“Mother, would you leave me alone with my cousin now?”
The countess seemed exhausted and had little argument left in her, so she deferred to her daughter, kissing them both and retiring to her room.
Zofia’s black eyes assessed her cousin. “Now, Ania,” she sighed, “you must be realistic.”
“I want to keep my child, Zofia.”
“What do you hope to gain by taking this stance?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think that you do.”
“I have no hidden motive.”
Zofia’s smile seemed more a smirk. “I can see what you’re up to.”
Anna could only stare.
“You think if you insist on having this child that Antoni will have the marriage voided. Isn’t that it? You still think that somehow you will have Jan one day!”
“I have no hope of that.”
“In fact, you think—you know!—that this child is Jan’s, don’t you?”
“Zofia, I know that this child is not Jan’s. Do you think that it is his?”
Zofia winced. “I don’t really care.” Her anger was on the rise.
Anna stood and moved toward the door.
“Anna, you will listen to me. If Antoni leaves you, you as a noblewoman cannot bear a child out of wedlock!”
“Zofia, it is unlike you to be so concerned with convention.”
“Don’t mock me! The sooner you realize that you will not have Jan and that he is not worth having, the sooner you can get on with your life.”
At the door Anna turned back to face her cousin. “I will have my child, Zofia.”
“Then don’t expect help from me,” Zofia hissed, “and don’t expect Antoni to play Józef to your Virgin Mary!”
16
A FEW DAYS WENT BY WITHOUT incident. Antoni began taking his meals out of the house. Anna, Zofia, and the countess settled into a peaceful existence, avoiding any subject that might cause conflict.
Anna had never thought about motherhood in any specific way; even as a child she had opted for a crystal dove instead of playing parent to a doll. But she was unable to avoid the subject these days and found herself changed somehow. It was strange to think that she carried life within her, a life for which she now felt wholly protective. Not for one moment had she wished that life away, no matter how much it complicated her own. She would welcome the baby into the world and treat it with the same love she would have given to a child of a man she loved. A child, she reasoned, does not pick its parents nor the circumstances of its birth.
A more immediate subject on Anna’s mind was one of residence. Before her father-in-law’s illness, she had expected that in the spring she and Antoni would go to live at her residence in Sochaczew. But now she feared that Antoni might want to be near his parents, should there be a change in his father’s condition. Whether it was at the familial estate at Opole, in the south of Poland—or worse, at the Grawlinski city mansion in St. Petersburg, Anna became unnerved. She wanted to be near her own estate. And she wanted to be near her aunt and in a place where there was warmth and love. She could not imagine love in the Grawlinski household. He was a cold creature, as were his parents, cold as borsch.
One afternoon Anna was the lone diner at the noon meal. Lutisha told her that the countess and Zofia had gone out on some appointment. Anna wondered what common errand the two could possibly have.
She felt tiny, seated at the end of the long oak table, her back to the darkly ornate china cabinet that took up the full wall behind her, its shelves a treasury of pewter and silver rising to the high ceiling. She felt foolish, too, as three servants waited upon and hovered near, like worker bees about their queen. They served her a mushroom soup and rump of deer in the Lithuanian style. That it was a bit dry indicated to her that Lutisha had larded it prior to cooking. Because the larding needle allowed too many juices to escape when it pierced the meat, Anna’s mother had always strictly instructed their cook to prepare the roast by wrapping it in thin slices of pork fat. When it was nearly cooked, the fat would be removed and the meat coated with castor sugar that high heat transformed into a crisp caramel. This method produced generous juices that became the base of the delicious sauce. On occasion, Anna was allowed to partake in the sauce-making by folding in the heavy cream and squeezing the lemons. Her mouth watered at the thought. How much more delicious that recipe was. And how she longed for her mother and the old days at Sochaczew.
She had eaten and was preparing to go upstairs to her suite when there came a flashing brilliance, followed by a bone-snapping clap of thunder. Then came the sudden downpour.
