Then reveille sounded, and the camp came alive. Boris went to the mess tent and had his breakfast among the enlisted men. Natalia’s father had been such a man, he thought, curious about her background. Why had he never insisted on meeting her family? She’d hated them, but still—He had, as usual, done what came easiest.
But Natalia had not been easy. She had come more than halfway. He’d doubted her, over and over, accusing her of seeing Pierre, degrading her, even after Arkady’s birth. Suddenly he felt hot with shame. He was a grown man nearly forty years old, still entertaining the silly jealousy of a teen-ager.
In the middle of the morning the rider came with the mail pouch from Tiflis. Natalia hadn’t written in an age—what could have happened? His sister Nina hadn’t heard from her either and had been concerned. Now there was a letter from Switzerland—but not in her hand. Boris raised the envelope to the light and started. From Pierre? Fear, anger, and remembered pain shot through his chest and stomach, knocking the breath out of him. He regained his composure and strode with casual grace toward the tent to peruse his missive in private. Inwardly his body was churning.
He sat down at the small folding table and put on his spectacles. She’s getting a divorce, he thought, his throat constricting, and she’s made him write the letter because she can’t even face me on paper. Then, outraged, he heaped scorn and contempt upon himself. He must never let her know that his absurd fears still refused to die. He took his letter opener and meticulously inserted it into the corner of the envelope to quiet the snare drum that his heart had become. There it was, short and to the point. He leaned back to read it at leisure.
He read it once, the words making no sense. Then a second time, and a third. He could no longer hear his pounding pulse nor feel his extremities. His mind seemed to float above reality, in a strange amniotic fluid. The first paragraph registered perfectly well—but from there the logic short-circuited.
Boris felt his fingers lose their grip on the flimsy vellum, which dropped to the edge of the table. He looked at his hands with great, detached curiosity: They shook uncontrollably. He opened his mouth to laugh but found that his lips, too, refused to obey his command. Why had lightning pierced his stomach, gashing through his entire body like a tree on a stormy day?
Now he could no longer see, for a thick fog clouded his vision. He remained this way for an indeterminate length of time: It seemed like hours, days. When Outchakov entered the tent, Boris had to blink to make him out, and then he realized that his face was wet, that tears were overflowing into his mustache, onto his trembling fingers.
“My God!” Ivan Outchakov cried. “What’s happened, Boris Vassilievitch?”
Boris was surprised at how calm his voice sounded when he attempted to speak. “Nothing yet, Vanya,” he replied. “But tomorrow I shall go on the first patrol. Make the necessary arrangements, will you? I’ve had enough waiting.”
If it were ever possible to set grief aside, the place to do so would be the Caucasus. The squad with which Boris traveled contained thirteen enlisted men plus a corporal and a sergeant. They rode on horseback, the cold wind in their faces, prickles of anticipation running across their skins. The countryside was stark, and they climbed ridges and patrolled from their flatter tops, looking out toward Turkey. If the enemy traversed the boundaries, they would be able to send back warnings through the elaborate protective system set up by Baranov and the others at Division Headquarters in Tiflis. From platoon to company to battalion to regiment, the Division Sauvage’s intricate network would be prepared to receive the Turks and push them back.
The sergeant was older than most men of his rank. He was a dark-faced Georgian with hairy hands, a tall build, and black eyes that reminded Boris of Pierre. He was thirty years old, and his name was Lev Grodin. His corporal, almost a decade his junior, was a young Armenian from Yerevan, with a sweet face and a gentle demeanor. Mikhail Bogdanian was softly unassuming and bore the brunt of Grodin’s abuse. Boris wondered at their odd partnership and decided that they complemented each other in their dealings with the men. Grodin issued orders and Bogdanian made certain that the soldiers followed through; morale remained high because the poor corporal received the brunt of Grodin’s rage, and not them. Armenians, thought Boris wryly, had never fared well at the hands of Georgians. How had two such different peoples managed to coexist in the Caucasus for so many centuries?
