Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,61

each of her cheeks with a kiss. —But my dear, she cried, how can you manage to be so good and also so lovely? It is unfair of you to monopolize all the virtues. It leaves the rest of us with nothing but the vices.

Elfrida blushed. —Such nonsense, Irina, she said. You must not overpraise me; Mr Eagle will soon see through that and think me vain.

—Mr Eagle, said Irina Cherkassova, extending a long hand. We have already heard so much about you. How lucky you are that Elfrida has befriended you. She is a saint.

—If appearances are anything to judge by, said Flapping Eagle, bending over the outstretched limb, I am doubly lucky this evening.

Irina Cherkassova laughed merrily, but her eyes, as they caught and held Flapping Eagle’s gaze, were examining, mysterious and grey, holding perhaps the flicker of a promise. To Elfrida she said:

—Two saints, my dear. Two saints together: what may we not accomplish? Her eyes continued to dizzy Flapping Eagle. They were eyes that knew their power. A tiny frown appeared between Elfrida Gribb’s eyebrows.

—Come in, come in then, exclaimed Irina and linking arms with Elfrida led them into the salon. Ignatius Gribb muttered to Flapping Eagle as they followed her:

—A word of advice, Mr Eagle. Be careful.

Irina and Elfrida, two pale, exquisite, china mannequins, sailed on ahead of them. Flapping Eagle pondered on the rapid shift of his circumstances since arriving in K, from the simmering violence of the Elbaroom to the equally simmering beauty of the world of these two women; and wondered if there was, after all, much intrinsic difference between the two worlds.

Count Aleksandr Cherkassov perspired a great deal for a handsome man. He kept a handkerchief tucked in each cuff; one was already sodden, the other was catching up fast. He dabbed often and feverishly at his forehead, that high dome that gave him the appearance of a sensuous genius, an illusion fostered by his curling shock of blond hair and his curling upper lip. But it was an illusion; Aleksandr Cherkassov was a weak, stultified, barren, empty-headed fool, and his beautiful wife was keenly aware of the fact. She held it constantly against him, as a taunt and a humiliation. He never found a riposte: there was none to find.

He stood by the unused fireplace as the quartet entered, in the immemorial pose of indolent aristocracy, lounging with one elbow against the wall. Beside him stood a low table bearing a decanter of wine and a silver cigarette-case. The cigarettes contained no tobacco; but Indian hemp grew on the plains of K in sufficient quantity to make tobacco unnecessary. Cherkassov spent most of his life with a surfeit of marijuana coursing through his bloodstream, accentuating his natural glazed expression. It opened no doors in his lazy mind, serving only to sink him more deeply into the series of anachronistic gestures that made up his life. Aleksandr Cherkassov had never really left his Russian estates.

He discharged his functions in K with an absolute minimum of effort; there was little enough crime in the community, so he rarely performed as a magistrate, and until Flapping Eagle’s arrival, it had been a long time since he had had a prime interest to approve. Mostly he slept, or smoked, or walked around his garden, or ate. Life held few excitements for him, few ambitions; he was the peacock, and was content to strut. He wouldn’t have minded dying in the normal way; it was Irina’s fear of age and need of companionship that led him to take up the offered immortality; and when the society they knew had begun to crumble, Calf Island, where time stood still, had seemed an enticing alternative. And Madame Jocasta’s whores compensated for the sleek antagonism and sexual antipathy his weakness frequently aroused in Irina.

He greeted Elfrida with a kiss, Gribb with a faint mock-salute and Flapping Eagle with a limp-wristed thumbshake.

—So, Ignatius, he murmured, you’ve found a protégé, and such … such an attractive one, too. I shall have to look to my laurels, eh?

—The competitive spirit, said Gribb, not quite you, is it, Count?

—You’re probably right, said Cherkassov. Yes. Probably you are.

—Be that as it may, continued Gribb, it is I who should feel ill-at-ease, the one ugly duckling in a gathering of swans.

Cherkassov laughed and patted Gribb on the head.—You’re worth more than the lot of us Ignatius, he said casually.

Flapping Eagle found their relationship puzzling, the more so since both Irina and Elfrida instantly murmured