horses at full speed. There was no question as to what he intended to do. So without a second thought, I raised my arm, steadied my aim, and pulled the trigger. The impact of the bullet knocked him off his feet. The reins flew free and the horses careened off the drive, rolling the troika, and tossing him into the dust—where he lay unmoving.”
“You killed him?”
“Yes, Charles. I killed him.”
The presumptive heir to the Earl of Westmorland slowly nodded his head.
“Right there in the dust . . .”
The Count sighed and took a drink.
“No. It was eight months later.”
Charles looked confused.
“Eight months later . . . ?”
“Yes. In February 1915. You see, ever since my youth I had been known for my marksmanship, and I had every intention of shooting the brute in the heart. But the road was uneven . . . and he was whipping his reins . . . and the apple blossoms were blowing about in the wind . . . In a word, I missed my mark. I ended up shooting him here.”
The Count touched his right shoulder.
“So, then you didn’t kill him. . . .”
“Not at that moment. After binding his wound and righting his troika, I drove him home. Along the way he cursed me at every turn of the wheel, and deservedly so. For while he survived the gunshot wound, with his right arm now lame, he was forced to surrender his commission in the Hussars. And when his father filed an official complaint, my grandmother sent me to Paris, as was the custom at the time. But later that summer when the war broke out, despite his injury he insisted upon resuming his place at the head of his regiment. And in the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes, he was knocked from his horse and run through with a bayonet by an Austrian dragoon.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Alexander, I am sorry that this fellow died in battle; but I think I can safely say that you have assumed more than your share of guilt for these events.”
“But there is one more event to relate: Ten years ago tomorrow, while I was biding my time in Paris, my sister died.”
“Of a broken heart . . . ?”
“Young women only die of broken hearts in novels, Charles. She died of scarlet fever.”
The presumptive earl shook his head in bewilderment.
“But don’t you see?” explained the Count. “It is a chain of events. That night at the Novobaczkys’ when I magnanimously tore his marker, I knew perfectly well that word of the act would reach the Princess; and I took the greatest satisfaction in turning the tables on the cad. But if I had not so smugly put him in his place, he would not have pursued Helena, he would not have humiliated her, I would not have shot him, he might not have died in Masuria, and ten years ago I would have been where I belonged—at my sister’s side—when she finally breathed her last.”
Having capped off his snifter of brandy with six glasses of vodka, when the Count emerged from the attic hatch shortly before midnight, he weaved across the hotel’s roof. With the wind a little wild and the building shifting back and forth, one could almost imagine one was crossing the deck of a ship on high seas. How fitting, thought the Count, as he paused to steady himself at a chimney stack. Then picking his way among the irregular shadows that jutted here and there, he approached the building’s northwest corner.
For one last time, the Count looked out upon that city that was and wasn’t his. Given the frequency of street lamps on major roads, he could easily identify the Boulevard and Garden Rings—those concentric circles at the center of which was the Kremlin and beyond which was all of Russia.
As long as there have been men on earth, reflected the Count, there have been men in exile. From primitive tribes to the most advanced societies, someone has occasionally been told by his fellow men to pack his bags, cross the border, and never set foot on his native soil again. But perhaps this was to be expected. After all, exile was the punishment that God meted out to Adam in the very first chapter of the human comedy; and that He meted out to Cain a few pages later. Yes, exile was as old as mankind. But the Russians were the first people to master the notion