‘Yes, please do,’ she said.
The pony walked steadily on, along the white dust-track, his left side rosy and gilded from the last, low sunlight. To the right the tall oats whispered sleepily, their green-gold heads closing up in the distance into a gently-shifting sea, slicked with mysterious violet shadows, reaching away to where the wooded high ground rose like dark cliffs into the velvet eastern sky. And the evening lengthened all around them, as if, Anne thought, light were a new dimension half-way between space and time; as if it were some new element between air and water, through which they swam like birds.
They were late back to the house. Yelena had refused to go to bed until her father came home, and when he arrived, demanded to be allowed to stay up to supper. Her father, always indulgent, agreed, but supper was a long time being prepared, and it soon became clear that the child was over-tired and over-excited. She became more noisy and tiresome and rude until Anne could bear it no longer and took matters into her own hands, saying Yelena must go to bed at once. Neither of the adult Kirovs made any objection.
‘You’re her governess – you know best,’ the Count said easily, looking up from the cellar book which he had sent for, to choose some wine appropriate to what he regarded as a special, celebratory evening. ‘Go with Anna Petrovna, galubchik. You’re very tired.’
Anne took the child’s hand, but she snatched it back and began running round and round the room. Anne looked towards the Count, but he had evidently turned the situation over to her, so she felt it was up to her to be firm. She caught Yelena on one of her circuits, closed her finges round the small wrist, and towed her screaming out of the room.
Out in the hall she shook Yelena sharply and said, ‘Stop that noise this instant!’
‘I won’t go to bed, I won’t!’ Yelena shrieked.
‘If you don’t walk up the stairs quietly with me now, I shall carry you over my shoulder. Remember who you are, Yelena Nikolayevna,’ Anne said quietly, but with all the determination she could muster. Yelena’s lip thrust out rebelliously, but she thought of the indignity of such a proceeding, and consented to trail along unwillingly at Anne’s side. At the door of the nursery, Anne passed the child over to the care of Nyanka, who summed up the situation in an instant, clucked and tutted and addressed Yelena in soothing Russian phrases, and gave Anne a nod over her head of approval and dismissal.
Supper was finally served. The Countess seemed more than usually silent, and Anne had nothing to say, only sipped the fragrant, flowery wine the Count had chosen, as if in a reverie. All the conversation was between the Count and Fräulein Hoffnung, who discussed the wines of the Rhineland knowledgeably and, in her case, with nostalgia. When the lamps were lit and the table cleared, the latter three went out on to the terrace while the Countess played pensively on the pianoforte. The air was scented with white summer jasmine, and the notes from the piano dropped into the quietness like small pebbles into a clear pool. The Count lit a cigar, and soft brown moths fluttered out of the dimness and pattered against the drawing-room windows.
Anne stood at the balustrade, her forearms resting against the cold stone. The long twilight seemed to reverberate against the memory like faint music, as if there had been some time immeasurably long ago when she had stood like this, gazing into the luminous eastern darkness, feeling the blue air brush against her skin like warm silk, while the violet shadows of bats flickered shrieking back and forth after insects, half-seen, half-heard.
The Count was near, leaning in the same attitude and smoking his cigar; companionably silent, not touching, and yet connected somehow. Anne felt everything in her, all the thoughts and feelings of the day, and of weeks past, melting and merging together, distilling out inside her towards some single clear drop of perfect experience. All of life, she thought, was a striving towards the place where knowledge was perfectly matched by understanding, where a thing seen or done was felt and known with every particle of the self. That place seemed immeasurably far off, and yet not foreign to her, as if she had known it before, and would recognise it when she came to it, as she would recognise her childhood home.
And he was part of it. She didn’t understand how or why; perhaps he was simply another traveller along the same road, someone with whom to share the journey; or perhaps he was more, a guide, or native interpreter. Perhaps, in some strange way, he was part of the journey itself. She didn’t know, but she felt just then that he was aware of the connection between them, and was at ease with it.
As if he heard her thoughts, the Count turned his head, and they both smiled, the serene and contented smile of two people at peace with themselves and each other. Anne was aware even then that such moments of equilibrium come rarely, and that they do not last. Tomorrow, she thought, I shall be as confused and fallible and unhappy as everyone else; but as such moments inevitably pass, they always come again. The godlike, untroubled sensation expanded on the warm air, and enclosed the two people in a bubble which seemed both fragile and indestructible.
Chapter Eight
Now the normal routine of life began for Anne. There were lessons with Yelena in the little schoolroom. At first it was so difficult to make her concentrate, it was sometimes easier to move her from place to place and construct the lesson around some object or aspect of the house. She had never been obliged to work at anything, and, if pressed, grew either sulky or rebellious. She had not yet fully accepted Anne, and Anne knew there were fearful battles ahead of them.
There were lessons on the pianoforte, and sketching- lessons, mostly given out of doors when Yelena grew too restless to be kept in the schoolroom, and Fräulein Hoffnung took her for an hour each day to teach German and history, which allowed Anne time to do other things: cutting out her riding habit, doing her own piano practice, and studying Russian, in which she was determined to be proficient, for many of the servants spoke no other language. Nyanka’s attitude towards her softened perceptibly every time she acquired a new word, and the more Anne tried to speak Russian, the more kindly Nyanka consented to address her in French.0
She did not yet teach Natasha, although sometimes, to accustom her to the idea of education, Nyanka would bring her to sit in the schoolroom during one of Yelena’s lessons. Nyanka would sit in the corner, vastly overspilling a little schoolroom chair, and get on with her knitting or sewing, while Natasha sat on the floor at her feet with some doll or toy to keep her occupied. With Natasha there was never any cause to complain about noise: even when pushing a wheeled elephant back and forth across the waxed wooden floor, evidently engaged in some imaginary adventure, she made no sound, though her lips sometimes moved as if in commentary. After the first few visits, Anne noticed, to her amusement, that Natasha would sit her doll up and give it lessons, copying Anne’s gestures and making the doll go through Yelena’s motions. Every now and then the curly head would lift and the amber eyes would regard her solemnly and carefully for a few moments rather like a portrait painter referring to his subject. Anne did her best not to be unnerved by this minutely noticing gaze, and wondered how she would cope with it when she actually had to teach Natasha.
Every morning, unless it rained, Anne took both children out for a walk, accompanied either by Nyanka or Tanya, or more often by Fräulein Hoffnung. Anne grew to like the elderly governess. Though her education was narrow, she had a native shrewdness, and a great deal of experience of children on which Anne could draw. Her conversation was often amusing, full of strange turns of phrase, quaint adages, and English proverbs imperfectly remembered. She was patient and good, though rather slow, and Anne observed with inner amusement and understanding how Yelena was sometimes driven through frustration to torment her, and then felt guilty afterwards because she was so kind.