There was something about Kamenka at twilight when the shadows lengthened across the lawn and the missel thrush began its staccato song in the top of the pine tree.  It was the comforting sense of changelessness: the old servant shuffling about lighting the lamps and the distant clatter of plates in the kitchen.  He lapped it up, letting the heavily scented dusk and the whirr of moth wings over the flower beds lull him.  Kamenka was a last refuge from the world.  His life was an hourglass with the sand rushing through it:  the prizes and awards, the Imperial honours, the gala performances and invitations. 

He heard the ringing of a bell announcing the arrival of a visitor and the low murmur of the old servant as she took the message from the porter. 

"Antonin Vronsky, requests that you see him on business."  The old woman hesitated, her chin trembling, "Urgent business, he says."

The name crashed into the twilight, hard edged, cutting a ragged swathe through the lavender scented evening, splintering it all to smithereens.  A chaos of images tumbled through Pyotr's mind: the shape of a head, the nape of a neck, the way the hair curled around the ears; eyes with a green light in them; a smell of nervous sweat overlaid with brandy; the press of a body: sudden and hot, simmering with threat.

"Tell him… ask him to wait."

"He said it was urgent."

"Just give me a moment."

He sat, oblivious to the flickering of the little bats that hunted the moths.  It was Panya's drawing room that filled his mind's eye and the reek of sweat was in his nostrils, in which he could not distinguish his own from the memory of the other.

He'd paused in the middle of speaking to an over-dressed widow shackled by necklaces of jet.

The face of the young officer had imposed itself across a crowded room.   Everything in the room became dim and blurred, except for that smile growing ever more gigantic, blotting out the triviality of Panya's party.  It floated above the silver and crystal drawing him towards it, demanding to be introduced.

As he advanced towards the smiling vision, he thought that in a less handsome face the gleaming gash of teeth would have been too fierce. 

The officer clicked his spurs and unleashed his smile once more.  "I came in search of pretty women and find myself presented to our greatest musical genius."

"Oh, yes, pretty women, no doubt you've been struck by several, all falling over themselves to get at your scarlet uniform."

"I don't always get what I really want."

"And what is it that you want?"

"Happiness.  Isn't that what we all want?"

"Ah, happiness, we may want it, but there is always fate preventing us from reaching it.  And life is very short, there is so little time."  And he thought of the sand trickling away in the hourglass.

"Tell me about your music.  Where does the sadness of your music come from?"

"Where does it come from?  If I were to tell you that… Shall we step outside?  It's too warm in this room." 

Pyotr inhaled the evening air and the faint tang of the officer's sweat, glimpsing out of the corner of his eye the droplets of brocade glinting on a scarlet sleeve. 

"Why are you smiling?" asked the officer.

"Just remembering…"

He was reminded of a game he'd played with Panya when they were little.  The game involved a boy, the gardener's son, who would have been a few years older than Pyotr and his sister.  The boy delivered the vegetables to the kitchen in a barrow and one day Panya called to him with her imperious voice.  He came across the lawn and stood swinging his large hands awkwardly.  "Do sit down, tell us what you have been doing,"  Panya said.  And they both stood up and ushered him into the room, ceremoniously, guiding him to a chair.  His boots were caked with mud and little clods were breaking off and falling onto the silk rugs.  The boy tried to slip away but Panya was too quick:  "You can't leave until we've finished talking to you… Anyway, have an almond,"  and she pressed a sugared oval into his hand.  He sat there staring at it in his palm.  "Do you like our room?  Do you like the wallpaper?  Father brought it from St Petersburg last autumn but already it's a little grubby."  The boy stood but Panya took him by the shoulders and forced him down into the chair.  "It's grubby isn't it, our wallpaper?"  He mumbled something and flushed red.  "What's that?  Are you saying that our house is dirty?"  And she caught Pyotr's eye and they began to giggle.  They fell into each other's arms and laughed helplessly as the gardener's son fled.
 
"I was remembering that in summer we would have picnics in the meadow.  And there is a little summerhouse over there just beyond the fir plantation.  You must come to our country retreat, Vronsky, I insist upon it."

"I would need to get special leave but if you insist."

"I do insist.  You must come.  You shall be entertained as you have never been entertained."  Pyotr took the young officer by the hand and led him down the veranda steps into the thick meadow grass.

*        *        *

It had been an intoxication: Vronsky's lithe nakedness against his own; exciting aromas of tobacco and horse sweat; the sight of a broad equine chest, darkly furred.  But later, bruised and battered he'd felt the heat of shame.  His nostrils clogged with mucus and a taste of grit and blood in his mouth had taken the edge off his passion.  Twice more: in a hotel and barrack's storeroom he'd opened his animal being and howled silently into pillow and meal sack respectively.  And quite suddenly the urge was spent and he never wished to see Vronsky again.

