Written on the Wind, page 9
Dimitri was in a better frame of mind, casually sitting with a towel draped over his shoulders while submitting to the treatment.
“Once this is over, we will never speak of it again.”
“You think?” she teased, scraping out a few more nits and dunking the comb in a mug of hot water. He was so lordly, but she felt no compunction to fall into obedience.
“Have you issued the quarterly dividend from my investment in the bank?” he asked.
Normally the bank issued a huge check to their investors on the fifteenth of March, but Natalia had put a hold on it, not sure how it should be handled after Dimitri’s bank account in Saint Petersburg had been seized. There had been no demands from the Russian government for Blackstone Bank to surrender Dimitri’s American assets, and she doubted they even knew about them.
“We’ve been keeping your funds in an escrow account,” she said. “They are yours whenever you wish.”
The tension visibly drained from his shoulders and neck. “Good,” he said simply.
She waited, hoping he would offer more details about what drove him out of his position at the railroad, but he added nothing. Dimitri clearly had no wish to discuss whatever happened in Russia, and for the first time since she met him in the telegraph office, an awkward pause filled the air. She blotted her eyes against the watering from the eucalyptus oil, then moved to another section of his hair.
“Did you get the copy of Little Women I sent you?” she asked.
“I got it.”
“And?”
He released an exaggerated sigh. “I do not understand why you thought I would enjoy that novel. The only good part is when Beth dies.”
She threw the comb at him, but he caught it, laughing raucously as he shot to his feet and whirled to face her. “Did you think I was serious?”
“I know you’re serious, and that’s why I want to strangle you!”
Dimitri slanted her a chiding grin. “Come, we both know it is a maudlin and sentimental novel. You must forgive me for not wishing to drown in sugary syrup.”
“I haven’t forgiven you for making me read War and Peace, and I never shall.”
“It is an honest portrayal of the human condition,” he retorted.
“So is Little Women.”
He looked heavenward as though pained. “It is a boring portrayal of mundane domesticity. Novels should be written on an epic scale to explore and celebrate the depth of human suffering. Don’t subject me to women chatting beside the fireplace. Little Women is nothing more than a sleeping draught. That is not the purpose of literature.”
She stood up to face him. “You arrogant Russian snob! What gives you the right to decide the purpose of literature?”
A wickedly taunting grin lit his face. “Centuries of literary tradition agree that tragedy is more worthy than cozy domestic stories. Even though you are wrong about Tolstoy, I find your defense of sappy literature strangely appealing. Please continue.”
She smothered a laugh. It was fun being able to tease him without fear of offense, and it appeared he felt equally at ease returning fire. She really ought to defend her favorite novel more, but her eyes were still watering, and they had work to do.
“Sit back down and let me finish your hair.”
He complied and continued finding fault with Little Women, but she quit listening when she came across something odd on Dimitri’s scalp. Near the base of his neck, a lump of raised skin. She ran her thumb across it.
“Be careful of that spot, please.”
His hair was short enough to see a scar about the size and shape of a nickel. “What is it?”
“A memento of my time in Chita,” he said. “Perhaps the only wise move I made before my trial was to hide things of value on my person. Sadly, the items I sewed into my clothes were stolen before I could use them, but I hid a diamond beneath that scar you have just discovered. It survived long enough for it to be useful.”
She pulled her fingers away, aghast. “You hid a diamond beneath your own skin?”
“A good hiding place, yes?”
She felt dizzy as she absorbed the news. “Does it still hurt?”
“Not usually, but please be gentle with the comb on that spot. The eucalyptus oil will not be kind if the skin breaks open again.”
She leaned in closer, no longer caring about the eye-watering sting of the oil. She needed to inspect his scalp without hurting the scar tissue. “I sense there is quite a story behind this scar,” she said, hoping he would share it with her.
