The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  Rear Admiral Akhmatov, whose opinions by virtue of their perspicacity usually traveled to all the neighborhood nobility and were repeated even by the city fops, and who was also the youngest daughter Sonya’s godfather, called Aleksandra Pavlovna a seductive brunette. And, as always, he was correct. And who would believe that this seductive brunette, who had belabored this exemplary home and her happy domestic life into existence, could had thought herself the most unfortunate among all people. In truth it happened many years ago, and since then her luck and happiness had erased all traces of the past misery and only contentment and self-assurance lived in her soul. It was fifteen years ago, one year after the day Sonya was born, that Blagodatnoye was just a step away from a great calamity—the mansion almost burned to the ground, Pyotr Nikolayevich nearly perished, and it was Aleksandra Pavlovna who saved them all.

  In the fall and winter, when the children left, Aleksandra Pavlovna spent her days with her husband. She looked at him as she did twenty years earlier, with the same tender love, and saw him as he used to be twenty years ago, so in love; and the deep furrow clearly seen between her dark brows smoothed out. And he, dried out and long as a rod, gray, with a deathly pale face, stared with his unmoving eyes and their terrible sparks, and bared his teeth as he stood before her.

  “I know no boredom,” he would repeat a thousandth time, “everything is a breeze!” but it sounded like “I don’t care, I don’t desire anything” instead.

  But she could not hear these terrible words, they sounded like the words he whispered the first time they kissed, and she, blinded by love, responded with all the passion of a well-tended woman.

  If someone were to spy on them through the window, he would laugh heartily at this ridiculous scene, but who knows—maybe he would faint without saying a word, like that guest, the general, Pyotr Nikolayevich’s old friend.

  SECOND CHAPTER

  There was a big to-do in Blagodatnoye: Liza, the oldest daughter who had graduated from the Institute last year, was to be married on St. Matryona’s Day. Her fiancé was a well-known landowner, Rameykov. Everyone was excited for the wedding—they said the feast would be the biggest anyone had ever seen; at least, Pyotr Nikolayevich beheaded near every chicken.

  Blagodatnoye was taking on a ceremonious appearance—the guests were arriving in droves and well in advance, and many nearly got conniptions from the merriment—Pyotr Nikolayevich was especially in the mood for tales and amusements. Aleksandra Pavlovna tripped all over herself—there was so much to do, and hardly enough hands to do it all.

  Finally the whole family gathered: from Petersburg, their oldest son Misha, first-year student, had arrived; then Zina from Kiev where she was attending the Institute, and the schoolgirl Sonya from the county’s seat. The momentous day was nigh.

  And, to give credit where it was due, the wedding was a merry affair, although it was not without tomfoolery: after Pyotr Nikolayevich blessed the icons before the ceremony, he was going to give the newlyweds his fatherly address, but after a long pause he limited himself to just a single-word directive, quite strong and not to be repeated in polite company, and upon hearing that strong word the groom could barely keep upright, and the laughter was choking all those present. In church, Pyotr Nikolayevich whispered to the priest that the night before he dreamt of eggs in a hole, and even though Father Ivan did not know if such a dream was a bad omen, he thought it highly incongruous. And already everyone was in the mood, and Father Ivan guffawed so loud the entire church shook, and then his diakon busted laughing without any shame, and everyone started braying—a wedding or a circus, there was no telling.

  After the post-nuptial dinner, the newlyweds left for Moscow. But Blagodatnoye kept on celebrating, and even Lent was not very lenten. By the time Yule rolled around, the young ones staged a play, they dressed up in costumes and paid each other visits as if it was a masquerade. The pond froze over, and there was skating and sledding, and on this improvised rink young people held skating races and contests.

  Misha Borodin was considered the best skater. He was lithe and uncommonly flexible, with remarkable agility and skill he performed complex tricks and maneuvers. Sonya was not far behind, the girl quick as a flame, and her resonant and contagious laughter rang far in the winter nights. Everyone admired the two of them when hand in hand they raced down the hill and to the farthest willows. But Zina was very much like her sister Liza, and like Liza, she was quiet and restrained; some would have called her shy if she didn’t have a bit of a temper. “Just like their mother,” said aunties and uncles and old acquaintances who truly knew Aleksandra Pavlovna.

