CHAPTER II
FOR QUITE A WHILE, Tatiana Ivanovna listened to the sound of the bells on the horse-drawn carriage growing fainter. “They’re going quickly,” she thought. She had remained in the middle of the path pressing her shawl tightly to her face. The snow, light and delicate, felt like powder against her eyelids; the moon had risen, and the deep trail left by the sleigh in the frozen ground sparkled with a fiery blue glow. The wind dropped and immediately the snow began falling heavily. The faint tinkle of the little bells had died away; the pine trees, laden with ice, creaked in the silence with the heavy groan of someone in pain.
The old woman slowly made her way back to the house. She thought of Cyrille, of Youri, with a kind of tender shock … War. She vaguely imagined a field and galloping horses, shells exploding like ripe pea pods… like a fleeting image … where had she seen that before? In a schoolbook, no doubt, one the children had coloured in. Which children? Cyrille and Youri, or Nicolas Alexandrovitch and his brothers? Sometimes, when she felt very weary, like tonight, they became confused in her mind. A long, confusing dream. Would she perhaps wake up, as she had in the past, to hear Kolinka crying in his old bedroom?
Fifty-one years… Before, she too had a husband, a child… They had died, both of them… It had happened so long ago that sometimes she could barely remember what they looked like. Yes, nothing lasted, everything was in the hands of God.
She went back upstairs to see Andre, the youngest Karine in her care. He still slept next to her, in the large corner room where Nicolas Alexandrovitch had slept, and then his brothers, his sisters. All of them had either died or gone to live far away. The room seemed too vast, the ceilings too high for the few pieces of furniture that remained: Tatiana Ivanovna’s bed and Andre’s, the white curtains and the little antique icon hanging over his cot. A toy chest, an old little wooden desk that had once been white but which the past forty years had worn so that it now looked a pale, glossy grey. Four bare windows, an old wooden floor. During the day, everything was bathed in a torrent of light and air. When night fell, with its eerie silence, Tatiana Ivanovna would say: “There should be more children by now.”
She lit a candle, partially illuminating the ceiling’s painted angels and their mischievous faces, then shaded the flame and walked over to Andre. He was in a deep sleep, his golden head nestled against the pillow; she stroked his forehead and his little hands that lay open over the sheets, then sat down next to him, as she always did. She would sit like this for hours, every night, half-asleep, knitting, drowsy from the heat given off by the wood-burning stove, dreaming of the past and the future: when Cyrille and Youri would get married, where new children would be sleeping there beside her. Andre would soon be gone. As soon as they were six, the boys went down to live on the floor below, with their tutors and governesses. But the old room had never remained empty for long. Cyrille? Or Youri? Or Loulou, perhaps? The burning candle crackled loudly, steadily, in the silence. She watched it, her hands slowly swaying, as if she were rocking a cradle. “I’ll live to see other children, God willing,” she whispered.
Someone knocked at the door. She stood up. “Is that you, Nicolas Alexandrovitch?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, Nianiouchka.”
“Try not to make noise or you’ll wake him up … “
He came into the room; she took a chair and quietly put it next to the stove.
“Are you tired? Would you like some tea? It will only take a moment to boil some water.”
He stopped her. “No. It’s fine. I don’t want anything.”
She picked her knitting up from the floor, sat down again, quickly clicking the shiny needles.
“It’s been a long time since you came to see us.”
He said nothing, stretched his hands out towards the crackling wood-burning stove.
“Are you cold, Nicolas Alexandrovitch?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered slightly. “Have you caught a chill?” she cried, as she had in the past.
“No, not at all, my dear.”
She shook her head crossly and said nothing. Nicolas Alex-androvitch looked over at Andre’s bed. “Is he sleeping?”
“Yes. Do you want to see him?”
She stood up, took the candle and walked towards Nicolas Alexandrovitch. He didn’t move. She leaned over, quickly tapped him on the shoulder. “Nicolas Alexandrovitch … Kolinka …”
“Leave me be,” he murmured.