The immensity of the spaces around them touched Boris deeply. He tried not to think of Arkady, but the burning in his stomach reminded him that eventually he would have to deal with his son’s death. To Grodin the major appeared a brooding, remote, and handsome man, perhaps imperiously conscious that the men in the squad were below him on the social as well as the military scale. Yet this was strange: At the platoon headquarters, Major Count Kussov had laughed with the soldiers, sat with them, and told them bawdy stories. To be sure, his stories were different from theirs—but still, he had mingled quite charmingly. Now he seemed absorbed in something far away, and the excitement of anticipation was the only point of connection between the noble observer and the rest of the squad.
The top of the mountain range was sharp and barren, offering a panorama of vast loneliness to Boris. No wonder Pierre had always been so sullen, so bristling with rebellion. He had grown up in this open land where man and beast could ride as one, feeling the elements. Boris smothered his pain in the vista below. His own mount pawed the red earth of the hilltop, as nervous as he was himself.
“We’re descending now, Major,” Grodin announced. “Time for a watering stop.” He began the single file climb down from the promontory. It was late; they had traveled twenty miles out from platoon headquarters, then patrolled back and forth among the ridges twice already; ten miles in each direction. An orange sun illuminated the peaks of the tallest mountains, dancing over the tips of snow. They would patrol the heights one more time, and then camp overnight on the flank of a hill.
Below them flowed a small river, which had started its trip high above them and would at length hurl itself furiously into the Black Sea. It was an impetuous torrent that roared over the stones and gamboled at the bottom of a deep and narrow gorge. Lev Grodin led the way down to it, and Boris followed, with the men behind him and little Bogdanian making up the tail. “I certainly am thirsty, Excellency,” Grodin said conversationally. His wide shoulders were sagging, from fatigue, Boris thought. Amicably he patted the man’s shoulder and reined in his magnificent black stallion to again follow in the leader’s tracks. The men didn’t know what to call him: Sometimes they stuck to military terms, and at others they reverted to a class-conscious “Excellency.” Boris was amused and a little touched. To the Turks we’re one and the same, he thought—the enemy.
His horse suddenly stiffened, and Boris turned back in his saddle, curious. A black mass was moving toward them, and all at once his muscles tensed and his entire body became poised for action. He cried: “Lev, look—over your shoulder, there—Do you think they’re Turks?”
Grodin stopped, and the enlisted men did likewise on the other side of Boris. The tall sergeant began to shout orders. The intruders raised their rifles; shots rang out. Boris felt an exhilaration that drove all the anguish of Arkady’s death from his body and mind, an exhilaration that was more elating than anything he’d experienced in his forty years. Youth flowed into him, and intense virility. Next to him, firing on the approaching mass, Grodin had thrown back his head and was laughing, his face flushed. “Turks?” Boris called to him.
“No. We’d have seen them, Major. These must be Cossacks—guerilla fighters. But if we don’t kill them, they’ll slaughter us. There must be a villageful, and we’re only sixteen men!”
Briefly Boris felt disappointment, but Baranov had warned him of these Cossacks. Now they were the enemy. Boris turned for a split second to address Grodin, when he saw the sergeant open his mouth and fall forward in his saddle, clutching his stomach from which red liquid was spurting. Boris’s throat went dry. He s
werved to the right and saw that the men had witnessed Grodin’s fall and that panic was spreading through the line. “Forward!” he cried, not certain of the validity of his order, but knowing that only by propelling them onward at this very moment could he possibly prevent chaos from taking over. The young corporal, Bogdanian, looked at him in surprise, then raised his arm and spurred his mount toward the Cossacks. Boris followed suit.
In the mêlée that ensued, Boris saw the angry men throw themselves into the fray, shooting the guerillas with fierce resolution. Only one young soldier fell from his horse. Boris held the reins of his stallion in one hand and was preparing to reload his rifle, when something grazed his temple and he wheeled about, bewildered. His eyes were seeing double images of horses and Cossacks and his own men, firing. The sky was tinged with gold from the setting sun. A blinding pain made his eyes water, and he touched the side of his face. When he looked at his fingers, there was blood on them.
