‘Why is he doing this?’ I ask, half knowing that Freisler is the wrong man to ask; that if anyone should want me shut out, it’s probably Freisler.
‘Doing what?’
‘Excluding me. Keeping me in the dark.’
Freisler smiles. ‘Hecht is the strategist, Otto, not you or me. You must see that. We’re just the foot soldiers. Skilled, true, but foot soldiers nonetheless. Hecht alone sees the big picture. That’s how it is and always has been. He is the Master. So leave it to him. He knows what he’s doing.’
Hearing him say that I feel a little foolish, because I’d trust Hecht with my life – and in fact have done, many a time. So why question him now? If he says I need a rest, I probably do need a rest. Only …
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘A rest. But afterwards I want to know everything – everything you know, that is.’
‘Sure,’ he answers. ‘Whatever you want to know. Now go. Zarah’s waiting for you.’
244
And not just Zarah, but Urte and Inge and Leni. A regular little welcoming committee.
‘Where’s my pack?’
‘You won’t need one,’ Urte says.
‘And my clothes?’
Zarah studies me a moment. ‘Those will do. You can change when you’re there.’
‘So where exactly …?’
Urte puts a finger to my lips. ‘Just go.’
And so I find myself, less than thirty seconds later, standing on a broad dirt track between two stands of pines.
I have no idea where this is or when, only that it’s a fresh, warm day.
Birdsong echoes in the stillness.
I turn, looking back, but there’s nothing, and I begin to wonder if Hecht hasn’t, perhaps, planned this; whether, in fact, I’m exiled, stranded in some uninhabited time-stream.
And then I hear it. The sound of a saw.
I walk towards the sound and, after a while, a long, barn-like building comes into view, a great stack of wooden beams piled alongside. Two men – peasants by the look of them – stoop over a big, double-headed saw, drawing it back and forth across a massive pine trunk that’s spread across two large trestles.
I walk on. Coming into view just beyond the barn are other buildings: izbas mainly, but also a smithy, several workshops, another two barns, a church with a small blue cupola, and there, where the land climbs to the left, part hidden by the trees – a larger, better-built home – a proper two-storey dacha.
Russia. I am in Russia.
From the position of the sun, it’s mid-afternoon, or perhaps mid-morning, but as I walk on, someone appears at the door to one of the workshops – a keen-eyed man in his middle years with long dark hair and a neatly trimmed dark beard. Wiping his hands on his carpenter’s apron, he looks across at me, squinting into the daylight, then breaks into a beaming smile.
‘Meister Otto!’
It takes me a moment to recognise him, for he’s a good ten years older than when I last set eyes on him, but then I laugh aloud and, hastening across, wrap him in a great hug.
‘Alexander Alexandrovich!’
‘Oh, Meister, it’s so good to see you! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’
But in that moment I have realised something; if Alexander is here, then maybe, just maybe …
‘Katerina?’
‘The mistress? She’s in the house. But wait … the cart. You must see the cart.’
‘The cart?’
‘The one you ordered built before you went away. It’s finished.’ He turns and gestures towards the workshop, wanting to show me, but I interrupt him.
‘Later, Alexander, I promise. But first …’
He bows, embarrassed. ‘Of course. Stupid of me.’
‘Come,’ I say. ‘Walk with me, Alexander Alexandrovich.’ And I place my arm about his shoulders as we walk up the slope, following the path.
He wants to tell me everything that’s happened since I left, but I tell him no. I don’t want to know. Not yet.
And as I walk up that path towards the dasha, I feel something that I haven’t felt for years. Fear, and an incredible sense of anticipation.
Stopping, I turn to him. ‘Will you wait here, Alexander? It’s just …’
‘Of course …’
And so I walk on, alone, until I’m standing before the door, in the shade of a trellis that skirts a well-tended garden. The house is silent. The only noise is the sound of a woodcock calling and the distant sound of sawing. And then I hear something. Children’s laughter followed, a moment later, by a sound I’d begun to think I’d never hear again. Katerina’s voice.