Fortunately, he was in a chatty mood. “I spent many months with a friend who needed to escape as badly as I did.” He went on to describe his improbable friendship with a Buryat outlaw who had escaped from a penal colony. Together, they traveled thousands of miles before going their separate ways in a remote city called Chita.
What sort of man cut a diamond out of his own skin for an outlaw? Who navigated for months on end through a brutal wilderness in his quest for freedom? All her life she had admired brave, daring men who weren’t afraid of a challenge.
It looked like she had found one, but Dimitri was hiding something from her, and she feared it did not bode well.
13
Dimitri was beginning to feel like a man again, restored both in body and spirit. His first few hours in San Francisco had been a hectic experience. The sudden onslaught of noise and crowds, the fear of being alone and penniless, then the joy of falling into Natalia’s welcoming friendship. The mortification of telling her about the lice faded when she rolled up her sleeves to help him with the disagreeable problem.
After the lice treatment, Natalia noticed the disastrous shape of his hands and insisted on soaking them in warmed oil to soften the calluses he’d earned driving the sledge for months on end. He would probably go to his grave with those calluses, but he gladly accepted her ministrations.
Now they dined at a rooftop restaurant called the Oyster House, situated on a terrace overlooking the harbor on one side and the glittering lights of the city on the other. Few people chose to dine outside on such a chilly night, but it didn’t feel cold to him, and Natalia wore an elegantly tailored wool coat with a charming hat cocked at a saucy angle. She looked like a Russian princess in the clear, cold night.
He rotated a crystal goblet, staring at the remnants of a steak dinner and the votive candles that lit their table with a warm glow. Once again, he was on top of the world, dining with a beautiful woman, his belly full.
And somewhere in the cold, windswept land not far from the Trans-Siberian railroad lay thousands of people in unmarked graves. They called out to him for justice. The czar and his allies had done their best to silence him, but now he was in America, and the tables had just turned. It was time to embark on his next mission.
“I need to tell you what I witnessed in Siberia,” he said.
Natalia met his gaze across the candlelit table, pained sympathy in her face. “I’m ready to hear it.”
Dimitri drew a deep breath, bracing himself to relive the memory.
Natalia already understood his role along the southern route of the Trans-Siberian that skirted the Amur River. He did not need to tell her how the land was remote and isolated, nor how the border between Russia and China had repeatedly shifted over the past century. Many Chinese people had settled north of the Amur River in Russian territory even though it put them in a precarious legal situation. When the border was finally defined in 1858 by the Treaty of Aigun, those Chinese settlers living in Russia were guaranteed the right to keep their property in perpetuity.
The agreement worked well until the Boxer Rebellion of last year, when riots against European settlers broke out in China. It eventually spread toward the Russian border, potentially endangering the railroad.
“There was an incident in which Chinese insurgents launched shells across the river at the Russian town of Blagoveshchensk,” he told Natalia. “I was twenty miles away at the construction outpost, but the attack infuriated the Russian army. They used it as an excuse to expel the Chinese people living north of the river. It was too big a job for the local military, and I was ordered to appear along with workers from the railroad to help secure the border.”
He braced his elbows on the table, clenching his hands and looking away as dark memories came to the fore. He’d arrived at Blagoveshchensk with a hundred workers. At first he didn’t understand what was being asked of him, but soon it was apparent that he was to help expel the Chinese villagers by any means necessary. Some villagers went peaceably, but others resisted. Then the army moved in, and it became a stampede, with Chinese people racing to get across the river. The barges and ferries were soon overwhelmed.
“By the time I arrived, dozens of men had already been killed,” he said. “They had fought the expulsion from their homes, and the retaliation was brutal. Thousands of others, mostly women and children with a few possessions carried on their backs, begged for mercy, but they received none. They were driven at the point of a rifle toward the river.”
Natalia’s eyes were wide with horror. He wished he didn’t have to share these details with her, but they were at the crux of the charges against him.
