The Age of Ice: A Novel by J. M. Sidorova Read Free Book Online Page B

.”
    “As in—”
    “I am not seeking your company.”
    “I’m sorry I was mistaken . . . It must be one of your eccentricities.” She turned to leave—too abruptly. She was discomposed, and it was the perfect moment for me to spring from the chair and plead, “Anna! I’m sorry. Yes. Yes I was. I’m not eccentric. I’m lonely . Very lonely, that’s all.” An utter truth, backed up by that genuine God help me look in my eyes.
    She saw it of course. “Well, I’m lonely too. In a house full of in-laws—”
    “I know I have a reputation . But it is not that of a seducer.” (She almost, but not quite, winced.) “Your husband has nothing to fear from me . . . Friends?”
    This time Anna made me wait. At long last she conceded, “Friends. On a condition that you stop talking to me as if I am your brother’s possession.”
    “Why, I never intended—” and so forth.
    • • •
    In the barn again, where I was becoming more demanding. Then I saw how our own domestics chased Matryona from the yard, saying, Be gone with you! Scavenging here! Whoring around!
    When I asked what happened, the lackey said that Matryona was not even ours. Not our serf . There went my semiserious plan of easing her lot by making a house servant out of her.
    Matryona never touched me either. Except once: I was performing my routine while watching her—and was not succeeding, it just would not happen; so she said, Let me, and then pulled the kerchief off her head—a newer, whiter thing she wore, with a stitchwork of little red roosters alongthe edge—and she took me into her hand through this kerchief, explaining, My hands’re rough and young master’s skin’s tender. I leaned back on my elbows and wanted to close my eyes but those little red roosters—this misused Sunday-best kerchief—I could not tear my mind from it, it anguished me, it jumbled me—
    “You pity me, don’t you?” I said.
    She stopped for a moment. Her braid rolled over her shoulder and fell on my chest. She tossed it back. Then resumed.
    “I am not a ‘young master.’ I may well be older than you.” I could not bear these pangs of sadness and shame and injustice, perverted together, and so I cried, “Stop!” because I did not want her to stop, and then drew her in and held her by the waist, and straightened her skirt, and then buried my face in it and begged, “Don’t come here again. Please. Don’t come for me anymore.”
    Later, Father categorically refused to buy Matryona and Savva from whoever owned them. “When you come into money, you can blow it whichever way you want!” I had no income other than the allowance he gave me. The empire rarely paid my nominal Leib Guard salary. As a landed nobleman, I was expected to have no need for it, and if I had the need, to be too proud to ask.
    I came across Anna right after that conversation. “What happened?” she asked. My face must have been a portrait of ire.
    On impulse, I said, “Take a sleigh ride with me. Please?”
    And here we were, propelled by that same spirited mare (a choice of mine), over an end-of-February landscape, under the crisp sun. Once or twice at sharp turns Anna shrieked and grabbed my arm, then laughed—excitedly, I thought—and it cheered me up, and I thought that this was when I’d ask her about my brother. I needed, I had to know, now more than ever.
    On the outskirts of a village, some kids were building a snow fortress and I turned toward it. “A cavalry charge!” I roared, and Anna protested, God, no!, and I reigned in the mare to a halt and jumped out of the sleigh. “An infantry charge! Preobrazhensky grenadiers—attack!” I stormed on, and the kids responded with a volley of snowballs. I retaliated with snow grenades and rammed the snow wall, tumbling to the ground on the other side and being bombarded by the fortress’s defenders till snow bursts covered me head to toe; yet I lay sprawled and laughed like a madman until Anna’s face appeared