I push through, into the long, deeply shadowed hallway. There are coats and smocks hanging on the pegs to my right, and piles of boots and shoes of all sizes, while to my left there’s an open door, and through that door …
My voice fails. I try to call her but I can’t.
Katerina is as beautiful as ever, yet I realise that she has aged. Ten years? Fifteen? Only she is even more beautiful for that, her figure fuller, her hair longer and more lustrous. She is in blue, of course, her favourite colour, and as she turns towards me so her laughter turns to awed surprise. And then she shrieks and runs to me.
I tremble as she comes into my arms, as her mouth seeks mine and we embrace as if a thousand years have passed. As well they might have. Only it feels like the very first time I have kissed her; as if the years lie ahead of us not behind. And as I draw back from that kiss and see my eyes reflected in the darker pools of hers, I understand why I have felt dead these past few weeks, for to be away from her is to be away from life itself.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I say, my hand touching her neck, my lips gently meeting hers again.
‘Not as much as I missed you.’
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Urd protect me, look at you …’
My blood is pounding and I want to take her there and then, only I realise suddenly that there are others in that great, airy room. I look about me, stunned, realising with a shock just what I’ve walked into.
Katerina laughs and leans in close, whispering in my ear. ‘You’ll have to wait.’
But for once I barely hear her. Taking Katerina’s hand, I move back a little from her, staring at each of the five young girls in turn, my astonishment making them giggle. They think it’s a game, but it’s not. I have never, in all my days, had such a shock.
I look to Katerina. ‘Are these …?’
She looks at me, then at them, and back at me, sudden understanding coming to her eyes. ‘Sweet Mother of God, you mean …?’
‘The first time,’ I say, my voice an awed whisper.
She stares at me a moment longer, then, swallowing, takes charge of things.
‘Girls … come and welcome your father home. Natalya, you first. And be polite now. Remember what you learned.’
And the first of them – the image of Katerina, only twelve, thirteen at most – gets up from where she sits on the window seat and comes across. She is dressed, like all of them, in a simple white cotton smock, against which her long dark hair falls in a cascade of glorious ringlets. Just looking at her takes away my breath, for this is my daughter. These are all my daughters.
She gives a little bow, then, smiling broadly, says, ‘Welcome home, papa,’ in perfect German.
I laugh, delighted, and look to Katerina. But the best is to come, for, reaching up, Natalya holds my neck, gently making me bend down to her, so that she can place a kiss there on my cheek.
A tear rolls down to greet her kiss.
Next is Irina, nine and a tomboy like her mother. After her comes Anna, seven and shy. Martha, five, proves the actress of the family, curtseying low and giving me a cheeky wink, while the baby, Zarah, three years old, refuses to approach me, holding on tight to her mother’s skirts. I pick her up and, by staring at her sternly and then making a face, force her into laughing.
; My girls. My beautiful, unthought-of girls. And as I stand there, surrounded by them, looking from one to the next, I vow that I will do everything in my power to protect them. That I would give my life a thousand times over to let them live and be happy.
For I’m not a stupid man, and in that strange, wonderful moment of sublime and utter bliss, I am aware that such joy has its darker side, and that now, more than ever, I am vulnerable; that I have become in that instant a hostage to Fate and Time and, best and worst of all, to Love. A dark and overpowering love.
245
I wake beside her in the night and, rolling over on to my elbow, look down at her shadowed form. She is naked, the thin cotton sheet covering her legs and stomach.
I feel like waking her, simply to make love to her again, only I’m loath to disturb her sleep, for she looks so peaceful, so very happy in her dreams.
I blow a kiss, then gently climb from the bed and walk over to the window to sit there on the sill, looking out across the valley towards the village and the barn. This is mine. Everything I see, and more besides. Cherdiechnost. My estate, purchased in my name. My little foothold in the realms of time.
Untouched, I think, and wonder how that’s so, for I know the Russians have targeted me elsewhere. But this feels safe, and yet dreamlike, for everything I want is here. Everything and more.