  The Day of Baptism of the Lord approached. Misha’s pals and the girls’ girlfriends started to disperse—and it was time for the young Borodins to get ready for their departure, but they were so happy in their village that they didn’t even want to think about leaving.

  On Baptism’s Eve, Misha and Sonya waited for the Star of the Magi to come out and ran to the rink where they were spending their last nights. The night was bright with succulent blue stars reflected in the snow, and so cold that the ice was creaking and their cheeks were pricked as if by needles. But they were glad to race and skate all night long.

  After the rink they went for a ride in the empty fields, with Misha holding the reins. But as soon as they left the gates, the horses spooked. Sonya fell into the snow, and Misha was tossed out of the sled with such force that he hit his head on the fence. House servants came to their cries, someone ran to fetch the doctor. By the morning Misha was dead—such tragedy.

  The day of the funeral the house felt empty and everyone was overwhelmed by grief and fatigue, the kind that keeps one from doing anything and yet one cannot sit still. By the end of the day, a telegram from Moscow came, summoning Aleksandra Pavlovna to come right away.

  She left that night.

  Sonya and Zina were greatly worried, but not Pyotr Nikolaye—he seemed to carry on as if nothing was the matter. He still beheaded chickens, maybe even a bit more than before; but they said it was because Zina caught a cold at the funeral, and required a special diet. He also requested a very large cow tongue to be served for lunch; such eccentricity!

  Finally the news came from Moscow: Liza had hanged herself. What tragedy!

  The Borodin crypt received the second body, and the heavy emptiness hung in the rooms. Aleksandra Pavlovna wandered about like a ghost.

  She blamed herself for agreeing to the marriage—she always knew Rameykov was a frivolous man, and possibly dishonest—yes, dishonest—why didn’t she talk Liza out of it? Liza would’ve listened to her. She could’ve convinced her, she heard some unsavory things people whispered about him, even in their mansion the day of the wedding.

  But it was too late now: whether one forgave herself or didn’t, there was no fixing this calamity. Aleksandra Pavlovna was ready to scream and howl.

  Pyotr Nikolayevich meanwhile looked a bit fatigued, but that was hardly due to the fact of death. The death of his son as well as his daughter piqued his curiosity in the same way any dead body did, whether he knew the deceased or not. He was fatigued mostly from the lack of sleep: Liza’s coffin was delivered to Blagodatnoye sealed shut, but he insisted that they opened it. After the lid came off, he uncovered his daughter’s face by himself, and stood over her, never looking away, all night long.

  The day after the funeral, he dozed in his chair, wearing his usual bottle-green robe.

  Meanwhile Zina’s condition grew worse. The doctors said she had something similar to diphtheria, and the entire Blagodatnoye hushed, waiting for the disease to break. Instead, her condition became critical, doctors called a consilium. She was hopeless.

  Ever since the children were small, there was a certain order in the house, and they all had their chores: Liza took care of the flowers, Zina fed the parrot. Now the old valet Michey looked after the flowers, and the parrot screec
hed that it was hungry.

  And one could see that Zina heard it and remembered, and suffered because of it, and she felt guilt that by staying in bed she was somehow violating the proper order and it would be better if they took her back to the city, but she couldn’t say anything—her throat closed up. With her last strength she beckoned Sonya to give her paper and pencil, and with her weak hand she wrote one word: “parrot,” and the pencil rolled from her fingers. With that, she passed. Such tragedy.

  THIRD CHAPTER

  The third Borodin coffin was carried out of the mansion. In church, after the rites, as Aleksandra Pavlovna was saying good-bye to her daughter, she looked one last time at that resigned face with tightly closed eyelids, blue as steel, and her crusted over, long-suffering lips, Aleksandra Pavlovna suddenly remembered—not her recent contentment but the far-away, secret past that she had managed to forget for so many years. She howled and walked away from the coffin, bent into an old, old woman.

