Delicate and lovely in her mourning – for black, as she knew, suited her well – Varya, with drooping head and bravely held back tears, tyrannized the household. Wartime shortages notwithstanding, her delicate appetite must be tempted. Frail and desolate as she was, she could not be expected to take part in the bandage-rolling sessions that Zhenia organized, nor the fund-raising activities, nor the hospital visits. Her indisposition however did not prevent her from holding court with friends and family in Zhenia’s small private sitting room, that Varya with steely enterprise had taken firmly and indisputably as her own. She held always a delicately-embroidered, lace-trimmed handkerchief, snowy white, with which to dab at her still-lovely eyes each time the names of ‘my precious, martyred Victor’ or ‘poor dear Andrei’ could be produced, or when bewailing – as she did at length and with pious resignation – her poor widow’s lot.
Lenka, inevitably, was the first to lose patience with her.
‘Mama, for heaven’s sake! Anyone would think that Papa had got himself killed just to spite you! It’s been seven months! There’s a war on! I know it doesn’t make it any easier, but people are being killed all the time!’ Why not Donovalov? The thought was never far from her mind. Please, God, make him die. The thought was as automatic as a ‘bless you’ after a sneeze. ‘Don’t you think you should try – just try? – to go back home, to manage the shop – at least to attempt to pick up the threads? You’ll never feel any better while you sit here doing nothing but brood and eat those damned chocolates!’
Zhenia, sitting behind her sister, a heavy woollen balaclava taking shape beneath her competent hands, cast a wryly amused glance at her niece but held her tongue.
Varya lifted a pale, affronted face. ‘Brood, child? Whatever can you mean? My health is not good, that cannot be denied – but then what else could be expected in the circumstances?’ The pretty handkerchief fluttered, dabbed. ‘But brood? I don’t think that’s at all a nice word to use to your poor mother, do you? It does smack so of self-indulgence.’ Her eyes, sharp and clear, lifted challengingly to her daughter.
Lenka sighed, and looked away.
The long lashes drooped, triumph hidden. ‘Of course, if I felt for a moment that I were a burden, if I felt there were no room for me here –’ She turned her head a little, veiled gaze still on Lenka, but inclining head and body towards Zhenia.
On cue, resignedly, Zhenia shook her head. ‘Of course not, Varushka.’ The words, despite effort, were brusque. ‘Don’t be silly. There’s a home for you here for as long as you like, as you well know. Didn’t you ask Mischa the self-same question just yesterday?’ It was a small barb she could not resist. ‘Lenka dear,’ she added, mildly, ‘do you think you could persuade Tonia to put down that pretty thing she’s taken a fancy to? I wouldn’t normally mind, but it is Faberge, and a particular favourite of Katya’s.’
Heavily Lenka turned. Varya averted her eyes from her daughter’s untidy bulk. ‘Tonia,’ Lenka said, sternly, but with a caressing note in her voice that was used for no-one but this first-born daughter, certainly never to her small, placid son, ‘put it down, little one. It’s very fragile.’
‘I won’t break it.’ The child, thin as a rail, freckled and with a mop of marigold hair that her Aunt Anna, had she ever seen her, would have recognized, scowled.
‘I know. But Aunt Zhenia thinks you will.’
Adversity, Zhenia reflected ironically, had taught Lenka little of tact.
‘And since it’s hers, I suppose you should put it down, don’t you?’
The child, still scowling ferociously, replaced the gleaming crystal thing upon the table, but reluctant to leave it she clasped small hands behind her back and leaned forward, studying it, rapt.
‘What is it?’ Lenka asked. And, as she so often had been, Zhenia, watching, was struck by the rapport between these two. The look on Lenka’s face, whose very structure was lost now in rolls of fat, was intent, almost hungry, as she watched the spare, small figure of her daughter.
‘It’s a little tree. It has apples. And golden pears.’
‘And a little bird.’ Relenting, Zhenia set her knitting aside and went to join the child. ‘Would you like to hear him sing?’
‘Yes.’
Zhenia waited, glancing at Lenka.
Lenka said nothing.
‘Yes what?’ Zhenia asked, mildly.
The child lifted her small, pinched face. The wide pale eyes held an intelligence – no – Zhenia groped for the word – an awareness far beyond her years, ‘Just yes,’ she said, flatly. And would, Zhenia knew instinctively, have sacrificed tree, bird and life itself before she said more.
