“What is this music?” she asked. “Where is it coming from?”
“That’s the Sveshnikov Choir. Russian peasant music. This particular oeuvre is, I believe, ‘The Broad and Rolling Steppe’, or possibly, ‘From a Distant Land.’ The house has a tape system. Our people bring back recordings from the Soviet Union and I put them on tapes for him. He keeps them playing twenty-four hours a day. He’s very nostalgic.”
She pondered that.
“I don’t recognize the instruments,” she said.
“They’re not using any. The Sveshnikov performs a cappella. A Russian talent.”
Ramsey moved to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel, swirling the whisky in his glass. In his perfectly Westchester tweed jacket, gray flannels, gray sweater vest, striped tie, and button-down collar shirt, he looked more the master of this house than the old duke. He certainly acted it more.
“You’re certainly on familiar terms with the duke,” she said.
He smiled over the rim of his glass, his eyes deadly serious. “Tatty. I am now number three in the Soviet section. His Excellency is a marvelous resource. And, after all, I grew up here. If you had visited your grandmother more, you might have met the duke years ago.”
The duke was still sitting in his chair, still holding his glass in both hands, but still deeply asleep.
“Mathilde never mentioned him once,” said Tatty. “Are you sure he’s all right? He’s so still.”
“He sleeps quite a bit. Great age is at best a constant struggle against somnolence. The whisky acts as a soporific, of course, but it’s very good for his health. He takes a small glass three times a day. This is his second.”
“Ramsey, why has he no servants?”
“He has four, five if you count the gardener, who drinks considerably more than three whiskies a day. I have them sent away when I’m here; when the duke and I are working. They usually go down to the village, or to the gardener’s cottage.”
The duke stirred slightly, his shoulder twitching. He opened his eyes with a great deal of blinking, looking first at Ramsey, then at Tatty. He smiled.
“Astonishing resemblance,” he said, pausing to cough and clear the crack and rattle from his old voice. “Astonishing.” He noticed his glass of whisky, and sipped from it, coughing again. He sat straighter. “I must show you now many things, granddaughter of Mathilde Iovashchenko. Come. Pozhaluista.”
He seemed to gather strength the farther he went, though he passed by the main staircase of the house and led her to a small elevator in the rear that took them to the top floor. There was not a whisper of the Russian music once the elevator’s doors closed, though it resumed with full vengeance when they reopened. Taking her by the hand now, he proceeded into a huge room off the upstairs hall. It had probably once been the master bedroom of the house, but had been transformed into a sort of shrine. The emerald drapes had been opened to reveal the windows and the view beyond, but the drapes, the paneled walls, and the rugs were so dark that the room was only meagerly illuminated, as though the light dared not intrude. But for a narrow, triangular bookcase in one corner, the walls were lined with oily dark icons. The only furniture in the room were two scarlet velvet Victorian armchairs and a number of mahogany chests, one of them bearing a collection of Russian Palekh boxes. The others were covered with fringed oriental cloths.
“Dochka. Pridi.” He pointed to one of the chairs and then, despite its great weight, dragged the other close to it.
She paused before sitting, halted by the brilliant autumnal panorama glimpsed from the window.
“The view from the house is all to rear,” he said, enjoying her appreciation of it. “Mathilde liked it much more than that from her own. She would come here sometimes …”
Tatty thought, “often.”
“… and walk with me in the rear garden. There was a pond. Is still there. And the view is of fifteen miles.”
When she was seated, he went to the bookcase and pulled forth a thick, leather-bound album. It proved to contain not pictures but a genealogy, the most elaborate Tatty had ever seen, page after page of thick, costly paper inscribed in an elegant, old-fashioned hand with lists of names and diagrams of family lineage. It was written in French. The old duke turned quickly to the proper passages, pointing out proudly the linkages of Mathilde and Tatty to the czarina and the Romanov daughters, and to himself. He went on then, with some evident excitement, leading her with gnarled finger on a tour through the families, stopping for discourses on the most famous and most interesting, including a general at Balaclava, a freed serf who married into the aristocracy, and a countess who went for long summer walks in the woods—in the nude. Tatty was most interested in her own ancestors.
