Tempting Fate (60 page)

“You aren’t Italian, Laisha.” It was not an explanation, but it diverted her a moment.

“Yes, and sometimes Gaetano acts as if that were a crime. I’ve told him I’m Russian, which I probably am. He doesn’t approve of Russians.” She folded her arms as they went toward the conservatory.

“It’s fashionable to disapprove of Russians. You mustn’t blame him. He doesn’t disapprove of you.” He held the door for her so that she could step into the plant-filled room. The air here was pungently green, very rich, as if a seed tossed into the air could sprout from it. Laisha wrinkled her nose. “Why does Principessa Antonino let you stay here?”

“She and I are old friends,” Ragoczy explained, motioning her to a marble bench.

“She must be sixty.” Laisha sat down, taking care with her new clothes.

“Seventy-two, in fact.” Ragoczy did not sit, but picked up a long smock from its hook by the potting bench. He donned this, continuing to speak with Laisha. “I have known various members of her family for a good portion of my life.”

Laisha puzzled over this, then took her courage in her hands. “She said something to me when she was here, something about you.”

Ragoczy stopped in the act of adding potting soil to a small wooden tub. “Oh? What was it?”

“She said that you hadn’t changed, in all the years she has known you.” It was frightening to say such things. She could feel a tension she did not understand gather in Ragoczy’s mind.

After a bit, Ragoczy resumed his task and said with a lack of concern he was far from feeling, “Those of my blood generally age very slowly. The Principessa, like many old people, is kindly in her memories.”

“Is that all?” Her fingers were gripping the unyielding marble.

To his sorrow, Ragoczy discovered that he could not lie to his child. “No. It is not all. But it is enough.”

Laisha jumped to her feet, her face pink and her deep brown eyes swimming with tears. “Why won’t you tell me? Why do you always pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about? I don’t care what you’ve done. Everyone kills people in war, or they are killed. You don’t trust me. You think I’m as much of a child as Gaetano does, and it isn’t fair!” She pounded her fists against her legs as her voice rose.

“No, no, Laisha,” Ragoczy protested, distressed. He had always known she was an observant child, and living so close to him, as she had done, he ought to have anticipated this moment. He had known there would be a time when he must offer her some explanation, but he had hoped that it would be later, when he was more prepared to face her disgust. And when would that be? he asked himself sardonically. Would there ever be a time when he could face her revulsion, her loathing?

“What is it?” she demanded, the tears coming at last.

He put his trowel aside and came to her, taking her into his arms. “Laisha, my girl, my child, my daughter, no, no.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” she asked again, pressing her face into his shoulder.

“Because,” he said quietly, stroking her hair as he spoke, “I am afraid.”

Her tears ended in a hiccup. “That can’t be—”

“It is.”

“—the reason.” She brought one hand up and wiped her eyes. “I cry all the time here. Gaetano said that I’m worse than the Italians.”

“Russians have that reputation,” Ragoczy said with a trace of amusement.

“Papa, I keep
asking
and
asking
and
asking,
and all you do is put me off with another tale, or information about the Romans. What
is
it?” She sniffed, uncertain of what to do next.

“Laisha Vlassevna, can you trust me?” he asked her, and felt her nod. “Then will you believe me when I say that I am no criminal, at least not in the accepted sense. I have done things that have been against the law, but such things cannot affect you. You tell me that you have heard the Principessa speak of me. You told me a few months ago that Roger would not answer your questions. I have not done this to harm you, my child, but because I feared then, and I fear now, what you would feel…” He stopped, and went on in a gentler tone. “I admit that I am older than you think me. Much older.” He met her eyes as she looked at him.

“How much older?” she asked in a whisper.

“A great deal older.” He stepped back from her, taking her hands in his. “My friend Olivia, whom I mentioned to you? Do you recall her?”

“Yes. You said she died in Rome.”

“So she did. In 1658.” He watched her face as she considered what he had said.

“But if you knew her…” She was breathless, and her hands tightened on his without warning. “If you knew her, you were … alive then.”

“Yes.” His face was somber now, his dark eyes intent.

