However, Varenka knew that she had been widowed, that she was free now, and that, perhaps, it was still a possibility.
But now, she knew it was all over.
It was not just seeing Jamal Eddin again, here, in these circumstances, that rendered her speechless, but a thousand other emotions that filled her heart as well.
They looked at each other, both incapable of saying a word.
Suddenly the horseman in white, on foot now, appeared out of nowhere. With a brutal tug, he silently pulled down the canvas flap, and Varenka disappeared from sight.
It was not yet time for the two brothers to proceed with the exchange or even to acknowledge each other. Custom dictated that Prince Chavchavadze and the imam’s heir greet each other first.
Mohammed Ghazi, pale and tense, spoke only to David. He began a long and solemn speech, of which the interpreter translated bits and pieces.
“My father has ordered me to tell you that, if your women suffered during their stay with us, their pain was not inflicted intentionally, but out of lack of means and our own lack of familiarity with the way they should be treated. My father wishes you to know they are being returned to you today worthy in every respect, pure as lilies and protected from all eyes, like the gazelles of the desert.”
The prince bowed and replied with equal ceremony.
“I have been informed for some time, in my wife’s letters and those of my sister-in-law, of the respect the imam has shown toward my family. In writing to your father myself, I have had several occasions to express my gratitude in this regard. Now I beg you to present to him my most sincere thanks.”
The formalities had been observed down to the last detail. Mohammed Ghazi could now turn to Jamal Eddin.
They stood politely, face to face.
One wearing the blue, purple, and gold uniform of the lancers, the other a cherkeska, they were the same height, with the same youth and elegance, and the same nobility. Two sides of the same coin.
Their eyes locked, each finding in the other the reflection of himself. Nothing in their exchange betrayed their feelings; nothing in their respective expressions revealed the storm of conflicting emotions both felt.
They saluted each other with a simple nod of the head, and then they embraced.
The murids lowered their rifles and cried, “La ilaha illa Allah”—there is no god but Allah.
In the eyes of the Russians, the brothers’ embrace was glacial.
It was time to leave.
Jamal Eddin turned toward Baron Nicholas, Prince Bagration, and the other officers.
All of them removed their caps to salute him.
He turned to Prince Chavchavadze.
David stood there, surrounded by his children. He still had not seen his wife. But judging from Jamal Eddin’s body language when he looked inside the wagons, he had guessed that she was there and that she was alive.
The prince shook his hand warmly, assuring him that if he should ever need anything, there in the mountains, a book, or anything—
Chavchavadze paused. What could he add except the most obvious of words.
“Thank you.”
The two men embraced.
The farewell of these two brothers in no way resembled the icy greeting of the previous pair.
Jamal Eddin leaped into the saddle.
Milyutin and Buxhöwden, who had been ordered by the late czar to accompany their friend all the way to his father, came forward and spurred their horses toward the murid ranks. The naïb Khadji, who had given the signal for the exchange, approached the Russian lines.
He held out the package he carried to Jamal Eddin, who turned to the interpreter, puzzled.
“The imam wishes to receive his son in the dress of his country.”
Jamal Eddin recoiled involuntarily.
“How can I change here, in front of all these people?”
“The wishes of the imam are law. You will learn that no one disobeys your father. No one.”
“We’re in plain view of everyone, even from the other bank,” Jamal Eddin protested.
“That presents no problem. We’ll go behind the dead tree.”
Jamal Eddin paled. This demand—a change of costume in public, before his peers, before the Russian officers, even before the princesses—was the ultimate humiliation.
“Let’s go behind the dead tree,” the interpreter insisted.
His tone was anxious. He dreaded the thought of an “incident,” any little slip that both the Russians and murids had worried about since the beginning of the exchange.
Jamal Eddin read the dismay in the eyes of everyone around him.
What would happen if, in the middle of this plain, he refused to go through with it? He had no choice but to swallow his disgust and comply.
He rode toward the branches and dismounted. Khadji, Buxhöwden, Milyutin, and the thirty-five murids followed and dismounted too. They formed a circle around him, hiding him from view.
Jamal Eddin unbuttoned his tunic.
In his short life, he thought bitterly, all he had done was change from one costume to another. From the cherkeska to the uniform, from the uniform to the cherkeska. How many times had he done this?
How many times during his youth had he been forced to deny the symbols of his heritage?
And now, with a lump in his throat, he was giving them up, one final time.
He was renouncing his officer’s stripes, his epaulets, and his decorative silk cords, his Russian cap, his Russian tunic, and his Russian arms.
He was stripped of his past, of his future, of Lisa, of all he held dear.
He emerged from the circle.
In other circumstances, Sacha would have let out a whistle and shouted, “Splendid, old man!” And Bux, making some choice comments, would have enjoyed the show.
Dressed in black, with a high papakha crowned with his father’s immaculate white turban on his head, a whip at his wrist, and his waist cinched by the straps that held his daggers, Jamal Eddin was a djighit who had stepped straight out of Russian literature, a lyric hero of Pushkin.
He was truly splendid.
But Buxhöwden was too sensitive to the tragedy beneath the perfection of his appearance to laugh.
Undoing his baldric, Bux handed his own saber to his friend.
“Take it, as a remembrance. But please,” he tried hard to make light of the situation with irony, “don’t kill any of ours with it!”
Jamal Eddin accepted the gift.
“Not ours,” he replied, his eyes brimming with tears, “nor theirs.”
He quickly tied the baldric around his cherkeska. Buxhöwden’s saber clinked against Shamil’s kinjals.
At that moment, an adolescent boy broke through the crowd of murids and ran into his arms. It was his little brother, Mohammed Sheffi. Surprised and touched, Jamal Eddin hugged him close in an embrace quite different from the one he had shared with their brother.
Jamal Eddin jumped on the white horse, the fine stallion with the scarlet saddle blanket that someone had led over for his new master.
The horseman in black passed next to the wagons.