“Major, are you hit?” Bogdanian called, his voice sounding far off, as if from a dreamland. Boris supposed he was wounded. His body was collapsing because he could feel himself falling from his horse, and the fall took forever, like a ballerina’s movement in slow motion. He must have hit the ground because his blurred vision was jarred. He could see hooves and boots and the red-brown earth. But where was Natalia?
Now there was cotton in his head, wads of it in his mouth and ears. “Natalia?” he said. “Natalia?” A face with dark eyes bent over him, and he said: “Pierre?” Then he couldn’t see at all, and he supposed they’d gone into the baby’s room, to fetch Arkady. He smiled: Arkady, his son. And then the sky disappeared behind his horse.
It was chilly when Natalia entered the lobby of the Metropole. She had spent a wearing day at the hospital, and her calves ached from standing. Her muscular frame could support physical hardship, but, as a dancer, she had been accustomed to regulated periods of rest. Now there was dull, endless toil without respite. No rest and no glory and no joy, only wrecked human bodies and her own exhaustion. She wanted to throw herself on her bed and forget dinner. Who could eat after seeing what she had seen?
The desk clerk stopped her on her way to the elevator. “Letter.” He held an envelope out to her, and she went to pick it up. She was too tired to see whether it came from Boris. She wondered if her marriage would ever be the same after the war, if the resentment would ever fade. She did not allow herself to consider Arkady, and the fact that she would have to face her husband’s grief, making her own resurface. Accepting, she knew, would be the hardest adjustment of all.
She unlocked her bedroom door. The soft lights had been turned on by the floor chambermaid, and the bed lay invitingly open, welcoming her. She unhooked her cape, removed her skirt and blouse, and tossed off her hat. Her bathrobe lay on the bed, and she slipped it over her tired limbs. I need to practice longer on my basics, she thought with irritation: Her muscle tone was disappointing these days. She was twenty-five and no longer in perfect form: She hated to see her hard-won muscular control slip away.
Only then did she look at the envelope. It had come from the Caucasus, and on the back, in a strange hand, was the name of the sender: General Anton Alexandrovitch Baranov. Boris had written to her about this man, one of the leaders of the Division Sauvage. All at once she knew what his message contained.
Natalia felt very cold. She rang for room service, then lay down on her bed, facing its foot. Two medium-sized, “modern” cubes adorned either side, like two pedestals guarding the bed. Natalia had always hated that footboard with the ungainly flat cubes. They were a stupid decorating notion that Boris would have laughed it. Boris. She felt her throat begin to beat, and waited. Presently the maid knocked, and entered. Natalia said: “Bring me a bottle of Napoleon cognac and a snifter.”
The maid curtsied, then hovered near the threshold of the room. “That’s all,” Natalia said calmly. The young Swiss girl quickly exited, somewhat startled. What an odd request from the Russian lady!
Only when a busboy came in with a tray did Natalia look up. “Put it there,” she said, indicating one of the cube tops to the right of her. It would make a perfect little table. The boy did as he was told and went out, closing the door behind him noiselessly. Now Natalia was alone.
With steady fingers, she poured herself a snifterful of brandy and unsealed the envelope. Baranov’s decisive handwriting stared at her, and she perused it thoroughly. He was attempting to make the news more bearable by telling her about her husband’s courage, about his heroic leadership that had lived up to the “traditions of the Division Sauvage.” So. Fine traditions. And I am to be healed by reminding myself that my dead husband was true to these fine traditions?
She sipped the golden liquid and felt it coursing down her throat into her stomach. He’d always suffered from burning in his stomach but had never kept to a diet. She waited, but nothing came—no tears, no wild eruption of her body, no uncontrolled shaking. She reread the letter and poured another glass of Napoleon. Napoleon—another bloody fool for whom other fools had died. Fools such as Boris.
