The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  “Do you hear about my brother, Shim?”

  “They say he stays away, sewing in places for a bed and a bite.”

  I kept hoping this meant he had managed to run away. “And what will be done with the last two huts, Ossip, do you know?”

  “They’re no good until it’s warm again. Maybe my uncle will rent them from the village, next maneuvers, and fill them with girls for the soldiers.”

  According to him the villagers were gossiping that the Squire was dying, that his wife was crazy, that Glueck was not really a music teacher but a fortuneteller with an evil eye who was persuading the Squire to sell off the estate in pieces and that the one behind the scheme was Stanya Parsov.

  The night before the return of Tatiana Arkipovna the Squire suffered a serious knock. While enjoying one of his monologues, pacing up and down in his study, he happened to look out of the window. He shouted, “Danger, they are here, everybody take arms,” and ordered us to follow him to his sitting room where the rifles hung. There he fired shots to wake the household. When they appeared he explained that the enemy’s line lay along the near side of the stream and gave each of us a rifle, with instructions to Rodion and Vassily “to make a careful count of their bonfires.”

  By an exchange of rapid glances between them after they made sure the Squire was seeing things, Rodion and Vassily took themselves outside “to reconnoiter,” in this way to fetch Dr. Ostrov. Meanwhile the Squire had us lying flat on the floor with rifles, even the women. Every few moments he would speak in some intended tone of assurance to remind us he was our general. “They’re clever, clever . . . but wipe them out when they come creeping with their brands. Listen! Hear them? Ossip, you have good ears! Do you hear them?”

  Ossip thought it over. “I’m not sure, Squire. Your ears are better than mine.”

  By now I was able to speak. “Squire,” I whispered.

  “Eh?”

  “Who are they?”

  The Squire was on his belly. In this position his words seemed to fall out to floor. “The Avengers . . . sh.”

  Natalya found the courage to crawl next to him. “Dear Konstantin Andreyevitch,” she begged, “everybody loves you, you are safe.”

  I knew he was crazy and I didn’t see any good news in it.

  In a minute or so he said, “Nnnnnnow . . . fire.”

  I only fired once. I didn’t know how to reload. They each fired about six times, the glass shattering; we heard shouts from anear, “Enough! They ran away!” I recognized the voice of Dr. Ostrov, somewhat highly pitched and neither irritated nor friendly.

  “Good,” the Squire said, standing. “We didn’t need reinforcements.”

  When the doctor and the two others came through the unhinged door the Squire stood quite calmly explaining “the action ” The doctor kept nodding while holding the Squire’s pulse, his head cocked to a side, a dead piece of cigar in his mouth. “Come, Kolya,” he said, leading him to the door, “you’ll tell me everything upstairs.” They left the room in a most natural stroll. When they reached the stairs Dr. Ostrov told Rodion and Vassily to carry the Squire up. The Squire protested, “No, I am not even scratched,” and without warning fainted and shook in it.

  The doctor did not come out of his room for an hour. Glueck and I waited on the landing. “He will be in bed a week,” Ostrov told us at last. “I’ll talk to Vassily, he’ll know what to get from Yushin.”

  “Is it a stroke?” Glueck asked.

  “A stroke of luck,” said the doctor drily, hurrying away; a curious reply.

  The next evening Dr. Ostrov brought Tatiana Arkipovna and her female train from Minsk.

  She walked past us in the hall, straightly proud and up the stairs with a sure balance. She carried a small box or two, and she showed us clear eyes and how she must have looked long ago, seeming to have come from a thrilling vacation. Madame had apparently retrogressed, her

  small face betraying indications of new worries piled upon the old, but a stiffer pride in owning them. Lilli looked as before, her bonnet in a slant as she cried she had lost something on the way, nothing to hear outside of a baby carriage. Leta had taken some of her mother’s entering dignity and color, walking quickly and gently past us half on her toes with no more than a quick smile at Glueck’s bow. Her cheeks were red with more than the cold air, the girl happy to be young and near the one for whom she would have died.

