The White Russian

29

R uzsky walked slowly around the ground floor, the candle in his hand and Maria beside him. There were cobwebs in each nook and cranny and dust upon every surface. In the dining room, the silver candlesticks and salt and pepper cellars were still on the table, as if waiting for the family to sit down to dinner. Ruzsky opened the shutters, allowing the moonlight to spill into the room. “We used to eat as a family in the summer, all of us together, with these doors open and the sun streaming in.”

Ruzsky pushed open the double doors to the library. He pulled back the shutters here too. “The rest of my father’s collection of books. And his father’s. If you want a rare or unusual text, it’s probably here.” Ruzsky patted the dust off the top of a leather armchair.

A shaft of moonlight fell upon the giant portrait that hung above the fireplace and Ruzsky stood in front of it. “Your father?” Maria asked.

“My grandfather. They looked very alike.”

“All three of you do.”

Ruzsky looked at the face above him. “They were both tyrants, in their own way.”

“Did you know your grandfather?”

“He died when I was five. We had come down here to see him and he passed away in the room upstairs.” Ruzsky’s brow creased. “It was like a giant weight had been lifted from my father’s shoulders. That night, I heard him laugh for the first time.”

Ruzsky continued to stare at the dour, imperious face of his grandfather. “For a few years, he was a completely different man.”

“Is he buried here?”

“There is a graveyard beyond the walled garden. My father has never been there, but I have.”

He turned to face her.

“Is your mother buried here also?” she asked.

Ruzsky shook his head. “No. In Petersburg.”

“Dmitri never talks of her.”

Ruzsky tried not to react to the mention of his brother’s name. “No, well…”

“He says your father believes she died of a broken heart.”

“It was a claim he once made.”

“Is it true?”

“No.”

“Why is it that you do not talk of her?”

Ruzsky stared at the portrait of his grandfather. “I don’t know.”

Maria waited for him to continue. After a long silence, he did so. “She was afflicted with a deep melancholia, even before Ilusha’s… Sometimes, she stayed in her room all day.” He put his hand to his forehead. “She suffered from terrible headaches.”

Ruzsky looked at Maria again. “Perhaps my memory plays tricks, but after we left here that last time, she never embraced me again.”

“Where should I sleep, Sandro?”

Ruzsky did not respond.

“I’m tired,” she said softly. “And this is your home.”

“Of course.” He cleared his throat. “Of course.”

Ruzsky led her through the hallway and up the stairs. He walked swiftly down the landing, past the orchestra gallery and his parents’ bedroom, to those reserved for guests. Oleg had lit a candle and placed a bowl of warm water in the first of the rooms. He’d also pulled back the covers. Ruzsky patted the bed with his fist and a cloud of dust rose into the air. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling, where the wallpaper had begun to peel, the spreading damp visible even in this light. “Will you be all right?”

Maria moved slowly toward him. She took his face gently in her hands, her eyes searching his. She kissed him once, with soft, warm lips, then wrapped her arms around him and pressed him to her. “Thank you for bringing me here, Sandro.”

She released him and stepped back.

Ruzsky hesitated.

Maria did not move. He saw compassion and regret in her eyes. Was that all?

He turned and walked to the door. He looked back.

“Good night, Sandro,” she said.

“Good night.”

Ruzsky stepped out, pulled the door shut, and took two or three paces down the corridor.

He stood in the darkness, his mind clouded and his heart pounding.

He waited.

He walked a few more paces and then stopped again. This corridor stripped away time. He felt a tightness in his chest. He was back at the night of Ilusha’s death, when Dmitri had clung to him by the door of his room, here, just before he had been summoned to his father’s study.

Ruzsky remembered every inch of that journey.

He remembered the warmth of the fire, the look on his father’s face, and his own terror as the reality of his emotional exile dawned upon him for the first time.

He could hear his mother’s cries, and Dmitri’s echoing silence as he had tried to recount his father’s words.

Ruzsky shivered. He found himself at Dmitri and Ilya’s door.

The room was empty. The two beds were still there and the old chest of drawers, but everything personal had been removed: Ilusha’s collection of bears that had occupied half the bed, Dmitri’s sword that had hung on the wall, the regimental flag above the door.

Ruzsky was as still as stone. He realized that he had wished to bathe in these memories, and even this had been denied him. He moved toward the shutters and pulled them slowly back.

The lake was white in the moonlight. Ruzsky felt his eyes drawn along the ice, toward the top of the slope on the far side, to the place where a small black stone stood in a clearing beneath the trees.

He turned and looked across the corridor toward his own bedroom. The door was shut.

He hesitated for only a moment before opening it. If his father-or perhaps even his mother when she had been alive-had stripped his brothers’ room, then he was certain they would have done the same to his own.

He was right, but the disappointment still tugged at something within him.

There was a blanket at the end of the bed where his toy bear had once slept, and Ruzsky lay down and covered himself with it, his boots hanging over the end of the mattress.

He closed his eyes.

All Ruzsky could see and all he could feel was the ice-cold water against his clammy skin, his arms and legs swirling helplessly.

He was drowning, eyes bulging and lungs empty. He was trying to breathe, but could not.

They were watching him. His father, mother, Dmitri… they were standing there impassively, watching him die.

Ruzsky felt the searing, wrenching pain in his chest.

This was his punishment, and would be for all eternity.

“Sandro!”

The slap awoke him, but it was a moment before his surroundings began to coalesce. She was above him; it was her. It was Maria, her face soft and beautiful and etched with concern; Oleg behind her, a candle above his head.

“Sandro?”

He felt paralyzed. He became aware that he was soaked in sweat.

“Sandro?”

“Yes…”

“You were screaming.”

“I was drowning…”

“Screaming and screaming. We couldn’t wake you.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Maria turned toward Oleg. “It’s all right, Oleg. I’ll look after him now.”

Oleg hesitated for a moment and then nodded. He looked at Maria with compassion and then handed her the candle.

They listened to his footsteps recede.

Maria put the candle on the side table and then leaned back over him. She put a warm hand against his frozen cheek.

Ruzsky looked at her. He thought that it might be love he saw in her eyes.

Maria blew out the candle, then slipped onto the bed, pulling him toward her, cradling his head on her breast.

They lay still in the darkness.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Sandro,” she whispered.

“It will never be all right.”

“It will. Believe me.”

She tightened her grip on him.

“My sister cried out,” Maria said. “But I could not stop her.”

Ruzsky listened to the sound of her breathing.

“I could never cry out,” Maria said.