Silently, she looked away.
It was better to say nothing. And where could he cry freely, if not with her? Or Helene Vassilievna… Yes, it was better to say nothing… She quietly retreated into the dark room. “Wait here, I’m going to make some tea, it will warm us both up.”
When she got back, he seemed calmer; he was absent-mindedly turning the handle of the wood-burning stove; the plaster from the wall behind sounded like gently flowing sand.
“Look, Tatiana, how many times have I told you to plug up the hole behind the stove. Look, look over there,” he said, pointing to a cockroach scuttling across the floor. “They’re coming from that hole. Do you think that’s healthy in a child’s bedroom?”
“You know very well that cockroaches are a sign of a wealthy household,” said Tatiana Ivanovna. “Thank God, we’ve always had them here, and you were brought up here and others before you.” She handed him the glass of tea she had brought, stirred it. “Drink it while it’s hot. Is there enough sugar?”
He didn’t reply, took a sip with a weary, distant look on his face and, suddenly, stood up.
“Well, good night, and get that hole behind the stove fixed, understand?”
“If you say so.”
“Bring the candle.”
She picked it up, lighting his way to the door; she went down the first three steps leading to the room. They were made of reddish brick—loose, wobbly, and slanting to one side, as if pulled towards the earth by a heavy weight.
“Be careful. Will you be able to sleep now?”
“To sleep … I’m so sad, Tatiana, my soul is full of sadness.”
“God will protect them, Nicolas Alexandrovitch. People die in their beds, and God protects Christians from bullets.”
“I know, I know …”
“You must trust in God.”
“I know,” he repeated. “But it’s not just that…”
“What else is wrong, Barine?”
“Nothing’s going right, Tatiana, it’s hard to explain.”
She nodded.
“Yesterday, my great-nephew, the son of my niece in Sou-kharevo, was also conscripted for this cursed war. He’s the only man in the family since his older brother was killed last spring. There’s only his wife and a little girl the same age as our Andre … so who’s going to work the farm? Everyone has his share of misery.”
“Yes, we’re living in sad times. I pray to God that…”
He stopped her. “Well, good night, Tatiana,” he said quickly.
“Good night, Nicolas Alexandrovitch.”
She stood silently, waiting until he had crossed the sitting room, listening to his footsteps creaking against the wooden floor. She opened the little window-pane. An icy wind was rageing so fiercely that it swept up her shawl and blew through her hair. The old woman smiled, closed her eyes. She had been born in a region in northern Russia, far from where the Karines lived, and there was never enough ice, never enough wind as far as she was concerned. “Where I come from,” she said, “we used to break the ice with our bare feet, in the springtime, and I’d be happy to do it again.”
She closed the little window; the whistling of the wind was blocked out. The only sounds that remained were the faint rustling of the plaster trickling down the old walls, like whispering sand, and the hollow, deep creaking of rats gnawing away at the antique wooden panelling.
Tatiana Ivanovna went back into her bedroom, prayed for a long while, and then got undressed. It was late. She blew out the candle, sighed, and said, “My God, my
God,” out loud, over and over again into the silence, then fell asleep.
CHAPTER III
WHEN TATIANA IVANOVNA had closed all the doors of the empty house, she went up to the little cupola set into the roof. It was a hushed May night, already sweet-smelling and warm. Soukhar-evo was burning; she could clearly see the flames in the air and hear the sound of people’s screaming carried through the wind from far away.
The Karine family had fled five months earlier, in January 1918. Since then, every day, Tatiana Ivanovna had watched fires burning in the distant villages, the flames die down and then flare up again, as the Bolsheviks took the villages from the White Russians who in turn lost them again to the Bolsheviks. But the fires had never been as close as this evening; the flames lit up the abandoned grounds so clearly that she could see right down to the end of the long drive where the lilac trees had recently come into bloom. The birds, confused by the light, were flying to and fro as if it were daytime. Dogs were howling. Then the wind shifted, carrying away the sound and smell of the flames. The old, deserted grounds were calm and dark once more, and the perfume of the lilacs filled the air.
