Their May picnic was an annual excursion, a ritual that connected them to their lives in St. Petersburg. This year Dimitri had found a good place for them, on the shore of a lake about an hour’s leisurely drive from the Gallatinov house.
The lake was blue and wind-rippled, and as Dimitri pulled the carriage into a meadow Mikhail heard the cawing of crows atop a huge, gnarled oak. Forest circled the lake, the emerald wilderness unbroken by village or habitation for a hundred miles to the north, south and west. Dimitri stopped the carriage and chocked the wheels, then let the horses drink lake water as the Gallatinovs unloaded their picnic baskets and spread the blanket down overlooking the blue pool.
They ate their meal of baked ham, fried potatoes, dark wheat bread, and ginger cake with sugar frosting. One of the horses nickered and jumped around nervously for a moment, but Dimitri got the mare settled down and Fyodor sat facing the woods. “She smells something wild,” he told Elana as he poured them both a glass of red wine. “Children!” he warned. “Don’t stray too far from us!”
“Yes, Father,” Alizia said, but she was already taking off her shoes and lifting up the hem of her pink dress to go wading.
Mikhail went down to the lake with her and hunted for pretty stones while she walked in the shallows. Dimitri stayed nearby, sitting on a fallen tree and watching the clouds glide past, a rifle at his side.
The enchanted afternoon moved on. His pockets full of stones, Mikhail reclined in the sunny meadow and watched his father and mother sit together on the picnic blanket and talk. Alizia lay beside her father, sleeping, and every so often his hand would move out to touch her arm or shoulder. Mikhail realized, quite suddenly, that his father’s hand had never touched him. He didn’t know why, nor did he understand why his father’s eyes took on a January chill when they met his own. Sometimes he felt like a small thing that lived beneath a rock, and other times he didn’t care, but there was no time when there wasn’t a hurting deep in his heart.
After a while, his mother laid her head on his father’s shoulder, and they slept in the sun. Mikhail watched a raven circling overhead, the light glinting blue black off its wings, and then he stood up and walked to the carriage to get his kite. He ran back and forth, letting the string unwind from his fingers, and a breeze caught the silk, expanded it, and the kite sailed smoothly up into the air.
He started to shout to his parents, but they were both asleep. Alizia was sleeping as well, her back pressed against their father’s side. Dimitri sat on his fallen tree, deep in thought, the rifle resting across his knees.
The kite floated higher. The string continued to unreel. Mikhail shifted his fingers to get a better grip. The breeze was fierce beyond the treetops. It grasped the kite, hurled it right and left and made the string thrum like a mandolin. Still the kite ascended-too high, he decided momentarily. He started to reel it back. And then the wind hit the kite from a strange angle, lifted it and turned it at the same time, and the string tightened, strained, and snapped about six feet below the balsawood crossbar.
Oh no! he almost cried out. The kite had been a present from his mother on his eighth birthday, the seventh of March. And now it was flying away at the mercy of the wind, going over the treetops toward the deep woods. Oh no! He looked at Dimitri and started to shout for help. But Dimitri had his hands pressed to his face, as if in some private agony. The rest of his family slumbered on, and Mikhail thought of how his father hated to be awakened from a nap. In another moment the kite would be over the forest, and the decision had to be made now whether to stand here and watch it go or follow and hope it would fall when the breeze slackened.
Children! he remembered his father saying. Don’t stray too far from us!
But this was his kite, and if it were lost, his mother’s heart would be broken. He glanced again at Dimitri; the man hadn’t moved. Precious seconds were ticking past.
Mikhail decided. He ran across the meadow, and into the woods.
Looking up, he could see the kite through the green leaves and tangle of branches. As he followed its erratic progress, he dug a handful of smooth stones from his pocket and dropped them at his feet to mark a trail back. The kite went on, and so did the boy.
Less than two minutes after Mikhail had left the meadow, three men on horseback came down to the lake from the main road. They all wore dark, patched peasant clothing. One of them carried a rifle slung around his shoulder, and the other two were armed with pistols in cartridge belts. They continued to where the Gallatinov family slept in the sun, and as one of the horses snorted and whinnied Dimitri looked around and stood up, pinpricks of sweat sparkling on his face.
2
Fyodor Gallatinov awakened as three shadows fell across him. He blinked, saw the horses and riders, and as he sat up Elana awakened, too. Alizia looked up, rubbing her eyes.
“Good afternoon, General Gallatinov,” the lead rider, a man with a long thin face and bushy red eyebrows, said. “I haven’t seen you since Kowel.”
“Kowel? Who… who are you?”
“I was Lieutenant Sergei Schedrin. The Guards Army. You may not remember me, but surely you remember Kowel.”
“Of course I do. Every day of my life.” Gallatinov struggled to his feet, balancing on his cane. His face had become mottled with angry red. “What’s the meaning of this, Lieutenant Schedrin?”
“Oh, no.” The other man extended a finger and wagged it back and forth. “I’m simply Comrade Schedrin now. My friends Anton and Danalov were also at Kowel.” Gallatinov’s gaze flickered to the two faces; Anton’s was broad and heavy-jowled, and Danalov’s bore a bayonet scar from his left eyebrow up to his hairline. Their eyes were cold and only slightly curious, as if they were examining an insect under a magnifying glass. “We’ve brought the rest of our company with us as well,” Schedrin said.
“The rest of your company?” Gallatinov shook his head, not comprehending.
“Listen!” Schedrin cocked his head as the breeze keened through the woods. “There they are, whispering. Listen to what they say: ‘Justice. Justice.’ Do you hear them, General?”
“We’re having a picnic,” Gallatinov said firmly. “I’d like for you gentlemen to leave.”
“Yes,” Schedrin said. “I’m sure you would. What a lovely family you have.”
“Dimitri!” the general shouted. “Dimitri, fire a warning shot above their-” He turned toward Dimitri, and what he saw closed an iron claw around his heart.
Dimitri stood about fifteen yards away, and hadn’t even cocked the rifle or lifted it to a firing position. He stared at the ground, his shoulders stooped. “Dimitri!” Gallatinov shouted again, but he knew he would not be answered. His throat was dry, and he grasped Elana’s chilly hand.
“Thank you for bringing them here, Comrade Dimitri,” Schedrin told him. “Your service will be noted and rewarded.”
Mikhail, moving swiftly through the forest in pursuit of his kite, thought he heard his father shouting. His heart hammered; his father had probably awakened and was calling for him. There was going to be a switching in Mikhail’s immediate future. But the kite was falling now, the string snagging in the top of an oak tree. Then the wind kicked it loose, and the kite rose again. Mikhail pushed through dense brush, soft spongy masses of dead leaves and moss, and kept following. Ten more feet; twenty more; thirty more. Thorns grabbed his hair; he pulled free, ducked his head under the thorn branches, and dropped another stone to the ground to mark his way back.
The kite dipped, fell into the arms of an evergreen, and teasingly floated free once more. Then it was rising sharply into the blue sky, and as Mikhail watched it go his face was dappled with sun and shadow.