The figure she had seen was no longer visible. She ran in among the wagons and booths and vendors with their carts, heedless of the shouts and commotion and marketplace haggling filling the air around her. Frantically she ran about, glancing up and down the rows, trying to focus her eyes upon the one face she now sought.
Suddenly she saw the familiar back and head. But he seemed to be hurrying away from her!
She snatched up the hem of her dress and ran as fast as she could go with new energy. This time she would not take her eyes off him for a second!
She called out, praying he would be able to hear her above the din.
He seemed to hesitate, then went on. She shouted again, still rushing toward him.
He stopped and turned fully around to face her. As if with physical impact, their eyes met. He stared with shocked surprise, even pain. Anna slowed her pace and walked toward him, smiling. Why was there no joy in his face?
Suddenly he jerked around and rushed off again in the opposite direction.
“Paul!” she cried once more, anguish filling her voice. She knew he had seen her and recognized her . . . yet he had run away!
Again she tried to run, but the throng of shoppers and the haphazard arrangement of stalls and dogcarts and clusters of people impeded her progress. Still she managed to keep her brother in sight.
Then just as suddenly as before, Paul stopped again. The two uniformed gendarmes entering the market on the other side apparently caused him to think twice about the direction of his flight. In another moment or two, Anna caught up with him.
“Paul!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “You . . . I didn’t know . . . What are you doing in St. Petersburg?”
“Hello, Anna,” he said curtly, not even attempting to answer her questions.
“But what are you doing here . . . and why did you run from me?”
“It’s a long story, Anna.” His voice was husky. He was having difficulty masking his surprise at this meeting . . . nor could he conceal his dismay. Anna felt it and was grieved. Something must be dreadfully wrong!
“Paul, what is it?” said Anna. As overjoyed as she was to see her brother, the years had matured him, and she could not fail to see the hardness that had come over his countenance.
“So many things, Anna,” he replied wistfully, then shot a nervous glance over his shoulder at the two policemen.
Anna gazed at his face a moment, trying to discover some remnant there of the innocent younger brother she had last seen in Katyk.
“There’s a tea shop around the corner,” she said finally. “Won’t you join me?” Without giving him a chance to answer, she linked her arm in his and they walked away from the market. They went some distance in silence.
“Anna,” Paul said finally, in an almost desperate-sounding outburst, “I am sorry.”
“Dear Paul, that hardly seems the way to start a reunion. I want to hear about you, what you are doing.” She tried to sound eager, although she knew from his voice that more serious matters were on his mind than mere visiting.
“I am afraid it is the only way to begin this one,” he replied. “I am sorry for running when I saw you. But I am sorrier that we met in the first place.”
“Paul, how can you say that? What has happened?” Anna could no longer restrain her emotion. Tears welled up in her eyes. There was much more to all this than his running from her. Paul had changed!
“It would be best for both of us if we parted right now,” he said, “and forgot that we ever saw each other.”
“You are my brother, Pavushka.” He winced at the sound of the diminutive form of his name, Little Paul, and it made Anna’s heart ache. From Kazan’s lips he had felt it endearing; from Anna it made him feel like a child. “I cannot leave you,” she went on, “until I know what troubles you, and how I might help.”
“You can’t help, Anna.”
“Oh, but won’t you let me try?”
“I would never allow you to be drawn into the troubles that may soon come upon me.”
“Oh, Paul, I don’t understand any of this!”
“That is why I left home, why I must be as one dead to you all. It is for your own protection.”
“But don’t you see, I want to help you—whatever is the matter.”
“I am beyond your help, and I do not want or need it.”
“Why did you leave home, Paul?”
“I was forced to leave—”
“Not Papa!”
“No. He would never do such a thing. He would live with my shame before sending me away.”
“Of course. Whatever your trouble, he would love you through it.”
“I couldn’t do that to him. I could not bring shame upon him. So I left Pskov as soon as they released me from jail.”
“Jail? What are you talking about, Paul?”
“It is a long story, Anna. Long and unpleasant. I don’t want you to hear such ugly things—not about your own brother.”
“Paul, despite what you have always thought, I am not a hothouse flower that must be protected and pampered. I will love you no less.”
“You do not know the truth about me, Anna.”
“I am strong enough to hear what you have to say—perhaps not within myself, but with the strength God gives me.”
“I see you still believe in fairy tales.”
“Oh, Paul, how can you say that?” She started to cross herself as she uttered a quick silent prayer for her brother, but he quickly grabbed her hand.
“Not for me, Anna. I want no prayers on my behalf.”
She managed a smile through her pain. “It is too late, dear Pavushka,” she said.
He slowly dropped his hand from hers. “All right, Anna, you want to hear about my troubles . . . I will tell you.” His voice was filled with defiance and bitterness.
They walked past the tea shop. Neither was in the mood for tea, and the things Paul had to say were best not told in close proximity to eavesdroppers.
37
Up and down the streets of Vassily Island walked brother and sister—the one rebelling against what he saw as injustice in the world, the other full of a heart of love that could not understand his defiance.
