White Blood

by James Fleming

  Vastok climbed onto the spring leaf and stuck his head into the wrecked carriage. He withdrew it and peered down to me with his snakelike eyes. "Dead."

  "Count Igor Rykov, my relative."

  "Tell me the names of the other dead men again."

  "Timofei the coachman and Count Andrej Potocki from the general staff."

  "Two aristocrats, one bomb. Another victory for the bolsheviks. Who gave them their information?" He jumped down, flicked his head at Kobi. "What about him?"

  I said he'd been with me every moment for the last three days. Everyone knew the marriage was to take place in a few days. They must have had someone watching the station.

  "And ridden out in advance of these men and chosen the place? Hidden themselves and the bomb? Never. They had prior information." The sergeant dismissed my idea with a wave of his hand. "Thank the Lord I don't have to worry about that. Killing the bastards is my job . . . Form a line, men, and pick up every piece of the bodies that you can find. Hurry, it's getting cold."

  At that moment one of his troopers walked in his bandylegged way into the circle of light. He'd scooped up some clothing and now had it spread over both forearms, which he extended to us like a tailor proffering a sample. He even made us a little bow.

  I could have kissed every pockmark on his brutish face. For what he had draped over his arms was a ragged portion of one leg of the trousers Andrej had been wearing that morning: the unmistakeable regimental trousers of the Tsar's Garde a Cheval—saintly white with a fat seam of scarlet braid. No one could possibly dispute the fact of Andrej's death now.

  With delight I told Vastok whose they were. He said he'd already agreed the dead man was Potocki. Why was I so anxious? "You think you'll get his woman," he said flatly. "Either his woman or his money. Or his horses. You stand to get something, that's obvious. Maybe it was you who arranged it."

  He raised his large flat cap. His head was shaven except for a black forelock, his Cossack chub. He smoothed his hand over his nodular skull and settled his cap. One of his men spoke to him. Vastok jerked his thumb at me and said, "He did it. He wants the woman."

  Forty-one

  The steward arrived with the Popovka men from the other direction. They had a wagon laden with bedding, lanterns, ropes, shovels, crowbars and food. A little later Nicholas turned up on a fresh horse, leading the way for a young doctor from Smolensk who was driving himself in a covered trap, a little box of a thing.

  I made a joke to the doctor concerning the mix of limbs and the place for a pedant in the proceedings. He regarded me strangely, much as Kobi had done earlier. Nicholas overheard me, for I was in good humour. He became very stuffy. He was clearly upset, and not really speaking to anyone—certainly not taking command of the situation. The Popovka men were eyeing him slyly as they waited for orders. I could see trickling through their minds all the money, coin by coin, that the Rykovs had lost by this spectacular failure of the union with the Potockis. I had an urge to go among them whispering, But don't forget Count Igor's dead too ... his pockets rang like church bells when he went for a walk . . . Bozhe moy, the riches of the man . . .

  The parleying continued: Nicholas, the doctor, myself, the sergeant of Cossacks. The rankers were standing around smoking. Nicholas carped and criticised—glared at the torn soil—sat down on a log and fell silent. After a while I told him it'd be midnight before we got anywhere at this rate. When he started to whine about his bad luck, I took over. I got the soldiers and the Popovka contingent to form a new line and thus we swept the entire area, banks and bracken, stream and marsh, until the doctor declared the corpses complete—or complete enough.

  He agreed with me about Potocki's remains. I got him to sign my statement also. Then he made parcels of the bodies, which he tied to the roof of his trap. Having done this he set off back to Smolensk, the Cossacks following him.

  Of course the road had been rendered impassable. We unloaded the baggage and carried it round the crater to the Popovka wagon. The frosty moon shone as sharp as a cutlass, confusing the lanterns and throwing out long, swaying shadows. We could have looked like prisoners on the road to Siberia.

  Nicholas and I walked together behind the wagon.