  “Why would I think that I would bury them like this?” she cried and shook her head.

  And instead of comfort, her conscience bent her down further, raked her skin with new furrows, and reminded her that there was no one else to blame, there was no one but herself, and it was she, she alone who was responsible for everything.

  Sonya would not leave her mother’s side, pressed against her and tried to comfort her, and then cried herself and stared with wide eyes—one could not help but worry about this frightened child.

  “Mama, what are you saying?” she asked, startled by her own voice.

  And her mother told her of the secret past that she had managed to forget for so long.

  Fifteen years ago, when Sonya was just a year old, Aleksandra Pavlovna took her children and went to visit her mother—it was the first time she left Blagodatnoye since the wedding, leaving her mansion and her husband behind. And when she was away she had a dream: her husband entering the altar. She got scared—was he sick, was he dead? Next night, she had another dream: her wedding band broke. And again she got scared that her husband would die. And she decided to come back home.

  “So I gathered everything, and got on my way,” Aleksandra Pavlovna told Zina, “and all the way I keep praying to God, all the way home I pray to Him: if a misfortune to befall us, let Misha die, let Liza die, let Zina die, just let him live. I thought, they were little, it happens, I’d survive, I just need him alive. I never mentioned you—I could not. When I got home, I found out that there was a great fire, and Pyotr Nikolayevich was on death’s door. God heard my prayer: he gave me back the mansion and your father. And now Misha is dead, Liza is dead, Zina is dead…how could I think that they would die when they were like this?”

  Aleksandra Pavlovna suffered and would not let Sonya leave her side.

  Pyotr Nikolayevich seemed concerned and bewildered; there was some thought that was gnawing at him, needling him. He could not carry on as usual and occupy himself the same way as before. At night he tried to move around the hutch in the dining room—moved it away from the wall and then just left it there as it was. Took a poker in his hand—but even the stoves did not hold his attention. A few times he came to Aleksandra Pavlovna’s bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and then stood up, leaving his devastated wife and daughter.

  “They all were lost—Misha, Liza, Zina, Sonya, and now everyone but Sonya are found,” he muttered senselessly and terribly, addressing who knows who—maybe Michey or the potter Kuzma, or the housekeeper Darya Ivanovna who took over for Aleksandra Pavlovna for the time being.

  Late at night, Pyotr Nikolayevich settled down and went to his study, followed by Michey who would not leave him alone, like an old nanny.

  The mansion felt unsettled and filled with dread, all the corners grew cold. Where did everything go? Where was the peace, laughter, contentment? Three coffins—three deaths froze dead the warm fire in the Borodin hearth.

  FOURTH CHAPTER

  The events that only took one month—the string of Borodins’ tragedies—was immediately taken up by local gossips.

  “Clearly, something is not right,” they said in the neighboring Chernyanka and Kostomarovka, and even Britany and Motovilovka and, of course, the city.

  Why, what, how? And they started, and kept on it.

  The entire Blagodatnoye existence was turned top to bottom and dissected, they remembered the Borodins’ grannies and aunties, and even the things that never happened, and even the things that did happen but to someone else—say, the Muromtsevs. Everything was dragged into the sun—look, everyone, and judge, and we had known all this a long time ago.

  They even latched onto that mysterious visiting General for some reason—that friend of Pyotr Nikolayevich that fled God knows why. So everyone decided that the General surely knew everything, and that he should be interrogated and then everything would be crystal-clear. Only where would you find him? No one knew where to start.

  Someone said, “All St. Petersburg knows Pereverdeyev.”

  “So he’s in St. Petersburg?”

  “Of course!”

  The governor dispatched an urgent request to St. Petersburg, and the certified response came right away. It said that there were plenty of generals there, and some even with such strange names that it could be a bit awkward in mixed company, but no Pereverdeyev. Perhaps Pereverzev?