Paul talked of his experiences with scornful relish, perhaps subconsciously wanting to hurt his gentle sister as he had been hurt. Yet after the worst of his pent-up anger had vented itself, he began to talk in the manner Anna was accustomed to, pouring out his heart. He reminded her, once in a while, of the youthful Paul she had known back in Katyk. He tried to maintain the tough exterior, but found it impossible with a sympathetic and loving listener like Anna.
But the moment his talk came around to Kazan’s death, the hardness quickly returned. “It only proved that everything I have always said is true, Anna,” he said. “The tsar and Vlasenko and all the rest are out to spill the blood of the radicals, whether crimes are committed, whether proof of guilt exists, or not.”
“But you said yourself, Paul, that Kazan was one of them, one of the leaders . . . that he condoned the methods of violence. Isn’t it possible—”
“I think you have lived among the nobility too long, Anna!” he snapped.
“I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t even know Kazan. I don’t know whether he deserved to die, but—”
“He was my friend,” interrupted Paul again, in mingled anger and fresh pain at the thought of the hanging.
“Oh, Paul, but don’t you remember what Mama always used to tell you about getting into trouble just by being with that group of strangers, as she called them. Kazan was part of it all, even if nobody died in the incident he was arrested for. Isn’t that being an accessory? And he did threaten the tsar’s life; you said as much.”
“So when I was arrested in Katyk along with Kazan and the others,” he replied, ignoring her second comment, “you would have believed me guilty for the same reason?”
“Guilty of breaking the existing laws,” she answered slowly, tentatively. She did not enjoy this kind of debate
. “So . . . weren’t the police only doing their duty to arrest you?”
“And if the laws themselves are wrong?”
“Then they must be changed, not broken.”
“There is no other way to change the laws, my dear simpleminded sister. The people of Russia have been trying for three hundred years. But the government of this land spends very little time listening to its people!”
Anna shook her head. For the first time she was glad for all Fingal had tried to teach her and the princess about the roots of the strife presently dividing the Motherland. “Civil protest, even civil disobedience may be justifiable in some cases—perhaps in this case, Paul. But murder is another thing entirely. That goes far beyond the breaking of some minor law as you did in Katyk. To kill is to defy the most serious of God’s laws, Paul. How can you possibly argue against a truth you have been taught and know to be true?”
Her brother was silent a long time before he answered.
“Anna, you have only to step out of your little fairy world of pampered princesses and gilded corridors for one minute to truly see what the real world is like.” As he spoke he gave her a hard, penetrating glare, almost a challenge. He waited a moment, then went on.
“Nothing is normal in Russia; nothing works as it should; nothing operates according to the pat maxims we learned as children at our father’s feet. You admit there is injustice, yet you have no concept of its true scope. Perhaps you might if you saw your friends rotting in prison for crimes no worse than reading unacceptable literature, or meeting together to exchange ideas the government finds offensive. . . .” He paused, then took a breath and continued. “Houses of the innocent are searched and their lives turned upside-down for a rumor of so-called ‘anti-government’ sympathy. I have seen men and women exiled for no more than carrying a banned pamphlet in their pocket. I might even have suffered such a fate in Pskov had I not been so young. Even at that I was . . .”
He faltered momentarily as the memory of his imprisonment came painfully back to him.
“But how does our ruler, our benevolent ‘Little Father’ respond to our cries for justice? He answers by making more arrests, by greater censorship and repression of the press, by calling for more hangings, and by giving a wider range of power to animals like Vlasenko. You know him, Anna. You know what cruelty he showed to Papa’s friends. And he is worse now with such power in his hands! Tell me, Anna—what recourse is there?”
He did not wait for her to reply. “The monsters in power leave us no other path. They have signed their own death warrants by their blinded eyes and injustice!”
“Paul . . .”
Anna was too stunned to say more. She shuddered at his use of the collective us. She refused to think he condoned all this violence, much less that he might be part of it! How could her sweet, sensitive, innocent Pavushka possibly be involved in . . . in killing? Yet she feared his own words condemned him.
“I suppose it is too much for me to ask you to understand,” Paul said. “How much do your princes and princesses see of all this anguish?” he went on bitterly. “What do they know, what do you know all hidden away behind the wealth of the aristocracy?”
He was right. How could she understand? Could she ever accept that her own brother was in league with cold-blooded murderers? But even if everything he said was right, there had to be some other way!
“I am sorry, Paul,” she said with anguish. “But no, I cannot understand. People are being killed by these attacks on the tsar and other officials—innocent people! There is no possible justification for that. There can’t be any.”
“It is unfortunate,” Paul replied distantly. “But in a just cause, sacrifices must be made.”
“Paul!” she cried, her voice drawing the stares of passers-by as they walked along.
“I am willing to sacrifice my own life, Anna,” he said intractably.
“Oh, my dear brother . . .”
She was weeping now, and took a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe away the tears.