  The rupture of our routine that day gave me unexpected time to think; and this happened more and more until Arkip Apollonovitch came. By peering out of my window at a slant I could see an angle of our huts, patches of brown dotting the gray-white fields of soft wet snow, the generous air preparing the end of our locked-in winter life, and I would have taken any chance, no matter what the punishment, to run across the highroad and see which of my own were left and if my brother would still not talk to me. But I had visions of faceless women screaming, “Back, back, you murderer,” and no heart to hear if the real faces would speak differently* For themselves they would be right, I thought, overestimating the depth of my estrangement. In this mood I played Ave Maria sometimes; it sounded mostly “theirs.”

  I was playing it when Glueck returned from an interview with Tatiana Arkipovna. For all his slight build he never moved easily in a controlled flow, more like nailed together at the joints, yet here he almost danced to where I stood, taking the fiddle from me and giving it several happy rips of pure improvisation, more astounding to me than the time my nephew Aaron’s wife Rhoda lost a bet and paid it to him by kissing him in the behind at their twentieth anniversary party.

  “I’m happy,” he cried, skipping as he played, his small coattails flapping, “it went well, excellently! I’m to give Leta lessons again but Tatiana Arkipovna will do the rest, she said. I mentioned I had the highest feelings for the girl but only as a pupil and friend . . . which she’s to tell Leta ... an amazing woman! Leta will know from her that it is useless to hope. She promised!”

  “She has changed?”

  “To her true self . . . the rest in Minsk has done her good. She’s at peace, Lev. And I too! Come, let’s work!”

  The piano lessons resumed, Leta in a controlled calm, Glueck gay at the table, Madame glummer and bitten inside, Tatiana Arkipovna blooming, visiting her husband in his room twice a day for an hour; and she let us know she approved the plan to render Arkip Apollono- vitch a service, spoke of leaving the girls with Madame and traveling to Paris with us; and the day the Squire rose from bed she greeted him with the loveliest surprise; he was delighted! The family a family again!

  Dr. Ostrov learned of the surprise at tea, kissed Tatiana Arkipovna’s hand, said, “My dear, you have added twenty years to your husband’s life,” smiling in a gleaming manner. And what was the great surprise ? The first morning the Squire joined his family at breakfast, leaning on a cane, looser about the face, he asked, “Where is Madame?”

  “Where indeed,” from Tatiana Arkipovna with a girlish giggle.

  “Sick, I hope.”

  “Ah, be more charitable,” from her, “say you’d want her to enjoy her holiday.”

  “What holiday?”

  “I made it difficult for her in Minsk, I was a baby there,” Tatiana Arkipovna murmured with a rosy smile, “and since she’s to be alone with the girls while we’re in Paris I thought she ought to have a little trip too. She’s with her sister in Smolensk for a while, Kolya, until you say we leave for Paris. Poor Vera hasn’t seen her sister in years.”

  “How nice,” said the Squire, “to come down in the morning and see Madame among us, but how delightful it is to know she is in Smolensk!”

  Calm agreements, shared joys ... he obeyed to the letter every Ostrov instruction, napped or read the whole afternoon while Tatiana Arkipovna took a horse for gallops when the sun was high, the snow almost gone; even telling Rodion to saddle the two slowest horses for Leta and Lilli, teaching them all over again in the field beyond the summerhouse. In this atmosphere Leta betrayed no discontent,
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  neither plying Glueck with her old look of waiting to be harnessed and ridden nor allowing him to discover why. And so it went, nothing ceased on top. On the Monday before the Thursday that Arkip Apollonovitch was expected Tatiana Arkipovna urged Glueck into a concert for the family; I played what the great guest would be hearing except the scherzo of the Beethoven which I could not tame. She cried “Bravo!’" and the Squire took great heart from it, the excitement whirling in a glow. Deep knocks were preparing themselves, however, the house never a house again but a casino of obsessions, a place of endings.

  The telegram arrived on Tuesday. The Squire inspected Rodion’s boots and coat for fifteen minutes, the carriage and livery polished spotless five times, and at dawn Thursday Rodion clattered down the hill to bring the guest from the Minsk depot. That afternoon, another telegram from Arkip Apollonovitch; delayed in Petersburg until Saturday. Again waitings, inspections, polishings; and I too. “It gives them more time to be ready to play for Father,” Tatiana Arkipovna told her restless husband. The Squire insisted we work like horses and Glueck spent most of the next days trying to get me even with the Beethoven but he had to give up. Perhaps next month, he decided, when we were already in Paris I might have mastered at least the middle movement. Meanwhile he shined me up on the Glinkas, the Schubert, and the “Evening Star.” Dr. Ostrov did not fail to visit every day, giving the Squire encouraging chats and then retiring into private with Tatiana Arkipovna. She possessed her usual braveness when she reappeared, yet she smiled with an inner paleness. I said to Glueck, “The Squire is going to die.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Do you suppose she’d be sorry, really?”