Throwing on a gown, I walk silently through, looking in at their bedrooms. Natalya and Irina share a room just down the hall. Next door are Anna and Martha, and in a small room, on her own in a hand-carved cot that I’m sure is Alexander’s work, is my darling Zarah. I stand above her, looking down, in awe at her childish beauty. She lays on her side, her hair messed up and sweaty in sleep, her tiny thumb in her mouth, and I know I am in love – just as much in love with her and her sisters as I ever was with her mother. Yet how can that be so? For what I feel for Katerina swallows worlds. So how can there be room for more? And yet there is. Room for each one of these five small treasures.
I wipe my eyes and turn. Katerina is in the doorway, watching me. She smiles, then comes across, unembarrassed by her nakedness. Her breasts are pendulous and heavy, the nipples hard.
‘Come back to bed,’ she says. ‘We’ve catching up to do.’
I smile, then briefly turn back, looking down at my baby-child again. ‘I should have known.’
‘Known?’
‘How beautiful they’d be. So like their mother.’
I turn back, meeting her eyes, and find a look there that I’ve not seen before. Not just love for me, but … I don’t know. It’s hard to say what it is exactly, only I know that she would not be anywhere else, or with anyone else, than here and now, with me.
I reach out and take her hands and draw her gently close. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think I’m dreaming.’
She smiles. ‘Then keep dreaming, Otto. Don’t ever stop.’
246
Alexander Alexandrovich is sitting on a tuft of grass outside the front door, waiting for me as I emerge early that next morning, looking much as though he’s been there all night.
I grin at him, amused by his enthusiasm, then throw out my arm, pointing towards the workshop.
‘Come, then, Alexander! The cart!’
His face lights and he leaps up, hurrying to be at my side as we walk down the gentle slope towards the barn. It’s a beautiful morning, made all the more so by the fact that I am here and now, Katerina asleep in my bed, my children …
I stop dead, looking to my companion, a broad grin on my face.
‘You have children, Alexander.’
‘Yes, Meister?’
‘Do you love them?’
Alexander blushes, then nods reluctantly, as if it is unmanly to speak of such things. Yet this is new to me – totally outside of my experience. Yesterday I had no children, but today …
Today the whole world is transformed. Made fresh and new and bright and full of promise.
I laugh, in such good humour that I decide, there and then, to hold a feast, that very evening.
‘Meister?’
‘Yes, Alexander Alexandrovich?’
He gestures towards the workshop. ‘The cart?’
And so we go and see it, and a fine piece of work it is, for which I reward him. Only I don’t stay long, Returning to the house, I wake Katerina and ask her who I should see to arrange the feast.
Dressing quickly, she summons the steward, a short yet muscular man named Pavlenko. Igor Pavlenko. He is extremely pleased to see me, grinning like an idiot, yet when I tell him what I want, he is instantly serious and claps his hands and has a dozen peasants running about within minutes, each with a whole list of things to do.
‘Your father,’ I say, turning to Katerina again. ‘We mustn’t forget to invite your father.’
Her face clouds, and for a moment I think I’ve made a real gaffe, that he’s dead. But it isn’t that.
‘He’s out of town,’ she says. ‘He went to Tesov three weeks back. He’ll be so disappointed when he finds out he missed out on a feast.’
‘Maybe he’s back. It’s not that long a journey. Four, five days at most. I’ll send someone to see if he’s home.’
But Katerina’s not so sure. ‘He’d have come over, if he were back. He always does. Why, he almost lives here these days. The girls spoil him so.’
I smile at that. At least I’ve made my father-in-law happy. And that, in Russia, is no small accomplishment.
‘Let’s send someone anyway, just to be sure. And your mother …?’ I stop, knowing that this time I have made an error. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say gently. ‘I didn’t know.’
She pushes the door closed, then turns to me. ‘We need to talk,’ she says, very matter-of-factly. ‘If you’re not to make … elementary mistakes. You need to know what’s been happening.’