“According to this, I’m as much related to Kaiser Wilhelm as I am to the czarina.”
“Yes, but that is irrelevancy. Here, let me show you clearly how Russian you are, through Mathilde, that is.” He smiled, very broadly. “Otherwise, you are so American, so English. Hoops, Shaw, Chase.” He laughed.
She recognized only a very few of the Russian names he cited, and those few she remembered only as vague snatches of little-girl conversations with Mathilde. She was relieved when he finally put the album away and went to open one of the chests.
At length, he retrieved a small wooden box and brought it to her, setting it gently on her lap and wearily lowering himself into his chair.
“Yes, dochka,” he said, again calling her “daughter.” “Open it.”
She did so with considerable care, curious as to why he accorded it such special attention. Inside, nestled in the folds of very old wine-red velvet, was a very old-fashioned gold and emerald ring. She inhaled sharply at the strange beauty of it.
“Please, dochka. Take it out. Its history is very sad, but remarkable. It belonged, Tatiana, to the Grand Duchess, whose name you bear.”
Tatty held it close to her eye. The emerald was not extraordinarily large, but perfect in its cut and color, gleaming even in the room’s darkness. The filigreed design of the band and setting was exquisite, but on one side it was marred by a deep, ugly gash.
“If you have read Mathilde’s book,” said the duke, “and you have of course, yes? Then you know of the terrible end of the imperial family in all its lamentable detail.”
“This gash. They tried to cut it off her finger?”
“Yes. I, I have always thought this such a tragic thing to keep. But now, there, in your hand, by your face, the face that is so much Tatiana Romanov’s. I feel—how can I say, dochka?—I feel I have returned it.”
“Sir, I …”
“There are many Romanovs around,” he said. “From the Czar’s side. There are many in New York. Grandchildren of the Czar’s sister. Others. Some are decent people. Some are merely pretenders. They consider the Russia before the Revolution a civilized place, a civilized time. They have no understanding of what destroyed imperial Russia. You have this understanding. I know this from Mr. Saylor, from Mathilde. There was … once, one night in the winter, in St. Petersburg, I brought home this freezing, starving old man I had found. My family thought it was a joke, an amusement. I kept him in my room and fed him until he died. It was only a few days. I was very young then. I … Tatiana, they indulged me as though I had brought home a stray animal. You would not have thought it a joke. The Grand Duchess would not have thought it an amusement. She was her mother’s daughter, very proud, but so very kind and warm.”
He was touching her hand, looking at the ring rather than her. She stared at his monumental Russian face.
“What I mean to say, Tatiana Iovashchenko, is that … you see, Mathilde was the Grand Duchess’s friend, her best friend after her sisters. And you are related. You are of common blood. I want this ring to go to Iovashchenko, not Romanov. I wanted Mathilde to have it, but she would not. I want you to have it, Tatiana.”
It went onto her finger with an ease that amazed her.
“You see, dochka. Perfect.”
; Later, after they had lunched on soup, cheese, bread, and tea, she took him for the long slow walk to the pond at the edge of the rear lawn. She imagined Mathilde there in various styles of dress—a young woman in long skirt and straw hat, an older one in cloche and flapper shift, a matron in the frilly frumpiness of the 1930s, a grandame in the 1950s, returning to the long dresses of her youth. He sat while she walked around the pond, hopping over the brook that poured from it over the brow of the hill, pausing to take in the full magnitude of the view. She had visited her grandmother many times, had grown up nearby, yet had never known of this romantic place.
“It’s glorious,” she said, turning back toward him, but he only stared into the pond’s dark, still waters, saying nothing. She feared he might be cold. Saylor, who supposedly had stayed behind in the house, stepped out from behind a hedge and went to the old man’s side.
