White Blood

by James Fleming

  He glowered and looking down said they'd been his best riding boots ever. But he kept walking with me. He was leading the packhorse.

  And suddenly I got nervous. Our best horses had been stolen. What was to stop these vagrants rushing us and having our packhorse, with all our working capital on it? I bet we looked juicy, and our horse would make many meals. So we acted ostentatiously with our rifles, spoke loudly about the rest of our troop, and began to inch our way out of the scum. We'd return to our last camping place. There I'd leave Kobi to guard the horse. I'd come back on foot to enjoy Glebov.

  This was a wise decision—related to luck—for we'd only just got into camp when a couple of Zeps returned and leisurely bombed their way up the entire column. I don't expect the Red Cross signs swayed them a bit. They did as they pleased, unchallenged, for the remainder of the day. It was only when they'd cleared off that I could set out to run Glebov to ground.

  But everything was in total confusion, and people were crying out like sheep for their lost ones. There were broken corpses strewn along the highway and folded into the ditches, wounded of all ages crawling through the churned-up mud to keep going from the Germans, a shattered cow being bled at the throat, wrecked carts, abandoned old women—chaos. Over the entirety of this desolate and Napoleonic scene hung the usual mauve veil of cold.

  No one recognised my description of Glebov's carter. Weren't they all dottled old fools?

  At last I espied a tall straight man, transparently honest, walking alone. No sooner did I ask him where the hospital wagons had got to than he pulled a revolver on me. Looking into his eyes I saw they were hollow. "Are you mad or blind?" I asked, at which he aimed his weapon at somewhere near my liver and pressed the trigger three times—viciously, grimacing at the clicks. There was a cry from behind us. A girl, his daughter maybe, on all fours, dragging a mangled foot through the mud. Red cheeks, flaxen hair, a big blubbery mouth. "Keep them for us, one each. Keep them, idiot."

  I said to him, "Goes better when loaded." He hid the revolver from me like a child, behind his back. I left them to it and fiddled my way up the column, trusting in none but my eyes as witnesses.

  Night began to fall. Hundreds of small bobbing lanterns sprang up. I could find no trace of the hospital wagons. The village of Chernukh came in sight, where there was a railway halt. Having a fresh idea, I went back to fetch Kobi.

  He said, "Glebov's dead by now, must be, Doig. Let's sleep."

  It wasn't enough. I wanted to hear Glebov beg for his life, I wanted to be called in as arbiter by those officers, to look in the eye the destroyer of my happiness—and shake my head.

  Perhaps I'd dither a bit, spin it out. But in the end he would die, and I would watch him die. It was to be the certificate of completion, as close to quits as I could get it, remembering always that the other party had been my wife.

  "Killed and thrown out of the wagon like a dog," Kobi said.

  "Maybe," and I told him to repack the horse so the two of us could ride it to Chernukh, Kobi going pillion. We'd board the next horse train so that by dawn we'd be well ahead of the column. Then we'd ride back down it until we found Glebov. One way or another we'd get him.

  I thought about the one-legged giant. Wherever one looked there was misery. A rational human would have rated the chance of a decent life as nil. Yet here was an amputated fellow who'd thought well enough of the future to steal our horses and engage life head-on. Even now he was riding on Moscow. He'd have met others of a like mind. From hand to hand the torch would have been passed until the night sky was brilliant. Na Moskvu! To Moscow! Freedom from Tyranny!

  Was everything really so uncomplicated? Should I say of Elizaveta and thus Glebov—gone? Draw a line beneath their names and start up again?

  "They broke his other leg, for the sake of symmetry," Kobi said behind me. He was annoying as a pillion rider, always fidgeting around to get his balls comfortable.

  "What with?" I wanted a dispute.

  "The carter's lump hammer. He fainted. In my opinion he's certain to be dead."

  Nothing more was said until we arrived in Chernukh. A lantern was hanging in the station porch. By its light we saw them, the ten hospital wagons, all open at the back and all of them empty. Just pissed-on straw and bloody rags. I woke up the stationmaster. He thought we were bolsheviks. I said we had a mind to be unless he told us where the wounded officers had been taken. He said St. Petersburg—"I mean Petrograd, your honour. When they get better they're to join the Tsar's new army. That's what I heard them being told."

