she looking for?” Klim asked gloomily.

“Oh no!” Sofia Karlovna exclaimed. “You’ve misunderstood me. I want you to take Nina’s mill.”

Klim looked at her in bewilderment. “I need liquidity and cash, not a mill around my neck.”

“If you defer her loan payment and leave for Argentina, you can forget about ever getting your money back. I know exactly what Fomin is after. He is hoping to persuade Nina to marry him in order to get his hands on the mill and the lucrative contracts it is set to sign. What are you going to do if he refuses to pay you? Send him a threatening letter?”