Sweet Love, Survive (8 page)

“Ah, Apollo. We missed you.” The warmth in her voice was that of an old friend.

“And I missed you, Zadia,” Apollo replied, moving forward to greet her with a kiss. “Forgive me for not arriving sooner, but, unfortunately, events—”

“Apollo has an uncanny ability when it comes to the comforts of home,” Peotr cut in teasingly from the Chinese lacquered desk where he was unrolling a much used map. “I swear, if there’s a pretty woman anywhere in the vicinity, he’ll find her.”

“I have constantly to fight for my reputation,” Apollo mockingly retorted, his smile angelic.

“He does have a way about him,” Zadia agreed with a sunny glance, her arms linked comfortably in Apollo’s.

“Thanks to you, Zadia, my sweet,” Apollo observed sportively. “You taught me everything I know.”

Zadia looked at him fondly, reaching up in a motherly gesture to push aside a wave of sun-streaked hair falling low on his forehead. “I had a very good teacher myself, years ago.” She smiled knowingly. “By the way … how’s your father?”

“Well. Safe in France, working out his excess energy on the polo fields. Which reminds me. I’ve instructions to urge you to leave soon, and I am also commissioned to reextend Papa’s offer for assistance. Old friends are the best friends, Papa says, and you’re always welcome at Chambord.”

“Soon, Apollo. I’m—”

“If you two can break away from family nostalgia,” Peotr interrupted, “we’ve a war to fight. Come here, Apollo, and look at the advances Budenny’s been making near Manych.”

The next two weeks were a nightmare. The unit had just disembarked at Kharkov when the entire front crumbled. The Whites were evacuating the town immediately; the Savage Division was to cover the retreat. The Greens, increasing like mildew with the imminence of the White collapse, kept up steady pressure on the trains, attacking nightly with their guerilla bands that swept down in large masses, harassing, devastating, blowing up track, their machine guns and field artillery mounted on small gerrymandered tachankas
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lethal to anything in their way. They would send up flares and then in rushing waves ride alongside the tracks, firing into the trains—hospital trains, troop trains, civilian carriages, none were immune. Night after night the attacks continued, the guerillas relentless in their hatred of Red and White alike, interested only in plunder and personal gain. The officers of the Savage Division took turns snatching sleep when they could in the daytime, but no one had had more than three hours of rest at a stretch for a fortnight now.

The double track was completely blocked with southbound trains moving at a snail’s pace, locomotive to caboose, extending the entire two hundred miles from Kharkov to Rostov. On the route south were constant reminders of less fortunate southbound trains: trains tipped over, looted, burned, with charred corpses showing the success of a guerilla raid.

Human misery was everywhere, so prevalent, so awful and tragic that one became anesthetized as a survival mechanism. Dead bodies littered the sidings and roadways—civilian refugees,
women, and children dead by the hundreds; soldiers crippled, maimed, dead; all broken by the weapons of war, by starvation, by subzero temperatures, but most of all by the typhus epidemic that raged throughout war-torn Russia. The unsanitary conditions in the ravaged land were especially conducive to the disease-carrying louse. Bathing was difficult—there was no wood to heat water, even if one could find the time to indulge in the luxury—but primarily the typhus virus had been spread like wildfire by the crowded conditions in the refugee-and troop-packed trains and the hopelessly overrun seaport towns.

Just two days ago Apollo had seen an entire hospital train sitting silently on a siding outside Debaltsevo. The patients, lying on the stacked bunks, were visible through the windows but not a sound issued from the line of thirty carriages. He found out later from a doctor at Kupyansk that everyone on that hospital train had died—patients, nurses, doctors. That evening, at a small depot north of Taganrog, they had seen what looked to be a pack of gray wolves slowly approaching the train, only to discover, as the shadow materialized through the blowing snow and gloom, that it was a group of soldiers in their gray hospital gowns crawling toward the train. Victims of wounds and typhus, they had been left behind in the retreat, believed to be too ill to survive the journey. With their last ounce of strength, on hands and knees, they had crawled from the hospital to the depot.

With the retreat it seemed as if mercy had left and the heavens had crashed.

What ate at one’s soul in lucid moments was the unutterable calmness with which such horror was accepted by the mind. In the five and a half years since Russia had entered the Great War, Apollo’s life had been so inundated by gruesomeness—by battle, by tales and eyewitness accounts of death, bestiality, massacre—that another death, a hundred deaths, even a thousand, scarcely caused a ripple in his mental receptors. Perhaps it was an act of God, for certainly there was going to be no hiatus in death before Rostov.

