The Russian Affair by Michael Wallner Page A

wall chandelier with a gilt arm; Rosa had nodded in agreement. Once, some time later, Rosa had told Anna that the small lamps, the ones that could be carried off in a crate or a box, had disappeared soonest. For the middle-sized chandeliers, trucks with their tailgates down had pulled up in the parking area; the monsters, the largest of the treasures, had hung there for some time, and then someone had decided to dismantle them and sell their individual parts.
    That was the day when Anna accepted the first gift, the first time she associated herself with someone she barely knew in order to obtain some benefit. Much later, a good while after the two had become the closest of friends, Rosa admitted to Anna that no member of her family had ever been buried in the Vaganskovskoye Cemetery.
    “You look like an illegal street vendor,” Rosa Khleb said, snatching Anna out of her memories. “Why didn’t you wait inside?”
    “There’s … nothing there,” Anna said, pointing in the direction she’d come from.
    Rosa took her friend’s arm, and together they turned back to the man with the bundled twigs. She was a head taller than Anna, and she was wearing a fur-trimmed coat and black leather gloves. She bought two bundles, one oak and one birch, and entered the passage that led to the building’s inner courtyard. There was a cashier in one of the rear stairwells.
    “As a club member, I’m allowed to bring a guest,” Rosa said, paying for them both.
    “What kind of club is this?” Anna followed her inside through a normal apartment doorway.
    “You’ll like it. Every now and then, when I have more time than I do now, I stay here for a full three hours.”
    The dressing room smelled as though sweaty laundry were being boiled somewhere nearby. Rosa surrendered her watch, her briefcase, and a gold bracelet to a woman in a white smock. Anna hastened to put her own things in the woman’s hands. She received their coats and hats and handed them two tokens.
    “The second one is for the towels,” Rosa explained.
    They entered a room whose elegance had faded. A carved mantelpiece crowned the walled-up fireplace. A sleepy old woman was sitting in front of a massive mirror; a copy of the house rules was fastened to themirror’s frame with thumbtacks. One of the regulations stated: “Anyone seen consuming alcohol must be reported at once.” The woman showed them to a changing room. The coat hangers, the benches, and the shoe racks, but above all the moist, warm air, made it clear to Anna what sort of place they were in. Rosa loosened her hair and began to get undressed; Anna admired her ivory-white underwear.
    “What are you waiting for?”
    Anna let her pants, sweater, and shirt fall to the floor. When she was naked, she covered herself with the bath towel.
    “I have to sweat out yesterday’s office party,” Rosa said, going ahead of her. “A couple of our correspondents were still going strong at dawn. Good thing we publish only twice a week—otherwise, there would have been no edition of the Moscow Times today.”
    Once they were through the next door, the temperature and the humidity rose sharply. Several women stood under showers and soaped themselves. For a long moment, Anna felt inhibited among strangers; at the washstands in the building combine, people rarely appeared unclothed.
    “I thought you didn’t have much time,” Rosa said to encourage her. Anna stepped under the jet of lukewarm water.
    “Prepare yourself for feudalism in its most horrible form!” Rosa said, indicating with an outstretched arm the steam bath’s inner sanctum.
    They entered a room whose contours could only be guessed, because it was full of steam. Along the wall, Anna could make out slabs of black marble for reclining, and in the middle of the room a bathtub that seemed to have been chiseled out of a single block of stone; two women were sitting in it, chatting. On the marble slabs, too, women were sitting and talking. Water and