Susan Johnson (34 page)

But she wrote to him because he was in her heart, was a part of her, and she couldn’t bring herself to completely sever her life from his. She told him of her love as he had written of his, giving him news of his son, explaining how Mingen had stayed with her until after the birth. I named our child Andreas Pavel, she went on; Pavel was my grandfather’s name. We call him Pasha. The Russian diminutive suits him; he already commands the household. He looks like you, she wrote, her son’s startling resemblance to his father a source of great joy to her. She went on then to describe their country life and the small events that filled her days. It’s very peaceful here, she said, unlike the tumult of your life. I wish you peace and happiness, she said at the end, a kind of sad acceptance pervading her mind.

There it is, she thought—the wistful hoping was over. He was halfway across the world from her, engaged in battle again; there was little possibility he’d ever see his son. I
think of you when I hold him, she’d offered, and now that she was staring at the page, she wondered if she should have omitted the sentiment, whether he’d be embarrassed with her continuing affection, at the connection between them when a new woman must be warming his bed by now. She knew how unnatural celibacy was for him.

I offer you sincere thanks for my freedom, she added in a postscript, her tone more formal. The trustees sent me word of Korsakov’s death. I am deeply grateful.

And in a post-postscript, she wrote quickly before she’d change her mind and succumb to prudence: Our love to you always.

She signed it simply Teo and Pasha and added the baby’s little thumbprint and a lock of his hair before she sealed the letter.

And then she got on with her life because Andre Duras would always be planning the next battle or the next campaign or the needed strategy to support and maintain the French Republic. His life didn’t allow for a remote home in a forest so far from the sound of cannon—for a wife and a son … for a family.

At the moment a home in the forest would have been exceedingly welcome to Duras. Genoa had been without food for almost a month and all rations were reduced to the minimum. The soldier’s daily ration was now: 5 ¼ ounces of ersatz bread, 8 ½ ounces of horseflesh, and 1 ¾ pints of wine. Civilians received only half this ration, prisoners of war still less. The only available meat was horseflesh and even that had become so scarce that it had to be supplemented with dogs, cats, and rats.

Several attempts had been made to break through the siege but the Austrian forces were too powerful and Duras’s troops too few and eventually too physically exhausted to fight.

On May 28 Duras ordered Miollis to make a last sortie
to the northeast, but it met with no success. As soon as Duras heard of Miollis’s reverse, he put himself at the head of two battalions and covered the retreat of his troops. This was the last offensive attempted.

But the thirtieth was a day of some emotional excitement as this was the day when Bonaparte’s arrival was expected to raise the siege. A message had been smuggled the week previous with news of Bonaparte’s crossing of the Alps and Duras was determined to hold out until then.

But the thirtieth came and went, and then the thirty-first. Duras’s troops began deserting, the civilian population was getting out of control. Hundreds were dying daily of typhus and starvation.

On June 1, Duras sent Colonel Andrieux, his acting chief of staff, to Austrian headquarters to arrange terms of capitulation. He had two days’ rations left in the food depots. But the negotiations took three days more, with Duras unyielding on several items. He refused to sign any document that contained the word
capitulation
. Some French vessels must remain in his hands for transport of his wounded to Antibes. And his troops were to march out of the garrison with their arms and baggage.

On June 4 the terms were finally signed and Duras and his staff, with fifteen hundred men and twenty field guns, embarked in the five French privateers lying in the harbor and sailed for Antibes.

That same evening Admiral Keith, the chief principal for Britain at the negotiations, wrote to his sister: “I have signed a capitulation with the most brutal fellow I ever met.”

Duras’s dogged resistance at Genoa had contributed materially to the success of Bonaparte’s Reserve Army. With the bulk of the Austrian troops investing Genoa, Bonaparte entered the northern Italian plains unopposed by any Austrian army of note. And by the time Ott marched from
Genoa to the aid of the Austrian army under Mélas it was too late.

Bonaparte had just won the Battle of Marengo.

But the political situation in Paris was disturbing; Fouché, Sieyès, and Talleyrand were still conspiring and Bonaparte through his brother Lucien, who was minister of the interior, was made aware of the danger to his position.

