Blood Ties (28 page)

"It seemed so ridiculous. A von Kassel. What is a von
Kassel?" She hesitated again, seeking images to explain her meaning.
"Belonging is the thing that makes it all work. You belong, they have
insisted to me. More important, Aleksandr belongs, because his veins flow with
von Kassel blood. But the moral question persists. Does it really need that
business to hold it together?"

Moral questions? Not having the blood in him, he felt for
the first time the freedom of moral choice.

"Your father's obsession contains its own purity. Its
own logic. Going along, belonging, can remove all doubt. It could give life
purpose."

He knew she was testing herself, probing inward. Then she
sighed and drained her glass, shaking her head.

"I am afraid that, like Wolfgang, I had better resist.
I can't see my son as a merchant of death."

He felt the underpinning of himself give way, but the
telephone's jangle disoriented him. Her mother's instincts moved faster and the
blood drained from her face as she listened, banging down the phone.

"Aleksandr. Something is happening!"

She moved swiftly out of the door and he followed her in
the corridor and down the stairs. Her fingers fumbled with the key and he took
it from her, found the slot and turned. A bulky figure moved in the darkness
and Albert reached out for it, struggling, feeling hot breath and anger. It
thrashed against him, falling to the floor. Reaching out, he pinioned the arms
and stilled it in a hammerlock with his knees. It was a heavy form, and the
perfumed clue telescoped the message, before his eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness.

"Mimi!"

The sound of her name quieted her. She lay under him, a
puffing mass of flesh. From the other room, he heard the boy's whimpering and
Olga's soothing voice.

Under him, Mimi's eyes, moist and hot, glared back. He did
not have to ask why.

"You had no right..." she hissed. "You have
always tried to take it away from him. Now my girls. You have no right..."
But her strength was ebbing. He released her arms and stood up. The mingling
odors of her body were stultifying, unclean. She lay whimpering on the floor. A
sudden light illuminated her.

"He is all right. He thinks he has had a nightmare.
Thank God." She looked at the whimpering figure on the floor.

"Why?" Olga turned to Albert.

So the moment had been chosen for him. As his words came,
he felt the burden lift. Now she would have to share it with him, he thought,
hoping she had the courage to carry the weight.

Without a word, Rudi had eased Mimi from the floor and
helped her away. Her heavy makeup had run and beneath it was revealed the sad
empty face of failure. The features were beyond emotion now, catatonic. But
Rudi's look in the last moment before he shut the door, spoke the contrition
for both of them. Albert had understood the unspoken gesture instantly, the
bond of understanding clear between them. It is all right, Brother. I
understand. Everything would be as before.

Olga had gone back to the bedroom and from the doorposts he
could see her standing over Aleksandr, brushing his forehead. Then she stooped
and kissed him softly. Awakening, the boy reached out and grasped her, burying
his head in her soft bosom. "Mama," he heard him say. Albert turned
his eyes away, the longing too painful to endure. How he wished he was that
boy. He thought of his dead mother in the icy lake, that empty part of him.
Shivering, he felt tears run down his cheeks.

Turning off the light, he went to the window and stared
into the darkness. The sky was cloudless and the stars of the milky way hung in
a broad, infinite arc. The tears felt cold against his cheeks. Then he heard
her footsteps approach him.

He turned to hold her, feeling the length of her body
against him and her soft caress against his head and cheeks, stroking him.

"He has gone back to sleep again," she whispered.
They stood silently together, watching the night.

"I wanted to be him. To be Aleksandr," he said.
He felt the urge to confess it, to give her this piece of himself, as if in the
telling he might end the deep void in himself. She reached out and drew him
toward her.

He snuggled against her as the boy had done, filling
himself with her closeness, her womanness. They said nothing. With one hand,
she unbuttoned her blouse, then moved away briefly to unlatch her brassiere.
Her breasts fell free against his face and he caressed them with his cheeks and
lips, feeling a renewed sense of himself, a homecoming perhaps, dispelling the
loneliness, the terror.

There was no movement of time, only the comfort of her warm
flesh, an infinity. He could feel the gentle brush of her breath against his
ear and the soft movement of her fingers in his hair. He found in himself only
the dimmest memory of what he might have felt before, understanding the boy's
need and his own. Looking up, his eye isolated a single star and he wished on
it as a child might do, hoping only for the endless night. He dared not move,
although he felt the urgency of his manhood, the fullness of his joy.