  "What about a one-legged giant riding two good horses?" I asked.

  "I couldn't say, I see so much madness every day."

  Eighty-one

  It was three days later, at dawn, that we reached Petrograd. We went to the hospitals in turn. Through every ward for officers and every bed in them. The nurses didn't like it until I told them everything about Glebov. Then one of them gave me a list of private houses that were still taking officers.

  We took a trolley along Nevsky Prospekt to the stop at Kazan Cathedral. From there it was only a short distance to Uncle Igor's palace. I'd no idea what had happened to it since he'd been blown up. If Joseph was still there I was going to ask him about protocol at these other houses where Glebov might be: introductions, passwords and the like.

  Its huge grimy facade was bright with clothes hanging from the windows. Within the courtyard was an encampment of families waiting to claim a room. Children were playing with snowballs. A milking goat with tight yellowish udders like parsnips was eating from a nosebag. From the neck of the emperor Tiberius radiated a network of washing lines to the naked marble catamites that Igor had positioned round him.

  Here and there sprigs of Igor's box parterres could be seen, each wearing a bonnet of snow. I was surprised the goat hadn't eaten them. The long stone benches were level with snow between the armrests.

  I was told that Joseph had been allocated a room at the back. Kobi and I went in. The stuffed lion in the hall had gone. So too had the wooden panelling and the splendid sequence of stateroom doors.

  Joseph hurried forward, arranging himself. He'd put on for me his old shiny frock coat with satin lapels. We embraced and patted each other. He'd done his best after the other servants had left. Igor's steward had urged him to save himself. He'd refused. "I am my father's son. Why should I run away?" One morning the steward himself failed to arrive. A little later soldiers came and ordered him to take in common people. Having given up all hope of seeing the family again, he conceded.

  He brushed away the citizens gathered to eavesdrop and led us to his room, well out of the way, at the end of a quiet corridor. We could scarcely get in at the door for all the furniture he'd rescued. Piled-up tables and chairs filtered the light from the window, which was crusted with cobwebs. He himself had a cot to sleep in. Beside it was a French drum from the i8iz campaign. On it was a seven-branch candelabra, one of five that used to be on the dining table. He lit a candle from the little fire.

  "I spend much of the day sleeping," he said.

  "Think of the flies here in summer," Kobi said. Then he left us, saying he was going to find Glebov.

  I told Joseph about the information I was after. He knew nothing about any such houses: no one dared shelter officers any more. Not openly, anyway.

  He wanted to hear about Lizochka. I told him she was dead, at the hands of terrorists. He cried out and fell back into the hideous American chair made of chrome in which Igor had been accustomed to drink martinis. He waved his hands at me. "Brutes, brutes, the worst sort of our people. String them up. Or shoot them. Nothing has ever been as bad as this in our country."

  His ikon lamps were in the central pigeonhole of a nice French bureau. He bowed to them. Then he sat on the edge of his cot, his frock coat all rucked up. He crossed himself in advance of the story about Liza's death. But I refused him, saying I wanted to talk about good things only. "For a start," I said, "your employer, by whom I mean Count Igor, saw
fit to bequeath all his possessions to Liza. You know what that means by our law."

  It was as if a spring had gone off inside him. He jumped up and hugged me. "And thus to you, Doig, to you! These are all yours! My humble backside—I was only warming it for you, Excellency, knowing that no Russian aristocrat enjoys placing his behind in a cold chair—please, Excellency, I implore you, sit in it, it's yours . . . oh, this day has not been in vain! How have I deserved such fortune? Well, no matter how it was done, what's important—" His voice dropped. He toed a Rykov coal scuttle significantly. It was red-lacquered, with our wolf, now sadly bruised, on both side panels. He winked horribly. "I've still got some of his gin. English, the best, like oil, never freezes. I beg your pardon, Excellency, your gin. Count me as your gin creditor, Doig."

  I said, "Joseph, are you drunk already?"

  "Excellency, I am always drunk. It's the only consolation available in the city."

  "She was a goddess," I said.

  "She was more than that. She was from the Bible. Excuse me," and he disappeared to wash the dust off an antique lampachka so that we might drink with old-fashioned graciousness.

  It was some time later that he produced the photographs, slyly: three albums on brown cartridge paper and a collection of frames.

