Black Spring (21 page)

“I want you to tell her I am back,” he said. “She’ll hear soon enough of my return; I’m staying with that pig Masko for the present, and word gets about this village like a plague. But I will come to see her, and soon. I’d rather you told her of my arrival than anyone else. Prepare her for my visit. Tell her that my love is unchanged.”

His voice caught, and he paused, which permitted me to interject that I would say no such thing.

“At least give her this letter.” He pressed a letter into my hand, but I refused, despite his protestations, to take it. In the end, I said I would inform Lina of his return. I agreed with Damek that it were best to come from me, and I was secretly glad that he had thought to tell me first rather than bursting in unannounced. I greatly feared how the news would affect Lina’s health, and I impressed on him that she had been seriously ill in his absence.

“You will find her changed,” I said. “I was shocked by it when I came back from the palace. She is delicate, and the least thing can throw her. I insist you be gentle, if you care for her at all.”

“If I care for her at all! How can you say such a thing?” But at last, on my insistence, he promised to be discreet and to do nothing that would cause her distress, and with that, my anxieties had to be content.

I
was to spend the night at the Red House, where Damek too had accommodation. This strange circumstance of an apparent intimacy with his sworn enemy excited my curiosity painfully, but Damek was in no mood to satisfy it. We parted at the gate, he to wander up to the front door and rap on it with a black cane, and me to wind my way through the back garden to the kitchen. My mother was waiting impatiently for me and ran to the door as I opened it, wringing her hands, to break to me the news that I already knew.

Damek had, she said, arrived only that afternoon, in a richly ornamented closed carriage drawn by a handsome pair of black horses, which caused much speculation as it swept through the village toward the Red House. When Damek had emerged from behind its curtains and had been greeted at the door by Masko himself, who was clearly expecting him, the amazement of the household was enough for a month of exclamations. The maids were struck by Damek’s handsomeness — for he had grown into a striking-looking man — and the manservants by his obvious wealth, and the superior airs of his groom had chastened everyone at the servants’ table.

The history of Damek’s attempt to stab Masko was, of course, widely known, and so the apparent friendship between them was another mystery. According to Damek’s groom, they had met only last month in the city, at one of the gambling houses, and there had reforged their acquaintanceship, and it seemed that Damek had been invited back to Elbasa to stay for the winter, all their differences now quite dissolved. I listened to this story with disbelief: I couldn’t credit that Damek had forgiven Masko anything. But I kept my own counsel and told no one of my private conversation with him.

None of us ever found out where Damek had been or how he had made his fortune. He never dropped one syllable of information. All that was certain was that he had disappeared for five years and that he had returned rich. A favorite rumor was that he had made a pact with the Devil and that his soul was written in blood in the Book of Hell; another was that he had been a privateer in the wars now ongoing in the West, of which we heard distant and belated news; yet another, that he had formed a criminal gang in the city; still another, that he had made his fortune by gambling and had ruined a great southern family through his audacity and skill at cards. I fancied the privateer theory myself; his swarthy complexion hinted at a life spent much in the weather, and occasionally he would let fall a phrase that bespoke a nautical knowledge. It explained a sudden access of wealth without the taint of criminality, although his steady silence on the question suggested that his story was less than respectable.

Of course, the mystery added to his attraction, and at first he took great care to be attractive. When I had the chance to observe Damek in company, I saw that he charmed everybody, man or woman, yet a gleam in his eye very like contempt signaled to me that he was playing a role and that his intentions were far from benign. Also, he never bothered to pretend anything to me. I had known him too long and too well to fall victim to his allure.

I saw no more of him that first evening, in any case. Masko had invited his cronies in for a game of cards, and the festivities were loud and long; the other servants were kept busy ferrying refreshments to the dining room. My mother and I spent our evening quietly in the kitchen, and I retired early since I had to leave before dawn the next day, if I was to attend to my duties at the manse. Despite my early bed, I scarce slept with worry. What was I to tell Lina? How was I to begin to talk about a man whose name had not been mentioned once between us in all the months since I had returned home? And — a worse thought — what if word reached her before I did?

In the event, we were isolated enough at the manse that I was first with the news. I waited until after I had served breakfast and Tibor had gone outside to see to some job, and then sought out Lina. I was so uncomfortable that I fiddled about until she lost patience with me, and at last I blurted it out, without adornment or preparation.

“Damek?” said she, turning white. “You say Damek has come home?”

“I fear so,” I said.

“And you’ve seen him yourself? He is not dead?”

I assured her that I had seen him with my own eyes and that he was as alive as we were. She turned her face away from me, and I stood uncertainly before her, wondering whether to leave or whether she might need some attention. But in a moment she leaped up and grasped my hands, her eyes shining.

“Anna, I know you would not mislead me. But I can scarce believe my ears! This is beyond everything marvelous! It is a miracle! Damek is come home. Oh, I don’t believe it. He is not dead! And he is well? He is happy to be home? Why did he not come to me first? Why is he not here? I must tell Tibor at once! Such news!” Here she began to run from the room, only to halt in the doorway. “Did he say when he would visit me? Did he say when we would see each other again?”