Her face blanched. “Oh.” It was hardly audible, and for that reason more devastating to Ragoczy.

“Do you begin to see why I am afraid?” He released her hands. “I should not have told you, not now. In a few years, I might have found a way to prepare you for this, but…” He could not ask her what she felt toward him now. As often as he had faced the abomination of others, there had never been as much pain for him as there was now, as he looked at the girl who had become his child. What would she do, he thought, if he had told her the whole truth—that it had been nearly four thousand years since he rose from his grave, that he was not quite what she thought him—in the plainest language? With this minuscule piece of information, Laisha was staring at him, eyes enormous in her face, mouth half-open. He could offer her no consolation, no lying promises that he was a sort of conjurer’s trick.

“Papa?” she whispered.

He clung to that word with all the strength of his despair. “Yes?”

“I … I won’t tell anybody.” It was the only thing she could say to him. Her feet, she thought, were turned to marble, and her body was somehow not her own. She could not move, either to flee or to seek the protection of Ragoczy’s arms.

“Thank you.” He was able to keep the irony from his voice, but not his sadness.

“I won’t.”

“Yes, you have told me so.” He saw how ambivalent she felt, how deep in conflict she was. Against his better judgment, he stretched out his hand to her, justifying the action to himself by deciding that an adult might have the right to choose whether or not to reject him, but someone as young as Laisha would need the reassurance to gain confidence. He knew it for the rationalization it was, but he did not withdraw his hand.

For Laisha, that simple, pleading motion broke the spell that held her. She dashed forward, flinging herself against Ragoczy’s chest, her arms tightly around him. “Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa,” she repeated, as if in prayer.

With nameless gratitude, Ragoczy put his arms around his daughter. Often, when consumed with grief, he had wished that he had not lost the ability to weep; now he had no tears for joy. If Laisha could accept so much, she might one day be willing to know him for what he was, and not shrink from him. But what would he say to her? My daughter, I drink blood
but not your blood.
“My child.”

“Is that why you don’t want to live in Zurich?” she asked a bit later.

Ragoczy had gone back to his potting, but he paused in his work. “It is one reason, yes. There are two eminent professors there, men of great learning. I worked with them more than forty years ago, and should I live there, they would call on me, out of courtesy, unless I chose to be a recluse. Which I prefer not to do. Recluses attract too much attention to themselves.”

“But they never see anyone. How can they?” She had passed her initial shock and was caught in the first tremors of excitement. Her guardian; her father, was not just an exiled nobleman, which she had long assumed; he was uniquely old, a man of great experience and mystery. And he had taken her in. Her youthful vanity began to assert itself once more.

“For the very reason that no one sees them. What more fertile ground for speculation? I have tried to be isolated, but it does not suit me or my … nature. A foreigner like me must be visible, or he becomes an object of suspicion. That still may occur, of course, but when one has friends, well, there are certain options available.” He took a small jar from a rack by the potting table and opened it.

“What options?” She had braced her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

He began to mix a bit of the fluid from the jar with water. “First, there is being abreast of the news. Someone living away from society does not hear those first whispers that may mean survival to him. Then, there will be those who take the time to warn him when there is danger. That is most essential. And a man with friends has a degree of power—it can easily disappear, but it is better than nothing.” That had happened to him in the past, too often. “A man who has friends is less easily made a scapegoat.”

“But then…” She faltered. “The nobles of Russia had friends.”

“True enough, but most of them were other nobles. They needed friends among the peasants.” He poured the liquid mixture over the seedling in the tub.

She considered this. “Because it was the peasants who revolted?”

“In part. The peasants and those who aligned themselves with their cause. You may see echoes of the same thing here, with the Duce. He offers an alternative to the aristocracy, though what he proposes is simply a different set of nobles.” He picked up the tub and set it on one of the platforms. Most men would have had to struggle with such a burden, but he lifted it easily.

Laisha waited until he had finished arranging the tub to his satisfaction. “Papa, would the professors in Zurich recognize you?”