‘That child,’ Varya said, clearly and coldly, ‘has the manners of a peasant.’
Zhenia was winding the tiny golden key.
‘What a pretty thing.’ Margarita who, bored almost to tears, had been standing by the window looking down onto the frozen canal, wandered across the room, her interest caught. ‘Fabergé, you said?’
‘Yes.’ Zhenia was watching Tonia. The child stood, still and intent, listening to the sweet trilling of the bird, her rapt face free of its usual fierce scowl. ‘Lenka, I swear your little Tonia is getting more like her Aunt Anna every day!’
The effect on the child was startling. She threw back her head like an animal suddenly challenged. Stepped back from Zhenia and Margarita. Turned fiercely to her mother.
‘No, Tonia,’ Lenka said. ‘You’re nothing like your Aunt Anna.’
There was an odd and indisputably awkward silence. Only Margarita was apparently unaware of it. ‘That reminds me,’ she said, almost absently, still watching in fascination the tiny jewelled bird that warbled so musically, ‘I have a letter. From Anna. I keep forgetting to tell you. It came last week.’
‘Last week.’ Zhenia looked at her in exasperation. ‘Last week? Is it too much to hope you’ve brought it with you?’
‘Of course I have. Well, at least –’ Margarita was scrabbling in the small wrist-bag she carried. ‘Ah, yes. Here it is. Would you like to hear it? It doesn’t really say much.’
Zhenia picked up the little tree, clicked it to silence with a sudden sharp movement, and placed it back upon the table. ‘Yes, Margarita. We’d like to hear it.’
Margarita shook out two pages of flimsy paper. Screwed up her eyes a little. Read rapidly and with little emphasis.
Dearest Rita. Love to you and to everyone. How I miss you all in these bad times. It’s dreadful, isn’t it, with the war taking so many lives, not to be able to speak, to clasp hands, to reassure each other? I pray each day for Sasha and for Dmitri. I trust they both are safe.
She might, from her tone of voice, have been extending her sister’s greetings and hopes to a flock of chickens.
Lenka shifted heavily in her chair, the smallest sarcastic smile twitching at her lips. No-one, not even Anna, could bring themselves to pray for Donovalov.
I keep abreast as much as is possible with what is happening there with you. Guy has a contact in the Embassy in London – a very kindly man, Count Boris Stelyetsin – who keeps us informed, and of course the papers here keep us in touch with our allies in this war against the German aggressors. There were pictures the other day, of a patriotic march upon Nevsky Prospekt. I have to admit that it was such a shock to see that familiar street that a tear came to my eye. I searched and searched to see if any of you were there, though I knew as I did it how silly I was being!
For ourselves, sadly, the news is not good. Guy’s health is slow to improve – if I were honest I would admit that it does not improve at all. I have taken on most of the responsibility for the business, which is no trial I assure you, and keeps me busy, which is a blessing. There’s war work as well of course though down here in the country, where we spend a good deal of our time, that seems at the moment to consist of little but what the vicar’s wife calls ‘our little sewing bees’ and a constant speculation as to where and when the first Zeppelins will raid. I and Robert (our gardener
, a dear good friend) are very busy destroying our extravagant and pretty flower garden in order to plant vegetables. I hope you there in the city (isn’t it strange to think of dear Petersburg as ‘Petrograd’? I can’t seem to get used to it at all!) won’t be subject to too many shortages if this beastly war drags on?
Darling Rita, I hope all’s well with you. Sasha seems to have done well for himself – Boris says that to be at Baranovici with the Grand Duke is to be at the very heart of the Russian war effort. In England the spirit is very good, though no-one now thinks it will be easy. But we will prevail, our two countries together, and then your loving sister Anna will be back to kiss your cheek and hold your hand and laugh as we used to. Much love to all the family – is there any news of Katya? I haven’t heard from her for months. Is she with you in Petrograd, or has she gone with Jussi to Finland? – and please give Mama a hug and a kiss from me. I know how difficult a time it’s been for her. Tell her I’ll write very soon. Love too to Lenka, and to the children, and to Dmitri, ’Talia and their small brood. Just think, a whole tribe of children who’ve never met their Aunt Anna! Pray God the war ends soon and we can be together again.
Margarita was reading very rapidly now, scant interest in her voice.
Much love and God’s true blessing on you all, Anna.
Briskly she folded the paper.
Varya’s pretty handkerchief flickered. ‘Poor Anna.’
