Sweet Love, Survive

by Susan Johnson

  They entered Shura four hours later, their horses lathered. The city was drifting into early winter twilight, the streets busy with workers on their way home. Avoiding the main thoroughfares they arrived at the doctor’s house undetected. Waiting in the back with the horses, Karaim kept guard while Apollo went inside to persuade the doctor to venture out on the dangerous ride up the mountains. The gold Apollo carried was his most persuasive argument, although he was perfectly willing to use the pistols strapped to his hips if necessary. He fingered them impatiently while the doctor hesitated fractionally, and whether the gold or the threat of death proved more effective, the doctor went for his bag and coat.

  After leaving the doctor’s residence the trio skirted the busy areas of town, keeping to the quiet side streets. They were nearly to the outskirts when one of the newly formed people’s security units suddenly appeared from between a livery stable and a tumbled-down tavern.

  “Stop!” a heavyset, bearded man at the head of the group demanded. “Your papers!”

  In a split second a score of alternatives and probabilties tumbled through Apollo’s mind, but the revolutionary fervor of these police squads was well known, and the possibility of successful debate with them was negligible. “One never escapes bureaucracy,” Apollo said, a faint, grim smile on his lips, and for a second a living flash of bereavement and farewell passed from his golden eyes to Karaim. Then his nagaika came down brutally on the flanks of the doctor’s mount and he screamed, “Ride, Karaim!”

  In a swift, fluid motion only a lifetime in the saddle could achieve, Karaim stretched out on one stirrup, grabbed the bridle of the doctor’s horse, and, savagely manhandling the frightened animal, spurred his own mount. The two men careened at a gallop toward the deserted stretch of road ahead.

  Apollo turned to fight.

  He swung his horse frantically and went crashing into the rabble, firing both Mausers. Leda responded to Apollo’s commands, plunging, rearing, flailing out with lethal hoofs. When his pistols were empty, he laid on heads, faces, shoulders, backs with his sword and nagaika, managing to wreak disaster on the group before the squad’s sheer numbers overwhelmed him and he was hauled from Leda’s back. He fought every foot of the way down the street to the security commissar’s office; he fought when they dragged him down the hallway; he kicked and cursed when they unbolted the cell door. Then, their prisoner secure, the ruffian band jabbed at him with sticks and rifle butts, lashed out with booted feet and clenched fists. A powerful blow collided with Apollo’s golden head, and halfway into unconsciousness he cursed the end of four years of phenomenal luck.

  For days he lay in jail while the newly created commissars argued about the particular manner of executing him, several schools of manslaughter strident in their preferences. The hierarchy of authority was still very muddy and chaotic in the new Soviet Union, and control was frequently directly related to the loudness of one’s voice. The noisy, clamorous uproar was eventually resolved by a perspicacious new commissar who had the good sense to understand that supreme power still resided in the capital. He wired to Tiflis regarding the captured White officer and received an immediate reply: DO NOT STOP REPEAT STOP DO NOT STOP EXECUTE APOLLO KUZAN STOP SEND TO TIFLIS STOP. It was necessary to emphasize the negative since the utter dissolution of civil tribunals had resulted in every tree and lamppost becoming an instant courtroom, and Tiflis was very anxious to hang Captain Prince Apollo Kuzan with as much fanfare and publicity as possible. The execution might serve as an object lesson to the Dagestanis, who had been very slow—in fact, completely disinterested—in recognizing the new Soviet government. The reluctance of the Dagestanis to surrender themselves and their lands to the benevolence of Bolshevism was causing problems in Moscow. They must be made to understand who their masters were, and with the execution of their prince perhaps the point would be more readily taken.

  The argumentative commissars in Shura did as they were told, and as it happened, on the day Apollo left for Tiflis, the train to the capital carried an inordinate number of Dagestani warriors.

  When Karaim arrived back at Dargo without Apollo, Kitty’s heart almost stopped. Light-headed with despair, she asked for details. Karaim assured her men were even now retracing the route to Shura; shortly, they would know what had befallen the Falcon. Whether to follow Apollo’s orders or to stay with him and chance the Cub’s life was the hardest decision of Karaim’s life. Unyielding devotion to his prince’s orders had prevailed over his own personal inclinations. He tried to reassure Kitty in his taciturn way, but his spare phrases did little to comfort the shrieking terror echoing through Kitty’s numbed brain. Apollo gone? Captured? Maybe dead? How was she supposed to survive a loss like that? To have her happiness suddenly snatched away after only just finding it? Huge tears welled into her eyes and Karaim, in an uncharacteristic gesture, took both her hands in his dark leathery palms, saying gruffly, “We’ll get As-saqr As-saghir back for you, Countess. That I promise. But now … the Falcon’s son. Please. He needs you. He must live.”

