The sun slid over the zenith; other members of the family came and sat a while, and went away again, and Anne stayed, too lethargic to do anything about her discomfort. The afternoon heat softened and broadened, the shadows moved round, dogs and chickens sought shade and slept. Anne was alone again on the verandah when Sergei came out at last, and stared about him like a sleepwalker suddenly woken. She looked towards him encouragingly. He avoided her eye, as though he were embarrassed, but he came all the same, and drew out a chair to place it beside hers.
For a long time they sat side by side, staring out past the hanging flowers of the jacmanna towards the dusty shade-trees. Then at last Sergei said, ‘I want to tell you what happened. I must tell someone, just once. Then I shall have done.’
‘Yes,’ Anne said neutrally.
‘It’s fantastic,’ he said. His voice was weary, as though he were past all surprise. ‘I hardly know what to believe. I couldn’t tell it to the others, not everything.’
‘You can tell me.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Slowly, with many pauses, he told her everything that had happened since they parted at Akim Shan’s house. He spoke without inflexion, as though he were reading someone else’s narrative, as if he neither believed nor disbelieved. Anne listened, seeing through the eyes of his unemphatic words as if through a magic window on to past events.
She remembered the distant figure of Nasha riding purposefully along the side of the Valley of the Horses; she remembered Marya Petrovna’s words: She dances to a music we cannot hear. It was not difficult, at least today, and in this state of shock and emotional exhaustion, to believe that Natasha had ridden away to a Holy Place she could only know of, if she knew of it at all, by the most distant heresay.
‘Do you remember, the day of the picnic?’ she said at one point. ‘She talked about hearing voices.’ The evidence had been there, if she had only taken notice. She ought to have stopped her: she alone had all the clues. ‘She asked me if a person who heard voices was mad.’
Sergei looked at her for the first time. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin grey with weariness. ‘She was talking about Kerim.’
‘Yes, so she said. So I thought.’
He looked away again. ‘God,’ he said. ‘God.’ If it was an appeal, it was for oblivion. After a while, he took up the narrative again, describing the climb up the mountain, the cave, the finding of Natasha. There were tears on his cheeks when he reached that point, but he did not seem to notice them. He spoke of carrying the body out of the cave to the hillside, and of Zaktal’s words to him, how he swore that no one had harmed Natasha. Then he stopped.
Anne looked at him. His head was hanging, as if he were exhausted almost to death; his face bore the lines of a man who had seen what no man should ever see. After a moment he went on. ‘I believed him, God help me; somehow, at the time, I believed him. But we burned the village anyway. I carried her down the hill to where my men were waiting, and then I gave the order. We killed everyone – every man, every woman, every child – we even killed the dogs. I killed Zaktal with my own hand. And then we burned the village.’
He looked at Anne, but not as if he saw her. ‘What else could I do? If the other tribes had heard that she was dead and we had done nothing…’ He stopped again.
Anne was shocked beyond speech. She tried to think of something to say, but her mind balked at the images he had conjured for her, shied away like a frightened horse.
When he spoke again, it was in a faint voice, as if to himself. ‘There’s nothing left there now. I suppose eventually others will come and build over it again – a place such as that. But until then, it will be her monument.’
His voice faded and stopped, and did not begin again. Anne gathered herself together and looked at him. He was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling loosely between them. His face looked old: he looked older, just then, than his father.
Anne, who knew the truth of it – about Natasha, as about him – saw that what he had done, up there in the mountains, had violated his soul. He was a boy no longer. He himself had killed the boy he had been, and there was not yet a man to take his place: there was only this killing exhaustion. He might die, she saw, if he did not find himself again, because he had done what he could not regret, and could not live with. But she couldn’t help him. It was the boy she had loved: there was nothing she could love in this old man.
Chapter Twenty
In August, the Kiriakovs, like other wealthy families of the region, usually travelled to Pyatigorsk, a town whose natural sulphur springs had made it into a spa rivalling England’s Bath or Tunbridge Wells. It attracted invalids and valetudinarians from all over Russia, and as the facilities and entertainments of the town expanded to accommodate them, it became also a fashionable place for summer houses for the aristocracy. The young and the wealthy went there to dance and to flirt; and mamas took their marriageable daughters for the Pyatigorsk Season, for it was a favourite resort for officers on leave and convalescing from wounds.
The proposition was raised at Chastnaya and listlessly rejected; but Ekaterina, who had a tendency to fancy herself sickly when she was bored, wanted diversion and decided the baths would do her good. She began canvassing for support with Zinaidia.
‘I know we have had all this sadness, but it doesn’t seem fair to make you miss the balls at Pyatigorsk. It’s different for Nadya, after all – she’s already betrothed – but you ought to have your chance too. My own health is very indifferent, Zinochka dear, but I would undertake to chaperone you if dear Zina didn’t care to go.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Aunt Katya,’ Zinochka said with a frightened look, ‘but I couldn’t think of dancing at a time like this. I’m sure Uncle Feodor wouldn’t allow me to go.’
So Ekaterina went to Feodor’s wife, Galina. ‘You know, Galishka, I do think in spite of everything that it would be a good idea for your poor Masha to be allowed to go to Pyatigorsk this year. After all, a girl is only young once, and if she doesn’t have her Season, you’ll never be able to get a good husband for her – and why should she be made to suffer for something which isn’t her fault? She’s such a pretty girl, she ought to have her chance.’
‘I don’t think Feodor will want to go at a time like this,’ Galina said.
‘No, perhaps not. But then, I was thinking of going myself, for the baths – I’m such a wretched invalid, you know – and if I do, I could chaperone Masha for you. She’s such a good girl, it wouldn’t be any trouble, I’m sure.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Galina said doubtfully. ‘I’ll have to speak to Feodor about it.’
To Zina, Ekaterina said, ‘I’m so worried about poor’Rushka. I think her health will break down entirely if she isn’t taken out of herself. Don’t you think, Zina dear, it would be a good idea if we were to persuade her to go to Pyatigorsk for a month or six weeks, to take the baths? I’m sure if you suggested it, she would go – you always had great influence over her.’
Zina, who had been really worried about her sister in the weeks since Natasha’s death, frowned and said, ‘I don’t suppose for an instant she would listen. But she could be made to go.’
‘You could make her, Zina dear. And perhaps I ought to go too,’ she added with a wistful sigh. ‘My own health has suffered so these past weeks, and it would not do for me to become a burden on you. But at least’, she brightened, ‘if I went, I could save you the trouble of escorting poor’Rushka, for I’m sure you will not feel like going there at a time like this.’