White Blood

by James Fleming

  She had a tongue like a gypsy's that went halfway down my throat. With open palms I frotted her gunpowder nipples until her eyes grew as large as plates and her adam's apple began to quiver. I was primed, eager as a dog, as full of go as any man just rescued from the brink.

  But I was too forward. She was a woman of grace and at heart demure. She held me off. It was to be husband or nothing.

  And there was another reason beside her own moral inclination. Her mother, the lady from Krakow, had given herself to her father out of wedlock and "no good ever came of it. Look what happened. When she died giving birth to me, everyone said that was why she died. She departed this earth in ignominy, which I would not wish for myself. You take me—you fall down the stairs and break your neck—how am I to account for young Daniel when he arrives? Your mother was right—gradualness, my darling Charlinka."

  The dinner gong boomed, three times sternly, as was Louis's custom.

  "Marriage, then hourly, then America." I kissed her mouth hard. And Louis, as if he'd been listening at the door for the last two hours, took it into his head to deliver a pattering crescendo with the gong mallet that culminated in a single magnificent reverberation, like the final and most spectacular rocket at a firework party.

  Viva! The betrothed couple!

  Forty-three

  I shut Nicholas as completely from my mind as I could. Liza and I were the possessors of great happiness. We wished only for hosannas, and spoke them to each other with our lips and our eyes and the swollen gestures of lovers.

  However, in supposing that I'd just slip into Andrej's place going up the aisle I'd planned too wildly.

  It was two days after the assassinations, in the late morning, that we were visited by a harassed detective inspector who'd been sent down from Moscow. With him were a local inspector and a stenographer. (I had thought the latter to be only the coachman—which he was, but he'd learned shorthand at the Smolensk Institute in his evenings.) They'd inspected the scene and come straight on.

  We were questioned one after another in the drawing room, Liza going first. She came out quite pale, shaking her head, and hurried away to the kitchens to arrange for the samovar and zakuski.

  Bobinski too was summoned for questioning, which delighted him. He dressed up in suitably sombre garments that had belonged to a previous lodger, now deceased—a fallen lawyer. He had Louis announce him, throw open the door with a flourish, and in he tottered on his cane, his scant hair watered and his eyebrows soldered to his forehead.

  Misha was last. He was no time at all. The stenographer emerged looking for a quiet corner to go through his transcript. Then Misha stuck his head out and said they'd finished, we could all go in now.

  We started with the forest itself. The inspector from Smolensk said it was seething with deserters from the army, with anarchists, and with the general criminal riff-raff that the prisons were now inadequate to hold on to. That every miscreant in the province took refuge in Popovka forest had been a universal assumption for as long as I could remember. Uncle Boris had spoken of them, how useful the tame ones were at haymaking time. So what was new? We looked from one inspector to the other.

  "Tell us something we don't know, whether you've apprehended anyone," Nicholas demanded, tossing his head of fair hair. We were impatient. For a policeman to hold back on secrets is a terrible disappointment.

  Thus it came out, fortunately when Liza was still away from the room, that Sonja, her maid, had been arrested as an accomplice. She was in custody in Smolensk. Her interrogation had already commenced.

  "Third Section, though we don't call it that now. But an identical body with identical methods. Results will be quick."

  "Gratitude!" squeaked Bobinski. "The family takes her in, treats her like one of their own and then—just look at the strumpet. She deserves everything she gets. You ask Louis about her, my goodness. He has an opinion."

  Indeed he did. Shaping his lips, he wafted it towards the inspectors like an old connoisseur of debauchery. "It's my belief that she has a sexual disorder. A number of times she made advances that I repelled. Then one day she grabbed my hand and applying unimaginable pressure led it down to her pudenda—" He broke off as Liza returned with a plate of angel cakes.

  "I'll bring in the zakuski," he said and left the room as fast as he could.