  Into the awkward silence, Kitty replied a little shakily, “Yes … of course,” her confused mind still dazed with the enormity of her loss.

  “Go with the doctor,” Karaim said gently, pushing her toward the stairs, “and we’ll find the Falcon. I’ll return later with news.”

  Kitty turned back. “Oh, yes, please. Come any time, Karaim. I’ll be up and waiting.” Her eyes were dark with fear.

  “Sleep if you can. The Cub needs his mother in good health.”

  Kitty knew Karaim was right, and while she grieved for her son in his illness, a part of her would die if she were to lose Apollo. “Have me wakened, then, Karaim, when you return with news. Anytime, please!” And Kitty took a deep breath to forestall the tears threatening to burst forth.

  “As soon as I know anything, Countess.”

  Early the next morning, Karaim returned with the information: Apollo was being held in the jail at Shura, but rumor indicated a possibility he was to be transferred to Tiflis.

  “Why, Karaim?” Kitty anxiously cried. “Are they going to spare him? Is it possible, since they haven’t killed him yet?” The flare of desperate hope was pathetic in its intensity.

  “I don’t know, Countess. We must wait and see,” Karaim carefully replied, not wishing to inspire any unrealistic expectations. “If he’s taken to Tiflis, we’ll follow and see if he can be freed at some point in the journey, or possibly later in Tiflis.”

  “If you go, Karaim, I’m going, too.” Her voice was coldly determined.

  Karaim was momentarily startled; he could never get used to the countess’s lack of understanding of the most elementary principles. Regaining his composure, he quietly remonstrated. “Impossible. The Falcon would never allow you to be exposed to such danger.”

  “Say what you will, Karaim.” Kitty set her shoulders resolutely. “I’ll not stay behind and wait for tidings of Apollo’s … death.” Her lips quivered but she lifted her chin high. “Don’t think I don’t know why they want to transfer him to Tiflis. Bolshevik feeling against former White officers runs gallows high. It’ll be a circus, won’t it? A high-ranking White officer—a Kuzan and Iskender-Khan’s heir—being hanged. Like a public spectacle.”

  “I don’t know, Countess,” Karaim said noncommitally, but he resolved to lead his rescue troop out of Dargo in the greatest secrecy. Neither Iskender-Khan nor Apollo would allow the countess to put herself in such a vulnerable and dangerous position.

  Meanwhile, with the doctor’s drugs, the Cub rallied, and within days he was well on the way to recovery. But his mother had been unable to smile, despite the gratifying improvement. She felt, disconsolately, that Apollo’s life was too high a price to pay.

  Two days after Apollo’s capture, nearly riding three horses to death, Sahin had reached Poti and dispatched a telegram through the underground route. The message was received in a grand château on the outskirts of Paris. The cryptic wire stated only: THE FALCON IS CAGED, but en
dless wheels were immediately set into motion. Markers were called in, gold exchanged hands where it would do the most good; influence was pushed to its limits. Even a beautiful woman in the Crimea decided it was definitely worth her while to encourage the advances of a fat little commissar from Tiflis, who only hours before had filled her with loathing.

  So Apollo languished in Metekhi Prison at Tiflis awaiting the convenience of the chief commissar currently on holiday near Yalta. The prince was ignorant of the fact that the date of his execution hung on the merest whim of frivolous fate and on the degree of erotic pleasure the commissar’s stunning new girlfriend could evoke.

  Apollo wondered at the delay, but however abhorrent the incarceration, his will to survive valued each new dawn that arrived. He knew if it were humanly possible, Iskender would find a means to rescue him. The move from Shura to Tiflis, however, had been orchestrated in such a way that any attempt would have been suicidal as well as unsuccessful. A single armored car had been attached directly behind the engine and Apollo had traveled in that heavily guarded car. The remainder of the train had been armed with soldiers inside and atop the cars, machine guns at the ready. Should there be an attack, the cars behind the armored one were to be uncoupled immediately while the engine and Apollo’s vault were to speed to Tiflis alone.

