of you in that way. The thought just always made me give thanks for soundness and stability and the knowledge that, somewhere in the world, things were going on as they always do.”
Margaret merely said, “You do talk like a woman who never got married.”
She meant to be saying one thing, but Dora thought she was saying another. She tossed her head. “Don’t you know? I was so short and plain and wayward, no amount of money could purchase me a husband.”
“You haven’t lived in St. Louis in thirty years. I’m sure there were candidates.”
Dora looked around the tearoom as a hostess might, watching her guests take their leave. Then she looked at Margaret. She said, “What was the last book you read?”
“So Big. I’d like to read Show Boat.”
“Have you heard of The Well of Loneliness?”
“No.”
“Gertrude Stein?”
“I know that name.”
“I’m going to give you a copy of The Well of Loneliness.”
“But what about Pete?”
“I told you that years ago.”
“That he asked you for money?”
“Did I say that? Didn’t I tell you—”
“What?”
“Darling, he is married. He’s always been married. He saw her when he was in Russia. She’s a terrible Bolshie, and he likes to pretend that she’s dead, but she isn’t dead at all. I think that’s why he changed his name, so she’ll think he is dead.”
“Do they have any children?”
“I don’t know. If you ask him, he’ll tell you that she strangled them in the cradle. I suppose that there’s always the chance that a child will turn up to haunt him, but he’s covered his tracks pretty well.”
“We know him.”
“But we don’t know anyone else who does, do we?”
“The Kimuras.”
“Secret-keepers extraordinaire, n’est-ce pas?”
“I hardly know them, but they’re very nice to me.”
“They don’t gossip, do they?”
“No.”
“There you go. Pete is safe with them.”
“And with you.”
“I don’t know enough to be a danger to him—no names.”
“But what did he do in the Revolution?”
“What did he tell you?”
“I got the impression that he escorted hapless aristocrats to Paris and rented apartments for them.”
“He did do that. Three times. He was good at that. But that wasn’t a full-time job.”
“What was a full-time job?”
“Have you heard of Antonov?”
She shook her head.
“Well, there were more factions in Russia than just the Reds and the Whites. There was a faction called the ‘SRs,’ who splintered off the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, mostly because the peasants didn’t like Red grain seizures, and Antonov was their leader. All of Pete’s relatives in Ukraine hated the Bolsheviks because they were city boys and had no respect for peasants. By 1920, Antonov’s supporters were armed to the teeth. It was quite a popular and well-organized movement, and Antonov was a smart fellow.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I’m not sure in which order this was, but the Bolsheviks rounded up the women and children and put them in starvation camps as hostages. In the meantime, they cleared out the forests where Antonov’s army was hiding out, using gas. They just filled the forests with gas, and the Blacks, as they were called, died in droves.”
“We never heard about this.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Poison gas?”
“That’s the new way, I’m afraid. Pete says a million died, but I don’t know. I’m sure it seemed like the end of the world. Anyway, Pete was there part of the time, and part of the time he was beating the bushes for money and guns. But they hadn’t foreseen how ruthless the Bolsheviks were. Pete said to me, ‘I knew them all along. I just didn’t know this about them.’”
“The wife?”
“She must have been one of them. It’s a wonder to me that he escaped, and, having escaped, that he can smile at all, but Russians are fatalists first and foremost. Antonov was killed in ’22. After that, Pete was in Europe for a while. I don’t think he dares go back to the Soviet Union, of course.”
“Maybe he changed his name because of that.”
“Maybe.”
Margaret said, “I never believed he was Russian. I finally decided that he was an Irishman from Chicago pretending to be a Russian. His accent is so …”
“Fake?”
“Well, nonexistent now. But always uneven.”
Dora stirred her tea thoughtfully, then said, “I believe the big parts. Most of the big parts. I don’t mind the other parts. I don’t know about the accent. Other people have said that, too. But he grew up speaking lots of languages, and he’s a good mimic. I knew an actor in England who could speak in fifteen accents, including French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and if you heard