Alexandra Lapierre - Between Love and Honor

The girl now stood before him, her dress a bright stain of pink among the leaves.

“We’re leaving,” she said awkwardly.

She seemed a bit out of breath, as though she had crossed the gallery at a run. She was wrapped in a warm shawl that covered her hair and shoulders, à la Russe. Covered like this, she reminded him of the silhouettes of the women who went to fetch the water in the mountains at home. The princess of Georgia was every bit Caucasian.

Her presence seemed friendly and familiar. Unlike Sacha, who would have been struck silly by her sudden appearance, he wasn’t surprised. Yes, of course he found those arched eyebrows and big, dark eyes lifted toward his unsettling. But the girl’s face, which had looked so serious when she had spoken of the honor of men, now seemed a part of the peace he had finally found.

She did not share his serenity. He could see that she was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say.

“We’re leaving,” she repeated. “And we wanted to—a little while ago, I didn’t tell you.”

She stopped and began again, slowly and steadily.

“A little while ago, at the end of our discussion, my sister and I were worried about making things worse with the… well, we’re very grateful. But before leaving, both of us wanted to thank you for having defended us.”

Her words went straight to his heart. For a moment he said nothing. The moist breath of the plants bathed his burning cheeks.

“Don’t say anything about gratitude. You have no idea, I am the one who is grateful.”

“Who is that cadet who’s talking to one of our Anastasia Grigorievna’s cute little things, at the foot of the Hercules Farnèse?” Tatiana Borissovna Potemkina inquired, squinting through her lorgnette at the statue among the palms.

The imposing Princess Potemkina stood several meters from them, two-thirds of the way down the gallery, with her husband and three of their contemporaries.

Her nickname at court, “La Potemkina,” à l’Italien, was exclusively hers and signified neither the overly familiar nor the pejorative. She was the wife of a marshal of Saint Petersburg nobility and self-appointed guardian of the temple. She considered it her duty to ensure the proper conduct and respect for tradition of nearly everyone, and boys and girls had to be presented to her before they made their début in the world. After a visit to La Potemkina and a dozen other powerful old ladies, one was considered to have completed the “dowager tour,” a condition sine qua non to being received at any party. Of all the young people present, not one had failed to pay his respects by calling on La Potemkina.

“I asked Count Kiselyev the same question,” replied her companion. “He’s going deaf, poor dear, he didn’t even hear me. The boy is remarkably beautiful.”

“Yes, ravishing. But at this age, cadets of the First Corps don’t have private conversations with girls, they play hunt the thimble with them in the nursery. Or else ask them to dance. Sacha, come here for a moment.”

The sturdy arm of La Potemkina had stopped him in midflight and now held his own arm firmly. Who would ever have imagined that Tatiana Borissovna had once had the figure of a sylph? Her friends had called her a liana, whose stylishly cut dresses with empire waistlines had emphasized her slenderness.

All that remained today of the nymph with the face of a Madonna was her long, straight nose and the pursed lips that accompanied her ponderous stare. At forty-eight, she had gained as much weight as she had confidence. Despite her full skirts, fluted bonnets, and the mass of curls framing her face, these days she resembled nothing so much as a man, all the more so because of her energy and pugnacity.

“You know your little comrade there, I suppose. What’s his name?”

Sacha clicked his heels and bowed before the four ladies, greeting them politely and paying a small compliment to each, as he tried to play for time. It was no use. Dmitri, engrossed in conversation ten steps away, would never come to his rescue. He would have to reply, and he couldn’t think of anything to say but the truth.

Good Lord! La Potemkina—of all powers, the most fearsome—La Potemkina had spotted Jamal Eddin. The worst had finally happened.

“He’s a friend of Their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Dukes,” he hedged, “His Majesty’s personal protégé. One of his wards from the Caucasus. His favorite ward.”

“The son of a khan. I thought so. I’d recognize a Cherkess anywhere.”

For several years, Tatiana Borissovna had been head of the ladies’ prison committee, and in this capacity, she had visited Montagnards who were being held in the empire’s jails. She had met so many that now she was indeed capable of picking one out in a crowd.

La Potemkina had strong ties to the most influential members of the Orthodox clergy and was active in church life. She had devoted her immense fortune to the conversion of “pagans” and had financed several missions to the Caucasus and to Kamchatka. She had also founded a home for Jews whom she was preparing for baptism. But her specialty remained the conversion of Muslims. During her long career as lady catechist, she had converted over a thousand, or so she said. She organized the baptisms with great pomp in the chapel of her palace in Saint Petersburg or during her huge parties at Gostilitsy, her country home. She always invited her friend the empress Alexandra Feodorovna to the mass and the celebration that followed on such occasions. During the summer, the czarina stayed at her domain of Peterhof-Alexandria, only a few versts from Gostilitsy.

Tatiana Borissovna was widely respected by her entourage for her generosity and her religious zeal. Her husband, however, a little bald man, found her sanctimoniousness and her proselytizing exasperating and often teased her about both.

“Well, hurry up, my dear, go invite the emperor’s favorite to spend his vacation with us. By rights he’s yours, and you’d better act quickly before someone else grabs him and saves his soul.”

She shrugged her shoulders and rushed to the rotunda where Varenka had just disappeared through the rear door.

“Ah,” he said in mock horror, “if this ravishing young man is not only the czar’s ward but a Muslim, I’m done for. My wife will have him come to stay, feed him, take care of him, and practically adopt him. Poor boy, he doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

The pleasures of palace life at the cottage of Peterhof-Alexandria on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, two years later Summer, 1847

As he often did after his evening prayers, Jamal Eddin retreated to his favorite spot, a refuge he had found in a little glade carved out of one of the hillocks of the park at Peterhof. He had found this open place among the summer pavilions and work sheds, far from the cottage where the imperial family had settled in. The imperial family. His family. At the far end, between two marble benches that faced each other like fireside armchairs, was the sculpted bust of a young woman. Her hair, parted in the middle and looped back on the sides in a braided chignon that exposed the nape of her neck and the perfect oval of her face—everything about this delicate little head of marble reminded him of Varenka of Georgia. The scent of the roses and lilies cascading from the four basins above the benches reinforced a feeling of almost feminine religiosity in this isolated spot. The peaceful stillness he had discovered here had been his alone since the beginning of his vacation.

Between the end of the year and August exams, he savored a mere ten days of happiness, which were too intense to be honestly deserved. The boundless joy of living in this paradise made him feel almost guilty, as though he should temper his feelings or hold himself back in some way. So every morning and every evening, he came here to talk to his father, as though Shamil were seated on the bench facing him. He imagined his father, calm and sober, sitting there in his long imam’s robe. Only at these moments could he summon the presence of the man as he remembered him. Despite all his efforts, Shamil’s face had faded with the years, and he could recall nothing more than a shadowy figure.

He resented this silence. Since the czar had allowed them to correspond, why had Shamil never answered his letters? He had stopped asking that question and so many others. His faraway guide, his cherished master, obstinately refused to show him the way, and so he asked no more. But he told him everything, describing what he saw and mulling over the events of the past few years with him. He constantly tried to convince his father that he and Czar Nicholas were very much alike. Both were charitable to the poor, both honored their ancestors’ memories, and both looked after the honor of their progeny. The czar prayed and fasted and praised his god too.