The Age of Ice: A Novel

by Sidorova, J. M.

  “Then go ahead and do it! Do it, if only to stop us from reaching Orenburg and telling its defenders that reinforcements were always there, they just did not bother to move!”

  “Paul!” I cried—and the opponents finally acknowledged my presence.

  “This is insanity,” Freiman said, and Svetogorov spread his arms. “Just look at this, Alexis!”

  “General, please,” I pleaded. “We will do no such thing. We are in no position to judge, we’re grateful for your hospitality, and we are not asking for any assistance. We’ll leave quietly and at the first opportunity.”

  But it was too late. “Not on my watch,” Freiman said, and put us under arrest.

  • • •

  The bathhouse—from which Cyril and his cohabitants were expelled first—became our detention cell. They locked the door but did not take away our sidearms, which was either sloppiness, or a sign that Freiman trusted us to be men of honor. Svetogorov stretched out on a shelflike bench that went round the chamber, and fell quiet. A foot-square canvas-paned window made day into dusk.

  “Paulie—that wasn’t a wise move,” I said.

  He dismissed me. “I’d almost turned him, if not for your intervention. Nothing we can do now.”

  I found it difficult to see things the way he saw them. “From where I stood you hadn’t turned him in the least, only aggravated him.”

  “You weren’t there for the whole thing. Stop pacing, will you?”

  I obeyed and sat opposite him. I had to at least consider that he might be right. I said my next words more peaceably. “He has to understand that keeping us under arrest is just as troublesome for morale. We take up space—five men could have lodged here if not for us. Tomorrow Freiman will calm down and release us, and let us be on our way. The less attention is drawn to us, the better. He ought to know that.”

  Paul didn’t answer. With his eyes shut and his hands clasped over his chest, he lay like a holy relic of his own best intentions. His quarrel with Freiman seemed odd, but who was I to say? I kept sensing a nagging presence in the corner of my mind’s eye, as if reality itself kept smearing; I was having thoughts of snow and had trouble focusing. Paulie was trying to do what he thought right, I told myself. If he’d acted alone, it was only because he thought me too proud or too shy to ask Freiman for help.

  Just when I sorted it all out, he perplexed me again. “Jesus Lord,” he said, tossing to his side, “if you only waited for official papers!”

  How could he have forgotten?! “Paul,” I said, “you know why we left Saint Pete’s in a hurry—”

  But he wasn’t listening: “—then Freiman would’ve taken me seriously!” And then he interrogated me. “Tell me, Alexis, are you not afraid? At all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Afraid of— Do you really want to get up and go to Orenburg—and what’re you going to do there—if you get there alive—just sit and wait for Pugachev to roll over you and your family?”

  Truly, he puzzled me. My mind’s eye darted from him to myself: whom to trust? Who had changed, I or he? Be responsible, I urged myself. Do no harm. “I don’t know,” I muttered, “if I am afraid or not. But I hold you under no obligation to follow me.”

  He was laughing, not listening. Laughing in wild spurts and jabbering away as he hammered the log wall with the side of his fist. “All right then! We get up and go! Prince Velitzyn is not afraid! Neither am I. How’s this—we make a break for it. I know just what to do—”

  He sketched out his plan. I objected but he would not be swayed. He looked desperate and earnest now. “I got us into this, Alexis, let me get us out.”

  Toward the end of the day they let Cyril in with a meal, and Svetogorov told him to have horses and sleighs at the ready. Cyril gave me a quizzical look and I shrugged. “Do what you can. None of them is keeping an eye on you.”

  Late that night the door opened shyly and in squeezed the apologetic band of the former denizens of the bathhouse with their bedrolls and knapsacks—no other sleeping arrangements had been made for them, apparently. A bearish Cossack subaltern, a desyatnik, plodded in last and advised us to retire to the wardrobe-size enclosure behind the stove, the actual steam sauna, if we wanted to sleep in privacy. The squatters livened the fire in the stove, making the whole place stifling hot, then one by one succumbed to sleep, while Svetogorov and I, refusing to retreat into the claustrophobic sauna, kept to the bench farthest from the door. The desyatnik propped his body against the door and began to snore. Before long we heard a soft scratch at the door. Poor Cyril was impatient either for escape or for shelter.