It was an unusually warm fall day and the windows had been opened to air the house. Anna immediately began closing the dining room windows. There were four of them.
A flustered Lutisha rushed in from the rear of the house.
“Lutisha, if you’ll hurry upstairs and see to the windows there, I think I can manage these downstairs.”
“Yes, Madame,” she replied, bustling toward the stairway.
Anna closed the windows in the library, the sewing room, the reception room, and the countess’ bedchamber.
Zofia’s room was the last. Anna had gone only a few feet into the chamber when she realized that the windows had not been opened. The air was stale and thick with perfume.
She was just about to leave when she spied a curious looking book lying on the great feathered bed. Anna crossed the room, and picking up the object, turned it over in her hands. The gold-edged pages were bound by covers of red cloisonné enamel. “What a beautiful thing,” she whispered to herself.
Anna opened to the first page then and gasped. It was a diary. Zofia’s diary!
Another clap of thunder, deafening, and strong enough to make the house shudder.
Anna dropped the book and raced from the room. The hallway flared with light and shook with vibrating thunder as she went to check any windows she might have missed.
“They are all closed, Countess,” Lutisha announced as she met Anna in the front hall. “I checked the third floor, too, and the attic. And not any too soon. The rain is starting.”
“Thank you, Lutisha.”
The bulky servant made her slight curtsy. Anna had to suppress a smile at its comical execution.
Anna started for the stairs, then stopped and waited, watching the servant move toward the kitchen.
At Lutisha’s disappearance, Anna bolted in the opposite direction, moving with the swiftness of a bird in flight.
In moments Anna found herself once again in Zofia’s room. She closed the door behind her. Her brisk action precluded any extended battle with her conscience. I will read it.
Although she knew her action was an invasion of privacy, she was determined to crack Zofia’s veneer and peer into the mind of her enigmatic cousin. She was convinced that Zofia had engineered her marriage to Antoni. The marriage had served several purposes. For Anna, it saved her from gossip, possible spinsterhood, and as it turned out, unwed motherhood; it saved the Gronskis, too, from gossip and it ended their responsibility for Anna; most of all, it saved Zofia from what she saw as a fate worse than death.
And Anna could not help but wonder what Zofia might have written about Jan. She opened the book.
Her cousin had titled her book My Delights. Anna began to read, pledging to herself that she would read only those passages that contained her own name. She was surprised to find it in the first paragraph.
I have more than once come upon my cousin Anna writing in her diary. Upon receiving this lovely book with its empty pages, I have decided to do some writing of my own. I expect Anna writes of dark and disappointing things. It will be my intention to write only of that which delights me.
Poor Anna! Married to a man like the would-be Baron Antoni. Unlike my cousin, I have had a relationship with a real baron, and I suspect that mine has been the more pleasurable.
It happened last year. We had been to a raucous party and we were sleepil
y intoxicated when we arrived at his rented city apartment shortly after midnight. The baron collapsed onto the bed and slept immediately.
While removing my clothing, I experienced ludicrous difficulty with my chemise. With giggling, drunken wrath I ripped the garment open to my knees and let it fall to the floor.
I looked to the baron who lay on his side, snoring. My drowsiness left me when I observed his muscular physique outlined in his tight breeches. How masculine he was!
A few kisses revived my suitor. He undressed quickly.
It was nothing less than blissful when Baron Driedruski laid himself upon me, and on that massive, feathered bed, our bodies melted into one dream of slow, constant pleasure. The baron was relentless. The night passed slowly, as in a dream.
Shedding perspiration, he was nearing the height of his passion when he suddenly spoke. “You must marry me, Zofia,” he said with formality. “I do not want to leave you without the seed of my child.”
I wanted to laugh! I had never had such an untimely proposal of marriage.—And did he think that a child would make me more completely his?