  The extent of his problems now became evident. He'd been an idiot. He'd put all his ready money plus some borrowing into various joint farming enterprises with the Popovka peasants. They'd rattled the prospect of a good profit beneath his nose and gulled him ruthlessly. To finance the wedding and Liza's dowry he'd gone not to his usual lenders, the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, but to Kugel &C Co. in the Pochtamtskaya. There was a point here he didn't fully explain. I think it centred upon the anxieties of the Mortgage Corporation. Anyway, they'd only lend a proportion of the sum required whereas old man Kugel had been most obliging.

  "At a cost but at least I didn't have to worry about not getting the money at all. It wasn't a good deal. My friends do nothing but boast about how they got a quarter per cent knocked off here or an extra sixty days credit there, but I . . . However, reflecting upon it as I rode home, I thought, It serves me right for having spent Liza's dowry on my own projects. So I thought better of myself for having recognised this fact."

  Potocki had later agreed to share the cost of the wedding. But nothing had been written down—and now he was dead. It was weighing heavily on Nicholas. The Pink House was full of food, of every luxury that could still be purchased in Moscow. He'd had to pay cash. He faced a loss of a good fifty per cent even if he could get Belov's to take their stuff back. What could he do? There were still eight months before harvest. He'd also borrowed against the crop itself. So if the weather was like it had been two years ago . . .

  It would have been a dismal tale on anyone's tongue. But Nicholas would have me believe that bad luck had singled him out for special treatment. He walked with his head bowed. He could think of nothing favourable to say about anyone— including Liza.

  "She could have had him weeks ago if she'd put her mind to it. Now he's gone and got himself killed. It's even possible she may be too compromised to get another man—you know, Charlie, too soiled. She might be carrying his child. Think of that."

  This reminded him of Helene and Leo and young Nicholas, and of the Rykovs in general. The illustriousness of his family history pressed down on him. If things went on as they were, he might have nothing but debts to leave his children. He'd be best to sell the Pink House—retire to a district where he was unknown—even to take his own life, if he had the courage to do it. His anxieties came out in the jerky speech of a man sinking ever lower in his own estimation.

  Morosely he enumerated the possibilities. It was horrible listening to him. He was so feeble at the point of decision.

  For the third time he said, "But what shall I do if it turns out that she's pregnant?"

  I stabbed my finger at his chest. "I'll marry her. I'll take all these worries off your plate."

  We came to an abrupt halt in the brilliant moonlight. He stroked his lower lip. He looked at me intently.

  "Is this an offer made for family convenience or were you all along secretly . . . you know . . . her suitor?" He was looking at me with his face on one side. The weakness had vanished. Already he was making new calculations.

  "Take it as you find it."

  "What a tragedy that could have been . . . But Charlie, how your pulse must have raced just now, when you realised what had happened! Eh, Charlie boy, eh!"

  Then sharply. "She'll have you?"

  "Why'd I say that otherwise?"

  "Of course she'll get Igor's fortune now . . . Tell you what, I'll agree to the wedding as long as you promise to support me. You'll have enough money."

  I laughed at him. "I don't need your agreement. You couldn't stop us if you tried."

  He put his arm round my shoulder. "I don't know how that slipped out. It's all the tension that's been building up within me. Let's just be three good friends together—three cousins, even better. Have her whenever you want, Charlie
, just as I said to poor Andrej."

  Forty-two

  The wagon-driver was chanting a song concerning the unexpected death of a lover. Standing up, stamping his right boot at the moments of emphasis, he was making the most of the long, melancholy notes.

  Nicholas strode up. "Enough of that, boys, enough of the past. It was God's wish, wasn't it? Let's give thanks we're still here. Someone sing a cheery tune to get us home."

  I said to him in an undertone, "Have some respect for your sister. They'll think she's a whore if you just wipe out Andrej's death and pretend it won't matter to her. Have respect also for Timofei, who was a well-liked man."

  "We're going to be three jolly cousins together, old chap Charlie," Nicholas said. In that light I thought he had glass eyes they were so shining with triumph.

  I wanted to say to him, You're the greediest man in Popovka, and the most unprincipled and despicable. This is the second time that you've sold your sister—once every six weeks that amounts to.