  Svetogorov seized the moment. “Alexis,” he whispered to me, “I’m going. Feel free to follow whenever I clear the way. Meet you by the sleighs.” As the desyatnik was sorting Cyril out, Svetogorov waded forth over the mounds of sleeping bodies and asserted, “You—take me to the latrine. Not your shithole. The one officers go to. Chop-chop, now! Do it!” I marveled at Paulie. So effortless and so authoritative—truly, I wouldn’t have been able to deliver the lines so well! The desyatnik grumbled some, but did as he was bidden. The door, now unprotected, lured us; Cyril hovered there, unsettled. I stood up and, careful not to ding anyone’s head with the tip of my scabbard, tiptoed out.

  Outside, the stars were out but not the moon. Here and there somebody could be heard crunching through snow, and many huts and hovels still glowed with candlelight or hummed with voices. I urged Cyril to take the five-minute trip to the stables—and our sleighs—in no hurry. He had managed to ready only one of them. “Now what?” he said.

  The only reason I kept going was because I did not believe we were actually executing our escape. The logic of it was ridiculous—I was leaving one portmanteau’s worth of my belongings in Freiman’s house. But here I was in the stable, ushering out the nearest horse. Our harness to the second sleigh, though—we could not find it, and so we consolidated our sleigh loads, all the while Cyril getting more and more grumpy, and—where the hell was Svetogorov?

  A door was flung open in a hut opposite us some yards away; somebody tumbled out with a lantern and raced off, steadying his hat. Elsewhere, dogs burst out barking. Cyril fidgeted. “If you want to leave, we’ve got to begin leaving, Your Nobleship.”

  How long could we sit undiscovered, in a sleigh hitched to a horse and with another one tethered in tow? What happened next would later be hotly contested, but I swear, this is what I remember, clear as day. I waited, feeling in turns a betrayer or betrayed, but what gave me the final impetus was a flash: Paulie hadn’t even taken his sword when he’d left the bathhouse! That’s what turned my doubt into certainty, I swear, not the lingering itch for snowy fields!

  “Let’s go,” I said to Cyril.

  • • •

  So we went.

  We trooped on all night and most of the day, if only for the lack of alternatives. The mood was low. I needed closure. “In truth, Guards Captain Svetogorov was reluctant to go on without a convoy,” I said.

  Cyril snorted. “His nobleship? He was shitting his pants ever since those hanged people.”

  This would have been a punishable case of disrespect—in another world, but right now I was just grateful to Cyril that his observation matched my suspicions. Yet I had to give Paulie the benefit of the doubt, for nothing is ever this simple. “There are many reasons one may not want to be on this road. I do think that in his heart he wishes he were with us. ”

  Cyril snorted again. “That’s your nobleshipnesses’ kind of talk. I don’t get it.” After a long pause he sighed and added, “I’m shitting my pants too.”

  And that was that.

  By the end of that day we came to a lone hut on the bank of a frozen creek. A thatch fence let in to a small yard covered in footprints. In the middle stood a brass tripod. A candle’s glow outlined a shuttered window; I asked Cyril to knock on the door, and when no one answered, we entered. Inside it smelled strongly of blood; one man lay prostrate on the floor, another sat over hi
m on a bench by a table. One was too still to be alive, the other sniffled into a crumpled handkerchief. He was maybe eighteen years of age. “Who is it?” he said, staring at us as though responding belatedly to our knock on the door. I said, “It’s us. What happened?”

  “A conflict, dear sir,” the young man said, “between science and war.” His voice trembled and his words felt composed in advance. He blew his nose and finished, “We are astronomers, sir. We harm no one. We observe the movements of celestial bodies. We saw the transit of Venus, the last one in this century! And they, sir—they took our telescope. To use as a spyglass!” He paused and snuffled. “Professor von Bragge died protecting it!”

  “Who are they?” I asked. It wasn’t too hard to assume the worst, but I wanted certainty. “Where are they now?”

  The young man looked at me as if I’d misunderstood him, then extended a hand. “Ivan Kuznetzov, by Lord’s will a student. Pleased to meet you.”