  There were ten of her. Some as a dark, gangling, bob-haired child; one miracle of her skating, so clear that I could see the fanning spray of ice chips as she cornered, a look of mathematical concentration on her face, showing the tip of her tongue, fur-muffed wrists wrapped across her chest; and the stunner I was after, taken at close range as she stepped off the running board of the Astro-Daimler, her face filling the loom of the picture: the black beret, curlicue on top like the tail of a miniature pig, the surprised grin, the first-class teeth, the Saracen nose, and the deep truffling eyes, so full of shyness, in each of which was centred a pinpoint of silver light.

  "Ah, Elizaveta." Slowly Joseph pronounced the letters, pinching his forefinger against his thumb as he rang each chime. "Elizaveta, Madame Doig."

  I wrapped the photos in tissue. Joseph cut two slices of cardboard and taped the photos between them.

  "Now we shall drink to her properly," he said.

  We finished off the coal scuttle. He said he knew where there was more. He had hidey-holes everywhere in the palace. All servants did. It was so dull waiting for a man to finish writing a letter or having a nap. He'd often longed to march in and say, "That's enough of that, Excellency. You should have heard their rudeness about you when they were leaving your house."

  In his many hours of leisure Joseph had perfected a thank-you letter for uncle Igor. "My dear Alexander Alexandrovich and esteemed lady, the food and your company last night were from God. I was unworthy of your wines. This morning it is snowing. My steward says there are more riots to come. I shall stay inside with my cat. Heartfelt salutations from ..."

  "He was lonely. There was no one good enough for him except Elizaveta . . . Gone! Both gone! Leaving us with the barbarians. With the rubbish, Doig! With the country's absolute shit, pardonnez-moi, excusez-moi cinq mille fois, monsieur le Due. That was a saying of your uncle's that became a joke among us servants."

  I said I'd never heard it on his lips. Joseph said he couldn't have picked it up anywhere else.

  After a while I said to him, "Joseph, tell me this: can a woman be one's sole reason for living?"

  He debated with himself, quite visibly. In the end, "Yes, if the man is weak or stupid."

  "I'm neither. I've got no enemies in Chicago. That's where I'm going."

  "Why not? Go to Nicholas Station and ask for a ticket to Vladivostok. Then take a boat. There'll be nothing to cry for when you leave, except your lady."

  We drank, we wept, we drank.

  I gave Joseph the palace, but he refused it. Offered no reason, merely ignored what I said.

  Later I gave him all the statues and pictures and books and folios of botanical illustrations, and the silver and towels, and everything within and without the room where we sat in the great warmth of gin and latterly vodka. I pressed these important artefacts on him so amiably that I could see his refusal was insincere and done from embarrassment only. So I wrote the gift out on a scrap of paper and tucked it into the top pocket of his coat. He bowed to me and taking his coat off, hung it up so that, as he said, the valuables would be "out of harm's way."

  Much of the day passed doing suchlike things in that strange candelabra'd den. Then Kobi came to remove me.

  "What about Glebov?"

  "Disappeared. Dead, alive, I don't care any more. I've been to all the houses. The last soldiers in them were made to leave two weeks ago. If you want to see Glebov stiff in his grave, find him yourself."

  I stuck up my hand. He heaved me out of Igor's chrome chair. Joseph, lying supine on his cot, murmured, "The Tsar, has he risen?" Bending, I kissed him farewell.

  I was in a dangerous condition. Kobi was right to take my rifle away. The rabble in the courtyard might have suffered, or their goat, or the snow-capped head of Tiberius. Anything could have happened the way I was.

  Kobi said, "Glebov's lying dead with the rest of them. Bombed by the Zep or broken up by the officers. Anyway in pieces. Dead, Doig, dead."

  "Does he have to be?"

  "Yes."

  We walked past the gatekeeper's lodge and out into Nevsky. Her photographs were strapped to my chest, inside my shirt. Turning I flung kisses at the festooned windows. "Keep the palace! Money will be useful when paying the coal bills. Best of all would be a bank. Enjoy it! Don't let your children mark the floors."

