Written on the Wind, page 25
“Your mother is impatient to return to Saint Petersburg,” Mr. Antonovich said, drawing on his pipe. “She knew you’d want to come straight to Mirosa, but she’ll start nagging to go back to town soon.”
Dimitri prepared himself a cup of tea. “My mother deserves to do whatever she wishes. I shall remain here.”
“Olga has been waiting for you. She’ll probably want to go back to town too.”
Lovely Olga. When they were children, he and Olga used to catch frogs together, and in the evenings, they searched for fireflies. Now she was a widow with two children under the age of five. She had left her children in Moscow with their nanny, which was a sign that Olga might be here to rekindle their romance. There were all sorts of reasons he should welcome it . . . but he had not given up on luring Natalia here.
“What about you?” Dimitri asked, since lawyers like Mr. Antonovich rarely spent much time at their country estates.
“Saint Petersburg isn’t what it used to be,” Mr. Antonovich replied. “Even the czar has left. He now lives at Tsarskoye Selo and rarely ventures into the city except on state business.”
Dimitri blinked in surprise. The town of Tsarskoye Selo was south of Saint Petersburg and where the czar had a summer home, but it was nowhere near as grand as the Winter Palace.
“Why has he left?” Dimitri asked.
“Baron Freedericksz insisted upon it.”
Woldemar Freedericksz ruled over the imperial household with an iron fist. It was Baron Freedericksz who had refused to allow Dimitri access to the czar after the catastrophe at the Amur River. To this day, Dimitri didn’t know if blame for what happened to him should lie with Baron Freedericksz or Czar Nicholas. Possibly both.
“So if I wish to see the czar, Baron Freedericksz is the man I must consult?”
Mr. Antonovich nodded. “Yes, but why jump into matters of state again so quickly? You have your freedom and your property back. Relax and regain your strength, because it looks like you have aged ten years in the past twelve months. Nothing in the world will heal you like a month at Mirosa.”
A part of Dimitri agreed with Mr. Antonovich. The peaceful rhythm of life in this valley was a balm to his soul. He had everything he wanted or needed right here.
But within an hour, he had drafted a message to Baron Freedericksz, insisting on an audience with Czar Nicholas, because until he had an official recommitment to the 1858 treaty, he could never rest easy.
30
The best remedy for a broken heart was a daunting task, and Natalia found that challenge in learning all aspects of the budding music industry. The creation and distribution of records required equal parts musical insight and business acumen, along with a dash of chemistry, physics, and engineering.
She began educating herself in Jersey City, where the record factory looked more like a chemistry lab than a place that could mass-produce records. Henry Weisbaum was the production manager. The wiry man wore grease-stained coveralls, but he had the vocabulary of a physics professor as he explained how master copies of musical recordings were made. Sound caused vibrations to oscillate a stylus as it traveled across a waxy disc, cutting minuscule grooves in the surface. An acid bath fixed the grooves, allowing it to serve as a master copy from which additional records could be produced.
“This is aluminum oleate,” Henry said as he pried the lid from a steel drum to show her the brown, jelly-like material. “Up until a year ago, we used it to coat our master discs before the recording, but lately we’ve been experimenting with a blend of montan wax and petroleum jelly. The musicians hate it, because we’ve got to keep the recording studio hot so the wax stays pliable, but the results sound better. We’ve got a team of chemists working on a modified version that will be soft enough to work at room temperature.”
Henry kept filling her arms with discs as they toured the production floor. “This one was made with the electroplating technique,” or “this one is the old stamp technique. It’s cheaper but sounds a little tinny in the higher registers.”
By the time Natalia finished her tour, she had ten sample recordings, each manufactured with slightly different techniques. She would listen to them all and then decide which sort of process would be best for Tachenko’s recording. All the samples were of a soprano singing the same opera song to make the comparison easier.
Normally Natalia disliked opera, but not anymore! Now she felt like a scientist as she studied the recordings, listening for variations caused by the different chemicals and recording techniques.
She wanted additional opinions and took the records to the Black Rose, where she played the records for Liam and Darla.
Liam didn’t like opera either. “You owe me a gourmet dinner for making me listen to that soprano bellow.”
“Her name is Adelina Patti, and she is a very famous singer,” Darla said. “I think it’s marvelous that she’s lending her talent to help advance the industry.”
“She sounds like she’s being tortured on the rack,” Liam replied.
Natalia put on another record to listen to the same song recorded using a different blend of wax. “Close your eyes and tell me if this one has better sound quality.”
Despite his disdain for opera, Liam dropped his pained expression and settled down to listen, closing his eyes in concentration as the different recordings filled the room with music.
“I don’t mind a little of that background noise so long as the sound is good,” he said. “What did you call that noise?”
“Clutter,” Natalia replied. “That’s what the production manager calls it, and it’s going to be a challenge to get rid of it.” Some of the discs had no clutter but sounded tinny. Others were perfect, but the music sounded as if it came from very far away. “My hunch is that it won’t be so noticeable when an entire orchestra is playing a song instead of just a solo performer.”
“Let’s have the next one,” Darla said, and Natalia swapped out the electroplated disc for one made with the new wax blend.