She must have sensed that as well, for she reached
downward, finding, touching sweetly, magnetizing. Under his tongue her nipples
rose, gorged with their own fullness.

"I feel what love is now," he whispered, feeling
his years fall away, the clamor of his youth. Still, she said nothing, as he
quickly disencumbered himself, showing her his flesh, the engorged root of
himself. She lay back ready to receive him and he moved inside of her, wanting
to give her what words could not express.

They lay for a long time together, a measure indicated only
by the lightening of the sky, the beginning of the glow of morning. They dozed,
stirred, entwined again and soon the outlines of the furniture became clear.
Once the boy had whimpered again, and she had stood up swiftly, listening, but
then the sound disappeared and she lay down again.

"You must stay," he whispered, feeling the beat
of his heart accelerate. "You must let me love you." Above all, he
wanted her to say it.

"Yes. I would be happy to have that," she said,
kissing his cheek.

"Then you'll stay. Defect. We can arrange
asylum." He raised himself on an elbow, but her eyes betrayed the doubt.

"And Aleksandr?"

"He is yours. I would love him as well."

"I mean his future."

He knew what she meant. And Albert, he asked himself,
sinking on her breast, holding her. What of Albert?

"Man does not live by blood alone," he said. he
had wanted the humor to console him, but it fell flat.

"There is every reason to stay. Especially now."
It was an appeal to ambition. He felt ashamed.

The light quickened and she moved suddenly, disengaging.

"He will be up soon," she said. Watching her
smooth back move toward the bedroom, he lay for a while on the couch watching
the cloudless sky.

"It will be a beautiful day for a picnic," he
told himself, getting up and gathering his clothes. He stared at the closed
bedroom door as he dressed. He could not imagine how he had lived with the void
for so long.

He closed the door quietly, being sure to hear the lock
snap.

Charles looked with pleasure at the lineup of shiny black
cars glistening in the sun. Beside them the assembled family were awaiting his
arrival, grouped, in muted colors, posing it seemed for a sentimental
photograph meant for family viewing fifty years from then. Despite the expenditure
of energy taxing his frail heart, he could not deny himself the pleasure of
this picnic. Knowing it would be his last did not dim his enthusiasm for it.

The outdoor feast, like some ancient pagan ritual, had
become an obligatory family necessity, completing some inborn collective need.
He had often wished that he could convey to his children the picnic as it had
been during his own childhood. Then, the shiny cars had been glistening black
horses, pulling open coaches, and the caravan would move at a moderate pace
through the wagon-rutted roads of the old land. As they passed through tiny
villages, children would wave while their parents would lift curious eyes,
watching their rulers pass in regal procession.

The caravan would move to high ground, a flat clearing, a
shelf that seemed cut by design into the highest hill of their land.
Disembarking, the family would cluster in groups while the servants set up
wooden tables and over white linen lined up platter after platter of every
concoction the cook's imagination could contrive. From where they were, they
imagined they could see every corner of their land. To the human eye that was
impossible, but to the mind's infinite vision it was clearly seen. He could see
it now, the vastness of it, the pulse-quickening beauty of its sweeping
grandeur. Even now, he could hold to the irrevocable promise of its return to
some von Kassel of the distant future. Above all, he knew that he would soon be
returning to it.

"What a beautiful day," Karla's voice said, as they
moved out of the entrance into the sunlight.

"It is always a beautiful day." Since they shared
the same memory, it meant all the times that had gone before.

It was not only the memory of the earlier time that stirred
his sense of well-being. That, and the knowledge that a choice had been made.
The uncertainty was over.

Rudi had come to him earlier. The furtive knock had not
really intruded on his sleep. There was rarely contented sleep now, as he
wrestled with his agony in those frequent moments between wakefulness and
oblivion. Ever alert, Karla had answered the knock.

"It is Rudi," she said, drawing the blinds. He
saw a different vision of his second son. The recent pride seemed drained.

"I must talk to you, Father," Rudi said hoarsely.
The son's bloated face hinted broadly at what was to come. He had nodded, he
remembered, and Rudi had averted his eyes, talking instead to the now revealed
early light. The sun had just cleared the upper ridges.

"I have talked privately to Albert," he
stammered. "I think..." He paused. "I know I have overreached
myself. He is far more skillful than I. Also in the matter of the plutonium
sale, I think, I know, he can handle it better...."

"He has agreed?" Charles asked, confirming his
own inclination.

"Yes, Father," Rudi replied.
"Completely."

"Then you have no doubts."

"None."