By the time they reached Taganrog, the railway depot for
Rostov, everyone was exhausted by days of steady skirmishes and sleeplessness. Several of the cavalry officers were wounded, but none seriously, a telling enough indication of their skill in the hard-fought retreat. Everyone was looking forward to Christmas in Taganrog; a time to rest, recoup, and mostly drink to forget.

No sooner did they reach the northern suburbs than Peotr bid adieu, his heavy saddlebags slung over one shoulder. “I’ve hitched a ride with Sergei to Baku. He managed to requisition some gas for his Niewport.” When Apollo’s eyebrows lifted, Peotr added, “Don’t ask me where.
Bon Noël, mon ami
. I’ve two full days with Suata and the children.”

“I see,” Apollo said slowly, digesting this remarkable turn of events and realizing upon further contemplation that he didn’t see at all. Leaving one’s wife alone at Christmastime was a bit too blasé even for his hardened conscience—but it was none of his business, Apollo decided with his usual cool pragmatism. Wishing Peotr a
Joyeux Noël
in return, he refrained from asking the obvious question about Kitty. “My best to Suata,” he added, pouring himself another drink from the cognac bottle he’d been saving since Niiji. Everyone had taken to their habitual form of relaxation since Taganrog had been sighted, and several groups of men were at ease on the banquettes that had so often served as beds on the journey south from Kharkov.

Peotr nodded happily. “Thanks, I’ll relay the message.”

“And to Mirza and Alina, too, of course.”

Peotr’s mouth widened into a beaming smile. “You should see Mirza, Apollo. He’s almost six now and rides a horse like he was born in the saddle. Since you saw him last year he’s grown another three inches.”

“And Alina,” Apollo teased, “does she ride like an Amazon?” Alina was only five, but on Apollo’s visit to Baku a year ago, little Alina, darkly beautiful and dainty as a Dresden doll, was determined to keep up with her older brother.

Peotr laughed aloud. “Damned if she doesn’t. On that point Suata and I have finally agreed. Suata, as you know, was raised in the Moslem ways, but I won’t allow my daughter to be
reared in that restricted fashion. Alina does exactly what Mirza does, causing Suata to frequently throw up her hands in dismay at such unladylike behavior.”

“Sensible of you to insist, Peotr,” Apollo said. “That sort of harem training has to be a thing of the past. Good God, it’s the twentieth century.”

“That’s what I said to Suata.” Peotr grinned. “She finally came ’round to my way of thinking.”

Like any well-trained, harem-raised wife, Apollo thought. That precise lack of independence Peotr deplored for his daughter, that harem-schooled acquiescence and emphasis on male-pleasing, was exactly what he found gratifying and lovable in Suata. Evidently Peotr had never seen the discrepancy, too heedlessly self-centered to perceive the incongruity. Although Apollo and Peotr had been friends for years, Apollo recognized that Peotr generally put his own pleasure and comfort first, though in a blithely innocent way, like an unassuming child, egotistically certain that the world centered on him.

Through the window Apollo caught sight of a frantically waving aviator across the snow-covered railway tracks. “There’s Sergei, waving at you to hurry.”

Peotr shifted his saddlebags. “Right. I’m off, then. I see the Red Cross nurses are here in force. I’ll leave you to your life of depravity, and with your recent boudoir history common gossip—Apollo’s eyes came up in a startled action, and then he realized Peotr was speaking only in general terms—“the Red Crosses are probably drawing lots for you already.” Peotr smiled at Apollo amiably.

His composure restored, Apollo quipped, “And you’re leaving them all to me?”

“This time, mon ami. This time, they’re all yours. I suggest you take a break in your drinking and eat a hearty meal. You’ll need your strength. See you in four days.” A smile spread across his swarthy face. “Provided there’s anything left of you.”

Apollo looked squarely at Peotr, his expression pure as a nun at prayer. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll probably spend the holiday alone with a good book.”

Peotr’s brows lifted dramatically. “Ha!” he said succinctly. Halfway out the train door he paused, turned, and said, “Let’s hope they don’t evacuate Taganrog before I get back.” Then, shrugging, he added, “Although, come to think of it, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad either.”

