by AB Plum
My mother rode like a queen. I sneered. Her serfs had no other purpose than her well-being. At the top step, we gave her a bump off the human bridge. She stood there without moving. Bensen’s arm encircled her waist.
I snapped at Ingrid, “Call Dr. Hoag. Tell her it’s an emergency.”
Chapter 7
First Things, First
In my mother’s bedroom, Ingrid rushed to neaten the messy bedclothes while Detective Bensen’s arm remained around my mother’s waist. Dimitri and I stepped forward to help him lower her onto the bed. Ingrid pulled the covers over her corpse-like form. Detective Bensen showed more reluctance to leave the bedroom than was professional for a policeman.
His first excuse to remain?
He wanted to be sure Dr. Hoag would come to the house immediately.
He stood next to Ingrid as she made the call. Then, he appropriated the phone and spoke to Dr. Hoag like an anxious husband. Fru Romanov had received an unpleasant surprise.
Ubehagelig was the Danish word he used. It conveyed the idea that the surprise was trying. Probably as close to describing an emotional state as he was capable of—though he did crank up his meaning by adding chok.
Shock. Not a word much used by the placid Danes.
Behind Bensen’s back, Dimitri and I rolled our eyes. Whether asleep, unconscious, distracted, in shock, or awake, Aliina Pajari Romanov bewitched men. Bensen was a man. Ergo, when he was in her presence his tongue hung out, and his dick stood up. He kept nodding into the phone as if Dr. Hoag could see him.
I stuffed my fists in my pockets. Would the man ever leave? My father would certainly return to his office. There, I assumed, a policeman would be waiting.
And I would be cheated of the sweet pleasure of informing my father what happened to Alexei. Of course, I’m used to waiting for acknowledgment from my father. So no surprise if he still consigned me to the background—until he finally admitted I was now his son. His only son.
Someday, he won’t remember he had another son.
Chapter 8
Kill the Messenger
A phone call to police headquarters finally sent Detective Bensen flying down the stairs and out of the house. “Please give your mother my deepest regards. I may have more news for her later.”
The skin at the back of my neck suddenly stung. What did he mean more news? What else could he report? My older brother was dead. An unfortunate accident.
Dimitri frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Let’s go find my father. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”
We left the house without informing Ingrid. She was a servant. She had absolutely no control over me. If forced to tell the truth, she’d admit she liked having me and Dimitri gone as much as possible.
The wind had reached squall conditions. Ski masks provided some protection, but snow gusts reduced visibility and the chances of finding a taxi. Dimitri and I had the blood of Russians in our veins. We were eleven year-old boys wrapped up like polar bears. Tramping out the two miles to my father’s office gave me the opportunity to relate what I had done at the train station.
As I expected, Dimitri congratulated me on my boldness. He—out of loyalty to me—despised Alexei with perhaps an equal level of passion.
The small villa my father kept for his mistress faced Øresund sound. That morning, waves surged over the protective rock barrier like furious Norse gods determined to exact justice. Sea water swamped the residential street and turned the sidewalk into a quagmire of slush and debris.
Neither Dimitri nor I admitted fatigue out loud, but my legs shook the last block. Yet my physical weariness heightened my anticipation. I pounded the front door, jabbed the bell, and braced myself for consequences I might not like. My father was not my mother. He would curse the god he disavowed.
The maid who answered the door stared at us as if we were ghosts.
Which might explain why she started to close the door. Dimitri stuck his foot in the opening.
“I am here to see my father, Nikolai Romanov. It is urgent.”
When she didn’t move, Dimitri muscled his way inside. I dogged his heels. My bones and joints melted in the small, overheated foyer. The reek of hothouse roses plugged my sinuses. Our house in Hellerup showcased orchids which my mother cultivated. And why not? She spent no time cultivating our mother-son relationship.
The maid lifted her scrawny chest and drew herself up to Dimitri’s broad, powerful shoulders. He grinned at their reflections in the ornate floor-to-ceiling mirror. Words gurgled in the back of the maid’s throat. She turned and fled. When my father stormed into the small foyer, she remained out of our sight.
Dressed in unbuttoned trousers and soft slippers, he charged toward me and Dimitri. Russian, German, and Danish curses peppered his English command. “Speak.”
My bladder dropped, but I remembered Alexei slipping off the train platform and spoke with a bit of acid. “The police want to talk to you. They went to your office, then showed up at home. Your wi—Mor—took to her bed. She’s—”
Blood turned his face black. He took another step toward me with his fist raised. “What are you blithering about, you little bastard?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Dimitri going on alert. We had agreed a year ago never to let Nikolai Romanov hit either of us again. I gave my only friend a surreptitious hand signal. Wait.
Shoulders back, I met and held my father’s gaze. He was one of the few people who ever looked me in the eye. Whatever he saw there that day stopped him. He lowered his still clenched hand.
Breathing audibly, as if his lungs had collapsed, he said, “Tell me what the police wanted.”
“To report Alexei had an accident at Hovedbanegård this morning. He was killed.”
“What?” he rasped. “What did you say?”
