The White Russian

28

P etrovo loomed out of the darkness. As Ruzsky reached the beginning of the short driveway, a bank of clouds cleared overhead, and the white facade glimmered in the moonlight.

The house hadn’t changed, though it seemed smaller than he remembered.

Maria came up alongside him. “It’s beautiful.”

For a moment, and to his surprise, Ruzsky felt a twinge of bitterness. All this should have been his.

The drive and hedgerows had been well maintained, but as he dismounted by the big front door, Ruzsky saw, even in the darkness, the results of his family’s neglect. The brass had not been polished, and paint was peeling off the door and windows beside it. Inside, the shutters had been closed and there was no sign of light.

Ruzsky took hold of the knocker and hammered it hard three times.

They waited.

Ruzsky began to walk around the edge of the house.

He stood on the veranda, under the sloping glass roof, looking down to the lake.

Ruzsky walked ten paces backward down the slope, so that he could look up at the house. The shutters on the first floor were closed too, but he could see a light on in the attic.

He ran back around to the front of the house and hammered hard again. “Hello,” he shouted. “It’s me, Sandro!”

He felt like a child, his excitement tinged with fear. He wanted everything to be the same. “Hello!”

He hammered again.

A light came on, peeking through the shutters.

“What is it?” he heard a voice demand.

Ruzsky felt his spirits surging. “Oleg, it’s me, Sandro!”

“Sandro?”

“Yes!”

Ruzsky waited impatiently as the bolts were pulled back inside. He heard the big lock turn. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time and then Oleg stood before him, in his nightgown, a candle in his hand.

They stared at each other.

“Master Sandro?” Oleg took a step closer. “Is it really you?”

There was a moment of hesitation, even awkwardness, and then Sandro walked forward and into Oleg’s arms, the candle tumbling to the floor, the room plunged once more into darkness.

For a former sergeant in the Preobrazhenskys, Oleg was surprisingly slight, but when he stepped back, Ruzsky still saw the steel in his eyes. He bent down, picked up the candle, lit it again, and handed it back. “This is Maria,” he said.

Oleg raised his candle in order to get a better look at her. His face, Ruzsky thought, was thinner and more lined. “Maria?”

“Popova.”

If Oleg knew of her relationship with Dmitri, he gave no sign. “Welcome,” he said.

Ruzsky moved through into the central hallway, and looked up into the shadows of the dome. A wooden staircase gave access to the first-floor gallery, from where he and his brothers had spied on his parents’ guests through the balustrade. Three tattered military banners on long poles hung down from the balcony where an orchestra had sometimes played. All around him, lurking in the darkness, were Ruzsky’s ancestors, grim-faced in military uniform. “Do you think they ever had fun?” Ilusha would always ask when they were standing here.

Ruzsky walked on into the drawing room, which ran the length of the veranda. Oleg and Maria came in behind him, the light from the candle casting flickering shadows across his father’s prized collection of rare and ancient texts. Ruzsky ran his finger along them, disturbing a thick layer of dust.

He touched the leather chair by the door and turned the globe beside his father’s writing desk. Next to it was a bust of Ruzsky’s great-grandfather, who had become ADC to Alexander I and traveled to Paris with him, after Waterloo.

Ruzsky reached the window and pulled back the shutters, allowing the moonlight to stream across bare floorboards. He turned the key, shoved open the glass door ahead of him, and stepped out onto the snow-covered balcony.

Ruzsky slipped his hands into his pockets. He thought of those long summer evenings: Father at his desk, Mother at the piano, the three of them playing on the grass or lying on the veranda, legs swinging against the lilac bushes.

He found that he was staring at the tree on the hillock by the lake. It was impossible, in the darkness, to make out the tiny gravestone.

“We didn’t know you were coming, sir.”

Ruzsky turned around. He could see the compassion and concern in Maria’s eyes. “I didn’t know I was coming.”

“How is your father?” Oleg gave him a toothless smile.

“He’s fine.”

“And Dmitri?”

“Dmitri survived the front, that’s the main thing. He’s back in Petersburg now.” Ruzsky caught Maria’s eye. “He’s fine. Where is the good Mrs. Prenkova?”

Oleg looked down. He shook his head. “She passed away, Sandro. Some years ago now.”

Ruzsky felt his face flush. “I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me.”

Oleg looked up again. His eyes were hollow. “You must be ravenous! Come downstairs.”

As they walked through the hallway, Ruzsky guessed that the house’s decline had begun in earnest with the death of Oleg’s wife. She and Katya were sisters from Petrovo who had married local boys and seen them go on, under the Ruzsky family patronage, to become noncommissioned officers in the Preobrazhenskys before entering his father’s service. It was the way things had always worked.

