Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [124]
It was another of those silent meals, frequent of late, the only noise an occasional slurp. With each spoonful Igor saw the wrath building up in his father. Finally the old man brought a hamlike fist down on the table making the entire room rumble. “My own flesh and blood leaving the house and the land of his fathers!”
Alexander nearly choked trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. His father roared again. He dropped his spoon. “I’m telling you for the fiftieth time. I am going to Rostov at the invitation of the District Planning Committee. It is the greatest opportunity in my life. We will be reorganizing clear down to the Georgian border. Can’t you understand how important this is to me?”
“Nothing is more important than your own farm.”
“You’re wrong, Poppa. The revolution is more important.”
“It seems to me,” the father answered with a trembling voice, “that we have lived through enough years of bloodshed and sorrow. First the war took half our sons, then the revolution, and then the counterrevolution. Is there to be no peace? What kind of a revolution is it that turns a son against his own father and his own land.”
“The old ways are gone.”
“Gone, hell! Generations of Karlovys have been born, lived, and died on this land! Don’t you tell me they’re gone!”
“Poppa, for God’s name. The counterrevolution has failed. We’ve been bled dry for centuries. The people want a new life.”
“I will thank you not to repeat Red slogans under this roof.”
“This is not a slogan, Poppa. Glinka has stood here for three hundred years without a school or a hospital. Don’t you want to see Igor read and write. Don’t you want to see women like your own wife give birth without losing three or four children.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “Freedom is life, my son. We have heard all of the talk of reform before. Here ... this land ... this is freedom. You are a Kuban Cossack and that is freedom. If there is anything we have learned it is to smell out those who would take freedom from us.”
The young man pushed away from the table. “What the hell’s the use of talking.”
An impasse had been reached. A final impasse. The flame of revolution was destined to burn in the young man’s heart, alone. The father was lost to the son just as the old ways were gone. Alexander turned, shoved open the curtain across his alcove, and grabbed his carpetbag. His mother and his brother began weeping.
He went to her and kissed her and he tousled his brother’s hair. “Study Igor, study. The future will belong to those who study.”
The father and the son stood face to face. “Shall we shake hands, Father? Will you wish me a good journey?”
Gregory Karlovy arose, but his hands remained at his sides. He turned his back. “May God protect you,” he whispered after the door slammed shut.
Igor whistled their secret code, three times like a marsh swallow, then skittered down the bank through the tall grass to the clearing where Natasha waited for him. They were on the slightest of knolls on a point in the bend of the river; nearby stood a huge and ancient willow tree whose limbs draped to the water’s edge.
It was midday. The air hung still, the land aflame with oranges and reds and golds. A raftsman swirled past them, poking his long pole into the opposite bank to push him back midstream. Voices of song drifted to their hearing from over the fields.
Natasha’s great brown eyes were filled with fear and she was trembling. “I’m so glad you’re here, Igor ...”
“It wasn’t easy to come,” he said, mindful only of his own problems. “Alexander left home for good last night. He has gone to Rostov to join the Reds. I lay awake all night trying to think of what life will be like without Alexander. I could hear Momma crying and Poppa moaning in his sleep.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Never mind. Well, what is so important?”
Natasha drew a deep breath and tried to speak, not knowing if she could; and then he saw her anxiety.