“He’s gone out.”
“With his mother?”
“No. Mistress Ingrid has taken him to the Summer Gardens.”
Ruzsky forced himself upright and swung his legs off the bunk, rubbing his face with both hands. “Thank you, Katya,” he said. Then, “I’m sorry.”
Her cheeks flushed. She was embarrassed by her reluctance to admit him to the house earlier. Times are hard, her expression suggested. A servant cannot afford to be without employment.
But Ruzsky saw more in her eyes than that. Katya had joined the household staff when he was nine. She had adored his brother Ilusha and treated him as her own son. It was not just his parents who had found it impossible to forget, or forgive.
Ruzsky might not have been there when his brother stepped onto the ice, but everyone thought he should have been. Hadn’t his father asked him to take care of the boy? Hadn’t he been told to make sure Ilusha never played on the ice?
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I will leave now.”
Katya did not move. As she examined him, her face softened. “You’re not cared for properly.”
“I can care for myself.”
“When did you last eat?”
Ruzsky felt a dull ache in his stomach. When had he? He could not recall.
“Bathe and wash yourself, then come to the kitchen.”
“No.” Ruzsky shook his head. “No,” he repeated, in order to fortify himself. “Better not.”
But he felt awake enough now to weaken at the idea of bread and cheese, or even just bread. He thought he could smell fresh coffee.
“You look thinner,” she said.
“Impossible.”
Katya did not move. She turned her attention to his feet. “Your boots…”
Ruzsky gazed at them, as if noticing the holes for the first time. His socks were still damp and his toes numb from being repeatedly frozen and thawed.
Katya turned and strode purposefully away. She returned a few moments later clutching a pair of tall, black leather boots. “He has finished with these.”
“No.” Ruzsky shook his head.
“Don’t be so proud.” Katya stared at him. It was an admonition that carried a resonance beyond the question of boots, and, knowing that she had strayed too far, she averted her gaze. “A bath has been drawn for you. Come to the kitchen when you’re dressed,” she said, muttering, as she returned to the door. “You need someone to look after you.”
After she had gone, Ruzsky turned the boots upside down. Like all his father’s footwear, they had been beautifully fashioned by Meulenhoff, a German cobbler whose tiny premises had once been squeezed between much grander shops around the back of Gostiny Dvor. The man had been interned in the first days of the war and then sent home.
Ruzsky dropped the boots, yawned, and lay back down on the bed. On the other side of the mattress, he could still see the indentation that marked his brother’s presence alongside him in the night. He covered himself with the blankets and looked at the painted soldier at the end of the bed and the photograph of Ilusha on the shelf.
The house was quiet and the air still. He heard the tinkle of bells on a passing sleigh.
Ruzsky reached for Ilusha’s elephant. Robbed of human affection, it smelled only of mold and dust. He held it up, looking into its one eye. “I see you, Ilusha,” he said.
He hummed to himself. It was a child’s lullaby.
Ruzsky pushed himself upright. He checked his pocket watch. It was eleven o’clock.
He went down to the bathroom on the floor below, where a hot bath had indeed been drawn for him in the large tin tub. Katya or one of the other servants had placed some shaving tackle and pomades on the shelf beneath the mirror.
Ruzsky turned on the tap and felt the heat of the water. It was hardly more than a dribble, but it was a luxury he had not enjoyed since he’d last stayed in this house on the eve of his marriage.
He undressed. The room was dark and cluttered, its walls covered in military prints and photographs depicting generations of Ruzsky men attending the Corps des Pages and serving in the Guards. The line drawings and photographs closest to him were of his father’s younger brother, who had served in Her Majesty’s Life Guard Cuirassier Regiment-the Blue Cuirassiers-at Gatchina, before retiring permanently to Paris with his Belgian mistress.
The only nonmilitary photographs were of the family’s yacht, the Sinitsa, upon which they had once enjoyed holidays in the Gulf of Finland. Ruzsky examined it for a moment, before settling into the bath.
He felt uncomfortable enjoying the luxury that would once have been his by right.
About forty-five minutes later, freshly shaven and with a full stomach for the first time in days, Ruzsky emerged from the kitchen in the basement to find his father standing by the doorway, head bent in thought.
As the old man looked up, his expression softened. “Good morning, Sandro.”
“Good morning.” Ruzsky felt uncomfortably aware of the boots Katya had brought him.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes.” Ruzsky nodded. “I’m sorry, I should have told you that-”
“Michael is out in the Summer Gardens. He’s with Ingrid.” The old man was staring at the rectangular pool of light stretching away from the drawing room window.
Ruzsky watched him. “Are you quite all right, Father?”
“Yes.” He turned to his son. “Of course, yes.”
“You look tired.”
The old man attempted a smile. “Yes.”
They heard the sound of horses’ hooves on the cobbles and stepped into the drawing room to watch them pass. It was another detachment of the Chevalier Guard in white and red dress uniforms and blue overcoats, stiff and upright in their saddles. Their mounts were finely groomed, the men’s uniforms spotless.
After they had gone, Ruzsky watched the snowflakes dancing in their wake.
A private sled passed. They heard the crack of the driver’s whip.
The old man was about to turn away when he caught sight of another group of soldiers, this time on foot. They wore khaki overcoats, rather than dress uniform, but their epaulettes identified them as members of the Izmailovsky Regiment, and their demeanor as reservists.
“Dmitri says there are few regulars left in the capital,” Ruzsky said.
His father did not answer. He kept his eyes upon the soldiers until they had disappeared from view.
The telephone trilled in the hall. Neither man moved, though their heads inclined toward it until the call was answered. They heard the quiet murmur of one of the servants and then a final tinkle of the bell as the receiver was replaced. The young man who had first welcomed Ruzsky to the house appeared in the doorway. He glanced at him momentarily, as if unsure as to whether he should impart information of any significance in his presence. “It was Mr. Vasilyev’s office, sir,” he told Ruzsky’s father. “He will be here any moment. He sends his apologies for the delay.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
After the servant had gone, the old man checked his pocket watch. He was frowning heavily. “Mr. Vasilyev will be late for his own entry to hell.”
Ruzsky was about to speak, but found he did not know how to begin. In forty years, he could not recall a conversation with his father upon matters of the world, let alone affairs of state. “I imagined you would be at the ministry,” Ruzsky said.
“Not today.”
“Does Mr. Vasilyev often come to see you here?”
“No.” An intense weariness seemed to suck the life from the old man’s face. “No,” he said again.
“What does he want?”
“That is the question, Sandro. What does this man want?” He sighed. “To protect the assets of the state, he says. That is the pass he would have us believe we have come to. To protect the wealth of the Tsar from the mob.” He shook his head.