David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (25 page)

“Well, no, Helene Vassilievna.”

“There’s so much snow. Have them put some more blankets on the sleigh.”

“Try not to worry.”

They pushed the terrace door open with great difficulty; it creaked beneath the weight of the snow. The icy-cold night was filled with the scent of frozen pine trees, and smoke, in the distance. Tatiana Ivanovna closed her shawl around her chin and
ran out to the sleigh. She was still as straight and energetic as she had been in the past, when Cyrille and Youri were children and she would go to look for them at dusk. Helene Vassilievna closed her eyes for a moment, picturing her two eldest sons, their faces, the games they played. Cyrille, her favourite. He was so handsome, so … happy… She feared more for him than for Youri. She loved them both passionately. But Cyrille … Oh, it was a sin to think such things … “My God, protect them, save them, grant us the blessing of growing old, surrounded by all our children … Hear me, Lord! Everything is in the hands of God,” Tatiana Ivanovna always said.

Tatiana Ivanovna climbed up the steps of the terrace, shaking off the snowflakes that clung to her lace shawl.

They went back into the sitting room. The piano was silent. The young people were standing in the middle of the room, quietly talking amongst themselves.

“It’s time, my children,” said Helene Vassilievna.

Cyrille motioned to her. “All right, Mama, in a second… One more drink, gentlemen.”

They drank to the health of the Emperor, the Imperial Family, the allies, the defeat of Germany. After each toast, they threw their champagne flutes to the floor, and the servants silently cleared away the broken glass. The rest of the servants were waiting in the entrance hall.

When the officers passed in front of them, they all spoke at exactly the same time, as if they were reciting a mournful lesson they had learned by heart: “Well… Good-bye, Cyrille Nicolaevitch… Good-bye, Youri Nicolaevitch.” It was only Antipe, the old chef, always slightly tipsy and sad, who leaned his large grey head on his shoulder and added automatically in his loud, hoarse voice: “May God keep you safe and sound.”

“Times have changed,” grumbled Tatiana Ivanovna. “In the past, when the Barines left… Times have changed, and so have people.”

She followed Cyrille and Youri out on to the terrace. The snow was falling fast. The servants raised their lanterns, lighting up the ancient, frozen grounds, so still; and the statues at the foot
of the drive, two B ellonas, goddesses of war who shimmered with frost and ice. One last time, Tatiana Ivanovna made the sign of the cross above the sleigh and the road; the young people called out to her, laughing as they leaned forward so she could kiss their cheeks, cheeks that were burning, whipped by the cold night air. “There, there, my dear, good-bye, look after yourself, we’ll be back, don’t worry.” The driver took hold of the reins, made a strangely sharp whistlelike noise, and the horses started off. One of the servants put his lantern down on the ground, yawning.

“Are you staying here, Nianiouchka?”

The old woman didn’t reply. The others went inside. She saw the lights on the terrace and in the entrance hall going out, one by one. In the house, Nicolas Alexandrovitch absent-mindedly took a bottle of champagne from one of the servants.

“Why aren’t you drinking?” he murmured, with difficulty. “We should have a drink.”

Carefully, he filled their glasses; his hands were shaking slightly. A large man with a dyed moustache, General Siedof, went over to him. “Try not to upset yourself, my friend,” he whispered in his ear. “I spoke to His Highness. He’ll look after them, don’t worry.”

Nicolas Alexandrovitch slowly shrugged his shoulders. He had gone to St. Petersburg as well. He’d been granted an audience and obtained letters. He had spoken to the grand duke. As
ifhe
could protect them from bullets, dysentery. “Once your children have grown up, all you can do is fold your arms and let life run its course … But you still get upset, rush about, imagine… Yes, you do … I’m getting old,” he suddenly thought, “old and cowardly. War? … My God, why, twenty years ago I couldn’t have imagined such luck.”

Out loud, he said: “Thank you, Michel Mika?lovitch. What can you do? They’ll do what all the others do. May God grant us victory.”

“God willing!” the old general said passionately. The others, the young men who had been at the front, said nothing. One of them instinctively opened the piano, played a few notes.

“Dance, my dears,” said Nicolas Alexandrovitch.

He sat back down at the card-table, motioning to his wife.

“You should go and rest, Nelly. Look how pale you are.”

“So are you,” she whispered.

They silently squeezed each other’s hand. Helene Vassilievna left the room, and the elder Karine picked up the cards and started playing, fiddling absent-mindedly with the silver candelabra.

