Scarlet in the Snow Read Free Page A

would long since have beaten a path to her door, and I’ll wager she too would go into service with Old Bony for it. Not that there’s any danger of that for either of us. For who has seen Old Bony these days? Not a single soul. Not once in a hundred years has she shown her long thin nose and sharp teeth to people anywhere. Who knows, maybe her brand of magic, the magic you hear of from the old stories, cannot survive in our modern world of telegraphs and trains and typewriters.

    It’s said that Christmas has its own magic and perhaps that’s true, for only a week later came some good news, in the shape of a messenger from Count Igor Bolotovsky, a wealthy landowner who lived two or three hours’ drive from us. In a note, the Count said that he had just remarried for the second time, to a woman much younger thanhimself. It was her birthday very soon and he had decided that he wished to give his new bride a portrait of herself as a present, and he wanted Mama to paint it. Clearly, he had not heard Captain Peskov’s rumours, or if he had he didn’t care. He would pay well for it, he said. But there were two conditions: first, it was to be a surprise, so Mama could not go to his house to paint a likeness from life, but must take it from the photograph he had enclosed. And second, as the Countess’s birthday was in a week’s time, the painting must be ready and delivered to his mansion within the week.
    Normally, it takes Mama anything from two weeks to two months to complete a portrait. To do one in just a few days, without even the subject there for sittings, would be a hard undertaking, especially as she had come down with a bad cold. But equally there was no way Mama could refuse the Count’s imperious request, not with things being the way they were. Besides, this was the first time he’d ever commissioned her, and it might be the start of something good. So she began work immediately, shutting herself up in her studio all day and much of the night, with Sveta and I running in and out keeping the little stove in the studio well fed with wood so she could stay as warm as possible.
    Mama would occasionally let me stay a while and I’d watch her painting, marvelling at the transformation from blank canvas to living scene. She painted the young Countess in a beribboned hat and pale blue dress, holding a basket of peaches against a background of summer flowers, the kind of flowers Mama herself loves so much.Every time I looked at the painting, I felt as though winter was no longer with us. I could smell the flowers, taste the juicy peaches on my tongue. Mama made the Countess look beautiful, much more beautiful than the pretty but bland little face in the photograph, and I knew that the Count would love it.
    She painted and painted and in just three days, it was finished. But the effort had been too great for her, and the cold that she’d managed to hold at bay during the painting frenzy came back with a vengeance. Weak, coughing, eyes streaming, limbs aching, Mama was so sick that there was no way in the world she could possibly keep her promise and deliver the painting in time. And if she didn’t, there’d be no fee, for the Count had made it quite clear he would not pay if his conditions weren’t met to the letter. Somebody else would have to go, and not Oleg or Vanya either, for Mama was sure the Count would not be happy if the painting was delivered by a servant. One of us would have to go, she said.
    ‘Oh, but, Mama, you know I’m a nervous driver,’ said Anya fretfully.
    ‘And I’ve got a sore throat,’ said Liza, coughing for good effect.
    Now, I knew very well that those were just excuses, and that actually neither of my sisters felt like leaving the nice warm house for a tedious errand through the snowy fields. But who cared? It gave me a chance to help. ‘I’ll go, Mama,’ I offered. ‘I’m perfectly well, and I love to drive.’
    ‘Oh, but you are so young, and you’ve never driven so far .