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- Chapter 14 - The holy land awaits the homeland’s victory—rise, soldiers, rise!
I awoke n*ked, as though fainting had stripped me bare. Jurgen had gone. He always disappeared early in the morning.
I headed for the bathroom. In the mirror, I could still see the marks on my neck — his handprints. Days had passed, yet the bruises remained, blotchy and ugly.
I was terrified of Jurgen. Even when he was kind to me, I was consumed by fear, to the point where I thought I might lose my mind. At any moment, he might put his hands around my throat again, just as he had before.
‘Maybe Archum could help me.’
The thought came suddenly. He was a good man. Hadn’t he helped me once before? Surely, he would help me again.
I left the bathroom and immediately called Archum.
— “Hello?”
“Mr. Aslankovsky?”
— “Svyeta?”
Thankfully, Archum seemed to be at home.
“Ah, yes. It’s… it’s me, Svyeta. It’s Svyeta.”
— “I’m sorry, Svyeta. I have important guests over right now…”
“Could we meet? As soon as possible…”
From the receiver, I heard a woman’s voice—questioning who I was. Likely his fiancée.
— “Svyeta, just a moment…”
Hearing Archum hurriedly explain who “Svyeta” was sent my mood plummeting. But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
— “Yes, Svyeta. Could you say that again? What’s wrong?”
“Could we meet sometime soon?”
— “Yes, Svyeta. Let’s meet. I’ll come to the Roza garage.”
“No… I’ve taken leave from the garage. Perhaps at Jurgen’s—”
Before I could finish, the door opened.
I gasped in shock; I was sitting n*ked by the telephone.
Unlike me, Jürgen was immaculately dressed in a suit and tie — he was even wearing a hat. His polished shoes gleamed as he strode towards me in long, unhurried strides.
I put the phone down, my face drained of colour. My body felt hollow, as though all the blood had drained from it, leaving me too weak to stand.
He brushed a light kiss across my lips, then held the receiver back up to my ear.
“Say it all.”
He kissed the side of my neck as he spoke, smiling faintly. A shiver of goosebumps rippled down my shoulders.
“Go on.”
He urged politely. I bit my trembling lips and squeezed my eyes shut.
From the other end, Archum’s voice called out to me.
—“Svyeta? Did the line cut off? What’s going on? Svyeta?”
“A… Archum.”
I managed to force out a rasp, barely more than a whisper. Although Jürgen had not laid a hand on me, his mere presence was enough to suffocate me.
“Beg him to help you.”
“…”
“Now.”
Jürgen pressed me again, his face expressionless. When I remained silent and still, he gripped my chin.
“I give you the chance, and still you won’t use it.”
He put the phone down on the bedside table and pressed his lips against mine. He sucked hungrily at my lips and tongue, repeatedly twisting my jaw. I had to swallow the saliva flooding into my mouth each time he did this, while tears welled in my eyes.
“sl*t.”
At the sound of that word, I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for a slap. But instead, he only returned the receiver to its place and did nothing to me.
“I never expected you to be so faithful.”
He pulled me to my feet and steadied me as I staggered, guiding me back to the bed.
“But this is far too careless. In my house, with my telephone, you call him?”
“I only meant to ask after him. Archum is my only friend.”
The shameless lie seemed only to stoke his irritation further.
“I’ll let it pass this once. But never again. Don’t ever contact Archum.”
“Why?”
“If your new tsar shoots that man in the temple, won’t you get into trouble, too?”
At his threat—though he hadn’t called it one—I answered feebly.
“Fine… I understand.”
Jürgen sighed, pulled me to my feet and led me over to the sofa. My heart was still pounding wildly and I was still in shock. He took a robe out of the wardrobe and threw it at me before sitting down opposite me.
“Put it on.”
I drew the robe around myself, watching him carefully. His mood was still visibly foul.
“I’d like to stop by my home to pack my things.”
“What things?”
“Clothes, cosmetics, and… well…”
Pathetically enough, apart from clothes and makeup, there was nothing else to bring.
“Leave them. Those rags you call clothes, and those ridiculous cosmetics.”
