The Golden Sabre. Jon Cleary
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hospital train had brought home the body of Igor. There had been other bodies covered with threadbare grey blankets; and wounded men, the sight of whom had depressed her more than the shrouded corpses. Men without limbs, a boy with half his face blown away; she had felt more pity for them than for the dead, even for Igor. For him she felt a terrible sense of loss; then realized later, with a sense of shame, that she felt sorrier for herself than for him. He had gone eagerly off to war, as he might have gone to the Swiss Alps to climb, which he had told her he did every summer; he would have died as he had wanted to, a hero in battle, died for Russia. She sometimes wondered, however, what had been his absolutely last thought just before death took him. Did men in battle really die as heroes or did they go out fighting death as fiercely as they had fought the other enemy?
But Cabell was not thinking of the past war. He had no regrets at having missed it, but he was irritated when someone suggested he should have been in it. He was more concerned with the present war:
‘We have no idea where the armies are—’
‘General Denikin’s army is in the Ukraine,’ said Frederick. ‘That’s where Father is.’
‘There’s a dozen damned armies. White ones, Red ones, private ones. At least back home our Civil War was pretty straightforward. What about you English?’ He looked at Eden.
‘We English don’t fight amongst ourselves. At least not for three hundred years.’
‘You fight the Irish. What about the Scots and Welsh?’
‘They try to fight us. But we’ll just ignore them.’
‘And they’ll all go home and be quiet?’
‘Eventually.’ But she really didn’t believe that, only wished for it. Though she had never lost her Englishness, England was becoming like a foreign country to her. Her parents, in the infrequent letters that got through since the Revolution, told her that England had changed during the War. Perhaps when she eventually reached home – how soon? Next month, next year? – she would not recognize the country she had left.
They were still on a mountain road, passing through pine forests, but now the road began to dip as it swung slightly south-east. The car was behaving beautifully, rolling smoothly along without effort, everyone in it marvellously comfortable. Cabell, a man who had never wished for riches, suddenly was seduced; he wanted to be an oil millionaire, have a car like this. He would chase horizons, follow beckoning roads in the grand manner, a vagabond with style.
Then the forest thinned out and they saw the narrow-gauge railway track running up to the mine cut into the side of the mountain slope. A wagon loaded with ore was being winched down the track to two wagons, drawn by oxen, waiting on the road.
The half-dozen men standing by the ox-wagons stiffened in surprise as the Rolls-Royce came round the bend in the road and glided to a halt beside them.
‘Good morning,’ said Eden. ‘Is there a town or village up ahead?’
The men glanced at one another, then a thickset, bald-headed man said, ‘Who wants to know?’
Cabell, half-turned in his seat, saw that Frederick was about to let the men know who he was. ‘Shut up, Freddie,’ he said in English.
The foreign language caused a stir amongst the men. They had been examining the car, their expressions a mixture of amazement and admiration. Now they stopped dead and looked at the man in the wide-brimmed hat who spoke a strange tongue.
‘Who’s he?’ said the bald-headed man.
‘He is an American engineer,’ said Eden. ‘I am an English teacher.’
‘Who owns such a motor car as this one?’
‘I do,’ said Cabell, and borrowed some of Frederick’s arrogance for the moment. ‘Good-day to you, gentlemen.’
He let in the gears and drove the car on before the men could move to stop him. Farther along the road, when they were out of sight of the mine, he said, ‘Those guys were asking too many questions.’
‘They are iron miners,’ said Nikolai. ‘Miners are different people from anyone else. It is the working underground, I think.’
‘Who do they work for – themselves?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Eden. ‘Probably for some landowner who lives in Moscow or somewhere far from here.’
‘They might work for my Uncle Vanya,’ said Frederick. ‘Father once said that Uncle Vanya owned everything for a hundred miles south of Verkburg.’
‘Freddie will inherit it all when Uncle Vanya dies,’ said Olga. ‘He is Uncle Vanya’s favourite nephew. I’m his favourite niece.’
‘Well, you’re not my favourite passengers,’ said Cabell. ‘I have an idea your Uncle Vanya wouldn’t be those miners’ favourite boss, either. Just keep your mouths shut about your relatives, okay? Stop playing Prince and Princess and be just plain Fred and Olga.’
‘Mother won’t like it when she hears of it,’ said Olga.
‘Your mother’s safe in Tiflis.’
The children said nothing, just looked at each other and sat back stiffly in their seats. But Eden said quietly, ‘You didn’t have to say that, Mr Cabell.’
‘I know,’ he said just as quietly; he increased the speed of the car, hoping the wind would make the children deaf to what he said. ‘But I haven’t had much experience with kids.’
‘That’s very evident, Mr Cabell.’ But she smiled when she said it and he grinned back at her.
Goddam, he thought, she’s a good-looker and she looks as if, with the right feller, she’d enjoy … But with two kids and a namby-pamby Cossack in the car, what could a feller do?
Ten minutes along the road they came into a large village. There was a main street and side streets running off it; a white stone church sat on the slope above the wooden houses, its golden dome dull and patchy. Children and dogs appeared from nowhere; then doors opened and men and women stood there. Excitement made the warm lazy air come alive; no one had ever seen such a magnificent car. Cabell and the others floated down the main street as Cleopatra’s barge might have floated down the Nile.
The main street ran into a square halfway through the village. On one side of the square a row of walnut trees fronted the entrance to a small railway station. Old men sat on benches beneath the trees, sometimes poking with their walking sticks at the hens that scratched about in the dust; they sat in silence, gossip and comment exhausted. Half a dozen women stood waiting their turn at the well-pump in the centre of the square, chatter spouting with the water. Several dogs rose up out of their torpor and began to bark as the Rolls-Royce and its procession came into the square and pulled up.
‘You do the shopping, Miss Penfold.’ Cabell got down from the car, smiling broadly at the gathering crowd like a politician gathering votes. ‘Take the kids and Nikolai with you, get a good supply. Don’t waste time. I’ll have a talk with these old guys, find out what lies south of here.’
The old men sat up straight on their benches as he approached them. They looked remarkably similar in their loose blouses and baggy trousers, as if they had all shrunk to a uniform size inside their clothes. Their only difference was in their headgear: some wore caps, one or two had straw hats. They peered at him with their rheumy eyes, recognizing him as a foreigner but knowing no maps on which to place him. Their eyes retreated into the gullies of their faces and he felt he was walking into an ambush. He was aware that the crowd, those that hadn’t followed Eden and the others, had fallen silent. He had a sudden premonition that he should turn back, get into the car, pick up the others and drive on. But it was too late now.
‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ Their gaze sharpened even more with suspicion; you could combine all their ages and no man in that time in this village had been called a gentleman. That was for the absentee land owners, the men who had come every year like the