  "I omitted to tell you that we have in fact arrested your maid Sonja," the Moscow inspector said to Liza. "I wanted first to hear what these other gentlemen had to say. There is no doubt about her involvement."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "She was the only person who knew exactly what Count Potocki's movements were to be. Because of her position in your service."

  "Apart from myself."

  "Indeed."

  "Apart from a dozen members of the general staff."

  "Indeed."

  "So you agree that she wasn't the only one."

  "Of course, I have said so. But there is far stronger evidence that I cannot disclose. Anyway, the Third Section have her. Rest assured that we shall soon know everything. The Count will not go unavenged though we have to move both heaven and earth."

  She rose and ran from the room. I would have followed but Misha stayed me. "Give her some time by herself. These are great blows she's having to take. I know, Charlie, there's always you to help her, and thank Christ for that. But women . . . take my advice, I've known a few."

  Bobinski's eyes were stark with excitement, about a foot out of his skull. "The villain, the minx that she was—but how did she get the information out of this house? Have we thought enough about that?"

  I said that I believed she met someone in the forest. I'd seen marks on her dress, and a rip she couldn't, or wouldn't, account for.

  "That's it! Do you hear that, Inspector? It's all the proof you need. Hang her immediately, that's what I say."

  "What Bobby means is at least hang someone," Misha put in laconically.

  "Andrej deserves it," Nicholas said. "He was a hero to the whole country. His march after Tannenberg—can you remember the excitement in the capital, and the crowds, and how proud and grateful everyone was? If no one's executed for his murder the whole of Russia will want to know why."

  The samovar arrived. Soon after, Nicholas asked Louis to lay two extra places for lunch. Liza never came down. The history of Sonja filled all the spaces in the short winter's day.

  Together with her name there was much talk about the armed soldiers wandering around the cities seemingly unattached to any regiment. Most would have known how to plant and detonate the bomb. Some might have taken pleasure from killing Andrej just because he had a safe post on the general staff and a yellow silk lining to his greatcoat. I knew it for a fact. One only had to glance at the factory strikers in Petrograd or at the soldiers on the trains, in short at starving, exhausted, jealous citizens, to understand that many unthinkable actions become possible when hope is drained from existence.

  I found myself repeatedly whispering the magic incantation of "America" and as soon as the policemen had gone I ran upstairs with the drawing-room atlas and smothered Lizochka with my schemes.

  We rubbed noses, bubbled our lips together. "After the funerals, after we're married," she murmured. "One thing at a time, as you're so fond of saying. What difference will two weeks make?"

  That was how long it took. It was wartime, and people accepted that different customs should apply. But Andrej and uncle Igor were men of distinction. No lime-slaked pit for them, though I would have gladly settled for something less grandiose than the three-hour service in Smolensk Cathedral we had to endure.

  What am I to say about those two lost weeks? The combination of fatalism and lethargy that seems to breed in Russia like cholera bacilli in an open sewer drove me frantic. Even my darling was not immune: would flick through magazines or plump up the cushions on her bed and puff a little hashish. She said she was developing a passion for roses. Why didn't we go and live in England in some cottage ornee with an imm
ense Marechal Niel trailing all over the walls? Everyone knew about England and its roses ... It was as if the future having been settled, she could put her feet up.

  Nicholas was hopeless. Only two subjects interested him: the value of Lizochka's inheritance and how to avoid speaking to Helene, who'd come down from Moscow for the dual events. He cared about no one but himself. I understood that quite clearly now.

  Misha, my urbane and loveable godfather, moved between the Pink House and Zhukovo, speaking amusingly to everyone and lifting not a finger to help.

  So it was I who had to shoulder the greatest burden of the arrangements. I found myself collecting surprise remarks to inject like stimulants whenever Liza, or Nicholas, or Misha, or even Louis said something like: "Next week, Charlie, let's leave it until then. Today would be unlucky." Or if a particular saint's day was coming along, the patron saint of love or luck, they'd be likely to say, "Why don't we do everything then? We'd be setting out on the right foot."

