Everyone was waiting for the ball to begin. The women strolled in small groups through the adjoining receiving rooms while the men played whist in the smoking room. The young people played ambassadors and other games under the watchful eyes of their governesses. Behind the closed doors, they could hear the violins tuning up.
Suddenly, in an explosion of brass, the first measures of a polonaise resounded throughout the halls, a veritable thunderclap that instantly emptied the salons. Jamal Eddin found himself alone in the small rotunda known as the Hercules Rotunda.
Situated at the end of a gallery of paintings, the room was considered by many to be less than congenial. Decorated only with palms, potted plants, and four monumental statues of Hercules leaning on his club, it struck the ladies as cold and uninviting. Even those who were curious to see the entire palace turned around before entering this room. This was where Jamal Eddin had sought refuge when dinner was over.
He stood in the shadows of one of the alcoves, hidden by the palms and ferns. Varenka and Gayana had obtained permission from their mother to stay up until ten, until the mazurka, but he wouldn’t go watch them dance. He did not want to see them again; in fact, he was waiting for them to leave. It was not that he hadn’t found them attractive. On the contrary, he could think only of them and hoped that the evening would never end. Or else that the soirée would conclude then and there, while he was still reveling in this feeling of security and peace.
He was happy.
He thought about what he had just heard, about the message they had transmitted.
The girls had said that Shamil was a great warrior, a generous and noble man, so noble that even his enemies admired him. And they had told him other things that were even more gratifying to hear.
They had said that Shamil was keeping the promise he had made when he had been forced to surrender him at Akulgo. “Never will I abandon you.”
They had told him that his father remembered him, and that he loved him.
All this time, these five long years without news, Jamal Eddin had feared that Shamil had forgotten him. He thought perhaps that his father had denied him, rejected him, the same way they had rejected his cousin Hamzat, whose own mother would have nothing to do with him, declaring that he stank and that he had been sullied.
Suddenly this constant, throbbing anxiety had vanished.
A knot inside him had unraveled this evening, leaving him confident and content. He was proud of the present, proud of the past, proud of Shamil and of his own origins. His faith in his love of his own people made him feel light, almost free, as he had been as a child. Hope had conquered his fear.
“Oh, are you there?”
Even before her full skirt and lace pantalets emerged from the forest of plants, he recognized her voice. Soft and sweet and a bit husky, Varenka’s voice belonged to the voices of his past and rose from the murmur of his memories. Of all the voices that sang in the back of his mind, hers was already the clearest.
The girl now stood before him, her dress a bright stain of pink among the leaves.
“We’re leaving,” she said awkwardly.
She seemed a bit out of breath, as though she had crossed the gallery at a run. She was wrapped in a warm shawl that covered her hair and shoulders, à la Russe. Covered like this, she reminded him of the silhouettes of the women who went to fetch the water in the mountains at home. The princess of Georgia was every bit Caucasian.
Her presence seemed friendly and familiar. Unlike Sacha, who would have been struck silly by her sudden appearance, he wasn’t surprised. Yes, of course he found those arched eyebrows and big, dark eyes lifted toward his unsettling. But the girl’s face, which had looked so serious when she had spoken of the honor of men, now seemed a part of the peace he had finally found.
She did not share his serenity. He could see that she was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say.
“We’re leaving,” she repeated. “And we wanted to—a little while ago, I didn’t tell you.”
She stopped and began again, slowly and steadily.
“A little while ago, at the end of our discussion, my sister and I were worried about making things worse with the… well, we’re very grateful. But before leaving, both of us wanted to thank you for having defended us.”
Her words went straight to his heart. For a moment he said nothing. The moist breath of the plants bathed his burning cheeks.
“Don’t say anything about gratitude. You have no idea, I am the one who is grateful.”
“Who is that cadet who’s talking to one of our Anastasia Grigorievna’s cute little things, at the foot of the Hercules Farnèse?” Tatiana Borissovna Potemkina inquired, squinting through her lorgnette at the statue among the palms.
The imposing Princess Potemkina stood several meters from them, two-thirds of the way down the gallery, with her husband and three of their contemporaries.
Her nickname at court, “La Potemkina,” à l’Italien, was exclusively hers and signified neither the overly familiar nor the pejorative. She was the wife of a marshal of Saint Petersburg nobility and self-appointed guardian of the temple. She considered it her duty to ensure the proper conduct and respect for tradition of nearly everyone, and boys and girls had to be presented to her before they made their début in the world. After a visit to La Potemkina and a dozen other powerful old ladies, one was considered to have completed the “dowager tour,” a condition sine qua non to being received at any party. Of all the young people present, not one had failed to pay his respects by calling on La Potemkina.
“I asked Count Kiselyev the same question,” replied her companion. “He’s going deaf, poor dear, he didn’t even hear me. The boy is remarkably beautiful.”
“Yes, ravishing. But at this age, cadets of the First Corps don’t have private conversations with girls, they play hunt the thimble with them in the nursery. Or else ask them to dance. Sacha, come here for a moment.”
The sturdy arm of La Potemkina had stopped him in midflight and now held his own arm firmly. Who would ever have imagined that Tatiana Borissovna had once had the figure of a sylph? Her friends had called her a liana, whose stylishly cut dresses with empire waistlines had emphasized her slenderness.
All that remained today of the nymph with the face of a Madonna was her long, straight nose and the pursed lips that accompanied her ponderous stare. At forty-eight, she had gained as much weight as she had confidence. Despite her full skirts, fluted bonnets, and the mass of curls framing her face, these days she resembled nothing so much as a man, all the more so because of her energy and pugnacity.
“You know your little comrade there, I suppose. What’s his name?”
Sacha clicked his heels and bowed before the four ladies, greeting them politely and paying a small compliment to each, as he tried to play for time. It was no use. Dmitri, engrossed in conversation ten steps away, would never come to his rescue. He would have to reply, and he couldn’t think of anything to say but the truth.
Good Lord! La Potemkina—of all powers, the most fearsome—La Potemkina had spotted Jamal Eddin. The worst had finally happened.
“He’s a friend of Their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Dukes,” he hedged, “His Majesty’s personal protégé. One of his wards from the Caucasus. His favorite ward.”
“The son of a khan. I thought so. I’d recognize a Cherkess anywhere.”
For several years, Tatiana Borissovna had been head of the ladies’ prison committee, and in this capacity, she had visited Montagnards who were being held in the empire’s jails. She had met so many that now she was indeed capable of picking one out in a crowd.