  I hesitated, wondering how cold my hand may be, but before I could make up my mind, student Kuznetzov changed his. “Oh, right.” He studied his palm and scratched at it. I noticed that it was covered in dry blood, as was the student’s jacket. “Sorry,” Ivan babbled. “Nosebleed, sir. I get those. I blow my nose too hard.”

  Cyril behind me snorted, “ ’Tis no nosebleed,” while Ivan seemed to forget all about us, moistening his handkerchief in his mouth and rubbing his hands with it. I told Cyril to go let the horses into the stable, and sat down at the table opposite the student. I waited till he stopped rubbing and scratching and looked back at me; his face bore a mix of helplessness and annoyance. I introduced myself. He said, “Oh,” and asked whether my detachment was waiting outside.

  “What?”

  “Your soldiers, sir.”

  “There is no detachment.”

  “Oh,” he said again.

  Cyril returned and loitered by the door, looking at Ivan with disapproval.

  I tried to broach the subject again. “Is anybody else around?”

  “No. Just me and Herr Professor. And a servant, but he was taken away. He and the mare. Well, then . . . How was your trip?”

  “Can we help stow away the body?” I asked.

  The student nodded and did not move.

  “Ivan? Where should we carry it?”

  “Yes, yes.” He smiled politely.

  I’d had enough. I stood up and waved to Cyril. Together, we closed in on the “Herr Professor.” Ivan shuddered and shouted out, “No!”

  “Good grief !” Cyril backed off.

  “Why can’t we move him?” I crouched over the body.

  Ivan’s tormented whisper was but a confirmation of what I could now see myself. “Because his face will fall off.”

  Now at least I knew what I had to do. First, we nudged Ivan onto his feet, then led him behind a curtain where the sleeping quarters were, and where he burst into tears. Second, we ripped the said curtain off, covered the unfortunate professor’s face—they had meant to decapitate him, but landed a saber too high and at too steep an angle—and carried the wrapped body out, placing him atop the firewood pile. And then—a long, long night to endure.

  I spent some hours calming Ivan down. I managed to tease out of him that they were a gang of bandits, now gone. But even after Ivan stopped sobbing and shaking, I remained awake until after six in the morning. Naturally, I was also the last to wake up, and when I did, I overheard the conversation the shaken, stuffy-nosed Ivan held with my Cyril. Ivan must have shown interest in joining us, and Cyril did not think it was a good idea. “You can’t, ’cause he’s going to Orenburg,” Cyril declared.

  “But that’s . . . that’s where the rebel is!” Ivan said in an awed half-whisper. “Does he know it?”

  “Like hell he does!” The frustration in Cyril’s voice was impossible to miss.

  The two were silent for a while. Then Ivan sighed, “Sweet Jesus,” and in another while asked, “Why does he have to go there?”

  Cyril answered, “You mister astoronomer, why don’t you go and ask his nobleship yourself. I am just an orderly here.”

  When at last I made my appearance, I’d already come to a decision. “Cyril, you’ll take Ivan back to Bugulma,” I said. “And the professor. Ivan has another sleigh; we have a horse for it. You have my leave.”

  The magnanimous Cyril voiced a concern about my well-being, but I cut him short. And after that—well, we had to turn our attentions back to Ivan. When he learned that all this time help and safety had been only one good day’s travel away, he broke down all over again.

  To this day I wonder, was my letting Cyril go a moral choice, or simply an irresistible urge to be left alone with the snowy fields?

  • • •

  A man who descends into the surreality of winter realizes all too late that the chatter of his road companions had been the lifeline that kept him skirting the spell, and now, in utter silence, he has no recourse—and he succumbs to it.

  He drags on day and night. He eats and sleeps in his sleigh, letting the horse follow the tracings of the road beneath virgin snows. He empties his bowels at the roadside. He breaks to feed his horse, and if he can start one, he makes a small campfire to boil snow for water.

