The Silent Land Read online

  “Is the world really wicked?”

  “The people who live in it are. My mother calls the muhziks animals, and she’s right. We’re all animals, every one of us, driven on by urges which have nothing to do with love or caring. And I’m one of the worst. Why can’t I … why couldn’t I just …”

  “You’re not like that at all,” I told him. “You’re kind. You’ve always protected me.”

  “I … want to protect you now, but I haven’t got the strength any more.”

  I laughed. “Protect me from what?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he picked up a stone and threw it into the water. Circles formed around the point where it had landed, and we watched them spread wider and wider, and then grow fainter, until they had finally disappeared.

  “We’re just like that stone,” Misha said miserably.

  “First we’re animals, then we’re stones,” I joked. “You want to make up your mind which we are.”

  But Misha was not to be put off. “We are like that stone,” he said. “We die, and it’s as if we’d never been. There’s no trace left of us. So does it really matter what we do on that short journey to death? Shouldn’t we do what we want to do?”

  “What do you want to do, Misha?” I asked, my mood now matching his.

  “I want to make love to you,” he said. “Will you let me?”

  If he’d been my Misha all holiday, I might have expected it. Instead, he’d been a cold shell from which the boy I loved was only just emerging – and what he asked took me completely by surprise.

  “Will you?” he pleaded.

  A little warmth to keep me going through the long, bleak months ahead. “Do you really love me?” I asked.

  “Of course I love you,” he protested. “I’ve never loved anyone else.”

  We stripped off our clothes as quickly and sexlessly as if we were going from a swim, then turned and faced each other. We had both grown since the last time we had been naked together. My breasts, mere buds then, had burst into full flower. Misha’s penis seemed twice the size it had been in the barn.

  Misha gasped. “I used to lie awake at night in the barracks,” he said, “thinking of you, imagining you without your clothes. But I never dreamed you could be as beautiful as this.”

  “What do I do now?” I asked awkwardly.

  “Lie down,” Misha said, his voice trembling with excitement. “Just lie down. Leave everything else to me.”

  I lay on my back and he knelt beside me. Our lips met, locking us together, uniting our souls. I felt his hand rest tentatively on my knee, then settle in the space between my legs.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  But I already knew. Often, alone in my bed at night, I’d guiltily allowed my own hand to follow the path that Misha’s was following now. I felt the familiar sensations of pleasure shoot through my body – familiar, yet deeper, more intense. Misha leant forward and cupped my right nipple with his lips. I closed my eyes as his tongue caressed me … back and forth, back and forth.

  His mouth withdrew, his finger ceased its paralysing, ecstatic work. He lowered his body gently onto mine, and then he was inside me, thrusting and thrusting and thrusting, until he exploded, I exploded, the whole world exploded.

  As I lay there, more relaxed, more at peace, than I’d ever been before, I felt Misha suddenly tense. What was the matter, I wondered. Had I done it wrong? Was there something else I was supposed to do? I’d thought he’d liked it as much as I had. Maybe it was different for a man.

  He eased himself out of me, turning his head to one side so that he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Misha …”

  He went over to his clothes, picked up his shirt, and began to put it on. I wanted to get up and rush to him, but I was afraid to. If he brushed me aside, or laughed at me, I knew I’d die. So I stayed where I was, frozen in misery, while he put on his breeches, his boots and finally his jacket.

  He began to walk towards the horses, then stopped, dead, in front of a thick oak tree. He stood for a few seconds just looking at it, as if would provide the answer to an unspoken question – and then he attacked it.

  His nails sank into the bark, he butted the trunk. One, two, three times, his forehead struck the hard oak. I was on my feet and running to him when his legs buckled and he sank slowly down to the roots of the tree. By the time I reached him he was huddled in a ball, crying.

  “Are you all right?” I cried. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  He looked up at me. His face was wracked with pain, but it was not the tree which had caused the hurt. “It was wrong,” he sobbed. “I should never … I had to come back and see you. I thought I could do that without it going … without me doing … what I’ve dreamed of night after night. But it was wrong, Anna, terribly wrong.”

  “How can it have been wrong?” I demanded angrily. “We love each other. Isn’t it what people do when they love each other?”

  “It wasn’t wrong of you,” Misha sobbed. “It was wrong of me. You didn’t know.”

  Didn’t know what?

  “I should’ve told you. I should’ve given you the choice.” Misha struggled to his feet and lurched towards the edge of the copse like a drunkard.

  “Come back,” I shouted. “Please come back. I love you!”

  He ran past the horses and into the bright sunlight. He didn’t look back – not even once.

  Dressing for dinner was an ordeal, descending the stairs to the dining room drained me of most of my remaining courage. I hesitated on the threshold, not knowing how I could face Misha – what I would say to him.

  “Are you all right, Miss Anna?” the butler asked.

  I nodded, and forced my feet forward.

  Misha was not there! The Count sat alone, a brooding figure looking almost lost in vastness of the dining table. “Misha came back on foot this afternoon,” he said.

  “Yes. My … my horse cast a shoe and he lent me his. Will he … is he coming down to dinner?”