FOR
QUITE
A
WHILE,
Tatiana Ivanovna listened to the sound of the bells on the horse-drawn carriage growing fainter. “They’re going quickly,” she thought. She had remained in the middle of the path pressing her shawl tightly to her face. The snow, light and delicate, felt like powder against her eyelids; the moon had risen, and the deep trail left by the sleigh in the frozen ground sparkled with a fiery blue glow. The wind dropped and immediately the snow began falling heavily. The faint tinkle of the little bells had died away; the pine trees, laden with ice, creaked in the silence with the heavy groan of someone in pain.

The old woman slowly made her way back to the house. She thought of Cyrille, of Youri, with a kind of tender shock … War. She vaguely imagined a field and galloping horses, shells exploding like ripe pea pods… like a fleeting image … where had she seen that before? In a schoolbook, no doubt, one the children had coloured in. Which children? Cyrille and Youri, or Nicolas Alexandrovitch and his brothers? Sometimes, when she felt very weary, like tonight, they became confused in her mind. A long, confusing dream. Would she perhaps wake up, as she had in the past, to hear Kolinka crying in his old bedroom?

Fifty-one years… Before, she too had a husband, a child… They had died, both of them… It had happened so long ago that sometimes she could barely remember what they looked like. Yes, nothing lasted, everything was in the hands of God.

She went back upstairs to see Andre, the youngest Karine in her care. He still slept next to her, in the large corner room where Nicolas Alexandrovitch had slept, and then his brothers, his sisters. All of them had either died or gone to live far away. The room seemed too vast, the ceilings too high for the few pieces of furniture that remained: Tatiana Ivanovna’s bed and Andre’s, the white curtains and the little antique icon hanging over his
cot. A toy chest, an old little wooden desk that had once been white but which the past forty years had worn so that it now looked a pale, glossy grey. Four bare windows, an old wooden floor. During the day, everything was bathed in a torrent of light and air. When night fell, with its eerie silence, Tatiana Ivanovna would say: “There should be more children by now.”

She lit a candle, partially illuminating the ceiling’s painted angels and their mischievous faces, then shaded the flame and walked over to Andre. He was in a deep sleep, his golden head nestled against the pillow; she stroked his forehead and his little hands that lay open over the sheets, then sat down next to him, as she always did. She would sit like this for hours, every night, half-asleep, knitting, drowsy from the heat given off by the wood-burning stove, dreaming of the past and the future: when Cyrille and Youri would get married, where new children would be sleeping there beside her. Andre would soon be gone. As soon as they were six, the boys went down to live on the floor below, with their tutors and governesses. But the old room had never remained empty for long. Cyrille? Or Youri? Or Loulou, perhaps? The burning candle crackled loudly, steadily, in the silence. She watched it, her hands slowly swaying, as if she were rocking a cradle. “I’ll live to see other children, God willing,” she whispered.

Someone knocked at the door. She stood up. “Is that you, Nicolas Alexandrovitch?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, Nianiouchka.”

“Try not to make noise or you’ll wake him up … “

He came into the room; she took a chair and quietly put it next to the stove.

“Are you tired? Would you like some tea? It will only take a moment to boil some water.”

He stopped her. “No. It’s fine. I don’t want anything.”

She picked her knitting up from the floor, sat down again, quickly clicking the shiny needles.

“It’s been a long time since you came to see us.”

He said nothing, stretched his hands out towards the crackling wood-burning stove.

“Are you cold, Nicolas Alexandrovitch?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered slightly. “Have you caught a chill?” she cried, as she had in the past.

“No, not at all, my dear.”

She shook her head crossly and said nothing. Nicolas Alex-androvitch looked over at Andre’s bed. “Is he sleeping?”

“Yes. Do you want to see him?”

She stood up, took the candle and walked towards Nicolas Alexandrovitch. He didn’t move. She leaned over, quickly tapped him on the shoulder. “Nicolas Alexandrovitch … Kolinka …”

“Leave me be,” he murmured.

Silently, she looked away.

It was better to say nothing. And where could he cry freely, if not with her? Or Helene Vassilievna… Yes, it was better to say nothing… She quietly retreated into the dark room. “Wait here, I’m going to make some tea, it will warm us both up.”

When she got back, he seemed calmer; he was absent-mindedly turning the handle of the wood-burning stove; the plaster from the wall behind sounded like gently flowing sand.