  The purpose of his quest has sifted out of him and dispersed, like millet out of a punctured bag. His horse will fatigue, and the food he carries won’t even cover this journey, because it will be endless. He stares into the skies. A gunpowder-gray cloud is creeping over the heather grayness; flurries start. He sees a riding party approaching; it is so far away that it seems innocuous, although distance is his only, and temporary, protection. He is a captive of the road—the snow is too deep everywhere else. Unless the riding party turns away, it is bound to run into him.

  The man who descends unharnesses his horse from the sleigh, and saddles him instead. He stuffs what he can into saddlebags. He leaves his Leib Guard uniform coat in the sleigh and dons a commoner’s coat, Cyril’s find. His grenadier miter hat has an ostrich feather and a copper badge with regimental insignia. He leaves it too, only rips the badge off and hides it on his body. He perceives himself as excruciatingly slow, especially when he loads his pistols from the cartridges Cyril had rolled for him—if he is lucky, the pan will remain dry for the next fifteen minutes. There are seven armed men in the party and they are not turning off the road. He mounts, tucks the pistols behind the flaps of his coat, and, after a moment’s hesitation, cocks them. If he feels anything at all, it is a tug of something inevitable, clumsy, and ugly.

  They encircle him. They order him to get off his horse. He doesn’t. Their leader, the ataman, is in front of him, sitting askew on his horse, grinning. “Who are you?” the leader demands.

  “Old Man Frost,” he mutters.

  The ataman snorts. “Why’d you drop your sleigh? I watched you all the way from back there.” He waves a hand toward the horizon. “With a spyglass. Let’s take a look, shall we?” His henchmen produce a two-foot-long cylinder with a lens on one end and an eyepiece with some screws on another—so heavy that it takes two to hold it in front of the ataman’s eye. It ought to be the astronomers’ telescope, and it is trained on me. On Old Man Frost. “Whoa!” the ataman says. “I see every damn zit on his face! And check this out—he is upside down!” He pokes out from behind his “spyglass” and asks, “What was in your sleigh? What did ya hide?”

  “The cruelty of ice, the kindness of snow,” Old Man Frost answers. Snowflakes fall thicker and thicker; he licks them off his lips, then spits them out.

  The ataman looks into the eyepiece again. “I say, this fellow is upside down. Hey, Peter, Bulava, set the guy up straight, see what shakes out of him!”

  They guffaw and edge toward him, readying to yank him from the saddle and flip him head down. So Old Man Frost pulls out his two pistols and shoots at Peter and Bulava.

  Then he unsheathes his sword, dropping the pistols, and rides through the ataman and his two henchmen. He aims for exposed parts—necks an
d faces. He strikes once, and notes the impact only in passing, by the pain in the wrist of his sword hand as he keeps riding, that’s all.

  All of this gives him a bit of lead time over the bandits, who turn around and give chase. And then, not two minutes later, a raging snowstorm descends, and neither chasers nor chased can see anything farther than the reach of their own arms.

  • • •

  I did not leave the road purposefully, more likely it veered away from my blind trajectory. Instantly, my horse was up to his underbelly in snow. I dropped off him, falling so deep into powder that I took all the slack out of the bridle. I managed to right myself and grabbed him by his halter. The wind howled between us. My mount heaved to free himself, but I hung onto him, I held his head down, and he looked at me in terror—as though I were drowning him. It seemed he would neigh for help. “No,” I whispered. I took off my greatcoat, threw it over him, and tucked him in.

  Now I was all ears, trying to listen in the whine of wind and the rustle of snow for the approach of my pursuers. No sound came, or else it was coming from all sides at once—the storm kept playing with me until I gave up trying to hear beyond its orchestra. I accepted that I would stay here, waist deep in snow, and if they were destined to find me, then find me they would.

  • • •

  When I came to, the skies were gray and quiet. This I did remember: there had been a blizzard, and it must have ceased. But who was I? What was I doing here? I did not know.

  I had a horse next to me, a horse draped with a greatcoat; he looked unwell and his head was drooping with a certain submission to fate. The sight made me eager to help him, or at least change his position. He was reluctant to move, but I kept pulling and excavating—his reins were wrapped around my hand for a reason. We plowed into shallower snow and started walking—I in the lead, my beast companion, still in his overcoat, limping behind me. I had no idea where I was going.