“Soon, he said. Soon. He’ll be here soon.” I studied with misgiving the hectic flush that had now risen in her cheeks. “Miss Lina, you must not get too excited. Time enough to tell Mr. Tibor at luncheon, without running out to look for him. Come, let me pour you some wine.”

“Wine? What need have I of wine?” She rushed back into the room and embraced me. “But you’re right: I can tell Tibor later. He shall be so happy! I think I have never been happier in my whole life! And what if Damek called and I were out? I couldn’t bear it. And he is at the Red House? I should ride there this instant! I can’t bear to wait even one minute. I should ride there now. Order my horse, Anna.”

She was breathing fast in her excitement, and her eyes were dangerously bright. I begged her to sit down and poured her a wine, which I made her drink. She agreed at last to sit, but it made her no less restless: the words tumbled out of her, expressing her astonishment, her joy, her impatience to see Damek. It took me the best part of an hour to calm her. She only agreed to rest because she became exhausted, and even then she insisted on lying on a sofa in the front room, where she started at every noise in an anguish of expectation. I had not seen her in such elevated delight since my return, and I wished I could feel an equal joy. But I could not like the fever that attended it, nor how her pulse fluttered in her neck, as if a wounded butterfly were trapped there.

W
hen Tibor returned to the house, Lina flew to greet him, breathless with her news. At first he responded to his wife’s joy — he knew that Damek was a childhood friend long missed — but as the excess of her emotions overflowed, sweeping aside any other topic of conversation, his enthusiasm began to dim. His wife scarce noticed his indifference: she had enough animation for both of them. They were a pretty picture at the luncheon table, one bubbling over with excited chatter, the other becoming more and more morose. At last Tibor’s unresponsiveness penetrated even Lina’s overwrought perceptions, and she upbraided him for not sharing her delight. He answered curtly, she took further umbrage, and at last he threw his plate across the room and stalked out of the house.

As I cleaned up the mess, I reflected gloomily that this was not a propitious beginning. Irli, who since my arrival had been assigned general duties, helped me to clean the walls, her eyes lively with curiosity, but I refused to tell her what had happened. Lina, of course, failed to see any good reason for Tibor’s actions and abused him as capricious, ungenerous, and cruel.

“I would say he is jealous,” I said shortly. I felt little patience with her, as I was behind with my work after the scenes of that morning. “And perhaps that is understandable.”

“That is just foolish! He is my husband, and he should love where I do. It is small and mean of him to try to spoil my joy.”

I sighed and took my bucket and cloth into the kitchen without further argument. I knew it was useless. It wasn’t long, however, before she followed me. She had already forgotten her quarrel with her husband.

“Anna, do you think Damek will call this afternoon? I think I should visit the Red House, don’t you? If he doesn’t come here, I mean. Why has he not called already?”

I told her that if she called alone on Damek, it would cause a scandal. I also reminded her that Masko lived in the Red House and that she would be forced to speak to him as well. Only the latter point gave her pause: she still hated Masko with a passion and avoided him entirely. I repeated my assurance that Damek would call soon and bent to my work. After a while, she drifted back to the front room, to hover impatiently by the window. For myself, although I dreaded Damek’s visit, I also prayed that he would make it that day. If he did not, I couldn’t imagine what state Lina would be in by nightfall, but given his anger about her marriage, it was not impossible he would delay his call. In my anxiety, I found myself wishing that Damek had indeed been killed. Lina’s irrationality that morning dismayed me more than I could admit even to myself; when I thought of what Damek had said to me the night before, and of the lunchtime quarrel, I found myself filled with dread. So I didn’t think at all: I attended to my tasks, and then I tried to make my mistress take a rest, which she resisted with increasing irritation.

She became more tense with every minute. By mid-afternoon, Lina was in such a state that the smallest sound — a dog’s bark, the shutting of a door — would make her start horribly. I was not much better myself, as her restlessness and anxiety had infected me. Also, I was listening for Tibor as well as for Damek; most of all, I dreaded that they might turn up together, an unlucky chance which would do no good for any of us. When I heard hoofbeats nearing the house, I think I jumped as high as Lina. She rushed to the window and confirmed that it was Damek; she lost her color, and for a moment I thought she might faint. I rushed to her, holding her arm so she would not fall, and she turned on me eyes piteous with fright.

“I can’t see him,” she said. “Anna, tell him to go away!”

In my exasperation at her perversity, I could have shaken her. There came a rap on the door, and I swear she went even paler.

“It’s him!” she whispered. “Oh, he is here! What shall I do?”

I bit back the sharp words that came to my tongue and instead asked her to sit down so I could answer the door.

She shook her head, so I made no move; when he knocked again, she gripped my hand so tight I felt the bones crunching. She was trembling all over. By now I was half distracted.

“Please sit down, Mistress Lina. I fear that you will fall,” I said, and to my relief she did. “I shall tell him you’re unwell and can’t see him.”

“No! No, show him in!”

I looked at her dubiously, but a little color had returned to her face, and so, lamenting the ill-luck of the day, I left her and hurried to the door.

“Greetings, Anna,” said the author of all this discomfort. “How is your mistress?”