Once again, Liam settled in to listen with total concentration as he closed his eyes and turned his ear to the music, but this time he clasped Darla’s hand. The way he traced his thumb across the back of her hand was sweet. They seemed such opposites: Liam a big tough man and Darla refined and smart as a whip, but they seemed to fit.
It made Natalia feel like a third wheel. Was there anything worse for a lonely person than to be lumped in with a happy couple? This time when the needle came to the end of the recording, the disc kept rotating, and the needle made a staticky clicking sound over and over. Neither Liam nor Darla noticed; they just kept staring at Liam’s thumb tracing a pattern on the back of Darla’s hand.
Natalia rose and lifted the needle. “I should head home.”
Liam snapped back to attention. “Did you get what you needed?”
Mostly. She already knew which technique could make the most of Tachenko’s talents. What she really wanted tonight was human companionship. She’d found it but somehow felt lonelier than ever.
It was late before Natalia arrived back home to begin preparing dinner in her newly remodeled kitchen. When she first bought this modest townhouse, she wanted to prove herself superior to Poppy by living humbly and doing everything herself. Even after the plumbing disaster, she tried to repair everything on her own to prove her independence to Poppy.
It had been nothing more than immature pride. She didn’t need to prove herself against Poppy. Natalia paid a plumber to add a hot water heater and additional lines so that she now had decent plumbing throughout the house. The charming woodland mantelpiece had been repaired with a series of tiny screws that were almost invisible. The house smelled like new plaster and fresh paint, and the water no longer gurgled in failing pipes.
Poppy never breathed a word about how Natalia hired outsiders to do the work. She probably neither knew nor cared. Natalia’s life became much easier once she stopped competing in endless games of one-upmanship with Poppy.
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, and she opened it to see a young man from the Western Union holding a telegram.
“Miss Natalia Blackstone?” he asked, and she nodded. She shouldn’t get too excited, because the message could be from anyone, but it had been three weeks since she’d said good-bye to Dimitri, and he should be home by now.
She signed for the message and tipped the man, then tore the message from its sleeve. The lengthy, rambling text was a dead giveaway that it was from Dimitri. She smiled at its length, because no one else on the planet wasted so much money on telegrams.
Dearest Natalia. I have returned to Mirosa. The valley is as I remember, with amber sunlight that makes the air shimmer like spun gold. I like to imagine you beside me as I walk the hills of my estate. I would show you the apple groves and the profusion of lilacs that perfume the air. When we are tired from walking, we will lie on our backs and gaze at the clouds overhead and dream of the world to come. Natalia, I want you to join me in Russia. These days have been the happiest and saddest of my life. My spirit rejoices at being back home, but my soul aches for you. Come to Mirosa, Natalia! I will be waiting for you with open arms. If you wish to work in a bank, we shall find a way to make it happen. If you wish to relax and do nothing more stressful than watch the sun rise and set, there is a balcony from my house overlooking the valley where we can do this together.
I have not yet seen the czar or secured a reaffirmation of the treaty. The czar surrounds himself with people who shield him from distasteful news, but I continue to work toward a meeting. Until then, I savor my time at Mirosa and dream of the day you will join me.
Natalia leaned against the doorjamb, holding the telegram to her heart. The world Dimitri painted seemed so perfect. She could pack a trunk and be on the next steamship, but the logical part of her mind overruled the wayward impulse.
She would turn into a shell of a woman if she lived at Mirosa. She still didn’t know exactly what God wanted her to do with her abilities, but it wasn’t to watch the sun rise and set in a rural dacha.
She and Dimitri hadn’t even been apart for a month, and it was natural for the pain of separation to still be fierce. It might not last. It was easy for Dimitri to ask her to join him in Russia, but he wasn’t the one who would leave his home, family, and every familiar guidepost in his world.
But still, a part of her was tempted.
31
Once Dimitri began wiring Natalia, it was impossible to stop. Back when they corresponded during his work on the railroad, he hadn’t truly known her. They liked and respected each other, but he didn’t know the cadence of her voice, or the way she could sound serious even when she was teasing, or how comfortably her head fit beneath his jaw when he embraced her. Now he knew all those things and heard Natalia’s real voice while reading her messages, which made them all the more meaningful.
In the mornings Dimitri worked in the old cider mill on his estate, but in the late afternoons he rode into town, since Natalia would be awake in New York and he could pester her for a little conversation. Lately she had been eager to tell him about her recording of “Waves of the Amur.” Maxim Tachenko recorded the song perfectly on his first and only take, and she was currently shipping the discs across the United States.
Her success with “Waves of the Amur” had inspired her to commission additional recordings of other musicians, and he wanted to know more. From the moment she told him about her new venture, he had been cheering her on from afar.
Well, mostly cheering her on. He hectored her mercilessly over her regrettable fondness for German composers, but what vision! What chutzpah! Watching Natalia embark on this new line of business was almost as much fun as being a part of it himself.
The general store was two miles away, a sad little outpost with one wall of canned goods, a shelf of vodka and hard cider, and barrels of flour, barley, and oats filling most of the floorspace. In one corner behind the front counter was a telegraph machine, possibly the best invention of the past century for rural people because it was a lifeline to the rest of the world.