“Alexei is dead.” I spoke louder this time, enjoying the elongated rhythm of the words echoing in my ears. His ashen face fueled me with so much power I felt dizzy.
My father shook his head. Once. “Another Alexei.”
“They found his identifica—”
“Did you hear what I said?” he roared.
A dark-haired, gypsy-looking woman appeared, pulling a sash on her scarlet robe. She glanced from me to my father. “What is happening?”
“A mistake,” he growled, spittle in the corners of his mouth. “This stupid clod wants me to believe my son is dead.”
A red haze enveloped my father and blotted out everything but his twisted face and blazing eyes. I was shorter than he by at least a foot, but Dimitri and I could take him easily. So what if we had to kill the woman and her maid? The chauffeur would then undoubtedly materialize . . .
Somewhere in the deepest corner of my mind, logic whispered, Not yet. Not so soon after Alexei. Not until you finish the rest of your work.
“I thought you should know,” I said, struggling to repress the laughter building in my throat. “The policeman’s name is Detective Lars Bensen.”
“Lars? What kind of name is Lars for a policeman? Every Lars I’ve ever met was the village idiot. Obviously, this guy comes from the same neck of the woods. He doesn’t know his head from his ass.”
The note of anger riding each syllable trailed off to pleading. God. I was so sick of living with his constant, unprovoked fury turned on me. Always on me. Never on his favorite son, dead Alexei. God, how I loved hearing his mewling.
Chapter 9
No Mistakes
Within seconds, my father fell back on curses and outraged name-calling.
The chauffeur, as I suspected, appeared from out of thin air. Sturdy as a Sumo wrestler. He would have presented a challenge to two boys had I acted on my impulse to kill my father and the two women. My father jumped at the lifeline offered by his bootlicker: Go to the metro police headquarters to straighten out the mistake.
Dimitri and I shared a secret smile.
Who was I to attempt to talk my father out of humiliating himself
publicly?
No one. Certainly not in his mind. In his mind, I should be the one to suffer public humiliation for misrepresenting police reports.
“Or,” he said, pulling on a fine hand-made shirt and custom shoes while Dimitri and I stood in the opulent bedroom he obviously shared with the gypsy, “you can admit right now that you created this story. Made up a lie. In which case I won’t take you to police headquarters where they will throw you in jail.”
The more he prattled, the more I mentally enhanced the scene I imagined in the police station. They would confirm my story. He would lose control. Rave like a lunatic . . .
Shaking my shoulders, he brought me back to the bedroom. He was offering me one last chance to change my story. The pleading had returned to his quavering voice. My refusal to lie about one of the few things I’d told the truth about enraged him. He ordered me and Dimitri to the backseat where we were to remain absolutely silent for the entire ride.
Later, Dimitri echoed my own thoughts—that he expected my father would make us walk back home and wait for him to return from the police station.
In the warm, cushy Mercedes limo, its windows fogged over, our worries evaporated. The trip for me was too short. I wanted more time to view the mental movie of Alexei’s plunge off the platform. I wanted to prove the police had made no mistake about the victim.
Detective Bensen ignored me and Dimitri. He focused his sad, puppy eyes on my father, presenting his open palm. My brother’s gold ring proved the impossible.
There was no mistake about the identity of the Hovedbanegård casualty.
My father’s face blanched whiter than his shirt. I fought back my smile.
Chapter 10
The Strange Faces of Grief
Despite the ring, handed down from ten generations of Romanov fathers to the oldest son on his sixteenth birthday, my father insisted on seeing the body.
This should be interesting. The ultimate unraveling of my father. Excitement shot through me, and I telegraphed my eagerness to Dimitri. We were going to witness my father coming undone. The beginning of his end.
Detective Larsen said, “There is no need to see your son at this moment, Herr Romanov. We can arrange for a viewing tomorrow.”
“Now. I’m here.”
Was there still a scintilla of hope in his voice?
“All right,” Detective Bensen said. “Give me a few seconds.”
“For what? If that is truly my son in there, nothing you can do will make this any easier.”
“If you insist.” Stiffness crept into Bensen’s monotonous inflection. “I’ll call the pathologist to make sure he’s available.”
My father’s face turned that unhealthy purple again. “If he’s not available, call someone else.”
“Lean on me, Far.” I offered my elbow. “I’ll go with—”
“Get away from me. Don’t even think about going with me, you ghoul.”
Ghoul? If he only knew. I swallowed my laugh and whispered, “You’ve had a shock.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t strike me. He stared. As if I was covered in shit. He opened his mouth, but Detective Bensen returned and escorted him down a long hall. Dimitri tapped my biceps, letting me know I was the winner. We stood in silence for fifteen minutes. My father shuffled back into the waiting room. Eyes blank, skin ashen, he ordered me and Dimitri back in the car. His voice carried all the warmth of the icicles hanging from the buildings. He got in the front seat and imposed another no-speaking rule.
My father, the Russia autocrat. I cleared my throat to signal my intent to ask if the police had made the correct assumptions, but Dimitri shook his head in warning. Shudders racked my father’s back and shoulders, but he didn’t make a sound. Lost in his own grief, he made no effort to offer me and Dimitri solace.