  “Yes, a bit. Her deepest sorrow is pledged to another cause however. Since we have grown close, I see it. She mourns being denied her own son, that’s why she’s fine and tender about me, somewhat secretly, it’s true ... if you knew what she’s accomplished for me . . .” He sighed, then with happy risk, “I must tell someone, you won’t repeat?” I shook my head. “The woman is a jewel — a second mother.”

  “What did she do for you?”

  “I may stay here as long as I wish,” he cried youthfully, “as a son to her and a brother to Leta! Oh . . . now you’ll see me compose! Do you understand, boy? Suites, operas, symphonies! And conduct them all myself, in the Hall of Nobles!”

  “You’re happy.”

  “My life is saved!”

  Then, the great Tuesday; and with it a weary annoyed Arkip Apollonovitch anxious to leave before he arrived, trailing behind him a certain Kremenko, a little person of indeterminate age and magnificent blandness carrying several dispatch cases and wearing a shock of a diamond on his pinky finger; something of a butler, more of a secretary, and mostly the old man’s assassin of those irrelevancies hovering in swarms over brows contemptuous of halos, brows already graven on top of their self-erected monuments. The first meeting downstairs must have been of the briefest; Glueck and I saw the carriage coming, from upstairs, and shortly afterward we heard them on the landing just below us. We had a glimpse of Arkip Apollonovitch as he made the turn towards the guest suite — tall and spare, incredibly straight for his over ninety years, no beard, a starved eagle’s face, it seemed, of cherubic structure planed thin by a life of the sternest flights; some giant of a bird from another time flying the continents from peak to peak, austerely avoiding the jungles, satisfied only when alone and above. This was his everyday face, the full red lips and russet cheeks of his picture hanging downstairs in the Gallery the artistic embellishment he had not been able to abide; why he had gladly given away the picture. He sent out Kremenko to inform that he wished to see Dr. Ostrov but no one else until the next day and that no food should be prepared for him.

  Dr. Ostrov paid his call. The Squire forced him to stay for supper in order to receive a full explanation of Arkip Apollonovitch’s exclusivity. Kremenko failed to appear downstairs when the bell rang, taking his meal in the guest suite also from the store carried with them. He called for hot water which Vassily took up, returning to report that their

  supper consisted of a special brew of tea and herb-root from their own samovar together with clabbered milk mixed in a bowl of plain white cheese with a garnish of raisins and almonds. Dr. Ostrov said approvingly, “He eats like a peasant.”

  “Is he ill or tired?”

  “To say he’s ill would be incorrect, Kolya. He is ninety-four or -five.”

  “Please, Alexander Voyinevitch, say straight out ... is there any danger of his . . . ?” The Squire bit his lip sharply and not entirely without pleasure. Dared he hope the father-in-law’s time had arrived? After all had his long-nursed project turned unnecessary?

  “He’s prepared, bodily, to expire,” the doctor said carefully, “but this has been so for more than twenty years. Don’t upset yourself, Kolya. I simply reviewed for him our little ailments here, in which he took a fatherly interest. He is relieved that the worst has passed. He took cold on the train and wisely rests in order to give his best self to the family tomorrow. Besides, his Georgei advises me he has a number of decisions to certify and telegrams to compose.”

  “Yes, that’s Father,” Tatiana Arkipovna said without bias.

  Three times the next day Rodion was sent to Pukop with telegrams. It went into the afternoon, and still no summons from the little Kremenko. I fiddled in the main reception hall, Glueck filling in at the piano. Tatiana Arkipovna took the girls for a gallop, it being almost balmy that day, and as the sun slanted we saw the Squire and Kremenko step out to the promenade together, Kremenko democratically accepting a cigar without modifying the gestures he was making in the course of his establishing some point or other. The brusqueness of his steps and the vigorous casualness with which he was waving the hand holding the cigar, together with the smiles of self-evident shrewdness playing on his face as he pronounced what through the window-glass appeared to be informal observations of an epochal nature, made Glueck remark, “The Squire is contented, for once, to listen.”

