She was always restless during the white nights. “So much daylight,” she said, “it’s as if you have to lead two lives instead of one. It exhausts me.” Gratefully she accepted the lemonade Mama had made from some powder she had found in the store. Aunt Marya made a face. “Svetlana, this tastes like a dissolved aspirin tablet.” I could see politics were coming and I wanted to escape, but before I got to the door, Aunt Marya said, “Tanya, I saw Mr. Brompton today. He came to say good-bye. He leaves for England tomorrow. I gather he was successful. He looked like the cat that ate the cream. Did Sasha give him some of his paintings to sell?” “Yes, he took three or four.” I said nothing about the icon that Sasha meant to sell him, but I wondered if that was the reason for Mr. Brompton’s satisfied look. “I have been hearing even more unpleasant things about him from artists he has talked into giving him work with no compensation,” Aunt Marya said. “Of course it is not unusual for a dealer to wait until he sells a work to give money to an artist, but when the dealer is a thousand miles away, what is an artist to do if he is cheated?”