  I stood to attention and sang a verse of the Marseillaise in its striking Russian version. I saluted the flag. I lowered it for the last time, the slinking Rykov wolf. It was so obviously a failure. An old babushka was stood watching me. Seeing the rapid, nautical movement of my hands and my upturned stare, she asked me what I was doing. I told her. "It's been there since 1813. You're not worthy to look upon it any longer. I shall have it made into a pair of trousers and fart out of its mouth."

  She gaped into the grey sky, seeing nothing. She looked at me cunningly and nudged her companion. I said, "Do you suppose that I'm mad? Is that what your potato brain has indicated?" Kobi came forward to restrain me.

  But like a gazelle I sprang from his grasp and ran out into the middle of Nevsky Prospekt. I stood astraddle with my hands on my hips and looked down the long, straight, noble view towards Znamenskaya, where Nicholas Station is. It was sensational in the blond light of March. Here, captured in a glance, were the last two hundred years of our fraught and horrible history. And the next two hundred? Tears came into my eyes. The horse-cabbies swerved around me. Complicated abuse issued from their mouths, its intensity blowing aside the curtains of their black, sucked whiskers. More punctually than usual, my darling tripped daintily from the palace (her palace: I hoped Joseph wouldn't be offended that I had to take the gift back) wearing her scarlet dancing shoes. Hearing a noise, I looked up and saw that the Rykov wolf was again snapping in the wind.

  I bowed to my bride, bowed low. She laughed, and curtsied in return.

  "Shall we . . . ?" My hand went round her slender cream-taffeta'd waist. To save arguing later, I said, "Will those shoes do for a mazurka?" She laid her hand on my shoulder. "Long-step, my soul?" "Long-step," I said, hunched over her, the tip of my nose in line with the tip of my boots. She raised a pinch of her dress and looked into my heart and then my face. Black eyes, white teeth, that sharpish nose—my love forever and ever, amen.

  We clasped hands and cocked them at the ready. Sunshine was suddenly around us.

  "Paidyom, then let's go," I shouted.

  But she held me back. "Gradualness, Charlinka, remember what your mother told you ... to Nicholas Station—and then?"

  "To Moscow, Vladivostok and Chicago," I roared. "To paradise, my angel."

  "Then, two—three—to paradise, oh yes!" and away we swirled down Nevsky.

  A policeman stayed us with
an out-thrust baton and said, "Where are you going, comrades?"

  "Dancing to Moscow," I replied, and he stood back.

  My breath was coming in lumps and the blood was strong in my cheeks, suffusing them with happiness. I kissed her, I cradled her, I had her recline against my arm so I could kiss her the better, and together we fell among the heaps of rusty Tsarist snow that had been shovelled into the centre of the street. A pedestrian ran out to help us up. He said, "I shall remember this day until I die," which was similar to what Joseph had said. I gave him the change in my pocket. He brushed the snow off my greatcoat. With the back of his forefinger he flicked more off my eyebrows. "Like a prince," he said, straightening my lapels with fatherly solicitude, as Pushkin would have done for me had he lived. But I wouldn't let him touch Lizochka, though he obviously wished to. I gathered her up and on we went, east along Nevsky, towards Znamenskaya and thus Vladivostok. Now I gave her only little dabbing kisses and held her tighter so we didn't fall over again. Her eyes gleamed like coal. I laughed into them, I kissed the pointy tip of her nose and I glissaded my palm over her rump, which was tight and corky from our dancing.

  Nothing could stop us. I had borrowed the god of good fortune from the giant one-legged robber. Even the militia cheered us. "Bravo, bravo Natalie," one shouted, clapping his gloved hands above his head, applauding Liza with the stage name of the immortal Goncharova, for whom three ballets altogether were written.

  Down Nevsky we spun, her scarlet lace-up dancing shoes flicking through the corners of my vision like fireflies. Past the Gostiny Dvor, from which a shop assistant in a long black skirt ran out to gawk at us, still holding a silvered cake stand and a pair of pastry tongs. Past the Public Library and over the Fontanka. The entire street came to a halt. Cars pulled into the side, the cathedral bells stopped in mid-chime, horses ceased their shitting. A platoon of soldiers presented arms to us. A newspaper vendor started to cry "Miracle on Nevsky! Miracle on Nevsky!" Otherwise, because we were dancing for the Orlov gold medal, we danced through silence except for the whiffle of my darling's red shoes across the dirty snow and the thunder of my boots.