Tatiana Ivanovna waited a while, then sighed and went downstairs. In the downstairs rooms, they had taken down the carpets and draperies. The windows were boarded over and protected by iron bars. The family silver was hidden at the bottom of packing trunks, in the cellars; she’d buried the most valuable china in the old, deserted part of the orchard. Some of the serfs had helped her: they assumed that all this wealth would belong to them one day. These days, people cared about their neighbours only for their possessions. That’s why they wouldn’t say anything to the officials in Moscow, and later on, well, they’d wait and see… Without them, though, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything. She was all alone, the other servants had left long ago. Antipe, the cook, the last one left, had stayed with her until March, when he’d died. He had the key to the wine cellar and wanted nothing more. “You’re wrong not to have some wine, Tatiana,” he would say, “it makes you forget all your troubles. Look, we’re all alone, abandoned like dogs, and a curse on all the rest, I couldn’t care less, just as long as I have some wine.”
But she had never liked drinking. One evening, during those final stormy March days, the two of them had been sitting in the kitchen. He’d started rambling, remembering back to when he was a soldier. “They’re not so stupid, these young people, with their revolution … It’s their turn now … They’ve bled us enough, those bloody Barines, the dirty bastards.” She hadn’t replied. What was the use? He had threatened to burn down the house, sell the jewellery and the hidden icons. He had carried on like this, deliriously, for a while, then, suddenly began to shout plaintively: “Alexandre Kirilovitch, why have you abandoned us, Barine?” He’d started to vomit, a torrent of dark blood and alcohol poured from his mouth; he’d suffered until morning, then he’d died.
Tatiana Ivanovna fastened the iron chains on the sitting-room doors and went out on to the terrace through the little hidden door in the hallway. The statues were still in their wooden crates; they had been sealed away in September 1916 and left there, forgotten. She looked at the house; the delicate yellowish colour of the stonework was blackened by the thawing snow; beneath the acanthus leaves, the stucco was flaking off, revealing whitish marks, as if it had been struck by bullets. The windows in the greenhouse had been shattered by the wind. “If Nicolas Alex-androvitch could see all this…”
She took a few steps down the path and stopped still, clutching her hands to her heart. There was a man standing in front of her. She looked at him for a moment without realising who it was, without recognising the pale, exhausted face beneath the soldier’s cap. “Is it you? Is it you, Yourotchka?” she finally asked, her voice shaking.
“Yes,” he said; the look on his face was cold, hesitant and strange. “Will you hide me tonight?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, as she had in the past. They went into the house, into the empty kitchen. She lit a candle, held it up to see Youri’s face.
“How you’ve changed, good Lord! Are you ill?”
“I had typhus,” he said; his voice was slow, hoarse and husky. “And I’ve been as sick as a dog, not far from here, in Temna?a. But I was afraid to get word to you. There’s a death warrant out for me,” he continued with the same steady, cold intonation. “I need something to drink …”
She gave him some water and knelt down to loosen the dirty, blood-soaked rags tied around his bare feet.
“I’ve been walking for a long time,” he said.
She looked up. “Why did you come? The serfs have all gone mad around here,” she said.
“Ah, it’s the same everywhere. When I got out of prison, my parents had already left for Odessa. Where is there to go? People are fleeing everywhere, some to the north, others to the south…”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the same everywhere … ” he repeated, apathetically.
“You were in prison?” she murmured, folding her hands.
“For six months.”
“But why?”
“Lord only knows.”
He fell silent, sat very still, continued with difficulty: “I got out of Moscow … One day, I found my way into a hospital train and the nurses hid me … I still had some money left… I travelled with them for ten days… Then I started walking… But I’d caught typhus fever. I collapsed in a field, near Temna?a. Some people found me, took me in. I stayed with them for a while, but then the Bolsheviks were getting closer, so they were afraid, and I left.”