  Going to America was completely submerged by the effort of steering these very different engagements upon which I balanced precariously, like a logger keeping his raft of timber in one pack. Only when the two sets of obsequies had been completed and the family crypts sealed could I clearly see the prospect of my marriage to Liza: the two of us at the altar, the ring, and the beautiful words of accomplishment.

  By this time I was on my knees with fatigue. Also tense, shivering, with an emptiness behind my eyeballs as if a network of caves had developed there.

  So when Kobi came down from Popovka on the morning of my wedding to warn me that a troop of armed deserters was encamped nearby in the forest, I told him roundly to get out. I swore at him. I told him he was scaremongering in order to steal my thunder. In a crouching, bad-tempered way I bore down on him. "This is my day, the day to beat all my other days," I snarled at him.

  Forty-four

  Few of our guests came back from the cathedral. The road through the forest had become notorious. They didn't want to be reminded of the murders. The idea of going back at night was loathsome. They feared that they too might end up speckling the upper branches of the oaks like an unseasonal flush of leaves.

  Nevertheless guests there were and with a purpose, and what was cardinal was that Lizochka and I were that purpose. Come the late afternoon you would have found the blue-tiled stove roaring away in the hall as with Liza at my side I kissed and embraced all who came within reach. I was the blissful bridegroom and shortly I'd be lording it over the banquet that had been planned for another. Excelsior! I raised my eyes and signalled to Pushkin in his heaven. Now I know the source of happiness, old father!

  I didn't give Andrej a second thought. I never dreamed of calling up to him, Hard luck, or some such tripe. It's a mistake to let one's feelings get over-soft or in any respect pretty. That way lies diffidence and indecision.

  Nicholas had invited a few of his peasant farmers from the village. They stood in a solid group, combing their beards with bent fingers, shifting their feet and covertly examining photographs of the last generation of Rykovs, the knick-knacks and the furniture—mentally compiling inventories and valuations.

  Their wives stood close to them, trying by frowns and rasping whispers to deflect the shots of peppered vodka that Louis was urging on them.

  Bobinski had a number of jokes that would have been deemed scurrilous in Uncle Boris's time. But the changes in morals had eroded their pungency and now he dished them out, one per male person, as he circled the room tittering.

  Bobby: white-tufted chin, emaciated nostrils, skin like papyrus, stooping, the pensioned tutor in worsted stockings and knee breeches helping out his adopted family.

  Nicholas: out of character in a frock coat, gappy-toothed, with lumpy red hands like his farmers, prowling among the throng with skin-deep laughter, thinking of the money going down the drain and who was going to drive his sorry-looking wife to the railway station the next day. Not a scrap about us.

  Kobi: by no means turning away Louis and his vodka. His widow—a proud woman and by her build a lusty one.

  Oh, friends crowding round us and people I'd never met and the heat from the stove and the vodka and the red faces and from our own happiness, oh, this was an apt and lovely world! I caught Kobi's eye and saluted him, meaning by it that I apologised for my rudeness to him in the morning.

  We went in to dine—caviare on warm kalack, milk-cap mushrooms flavoured with saffron, sauerkraut and whortleberries, graceful fillets of sturgeon, woodcocks' livers on steeped toast, roast boar plugged with cloves, real French wines, Einem's chocolates, and to crown it all, a gift from Misha, half a dozen bottles of Tokay, the 1874, the archangel of wines.

  Mishenka Baklushin! Dearest Misha!

  His face was the colour of a bursting tulip. The contours of his stomach made one understand more about the function of legs. He was wearing two waistcoats, in case he got bored with one of them or spilled his food on it. The topmost was cream with roses picked out in gold silk and a hem of light blue—to suggest the summer, he confided to Liza. And the under one? she enquired nosily. His laughter made the buds of candle-flame quiver. He wouldn't say—well, he might—for such a delicious bride—for his godson—for the two finest people in the world—but the truth was that it clashed with his countenance and so she'd understand it if he said nothing more—at which with another huge laugh he displayed the article in question, a garment so pale and puffy except for its bright green buttons that it might have been intended for a warm shirt. The Popovka men looked on with amusement, it being well known among them that Misha had had the fancy for it only last night and had given the village tailor an hour to get it done.

