The Model Page 9

  “I don’t think I want to go back to the Opera House.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to go back home either.”

  “Tatiana has told me.”

  “There are threats on all sides, Anna Ismailova.”

  “But now you are better equipped to meet them, Elena Andreievna.”

  About an hour later, or so it seemed, Elena spoke again.

  “We were right to sell the cows. There was no room for them to turn round. Let alone the bull.” She spoke as one conscious at the same time of the comic and tragic sides of the former situation.

  “Soon there will be no room for human beings to turn round either, Elena Andreievna.”

  “Anna Ismailova! Are you a revolutionist?”

  “Of course not, Elena Andreievna. There is no such thing as a revolution.” It was the very voice of the newly educated female, even though educated in disguise.

  “I don’t think Lexi agrees with you,” said Elena.

  “Who may Lexi be?”

  “I’ll tell you, but not now.”

  “Our country is full of illusion and illusionists,” remarked Anna Ismailova, as if she were more than three times the age she actually was.

  But Elena was hardly attending. “Look!” she cried, and, as they were quite alone, stopped to point.

  “What is it?” asked Anna Ismailova. All the girls in Tatiana’s family had weaker eyes than Elena’s, who could at any time differentiate a native gnat from a marauding mosquito in midair, which many found impossible.

  “It’s the Gates of Smorevsk, of course!”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Well, I can. Don’t worry, I know they’re open. In fact, they won’t shut.”

  “Are you sure these are the same gates?”

  “No, I’m not, Anna Ismailova, but, if not, we can walk round.”

  “We ought to be thinking of where we’re going afterwards,” said Anna Ismailova, still very much the product of a higher education.

  “The Opera House frightens me now. It was like a dream. Anyway, I’ve done it once. Where do you want to go, Anna Ismailova?”

  “I’m on a pilgrimage, Elena Andreievna.”

  “What, to the Holy Black Icon?”

  “To nowhere specific. Say to life itself and to the heart of truth.” Before Elena’s eyes, Anna Ismailova was changing from man of the world into Elena was not sure what. Anna’s smile gave little clue, either.

  “I’m too young to understand,” said Elena, smiling a little herself.

  “I feel that I have seen, heard, and known all that there is,” cried out Anna, pressing her gauntlets to her eyes.

  “I think that may be quite easy to do,” said Elena. “Please don’t cry, Anna Ismailova. Perhaps you shouldn’t have gone to University.”

  “I had to take experience to the limit, Elena Andreievna. My Father died from frostbite showing our flag in Spitzbergen. My Mother died at a scientific conference.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Elena, putting her arm round Anna’s shoulders, which she could not quite reach. “Would you like to sit down? We can listen to the bells from the thousand churches.”

  It was easier to embrace Anna when they were seated side by side on a horizontal stone inscribed “Smorevsk 1 Verst” with an arrow, but no arrow pointing in the other direction, and no inscription.

  “Listen!” said Elena. “I’m sure you’ll feel better.” And, suddenly, as on a previous occasion, the sun began to shine quite brilliantly.

  “You have stronger eyes than me, Elena Andreievna, and you may have stronger ears also. I have listened to so much.”

  “Bábaba always says that my ears are far too big.”

  Be that as it might, Elena now clearly realized that she could hear something coming towards them and from the direction they had come themselves. She sprang to her feet. Yes, yes: she could see creatures and a small coach lumbering in the midst of them.

  “Stand up, Anna Ismailova. Do you see all those dogs?”

  “No,” said Anna Ismailova. “I see only a tumbril of some kind. I see nothing else. I told you.”

  Elena swiftly changed the subject. “It’s Lexi. That’s his carriage. Now you’ll meet him, and I shan’t have to explain anything.”