“We must go back now, Your Excellency,” he said. The duke rose slowly, obediently.
They returned to the library. As Ramsey restocked and restirred the fire to its former blazing intensity, the duke seated himself on the long, soft couch opposite, inviting Tatty to join him. She did so feeling very girlish and daughterly, the ring a magic, commanding presence on her hand, the emerald glittering brightly with the light of the flames.
Then at once he slept again, this time snoring quite loudly, his head fallen onto the back of the couch. Tatty ignored Ramsey, letting the taped Russian music fill the minutes. The sunlight from the windows faded and dimmed as the afternoon slipped to evening. Ramsey brought her a whisky, which she accepted with a nod. He poured a stronger one for himself and then another small neat glass for the duke. When the old man again awoke, Ramsey greeted him with it.
“We must go soon, General. Will you join us in a farewell drink? It’s a special occasion. I’m sure the good doctor will not mind.”
“Yes, spasibo, gospodin Saylor.”
He took the glass with one hand and then her hand with his other. The room was dark now but for the fire. The Sveshnikov Choir had returned, the voices softer, singing in a slow cadence, receding as a male alto came to the fore in clear and lilting tones. She had never heard Russian words sung so beautifully before.
“It sounds like bells,” she said. “They’re singing like bells.”
The duke nodded, smiling.
“The name of the song is ‘Evening Bells,’” Ramsey said.
“Is a song for the twilight,” said the duke. “The man you hear singing is hearing the sound of evening bells, and they remind him of the evening church bells in a distant village where he once lived. When he is no more, after he is dead, he knows the sound of the evening bells will still be heard.”
When the music at last was done, the last singer’s long note fading into a momentary interlude of silence, Tatty squeezed the old man’s hand. “I will come back to see you,” she said. “Would that be all right?”
“Yes, dochka. Indeed. Very much. I am so sorry that it was not possible, not appropriate, for us to meet before this. Now I am very, very happy.”
A door slammed at the rear of the house.
“That will be the cook,” said Ramsey. “We must go.”
“Chto?”
“We must go, Your Excellency.”
“Yes. Do svidaniya, moi sin, moya doch.”
They left him looking into the fire. She held that image of him in her mind until Ramsey halted them in the hall to point out one of the smaller paintings, a portrait of a young officer in imperial uniform. The face was bold, sharp, and aristocratic, more striking than handsome, the hair and cavalry moustache blond, the unmistakable staring eyes the same arresting gray.
“How old was he then?” said Tatty, in a near whisper.
“In his twenties, I imagine. He said it was done just before the Revolution. Your grandmother must have thought him quite a dashing fellow.”
Ramsey again refused to drive, irritating Tatty, for she would have much preferred lolling back in the passenger seat with her thoughts on the long trip back to the city. There was still a fair measure of light along the western horizon. When she turned her MG south onto the Bedford Road, it brought a dim sparkle to her ring.
“I wonder whether to believe half of it,” she said. “Or any of it.”
As they crested a small hill, she could see the moon rising through some trees to her left. Upper Westchester was not only wilder than her part of Connecticut, but in its eerie way more beautiful.
“We’ve found him quite reliable,” said Ramsey, slouching in his seat with his knees up against the dashboard. He clasped his hands, his two index fingers pressed together and pointed at the road ahead like a gun. “A most veridical man. You might question his memory at times, but never his honesty.”
“Could this really have been the grand duchess’s ring?”
“The leading expert on the subject just gave it to you.”
“I feel guilty wearing it.”
“It fits you perfectly, as though they’d made it up for you at Tiffany’s. Cinderella’s slipper.”
“I feel it belongs with the family.”
“Tatty. He explained all that to you. You are family.”
There were headlights behind her, approaching at some speed. She was traveling at exactly the limit.
“It must be a very expensive ring.”
