Free The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov by Paul Russell

lustrous fever in the blood! A hero for our time!” I had made myself very merry indeed, and my stammer was entirely gone. Elena, Olga, Mlle. Hofeld—all stared at me. Even our coachman Zahar turned around in his seat to make sure all was well with his charges. I
could see him shaking his head at the foolish young barin .
    â€œAre you drunk?” asked Olga. “Please tell us if you are.”
    â€œDrunk on love,” I wailed, for by now I no longer knew whether I was speaking of Volodya or myself. “Drunker on love than on Slivinka,” I whooped. “Drunker than on vodka or champagne or Tokay…”
    Our arrival at the scene of the fire brought my spirited performance to an end. By carriage, automobile, bicycle, horseback, and hay wagon quite a festive crowd had shown up. From Batovo just across the river had come Grandmother Nabokova, Khristina, Aunt Nadezhda, and a hodgepodge retinue of servants who formed an absurdly inefficient bucket brigade to ferry water from the river to the by-now-unstoppable flames.
    At the margin of the gathering crowd, good-naturedly shoving each other, two muzhik lads caught my attention.
    I had seen the pair countless times before, two more anonymous cogs in the vast machinery of our estate. Now firelight transformed them. Was it my imagination? The longer I watched them, as one deftly tripped the other with his leg and both went down in a tumble, the more certain I grew that they kept between them some secret. I had not an iota of evidence save the illogic of desire, but when a slant-eyed old Tatar cuffed one of the boys on the ear and ordered the two of them to join the fire brigade, I suddenly knew that it was none other than they who were responsible for the arson.
    From her handbag my mother produced two tumblers and a small bottle of port with which to fortify herself and Mlle. Hofeld. On seeing the bottle, my siblings burst out laughing, much to my mother’s confusion.
    â€œWhat, mes enfants ?” she kept asking. “What’s so funny?” But as they would not tell her, she grew more and more confused.
    This left Mlle. Hofeld to cluck, “What a foolish bunch of children! The excitement has caused all of them to completely lose their minds!”

    As my mother, grandmother, and aunt nattered away and my siblings milled about, their boredom growing in direct proportion to the flames, which now consumed the shed entirely, I caught sight once again of my two criminals and felt a satisfaction heightened nearly to ecstasy by the simple gesture of one boy putting his arm around the other’s neck and whispering something no doubt conspiratorial in his ear.
    Had I actually seen them brandish the incriminating torch, I could not have been more astonished. It was mere practice, I saw now, for the greater drama they planned. One day soon, they and their flame-red banners would come for Vyra itself, for Batovo, for Rozhestveno. Our night watchmen, the Tsar’s secret police, the scarlet-uniformed Cossacks that patrolled the streets of the capital, the Imperial Guard at Tsarkoe Selo: none could hold the flames at bay. And I was in love with the arsonists!
    We rode back in subdued spirits, Kirill and Elena asleep on either side of Mlle. Hofeld, Olga singing under her breath a strange song of her own devising. Ashamed of my antics on the ride out, and chastened by my traitorous emotions at the fire, I gazed at the passing woods. The early light of a Russian summer morning was turning them ashen. Two figures strolled hand in hand; they swung their arms broadly. Volodya had woven his Valentina a garland of lunar flowers; he wore on his face a look of supreme satisfaction.
    Olga must have nudged Elena awake, for they both began pointing excitedly, and Volodya acknowledged them with a single gallant wave that roused them to even more hysterical paroxysms of adoration.
    Â 
    A humid afternoon some days after the incident of the burning stable