“Where is Cyrille?”
“He was in prison with me. But he managed to get out and join the family in Odessa; someone gave me a letter from him while I was in prison … By the time I got out, they’d been gone for three weeks. I’ve never had any luck, my dear Nianiouchka,” he said, smiling in his usual way, resigned and ironic. “Even in prison, Cyrille was in a cell with a beautiful young woman, a French actress, while I was locked up with some old Jew.”
He laughed, then stopped, as even he was surprised by the broken, hollow sound of his voice. He held her hand to his cheek. “I’m so happy to be home, Nianiouchka,” he sighed, and suddenly fell asleep.
He slept for several hours; she didn’t move, she just sat there opposite him, watching him; tears flowed silently down her ageing, pale face. A while later, she woke him up, took him to the nursery, put him to bed. He was slightly delirious. He was talking out loud, sometimes reaching out to touch the calendar on the wall, still decorated with a colour portrait of the Tsar, or to grasp the rungs on the side of Andre’s bed, where the icon was hanging, as if he were a child. He pointed to the page with the date: 18 May 1918, saying over and over again: “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”
Then he smiled as he looked at the window-shade billowing gently, and outside at the grounds, the trees lit up by the moon; and the spot, near the window, where the old wooden floor was slightly hollow. The pale moonlight washed over him, rocking him like a river of milk. How often had he got out of bed and sat right there, while his brother was asleep, listening to the coachman’s accordion, the stifled laughter of the servants… He had inhaled the strong perfume of the lilacs, like tonight… He strained to listen, unconsciously trying to hear the music from the accordion in the silence. But he heard nothing except an occasional soft, low rumbling. He sat up, saw Tatiana Ivanovna sitting next to him in the dark room, tapped her on the shoulder.
“What’s that noise?”
“I don’t know. It started yesterday. Maybe it’s thunder, you sometimes get thunder in May.”
“That?” he said. He laughed suddenly, staring at her with his wide eyes, eyes that looked pale but which burned with a feverish harsh light. “That’s cannon fire, my poor dear! I thought itwould happen… It was too good to be true.”
His words were jumbled, confused, interspersed with laughter. Then he said quite clearly: “If I could just die peacefully in this bed, I’m so tired…�
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By morning, his fever had broken; he wanted to get up, go out into the grounds, breathe in the spring air, warm and pure, as in the past. Everything else had changed… The deserted grounds, full of wild grass, looked pitiful and sad. He went into the little pavilion, stretched out on the ground, absent-mindedly feeling the broken shards as he looked at the house through the shattered coloured glass in the window. One night, in prison, when he was expecting to be executed at any moment, he had seen the house in a dream, just as he did today, from the window of the little pavilion; but the house had been open, the terrace full of flowers. In his dream, he had seen every detail, right down to the chimney sweeps walking along the rooftop. He had woken up with a start and had thought: “Tomorrow, I’ll face death, that is certain. It is only just before dying that people have memories like this.”
Death. He wasn’t afraid of it. But to leave this earth in the turmoil of a revolution, forgotten by everyone, abandoned… It was all so absurd… Well, he hadn’t died yet… Who knows? Perhaps he’d manage to escape. This house… He had truly thought he would never see it again, and here it was, and these windows with their coloured glass that the wind always shattered; he’d played with them as a child, picturing in his mind the vineyards of Italy… undoubtedly because of their purplish colour, like red wine and blood. Tatiana Ivanovna used to come in and say: “Your mother’s calling you, my darling …”
Tatiana Ivanovna came in carrying a plate with some potatoes and bread.
“How have you managed to get any food?” he asked.
“At my age, you don’t need much. I’ve always had enough potatoes and in the village, you can sometimes get bread… I’ve never wanted for anything.”
She knelt down beside him, started feeding him, as if he were too weak to lift the food and drink to his lips.
“Youri… Don’t you think you should leave right away?”
He frowned, looking at her without replying.
David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) Page 23