As they descended the back stairs to the kitchen, the light from Oleg’s candle flickered across the lattice of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling. Since he was taller than Oleg, one caught in Ruzsky’s hair.

“You should have warned me,” Oleg said. “You should have warned me.”

There was no electric light in the kitchen-there never had been-but in the winter darkness, the cavernous room had always been brightly lit by huge torches. Oleg hurriedly lit two more candles as Ruzsky peered through the gloom. More cobwebs tethered the line of enormous copper pots and pans to the shelf beside the range.

He pulled back the wooden bench from the long table, for Maria to sit.

“You should have warned me,” Oleg said again as he disappeared into the larder. He returned with some bread-old and stale-and a hunk of ham and of cheese.

Oleg placed the food in front of them. In the awkward silence that followed, the truth of Oleg’s life here dawned on Ruzsky. The old man was alone, scraping a marginal existence amongst the cobweb-shrouded ghosts of their past. He had been forgotten by the family.

Ruzsky looked at the meager fare. He wondered how long this would keep Oleg.

“It must be lonely here on your own,” Maria said.

“A boy from the village comes to help with the garden.” He pushed the bread across to them. “The Colonel sometimes sends word.”

It was a lie and Ruzsky knew it, but said for Oleg’s benefit, he guessed, rather than his own. To accept poverty and neglect was one thing, to lose respect for the family you’d served for more than half a century, quite another. “Has he been down to visit?” Ruzsky asked.

“Not for a time.”

“Not since before the war?”

Oleg pretended to have to think hard. “It’s been a time. A few years, maybe. It is the war, of course.”

Ruzsky knew his father had been here since Ilusha’s death, but he thought that his visits had been nothing more than an attempt to prove something to himself, and so had eventually petered out. Dmitri had once told him that in the year before their mother’s death, both parents had eradicated the house and its memories from their minds, but the old man still refused him the chance to take it over and restore it. “It’s like a living tomb,” Dmitri had told him. “And I think that’s the way he wants it to remain.”

Ruzsky thought of his mother. He remembered the cold accusation in her eyes on the morning after Ilusha’s death.

Ruzsky took a hunk of bread. Maria cut herself some ham. Oleg was trying to assess her with a subtlety he had never possessed.

“You’ve come far together?” he asked.

“We were on our way to Yalta,” Ruzsky said. “We found we were traveling companions.” Ruzsky wondered if Oleg would tell his father about his visitors, but he doubted it.

“All the boys in the village have gone,” Oleg said. “You remember Kirill?”

“Of course. He rode bareback, like a maniac,” Ruzsky told Maria. “He was the son of the foreman at the glassworks, and he loved to taunt us with his superior ability. Ah, Kirill…”

“Killed. And two of his sons. And many more. What’s the news from Petersburg. Will we win?”

“All the talk is of revolution again.”

Oleg looked at Maria. He did not seem to know whether to disapprove of her or not. His own personal code considered infidelity-even a hint of it-an abomination, and yet he could hardly fail to be affected by her beauty. Even in the dull light of this basement, she seemed to sparkle. Ruzsky watched as the old man sought a way of tactfully framing the questions to which he wished answers.

Oleg stood. He waved his hand. “It was bad enough last time. They know if they come to the house, I’ll shoot ’em. What have I got to live for?”

“Have you had trouble?”

“We’ve had trouble, once or twice. When did it start before? In 1905? I can’t remember. She was alive then. Tanya, I mean. There were some at the door. She stayed in her room. Shouted at me not to go down. I said I’d blow their heads off if they took another pace forward.”

“Who were they?”

“Thugs.”

“From the village?”

“No.” Oleg shook his head vigorously. “No, no. One of them was, a bad boy. He was dismissed from the factory for stealing. This house belonged to the people-that’s what he said! He must have led the others here. I heard some of them were from Tula, but I don’t know how they got this far.”

“What happened?”

“They left us alone, but I heard they burnt the Shuvalov house to the ground.”

Ruzsky shook his head. He was shocked. He’d heard of such things, of course, but did not expect them here.

“And assaulted the servants. Killed the butler!” Oleg was obviously proud of his success in defending their property. His face softened. “I’ll leave you, Master Sandro. I know you will want to look around. There are sheets on the bed in your parents’ room on the first floor.” His expression remained suitably opaque. “And in the guest room.”

Oleg lit a candle for them and then walked slowly to the door. “I’ve done my best, sir,” he said, turning to face them.

“Of course, Oleg.”

“I’m sorry for…” He thought better of it. “Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”