‘Why is she poor?’ Margarita’s mouth was set in a small, sulky line. For some reason the letter from her sister, with its breath of events and concerns beyond the snowlocked confines of war-constricted Petrograd, had unsettled her. This reading had produced again, as it had when first she had read it, a small, indefinable stirring of restless resentment that she found herself hard put to explain. ‘Why is she poor?’ she asked again.
‘In a foreign land. Far from her family, her home. And at such a time!’ Varya was indignant.
‘England, surely, is her home now?’ Zhenia, used to her sister’s irrational outbursts, pulled upon the bell cord. ‘We’ll take tea, shall we? Of course it’s her home. She doesn’t sound unhappy.’
‘Of course she does! She’s missing her family! It’s apparent in every line she writes!’
‘We’re all missing our families.’ Zhenia stood, collectedly tidied her knitting. ‘It’s part of the burden of war. Even having Katya just such a short distance away in Finland is a far greater worry than it normally would be. It’s strange. War seems to have made distances greater. And bonds more loving.’
Lenka shifted her bulk in the armchair. Her face was expressionless. Margarita had wandered back to the window, stood looking out, taking no further part in the conversation. She had a photograph at home, that Anna had sent her, of her sister’s house in the place called Sussex. A rambling, pretty house, not grand like a palace nor forbidding or romantic like a castle, but a small, flower-set jewel of a house, a dacha in a lush, tree-filled countryside. And they had an apartment in London, overlooking the city’s river Thames. London! And she’d been to Paris. Several times! And to Florence, and to Rome – poor Anna indeed!
‘Trust Anna,’ Lenka said, ‘to be able to worry about us all at a very great and very safe distance.’
‘Of course she’s worried about us!’ Varya failed entirely to hear the heavy sarcasm in Lenka’s voice. ‘Of course she is! What better daughter, what better sister, could anyone ever have asked for than Anna?’
Adages about absences and fond hearts, Zhenia thought, wryly, could truly have been coined for Varya.
Inconsequentially, tired of the conversation, noting only the grating sound of her sister’s voice, so familiar and so wearing, Margarita found herself wondering suddenly if Lenka knew of the visits that Pavel Petrovich Donovalov had taken to paying to the tiny apartment behind the Liteini Prospekt. The recollection brought the usual small tremble of unease. The man had the strangest eyes. He sat, drank tea, asked after Sasha. Asked all the time after Sasha. But that wasn’t why he came. She knew it. No man came to that apartment simply to ask about Sasha. And for every second he was there those awful eyes watched her. Made her feel – she lifted her head sharply, pushing the thought away.
‘What better sister indeed?’ Lenka asked, quietly.
‘I still think,’ Zhenia said, moving her chair a little closer to the stove, clearing a space around the samovar for the tea glasses, ‘that your little Tonia is her very image. Varya, don’t you remember Anna at that age?’
The small, tinkling crash arrested them all. Tonia stepped back, hands clasped firmly behind her back.
With a sharp cry Zhenia stepped forward, dropped, shimmering striped skirts billowing about her, reached out a hand, withdrew it.
The tiny bright shards of crystal glittered upon the carpet. The little bird lay still and silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tonia said, expressionlessly. ‘I dropped it.’
* * *
Katya moved, for what seemed like the hundredth time, from the dark window to the stove and then, within a moment, back again, plain woollen skirts swishing about the tiled floors. ‘You’re sure he said today?’
‘Today. He said today.’ Kaarlo sat apparently unconcerned, the inevitable knife, needle-sharp, in his hand, paring his nails. His dirty stockinged feet were lifted to the warm stove.
‘Then where is he? Where in the name of God is he?’ All day she had contained herself, all day she had told herself to remember the circumstances in which Jussi travelled, not to pin her hopes on that one laconic message. Today, he had said; but that could mean tomorrow, or the next day, or – chilling, unthinkable thought – never. ‘Where is he?’ she repeated, urgently, more to herself than to her companion.
Kaarlo shrugged. ‘Could be anywhere between here and –’ he caught himself, glanced at her ‘– and the coast. At least we know he got across the ice. Don’t worry. Jussi will make it.’ His reassurance was not personal, bore no warmth. It was a statement of fact. In Kaarlo’s eyes the day that Jussi failed would be the day the world collapsed and burned to a cinder.
Katya stood for a little while longer looking out into the darkness.
‘Draw the blinds,’ Kaarlo said. ‘Close the shutters. You’ll draw their attention.’
