Page 120 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Tatyana shrugged. “Papa has his ways.”

A long silence passed between them.

“Well, what’d you think?” he said.

“What didyouthink?”

“You seemed ecstatic.”

“It was so generous of my father. I don’t just mean the money. I mean the time and attention he must have put into the renovation.”

“He didn’t ask me about enlarging the place. Did he ask you?”

“He wanted it to be a surprise, Pasha.”

“Explain something to me. You’ve lived here for five years.” He waved his hands around, speaking softly but with a burning intensity. “You don’t want to show off your wealth. Yet now you’re happy to live in the . . . the Winter Palace. I don’t understand the contradiction.”

She looked distraught. “Why are you so, I don’t know, so angry about this gift?”

“Your father turned the nice apartment you and I bought together, which was in need of a lot of work, into a place twice the size.”

“Yes, but there’s a photography studio and a gallery. And if we have kids—” They hadn’t talked much about kids, though Tatyana always smiled and cooed at babies they passed on the street.

“I get it,” Paul said. “Your father is acknowledging your art. You feelseen.”

“Exactly! And there’s no gold anywhere. It’s incredibly beautiful. How can we say no?”

“It’s a beautiful apartment, yes, but it’s notourapartment.” Paul was reminded of the old saying “Happy wife, happy life.” The enormous, sprawling, yet tasteful apartment seemed to make Tatyana happy. Or maybe it was the thought behind it that made her happy. He wasn’t sure.

She nodded. She had half her wine left, and he’d finished the rocks glass of bourbon. “I get it,” she said.

“You always shun that kind of opulence. I don’t think you really want to live in a place like that.Idon’t want to.”

“It’ll hurt his feelings,” she said. “He’ll be crushed.”

“Your father?” He couldn’t imagine Arkady Galkin having bruised feelings. He wasn’t that sensitive. Paul shook his head. “Will you explain something to me about him?”

“I can try.”

Paul’s friends on Wall Street who’d grown up poor and then gotten rich always had the biggest, showiest houses in the Hamptons, the most impressive apartments or town houses. Great novels had been written about the struggle between old and new money. But for Galkin, it was more complicated than that. “Your father has one of the biggest town houses in New York City, a giant yacht . . . yet he’s always wearing the same clothes, and they’re not very expensive. He buys them from catalogues.”

Tatyana laughed, her laugh high and lilting, always lovely. “Oh, mypápachka. You know, in Soviet times, before I was born, he was poor. He lived in a communal apartment with his mother and his grandparents and his sisters. And now that he’s rich, he wants to enjoy it. But he still loves a bargain. He doesn’t care about what clothes he wears, or shoes, or watches.”

“Huh.”

“But he always wants his opponents, his adversaries, the people he’s negotiating with . . . he wants them to see how successful he is. So he shows off. I know people in Russia, who are even richer than we are, who live much more modestly.”

“Okay.”

“So what are we going to tell him?” Tatyana asked.

A long, awkward silence passed between them.

How can I accept this gift from Arkady?Paul asked himself. He wanted to refuse, to insist that they sell what Arkady had created for them, get their money back and buy another place, theirownplace. But he was immediately suffused by a flush of guilt for having betrayed Tatyana and her father. No matter the reason, how would she ever forgive him?

“How can we tell him no?” Paul finally replied.

Tatyana beamed and clasped his hands and kissed him. Tears were in her eyes. “So now I can tell you: he invited us to join him on his yacht this weekend,” she said.

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