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SEVENTEEN
‘You are certain you’ll be well here?’ Prince Razuainst the carved pillar of the veranda, a rough old sun-splashes: beard, buttons, the braid of his sleeves What was it, Lydia wondered, that drew male Russian aristocrats to wear unifor officers? A craving for brilliant plurays and browns to which Western Civilization had condes?
‘Perfectly, thank you, Prince’ She folded her hands on the neat piles of account books before her ‘You’ve left me more than ample entertainment--’
‘And you truly find this perusal of dry nu?’
Does he really think the idea of having affaires with half the Imperial Guards officers would amuse a woman? Well, she reflected, it certainly seems to amuse his sister
‘Oh, absolutely! It’s a puzzle, like an egg hunt at Easter – or--’ She gestured, trailing the edge of her sleeve lace through the wet ink-line on her notes ‘Or like analyzing the results of a series of graduated filtrations Figuring out what things reat sha around the wickerwork table to take and kiss her hand, ‘that your husband will probably never per suddenness, spring had coh the weather was still sharply chill, Lydia found the sea air sweet and the touch of the sun on her face a blessing Beyond the veranda’s carved railing, the woods were tender with new green
‘I will give your very best wishes to my mother,’ the Prince continued, ‘who I suspect only wants to lecture une Anglaise on the spiritual virtues of living in the Russian countryside – not that she herself could tell a mushroom from a birch tree – and your excuses, and will return in nohunt palls, by all means walk up to the house and telephone Annushka or Ninochka or Sashenka –’ he nah the Circle of Astral Light – ‘and make them take you to tea at Donon’s Sashenka –’ that was a very dashing, raven-haired Baroness who one of her host’s mistresses – ‘at least won’t try to involve you in conversations with the dead’
‘It isn’t the seances I mind’ Lydia reflected that conversations with the actual dead had been, in her experience, farthan the ersatz variety moderated by mysterious individuals with nale ‘In fact, I found Madah they did beco hts had to be out – unreasonably so, I thought’ She dabbed a corner of her blotting paper at the inky disaster on the page, then gave it up She hoped one of the maids up at the main house could deal with the sleeve lace
‘But the religion does trouble ious,’ she hastened to add, reading the shift of Razumovsky’s shoulders, the tilt of his head – for of course she had concealed her spectacles under a pile of Deutsches Bank credit transfer records the ent for that her words had touched a chord in his own thoughts ‘But it see into black and white, so that anything that claiht through, and has nono patches of fallibility--’
‘Like our friend Rasputin,’ said the Prince, a little gri fallibilityDid he make an attempt on your virtue before he left town?’
‘Oddly enough, no I mean,’ she added, ‘not that it’s odd that a man wouldn’t, because plenty of entlemen in society here do! And they seem so surprised when I’m not interested – and ould I be? I scarcely know thehed ‘Ah, Mada society that doesn’t matter’
‘So I’ve deduced,’ said Lydia ‘Which seems so odd to ory gets up to, if he’s considered excessive by co But I think he’s on his best behavior when Madarunted ‘You’re in a small circle indeed, then, Madame They are bored, you understand,’ he went on after a moment, and in his voice was not the impatience Lydia had often heard, when men said that of upper-class women He propped his boot on the seat of the other chair, leaned his forearh ‘Bored and discontented, and indeed why should they not be? After Easter one goes to the Criust one goes to one’s Polish estates, for the huntingIn September it is either back to the Crimea, or to Monte Carlo or Nice or Paris, before the Season opens here in Petersburg And in all of those places one sees the people one knows frooes to the Opera If you’re a girl – like my sisters, God help them, or my poor wife –’ this was the first the startled Lydia had heard of this lady – ‘one waits out one’s tih to put one’s hair up and be fitted for evening dresses and go dancing and gaet married to a man who loses what interest he had in you very quickly--’
Softly, Lydia said, ‘I know All my life, when I was a child, and in schoolIt’s as if one is being swept away by a flooding river – at least, I suppose it is, though I’ve never actually been swept away by a flooding riverBut so often I felt as if I were fighting a current that was too strong forto helpto push me back into the water Except Jah that she could see, as well as sense, his s is,’ Lydia went on, ‘it doesn’t have to be that way That’s the troubling thing about it Not the religion – because I should iine, in all the centuries of the huious sensibility that He’s past being surprised by anything – but the waste ofthe poor, instead ofof trying to get in touch with the dead, or find out how many civilizations of hyper-sentient spirits rose and fell on this planet in the dark abysses of time before humankind evolved’
The Prince’s srin at this description of soht, and of dozens of other occult societies in the city Then he sighed and shook his head ‘But religion is a thing that they can master without education, you see,’ he explained ‘To which, God knows, few girls of -schools and Mada Females, Rue St HonoréAnd, as you say, while the current of dress fittings and dances and beaux sweeps them away, their parents and friends and everyone who them back in So those without a Jamie to pull them out when they were-- How old were you, when you met him?’
‘Thirteen,’ said Lydia ‘Sixteen, when he helped et into Sos for a year before that I always kneanted to be a doctor, you see’
‘Thirteen,’ said Razu ladies are twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and they have not had educations and can not marshal either the e to take pleasure in-- What did you call it? Analyzing results? Their souls are ravenous, and they do not know for what And, here in Russia, religion is not like religion in Englandor anywhere else in the world, I think Here in Russia, fairies and devils are as real as angels – and angels are as real as one’s village priest Here in Russia – perhaps because of the long winters, or the vastness of the land – one feels the Other World is very close Have you not sensed it, when you sit on the veranda here in the twilight? Have you not felt that if you walked a little way down the path –’ he nodded towards the graveled way that led back into the woods, towards the birch groves and the river – ‘that you hta load of ,’ he added gently ‘For good or for ill, these things still lie very close to the skin And now I aundy for, Lydia identified Jov the butler long before the , wrinkled face – appeared on the pathway Razu out his arms ‘I come, I come! See how I hasten--’
‘It isat your rin Like most of the Prince’s upper servants, he spoke excellent French ‘And to saveyour Excellency to his train Madaer Princess at Byerza? Mada to address her – a dapper, elderly rizzled side-whiskers that reuise ‘Be assured that I speak for all of us when I say, do not hesitate to issue the sot to her feet, extended her hands to the Prince ‘And thank you, Prince--’
‘Andrei,’ he corrected her ‘If Madame will be so kind Until Monday next, then’ He kissed her hand again and was gone, disappearing a the bare silvery trees
Lydia returned to her wickerwork chair and drew her shawl around her again, but for a long time she did not return to her systematic examination of Deutsches Bank property transactions over the past five years Instead she sat, turning over in her mind what the Prince had said about the ladies of her acquaintance From informants about possible partners and patrons of Benedict Theiss, they had become friends, some of themOn the previous Friday she had accompanied Natalia, and the Baroness Sashenka, and several others of their circle, to the night-long services of the Orthodox Good Friday; and had gone with the and standing and singing and inhaling incense, and had seen the ecstasy of Easter on the faces all around her
And had been propositioned four ti services, once by the Baroness’s husband She didn’t doubt the sincerity of their beliefs, and yet – how easy it was to believe one was engaged in so was chasing phantoure out, she reflected, retrieving her spectacles from beneath the pile of her notes, which was the phanto to trace money sent from a dead man’s bank account in some unknown city, to purchase property in a place where even the Undead were unable to walk for two ood deal less sense, she sighed, than attehtforward conversation with one’s deceased Uncle Harold, so which at least has the virtue of repeated anecdotal evidence
She dunked her pen in the inkwell, found her place again, and continued with her notes
‘I want to see the American consul’