A few brief days after Marengo, Bonaparte summoned Duras to Milan and handed over to him command of the Army of Italy together with the Reserve Army and left for Paris to defend his position as First Consul.

There was no other senior officer with the ability or experience of Duras so once again he was put in the position of reorganizing and reequipping an army that hadn’t been paid for months. It was the most onerous and exasperating of his problems, and before long he was at odds with the War Ministry. He wrote repeatedly to the ministry explaining the difficulties of supporting an army without funds and received only complaints in return. After two months of discord and strained relations, Duras received notice from Carnot, the war minister, telling him a new commissioner was being sent down to purge his administrative services of all excess officers.

“It’s time,” Duras said to Bonnay one morning, tossing the Carnot letter aside, “to consider my life of retirement. Someone else can deal with these politicians in Paris. Sorry, Bonnay, but I’m going to desert you.”

It was late July, the negotiations over the line of demarcation in the treaty with Vienna were as tiresome and acrimonious as usual, procurement of cash to pay the troops was an ongoing problem, and now some commissioner was arriving to tell him how to administer his army.

“I feel a need for a leave as well,” Bonnay said with a faint smile. “Amalie tells me I’m about to become a father again. She’s going to require my personal attention.”

“You needn’t go because of me, Henri. Your diplomacy
will hold you in good stead even with the latest cretin sent down from Paris.”

“No, it’s time, I think,” Bonnay murmured. Both men had suffered during the siege. There was no glory in starving to death and Bonaparte’s ruthlessness in sacrificing the army in Genoa when he could have come to their aid had left both men with a kind of permanent disenchantment. “Will you go to Nice?” Bonnay inquired.

“I’m not sure,” Duras slowly replied, his life without purpose or joy. He’d drifted into his old libertine habits of late, disturbed with not hearing from Teo, brooding over the possibility she’d found someone else, guilty too for his desertion of her. And with no lack of women clamoring for his attention, it had been easy to revert to the casual immorality of his past. Although his cool detachment was so discernible, Bonnay wondered if he actually spoke to the women in his bed.

“You’re welcome to join me at Rueil.” Bonnay’s château in the country west of Paris served as his summer home.

“Too tame, I think,” Duras said with a smile. “But thank you. I may go to Istanbul. My mother had relatives there.”

Taking a risk at offending, Bonnay said, “You could take a summer trip to Siberia.”

Duras looked out the window for a moment and when his gaze swung back his eyes were shuttered. “I’m not sure I’d be welcome. It’s been almost a year.”

“The child must be—”

“Eight months old.”

“You should go.”

Duras smiled. “I recall you saying that to me the first night Teo arrived in Sargans.”

“And I was right.”

“You’re too much of a romantic, Henri. By now she’s forgotten those days in Switzerland.”

“I could have travel permits for you in a few days. We’re
no longer at war with Russia.” He grinned. “At least for the moment. Hell, you could travel up the St. Gotthard Pass without getting your head blown off.”

“A pleasant thought.” Duras was silent for a moment, his fingers tapping lightly on the polished surface of his desk, his mind discomposed by a host of uncertainties. She could be married by now for all he knew. He swore at such unwelcome thoughts. Then he looked up and softly said, “Get me a map.”

Bonnay had travel documents in three days and very early one morning, Duras left Milan in a carriage sturdy enough to withstand the long journey. Three post stops later a courier overtook them with an important dispatch from Bonnay. When Duras opened the envelope sealed with Bonnay’s stamp, he found a letter from Teo enclosed and a scrawled note from Bonnay, saying, “I hope it’s good news.”

It was.

It was all he’d wished for. She loved him still, he perceived between the careful, cautionary phrases; he was hopeful and comforted. And he had a son she’d named for him. He found himself smiling at that. And when he touched the tiny fingerprint with his callused finger, tears filled his eyes. He placed the silky lock of hair in the pocket over his heart and sent the carriage back to Milan with the courier. Purchasing a fleet thoroughbred, his baggage limited to what would fit in his saddlebags, he was back on the road twenty minutes later, his mount settled into a steady canter.

