The Borodino Sacrifice: Chasing Mercury Book One by Paul Phillips

Author:Paul Phillips [Phillips, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I Quaterni Books
Published: 2024-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

From deep within a cane chair in the colonnade, Mila watched the SS press the driveway into service as their parade ground. They wore a mixture of military and civilian clothing, carried a mixture of machine-pistols and rifles, yet the drill brought back Prague’s darkest days – barrel chests and bellowed orders, brazen faces transformed into Walpurgisnacht skulls.

They were in their element here. Were it not for the wrecked vehicles and mismatched kit, the twenty troopers and their officer might have been the stars of a propaganda piece. Above the tiers of statues and balustrades, behind the summerhouse at the top of the gardens, the far end of the saddle swept up to the dome of the Keilberg. On either side, forested crests undulated above clouded valleys. You could practically hear the Wagner.

And like Tannhäuser or Parsifal, like Castorp at the Berghof, she found herself adrift in time and space. How many days had she been here? Four, five, a week?

What did it matter now?

Are we all the same, she thought, watching the SS charade; is this what the absence of war means? Absence of purpose. Absence of hope.

The interior of the colonnade bore witness to the last gasp and death throes of the conflict. Worn-out handchaises draped in dirty bandages. Stacks of mouldering stretchers. Heaps of iron bedsteads and traction apparatus, all rusted pulleys and tangled wires. On a grand oak table where afternoon teas would once have been served, a clutter of mildewed rags and enamel bowls indicated the more recent presence of a makeshift operating theatre. From the final days, she guessed, when the convalescing wounded had been marched back to the front and the new wounded had begun to arrive in ever greater numbers, when every nook and cranny of the uncaring world had been a makeshift operating theatre. Under the table, beneath the dust and splinters, the mosaics were indelibly stained.

Surely, when it had happened, it had not been in so grim a place. The idea tripped her up and sent her tumbling into a chasm at the heart of herself, but that part of her which still dared to face outwards prayed it had not.

The rest was turned inward and backward, to her arrival here so many timeless days and sleepless nights ago. It was imprinted on her mind: the look on Theodor’s face in the moment his astonishment at seeing her had turned to something else. To dread. Without articulating the thought, she had sensed instantly the meaning of that look and although he had not even seemed to register her first words to him, her question about Pavel, still she understood his reaction had to do with their son. It had been suddenly, terrifyingly clear to her. Theodor’s expression was telling her what he could not.

As the strength drained out of her, she had almost fainted into Frau Kaindl’s arms.

“Mila...” The man she had called her husband, whom she had not seen for five and a half years, had offered a reluctant hand.

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