Hot Siberian by Gerald A Browne Page A

again. He asked about it.
    â€œIt’s a magnifier, not a monocle, but I call it a monocle,” she said. “It magnifies ten times.”
    Like a loupe, Nikolai surmised. “For looking at jewelry?”
    â€œEyes,” she said, just the one word to see how that would strike him.
    He was appropriately puzzled.
    â€œIridology is something I became interested in years ago, and now I’m really good at it,” she said.
    â€œIridology,” he repeated with a knowing nod. He’d never heard of it.
    She assumed he hadn’t. “By looking closely at the irises of a person’s eyes I can determine his well-being, or, if you will, his ill-being. I can tell the state of his liver as well as his libido. Are you open-minded?”
    â€œI’d say yes.”
    â€œBecause with me you’re going to have to be.”
    Nikolai liked the future that promised.
    â€œLet me have a look at you,” she said, bringing the monocle up to her right eye. She moved in with it to his left eye. She was so close he could feel her breath against his cheek and distinguish the personal fragrance of her skin from that of her perfume. She examined the irises of his eyes a full minute before telling him: “You’re bothered by one of your knees—the right one.”
    That was true. When he was fifteen he’d seriously injured the ligaments of his right knee while cross-country skiing with Lev. He would never have made it back to the dacha if Lev hadn’t practically carried him. Even now if he happened to step off a curb wrong that knee gave way.
    â€œKeep looking straight ahead,” Vivian instructed. “Focus on one spot.” After another long moment she told him: “You’ve got the beginnings of a sodium ring. Too much salt intake. You’ll have to watch the salt.” She continued examining. “You’re also a bit of a kink sexually.” She sat back and allowed the monocle to dangle.
    Nikolai admitted to having a salt habit and a problem right knee. He told her she was uncanny.
    â€œI could have told you much more about you, and perhaps I shall another time. People can’t take too much of themselves in one dose. You know, I’m always leery when irises have dark browns. It’s a sure sign of madness or inner destruction of some sort. However, your iris pigment is genetic brown, isn’t it?”
    â€œYou’re questioning my sanity?”
    â€œWhat color were Grigori Yefimovich Novykh’s irises, I wonder?”
    Nikolai was astounded. Not one out of a million non-Russians would know Rasputin’s real name. As for Rasputin’s eyes, Nikolai had no idea what color they had been.
    â€œI’ll wager they were brown,” Vivian said. “Many brown-eyed people, particularly those who aren’t swarthy, aren’t brown eyed at all but are suffering internally from the accumulated sins of their forefathers.”
    â€œYou believe that?”
    â€œNo. I think it’s just rot.” Then, without a beat: “ Are you kinky?”
    Nikolai thought it best not to reply, certainly not to deny. He let a sidelong gaze, which he hoped came across as enigmatic, speak for him. (Later on in their relationship Vivian mentioned to him that during his gaze she was not only trying to read his mind but also sorting through a myriad of marvelous possibilities, and some that were a bit scary.)
    Nikolai, being Russian, didn’t consider the idea of iridology all that farfetched. It was his nature to put a certain amount of stock in anything mystical, or at least not to close his mind so tight that it couldn’t admit possibility. Neither he nor anyone else knew anything absolute, he reasoned. Hadn’t they once burned people at the stake for believing the earth went around the sun? So what if Vivian claimed she could tell about a person by looking at his eyes? That didn’t make her crazy. If anything, it made her more