  That evening after supper, the formal welcome; the family must have been with him about half an hour when Glueck and I got our summons. They sat in a ring about the bed, the Squire at Arkip’s feet, one

  leg over the other, his arms folded across his chest, a cigar in his mouth; Leta and Lilli on a bench together near their mother, their hands in their laps like the girls who go to dances but don’t dance; and Tatiana Arhipovna, a young tilt to her in the lamplight, leaning forward listening to her father, the skin tight upon her cheeks taking some of the pink of her dress which rustled at her smallest movement, and allowed a visible rise and fall of her bosom; no sign on her strong face if her father’s words had touched her or if like him she was standing on the ramparts. The bed was a litter of documents and ledgers which Kremenko unobtrusively cleared piece by piece, examining each one carefully before placing it in a small trunk filled with similar material, the old man talking along meanwhile though having noticed Glueck and me standing at the door, a good twenty-five feet from him and to one side. We were allowed to remain there until Arkip Apollonovitch finished.

  “It is interesting, I suppose,” he was saying in a voice well reined, the breaths paid out carefully like coins taken from a purse and laid one by one on a counter. “But not for long. It is always the same at spas. The pilgrims come; everything is planned by the watch. They stand in their bathes, looking about to see if anyone is cured. It should be a pleasant life, in the summer. I will go to no more spas. No cures will be made on me. Many of them are genuine but not from the bathes. You see gentlemen on the benches in the morning waiting for their time, conversing on topics considered cm courant. One speaks, the other listens. They meet in the afternoon, waiting for their time to bathe. Now the morning speaker listens while the other talks. For this they return every summer to the spa. For the curative bon ton . . . .” He stopped. “And who is that?” he asked quietly, pointing to Glueck and me. Glueck came forward, gave him a full bow and a loud click o
f his heels. “Ernst Glueck, sir, of the Maryinsky Theatre, Petersburg.”

  “So you are the boy,” Arkip Apollonovitch said, indicating with his finger for me to come forward. “I thought I heard a piano downstairs, and not poorly.”

  “He plays the molin, Papa,” Tatiana Arkipovna said.

  “You must hear him,” from the Squire, with a defensive puff at his cigar.

  “Yes. Well, Georgei? Before we go to sleep what have you forgotten ? ”

  “Nothing,” Kremenko replied, congratulating himself with a smile.

  “I would like,” said the Squire as the ladies rose, “a minute privately with you, Arkip Apollonovitch.”

  “Yes, yes. Tomorrow, Kolya.”

  “It is of first importance to you, Father.”

  “Yes,” the old man threw into the Squire’s trembling aggressiveness, “tomorrow, then. Tatya . . .” He motioned to her to sit again. “We’ll see what's left to speak of.”

  Good-nights were said stiffly, the Squire bearing up against having to leave with Leta and Lilli.

  On the morning of that Thursday Glueck and I were fighting with the Beethoven downstairs in the main reception hall, the day rolling warmly to noon, the trees losing their winter gray, the bark darker, the brown ground lightening with promises of soon green, spring still with its eyes closed but yawning; and during a short rest as I put my bow to the resin Glueck opened the French door near the piano, sampled the refreshing air that entered. We left the door open, returned to the Beethoven not aware immediately of the voices on the promenade, when they began or whose they were. As we played there seemed mixed into it that other sound, at first sensed as a discord, extraneous, then as voices, clearly people talking on the promenade, two. Our eyes slanted to the door; but no one, the voices continuing agitato, the piano angled to the meeting of the walls; we were unseen.

  Glueck’s eyes met mine, we stopped playing, we listened. The woman was doubtless Tatiana Arkipovna, her tones urgent and even pleading, her tempo quick, her volume conspiratorial but carrying. They stood at the corner of the promenade just to the side of the French door; at first the voice of the man remained a mystery. Not his public voice, no professional control in it; all feeling, the voice of a man with a woman important to him.