The White Russian

44

P avel slipped quietly into the room. He looked at Ruzsky only long enough to confirm that there was no need for words.

He carried out his work discreetly, without asking questions or catching his partner’s eye. He examined the body, removing the revolver from the old man’s grip and slipping it carefully into his overcoat. He walked around the room, checking the desk and the area beside it.

Sarlov entered and both he and Pavel came and went in silence for half an hour or more. When they had completed their tasks, they stood in front of him. Pavel crouched down with his notebook open. “He had visitors, you know that?”

Ruzsky nodded.

“Vasilyev and two of his men.” Pavel looked into his eyes. “The meeting lasted about ten to fifteen minutes. Your father saw them out and returned to his study. The valet said he seemed subdued, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Approximately two minutes later, they heard the shot.”

Ruzsky stared at Pavel. His partner was waiting for a response, but he had none to give.

“With your permission,” Pavel went on, “we will…” He glanced at Sarlov. “If we could take your father’s body down to Ofitserskaya Ulitsa…”

Ruzsky looked to his brother, but receiving no lead from him, turned back to his colleagues and nodded. Neither man moved. “We’ll… arrange it,” Pavel said. “Is there anything else that you would like us to do?”

Ruzsky shook his head.

“Is there anyone you wish us to notify?”

“No.”

Pavel stood, but both he and Sarlov lingered. “I’m sorry, Sandro. If there is anything else… anything at all.”

“I will see you in the office later today.”

Pavel did not respond. His compassion was the more moving for remaining unspoken. He and Sarlov slipped out and pulled the door shut.

Ruzsky opened the window a fraction and looked out at the garden. He could see a snowman Michael had built earlier. He wondered if the old man had helped him. “When did you last see him?”

“Last night,” Dmitri said.

Ruzsky rubbed the condensation from the window. The morning sun disappeared behind a bank of heavy cloud.

Dmitri left the room for a few moments and returned with a yellow carnation. He placed it in the buttonhole of their father’s jacket.

Ever since the death of their mother, the old man had ordered fresh flowers for her bedside table every week, just as she had done when she was alive.

“Do you think they will be happy together?” Dmitri asked. “Wherever they are.”

“Content, perhaps.”

“Is that the best we can hope for? To be content?”

“We were born to a different age.”

Ruzsky bent down and tugged the wing of his father’s collar back inside his morning coat.

There was a soft knock at the door. Pavel and Sarlov slipped in and Ruzsky saw from the expression on their faces that it was time for them to take the body away. Ruzsky straightened his father’s coat once more and then stepped back.

Pavel and Sarlov bent to pick up the body.

Ruzsky and his brother watched their father being carried out.

As the door was pulled shut, Dmitri moved to the old man’s desk and picked up the paperweight he had always used-a rock Ruzsky had given him during a family holiday at their aunt’s estate in the Crimea. He pushed it to and fro on the desktop.

Despite the sight and smell of blood, the removal of the body made the old man’s death seem almost an illusion. The voices outside died away as the servants drifted back to their tasks. Pavel and Sarlov left with the ambulance.

The telephone in the hall was silent. Even the wind had faded to a whisper.

Ruzsky thought of the loneliness that must precede suicide; could he not have saved him that? Was it simply for want of another’s support that his father had reached such an impasse? He’d assumed the old man would have been too proud to want to share a dilemma with his eldest son, and yet hadn’t he tried?

As Ruzsky looked out of the window at the lifeless skies, he grew more certain. A liar or cheat could always dream of escape, because he did not fear his conscience, but for an honorable man, sometimes there was only one way out. The old man’s responsibility was to protect the assets of the state-what mistake or threat could have demanded such a sacrifice?

“Did you know he was going to meet Vasilyev this morning?” Ruzsky asked. He was surprised by the strength in his own voice.

“No.”

“Do you have any idea what they could have talked about?”

Dmitri looked at him. “No.”

Ruzsky turned to face his brother.

“I sometimes think,” Dmitri said, “that you believe Father talked to me in a way he never did to you, but it wasn’t so. He would never have confided in me.”

Ruzsky shook his head, but even as he did so he knew that Dmitri was right. “You were an officer in his regiment…”

“But not like he was. Not like you would have been.”

Ruzsky saw the distress in his brother’s eyes. As it had once before, grief diminished him and it broke his heart to see it. “Let us not quarrel,” he said.

The tension on Dmitri’s face eased. “Yes. Let us not quarrel.”

Ruzsky found Michael playing with Ingrid in the attic. The pair sat side by side on the floor, putting together the train track. The boy looked up with a naive but brittle optimism in his eyes. “Is Grandfather awake now?”

Ruzsky sat down. He put the station at Mtsensk by the edge of the track and then assembled the house and village at Petrovo a short distance away from it. “I think Grandfather has gone to be with Uncle Ilusha.” Ruzsky glanced at Ingrid.

“Does that mean we won’t see him again?” Michael asked as he fitted the first locomotive onto the track and then began to hitch carriages behind it.

“Not in the way we are used to.”

Michael concentrated intently on putting together his train.

“I’m sorry, my boy.”

“Will you come and live here, now, Father?”

Ruzsky hesitated. “Yes.”

“With Mama?”

“I will talk to her.”

“I will miss Grandfather.”

Ruzsky did not answer.

“Will you miss him also?”

“Very much.”

“Some of the servants said you didn’t like each other, but you did, didn’t you?”

Ruzsky swallowed hard. “I loved him. And I think, in his way, he loved me.” He pieced together two stretches of track. “He was my father, just as I am yours. It is an unbreakable bond.”

Ingrid reached forward to squeeze Michael’s shoulder.

There was a long silence.

“How did he have an accident?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Was he sad?”

Ruzsky shook his head. “No.”

“Then why did he have an accident?”

Ruzsky did not offer an answer, since he had none to give.

Michael put the last carriage on his train and pushed it around to the station at Mtsensk. He unloaded the small wooden passengers and assembled them on the platform with their luggage. One family had been modeled on Ruzsky’s own: two parents with three boys and a small group of servants. There was even a troika waiting for them. “Can we speak to Grandfather?” Michael asked.

“In our dreams,” Ingrid said. “In our dreams, we can talk to him.”

Michael seemed encouraged. His frown eased. He loaded the passengers back onto the train, sorting each group into its regular compartment before storing their luggage.