Not that I wanted—expected—or needed solace. Neither of my parents had ever given me consolation. Or approval. Or love.
By the time I was five, I’d figured out a reason for their emotional distance. They adored Alexei so thoroughly they had nothing left for me.
The chauffeur pulled into the garage and cut the engine without speaking.
My father said, “I’ll be ready to leave again in five minutes. Get a thermos of tea from Ingrid.”
“Yessir.” He got out of the car. As he crossed in front of it, my father spoke to me and Dimitri without turning. “Stay in your room for the rest of the day and tomorrow. Ingrid will bring your meals. If your mother asks you to visit, send your regrets through Ingrid. If she comes to your room, lock the door so that she cannot enter.”
Holy shit, Dimitri mouthed our favorite obscenity. Fuck you had not yet entered our vocabulary.
The door whispered open. The haggard, bloodless face my father turned to us resembled that of a dying man. Perhaps, more accurately, the face of a man already dead.
“No radio. No records. No chess or cards. Nothing to distract you from mourning Alexei. Do you understand?”
Chapter 11
Mourning
Dimitri and I shared a room under the eaves. The space had functioned as a schoolroom in the nineteenth century. Floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the house brought in abundant light. During the day, we had amazing vistas of the neighbors’ gardens. In two cases, titillating nighttime views of the resident teen-age girls fueled our wet dreams.
Exile in a space Dimitri and I considered ours didn’t amount to punishment from our point of view. We loved being up above everyone else. We loved looking down on the rest of the world.
But. I wanted to feel my mother’s agony.
I wanted to witness my father’s pain.
He robbed me of that opportunity.
Whatever he said to my mother following our return from the police station reverberated in her screams. They smashed through the floor separating our sleeping quarters from my mother’s bedroom. Her cries sent goose bumps tracking up and down my arms. A crescendo rose with a haunting throb. Dimitri and I looked out the windows over the garage. My father’s car glided away.
My mother’s wails and screeches continued long after my father’s departure. In our private bower, Dimitri and I danced and cavorted and mourned.
My favored brother—through no other reason than he was born first—entered our sanctuary. Unlike when he lived and taunted me mercilessly, he danced with us.
Laughed with us.
Jerked off with us as we mourned.
Chapter 12
Ashes to Ashes
Twenty-seven hours after my father identified the remains of my brother Alexei, six hundred people gathered in the grand salon of the Russian Embassy at 3 Kristianiagade to pay their respects to my father’s older son.
Ninety percent of the attendees claimed Russian roots.
Only three to five percent of the Finnish contingency came to offer respect to my mother.
They all owed my father something—money, a business tip, a favor, a secret, loyalty.
The rest were hangers-on. They neither knew my brother nor my father nor my mother nor any member of our family. They had read about the accident or heard about it on television and radio or had milled around Hovedbanegård the day my brother left this Earth. No one had yet to throw out the idea that Alexei’s death had been a suicide. Or a homicide. But the way he died generated a lot of discourse about safety at the Central Train Station.
Dimitri and I dressed in the required black suits, white shirts, and black ties. We sat in the row behind my parents. Dignitaries claimed chairs on the right of my parents. Pictures of Alexei flanked the brass and marble urn holding his ashes. The heavy scent of oils and herbs I didn’t recognize permeated the air around the urn. The scene was very . . . Russian—even though there was no coffin or Orthodox liturgy. I overheard several indiscreet whispers about cremation. The Church dictated burial.
My mother sat next to my father as unmoving as a corpse. She wore the traditional black of Russian Orthodox mourners. I guessed Dr. Hoag or someone more accommodating
had shot her with enough tranquilizers to stun a rhino. Throughout the ceremony, she never once used the lace handkerchief in her hand.
My father, also dressed in somber black, sat straight and stiff. He stared ahead as if expecting my brother to appear and smash the urn. At one point, my father pinched my mother’s upper arm, jerking her to a more upright position.
Dimitri and I noted this behavior at the same time and bumped each other’s thigh. By then I had revealed the whole truth about Alexei’s demise. Dimitri, more brother than my dead sibling, repeatedly expressed his admiration.
The one person who claimed my attention was a tall, lean man with sandy hair and a horsey face. He sat on the aisle in the back row. He entered late and tried to melt into the crowd of mourners. Urho Karppinen, Finnish Ambassador to Denmark, should have taken a seat with the other dignitaries at the front of the room. When he sat in the back, my mother the slut had no idea of his presence.
My father was the only person to eulogize my brother at the hour-long observance. His voice never quavered, his hands never trembled. The rage spilling out of his red-rimmed eyes hit me in the solar plexus. At that moment, I had no doubts he would kill me—slowly, painfully—should he ever learn of my part in Alexei’s death.
Ridiculously, knowing his reaction filled me with a sense of power. Let him kill me. My death would not bring his precious first-born favorite back to life.
And someday, when it came time for him to surrender his power to me, I would brag to him about what I had done.
That vow got me through the rest of the endless day of shaking hands with people I’d never met. I made inane comments—because when I wanted to exercise a bit of talent, I turned on my charisma. As long as I avoided eye contact, I managed quite well for four or five minutes.
