When she stopped at last, there was a silence, filled only with night noises – the chirp of cicada, the rustle of the breeze in the leaves, the thin high squeak of a hunting bat. A servant came out to close the screens on the windows, so that the lamps could be lit inside, and their butter-yellow light made the dusk suddenly blue as steel. When the servant had gone, leaving them alone, the Count lit a cigar. Anne watched the movements of his hands until the task was completed, and then said, ‘She doesn’t know the true story. Sergei didn’t tell her, and it was not for me to do so, if he did not.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘She does know. Perhaps not in detail, but she knows something. Natasha was her child, more than anyone’s. She knows, at least, that Nasha went away of her own accord.’
Anne watched him draw on the cigar, making the tip glow with sudden jewels, sending the smoke wreathing out into the twilight through the tangled, nodding roses. And suddenly she thought how the accoutrements of the scene were utterly fantastic, like details in the dream of a lunatic: cigar, champagne, roses, glowing fruit in a deep lapis-blue bowl – so completely incongruous with what was being said. If this were a dream, it could only be her dream, and there was nowhere to hide in it. She felt utterly exposed to him, as though all her nerve endings were uncovered, as though he would be able to hear her thoughts as she thought them.
At last the Count put down the cigar on the edge of the table, and looked down at his hands, and said wearily, ‘I wish to God I had never allowed you all to come here! This place! I rescued her from it – why did I let her come back? It’s like an evil monster in a fairy-story, weaving bad spells, stealing life away.’
‘I thought you would blame me,’ Anne said. ‘I blame myself. I shouldn’t have left her unguarded.’
‘Blame is useless,’ he said. ‘Nothing can bring her back. What we have to do now is to find some way of going on. But just now, I can’t think what it could be. Perhaps it’s too soon.’ His hand went up to his face as if it didn’t know what to do with itself; he rubbed his eyes, and then dropped both hands to his knees. ‘Help me, Anna,’ he said quietly.
‘I’ll try. Only tell me what to do.’
He gave a small, quirky smile. ‘I was hoping you would tell me.’ He looked down at his hands, and then at her, and the smile warmed into something without pain in it. ‘Well, you can help me finish the bottle, to begin with. Fill the glasses, would you? I think I’m too tired to reach for it.’ She hesitated, and he met her eyes with faint, humorous reproachfulness. ‘What, you won’t even do that for me? Do I ask so much of you, Anna Petrovna?’
She felt the tears close behind her eyes, and wanted to look away, so that he shouldn’t see them; but his gaze was too bright and close, and that faint smile told her that he knew everything she was thinking, understood all and forgave all.
‘No, sir,’ she said at last. ‘Nothing you ask of me could be too much.’
‘Then drink with me.’
He released her gaze, and watched her fill the glasses, and took his from her hand with an odd grimace, his mood changing again. ‘It will at least make us both sleep,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next few days were hard for Anne. She couldn’t bear to see the Count and Irina together; she hated his care for her, the absolute concentration he bestowed on her. At dinner he sat beside her, served her with his own hands, poured her wine, coaxed her to eat and obliged her to drink. After dinner he sat beside her on the verandah, talking and talking to her in a low voice while she rocked. Anne sat apart with a book, trying not to overhear, but her ear seemed especially tuned to his voice. She wished, desperately, that there were a piano here, so that she could keep out his voice with music; she talked to Galina about household matters, even surprised Katya by asking after her various matronly friends.
By day, the Count walked with Irina in the gardens, accompanied her to the baths, was with her every moment. By night, he retired to her room with her, and Anne shut her mind resolutely to that. Unable to sleep, she would stand by her window for air, and see the light burning in their room at all hours. It didn’t seem to matter how much she told herself that she was both foolish and wicked: she had felt, that evening on the verandah, how close they were to each other, and how alike, in a way she could not believe was true of him and Irina. She could not bear that he loved his wife, cared for her, gave her all the product of his remarkable mind – that woman who could not begin to appreciate it. And yet she cared for Irina too, grieved for her grief, wanted to comfort and restore her, and was bitterly ashamed of her jealousy. The dichotomy in her own feelings was doubly hard to bear.
She turned to Count Tchaikovsky for respite from the impossible situation, and was grateful that he seemed ready at all hours to escort and distract her. He took her riding, strolled with her in the gardens or along the main boulevard to look at the shops, and talked to her endlessly: social small talk, gossip, long discussions about the political situation – it didn’t matter what he said, she responded with all the eagerness of one trying to escape from her own thoughts.
She met him in the evenings, too, for though she would not attend entertainments on her own behalf, she offered with a firmness that would not be denied to chaperone Masha and Zinochka, to save Galina the trouble. At balls and routs and social evenings, she sat in a corner, protected by her cap and her black gloves from being asked to take part in the amusements, and Basil Andreyevitch would come and sit by her and talk. From time to time she intercepted odd looks from some of the matrons, and knew that they were being talked about. The particularity of his attentions to her was bound to cause comment, but she was beyond caring about that. She began almost to wish that the Count would be recalled to Paris: at least there he would be as much hers as Irina’s.
One day, when they were out riding on the lower slopes of Mount Mashuk, she asked Tchaikovsky, diffidently, what chance there was of it. They had reined in their horses at a natural vantage point. Below them the town was spread out, humming with morning life in the clean sunshine; to the west, Mount Besh-Tau rose up to jab the sky with its five peaks; and to the south, just visible against the skyline, were the twin peaks of Mount Elborus, between which Noah’s Ark was supposed to have lodged when the Flood subsided. It was a lovely day, the sky clear blue, the air fresh, the sunshine bright. Anne was aware of these things outside her unhappiness, close but not touching her, like something seen beyond a window.
‘Recalled to Paris?’ mused Basil Andreyevitch. ‘It’s hard to say. The situation is tense, but not critical, from what I hear. Of course, Napoleon’s had to go to Spain to take charge of the campaign his brother’s bungled, and the life of Paris always drops from a canter to a trot when he’s away.’
‘Do you know Paris so well?’ Anne asked, surprised.
He looked embarrassed. ‘I’m reporting what I hear at mess dinners: there are plenty of officers who have been there since Napoleon took it over. Anyway, he won’t beat the Spanish in five minutes, so Paris will be quiet at least until after the harvest.’