Read Online The Alien by Josephine Bell - Free Book Online Page A

happened. After a week he went back to the house. He found it was taken over by his peasants. They had broken in, destroyed, desecrated, were still enjoying a drunken orgy on stolen wine from the cellar. A Russian was in charge. All the servants left behind, except Vassili, had fled.’’
    â€œThey murdered my father, my mother, Anna, Nadia? Their own people murdered them?’’ Boris raised haunted eyes. “I sent that message,’’ he said. “For their safety. I had been carried in the retreat far behind the line of the Russian zone. We knew nothing about the pact until three days after it was signed. We were surrounded and virtually made prisoner. But they were in a hurry, the Russians. They could not delay just then to dispose of us. We escaped massacre. I had a plan to get away from them, I and two others and my batman, Ivan. As we got nearer to my home, into country Ivan and I knew as well as our own faces, I managed his disappearance with a message to my father. That they should leave and hide and I would meet them.’‘
    â€œYou! It was you who should have got them out? Vassili did not know that. He managed to get away after the killing.’’
    â€œMy father will have told no one. Not even my mother.’’
    The old man nodded, understanding very well the desperate secrecy needed in those appalling times.
    â€œAnd then?’’
    â€œOur direction was changed. For no reason or for very good reasons. Ivan never came back. Perhaps he never delivered my message—’’
    â€œHe must have done so, since they were gone the day I passed through.’’
    â€œPerhaps he was killed – or captured – or turned traitor – to either enemy. We shall never know. The plan failed. I was taken into Russia. You know the rest.’’
    â€œIvan was killed with the rest of your family.’’
    It was the general who spoke. He had been so quiet since their arrival that Boris had almost forgotten his presence. His harsh voice, stating a harsh fact, struck a sudden flush into Boris’s cheek. His own voice was harder than usual as he answered, “What evidence have you for that?’’
    â€œThe word of a brother officer, now dead.’’
    Scziliekowicz, aware of the sudden tension in the room and suspicious of its cause, took refuge in the decanter.
    â€œLet me fill your glass, general,’’ he said, quickly interposing himself between the other two as Boris rose slowly to his feet. “Count?’’
    â€œI shall never use that title,’’ said Boris, grief and anger mixed in his tone. “It died with my father and with the land stolen from him. I am Boris Sudenic, without any prefix, to you and to all my friends.’’
    The general’s eyes gleamed with sudden amusement, but he said nothing, turning away with his drink in his hand to sit down for the first time since he entered the flat. Scziliekowicz also sat down near Boris, who slowly followed the example of the others.
    Their death-laden revelations, their sharp emotions, had exhausted all three. Now they could only sit, cut off by the long crimson velvet curtains from the happy lights and moving London crowds outside under the warm summer sky, each turning over the sad pages of a cruel history, stunned by its excessive horror, its indecisive, lamentable sequel. They saw the scenes of their childhood, the country of their love and allegiance, as it were through a coating of transparent ice, a thick, terrifying icicle of slow-dropping perpetual frost, a never-ending winter of imprisonment.
    Boris rose at last, quiet, polite, with apologies for staying so long and for being the cause of so much distress to his host.
    â€œNot at all, my dear Boris,’’ Scziliekowicz assured him. “I hope to see more of you. Much more. We cannot expect any immediate change – you understand me – but any up-to-date detail from behind