All at once cold anger began to tremble within her. He had lived up to the traditions of the Division Sauvage! What a joke! He hadn’t lived at all. You may be fooled, General Baranov, but I’m not, she thought. Boris is, as Pierre says, a manipulator, and he’s manipulated me once again and changed my life by his actions. That’s right—he’s dead and I’m still alive, and our son is dead too. He’s won even in this. And I’m supposed to accept this victory, and not fight back? Oh, God, how can I fight back, what can I do? I have to win this one away from you, I can’t just let you die and laugh at me from your grave. But maybe you don’t even have a grave. Those rebel Cossacks who killed you surely didn’t bury you. They didn’t know about you, about your mystique and your charm and your ironic mind. They thought you were only a man, an undistinguished major accompanying his squad. The idiots! They failed to recognize the great Boris Kussov, before whom all men trembled—and all women. Isn’t that the greatest irony of all, my darling? Carry that wherever you are, my own true love. You can’t win with everyone.
She was beginning to feel tipsy, but she treated herself to a fourth glass of brandy and raised it to the empty room. “To your health, my dear husband.” It was ludicrous, ludicrous. I have never hated anyone so much as I hate him, for doing this to me, she thought. And now if there’s a place where dead men go, he’s found Arkady, my son, my child, part of my body. I’m glad you’re dead, Boris Kussov, because it saves my having to leave you upon your return. Though I always knew you’d never come back. I knew it that night in Zwingenberg, when you told me of your absurd decision. You made a fool of me even then! You’ve always made a fool of me. Even when you said you wanted a child, you were making a fool of me. You who knew everything, didn’t you have any idea he’d die, too?
Goddamned Boris Kussov, she thought, pulling the bedspread over her. And goddamned Natalia Kussova. God has damned us all. And then, starting to sob, she thought: But I’d forgotten, there is no God! We have damned ourselves.
Chapter 20
Pierre held Diaghilev’s letter to the light and took a deep breath. In Viareggio the Russian impresario had learned of Boris’s death and wondered whether Pierre had seen Natalia. The war had separated the various members of the Ballets Russes from one another; it had caught Serge Pavlovitch and his new ¦ premier danseur and favorite, Leonid Miassin, in Italy. Pierre wondered exactly how much Diaghilev knew—or had inferred—of his relationship to both the Kussovs.
Pierre had renewed his acquaintance with Stravinsky, who lived in Morges, near Lausanne. Through the composer he had learned that Diaghilev had signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera in New York to appear there next year, in April 1916. “Karsavina’s in Russia; he’ll have to get Natalia and find some way of enticing Nijinsky for the North American season,” Stravinsky had told Pierre. “The New World wants to see the main attractions of the old Ballets Russes.” But Pierre had known that Nat
alia was tied to her sick baby and that Nijinsky and his wife and small daughter had been caught in Hungary when war was declared and were now interned in house arrest at the home of her mother, Emilia Markus.
Later, when Arkady had died, Pierre had written to Stravinsky, asking the composer and his family to call on Natalia. But she had refused to see him. I’m not going to her, Pierre had thought fiercely. If she needs me, let her send for me.
He had met a young woman from Locarno, Fabiana d’Arpezzo, and had moved her into his rented house overlooking the Lago Maggiore. Fabiana was dark, laughing, and compliant, a good model and a fine cook. I don’t need Natalia, or her problems, he had said to himself. Life is sweet this way. I’m not expected to love, and I’m not looked upon as a commodity. I can devote my energies to painting, and Fabriana does not wreak havoc on my nerves or make demands of my very soul. I am free of her at last, free of Natalia.
Then Medveyev had shattered his peace by announcing in a letter that Boris had been killed in the Caucasus. An inexplicable tightness had gripped Pierre’s throat and brought the taste of salt to his mouth. Somewhere at the back of his life there had always been Boris. Now there was emptiness and the certainty of never encountering him again, of having no one left to hate, no force against which to battle. Boris Kussov has been my albatross, Pierre thought, and he has been my Satan. But while he was my mentor, I escaped mediocrity, and since then my potential has never been fulfilled.
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