‘I’d rather put out the lights.’
The young man moved impatiently. ‘Put them out then. But don’t stand there like a bloody beacon attracting every sodding Russian soldier within miles to the door.’
Without comment she extinguished the lamps. She was beyond responding to his provocation. She took her stand by the darkened window again, renewed the litany that ran in her head like weary feet on a treadmill. Dear God, let him be safe. I’ll give anything, do anything, just so you make him safe.
Please. Don’t take him from me. I’ll do anything. Anything. I’ll go to church – I’ll build a bloody church. With my bare hands. But please! – don’t let him come to harm.
‘Is there tea?’ Kaarlo asked.
‘In the kitchen.’ She did not turn. Her voice was calm.
He muttered something.
‘Make it yourself,’ she said, crisply.
She remembered, suddenly, the first time she and Jussi had made love. Turned restlessly, walked to the stove again, stood looking at the pretty shining tiles that surrounded it, colourless in the darkness, yet gleaming in reflected light.
Walked back to the window. Jussi? I hope you’re listening, in that daft head of yours. I’ll never forgive you if you let yourself be killed. You hear me! I’ll haunt you. Oh, Lord! Even in such extremity, amusement lifted at the nonsense of such a notion. I’ll force you to haunt me. There! You won’t enjoy that, I promise you!
‘Where’s the blasted tea?’
‘Where the blasted tea should be. In the blasted box on the blasted table.’
She remembered other times, other lovemaking, beside the lake. In the lake. She remembered their bodies, shining and cold and slick with water. She remembered too the blithe and happy St
Petersburg nights, after their return to the city, before the coming of war had blighted everything and catapulted Jussi still further into this dangerous game he insisted on playing. She remembered the graceless deceptions, the shared laughter, and above all the love. The silly, astounding, frightening love. She had not known it was possible that one’s whole happiness, one’s very life, could rest in the hands of another. Jussi, you stupid, brainless idiot of a man – where are you? She couldn’t trust him to take care of himself, that was the problem. The stories Kaarlo had told! By God, she’d kill him – if he walked through the door at this minute, she’d kill him!
In the deserted street beyond the window, beneath the low overhang of the eves of one of the painted wooden houses, the shadow of a shadow moved, cast a goblin shade upon the snow for a moment and was gone. She narrowed her eyes, trying to probe the darkness. Kuopio lay in uneasy silence beneath its winter shroud. At the outbreak of war all pretence that Russia was not an occupying power had been abandoned. The Finnish Parliament – the Diet – had been summarily dismissed. Russian troops had been billeted everywhere. The Tsar’s Secret Police were suddenly much in evidence. Finland’s own young men had not been mobilized into the Russian armies, for their Russian masters did not trust them, and with good reason. Yet these same young men were not, on the whole, to be found at home twiddling their thumbs; some indeed were not to be found at all. Under the darkness of the bitter northern winter a secret war was being waged. Shadows slipped through the silent forests, in ones, in twos, in threes; the swish of skates was heard upon the misty, frozen lakes and rivers. Ski tracks appeared and were blown away before morning. Bridges fell. Trains were derailed. The odd Russian soldier, unwise enough to wander the apparently deserted forest alone, disappeared. Information was passed, quietly, from ear to ear beneath the very noses of the ever-suspicious Russians. Letters were sent, and cryptic telegrams, many from Stockholm where so many Finns had friends and relatives; it was natural, was it not, to communicate with such in times of trouble? Jussi had made three trips to Stockholm in the past four months, taking the perilous but apparently well-organized route across the ice of the Gulf of Bothnia, slipping through the Russian guard at night and striking out across the white wilderness of frozen ocean to Sweden. She did not know the purpose of these trips, though recently she had begun to suspect, and neither Jussi nor any of the others had chosen completely to confide in her; she was, after all, a Russian still. Jussi’s light-hearted declaration that what she did not know could not worry her did not fool her; the one thing she had had to come to terms with very early in their life together – the one thing that, tartly and with clarity, her sister-in-law Elisabet had taken quite unnecessary pains to point out to her on their return to St Petersburg – was that his love for his country would always outweigh his love for her. That particular passion was too long-held to be superseded by another. He would die for her, she supposed, if it were necessary; but not as readily as he would die for his country. It was a knowledge with which she lived day and night, a constant companion, a crow perched heavily upon her shoulder waiting for any chance to peck at her brain.
Strange Are the Ways Page 38