Everyone knew by now that Red victory was imminent. A sense of impending doom had settled upon the retreating army and refugees alike. As officers, though, both Apollo and Peotr, along with the entire division, would follow orders until there were no more issued. All the years of military training in the elite Guard regiments had left their mark. No one would desert the cause, no matter how hopeless it was, but just the same, everyone knew it was only a matter of time now. The front was dangerously close to Ekaterinodar and Rostov. If they could not be held, it would be full-scale panic to the seaports. Already the six-hour train journey to Novorossiisk took over four days. What would happen when all of South Russia tried to retreat via the southbound train?

After Peotr left, Apollo stood in the doorway of the railway carriage, his thoughts alive to an intoxicating situation: Peotr’s wife was spending Christmas alone. Very tempting, he mused, his eyes ranging over the hundreds of railway cars drawn up in the snowy yards north of the depot.
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Damnably tempting. He could talk one of his pilot friends into lending him a plane for a day or so. Apollo had learned to fly at fourteen, while other boys his age were learning to drive their first motor cars, and soon after that he’d driven his parents to near apoplexy by insisting on flying his own plane in the treacherous cross-currents of the Caucasus mountain valleys near their aul. In less than two hours, he thought with a spoiled child’s relish for excitement, he could be at Aladino. That would give him almost four days—provided he could keep the plane that long—to be with Kitty. They were both alone for Christmas. Why not?

Apollo turned from the doorway and was halfway down the corridor to his compartment to pack before the unpleasant answer materialized. For a long moment he stood arrested in the corridor, then swinging around with an exasperated gesture
he struck both fists on the inlaid mahogany paneling. “Damn.” What sort of explanation could he give for Peotr’s absence when the unit was obviously on Christmas leave? The truth, of course, was out of the question. Your husband has a mistress plus a family. Always unpleasant news to a wife.

Pushing away from the wall, he thought, Oh, hell. He’d make up some kind of story. He resumed his long-legged stride down the corridor. Some plausible explanation could be fabricated before he reached Astrakhan. Wartime was chaos at best, anyway.

Apollo paused, his hand on the doorlatch, contemplating a facile lie, and in that brief moment hardheaded pragmatism began reversing his spontaneous decision to see Kitty. All the unwonted practical considerations flooded into his mind. Remember, she’s your best friend’s wife. Regardless of Peotr’s behavior, there is no excuse for you to become even more ungentlemanly than you already are. Perhaps more pertinent, why renew a relationship with no future? It would be even harder this time to say good-bye. God knows it was hard enough—for some unknown reason—last time.

Much as Apollo wanted to see Kitty, he realized, with a grimace of astonishment, that he found the thought of treating her with the careless expediency of an erotic interlude distasteful. For a man who prided himself on the laudable merit of erotic interludes, this was a staggering conclusion. And what settled the issue in the end was not the moral or ethical considerations, but the uneasy recognition that Countess Kitty Radachek had become a constant image in his mind of late, a disturbing, devouring, never-diminishing focus of desire. This preoccupation, this
decided preference
for a specific woman—there were no reference points in his previous experience to explain it. He didn’t know what love was. He certainly didn’t admit to himself he could be in love.

Under the circumstances—Kitty being his best friend’s wife, and the certainty of losing the campaign ominously real—that sort of intemperate desire should be repressed rather than encouraged. In the desperate, frantic hedonism prevailing in the wartime atmosphere of South Russia, Apollo
decided pragmatically, if disgruntledly, that if he was going to eat, drink, and be merry, he’d damn well better pick some female who could be easily forgotten.

Consequently, on the afternoon Peotr went off to spend Christmas with his mistress, Apollo, very begrudgingly, for reasons not altogether familiar to him, gave up the idea of passing the holidays in bed with Kitty. It was, as a matter of fact, the first action in his life concerning a woman that was undertaken with prudence, and, had he known it, the most useless.

With sensible concepts now perfectly balanced against flighty hedonism, Apollo was easily persuaded by several of his fellow officers to join them at a party in the Red Cross train parked four tracks east of them. The nurses had several gallons of high-quality alcohol, transformed into vodka, while Prince Ghivi, resourceful soul that he was, had managed to trade his diamond watch to some profiteer for eight cases of champagne. There was enough liquor, Apollo was assured, to keep everyone drunk for the entire four days of Christmas furlough.