Suppressing my irreverent glee, I politely refused to marry him, but did agree to bear his child. Soon he had to return to his castle on the cliffs of the Carpathian Mountains. I would make certain that he leave me a sizable payment for a nurse, and if I were clever enough, he would continue to support the child.
I knew that it was unlikely that I would conceive at that time. Both nurse and child were but deft devices. The evening of pleasure would make it possible for me to stroke the rows of ermine on the most beautiful cape in the city.
The sorrowful baron did not answer me. For a man fifteen years older than I, he did not tire easily. His weight came to exhaust me, however. I was unenjoyably warm before I finished with him. But I would bear ten more such unenjoyable experiences for ten more such children as the one which now graces my wardrobe.
Anna suddenly became aware of the commotion outside of an arriving carriage. She flung the diary back onto Zofia’s bed and quickly fled the room. She had just reached the front hall when the door swung open.
“Hello, Anna,” Zofia said. “Is something wrong?”
Anna attempted a smile, trying to smother her stunned amazement. “Why, no.”
“Well, you look like a woman with a secret,” she sang.
Anna noticed the Countess Gronska now. While she had seemed distracted and unhealthy as of late, her face was quite ashen, the large brown eyes strangely wild. Whether the wetness of her face was rain or tears, Anna could not tell. The countess always had some cheerful greeting for Anna, but she whisked past her now without a word.
When Anna heard her aunt’s door close, she turned to Zofia with questioning eyes.
“Oh, she’s in a state, Anna!” Zofia clucked. “She received a bit of a shock today.”
But you are positively buoyant, Anna thought. “What is it Zofia? Where have you been? You don’t seem so very shocked.”
“Oh, but I am, darling! Only for me it is the happiest of shocks.”
“Tell me.”
Zofia motioned Anna into the reception room and closed the double doors.
“You will not believe it. We’ve just come from our attorney’s.”
“Zofia, do tell me.”
“Anna . . . I’ve known for some time that Walter is not my brother by blood.”
Anna’s mouth dropped in surprise.
“When Mother and Father thought they would not have any children, they adopted Walter. Then a few years later along came a natural daughter. Isn’t that just like me? I started my life surprising people. I suppose I shall end it that way.”
“Walter knew?” Anna dropped into a winged armchair.
“Not until that last visit at Halicz. Father told him out of anger when he would not leave Catherine’s service to come home.” Zofia was standing in front of the ceramic stove, her face and hands full of animation. “Father told him also that he would disinherit him if he did not take up family duties. But Father was unable to follow through on it before his unexpected death. Of course, by law no title can go to an adopted child. I alone inherit a title. And darling, I have just put my claim against the entire estate.”
“How could you do that?”
“It so happens I found the will Father had drawn up. It was an amazing stroke of luck! Mother didn’t know I had it until we arrived at the attorney’s. She was expecting to hear the will that had been drawn up years ago. Oh, you should have seen her face!”
“What about Walter?”
“What about him? Too bad for Walter! He wasn’t about to follow Father’s wishes. And he gambled that Father wouldn’t disinherit him.”
Anna didn’t know what to say. Her worst fear was confirmed by her cousin’s next words.
“So you see why Mother is so upset, darling. I am now in complete control. Of the estates, of the money, of the servants. Everything!”
Looking up at Zofia, Anna tried to put on a pleasant face. Underneath simmered only fear for the future of her aunt and cousins. She mumbled a few words of congratulations. “I think,” Anna said, breaking into Zofia’s rambling, “that I’ll stop in a moment to see the countess.”
“Correction, darling. The dowager countess. You are looking at Countess Zofia Gronska. I have more than a dowry now, you can imagine. Perhaps I shall never marry! This Polish fixation with early marriages and fertility is absurd. Besides, if Russia’s Catherine can manage a country alone, I think I can run the Gronski affairs. We’re hardly a magnate family. But, then again, perhaps I’ll marry into one.”
