But he was mistaken. The subject was not closed.
The conversation had opened a chasm he could not close.
Buoyed by a wave of fragile hope, he was overwhelmed by conflicting thoughts and feelings.
Impossible. Impossible, but why? Sacha’s questions and Buxhöwden’s words ran endlessly through his mind.
He was caught between two worlds and two loyalties, each of which excluded the other. The choice he had always refused to make, between the Caucasus and Russia, was now an imperative. How could one belong to two universes at once? What would happen if he dared to ask for Lisa’s hand, if he dared to marry her? He could not even find the words to express his thoughts.
Choose. Dare. A man is of little substance unless he has done his utmost to live in harmony with himself.
And in response to such high-minded eloquence, he recalled the suras of the Koran that condemned to death one who denied Islam: God would not tolerate another divinity sharing His place.
He went over his reasoning again. What if he should go all the way and truly embrace what he had become: a Russian, who belonged to the Russian army, in love with a Russian girl—and married to a Russian woman? He would have to renounce the task for which Allah had created him and the emperor had educated him. He would not be able return to the Caucasus and serve his people.
His people? Who exactly were they—Shibshiev?
He who denies the Almighty after having believed in Him, he who deliberately opens his heart to nonbelief, has provoked the wrath of God. For he will have chosen a life in this world over a future life.
Was this what it meant to dare all? To commit the act of supreme betrayal?
A traitor before God. A traitor to his father, a traitor to the czar.
He abruptly ended his visits to Machouk.
What now?
“Everything happened very quickly,” Elizaveta Petrovna recounted in her memoirs, written over half a century later at the age of eighty-seven. “I have forgotten nothing of the events that transpired in late August, 1853. By that point, we knew Jamal Eddin well, and my parents had a great deal of respect for him. He had been coming to see us all year, he had become an attentive companion to Tatania and myself, and he didn’t seem to differentiate between the two of us. His conduct was irreproachable, he treated us both exactly the same way. In all sincerity, I never once suspected that Jamal Eddin had been coming to see me. No one would have guessed it.
“But then, one morning I was sitting in the salon, trying to sew by the light streaming through the French doors, when he suddenly appeared on the terrace. A morning visit was unusual. He had not come to Machouk for the past several days, and I had been very worried about his absence. When I got up, my sewing box fell to the floor and the spools of thread rolled away around me. He was as pale as death. He looked like a madman. I knew that something had happened, that he hadn’t eaten or slept during all that time. He strode across the room, his eyes ablaze, took me by the hand, and said, without introduction or explanation, in a flood of words, ‘I love you, Lisa, I love you, I love you!’
“His eyes brimmed with tears and his lips were trembling.
“‘If it’s yes, if you love me too, I’ll go talk to your father immediately.’
“‘Yes, yes, yes, I agree!’ I stammered. ‘To everything, yes, yes!’
“He took me in his arms. Together, we went to knock on the door of the studio at the far end of the garden.”
“Good Lord, what’s going on?” La Potemkina said to herself as she came charging out onto the terrace.
Her instincts had alerted her. The governesses, the children, and the servants, all of them, were standing, petrified, amid the garden furniture in disarray. The readers and the nursemaids, standing before the little shelf that held the votive candle to the Virgin, were crying and praying. Old Coutin, forgetting her former Roman Catholic habits, crossed herself incessantly. She swayed before the icon, bending to kiss it as she droned on.
La Potemkina paled beneath her rouge and powder.
“What has happened?”
Even the young people, even Alyosha and the Lvov cousins gazed in a state of expectation that bordered on the trancelike. She noticed the absence of several family members in the group.
“Where is Lisa? Where is your mother, where is Piotr?”
“In the studio,” Tatiana replied. Although visibly moved, the young woman spoke in a normal voice. “They’re talking. They have some things to discuss. He has asked for her hand in marriage.”
“He—” La Potemkina instantly understood. “Lord, oh Lord, protect him!”
“It’s done. Papa consented. Papa says Lisa is fortunate to marry a man of his character. He summoned Mama, and she joined them at the far end of the garden. When Mama learned the news, she nearly fainted. But once she had recovered, she seemed very, very happy for them too. Papa has said they may marry on two conditions. That Jamal Eddin be baptized. And with the consent of His Majesty and his blessing of their union.”
La Potemkina clasped her hands together.
“Praise be to thee, my God, who has illuminated the soul of your child in granting him Grace. He is saved.”
La Potemkina, however, had gotten a little ahead of herself. Saved? She was forgetting that her own efforts to lead Jamal Eddin toward the light, along the path of the “true faith,” had earned her the sharpest warning of her life: an imperial reprimand, very close to complete disgrace.
Saved? There was still the sizeable challenge of attaining the czar’s blessing, which would entail his sacrificing the political project that had motivated the boy’s kidnapping in the first place. The czar would have to forget all that he had invested in Jamal Eddin’s education, all of the strategies he had employed to gain his confidence, seduce him, and shape him in accord with his own plans for the past fourteen years. To defy the will of Czar Nicholas and make him change course was no small endeavor. Would Jamal Eddin manage to wrench approval from the emperor? He preferred to avoid asking himself that question.
Wild with joy, he gazed at Lisa as she walked in the light. At long last, he felt a deep sense of harmony within himself. All traces of anxiety and doubt had fled. After months of agonizing heartache, Jamal Eddin had finally discovered peace.
He requested a few days’ leave and took off at a gallop the next morning along the Sovereign’s Road, which led to the Winter Palace.
CHAPTER IX
The Choice 1853–1855
Standing before the massive red palace, Jamal Eddin felt a moment’s hesitation that strongly resembled panic.
Between Torjok and Petersburg, he had had time to contemplate what he was about to ask. He was preparing to commit the unthinkable, the act he had always refused. The step he was about to take contradicted everything he had been for the past fourteen years. It denied his own will and refuted all his former choices. It renounced the child he had been. It defied all of his own reasoning and betrayed his pact with the czar.
How could he present the emperor with such an insane request?
His destiny hung in the balance. He knew it. He could win or lose everything. Double or nothing. He could lose Lisa. The terror of such a thought made him forget all the others.
He dashed up the stairs of the entrance to Saltykov. The sentinel recognized him and he walked on through. However, he noticed a strange confusion among the soldiers, a disorder that increased at each landing as he rushed, unsuspecting, up the stairs. He was nearly out of breath when he reached the White Hall. The chamber attendants who greeted him let him cross through the adjoining salons without asking him the nature of his visit. Their uncharacteristically lax attitude and lack of curiosity surprised him. But it was just as well. He descended the steps toward the imperial office.