White Blood by James Fleming

Author:James Fleming [Fleming, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime
ISBN: 9781446412701
Google: waD-ZUUahhMC
Amazon: B002ECEUIK
Publisher: Atria
Published: 2007-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

Forty-two

The wagon-driver was chanting a song concerning the unexpected death of a lover. Standing up, stamping his right boot at the moments of emphasis, he was making the most of the long, melancholy notes.

Nicholas strode up. “Enough of that, boys, enough of the past. It was God’s wish, wasn’t it? Let’s give thanks we’re still here. Someone sing a cheery tune to get us home.”

I said to him in an undertone, “Have some respect for your sister. They’ll think she’s a whore if you just wipe out Andrej’s death and pretend it won’t matter to her. Have respect also for Timofei, who was a well-liked man.”

“We’re going to be three jolly cousins together, old chap Charlie,” Nicholas said. In that light I thought he had glass eyes they were so shining with triumph.

I wanted to say to him, You’re the greediest man in Popovka, and the most unprincipled and despicable. This is the second time that you’ve sold your sister—once every six weeks that amounts to.

That was what I said to him with my expression. To myself I said, I shall wed Elizaveta Rykov in place of Potocki and straightway take ship to the United States, to Norman Joiner and the museum in Chicago.

Yes, we would marry immediately. I would walk up the aisle wearing Potocki’s boots and after a short honeymoon Liza and I would become another of those families camping on the platform on the chance that a Train No. 7 would at some stage arrive and whisk us to Odessa. Then to Marseilles—New York—and so in our gliding cream and brown Pullman through the roaring stockyards of Chicago to Union Station. We would emphasise our Russianness, paint ourselves as the naturalist and his aristocratic love match fleeing from the barbarians. Lizochka would play auction bridge, impetuously, at afternoon parties of jealous, lynx-eyed ladies. Husbands would return early from their discount brokerages to feast upon her beauty, her nurse’s sympathetic eye and her rolling-river “r”s. I’d have to associate with men of learning who wore brown suits and celluloid collars, but for half the year I’d rough it and grow old on the trail, as Goetz had done. Uncle Igor’s fortune would see us through the hard times.

I began to make a reckoning of the hard times we’d have. Allow seven days a year for her fits and their consequences, five for my recurrent bouts of typhus, five for arguments, five for tantrums, ten for when the babies come, five for the visits of sheer bad luck plus a general allowance of ten per cent. Thus six weeks of every year could be ruined—annulled from the records. It was too much.

Paring it down: Dear Lord, preserve Lizochka and your servant from hard times. She is the only woman I can love. She deserves the best you have. Make me listen to her. Give her easy births and loving children. Hear this prayer, Lord Christ.

I was ready to explain all this to her, that it wasn’t going to be easy on account of our afflictions.

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