  Coincidentally, on the same day Apollo was escorted to Tiflis, the golden Karabagh mare disappeared from the police chief’s stable at Shura. “She was never meant for that worm, anyway,” a dark Dagestani warrior spat on a moonlit mountain trail. “She wouldn’t let him on her back.” Behind him, Leda shone silver gilt in the light of a new moon.

  The police chief had mistakenly assumed the egalitarian principles of the Revolution included thoroughbred Karabaghs as well. But Karabaghs were bred only for princes, and if the police chief had forgotten that fact in the rush of revolutionary fervor, Leda had not. His pedigree was not to her liking.

  Apollo had been in Tiflis now for almost ten days, and while he appreciated each day of life, he knew the possibilities of being liberated from the Metekhi were slim. The prison, formerly used for tsarist political prisoners, was completely in accessible on three sides, built on a jutting precipice high above the Kura River. The Cheka guard, who came occasionally to make his life miserable, had gloated that no successful escape had occurred from Metekhi since 1822. Well, once each century, Apollo had thought optimistically, and then he had forced his mind to concentrate on pleasant memories of Kitty to evade the excruciating pain of the rubber whip striking his body with searing monotony. Flogging with the stiff rubber lash was one of the Cheka’s favorite torture devices, for it caused internal injuries and bleeding without external evidence.

  Luckily the second in command at the Metekhi while the commissar was vacationing in Yalta regarded the Cheka as an inhuman aberration, and strict orders had been given—preceded by a curt telegram from Lenin himself—that the prisoner was not to be visibly maltreated. On the day of Apollo’s “trial” and public hanging, the Soviets wanted no broken, tortured ruin of humanity to appear before the people of Tiflis. Too many stories of torture and atrocities were finding their way out of the country, contributing to an unsuitable image abroad.

  So the Cheka monsters who came irregularly to Apollo’s cell kept their hand in with forms of torture that wouldn’t break a man, only make his life grimly oppressive.

  Apollo was now very white and only his fingers unobtrusively linked behind the chair back held him erect. His chest and arms were a bruised pulp, the feeling in his legs had disappeared an hour ago. While stubbornly proud, he wasn’t foolish. He knew he couldn’t last much longer; he was existing on willpower alone. With a kind of brutal persistence he braced himself for the next blow, his face set like iron. Father, Pushka, get me out of here, Apollo prayed for the thousandth time since noon.

  The Cheka torturer heated another small iron rod.

  “Hasn’t this game gone on long enough today?” Apollo said in a faint, gasping breath. “You can’t seriously think they’re going to want a charred corpse for trial. Think how unhappy Lenin will be.” For days Apollo had been trying to get some response from the brute. The goading distracted his mind, however briefly, from the pain.

  The hulking monster was coming toward him with the red-hot iron.

  “Try that once too often and you won’t have a guinea pig left,” Apollo whispered, his head flung back, the last shreds of strength ebbing away. His hair was dark with sweat and his fingers cramped, resisting the raw agony.

  “You hang soon, anyway,” the guard said, applying the iron with emotionless eyes.

  And just before the darkness engulfed him, a wisp of a grin crossed Apollo’s mouth. By God, he gloated, he’d finally made the bastard talk.

  Kitty discovered two days after the fact that Karaim had departed with his men. In a frenzy she confronted Iskender-Khan. “I wanted to go to Tiflis!” she screamed, quite unconcerned with the row she was making in front of several visitors he was entertaining.

  “Ah, Kitty, my dear,” the old chieftain replied calmly, rising to meet her and murmuring quiet apologies to his guests as he moved to the doorway where Kitty stood.

  Indifferent to tradition and protocol, Kitty shouted, “I’m not sitting here, waiting—I’m leaving!” Her voice blasted through the hushed room like an anarchist’s bomb.

  Taking her arm, Iskender turned Kitty aside. “It’s too dangerous.” His voice was moderate, reasonable.

  “I don’t care,” Kitty cried, her hands clenched into fists at her side.

  “It’s no place for a woman.” A placating attempt at chivalry. He touched her shoulder gently and she shook him off.

  “Don’t you dare say that!” Kitty retorted through gritted teeth, fed up with mountain tenets of what a woman could and could not do.

  “Apollo wouldn’t approve if I let you go,” Iskender patiently explained. It was true.

  That touched off the explosion. Kitty was nearly hysterical, and this was not the time to bring up male prerogatives. She rounded on him. Her face, appallingly white within the framing mass of honey-apricot hair, was unflinching. “I don’t care!” she hissed and, in a whirl of silk, left.