“Very probably. We were colleagues, and one of them worked with me on a daily basis for more than eight years.” He had selected another tub. “We have been asked to call on the Cabrinis around sunset. Do you mind seeing Gaetano twice in one day?”

“Oh, no,” she said, her humor improving. “If he says anything too silly, I will try not to laugh.”

“You’re a woman of the world today, are you?” He was once again mixing potting soil.

“Not yet,” she admitted. “One day I will be. I’ll be tall and very elegant, like Ariana Scintelese. I’ll wear lace stockings that cost hundreds of marks a pair and dress only in silk. I think one of those long ivory cigarette holders would be right, don’t you?” Her voice deepened in an attempt to achieve the rich, husky sound of the sensual, sophisticated women she had seen and longed to emulate.

“You’ll probably be tall,” Ragoczy allowed. “For the rest of it, if that is what you want to be, then by all means indulge yourself. But if you don’t truly feel inclined to being a social siren, don’t waste your time with it.” He had taken another seedling and was setting it in the large tub.

“I wouldn’t do it capriciously,” she protested, shamming insult “Only stupid women do such things for mere amusement.”

“Mere amusement,” he repeated, chuckling once, a little bitterly, as he thought of the women at the resorts of Tegernsee and Bad Wiessee. Their interest in him was, as he knew too well, mere amusement.

“I think I would like to be passionate. My heart would be broken many times, but my soul would shine as bright as diamonds.” She opened her arms, exclaiming as she did, “I want to be enthralling!”

Ragoczy poured more of his mixture over the seedling. “What poets has Gaetano been reading to you? And don’t tell me that he has not been reading you poetry.”

Laisha dropped her arms and gave an embarrassed titter. “Leopardi, Guerazzi, di Giacoma, and some of D’Annunzio. He’s the one who’s in trouble. And sometimes he reads me Byron. His English is very bad.”

“Is yours good?” he asked in an affectionate tone.

“It’s better than his.” She got up from the bench and came over to the potting table. “What are you doing?”

“Transplanting. The Principessa has a desire to line her drive with pine trees, and so I have offered to grow them for her.” He indicated another four seedlings. “These are the last of them. I’ve prepared most of the others already.”

“How strange. Pine trees.” She gave him a wistful smile. “I miss the pines at Schloss Saint-Germain. I didn’t think they would matter at all, but while we were in Venezia, I began to ache for the sight of a grove of trees,
any
trees.”

“It isn’t practical to have a large grove of trees in Venezia,” he chided her as he set the next tub in place.

“No. I liked Venezia. I think I like Verona, too. Italy is a golden country, Papa, but I’m starting to want to see Schliersee again.” She clasped her hands together, a bit self-consciously.

“Do you want to go back?” There was no criticism in his voice, nor any hint of it in his expression.

She nodded. “I would like that. I miss Roger and … and Nikolai. I am quite sensible about Nikolai now.”

“Yes, I realize that. And so does Nikolai. He has said so to me. We all realize that you needed time to have that infatuation run its course.” He was quite certain that she did not wish to be reminded of how devotedly she had followed Nikolai.

“I’ve thought that perhaps one of the reasons you agreed to bring me with you to Italy was that you were afraid that if I remained at Schloss Saint-Germain I would pursue Nikolai again.” She unclasped her hands. “I wouldn’t do that, Papa. I wouldn’t … not anymore.”

“Yes, girl, I know,” Ragoczy said, continuing his work on a third tub. “I told you that none of us blamed you for your feelings. They were intense, but that’s to be expected.”

“If you remind me again that I am young, I will scream,” she warned him, her eyes brightening.

“Then I won’t, but that will not change the facts. Ma si muove.” He set another seedling pine in place.

“What does that mean?” she asked, recognizing her father’s deft way of changing the subject, but unable to resist it.

“It means, ‘but it still moves.’ Galileo said it or something like it, when he was forced to recant. He had published a paper that said the earth moves around the sun, and—”

“But it does!” Laisha exclaimed.

“Yes. But the Church did not agree. Your reaction just now was his. He recanted but remarked that it changed nothing. Ma si muove.” He reached for his special liquid and dribbled it onto the little pine sprout.