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of the most prominent members of Kerensky’s cabinet. She had this man’s ear, his money and the run of his houses in St. Petersburg and Moscow and of his country estate at Kaluga. An outsider would have said she depended on him for everything. Such a person would have been wrong. She had investments of her own and above all she had her nerves, which she was fond of boasting were descended from the best Jewish nerves in America.
    For a while, during that hot—that exceptional—summer of 1917, it looked as though her predictions would be proved right. Everything that Kerensky did was just what the country wanted from him. Though not from a military background, he struck all the right notes when he toured the battlefields of the European conflict. Some of his speeches to the troops were inspirational. He was everywhere at once, never short of ananswer or a beautiful phrase. The newspaper photographs of him were invariably reassuring. The short dark hair, the shrewd eyes, the decisive forehead (neither too low nor too intellectual) appealed to men, while those lips of his, so fleshy and uxorious, conveyed to every woman the idea of a good family man.
    Kerensky made it possible to feel encouraged. And when, in the brilliance of May, the purple trusses of lilac dangled over the sidewalks and their scent inflated the air to bursting point, when dreams began to stir of the creamy flesh of potatoes dug from our rich dark soil, and of baby onions and beetroots, there were many people besides La Zipfa who professed optimism. Everything was going so well for Russia. Could one invoke— at long last—after so many sacrifices—the longed-for word, victory? And if that were so and the Hun were bashed to pieces, might not his palaces and positions be restored to the Little Father, at present mooning around at Tsarskoe Selo, preening himself in his Jaeger underwear and cataloguing his collection of seaside postcards? If only, murmured these optimists, someone had taught him to think for himself, to articulate boldly—to make every word he spoke stand up and salute. He had such a nice voice...
    The heat grew. Russia baked. Kerensky declared that along our country lanes the wild flowers had never looked so lovely in his entire life.
    â€œDoesn’t he express himself charmingly?” said Cynthia to me one day upon meeting by chance in Nevsky. “But you know what he should really do, of course you do.”
    She drew her forefinger across her throat and gurgled. “Kaputnik. The only definitive solution.”
    She swayed towards me. Such a fine, strapping body when viewed as a whole. With first-class technique, one could count absolutely on it just by the way she walked and by the confidence with which she moved her limbs, as if she were already in bed with her favourite man. She’d tried to jump my uncle, Count Igor, when she was down on her luck. She’d had herself driven over in a rented carriage to dine and play a few hands of piquet. She’d worn a strong scent—like a she-buffalo, said Joseph. Had offered my uncle several perspectives of her bosom but then had spoilt everything by tapping him reprovingly onthe wrist when he made a poor play and calling him an asshole. Uncle Igor had sent her packing. Thud! went the heavy beam that secured the front door—with the Countess on the wrong side. Igor had turned to Joseph, put a mottled hand on his shoulder and murmured, “Womanhood and its perils, my dear Joseph.”
    In recounting this anecdote, Joseph had played the parts of himself and both principals, making free use of the floor space and not holding back on La Zipfa’s idiosyncratic Russian.
    â€œOf course you know what I mean,” she said to me, “you’re Russian yourself. One day he’ll have Lenin killed, has to. Then— oh boy, shan’t we have a party! Meanwhile you should be grabbing the common stock of the Archangel Timber Corporation.