  “I’m sorry,” Iskender apologized, turning back to his guests. “As-saqr As-saghir’s woman is distraught. His capture, following their son’s illness, has taken its toll on her nerves. Now, as we were discussing: Ali, could you see that the streets are clear between Krasilnava and Bebutovskaya on the morning of April twelfth? And Shirez, about the touring car …” Kitty’s female hysteria was dismissed from his mind as plans went apace for Apollo’s rescue.

  Frustrated in her efforts to convince Karaim to take her along and irritated by Iskender’s patronizing behavior, Kitty finally lost her temper completely and decided to take matters into her own hands. Something she should have done a long time ago, she thought. The months with Apollo had made her soft. Good Lord, she’d run her own affairs for years with no help from anyone. It was about time she broke out of the cushioned confines love had woven around her.

  Several hours before dawn the following morning, Kitty and the Cub were passing through the last sentry post guarding the mountain aul. Mother and son, dressed in dark peasant garb, sat atop a mountain pony packed high with Kurdistan carpets and went unnoticed in the lengthy caravan of burdened horses leaving Dargo in the train of an Armenian rug dealer.

  The Armenian, whom Kitty had approached the previous evening, was richer by a ruby-and-diamond necklace valued in the range of two years’ income. Only for such an extravagant price would he have even considered spiriting As-saqr As-saghir’s woman and child out of the village. If Iskender-Khan were to discover his part in her flight, his life would be worthless—less than worthless, for he would be hounded from one end of the earth to the other. Patting the heavy necklace, he prayed to all the gods he knew.

  At Shura, Kitty and the caravan parted company. Purchasing a ticket for herself, she and the Cub boarded the train for Ti
flis. She wasn’t certain what she would do when they reached Tiflis, but she had to be near Apollo. She had plans and would begin by looking up the only acquaintance she knew there: her former music teacher, Professor Pashkov.

  The interior of the car she entered was a mass of humanity. Since the Revolution, privacy was almost impossible unless one was high in the party ranks. Compartment walls had been torn up for firewood along with doors and woodwork. The cushioned seats had been ripped apart, broken windows haphazardly boarded up, the floors littered with refuse.

  Kitty and the Cub found a corner among a group of mountain villagers traveling with their stock of newly made rifles they were going to sell in Tiflis. The journey passed safely until the outskirts of Tiflis when two guards came into the car checking identity papers. When a hand was held out to receive hers, Kitty replied she had lost them. Two calculating eyes studied her. Behind the black, voluminous peasant garb was a startlingly attractive blond woman.

  “An Ossete?” the soldier brusquely asked. That mountain tribe was almost wholly blond, distinctive in the Caucasus where dark-haired, dark-eyed coloring prevailed.

  “Yes,” Kitty quickly replied, and hoped he didn’t know the language.

  “A little out of your territory, aren’t you?”

  “My late husband’s from Dagestan. I’m returning home to my people.”

  “Your husband’s dead?” A familiar gleam Kitty had seen so often in Stavropol lit in his eyes.

  Uneasily, she answered, “Yes.” The guard’s scrutiny now became attentive, taking her in from head to toe, dwelling at length on the Cub sleeping in her arms.

  “No papers, hmmm?” There was no mistaking the lust kindling behind his small, inset eyes. He patted the pistol on his hip. “Come with me. I’ll have to …” The pause was deliberate. “Interrogate you.”

  Kitty followed him, with a pounding heart, through three railroad cars, everyone glancing away prudently from the by now familiar sight of an arrested individual. Though fear seized her, deep down she was determined to suffer no further indignities at the hands of a Bolshevik. Her hand slipped down into the folds of the blanket wrapped around the Cub and eased the kinjal handle slightly from its sheath. Apollo had insisted she learn to wield the mountain dagger, and for the first time since the endless lessons, she was thankful for his insistence. She could almost hear him quietly saying, “Slide it in between the second and third ribs. No, no, you’re too high; down there.… Didn’t I tell you it was easy?” And when she had become fast and expert he’d teased her into performing for Iskender one night. She’d never forget the glowing pride in Apollo’s voice when she had gotten under Iskender’s practiced guard and touched him lightly exactly over his heart. “What did I tell you, Pushka,” Apollo said, excitement warming his voice. “You have to admit she’s good.”