I reach out and hold her a moment, feeling her face against my shoulder. ‘When did she …?’
‘Six years back. It was winter. She was very ill. A lot of people were. There was a poor harvest that year. Anyway, we thought she’d pulled through, only …’
For a moment we hug, saying nothing, then I kiss the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry. I really liked her.’
She smiles up at me sadly. ‘You were at her funeral. You know, it’s really odd, all this. It’s happened before, but … not like this.’
‘I’m out of sequence, huh?’
Her smile broadens. ‘Very much. That business with the girls … What did you feel?’
I stare back into her eyes. ‘It was like the first time I saw you. I was … overwhelmed.’
She kisses me. ‘You’re such a good father to them. Or will be.’ She grins. ‘Back in the past.’
‘And in the future, too, I hope.’
Yet it has to be, surely? For them even to exist must mean I’ve been there, in that past, which for me, of course, is still in the future.
I speak to Alexander Alexandrovich, and he harnesses a horse to the new cart and sets off to bring Razumovsky, if he’s there, and – so he says – to give the cart a good ‘test’. Only when he says ‘test’, he uses the German word versuch, meaning ‘experiment’, and it makes me wonder what other little seeds I have sown in this place.
While he’s gone, I sit with Katerina in the kitchen, talking, enjoying the attentions of my daughters who, one by one, come down from their beds to slowly fill that big, sunlit room.
But let me pause. Even to have a kitchen is this age is something. For this is, remember, the thirteenth century, and nowhere, outside of castles and palaces and monastery refectories, do they have such things as kitchens. Cooking over an open fire’s the thing. But I have brought a degree of innovation to this place. Nothing that can’t be found somewhere in this age, of course – nothing anachronistic – but it is certainly unusual, and the servants love its ‘sophistication’, its ‘modernity’ and take pride in working here.
Those servants now appear as if from nowhere to pr
epare breakfast, and like Pavlenko, they are delighted by my return, embracing me and clapping my back heartily or gently touching my cheek – this from the older women – so that after a while I begin to feel like the Prodigal Master, even though they might as well be strangers for what I remember of them.
At Katerina’s prompting, I ask them questions, and soon I begin to get a feel of the close-knit web of lives that exists in this place.
By now, Martha is encamped in my lap, her head against my shoulder, the simple physical presence of her there – her childish warmth – making me feel drowsy. And on her lap is one of the seven cats we own – Nikita, it appears – a fat, grey animal that looks as if it’s swallowed an extremely large rodent.
Just after midday, Alexander Alexandrovich returns, the cart filled with overflowing crates and baskets and stoppered pitchers. They’re from Katerina’s father, and the news is that he’s home from Tesov and coming along later. And there’s more … only Alexander Alexandrovich has been sworn to secrecy by Razumovsky.
‘Go and work, Alexander,’ I order him, knowing that unless I do Katerina will pester him until he gives up his precious knowledge. ‘I’ll see to the cart.’
He hurries away, relieved.
I look to Katerina. ‘What do you think? What could he possibly have brought back from Tesov?’
The answer’s obvious to us both. Tesov is north-east of us – a trading post that specialises in only one thing.
‘Furs!’ she says excitedly. ‘He’s bought the girls their own furs!’
But we’re going to have to wait and see. There’s much to do, and we’ve barely finished getting things ready – setting out the great trestle tables in the main field – when Razumovsky arrives in his troika, even as evening falls.
He’s not alone. As he steps down, he turns and puts out his hand, helping down a young, blond-haired woman of a startlingly pale complexion. She gives a frightened smile and pulls her dark furs tighter about her.
A slave, I think. He’s bought himself a slave to keep his bed warm at night.
And who can blame him? Only I glance at Katerina and see the guarded, almost hostile expression in her face, not to speak of the troubled looks on the faces of my girls, who have formed a line beside her, waiting to welcome their dyedooshka home.
The Ocean of Time Page 28