Blood Ties (25 page)

The words had come out of her in a gush and she paused to take
a deep breath, watching him, as if demanding some kind of tribute, some
satisfaction.

"A farewell gift, Albert. What better gift than the
gift of knowledge?" She moved toward him, then he felt her lips brush
lightly against his cheeks. "Sorry about all this, sweetie. But you're all
rather clever. You'll think of something."

He heard the door slam behind him and he stood rooted to
the floor, groping for understanding.

But how? he had wanted to say, watching the car disappear
through the castle gates. Something tugged at his mind, as if the story had
been concocted out of his own wish.

"One finds it hard to refute," Karla was saying
calmly. Olga, after recalling Wolfgang's version of the burning of their
country estate and the way he had saved them, delicately picked up the teacup
and sipped.

Charles had been listening patiently, propped in the bed
watching the afternoon sunlight wash over the timberline to the west.

It had been Karla's idea, after all, to invite Olga and the
boy to the reunion. He had, of course, finally surrendered. For Karla was the
tuning fork of himself, her instincts superior to his. Of that he was certain.
It was merely a gesture of fate that she had been born a woman. Only a son, a
male, could lead the von Kassels, although in his heart he knew that Karla was
the stronger. Hadn't she proved that to him time and time again? With Emma?
With Helga? How could he have done his duty without Karla?

But he found it distasteful to reminisce about Wolfgang.
Their disagreements had been fundamental. Wolfgang had always been bookish,
argumentative, with no stomach for what had to be done with the peasants. Like
his father.

"We have too much. They have too little,"
Wolfgang would say. One could have suspected then where his future lay.

"We have earned it," Charles would protest.

"We stole it."

"We are cleverer than they."

"You mean stronger."

"That too."

Compassion Wolfgang had called it. Weakness his grandfather
had warned. Pity waters the blood, weakens the resolve. Men were destined to
clash. Life was the struggle to survive. And we must be true to our blood.

Aleksandr sat patiently in a corner of the room, munching a
cookie. The boy's resemblance to Wolfgang, even to Charles' grandfather, warmed
him. He had never seen that resemblance in his own sons.

"Something is wrong," he had confided to Karla
after the meeting that morning.

"Wrong?" He could sense her desire to calm him.
"You must not thrash around so, Brother. The right way will emerge."
He had been brooding about it all day.

Perhaps it was the loss of the land. From the land, their
Estonian lands, one could deduce a clear picture of the von Kassel heritage.
The first von Kassel traveling east-ward surely fully understood his conquest
in terms of land. That was the thing that he had always felt in his own blood,
that his grandfather had confirmed.

"They did not come to bring God. They came to find
land."

Now, without the land, it was difficult to convey the
meaning of it. At least, he had seen the land, had lived on it, smelled it,
touched it, killed for it. It was one thing to preserve the heritage of
centuries when you had the land. If your spirit needed replenishment, if you
faltered momentarily, you could always receive inspiration from the land.

Now they had lost that symbol. There was still the other.
The business of brokering arms, he had proved, could be another symbol of their
cohesiveness, of the von Kassel nationhood. That too had held them together.
That was the substitute for the land. But would the next generation carry on?
Had he done his duty?

It took will, courage, obsession. Would any of his sons
have had the will to kill the barren Emma, to banish the faithless Helga, to
have rebuilt the family business from a shell, to have sent their sons to the
far corners of the world, to protect the heritage of blood?

"So you see we are not monsters," Karla was
saying. They had undoubtedly thought he had dozed and were speaking quietly
together.

"Monsters?" he said to let them know he had been
listening.

"He wanted you to come back to us," Karla said.
It was, Charles knew, her constant theme with the Russian woman. But why? He
could understand the motive, but not the degree of her singlemindedness. Karla
is true to the blood, he thought. Was the implication that his sons, the blood
of his sons, was not worthy?

"To the reunion, yes," Olga agreed.

"I mean permanently."

"No, Karla. I doubt that. He hated the idea of the
family business as well. And he was, to the end, as you put it, a good
Bolshevik."

"He was what he was. But he must have had other ideas
for the boy."

"Perhaps." A cloud passed over Olga's face, a
hint of her indecision. "I'm not sure."

"Why then do you think you have come?" Karla
persisted. He had not seen her so agitated in years.