“I was ordered to command my men to guard the flanks and prevent anyone from escaping as the army drove the Chinese toward the river. It wasn’t an expulsion; it was an extermination. There were thousands of people, and they were helpless as the soldiers closed in. Then the shooting began.”
Dimitri swallowed back his revulsion. “I shouted at my men, ordering them to break ranks. We couldn’t step in front of the bullets to save those people, but we could give them the chance to escape. A Russian colonel ordered me back to the line, but I refused. I reminded him of the Treaty of Aigun. I said he was the one in violation of the law, not me. It was useless. I was arrested on the spot and taken to the governor’s mansion in chains. They sent me to Saint Petersburg to face trial on charges of refusing to obey orders, for which I was guilty, and of cowardice, for which I was not.”
His intransigence hadn’t done much good for the people of Blagoveshchensk. He later heard that over three thousand people had been killed. They had either been shot, axed, trampled, or drowned in the river.
“I have asked myself a thousand times if I could have done anything differently,” he said. “I wish I had never been put in that situation, but I cannot regret my decision. Had I participated in forcing those people into the river, it would have been murder.”
Natalia reached across the table, laying her hand over his clenched fist. How smooth and unblemished her hand looked against his weather-beaten one. He opened his hand, turning his palm up to clasp hers. She looked at him with no contempt, only sympathy, and he was grateful for it.
“The Russians do not wish this story to be known to the world,” he said. “I was not allowed to speak of the incident at my trial because the authorities needed to make an example of me. They publicly humiliated me so that others who witnessed the massacre would remain silent.”
And so far, it appeared the tactic had been successful. Certainly, no one came forward to protest at his trial.
“What can I do to help?” Natalia asked.
He scrutinized her across the table. Just how brave was she? Natalia wasn’t going to like what he wanted of her. She would argue with him, fight him, maybe even work against him . . . but he hadn’t come this far to back down now.
It was too early to risk their friendship by revealing his plans. He broke the tension by reaching for his wine glass and raising it in a toast.
“There will be time to discuss it later,” he said. “For tonight, we must celebrate our friendship. I am very glad to have finally met you, my dearest Natalia.”
The challenge ahead of them was daunting. He had survived the ordeal of the Siberian wilderness and crossing the Pacific, but what lay ahead would test Natalia in a manner she never expected, and he didn’t know if she could deliver.
He and Natalia would board a train to New York the following afternoon, where the showdown would begin.
The following morning Dimitri ordered an atrociously large breakfast in the hotel’s dining room, only to be dismayed at how little he could eat. After months of surviving on little besides cedar nuts, he ordered scrambled eggs, toast smothered with cheese, and raspberry tarts. He dove into the eggs first, but after a few bites he felt stuffed to the point that even looking at the raspberry tarts made him nauseous. He pushed the plates away while listening to Natalia chat about her new townhouse. Their train did not depart for New York until five o’clock, so he intended to spend the day shopping and sightseeing with her.
“Are you finished?” she asked with a glance at his mostly untouched plate. It seemed a crime to walk away from it. What would Temujin say? It was a shame, but he couldn’t eat any more without becoming ill.
“I’m finished,” he confirmed.
Natalia took him to the city’s largest emporium, where he shopped in the gentleman’s section. They had a six-day train ride ahead of them, so he picked two more ready-made suits, a proper overcoat, and a gold satin vest embroidered with swirls of ivy. Vanity had always been his greatest personal failing, and he was in the mood to indulge it. At the tie counter he practically wept at the feel of the silks on his chapped skin and proceeded to buy patterned cravats, ascots, and bow ties in every imaginable shade. At the jeweler’s counter he purchased garnet cuff links, a timepiece on a fine watch chain, and an opal stickpin. The packages were shipped directly to the train station so he and Natalia remained unencumbered during his voracious quest to keep shopping.
