Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  Stiffly Sasha nodded. ‘Very well. Two hours.’

  The driver helped them unload the basket containing the picnic, and drove away, his last look, cast over his shoulder at Sasha, a distinct mixture of salacious envy and a kind of knowing contempt. For one moment the pacific Sasha found himself wishing that the man served under him, specifically in the company of a sergeant by the name of Marakov, whose well-deserved reputation for impeccable discipline achieved by a particular brutality was the source of much squeamish if ineffective disquiet for his superior officer.

  Beside him, skirts lifted above the deep snow, Margarita waited impatiently. ‘You have the key?’

  ‘Yes.’ He stepped in front of her, clearing the way as he walked for her to follow to the front door.

  The house was like an icebox, and dark. Furniture loomed in dust-sheet shrouds. Icy draughts scurried like mischievous sprites, moving curtains, stirring the air.

  ‘Goodness!’ Margarita ran to the window, opened it, flung open the shutters then closed the tall window again. Sun streamed through, slanted low, already almost at the horizon. Sasha watched, bemused, as she ran, laughing, from room to room, letting in the light, exclaiming and examining. ‘A stove! Here, Sasha, in the kitchen! Oh, may we light it, do you think? We could eat in here. What a pretty little house! Just look at this view – Sasha – do come and look!’ But before he could join her she was off again, throwing open doors, lifting sheets, playing like a kitten, exploring every room.

  Smiling, he set a match to the ready-laid stove, went back out into the snow to pick up the picnic basket. It was growing colder. The sun was dipping fast, half lost to the western horizon.

  Back in the kitchen the efficient stove was already roaring and the fragrant and comfortable smell of woodsmoke drifted in the air. Still dressed in fur-lined cloak and becoming hat, Margarita perched on a wooden chair beside the table. ‘What have you brought? Caviar? Darling Sasha, I do hope you’ve brought caviar?’

  He had indeed. And smoked meat, and cheeses, and fresh-baked bread. And champagne. Lots of champagne.

  The kitchen was a large and comfortable room, flagstoned but made warmer with rugs. The furniture was fairly primitive, a heavy wooden table with huge matching dresser, a couple of armchairs and a battered settee set by the stove. As Sasha fed the already glowing fire from the stack of logs that ran along one wall the air, chilled as an icebox when they had first entered, warmed to soporific comfort. Margarita, cheeks flushed, shrugged out of her cloak, flung her hat after it into a corner. Sasha too had doffed fur hat and greatcoat. He was dressed this afternoon not in uniform but in well-worn country clothes, riding breeches and an English tweed jacket; even Margarita, disappointed at first that her peacock officer had chosen to become a sparrow, had to concede that he looked every bit as handsome thus attired and in this setting as he had that first night she had seen him at the Bourlovs’ ball. She had drunk just enough champagne not to have to masquerade, as so often she did. When, as the sudden dusk fell, he bent to light the candle that stood upon the table she reached a hand to him perfectly naturally, and as naturally his mouth touched hers, gently at first, then much more fiercely, his fingers in her hair. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation, arching her back to brush her body against his as he bent over her. He pulled her to her feet, crushing her to him, kissing her again and again, mumbling foolishly into her hair. Who first made the move towards the settee beside the stove would have been hard to say.

  Beyond the window the sun continued its steady descent, a bright slither of red against the dark-drawn horizon, and the sky was aflame.

  * * *

  ‘I’ll die! Oh, my God! I’ll die of shame!’ Margarita sobbed heartbrokenly into a scrap of handkerchief, shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her face. ‘I’ll kill myself! I swear it!’

  ‘Darling – darling Rita – please don’t say such things – please don’t upset yourself so.’ Sasha was aghast, at what he’d done and at this inevitable but distressing consequence. The light had gone from the sky, the troika and its unpleasant driver would be back at any moment, he was due back on duty in under two hours and Margarita, hair a tangle about her distorted, weeping face, was all but hysterical.