"My own motives are clearer. Family. The boy had a
right to see his family."

"For what purpose?"

Olga had lowered her eyes. Was it a pose, Charles wondered?
Surely, if it was, Karla would see it quicker than himself. Perhaps the woman
wanted to be persuaded, after all.

"Can we go, Mama?" Aleksandr asked. With the last
of the cookies, his child's contentment had vanished.

"Soon," Olga said, patting the boy. It was
obvious that her thoughts were elsewhere. She turned toward Karla.

"All right then. I was alone. Wolfgang had not been
able to stop talking ... you may be right ... longing for his family. If there
was some mystique, I wanted to discover it for myself." The intensity of
her explanation had made her breathless.

"So the Jew Marx could not blot out the concept of
family after all," Charles said. "Even that great archdevil could not
destroy it." Karla turned toward him briefly, narrowing her eyes, the
familiar rebuke for his exciting himself. He nodded acquiescence.

"So you see, Olga, It was predestined."

There was a long silence in the room. He could see the
highest trees of the timberline pinching the sun's orange bottom and the light
was changing rapidly. A clock on the mantlepiece ticked and the sounds of the
castle's activity barely filtered into the room, muffled by the heavy stones' protection.

"You must stay with us now, Olga. Think of the boy. Of
his future. His destiny." She reached out and patted the boy's head.
"We will send him to the best schools. We will prepare him for his proper
place. He will have his fortune." She looked at Olga. "And so will
you, Olga. That is what Wolfgang wanted."

Charles watched her lift the teacup again, sipping what
must be tepid liquid. Her fingers shook. Of course, it was what she had come
for in the first place, had longed to hear.

He lay back on the pillows, spent. Yes. He would choose
Karla. Karla knew. Karla would be the bridge between him and the others. There
was comfort in that. A bit of insurance. There would be at least a few years in
between. Karla would protect them. The von Kassels! While he rested in his
eternity with his ancestors in the Estonian ground.

The pain had begun again. As always, he felt the inner
panic. He must not die. Not quite yet. He stuck out his tongue and she placed
two pills on it.

"You really must defect, Olga. You owe it to the
boy."

The pain slowly receded and his eyes grew heavy.

Only once had Siegfried had the courage to do what had to
be done. To shut off the von Kassel spiggot. Every life had a foundation and
that had been his. He had not, he knew now, done it for Alysha. He had done it
for himself. And now, even that foundation, like everything in his life, had
crumbled.

He hated the woman, his mother, for telling him what he did
not wish to know. Mother? Damn her. How dare she intrude on his hate?

Even the induced mindlessness of alcohol had given him no
respite. His body felt chilled. His head ached. What had transpired in the few
hours before he had stumbled into bed was merely an unending series of
nightmarish meanderings, kaleidoscopic wanderings in the anguish of his mind.
He was trapped, he knew, in the equally preposterous worlds of reality and
fantasy. Nothing could demolish that inescapable fact, although he had given it
a solid try with alcohol. Vaguely, he had heard Heather's angry admonishment,
then a slammed door, and he had sunk again into the pit of nothingness.

He lay there, fists clenched, jaw tight, eyes bulging
beneath tight lids, hoping that, somehow, if he held this stance it would all
go away. Maybe it had been an apparition, an imagining, a drunken
hallucination.

When the woman had left, he had rushed to his father's
suite, thankful that there had been no answer. Then he had gone to the lobby,
standing among the Knights, waiting. Waiting for what? There was no sign of the
woman. Then his father had appeared. Alone. He had, he remembered, detected
some agitation in his father. Albert had seen him first and he had led the old
man into the rectory. His aunt's absence had confused him. The woman had made
Karla promise that she would see his father.

But if, as the woman had promised, she had told her story,
wouldn't he have been able to see it on his father's face?

And if she had not told his father, why not? Siegfried's
anxiety overheated his mind. He needed a drink. But he sat riveted to the
chair, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. To have told Dawn, a stranger,
agitated him further. He was, he was certain now, the weakest of them all.

He sat in the wing chair in the lobby for a long time,
rising when he heard the tapping of his father's cane. He saw Aunt Karla and
the Baron emerge slowly from the rectory and moved unsteadily toward them. He
followed them down the corridor to the elevator. As they waited, his aunt
turned toward him, beckoning for him to follow, and he got into the elevator
when it came.

