Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(7)
Could he be guilty of the charges? Dimitri was always so melodramatic, bemoaning his misery and discomfort in “the frozen wasteland that is my life.” She always suspected he was a bit of a hypochondriac, for how could a man be “practically on his deathbed,” as he often complained, and then moments later send her messages overflowing with lyrical prose sparkling with humor? He had the soul of a poet as he paid homage to stars that glittered like diamonds on the velvety night sky or the joy at seeing the first violets of spring peeking out of the wet snow to defy the harsh climate. His observations were keen, sharp, and humorous. He wrote better English than most native speakers.
She rested her forehead in her hands. It was impossible to know the circumstances of his dereliction of duty, but she would not be his judge. Dimitri had enough loyalty to his country to accept an appointment in the middle of Siberia for the past three years. He’d once told her he took the dreadful assignment because he wished to prove himself worthy of his title.
For hundreds of years my family has dined on the nectar of privilege. I wish to venture out of our halcyon valley and into the frozen wasteland, building an iron rail to conquer time and distance.
Over the years, Dimitri moved from outpost to outpost, following the newly constructed railway as it tracked toward the Pacific. He negotiated for provisions, kept the supply lines operating, and worked with the local population to ensure rights of way. In recent months, he’d expressed concern over the Boxer Rebellion, which raged across the border in China, where insurgents had turned violent. Dimitri worked less than five miles from the border with China. Could he have gotten caught up in the violent rebellion? It seemed unlikely, but so did his arrest and conviction.
Someday she might learn more, but no matter what happened, she would always consider him a friend. Dimitri was a man born into unimaginable wealth and privilege, and yet he set out for Siberia to prove himself to his czar and his country. And if he balked in the face of battle . . . well, he wouldn’t be the first man to do so.
After saying prayers for Dimitri, Natalia extinguished the candles and retreated to her bedroom, where she set her favorite Brahms record on the turntable of her phonograph. What a miracle of modern technology that the thin disc coated with a layer of wax could contain the majesty of a Brahms symphony. She cranked the handle, set the stylus onto the record, and let the moody music fill her bedroom.
Then she indulged in a unique sort of torture by rereading the telegrams she and Dimitri had exchanged over the years.
Dimitri’s initial messages to her were short and businesslike until the day he alerted her of a slowdown on the construction of a bridge. Natalia asked for a revised timetable and an explanation behind the slowdown.
It should have been a simple question. All she wanted to know was how long the delay would last and if there was anything she could do to get the schedule back on track, but little did she know that she had pricked a sore point that unleashed centuries of ingrained European resentments.
Count Sokolov complained that his German bridge engineer refused to work with French-supplied concrete mix. The engineer insisted on waiting for a costlier mix from Berlin because it was allegedly superior to what the French could produce, which prompted Count Sokolov to rant about German pedantry.
Heaven save us from the German love of rules. The only good thing ever to have come out of Germany is the incomparable music of Johannes Brahms, and this is a verifiable fact.
Natalia telegraphed a one-word reply: Beethoven?
She feared she might have offended the count with her blunt reply. She didn’t know if he had a sense of humor, and communication through a telegraph wire could be so easily misinterpreted. It took a while for his reply to come through, but when it finally arrived, it contained a keen analysis of the difference between Brahms and Beethoven and why he appreciated Brahms’s ability to incorporate the folk traditions of eastern Europe into his symphonies. Of Beethoven, the count was dismissive:
Beethoven’s compositions are generic romanticism. They sound like they could have been composed anywhere: Berlin, London, Paris, or heaven help us all . . . New York.
Natalia had burst into laughter. Count Sokolov did have a sense of humor, and that day changed the nature of their correspondence forever. The count confessed that he was bored and lonely in Siberia, where most of the workers on the railroad spoke Belarusian, Chinese, or any one of a dozen Mongolian dialects he did not understand. There were a few Russian workers, but most of them were convicts. Those men were glad of the opportunity to knock a few years off their sentences by laboring on the railroad, but their goodwill did not extend to befriending the managers of the construction site, whom they instinctively regarded with hostility.
Count Sokolov’s isolation made him wax poetic over his home not far from Saint Petersburg, and his profound love for the estate was endearing.
I long for the comfort I can find only at Mirosa. The creak of the waterwheel, the fragrance of the apple blossoms on the damp morning air, the golden light over the valley on long summer nights when the sun never fully sets. My grandfather planted a ring of birch trees around the estate because in Russian folklore, birch trees protect against evil. I am a Christian, but still believe those trees have protected Mirosa because the valley seems wondrously suspended in time and preserved like a castle in a snow globe.
She loved Dimitri’s lyrical ramblings, even when they veered into politics. Although love for his homeland came through in almost every message, he was concerned about the continuing decay of the Russian economy, which was mired in natural resources rather than pursuing the opportunities of industrialization. Tensions among the classes grew worse by the year, and he feared for the long-term stability of his family’s investments.