  ‘Upset myself ?’ She lifted a tragic face. ‘Upset myself? Sasha, how could you? I’m ruined! Sweet Mother of God! Ruined! How will I ever face poor Mama and Papa? I’ll die! I will! I want to! I – want – to – die!’ She went off into another paroxysm of weeping. In truth she had worked herself up into such a state that the tears and the hysteria were all but real. ‘I won’t go home! I won’t! They’ll – they’ll see! They’ll know! They’ll know what I’ve done! Oh, it’s horrible! Horrible! They’ll hate me! Sasha – oh, Sasha – what am I going to do?’ She folded her arms upon her knees and laid her face upon them, sobbing.

  Uncertainly he laid a hand upon her shoulder. Last time he had touched her she had screamed at him and pulled away. Now at least she allowed the hand to rest where it was. A little encouraged, he leaned gently to stroke her hair. ‘Rita – please – don’t worry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to –’ He stopped.

  Her noisy sobs had subsided a little. She waited, not lifting her head.

  He was bemused. How in the world had this happened? He had been so determined to behave himself, so determined not to take advantage of her. ‘What a beast I am,’ he said. ‘Rita, don’t cry so, darling. It will be all right. I promise you.’

  She let a small, dramatic silence develop before she lifted her head. Her kittenishly pointed face was set, the sapphire eyes gleamed still with tears. She lifted her little chin bravely. ‘What? What do you promise, Sasha? What can you promise? Now?’ Her voice broke on the word. ‘Can you give back what I’ve lost? Can you undo what we’ve done?’

  He drew back, stood up, turned from her looking out into the darkness. Through the trees he saw the lamps of the troika as it sped through the darkness towards the house. ‘The – the sledge is coming.’

  She shook her head sharply. ‘I’m not coming. You go. Leave me here.’

  ‘Rita, don’t be absurd! You can’t –’

  She flew to her feet, face blazing, small fists clenched. ‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! What do you expect me to do? Face my father? My family? Knowing –’ she bit her lip, tears surged again ‘– knowing I’ve betrayed them? It will break their hearts, Sasha. As it has broken mine!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’ The shrill word echoed between them. She turned from him, shoulders hunched against him. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Everything they’ve taught me, everything they warned me against – I wouldn’t listen. Oh, how wicked I’ve been! I thought they were wrong. I thought – with you – it would be different. I thought I knew better. They didn’t know you, you see.’ She lifted her head, allowed pain to quiver in her voice. ‘I thought I did.’

  Truly distraught now, he came swiftly to her, gathered her into his arms, holding her close, rocking her like a child as the tears came again. ‘Rita, Rita, no! Don’t say such things. I love you. I love you!’

  Mutely she shook her head against his shoulder, her face buried in his jacket.

  ‘But yes! I do! I love you more than anything! More than life!’

  The troika came out of the trees and into the clearing in front of the house. Sasha had to get back to Petersburg. The colonel himself was due in barracks tonight. Desperately gentle, he pushed her a little way from him, peered into her face, lit by the flicker of candlelight. Tearstained and dishevelled, he thought she had never looked lovelier, nor more vulnerable. ‘Margarita, we’ll talk later – but we must go.’

  She shook her head stubbornly. ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t possibly stay here alone.’

  She said nothing, watching him.

  His heart was beating unpleasantly fast. ‘Rita, what are you thinking of? You can’t stay here. You know it. Why won’t you come back with me?’

  Still she did not r
eply. Her small mouth was set. So immersed was she in her role that for the moment she had come to believe it. ‘I can’t go home,’ she said, at last, very clearly and quietly. ‘I simply can’t, not now. Not ever. What is there for me? I can’t live with you, it’s unthinkable. And – I can’t live without you. So –’ she bowed her head, her voice a whisper ‘– so I don’t think I want to live at all.’