Standing behind them as the elevator rose, he felt the full
measure of his alienation, their toleration of his presence. When they arrived
at their floor, his aunt turned, motioning with her finger, an unmistakable
signal to wait. Emerging with them, he lingered near the elevator as they moved
slowly to the Baron's suite. The Baron had barely acknowledged his presence.

Siegfried was growing impatient when she emerged, wrapped
in a coat. Saying nothing, he opened the elevator door. As he closed the gate,
Karla pressed the button and the elevator rose. It was only when they arrived
at the rampart promenade that he spoke:

"She came to me this morning," he said. He
wondered if she would be evasive. They began to walk along the graveled
promenade. At first she did not respond. The only sound was the banner of the
Old Order whipping in the wind.

"It is no good pretending, Aunt," he said without
looking at her face. "I saw her come in last night. I overheard you
talking."

They continued to walk. He sensed no contrition, no
remorse. Why had he expected that, he wondered, as if in his heart he had
already allied himself with the strange woman's aspirations.

"Where is she now?" he asked. Karla stopped
walking and turned to him.

"I sent her away." His tension eased with the
acknowledgment.

"Again?"

"Did it have any point? He is dying. You can see
that."

"And she consented to leave? Just like that? Without
any protest? Without any word? Somehow she seemed more determined than
that."

"She was determined."

"But she went?" His aunt shrugged. He felt a tug
of filial instinct, a sense of loss. But hadn't she abandoned them? He was
surprised at his flash of anger. Once he had yearned for his lost dead mother,
had cried, suffered. The early pain had been her fault. He had a right to be
angry with her.

"Good riddance," he said bitterly.

"And she didn't see him?" he asked. He could not
bring himself to say father.

"Thank God, no," she whispered. "Only
me."

"And you were able to persuade her."

"Apparently. She is gone."

He felt suddenly relieved. So nothing would change after
all. Dawn would go away. That would be the end of it. But he could not resist a
further probe.

"You know, of course, what she told me. She said that
the Baron was not our father."

"Yes. She would say that. How else to sow more hatred,
more doubt?"

"Perhaps one," he said. "I might understand
that. Even if it were me. But all three?" He took a deep gulp of the fresh
mountain air. The sun was still high. "It is absurd, of course.
Preposterous. Don't you think?"

She turned to him and gripped his arm.

"A pathological fantasy," Karla assured him.
"But, then, she never lacked gall. It was tragic. She seemed unhinged even
then." He longed to believe in the assurance.

"You are von Kassels," Karla continued. "All
quite legitimate. Even you, Siegfried."

"She said she had a lover. A Jew."

"There was no end to her contrivances," Karla
sighed. "You are von Kassels," she said firmly. "There is no
evidence to suggest otherwise. Only the ravings of an unfaithful woman."
There was another long pause. "In the end, even she realized..."

"Realized what?"

"That it was better for her to go away."

"I wanted to believe her," he confessed,
confronting the truth of himself. He needed a drink. Despite the sun's warmth,
he shivered and his legs were unsteady.

"It would have explained everything," he said.
"My life. I have never felt comfortable as a von Kassel. I wanted to
believe her."

"I'm sorry to have shattered your illusion. Not all
von Kassels felt comfortable in their roles."

Siegfried was not surprised at how easily he had accepted
her explanation. There was, after all, no point in disturbing existing
circumstances. His life's pattern had been set. If he was incredulous, he would
try to create distance from it. Changes were a frightening prospect.

By then they had traversed the full circle back to the
elevator. Recovering herself, his aunt opened the gate of the cab. She pressed
the button and the elevator moved, the ancient apparatus shivering as the cab
descended. When it stopped, he opened the metal gate. It was then that she
faced him again. In her face he saw the Baron, the same cold determined eyes,
and beneath them, the cast of mind that gave perpetual energy to the family
obsession. Against that, he could never muster more than a meek personal
rebellion. He had wondered why he could never find it in himself. Now he knew.
He was sure. He could no longer deny it to himself.

"Say nothing," she said again. "Your mother
is deranged." She turned and the doors clanged shut, emphasizing the
point. It was then that he headed for the bar.