"You're married, Vladimir, and sometimes I think of your wife and think of how I would feel under similar circumstances."
"That is all?"
"Well—"
"Then listen to me, Anna. What is a wife? A man has a wife because it is conventional, like a country says it is striving for peace when often it must have war to keep from flying apart. I can get you anything, anything. I could treat you like no wife ever was treated. Here, you like this dacha? Say the word and it is yours."
Servants came with vodka, champagne, paper-thin slices of sturgeon, caviar. Chenkov nibbled at the sturgeon while Laniq had some caviar and champagne. Chenkov began drinking vodka and hardly paused until, Laniq realized, he was high enough to be uninhibited, yet not sufficiently high to be a boor. It was the gentlemanly thing in Russian nobility, Laniq knew.
"Do you not even feel inclined to kiss me tonight, my Anna?"
Laniq offered her lips without heat, got them bruised by Chenkov's teeth.
"Then at least dance for me, Anna."
She had danced for him before, here in this very dacha, at the same fireplace. But now it was different, now she could not feel the same emotional indifference and so whet Chenkov's appetite sufficiently for him to start talking.
Laniq got up and did a tentative pirouette.