“Priceless. I shouldn’t flash it about on the IRT, or for the IRS either.”
“Why wouldn’t my grandmother have mentioned him? She talked about Russia constantly. Why wasn’t he at her funeral?”
“Tatty, not to be indelicate, but there were rumors about your grandmother and the duke. I remember hearing them as a child in the village.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Scandalous rumors, Tatty. I’m sure she didn’t want to do anything to encourage them. Certainly not with her own family.”
“I find that very hard to believe.”
“You will note a certain fondness on his part for her.” He slouched further down in his seat. “I’m going to sleep a while now.”
“Again?”
“I’ve been working rather hard, lately. Don’t speed.”
“Ram. There’s a car behind us.”
“Imagine.”
“It came up fast, then slowed to match my speed. It’s had several chances to pass, but doesn’t.”
“They’re friendlies, my dear. Associates of mine. I keep them with me constantly now, at a discreet distance. They’re a perk attendant to my new position. Not to worry.”
“Ramsey, do you swear this Russian junket you’re offering me isn’t some covert action?”
“Oh, some higher-up in the HumInt section might try to take some advantage of it, but nothing that would personally involve you. All you’d have to do is perform your readings brilliantly as always and be nice to the Sovietski.”
“Take advantage how?”
“I’ve no idea. But your glamorous presence will certainly attract attention, and with so many Russians looking agog in one direction, our fellows might well find opportunity to busy themselves in another.”
“Busy themselves?”
“Tatty, we always take advantage of a distraction. When Nixon was in Moscow, the Agency was able to clean up all sorts of old business. During the Moscow Olympics we had an absolute romp.”
“And this is why you want me to go on this tour?”
“No.”
“I suppose you’d like me to do a striptease at the end of each reading. That certainly would hold their attention.”
“Tatty, for God’s sake. I’m merely trying to give you honest answers to your questions. I can’t promise that one of our gentlemen won’t seek some benefit from this. I can’t. But I can guarantee there’ll be nothing involving you personally. This venture is legitimately and genuinely a State Department cultural exchange. I just saw this as a good opportunity for you. One you need. One we owe you.”
“How could I ever doubt you, Ramsey? What’s an
attempted rape by a crazed KGB agent among friends?”
“Don’t be so churlish. If you don’t want to go on this, don’t. But whatever you decide to do, don’t worry about this being an Agency mission. I swear to you it isn’t.”
She drove on a ways in silence. The car behind her kept pace. They were nearing Bedford, just a few miles from the interstate. In an hour they’d be back in New York City, and she’d be free of Ramsey Saylor. She could be free of him forever.
“Why would you pay me so much money? Sid Greene isn’t that generous.”
“It’s not out of line for this kind of thing. Foundation grants are often generous. You’d be representing your country; presenting some of its greatest literature. And with your talent and speaking voice, there’d be a good return on the investment.”
The road led on in shallow curves, then straightened for a direct climb of a long hill.
“I’m going to sleep now, Tatty.”
If he did, she could not tell. She glanced at his profile in the flare of headlights as a car came by in the opposite lane. The thickly lashed eyes were closed, but he could have been fully alert, listening to every sound she made. Her thoughts, though, were still her own, and they were of Russia, a Russia she now seemed to see as her grandmother and mother had seen it. Her one schoolgirl’s tour of it had been brief and unpleasant. She had been hurried through The Hermitage in Leningrad scarcely understanding that it had once been the czar’s Winter Palace. Illness had kept her from an excursion out to Czarkoe Selo, the imperial country retreat. Her distaste for her own Russianness had been very strong then and colored every impression. She had been told of the beauty of Saint Basil’s on Red Square when it was floodlighted against a cold, starry winter sky. She had seen it on a hot, gray, rainy day when she was suffering from an upset stomach. And so many years ago. So briefly. Mathilde might have prayed in that church; so might have the grand duchess.
Blood of the Czars Page 6