“Look, Tatiana, how many times have I told you to plug up the hole behind the stove. Look, look over there,” he said, pointing to a cockroach scuttling across the floor. “They’re coming from that hole. Do you think that’s healthy in a child’s bedroom?”

“You know very well that cockroaches are a sign of a wealthy household,” said Tatiana Ivanovna. “Thank God, we’ve always had them here, and you were brought up here and others before you.” She handed him the glass of tea she had brought, stirred it. “Drink it while it’s hot. Is there enough sugar?”

He didn’t reply, took a sip with a weary, distant look on his face and, suddenly, stood up.

“Well, good night, and get that hole behind the stove fixed, understand?”

“If you say so.”

“Bring the candle.”

She picked it up, lighting his way to the door; she went down the first three steps leading to the room. They were made of reddish brick—loose, wobbly, and slanting to one side, as if pulled towards the earth by a heavy weight.

“Be careful. Will you be able to sleep now?”

“To sleep … I’m so sad, Tatiana, my soul is full of sadness.”

“God will protect them, Nicolas Alexandrovitch. People die in their beds, and God protects Christians from bullets.”

“I know, I know …”

“You must trust in God.”

“I know,” he repeated. “But it’s not just that…”

“What else is wrong, Barine?”

“Nothing’s going right, Tatiana, it’s hard to explain.”

She nodded.

“Yesterday, my great-nephew, the son of my niece in Sou-kharevo, was also conscripted for this cursed war. He’s the only man in the family since his older brother was killed last spring. There’s only his wife and a little girl the same age as our Andre … so who’s going to work the farm? Everyone has his share of misery.”

“Yes, we’re living in sad times. I pray to God that…”

He stopped her. “Well, good night, Tatiana,” he said quickly.

“Good night, Nicolas Alexandrovitch.”

She stood silently, waiting until he had crossed the sitting room, listening to his footsteps creaking against the wooden floor. She opened the little window-pane. An icy wind was rageing so fiercely that it swept up her shawl and blew through her hair. The old woman smiled, closed her eyes. She had been born in a region in northern Russia, far from where the Karines lived, and there was never enough ice, never enough wind as far as she was concerned. “Where I come from,” she said, “we used to break the ice with our bare feet, in the springtime, and I’d be happy to do it again.”

She closed the little window; the whistling of the wind was blocked out. The only sounds that remained were the faint rustling of the plaster trickling down the old walls, like whispering sand, and the hollow, deep creaking of rats gnawing away at the antique wooden panelling.

Tatiana Ivanovna went back into her bedroom, prayed for a long while, and then got undressed. It was late. She blew out the candle, sighed, and said, “My God, my God,” out loud, over and over again into the silence, then fell asleep.

WHEN TATIANA IVANOVNA
had closed all the doors of the empty house, she went up to the little cupola set into the roof. It was a hushed May night, already sweet-smelling and warm. Soukhar-evo was burning; she could clearly see the flames in the air and hear the sound of people’s screaming carried through the wind from far away.

The Karine family had fled five months earlier, in January 1918. Since then, every day, Tatiana Ivanovna had watched fires burning in the distant villages, the flames die down and then flare up again, as the Bolsheviks took the villages from the White Russians who in turn lost them again to the Bolsheviks. But the fires had never been as close as this evening; the flames lit up the abandoned grounds so clearly that she could see right down to the end of the long drive where the lilac trees had recently come into bloom. The birds, confused by the light, were flying to and fro as if it were daytime. Dogs were howling. Then the wind shifted, carrying away the sound and smell of the flames. The old, deserted grounds were calm and dark once more, and the perfume of the lilacs filled the air.

Tatiana Ivanovna waited a while, then sighed and went downstairs. In the downstairs rooms, they had taken down the carpets and draperies. The windows were boarded over and protected by iron bars. The family silver was hidden at the bottom of packing trunks, in the cellars; she’d buried the most valuable china in the old, deserted part of the orchard. Some of the serfs had helped her: they assumed that all this wealth would belong to them one day. These days, people cared about their neighbours only for their possessions. That’s why they wouldn’t say anything to the officials in Moscow, and later on, well, they’d wait and see… Without them, though, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything. She was all alone, the other servants had
left long ago. Antipe, the cook, the last one left, had stayed with her until March, when he’d died. He had the key to the wine cellar and wanted nothing more. “You’re wrong not to have some wine, Tatiana,” he would say, “it makes you forget all your troubles. Look, we’re all alone, abandoned like dogs, and a curse on all the rest, I couldn’t care less, just as long as I have some wine.”