  The Count shook his head. “He doesn’t feel well. He says he has a fever.”

  We didn’t exchange more than a dozen words over the meal. It was a relief when it was over, and I could return to my lonely room.

  After a sleepless night, I rose exhausted but with fresh resolve. I would make Misha tell me what was wrong. Whatever the problem was, we loved each other and we’d find a solution. I’d waited for years for him to come back, and I wasn’t going to lose him now.

  One look at the Count’s trouble face and Misha’s empty seat was enough to dash all my hopes.

  “He’s gone, hasn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yes. He told me he couldn’t stay here any longer.” The Count twisted his fork nervously in his hands “Do you know what’s wrong with him, Anna? Did something happen yesterday afternoon?”

  No. Nothing had happened, I’d only thought it had. Our passion on the riverbank, which had seemed to me to complete our love, to lock us together for ever, had only served to drive him away. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  “Anna?”

  “We went for a ride, we stopped by the river. That’s all.” Tears were streaming down my face. I stood up. “I’m glad he’s gone. I hope he never comes back!”

  I fled from the table and up to my room. I locked the door and wouldn’t come out, even for the Count himself. I felt used. I felt betrayed. I would never trust a man again.

  By the time Mariamna and the Countess returned from the Crimea a week later, I’d recovered sufficiently to put on a brave face. Misha’s sister, at least, would never learn of my humiliation. But the hurt inside hadn’t disappeared – if anything, it had grown, until it seemed to be eating away at me.

  I thought of killing Misha. I thought of killing myself. I had to do something. I couldn’t go on like this, I just couldn’t – it was driving me mad.

  The last days of summer dragged by, and autumn was upon us. I’d still not decided what to do when the leaves began to turn brown and I had my fir
st attack of morning sickness.

  Chapter Nine

  It was Mariamna, of course, who first noticed the change in me, Mariamna who watched me like a hawk until she was sure, Mariamna who chose the moment of maximum impact to break the news.

  The dinner table. The Count, the Countess, Mariamna and Anna dining en famille. Anna is quiet and withdrawn, but she has been like that for several weeks and the Count is now used to it. Besides, she never says much in the presence of the Countess because she is far too intelligent to give Olga ammunition to fire back at her.

  The atmosphere is not exactly pleasant, but it’s as relaxed as it ever gets in the Big House. The Count, having for once spent a day as a conscientious landowner, is talking about his animals, in particular one sow which is expected to deliver its litter only with difficulty.

  “You should send Anna down to look after it,” Mariamna says. “They’d be company for one another.”

  “Mariamna!” the Count says sternly. He will allow his wife to insult the peasant girl with whom she is forced to share a table, but only in his moments of weakness can his daughter get away with it.

  “I wasn’t being rude, Papa,” Mariamna continues innocently. “I only meant that since they’re both pregnant …” She trails off, a smile playing on her lips.

  The Count turns pale, already suspecting the terrible truth. The Countess, who was not there to see Misha’s departure, is suddenly radiant. At last, after all these years, she has an excuse to banish this upstart girl from her home.

  “Pregnant!” she says triumphantly, pointing her spoon accusingly at the transgressor. “And do you know the name of the father? Or have you been rutting with every boy in the village?”

  “Not with every boy,” Anna says defiantly. “Only with one. Only with Misha.”

  “Misha!”

  The Countess drops her spoon and screams hysterically. The Count is now so white that he seems on the point of fainting, and his hands, resting on the table, are shaking. Anna sees the violence of their reaction and wonders why it so disproportionate. It makes no sense to her at all, unless …

  Anna, slowly realizing the truth, feels her heart start to beat against her ribs and wishes she were dead.

  Only Mariamna is undisturbed. The knowing smirk on her face grows wider and wider.

  We sat in the Count’s study, he behind his great mahogany desk, me in a chair in front of it. The desk made him feel better, I think. It gave him back his air of authority. “I tried to warn you,” he said. “I told you to be careful with Misha.”

  “You told me to keep away from him, but you didn’t tell me he was my brother. Couldn’t you see that I was in love with him?”

  The Count nodded his head miserably.

  “How could you keep it secret from me?” I demanded. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

  He held out his hands in supplication. Did he expect me to rise to my feet and grasp those hands … to call him Papa? I stayed where I was.

  “I thought you did know,” he said. “I always assumed that someone must have told you. When I realized, in the cherry orchard, that nobody had, I tried to explain – but I couldn’t.”

  “It shouldn’t have been too difficult. You had only to open your mouth and say, ‘I’m your father’.”

  “I love you more than either of my other children,” the Count replied, his voice thick with shame and self-pity. “Perhaps because of you yourself, perhaps for your mother’s sake. I wanted you to love me. What would you have said to me if I’d told you the truth that day?”

  “I’d have asked how you could have allowed my mother, who you must also once have loved to live a life of poverty and die before her time!”

  “Yes, you would have said exactly that,” the Count responded sadly. “You wouldn’t have seen the imposibility of my position then any more than you see it now. And I knew that. I thought … I hoped … that you might in time come to love me as your protector. But I was sure that if you learned the truth, you’d only despise me.”