  Lexi simply took it for granted that they would want to return to Elena’s small town, and there seemed little point in arguing. He knew all about Elena’s enormous success two nights before. He quite understood that now she needed a rest, especially as she was still so young: indeed, he did not wait for Elena to say so, but took the initiative in saying so himself, and without mentioning the matter of age. From at least one of his remarks it seemed that he might even know about the peril from which Elena had been rescued. Certainly he expressed no surprise at the way the two girls were dressed. “It is charming, charming,” he said. “Delightful, delightful. It will be convenable if we meet the brigands. They are infesting all the roads.”

  “What’s happened to the dragoons?” asked Elena.

  “No one knows. Perhaps the brigands have killed them all. Perhaps they have joined the brigands.”

  Elena would normally have inquired, as people always did, whether they themselves would be safe on the road, but it seemed absurd when she was a hussar, and her rescuer also.

  Lexi said he had a little business in Smorevsk, with which it would be unnecessary for the two girls to be involved, but that he would return for them in an hour or two. He gave them a cold baked ptarmigan and a bag of sugared almonds and a small bottle of spirit made from grass seeds. He told them to fear nothing.

  Thus reinforced, they spent the noonday hours spinning dreams like cobwebs, and dodging demands like nets.

  When they were on their way again, Elena asked whether it might not be far more interesting for them all to stay not with the Baron and the old Countess but somewhere else. Lexi explained that there was nowhere else.

  Inevitably, the Baron supposed the two girls to be men and wanted them, after the meal, to tourney with selected servants: successively at fist fighting, Russian wrestling, and pikestaff; in that order, he suggested. He remarked that an award of any kind to the winner would, in the circumstances, be a bêtise, as his two guests would understand. The girls claimed long overdue dispatches, and locked and barred and wedged themselves in so that they could compile them with exemplary care.

  Lexi kept the Baron so occupied thereafter that not a sound was heard all night from the landing. Elena said not one word to Anna about the Baron’s evil-looking, shaggy dogs. When it came to dogs, people’s vision differed, as well as the power of their eyes.

  The old Countess, seeing the two girls through the bars, calmed down to some extent, and proceeded to spend the entire evening and much of the night talking about experiences at the Court of Tsar Paul, who had been as mad as she now was. It seemed incredible to Elena that the Countess could be so old, but it would hardly have been polite to ask, and, anyway, the Countess gave no opportunity.

  The hours of darkness seemed more secure with Anna by her side than on Elena’s previous visit. When Elena raised the matter of the old Countess’s age, Anna merely spoke of important researches that were now going on into all such questions, leading to the provisional conclusions that many people lived hidden away for many, many more years than was generally supposed, and that the secret of longevity seemed to lie entirely in eating and drinking nothing but soured goat’s milk. Special bacteria then took charge of one. Madness might also, she thought, prove to be a question of special bacteria, though different ones. Meanwhile, the old Countess had talked so much that she had no energy left to scream, chuckle, and rage.

  The bright sunshine outside Smorevsk proved to have been the last for that year, and on this third day snow was falling all the time. It might be a race to reach Elena’s small town before the road was blocked for months, though it could not be said that the coach was going particularly fast. Birs and Fors were wearing more and more overcoats; seve
ral additional hats, woolly and furry; gauntlets like used cannon balls. Elena and Anna wished they had brought their own full winter issue. They had to make do with Lexi’s spare rugs, which smelt and were rather infested.

  In the end, falling snow was the whole world.

  “I shall proceed from the town by sleigh,” announced Lexi, as he puffed. In the cold air, the smoke hung in tendrils.

  “Or there’s the railroad,” Elena suggested helpfully.

  “Why not wait for the spring?” asked Anna.

  “I cannot wait. I am one who is awaited,” averred Lexi in his curiously high voice.

  “You seem to be awaited here,” remarked Anna, controlled and equable, even though the coach had come to a very sudden stop.

  “The brigands!” cried Lexi. “Now show your mettle, boys!”

  But the brigands seemed to have little idea of ambushing the party. On the contrary, they were clustered in the middle of the highway, chanting and preoccupied. Their garb was wild and their hair was straggling.

  “They are penitent,” cried Lexi. “They are suffering.”