“Clothes I can understand, but why the cosmetics?”
Collecting makeup had been my only hobby.
“Your makeup is laughable. Almost unbearable to look at.”
His cruel, blunt judgement made my eyes fill with shame. I had deliberately applied heavy makeup, hoping to appear stronger, but I never expected him to describe it as ridiculous.
I opened my mouth to protest, but someone knocked on the door at that moment.
“Mr. Bechmann, breakfast is ready. Please come to the dining room.”
‘A housekeeper?’
The realization that someone besides him and me lived in this mansion startled me.
“Get up. Let’s eat.”
He offered his hand, but I rose on my own. Following him into the dining room, I found breakfast already laid out: brötchen, sausages, salami, kasha, blini, kefir—all spread in abundance across the table.
“Eat.”
With no appetite, I lifted the kvass first. One sweet sip and strength seemed to flow back into my body.
I forced myself to begin eating the breakfast before me.
Starving myself would achieve nothing. What I needed was the strength to find a way out of this situation.
But first, I had to find out something.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
He paused mid-slice, the knife still in his hand, and fixed his eyes on me.
“You can’t possibly not know…”
“What?”
“Remember.”
His voice was sharp, commanding, the word a demand.
“Remember what, exactly?”
“Think back. If you retrace everything slowly, calmly—from the very first moment you met me—you might find the answer yourself.”
I was not a bad person. I was cowardly and weak, yes, but I had never maligned or hurt anyone.
And yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had overlooked something. I thought back to when I first met him.
“Svyeta Antonovna “
The memory came: crawling out from beneath the car, face to face with him for the first time.
Hadn’t he already known me then? He had approached me like someone with business to settle—yet never said what it was, only left.
After that, he came back. Every day. For three whole years.
And in those years, not every memory was terrible.
Though I had felt a natural aversion to him, the more time we spent face-to-face, the more I grew… familiar with him.
Jurgen could be kind. Warm, even. Respectful, and yet at the same time insulting. Gentle, yet cold.
He was a contradiction. A man with two faces…
“Don’t force yourself to remember.”
Even now, his words contradicted themselves. Only moments ago he had pressed me harshly to recall, and now he told me not to.
“But you told me to remember.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can never forgive you. Remembering changes nothing.”
My head felt ready to burst, tangled in a confusion too heavy to bear.
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“Jurgen. Jurgen von Bechmann…”
I whispered his name again and again.
A foreign noble and the son of a rebel who led a coup? A man with whom the daughter of a rural Elkinsky landowner would never have crossed paths. If he had not sought me out, I would have lived my entire life without ever knowing him.
For a moment, I wondered if he might have been one of the serfs my father had treated so badly in the past. But no — that was impossible. He was a foreigner, and there had never been a foreigner on my father’s remote estate. There had been gypsies and Jews, yes, but Jürgen was neither.
His brother had fallen in battle, and his mother had died in a bombing; nothing about his family would have brought him into contact with mine. So what was it?
Could his mother have been from Elkinsky? Had my father, once a low-ranking official, perhaps passed an unjust sentence on her long ago?
I shook my head.
No, if his mother had been Elkinsky, his accent would have sounded much more natural. Although he spoke Elkinsky fluently, he could never quite mask the hint of Hildenbech in his speech. It’s that slight edge that betrays anyone speaking a language that isn’t their own.
“If only you would love me too.”
I pressed my aching forehead. Maybe this was just his way of expressing his spite because I hadn’t returned his feelings. There were men like that — rejected once and still holding a grudge.
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My brothers weren’t due to arrive until Thursday, which was six days away as today was Saturday. Surely I could find out something until then.
Pushing back the heavy chair, I stood up and went to the wardrobe to get my coat. Digging through the pockets, I found the small amount of money I’d kept aside for emergencies.
I got dressed and left his house, stepping out into the falling snow. I walked aimlessly, the flakes stinging my face.
“I’m going mad.”
The words spilled from me in a breathless mutter as I searched my pockets. Cigarettes. Cigarettes. Cigarettes…
“Why aren’t they here?”