  Weak! Weak! Weak! And weaker yet for hiding that weakness. When will men learn they’ll never win our love by disguising their true selves, that their only chance is to offer themselves up as they are – blemishes and all. I might have understood if he’d told me. I might have come to love him despite his faults. But now it was too late. Now I was carrying my half-brother’s child in my belly.

  “We … er … still have to decide what to do about your problem,” the Count said.

  “My problem? My problem?”

  “I believe that there are ways of … perhaps the doctor could give you some medicine or perform an operation—”

  “None of this is the child’s fault,” I said angrily. “I will not have my baby aborted.”

  “It might be easier—”

  “Easier! Where are your feelings?” I asked bitterly. “It’s your grandchild we’re talking about. You’re the grandfather on both sides.”

  The Count’s hands twitched, and he shuffled some papers on his desk. “That’s where the difficulty comes in, Anna. I’m not sure how much you know about these things but there’s a good chance, given its parentage, that the child will be backward, or deformed – or both.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a cripple!” I told him. “If it’s crippled it’ll need me more than ever, and if I have to spend the rest of my life looking after it, I will do. I’ll sell myself to the drunks of the mir for a few kopeks if necessary. I’ve already given myself to my own brother – what can I do that is worse than that?”

  I don’t mean to sound heroic – I certainly didn’t feel it. There was no bravery to facing the Count, not any more. He was a broken man. And I can claim no merit in defending my unborn child either. My mind and spirit were no longer in control of me – my body had taken over. I was in the grip of Nature, fighting for its own survival.

  “You must go away then,” the Count said. “Petersburg would be best. I have relatives there. You can stay with them.”

  Petersburg! How often have I seen provincial eyes light up at that magic word? Petersburg! The capital! It lit no fire in my eyes. This house, this estate, were my world. I could abide the Countess’s hatred and Mariamna’s contempt, just as long as I was allowed to stay.

  I desperately, desperately, wanted my child to grow up in the Big House. If it was able, it could learn in the schoolroom, as I had done. If, as a result of my incestuous union, it had poor, fuddled brains, then at least it could sit in the park and be soothed by the birdsong and the smell of the blossom. “Don’t send me away,” I pleaded. “Let me stay. I’ll move back to the servants’ quarters. I’ll scrub your floors for you. Punish me if you want to, but don’t punish your grandchild.”

  “You can’t stay,” he said. “Not after what’s happened. My wife would never allow it.”

  That was the Count – my father! – always knowing where love and duty lay, always sacrificing them on the altar of ease and expediency.

  I was unclean – a social leper. It took over a week to make the arrangements for my move to Petersburg, and the whole time I was kept a virtual prisoner in my room.

  It was a grey October morning when I left. Crows were cawing in the blackened trees of the park. Flowers were withering and dying in the beds in front of the Big House. I looked around, committing everything that was dear to me to memory, wishing my last view of it could have been at a time of life and growth, not now, when everything was decaying.

  My luggage was piled onto the drozhky and the Count ordered the servants back into the house. Standing in the driveway, he looked up at me. “I’ll ride with you to the railway station,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Anna—”

  “No.”

  “I’ll visit you in Petersburg soon,” he promised.

  “If you come, I’ll refuse to see you.”

  “You are still my child,” he said.

  “Then let me stay!” I begged him.

&nbs
p; He glanced back at the house. The curtain of the sitting room window moved. Mariamna and her mother were relishing their final triumph. “You know I can’t let you stay,” he said.

  “You can do anything you want to,” I told him. “Anything you really want to.”

  “I’m sorry, Anna …”

  Overhead, the black clouds rolled ominously. In the distance, a sheet of lightning seared the sky, and the thunder followed seconds later, growling its displeasure at the state of the world.

  “It’s time to go,” I said. “I want to get there before the storm breaks.”

  The coachman looked down at his master, and the Count nodded. The whip cracked, the horses broke into a gentle trot. For a moment, the Count stood completely still, then he started running. As he drew level with the drozhky, he held out his hand to me. “Anna—”

  “Goodbye,” I said, and turned my head away.

  I didn’t look back, not at him, not even at the house where I’d discovered the magic of learning.

  He was dead before Christmas, shot through the head with his own pistol. It was an accident, they said, and maybe it was. I didn’t cry when I heard the news. I had shed tears for my mother, I had wept over Misha, my reservoir of pity had run dry.

  The Count’s relatives had a small house in Voznesenki Prospekt, just on the edge of the fashionable district of Petersburg. The husband was a civil servant who swaggered around the house in his uniform and rarely seemed to spend much time at his ministry. The wife – Madam – was a social climber who would have sold her soul for an invitation to the right salons. They didn’t want me in their home, but they wanted the money the Count had paid them – no doubt behind Countess Olga’s back. They treated me like a servant, but I didn’t mind that – there is some honour and decency in honest service.

  They were greedy, selfish people, the watered-down stock of the man who generations earlier, had secured their entry into the aristocracy. My brief stay in their house touched me not at all, and I wouldn’t even have mentioned it had it not been for the fact that it was in their drawing room – their pretentious, over-furnished drawing room – that Konstantin first came to see me.