“How shall I tell Mama and Papa?” she asked, at last voicing the greatest agony in her wrenching heart. “How can you do this . . . to them?”
“They are dead to me, Anna, as I should be to them,” he replied coolly.
“Paul! How can you say such a horrid thing?”
“My only family now are my comrades in this cause.”
“And me . . . am I no longer your sister? Do I no longer love you?”
He did not answer. Anna glanced away, her heart torn in two, struggling to fight against breaking down completely.
“I cannot prevent you from telling them all you have learned about me,” Paul said in another moment. “I don’t care for my sake. It would be best for all if they buried me in their minds. But for their sake, Anna, take care what you say to them.”
She looked up hopefully. “Then you do still care about them?”
“Of course. But it is now only in the way a man grieves for a lost loved one who has gone away never to return—”
For just a moment, even amid her pain, Anna was reminded of Sergei, and her brother’s words stung all the more.
“It’s the only way it can be, Anna,” he went on. “I am dead, Anna.”
“I can never accept that, Paul.”
“You must accept it! You don’t even have to tell them you saw me.”
“I doubt I could hide that, even in a letter.”
“Ah, my transparent sister!”
He smiled lightly and touched her cheek in one last sign of tenderness. For a moment he was the same dear Paul, still an earnest, idealistic young country lad. But the moment was all too brief. The next instant the dark, heavy shroud fell again over his youthful countenance.
“There is nothing more I can say then, Paul?”
“Not if you think you can try to talk me out of the principles I have come to hold. Nothing can do that, Anna—not even you.”
A long silence fell between them.
When again they began to talk, they walked on for ten more minutes, each making pathetic attempts at trivial conversation. Yet each one’s lifestyle and beliefs were so offensive in the other’s eyes that there remained very little left to say that did not add salt to their already wounded hearts. Finally, they neared the approach to Nicholas Bridge. There was nothing to say except goodbye.
“Will I see you again, Paul?” asked Anna softly.
“Not by intention,” he said. “And if you should see me as you did today, Anna, it would be best, for both our sakes, for you to turn in the other direction and pretend you do not know me.”
“That would be so hard, Paul. How could you expect it of me?”
“Life is hard, Anna.”
Anna could no longer think about discretion, or even about what Paul himself might think. She turned and wrapped her arms lovingly around her younger brother. He stood woodenly for a moment, refusing to give in to the affection he still felt for his sister. But her tears finally overcame him. It was much easier to think of his family as dead to him when they were miles away.
Slowly he raised his arms and returned Anna’s embrace, tentatively at first, then with an almost desperate fervor. When they parted, his cheeks were also streaked with tears.
“Goodbye, Anna,” said Paul.
“Paul . . . I love you,” said Anna. “And I always will—no matter what.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodbye, Paul,” she said softly, reluctantly. Then he turned and was gone.
Anna stood at the entrance of the bridge and watched as Paul threaded his way down the crowded street. Would she ever see him again? He had not even told her where he lived. His life and cause had swallowed him up completely.
Yet as she turned and began her way across the bridge, she could not keep herself from clinging to the small glimpses of an earlier Paul, not completely dead but struggling for life beneath the tough skin of the embittered rebel youth. If only she could have said something to coax that Paul out of hiding. Y
et her intuition told her that words would probably not have helped.
She must commit her brother the rebel into the hands of God, who loved Paul more than she or even their own papa did. Only that love could now keep him—if he would only accept it—from a life that was sure to end in destruction.
38
The minute Anna returned, Princess Katrina noticed something was wrong.
“Are you ill, Anna?” she asked with genuine concern. “I have never seen you so pale.”
“I suppose I am not feeling my best,” replied Anna. The sickness in her heart had, in fact, begun to make its way to her stomach. All she had said to Katrina only hours ago about God sharing burdens and delivering from fear was still true, but oh, how she hurt inside!
“Why don’t you lie down, Anna?”
“I must iron your dress for the ballet this evening.”
“Oh, pooh! Someone else can do it. This isn’t a labor camp, Anna. You don’t have to work on your deathbed, you know!”
Anna managed a smile. “I suppose I imagine myself more indispensable than I am.”
“But you are, Anna! When I caught you in the garden that day I would never have imagined that you would become such an important part of my life. I do need you. You have become as necessary to me as Nina is to Mother. But I think I can manage for a few hours without you—as long as you are well and fit by the time Basil returns from Moscow.”
Anna went to her little room and lay on her bed with a book in hand, thinking that reading might distract her mind. She could not remember the last time she had fallen asleep in the middle of the day, yet before long she was fast asleep, dreaming vaguely of lying beneath her old willow tree at home, a book in her lap, with the fragrant breezes of summer blowing gently past her face.
She awoke two hours later with a start. The shadows slanting through her bed chamber windows had lengthened and darkened. She could not tell how late it might be. Could the princess already have left for the ballet without her assistance?
For the first moments after waking, Anna’s mind was filled with thoughts of Katrina and her responsibilities to her mistress. Then suddenly she remembered why she had taken to her bed in the first place.
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