Charles reached out his hand and Rudi grasped it. It felt
soft, clammy, and in its touch Charles felt a confirmation of his earlier
doubts. Albert will prevail. One could never be really sure. But the burden
lifted and he knew now he could prepare his mind for death.

Karla had listened, but she had said nothing. He did not
like the enigma of her silence, but the fact that she would outlive him quelled
his anxiety. She will look after them, he thought.

The family faces had turned up to watch him as he moved out
toward the first car, expectant faces, as his was when his grandfather moved
out of the old house and led the family on this sacred day. He lifted his eyes
and searched for Albert, who stood alone near one of the cars. He looked
lonely, isolated. It was a condition he could understand. The penalty of
commanding destiny.

All life was upheaval, he mused, continuing to watch
Albert's face. Revolutions came. Armies expired. Borders changed. Blood flowed.
Religions, governments, dynasties, families rose and fell, their histories
disappearing in the flow of time. But von Kassels endured. Again, natural
forces had decided who would lead von Kassels into new lands, new paths to
survival. Not every bud was worth the growth, his grandfather had told him,
crushing one of lesser quality to illustrate the point. Rudi had tried and
failed, but to pit him against Albert had seemed a necessity. Life was combat.

The caravan of cars moved out of the castle gate, working
its way upward over the narrow mountain road. He had done all that could be
done, he sighed.

"It is all right now," he said to Karla.

She nodded, providing the inevitable reassurance. She, too,
had carried the flame, had passed through the incredible hardships of their
generation. He reached out and put a hand over hers.

"I am content now," he said. She said nothing in
reply, her eyes focused on the road ahead.

The cars picked their way through the narrow road, winding
in a wide curving arc up the mountain in the clear glistening sunlit air. The
road cut through the timberline, then outward to the rim of the mountain again.
In the distance, he could see the slate gray outline of a lonely mountain lake.
The cars moved cautiously on the rim's outer edge. This was the narrowest
portion. There were no roadguards and the side of the road was a sheer drop
into the valley below. Then the cars turned inward again, moving less
cautiously onto a grassy plateau which formed a flat ledge with a commanding
view of the valley. In its center was a rock configuration that had easily been
imagined into a table. The cars were parked beside each other and the family
disembarked, while the servants, under the fussy eye of the hotel manager,
busied themselves moving chairs, removing plates, silver and food from an open
truck that had been the last vehicle in the caravan.

Garth placed two chairs together on the highest point, a
grassy knoll which overlooked the site. When the Baron and his sister were
seated, he placed fur blankets over their legs.

From here, Charles could observe the family moving about on
the plateau, viewing the vastness of the mountain forest. From this vantage,
they could see the turrets of the castle and the banner of the Old Order, a toy
flag whipping in the breeze.

This, he knew, would be the last opportunity to view his
family as an entity. Soon he would embark on the journey back to Estonia.
Arrangements had already been made with the Soviet authorities. For a price,
they would gladly take back the dead. The dead were unimportant to them, which
was why they were doomed to failure. In that was the ultimate insight of the
von Kassels. The dead were equally as important as the living.

He viewed them now, his sons, fruit of his loins, mixed
with the blood of kings. The genes melded oddly. His father was weak but he,
Charles, was strong. Someone would always be reproduced to pass the family
blood through the generations, he told himself, perhaps with some bravado. At
least, he knew he had found the courage to do what had to be done.

The servants were setting the rock table. The chef himself,
a large rotund man wearing the high hat of his calling, sharpened his knives
before the great round of steaming beef.

In the clear air sound tinkled, but the words' meaning lost
itself in the vastness. Occasionally faces turned toward him and he observed
them casually. Rudi. Albert. Siegfried. He noted the absence of Rudi's wife and
Albert's woman friend, but he viewed his brother's wife and her son with
satisfaction. The heart of the family remained. You see, he told himself, in
the end they return. Even the rebel Wolfgang could not revolt against the
blood.

Reunions usually provided some little family drama, he
thought, remembering. But it was in conflict that the family renewed itself.
Like now. He had brought it all forward one tiny miniscule dot of time. The
family was still the family. He was content.

He watched as Siegfried detached himself from the others,
moving toward them. Karla, in a sudden gesture, removed the blanket from her
lap and stood up.

"What is it sister?" he asked, confused by the
swiftness of her action. She did not respond, her back obscuring the
approaching figure of his eldest son. But he had already seen his face and the
message of its anger speared into his failing heart, awakening the pain.