The sententious student liked giving lessons.
“That’s totally idiotic!” Sacha burst out, ready to say anything in order to have the last word.
“All of the Caucasus is Russian,” said his adversary, developing his rationale.
“All the Caucasus is not Russian,” Varenka corrected him.
This intervention put a damper on the heated conversation, and a moment of silence ensued. Buxhöwden squirmed in his chair, sensing the danger. Jamal Eddin did not move. He listened intently to the girl’s words.
“The proof,” Gayana simpered, “is that Varenka’s sweetheart was Shamil’s prisoner for eight months in the Caucasus.”
“He’s not my sweetheart!”
“Maybe. But anyway, he was Shamil’s hostage for eight months.”
“Shamil?” smirked Sacha’s rival. “My father had him under his boot.”
The color drained from Jamal Eddin’s face. He was so visibly upset that Buxhöwden was afraid he would completely lose his composure.
“Our relative, Varenka’s fiancé, lived with him in his village, in his house,” Gayana professed insistently. “He says that Shamil is not at all the way everyone imagines him. He says that he is a great warrior, and he admires him.”
“Your relative,” the boy said condescendingly, “probably belongs to the branch of the Georgian royal family that chose to serve the shah of Persia rather than the Russian czar.”
Varenka turned almost as red as Jamal Eddin was pale. The student had struck a nerve.
Certain members of the Georgian aristocracy had plotted against the Russian occupation, and though they were Christians, they had fought in alliance with the Muslims. At the beginning of the century, when Russia definitively annexed Georgia, Queen Miriam, the widow of George XII, had stabbed the Russian general who had come to arrest her in her bed, with a kinjal. Her youngest son, little Ilya, who was only nine at the time, had helped her murder him. Ilya was Varenka’s own father.
The criminal queen had been shut up in the monastery of Voronets for seven years before being allowed to live in Moscow on probation. To some, she was a heroine of the resistance. To others, she was the incarnation of all that was barbarous, shocking, and vulgar.
Forty years later, Emperor Nicholas had granted her his pardon. The girls’ grandmother was now received at court, and the privileges, titles, and ranks of the entire family had been restored. The Georgian princes had been integrated into the Russian aristocracy and now counted among the most influential members of the empire.
In suggesting that Varenka’s “sweetheart” belonged to the enemy camp, the student had unwittingly attacked her loyalty. Even he did not realize the extent to which his comment was insulting.
Varenka managed to contain her anger, but she trembled with indignation and was close to tears.
“Our father fought Napoleon at Borodino, sir,” she said, her voice quivering. “Our uncles fought the Persians at Yerevan. The father of Prince Elico Orbeliani, our relative whom you have just denigrated, took the city of Poti back from the Turks. His brother distinguished himself in every battle against Shamil. The prince himself was taken prisoner at Dargo when he was fighting Shamil.”
“Of course, of course. I’m just surprised that he could have escaped from the clutches of the imam alive. Everyone knows how cruel he is.”
Varenka calmed down a bit.
“It’s true that he spent some very difficult periods in the pit where the imam kept his captives.”
Buxhöwden shot Sacha several urgent dark looks that warned of imminent disaster. Sacha understood that they had ventured out onto a minefield, but he could not find a way to cut the conversation short.
“The imam wanted to exchange him for his heir,” Gayana explained.
How could Buxhöwden drag Jamal Eddin away from all this? He tried to catch his friend’s eye, while Sacha attempted to distract him with subtle gestures and kicks under the table. It was all in vain.
Jamal Eddin hung on every word the girls said. He saw and felt nothing, nothing but the violence of the images and emotions their words evoked.
“The imam,” Gayana continued, all too pleased to be center stage, “had only one thing in mind when he captured our relative. He wanted to force him to write to the czar, to oblige him to beg His Majesty to give him back his son.”
“But the prince resisted,” Varenka cut in, with pride. “He refused to write the letter; he could not ask such a thing of his emperor.”
“So Shamil had him brought from the pit to be executed.”
“And the prince prepared to die. But the imam was so touched by his courage and his dignity that he pardoned him and spared his life. He even gave him free run of the village, as long as he promised not to try to escape. And that is how our relative lived with him for several months.”
“And that’s why he says he’s not cruel,” Gayana lisped.
“All that sounds too good to be true,” the boy scoffed.
“Well, you’re wrong,” Varenka murmured softly, “it is true.”
“Allow me, if you will, Your Highness, to express my surprise that the imam pardoned your relative without asking for anything in return.”
“Shamil finally exchanged him for several of his captains.”
“Your relative must have rendered some important service to the Montagnards for them to spare him and set him free,” the student insisted. “They’re very greedy, these people, as rapacious as they are corrupt. They in no way resemble the noble lords you’re describing.”
Varenka frowned. Exasperated this time, she lost her temper. “That, however, is the way things happen between men of honor! And that is how they did happen.”
“Please stop, sir.”
Jamal Eddin’s voice, like a knife slicing in one clean blow, cut into the conversation, its coldness matched only by its natural authority.
“You are insulting the princesses and questioning their word.”
“I don’t doubt their word, not for a second! That’s not what I wished to say.”
“I asked you to be quiet.”
He did not make the slightest gesture. He did not even raise his voice. It was worse. His entire person breathed contempt.
“On my honor, I never—”
“Do not use words whose meaning escapes you completely.”
His terse words expressed such pent-up anger that Buxhöwden was afraid he would grab the other boy and throttle him. However, Jamal Eddin did not move a muscle. The student, worried that he had offended Varenka Ilyinitchna, chose to ignore the interruption.
“I swear to you, Your Highness, that—”
“Be quiet. The subject is closed.”
“Yes, let’s all be quiet, shall we,” Varenka agreed, gracing the boy with a conciliatory look. “The war in the Caucasus is too painful and controversial a subject. Let’s all talk about something else.”
She gave her opponent such an encouraging smile that he was sure he had won her over, which was actually the intent of all his quibbling in the first place. Swallowing his humiliation, he complied. He was content to seek proof of her pardon by asking Her Highness for the honor—he emphasized the word pretentiously—of granting him the first waltz.
“Who is that cretin?” Buxhöwden whispered in Sacha’s ear as they were leaving the room.
“Tell me about it!” he exclaimed under his breath. “How could my brother have let that fool horn in at our table? Dmitri hit the bull’s-eye, giving us that son of an imbecile. We need to avoid him at all costs.”
“Jamal Eddin put him in his place.”
“That’s nothing. Just think what he would have done had he known he was talking to Nicholas Pavlovitch Grabbe!”