Natalia usually gave more interesting replies when he teased her, so he started with a modest jab.
Dearest Natalia. I await with bated breath to learn which musical interlude you have chosen for your next release. For the love of all humanity, I pray it is not another German composer. Sincerely, your devoted Dimitri.
He went outside to await her reply. It would take a while for the message to arrive at her townhouse and then for her to walk the two blocks to the nearest pharmacy, but he liked to imagine her receiving his note. The smile on her face. The way her clever eyes would flash with calculation while planning her reply.
A gust of wind carried a smattering of leaves through the air. The days were growing shorter, and soon the dark Russian winter would be upon them, but for today he looked with fondness on the worn country lane leading to this store. He was getting used to this view as his regular exchanges with Natalia filled his hours.
Twenty minutes after sending the telegram, mechanical tapping from inside the store brought him to his feet. He loitered impatiently as the clerk handwrote the message for him and put his hand out to read it as soon as it was done.
“Two rubles,” the shopkeeper demanded, holding the telegram to his chest.
Dimitri paid the man, impatient to see what Natalia wrote. He smiled as he read that she had commissioned a recording of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. The master copy was already complete, and she was headed to the factory in Jersey City to oversee the production of a thousand copies.
His heart swelled with pride. Natalia had made the bank the center of her world for too long. Now that she had been driven out of it, she was pursuing her love of moody, romantic music that she’d always kept carefully concealed.
He could not resist the temptation to advise her on upcoming recordings.
No more German music, please. I humbly suggest one of the new Russian composers whose visionary style will lead us into the new century.
Her response wasn’t long in coming. She insisted that Russian composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin were not well known in America and she wouldn’t earn her investment back on the master copy. He replied they were famous in Europe and had attained near-sacred status in Russia.
Once again, her response came within a few minutes.
I am not selling records in Russia. I need to sell them in America.
Dimitri set the message on the front counter, thrumming his fingers against it. Why couldn’t she sell them in Russia? If she could ship railroad supplies to Siberia, why couldn’t she send a few crates of record albums to Saint Petersburg? It was the most sophisticated city in all of Russia, and he could sell them for her. He and Natalia had been business partners on the Trans-Siberian, and they could be partners again.
He impulsively scribbled out his proposal and thrust it at the clerk.
Commission five thousand copies of “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Rimsky-Korsakov and ship them to me. I will sell them for you here.
Her reaction was shocked, as he knew it would be, but Natalia was a woman of business and naturally cautious. In time, she would see the merit of his proposal. After only two more exchanges of messages, she agreed to the venture.
That day began their new business relationship. In the coming weeks she advised him on which types of retail shops sold musical recordings, and he sought them out to initiate an agreement to sell Natalia’s records. Their new partnership wasn’t as good as having her here, but it was satisfying.
And perhaps in time, he could figure out a way to bring her here in person, and for good.
32
Dimitri had been back at Mirosa for two weeks but still had no response from Baron Freedericksz about an audience with the czar. Perhaps the baron thought Dimitri would be satisfied by the return of his title and property and would no longer stir up trouble regarding the massacre on the Amur.
If so, the baron thought wrong.
Tachenko’s recording of “Waves of the Amur” was now selling all over America, and Dimitri was prepared to start selling them in Russia too. It would be dangerous to release the incendiary violinist’s recording, but unless the czar renewed his commitment to the 1858 treaty, Dimitri intended to start the drumbeat here in Russia as well.
In the meantime, he sank back into work at Mirosa’s cider mill, doing everything from making the apple mash to bottling the cider. It was exhausting work, but a good sort of exhaustion that came with a sense of accomplishment from a job well done. Things were exactly as he remembered, from the creak of the waterwheel to the sweet scent of autumn hay. All of it was a balm to his soul.
Yesterday he had worked with Pavel Golubev, the overseer of the mill, to repair the ancient waterwheel, which was beginning to wobble and show its age. This morning he helped unload a cartload of apples from a local farmer. The Sokolovs grew more than enough apples to supply the mill, but they always bought from local people too. Apples were an easy form of income for the poor, and buying from them helped ease tensions in the valley.
The afternoon was growing late, and Dimitri hoisted another bushel of classic reds onto his shoulder and dumped them into the vat of water. Pavel cranked the flywheel while Dimitri used a rake to nudge the apples toward the millstone, blinking as cold droplets splashed his face.
He and Pavel had worked in tandem for several minutes when Pavel abruptly stopped cranking the flywheel and swept the cap from his head. Dimitri followed his gaze, surprised to see his elegant mother picking her way across the lumpy yard outside the mill.
“Mama!” he greeted her affectionately. He had been upset when he first saw her upon his return to Mirosa. Her hair had turned mostly gray, and worry lines had been permanently carved onto her face. Her traumatized appearance eased following his return, but the past year of being turned out of her home had been difficult for her. Perhaps that was why she was doing her best to regain her former standing in the valley by always appearing immaculately dressed, with jewels on her hands and pearls around her neck.