  And while they were finding out about that Pereverzev, judged and discussed forward and backward and sideways, someone steely, without asking, without reporting to anyone, already started his assured mission, someone merciless already walked in his seven-miles steps from far, far away to conduct his own trial and execution.

  Without Aleksandra Pavlovna, nothing was quite proper, and she forced herself to pay attention to the daily minutiae, abandoning her heavy thoughts for a time. She did not feel she had the right to abandon her home, her husband, and her daughter to their fates—her husband, to whose love she offered such an enormous sacrifice; her daughter, to whose love she was ready to offer her entire sanity.

  Wasn’t she mistaken that she, when she prayed, sacrificed only the oldest three, and forgotten Sonya? And didn’t forget, but intentionally omitted? Why didn’t she name her? If she offered all four, wouldn’t they all be alive today? Or perhaps all four dead. But no, that couldn’t be, because he who sacrifices all…why didn’t she sacrifice all? That was the question that kept drilling in her mind and would not let her rest.

  What if Sonya would die too? Didn’t she just say that she would sacrifice all, meaning Sonya too? That was the question that chased her from room to room, like a woman possessed.

  “Sonya, Sonya, where are you?” She would catch herself and start looking for her daughter that never strayed far from her anymore.

  Her torment for her past, for her terrible deed, her torment for her only daughter, was tinged by her worry for her beloved husband, whose life was propped up by three precious deaths. Pyotr Nikolayevich barely moved, he rarely left his study, turned blue, his hair plastered down, and his dull skin, as if separated from the rest of his body, hung loose on him, like a sack.

  The mansion, all the rooms, smelled rotten.

  The mansion was an old building, and under the floors there were plenty of rats—generations of them, so it was possible that some ancient rat gave up the ghost, and that was the source of the intolerable smell. In the old days, Pyotr Nikolayevich would’ve found the source of the smell, they would’ve lifted the floors and disposed of the carcass, but nowadays everything fell by the wayside.

  Everyone who happened to come by Blagodatnoye in those days felt that life could not go on like this, that sooner or later—and it didn’t matter how, but there would be an escape. And they waited.

  And they were supposed to wait three days and three nights. And two days and two nights had already passed.

  Saturday evening Father Ivan came to
the mansion for the nightlong service, and was very generous with his myrrh and smoked up the place thoroughly. After a repast he left, and everyone turned in soon after.

  Afterward, valet Michey told about that night. “Late, I heard the master is calling me. ‘Michey, bring me a young rooster, for Christ’s sake, I won’t forget your kindness.’ And I say, ‘Master, what do you want with a rooster at such an hour? It’s night out.’ And he only winked at me—like, you figure out what. I went to the coop, found a fat rooster, caught ’im, and brought him over. So I hand the rooster to the master, and offer him his knife. So he started cutting his throat—but he has no strength left, the rooster is still twitching. So he tried-tried, and finally finished the bird. A whole puddle of blood on the floor and all over ’im. And he seemed a bit better. ‘Michey, wouldn’t it be nice to see a dead one.’ And I say, ‘God keep you, what dead at this hour! No one heard of such a thing.’ And I can feel like a cold hand down my back, and my hackles are goin’ up. I can see he’s not himself—shaking and teeth are clattering, and if something is choking him. ‘Where is Sonya?’ he asks, and looks at me…such a look, on my deathbed I’ll remember, such look! ‘In the mistress’s bedroom, with the mistress.’ Then the master calmed down a bit, so I went to lie down.”

  The housekeeper Darya Ivanovna remembered, “I woke up that night, I heard as if a cat was meowing. And I wonder—where did a cat come from? So I meowed back, and something hissed at me.”

  “The rooster was crowing,” others remembered.

  But even the rooster did not help—and what a fine rooster it was! The old man had barely any strength left, last breath in his throat. Pyotr Nikolayevich sat up. “Everyone was lost—Misha, Liza, Zina, and Sonya, and now all are found, only Sonya is missing!”