They rode a cable car up Market Street, where he persuaded Natalia to stop at the perfumery so he could buy a bottle of something pretty for her. They laughed while sampling over a dozen bottles, and he persuaded her to buy the most expensive blend of rose and night-blooming jasmine in the store, a charming perfume improbably bottled in Kentucky. Then they sampled cologne for him.
“Any scent other than cedar,” he said as they headed to the gentlemen’s counter. Dimitri could happily live the rest of his life without the scent or taste of cedar nuts. In the end they found a nice sandalwood with a hint of citrus, and Natalia opened her purse to pay for it.
“Once we are in New York and I have access to my funds, I shall repay every dime for this lavish excursion,” he said. “I am not certain, but given my four-percent investment in your family’s bank, I think that I am wealthier than you. True?”
“True,” she laughed, but it was getting tiresome, having her pay for everything, so they visited a bank, where she withdrew an advance from his quarterly payment and gave him a fat roll of bills to sustain him until they reached New York. The bank also had a telegraph office, and he was anxious to send a wire to his mother.
“She will be pleased to learn I am not festering in a Siberian iron mine.”
It was a challenge to find the proper telegraph location code. After Mirosa was seized, his mother had been forced to move in with his sister and her husband in a village south of Saint Petersburg, and he did not know the correct station code. The clerk had to consult a Russian directory of telegraph codes, and it was lunchtime before the message was sent.
Dimitri breathed easier once the message was on its way. His mother would not spend another night fearing for his well-being.
“Worrying about her was one of the worst parts of this ordeal,” he said once he and Natalia were seated at a café on Market Street. “I know she fears for me, and living with my sister probably has not been easy for her. Sometimes mothers and daughters do not live in perfect harmony.”
“I can understand.”
He peered at her in curiosity. Natalia’s love for her mother was the reason she learned so much about Russia, but Galina had died several years ago, and Natalia had a frosty relationship with her father’s new wife.
“I sense you do not care for your stepmother,” he said. “Your messages often praise your father, but you have little good to say about the woman he married.”
Natalia shrugged. “There’s nothing specifically wrong with Poppy, aside from the fact that she’s a terrific snob.”
“What is her best quality?” he asked, and Natalia looked taken aback by the question.
She glanced all around the interior of the restaurant, taking an undue amount of time to come up with an answer. “Poppy is remarkably good at playing golf,” she finally said.
“That’s it? That’s the best thing you can say about this woman your father adores and who has given birth to your only brother? Come. Tell me why you dislike her.”
“I’ll need a fresh cup of coffee for that.”
14
Natalia wasn’t proud of her relationship with her stepmother. Many people thought her disapproval of Poppy was rooted in jealousy over her father’s affections, but it wasn’t.
“My father has an unhealthy dependence on Poppy,” she finally said. “I don’t like it.”
“How so?” Dimitri asked.
Natalia began by describing an attempted assassination that took place seven years earlier, when an anarchist lobbed a bomb at Oscar as he left the bank. The bomb destroyed the façade of the bank and killed three bystanders. Her father was badly injured, losing an eye and the use of one leg, but he survived.
“I think it was the first time he realized he wasn’t invincible,” Natalia said. “My mother was still alive then, but she couldn’t help him. She tried to tidy the bedsheets in his sickroom and bring him meals, but he was so angry. He barked at her to leave him alone, and my mother was too soft-hearted to stand up to him. She always felt inadequate because she hadn’t been able to give him a son, and she tried to make up for it by catering to him, but it just made him feel like an invalid.”
Oscar’s leg refused to heal, and he relied on a wheelchair for years before he met Poppy Galpin, a young, athletic woman whose father managed the country club where Oscar once played golf. Oscar’s days as a sportsman ended after the bombing, but he still visited the dining room at the club for business meetings. When Poppy saw him being wheeled across the lobby of the clubhouse, she boldly approached and asked when he intended to take up golf again. The people accompanying Oscar glared in disapproval, but her father was curious, challenging her to suggest how a half-blind cripple dragging a useless leg could play golf.