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘I mean it.’ She was suddenly quite convincingly calm. He looked at her in horror, utterly taken in. ‘I mean it,’ she said again, and managed a small, sad smile. ‘Leave me, Sasha. It’s best. I know you won’t marry me. I know you can’t. I know I’m not good enough for you. I suppose I’ve always known it. I’ve been stupid. So stupid. But I loved you, loved you more than anything.’ She smiled that small, sweet smile again. ‘Love you, that is. Still. You know that.’ She blushed deeply, but kept her eyes bravely steady upon his, turning the knife. ‘I’ve shown you that, today, haven’t I? And now –’ she took a tremulous breath, shook her head ‘– what is there for me now?’

  He caught her cold hand. The stove had burned low and the air was chill. ‘Margarita, listen to me. I’ll find a way. I promise you. What do you take me for? I love you. I love you! I’m a grown man – I can marry anyone I want.’ He shut out, flinching, the too-clear memory of his father’s heavy, scowling face, his roar of anger when crossed. ‘Please, dry your eyes, my love. Stop talking such nonsense. Come home with me. And don’t worry. I’ll work something out. I promise.’

  She searched his face with despairing, tear-wet eyes.

  ‘Please? Please, Margarita?’

  ‘I –’ she spoke hesitantly, wavering, shook her head. ‘I don’t think –’

  ‘Rita!’ He used as assertive a tone as he could manage. ‘This is ridiculous! Of course you must come back with me. You have to!’

  She punished him with silence and a defiantly-lifted chin. Then, ‘Supposing,’ she said at last, controlling with an obvious and courageous effort the tremor in her voice, ‘supposing there’s a –?’ She stopped, ducked her head in an apparent agony of embarrassment. She glanced at the rumpled settee. ‘What we just did – isn’t that the way –’ she swallowed ‘– the way children are made?’

  His heart sank further. Oh indeed yes, that was the way that children were made. ‘Darling, I told you – I’ll work something out.’

  ‘You keep saying that. But what do you mean?’ Impatience was growing. There was a chill, shrewish edge to the words.

  ‘I – I told you. I’m not a child, I’m a grown man –’

  ‘You’ll marry me?’ she asked sharply. ‘Is that what you’re saying? You’ll marry me?’ Belying the stubbornly pressing tone of the words she was looking at him with wide, innocently trusting eyes that were still swimming with tears. ‘You really mean it?’

  He hesitated for just a moment too long. Temper stirred. Her face crumpled. She took a swift, trembling breath and opened her mouth.

  ‘Yes, I mean it,’ he said, hastily. ‘Of course I mean it.’ Again the spectre of his father hovered; again he pushed it from him. ‘We’ll be married, my darling. Of course we will. What do you take me for?’

  A question best left unanswered. ‘You swear?’ she asked at last. ‘You swear on your honour?’

  ‘I swear. Of course I do.’

  ‘On your honour.’

  ‘On my honour.’

  She watched him for another long, level moment. Then she allowed him to drape the cloak across her shoulders, picked up the muff that lay upon the table. ‘Very well. I accept your word,’ she said. ‘Now – we should hurry – Katya will be waiting.’

  * * *

  It was an odd trick that fate played upon Sasha Kolashki that day. When he arrived at his quarters in the barracks near the Winter Palace, having with some relief handed over a calmer if still edgy Margarita to Katya and Jussi, a telegram awaited him, lying upon the table of the small, bare room. He was halfway to the press where his uniform hung before he saw it. He stopped, arrested in mid-movement. Then he snatched it and tore it open. Stood for several long moments, all movement frozen.

  His mother begged to inform her beloved son that his father, Feodor Alexandrovich Kolashki, had died of a seizure two days before.

  After a stunned moment of silence, appallingly, he found himself laughing. To his relief however the laughter did not last long. By the time he had flung himself onto the bed, his face buried in his arms, he was crying.

  * * *

  It was her mother in whom Margarita chose to confide first, trusting, with good reason, that here was her best ally. The simple but carefully-constructed story she told was convincing, if only half the truth; if Varya suspected the omissions she did not pursue them. Margarita told her mother that she had met Sasha at the Bourlovs’, that he was a friend of Jussi’s and had joined them once or twice on their afternoon expeditions. They had fallen in love at first sight; despite the obvious difference in their stations he was determined to marry her. She made no mention of the deceits they had practised and in particular no mention of the afternoon at the dacha. There was, she reasoned calmly, no cause to bring such things into the open now that Sasha had declared his intentions with no further pressure.