  "It's for when I cry," he said, his eyes already starting to brim. "I can weep and snuffle on it—and then give it away. It was only two roubles. And you all thought it was going to be as purple as my nose! Lizinka, my darling, how I shall miss you! My darling! My darling!"

  They embraced and hugged, both crying.

  Presently all the foods that Nicholas had squirrelled away for Andrej were swayed into the room in tureens and on platters held aloft. Beer and wine were served by Styopka, the younger stable boy, jug in one hand, bottle in the other. He poured them so merrily—slopping out the good French claret as if it was beetroot juice—that by the sheer vigour of the flow he overturned the glass of the man opposite me. Great shouts of joy, sufficient to bend the rafters.

  Voices began to be raised: "I tell you, Arkady Semyonovich, that the field you call Poor Furlong and I the Widow's Acre should never have been planted to rye. The soil is not unsuitable. Its character, Arkady . . ."

  "The best bull we ever had round here was old Thunder, remember? Hurdling that fence of pea-sticks to get at the black-and-white heifer? Remember how he took it, boys, remember? Like a racehorse, all his hoofs in the air at once . . . the size of the hip on him . . . what stock he left ..."

  And the man whose glass had been knocked over leaned across and said happily to me, "That girl of yours, Sonja, was hanged this morning. Tried at eight, hanged at nine. Rope must be cheaper than bullets. And if you think also of the time saved by not calling out the firing squad . . ."

  It's rare when a conversation that shouldn't be heard isn't heard. This was one of those occasions. I leaned over and kissed Liza's ear.

  Some hours later Misha got up to say he was going to share with the finest audience in Russia "a very good safe joke. The safest joke in the province,"—he kerfuffled his whiskers—"told me the other day by my old auntie." Everyone knew he'd just spoken three lies for their personal delectation and laughed dryly.

  "I'm keeping it back as a pledge for your orderly departure. Our friends Charlie and Elizaveta have before them fifty years of life together. They need an early night. It's a long way, fifty years, isn't that so, ladies?"

  "What's this about the ladies?" It was the man opposite me again. "If I were to be starting right over again, I'd take my wife's sister. She does a man better. Let's hear
no more about how the ladies feel. It never goes well when the hen crows. You all know the proverb."

  "When'll we know to go home?" asked another.

  "First day of Lent."

  "At an exact hour, on the stroke, that'd be the most sensible thing."

  "That's what I like to hear," boomed Misha. "Simplicity. One word, one meaning. When you hear the bells of my falcon you'll know it's bedtime."

  "What does he mean?"

  "It doesn't matter. Drink while you can. Take advantage of good fortune."

  Misha let himself fall backward; plummeted onto his chair, on which he bounced upon landing; a man made large by the magnificence of the evening and his own gusto.

  Liza said to me with full red lips, "If there were only one word allowed, what would we choose?"

  "I'll tell you later," I whispered and I cut up her sterlet and placed the first snowy flakes on her fork, which I guided to her lips. Everyone cheered. We were unashamedly in love amid the guttering candles and paraffin lamps and the scent of birch-wood in the hearth and the roaring gossip of the revellers.

  We drank toasts in the province's purest illicit vodka. I myself drank a million. Misha said it wasn't his joke, that was still to come, but here was a question on a different plane: why didn't someone invent a perfume for women that copied the aroma of lamb cutlets fried to brown in a pan of onions?

  "Why not? What man wouldn't want to rummage her instantly?"

  How Misha laughed! How we laughed with him, from the sheer pleasure of seeing his belly heave and the sweat disappearing into his rolls of chins and jowls to emerge seeping over the edge of his collar.

  "You should be the inventor!" someone shouted.

  "Invent a new world for us, Misha!"

  "That's it, one world, one meaning—"

  "Word, Arkady you fool, word."