Impatient, he rode twenty hours a day, resting just long enough to snatch a few hours of sleep each night, buying new horses as needed, eating on the run. He crossed into Russia a week later and reached Moscow six days after that. He stayed half a day in the city to procure maps, for the wilds of Siberia were well off the beaten path.

The road from Moscow to Nishney Novgorod through Kazan, Perm, Ekatherineberg, and Tobolsk was well-maintained
with post stations every five or six miles. He passed through thick forests of fir and pine, birch and larch; the days were beautiful and sunny as though the weather were cooperating with his swift journey north. His passports were checked occasionally but Bonnay had seen to all the necessary documents from the ministers, governor-generals, and his imperial highness, and the only points of delay were the occasional brief hours of sleep.

At Tobolsk, he rented a hotel room for a few hours, bathed, shaved, had his clothing cleaned and pressed, had his hair cut, checked and rechecked his maps. He forced himself to eat because the image in the mirror after he’d shaved off his rough beard showed his cheekbones with too stark clarity and he didn’t want to frighten Teo.

It would take two days more to reach Samarov, the last village on the edge of the wilderness. He’d find himself a guide at that point. Teo’s address was a spare notation of two lines with neither locality on the maps.

He reached Samarov late at night, having traveled almost three thousand miles in twenty-four days. And he slept through the night for the first time since he’d left Milan.

He dressed with special care the next morning and then chastised himself for acting like a young buck on his first assignation. But he recombed his hair for the third time, his unruly curls refusing to conform, and decided to change his waistcoat after all, substituting a plain cream linen for the white silk he’d first put on. His riding coat was black, his chamois breeches and top boots comfortable country wear. Dressed in mufti since leaving Milan, he was no longer a general but a simple man returning to his family.

He found he suddenly needed a drink, not sure of his welcome, not certain Teo hadn’t found someone else to comfort her in the months of their separation. Her letter was dated four months ago.

Two drinks later, the man who fearlessly led his troops
into the mouths of firing cannon had stabilized his nerves sufficiently to begin the last leg of his journey.

The track through the forest passed through heavy stands of birch and poplar, mountain ash and pine. The summer day was idyllic, the temperature pleasantly warm, the birds singing in the trees. His guide, riding a sturdy long-haired pony, turned occasionally and smiled at him as if to encourage him. They had no common language since Duras spoke neither the native dialect nor Russian. But the hotel clerk had given the guide instructions, and when Teo’s name had been mentioned, the guide had nodded his head vigorously and smiled.

They rode five hours into the forest across small streams, through steep ravines, up granite outcroppings or around them if the incline was too steep for their mounts. Until at last his guide stopped at the border of a small pasture and waited for Duras to ride up. Pointing across the meadow, he spoke three brief words, indicating a log home and outbuildings bordering a silvery lake.

Although set deep in the wilderness, the house was palatial, two stories high with several stone chimneys and windows that opened in panels so one could walk outside. A number of summer porches adjoined the house, their roofs and railings flamboyantly detailed in carvings and sinuous fretwork, the whole framed by elaborate, colorful flower gardens and crushed-rock paths. It was a noble’s dacha.

He’d pictured something quite different as a wilderness retreat and for a moment he was taken aback until he remembered Teo’s Russian grandfather was a prince despite his exile and her native grandfather had sent tribute in gold each year to Korsakov. His republican sensibilities were mildly shocked, now that he’d come face to face with her dynastic background.

But his guide was already riding toward the house, so he followed, anticipation overwhelming all else in his mind. Tamyr came to the door when they dismounted, shooing a
young boy before her to take the men’s horses. And speaking quickly to the native man, she bowed slightly to Duras, her expression neutral, and ushered the men into the house. Directing the guide down a hallway, she waved Duras into a parlor. “Tea?” she said, the universal word understandable in any language.

Duras’s brows came together. “No.” He hadn’t ridden three thousand miles with only marginal sleep to be offered tea. “I want to see Teo,” he said. “Is she here?”