  Everything had gone exactly according to plan. Better, in fact, for not even she had foreseen or could have contrived Sasha’s father’s convenient death. What remained to be done was relatively simple. She could, she knew, safely leave it to her delighted mother to break the news to Victor; and once her parents met Sasha with his handsome face, delightful manners and ancient name and holdings they would of course both fall over themselves to give their permission for the marriage.

  Which should take place, she had decided, just as soon as possible.

  With the steely determination that had been the hallmark of her campaign to possess Sasha, Margarita to everyone’s surprise refused utterly to entertain thoughts of a large and extravagant wedding, which necessarily would take time to plan. The fragile, baited hook was taken; only a fool would play the fish for too long.

  She was marrying a soldier, she informed them all with a sober, charming, and self-deprecating maturity, and with his father newly dead and his mother and sister needing the income from the estate, they must learn to live on his pay. This was, of course, as so often with Margarita, only half the truth. She intended, at some time in the near future, to take in hand this high-minded eschewing of the estate’s income. Meanwhile her reasons for – regretfully but shrewdly – deciding against a splendid wedding did indeed involve those shadowy figures of Sasha’s mother and sister, but had rather more to do with their unfortunately predictable reactions to Sasha’s new wife than anything else. By the time she met them she intended to be firmly married; under no circumstances, having come this far, would she run the risk of Sasha being talked out of his commitment. Appearances notwithstanding, Margarita was far from foolish – she knew, or guessed, at the doubts her intended must on occasion entertain about her suitability as a wife for a Kolashki. She simply gave him no time to think about them, and certainly no chance to express them. Her future in-laws might be less easy to manipulate. Again circumstances conspired to help her; after the shock of her husband’s death Sasha’s mother had, according to his sister Galina, virtually gone into seclusion, hardly leaving the house. Sasha had returned home for his father’s funeral, but at Margarita’s gentle and concerned suggestion had made no mention of their plans. He must not, she had insisted, worry his mother with such things at such a time. Always ready to take the easy way Sasha, with some relief, had concurred.

  The moment Sasha returned from the funeral Margarita set about ensuring that their marriage took place just as soon as possible by the simple means of assuming his agreement and steadily forging her plans. She spent much time with him, re-enchanting him with her pretty ways, teasing him light-heartedly, infecting him with her own enthusiasm. She refused point blank to sleep with him. Indeed, she displayed tremulous hu
rt and shock at the very suggestion, making him feel such a villain even to have considered such a thing that he was contritely ready to do anything to bring the smile back to her pretty face. Of course they would marry, and of course it would be soon. He truly believed that he could not live without her; what choice did he have?

  He wrote a letter telling his mother and sister of his plans. Margarita offered to post it; and post it she did. Two days after the wedding.

  * * *

  Dmitri and his Natalia through all this quietly planned their own nuptials, long awaited, happily and securely certain of their love. It seemed to Varya, who had little to do with the organizing of this wedding, since the task had naturally fallen to Natalia’s oddly unpleasant mother, that these two had lived virtually in a world of their own since they had met in childhood; their actual marriage would be no great novelty, it was simply a calm and inevitable step along the road they trod together. And so it fell out, coincidentally, that Dmitri and his sister Margarita were wed within a few days of one another, as Anna and Yelena had been, both weddings celebrated in the middle of a dark and viciously cold January. But if the ceremonies were the same, the participants were very different. Dmitri and his new wife had planned their union since childhood, together and with no deceit; their future was clear and calm, a certain road, as they saw it, to quiet, endless happiness. That Margarita and Sasha had known each other for exactly three months was the least of the differences between the two young couples. When Margarita Victorovna Kolashkova stepped out into the bitter January day, her hand tucked firmly into her handsomely-uniformed husband’s arm, she felt like a General who has seen his battle plan work down to the last detail. All that was left to do now was to ensure that she won the war.