Zofia leaned over and kissed Anna. “You go see Mother. I must find Lutisha and see that tonight at supper she serves some of that French sparkling wine which Father had stowed away. We will celebrate even if Mother will not.”
“Zofia?”
“Yes?”
“Why would your father pass over your mother in such a way?”
Zofia stared at Anna a moment, then shrugged. “How should I know? Perhaps he thought she would be too sympathetic to Walter, that she would give him what my father meant to deny him.” She turned heel and left.
Anna sat dazed. Even though she feared this news would put her aunt over the edge, she could not bring herself to go in to see her. Instead, she tried to sort through her feelings. She had few thoughts about Walter’s loss. Instead, she thought of her uncle who, she was certain, would not be dead, were it not for her. She thought of her aunt who had lost her husband and—for all purposes—probably her son. What’s more, the countess now had a daughter who would be impossible to control.
Oh, Zofia! Now in charge of the Gronski estate and finances and exultant over her brother’s undoing. Anna suspected that some machinations of Zofia were at play here. Indeed, a subtle but telltale shadow had passed over her face when Anna questioned her as to why her father would do such a thing. Anna remembered Zofia herself telling how Count Gronski thought his daughter had not learned the value of money. Anna had heard it said that a dead man’s will was a mirror to his life. She could not believe the truism applied to her uncle’s will. It seemed so unlikely that he would leave his wife—whom he adored—at the mercy of Zofia for the very bread on the table. What would Zofia do with such power and money?
And freedom—such freedom her cousin had gained! Anna was stung with jealousy. Anna had been free but had allowed herself to become locked in a loveless marriage, one in which Antoni expected to make the decisions. Was this her future, or was there some way out?
Like the Empress Catherine, Zofia seemed obsessed with prestige, wealth, and freedom. Such power she had! And then there was the shocking sexual account in Zofia’s diary. Anna realized for the first time that the words in that red book rang true. She shivered, then, as if in that well-heated room a cold draft had somehow overtaken her.
Where is my source of power, Anna brooded, how will I summon it, and will it be enough to stand against all the forces in my path?
The
Countess Stella Gronska took supper in her room. Anna thought her absence at the table seemed almost an abdication to her daughter.
Anna could not help but notice that Zofia had seen to it that the table was exceedingly well-set. Several of the large silver platters and dishes had been taken down from the high shelves of the china cabinet and placed in the center of the long table. The countess’ best set of Saxon porcelain, from Meissen, was put to use as well, and the detailed design of blue, rose, and violet caught Anna’s eye. Its beauty might have had a soothing effect were it not for the upsetting events of the day. She doubted that the countess was aware that the delicate set had been removed from the locked sideboard cupboards. Everything on the table, Anna realized, was to be used only on special occasions. While the crystal wine and water goblets were from Bohemia, Poland’s own best silversmiths had fashioned the silverware, employing the insignia of the country’s symbolic white eagle. Everything sparkled and shone in the light of a hundred candles.
Anna was amazed to find that the main course was a roast suckling pig, as if this were an Easter celebration.
Antoni, like his wife, spoke little. What went on behind those glass-gray eyes? Anna had resigned herself to the fact that he had married her for her estate and fortune, probably at Zofia’s urging. For Anna, the single real benefit of the marriage was that it provided her child with the respectability of a father’s name.
Anna studied her husband, who sat across from her. Now, with the revelation of Zofia’s inheritance, was his mind moving in the direction she suspected? That had the long-arranged marriage gone forward, he would have gained a greater fortune, the Warsaw townhouse, the Halicz estate—and the beautiful Zofia.
How ironic. Instead he found himself saddled with a plainer and poorer woman who would bear another man’s child. His once glittering bargain must have seemed to tarnish even as he watched.
It didn’t take the augury of some ancient seer to tell her that the marriage was doomed. Still, she could not help but wonder just how the end would play out. Was her lifetime to be used up in the meanwhile?
Push Not the River Page 15