  And indeed Elena could see through the falling flakes that many of the brigands were scourging and biting one another while they intoned. The doggy throng completely encircled the group, awaiting orders as always, even though the orders never came.

  “What hope is there for Russia but in sacrifice?” inquired Lexi ecstatically.

  In the time available Elena could not think of a reply, and Anna did not attempt one. But all three crossed themselves, and, after a further silent pause, Lexi simply called out “Drive on!”

  It was as well that he did so because already the wheels would hardly turn. There was also a risk of at least one wheel being wrenched off. Elena knew that it often happened. Or the central trunk of timber might split in the cold. Or everything and everybody might disappear in a crevasse, only to be found after Easter.

  They reached the small town: perhaps miraculously; as so much had already been. It was black. It was snowing. It was freezing. They were outside Elena’s Father’s house.

  The two hussars leapt out as if they had been escorting a chef de cabinet. The snow almost reached the tops of their boots.

  “Come with us, Lexi,” cried Elena. “My Father would be so pleased to greet you.”

  She knew it was the proper thing to say, but she doubted whether it was true. Judging by what her Father had said before she left, even the wherewithal might be lacking. Everything might be lacking.

  But that problem also solved itself.

  “No,” said Lexi, smiling and puffing. “I must go to Popelevsk.”

  “Why?” asked Elena.

  “I am Patron of the Athenaeum, the Gymnasium, the Propylaeum.”

  “Does Irash create in those places?”

  But Lexi only smiled. “I must find a sleigh,” he said and shut the carriage door, but in the most conclusive manner.

  “Thank you, Lexi,” said Elena, as the snow fell around her.

  “We are so grateful,” said Anna.

  “I must proceed with my mission,” cried Lexi through the closed carriage window.

  Dressed as they were, and in deep snow, the girls could hardly curtsy, so the carriage simply dragged off. Elena knew very well that in the old days the serfs were often found frozen to their box.

  “What is his mission?” asked Anna Ismailova, as they stumbled round to the door used by tradesmen, children, and hens.

  “To free Russia,” replied Elena, trying to prevent her boots being dragged from her legs. They fitted less closely than her own proper boots, as was only to be expected. Alas, her own proper boots might well have gone forever.

  “He will not succeed,” said Anna Ismailova, quite seriously.

  They entered the large back room, in which Elena stalked cherries, combed out cloudberries, stoned damsons, and counted potatoes. Her Father was standing there, wringing his hands. But he looked up at once.

  “Why, Gregori! Why, Boris!”

  “You forget, Papa, that Boris is not a soldier but a seminarian.”

  “Why, so I do. It is a time of trouble for all of us. Who then can you be?”

  “I am Elena, Papa, and this is Anna Ismailova, the second cousin of Tatiana Yegorova.”

  “Not second cousin,” muttered Anna, accurately but sotto voce.

  Elena’s Father clasped Elena briefly but parentally in his arms and bowed slightly to Anna Ismailova. Then he began to pace up and down the flagstones, lissome still, though less lissome than of yesterday. He wove effortlessly among the broken chairs, half-filled wooden pails, adapted garden tools, and other oddments.

  “There are changes, Elena.”

  “What are they, Papa?”

  “Your Mother is crying out constantly.”

  “But that is not a change, Papa.”

  “Bábaba has lost all emotion.”

  “I am sure Bábaba knows why that is, Papa.”

  “Stefan Triforovitch is sawing up the cowshed. There is nothing else left.” In fact, one could hear Stefan Triforovitch doing it as they talked. Elena’s Father turned politely to Anna Ismailova. “We no longer keep cows,” he said with a sad smile, but pacing ever.

  “They yield better in the pastures,” confirmed Anna Ismailova, cautiously reassuring her host.

  Elena sank down on to one of the chairs and began to sprawl. Sprawling was actually expected of a young officer. Anna Ismailova sat down also. It was difficult for anyone to decide how long the conversation might continue.

  “Cook has gone to her daughter. We have no cook now.”

  “Papa! I never knew Cook had a daughter.”