  That was what I said to him with my expression. To myself I said, I shall wed Elizaveta Rykov in place of Potocki and straightway take ship to the United States, to Norman Joiner and the museum in Chicago.

  Yes, we would marry immediately. I would walk up the aisle wearing Potocki's boots and after a short honeymoon Liza and I would become another of those families camping on the platform on the chance that a Train No. 7 would at some stage arrive and whisk us to Odessa. Then to Marseilles—New York—and so in our gliding cream and brown Pullman through the roaring stockyards of Chicago to Union Station. We would emphasise our Russianness, paint ourselves as the naturalist and his aristocratic love match fleeing from the barbarians. Lizochka would play auction bridge, impetuously, at afternoon parties of jealous, lynx-eyed ladies. Husbands would return early from their discount brokerages to feast upon her beauty, her nurse's sympathetic eye and her rolling-river "r"s. I'd have to associate with men of learning who wore brown suits and celluloid collars, but for half the year I'd rough it and grow old on the trail, as Goetz had done. Uncle Igor's fortune would see us through the hard times.

  I began to make a reckoning of the hard times we'd have. Allow seven days a year for her fits and their consequences, five for my recurrent bouts of typhus, five for arguments, five for tantrums, ten for when the babies come, five for the visits of sheer bad luck plus a general allowance of ten per cent. Thus six weeks of every year could be ruined—annulled from the records. It was too much.

  Paring it down: Dear Lord, preserve Lizochka and your servant from hard times. She is the only woman I can love. She deserves the best you have. Make me listen to her. Give her easy births and loving children. Hear this prayer, Lord Christ.

  I was ready to explain all this to her, that it wasn't going to be easy on account of our afflictions. However, I'd pleaded with God. I was full of strong and original lines why she should marry me.

  She listened for a bit. Then she interrupted: "I'll only do it if I can hear your heart beating as you enter the room. You've got to want me impossibly."

  "But I do!" What else could I say?

  "Not convincing. I'm having nothing to do with you if this is another of Nicholas's schemes. I understand them now. I don't want you to even touch me unless it gives you an electric shock. That's how it should be. That's proper love, not the sort that lawyers arrange."

  "As it was with Andrej?"

  "Nicholas's work from start to finish. He knows nothing about women."

  We were in her room, surrounded by the Chinese scarlet, amid the sweet perfumes of birchwood burning in the hearth and of the daily hashish pipe that she had taken to smoking to dampen le grand mal. It was evening. I'd spent the day rehearsing my lines. The wedding arrangements were still in place. Nicholas had been spreading the news about Liza and me to force our hands. Everyone was astounded by the twists in the tale and sniggering behind our backs. Kobi reported that the villagers were going round saying as Vastok had that it was I who'd been behind the bomb. "Look at him, pinching the dead man's woman without any sense of shame. Who else could it have been?"

  Sonja had been so disgusted that she'd taken her papers and left, the little prude.

  Somehow her name now entered our speech. I told Liza she was better off without her, saw the look in her face and sped off at an angle, hoping she hadn't been listening properly. She had. She bridled immediately: drew herself up: poked out her Saracen's nose. God she could be so beautiful.

  But it had been a mistake speaking against Sonja and it was useless trying to retrieve it. Women are so difficult. It's far easier to rectify a mistake made when luring a bird with its song. One wrong move with a woman and you've got to spend hours coaxing and cajoling and even bribing them to look at you again.

  "Gradualness is the great point with women," my mother used to tell me. "Don't snatch, Charlie."

  But to marry this woman was top of my list. I'd said it once and I said it again as Liza started to tell me about Sonja's intelligence and how wrong I was and how presumptuous. I told her what Mother had said about gradualness. I said I'd been as gradual as I was going to be. I told her flat that I wasn't going to be refused, that yes or no was too full a choice. She smiled slightly, a movement of her lips.

  The scarlet walls and black bookshelves, the hot colours of the Caucasus, they swirled around me with the tang from her hashish. I was intoxicated by them, by the tumult of my love and by my own energy. I wanted to eat her—to gain possession and have at my disposal her body—her entity, everything she was made of, bones and skin and spirit, guts and juices. I was on the point of bursting. My arms trembled to grab her. Only the lack of consent restrained me.