  “Of course. And three sons.” Elena’s Father was rending the veil of reticence from ceiling to floor, as with a heavy cleaver. There might be nothing he could not disclose. He was turning on his heel ever more frequently, often before he reached the actual wall.

  “I myself am totally lost. I am disgraced and ruined. I can do nothing. There is nothing I can do.”

  He was speaking to the air, rather than to his visible auditors. The air smelt like a toolshed. A reply was left to Elena.

  “I am sure there is, Papa. Anna Ismailova will advise you. She’s just come from University.”

  Elena’s Father turned to Anna. “Thank you, sir. Only Count Wilmarazov-Totin can help me, and he is distraught.”

  “Why is that, sir?” asked Anna Ismailova politely.

  “He shot at his son in a fit of disappointment. Happily the Mother is at the Baie des Anges and knows nothing.”

  Elena had sat up a little. “Is Rurik dead?”

  “No. It’s worse than that.”

  “Then he is laid up in bed?”

  “No. It would be no use.”

  Elena repressed a little scream. All she said was “Who now does the cooking? Remember that we have a guest, Papa.”

  “Bábaba does what she can.”

  “We must find a new cook at once, Papa.”

  “I am undone, I am undone.” Elena’s Father unclasped his hands from their usual position behind his back, and began to wave them in the air for a few moments. “Not only I, but my wife, my daughter, our servants. One of them has died from grief.”

  “Oh, Papa,” cried out Elena. “Which one?”

  “The Prussian, Silke. He died within twenty-four hours.”

  “No, no.” Elena burst into bitter tears. She was not as accustomed to sad news as she had supposed.

  “He was a cripple, sir, and not strong,” Elena’s Father explained to Anna Ismailova.

  Elena’s face was sunk between her hands. Anna put her arms round Elena’s shoulders.

  “Elena Andreievna has had many experiences,” she said. “Elena has learned at least half of all there is to know.”

  Elena’s Father stopped moving. He stood as still as he had stood when they had entered the room. He smiled bravely, as if he had been a statue: “The son of my client Count Wilmarazov-Totin may yet be able to teach her the
other half. I pray for that.”

  Elena stopped crying.

  “How is Asmara, Papa?” she asked, in a new, low, cold voice, which took her completely by surprise.

  But her Papa had never heard of Asmara, or at least not by name. He addressed Anna Ismailova.

  “You are welcome, sir,” he said, with the same brave smile, which had not left his features for a moment. “You are welcome to take up residence in my depleted, denuded, despairing home.”

  “I am obliged,” said Anna Ismailova, once more the man of the world. “I have in mind to disturb you only for a single night.”

  “Half the pain in the world is caused on purpose, the other half by mistake,” remarked Anna Ismailova, as they looked about for Bábaba, who had not been found in the kitchen, nor anyone else.

  “I shall go back to the ballet, whether I like it or not,” said Elena.

  “I expect you will like it,” said Anna Ismailova, now man of the world and reassuring friend at the same time.

  In the end they found Bábaba patching blankets in the mending room, which was big and draughty. Some of the patches were pink, some dark green, some so faded that one could not divine how they had begun.

  Bábaba did not even shriek when they entered. Elena’s Father had never fully realized who Elena was, but Bábaba knew at the first second, even by the light of a single candle.

  “So you’ve come back,” Bábaba said. “Stand away. Don’t try to embrace me.”

  Elena’s arms fell to her side. But she could see that Tosha was sitting on the floor, under the icon, and helping—in black, as always, from chin to ankle. Her chestnut hair was drawn back as in the ballet, but for different reasons.

  “I am a distant cousin of Tatiana Yegorova,” announced Anna, obviating misinformation.

  “You could have counted upon ending in a way you didn’t expect,” said Bábaba, more or less to both of them, it seemed.

  “Yes, Bábaba, I know that,” said Elena.

  “I suppose you’re dressed up for the Military Governor’s wife’s party, but it’s not till Christmas, and you’re too old anyway.”