  "We'll leave in a balloon for our honeymoon and conceive our first child at a height of five thousand feet." It was the continuation of a previous whim.

  "Don't be facetious. That's the sort of thing Nicholas would have said if he'd had enough wit. Listen, Charlie. A woman exposes herself and gives everything that's most vulnerable about her when she accepts a man. She must take her time, judge him thoroughly, judge the quality of his blood and the prospects for children and happiness."

  "That's being pompous," I said. "You've known me forever. Remember the Simplicitas?"

  "I knew Andrej too."

  "Good brave man, Andrej. But he still looked up your skirts when you were on the swing."

  "I never didn't wear knickers. Your Nanny Agafya would have had me struck by lightning."

  "But he's gone now. Whereas I am here, asking that you marry me and come to America. Why shilly-shally?" I took a step towards her. "Let's do it. That's where the future is. We're good together. God in heaven, Lizochka, you've only got to think about what's happened—Andrej, Uncle Igor, the state of the country, revolution being openly talked about, even abdication. Why wait? Are you crazy? . . . Oh dusha moya, my beautiful love, I didn't mean it like that, forgive me that I'm crass," and I raised her from the chair to her stockinged feet and fixed her solemn eyes.

  "Why didn't you say anything when I was betrothed to Andrej ? Was it just chance that you left it until Igor was dead—until I inherited? Are you sure this isn't Nicholas again? Sonja was right, you can never trust men."

  "I tried," I started, but she'd spread her sails and was scudding along.

  "What about it, then? What were you doing all the time I was being estimated for pedigree duties? Do you think I wanted to marry him? That his sugar beet was such a draw? Duty, that's how Nicholas wore me down. Duty, the noble line of Rykov, what society expects, comfort in my old age—night after night until I was exhausted and gave in. Where were you when I was in need, Charlie Doig?"

  Raising my voice, "Stop gabbing and listen. Remember that evening the timber beetle flew past? What do you suppose I was saying?"

  It was too much. She exploded, pushed me away, thumped the boards with her foot and yelled into my face, "Beetle! An insect flies past and you chuck me away! Your so-called lovemaking stopped dead in its tracks, like a raindrop hitting a
windowpane. Oh no, Charlie, you can't get away with that . . . All I was after was enough encouragement to put Andrej aside. Then a beetle goes past under your nose—and—and—"

  She had her fingers crooked in talons to claw me. Her nipples were taut beneath her blouse, an ounce of gunpowder in each. Tears the size of gooseberries were rolling down her cheeks, her lips were buckling. "A damned common beetle was better than me"—that was what I heard, and then I snapped her into my arms and clung to her as a stormbound mariner clings to the mainmast and puts his trust in God. We were shivering, both. I vowed never to mention beetles within her earshot. I called her my angel, my jewel, my columbine, my meadow pipit, my lady of Krakow, my treasure trove, the mother of my children.

  "I always knew we were meant for each other. Always! Daily!"—"Grow your hair to your waist and make a cradle of it for me to rest in, like Moses"—"Out, grand mal! Out, out, I abolish you!"

  Such were the endearments I murmured and shouted. She smiled and smiled on me, stroked my cheeks and swore it would have come to this, even if she had gone off with Potocki. It was how love matches were made. It was how the world operated its levers, even though it was sometimes slow to interview all the applicants and get them paired off. So many lost souls searching for love! Queues of them! Ladies in this line, if you please . . . gentlemen must remove their hats ... if you don't mind, sir. We kissed, made our jokes, wallowed like hippos in our conjoined emotions and kissed again and again. We built a house (wooden, very Russian) and furnished it exotically. We lined our children up on the brown turf of our summer-parched lawn in order of height and age and discovered a difference of three feet two inches between the glossy poll of Daniel, our firstborn, and Sibylla, the baby, who wasn't really a baby at the time we imagined this but a plump little lady of six who would be pushed on the swing only by her mother.