And there was much to do, always so much, and so little time.  Pyotr Ilych composed in a fury:  an opera, a ballet and three concertos.  

*        *        *

Vronsky was out walking out in the birch woods.   He watched a falling leaf.  The autumn was coming.  The leaf settled on the brown surface of the river and was carried away, slowly turning as it went.  They said that the army camps on the Yenisei were filthy, that the lice swarmed in winter and the mosquitoes in summer. 

Later, pacing the room he shared with two other officers, he kicked a bottle and it rolled across the floor that was littered with soiled underwear and torn playing cards. 

You must come to Kamenka, Pyotr Ilyich had written.  You must stay with me there.  Lord, I've precious little to keep me company, except for Panya and the servants.  Panya just wants to talk about the children's fevers and curtains.  And the servants… well, what on earth can you say to servants?

But, after promising to write again, Pyotr had not and next month Vronsky would be posted five hundred miles up the Yenisei River and might not get leave enough to visit St. Petersburg for two years.  If only he could persuade Pyotr Ilych to buy him out of his commission, if only. 

He began to throw things into a saddlebag.  If he could get Letkov to cover his guard duty he could ride overnight to Kamenka in three hours and be back by the following morning. 

Letkov grumbled:  "If it's that girl in the village, the redhead, she's just a tease.  You'll never get anywhere."

"We'll see!"  shouted Vronsky from the saddle feeling a great surge of hope. 

*        *        *

He rang the bell, trembling with excitement.  A porter met him and an old woman eventually received him.  She scrutinised him with eyes almost lost in the scrumpled flesh of her face, before leading him through the house to the sitting room. 

Vronsky had prepared many things to say but, at the merest glimpse of Pyotr's face, he realised that none of them could ever be said.

"Vronsky you're here?" uttered Pyotr, not moving.

"Yes, I've come." 

The curtains of the little sitting room moved in a faint breeze.  There was the tiny dry flapping of poplar leaves from the trees in the garden.

Vronsky knew that he would never succeed in expressing with words the thoughts that were so perfectly formed inside his chest.  He could have put everything to rights by taking hold of Pyotr - as he'd once pulled a soldier from a frozen river and pummelled him back to life.  The things he felt were in the muscles of his arms - if only he could get at Pyotr.  

Vronsky made a sudden lunge and captured Pyotr in his embrace.  "I've wanted to come and see you for so long.  Come, give me a hug.  It's been two months since we met.  No, no, don't try to get away from me."  He laughed and squeezed tighter.  "I can't forget the night we spent together in the summer.  The starlight, the scent of jasmine… didn't you find it very beautiful?"

"Yes, but … really I don't like to be crushed."  Having freed himself, Pyotr straightened his dressing gown, tugging at a loose sash.  He took a cigarette from a lacquered box and lit it. 

Vronsky followed all these little actions.  He watched the smoke disperse in the light from the little lamp. 

Pyotr suddenly turned:  " Vronsky, will you stop… just stop staring.  I really can't…"

At that moment a bat flitted into the room through the open doors, it glided round swiftly, turning backwards and forwards, then as quickly as it entered, it left.

"You're cruel."

"I, cruel?"

"You know I'm in love with you."  The words reverberated stupidly off the silk-papered walls.  The little laughing harlequin standing on the bookcase, glinted.

"Ah,"  Pyotr regarded Vronsky, whose hair was unkempt and dull.  The man looked as though he'd not slept.  There were purple lines under his eyes.  Pyotr smiled his brightest:  "Now, let us talk about this calmly.  You ought not to talk about such things."

"Can't I say such things?  Why not?"

"That's enough, Vronsky.  Sit down.  Stop pacing about; you're making me feel ill."

"You think that my feelings are worthless?"  He drew his sword and brandished it.  The blade flashed in the pastel-coloured sitting room. 

"I could cut this room to ribbons."

"Careful!"  Pyotr Ilyich stepped back as Vronsky swung the sword gouging plaster from the wall.

"Would you like me to kill myself?  I'll disembowel myself right here on the carpet."  Veins stood out on Vronsky's forehead and his nostrils flared.

Pyotr was suddenly inspired by the shining eyes.  They had something of the hard glittering beauty he remembered from their first meeting.

"Wait Vronsky, you've no need to say these things," and he reached out a tentative hand.

"No, don't touch me!"  Vronsky threw himself backwards and a small table toppled, shattering a china bowl.

How these banal objects were transformed by the thrumming anger of Vronsky.  The composer could hear the flutes, the strings, and a sonorous snare drum beating the rhythm of Vronsky's disappointment:  the furious tempo matched the surge of blood through the arteries. From Vronsky's mouth came a low moan, the note of a long-drawn viol.  Then the horizon blackening with a marching army.  It was great this rage, rising up like a god with bronze limbs and saturnine brows.  The tramp of boots was louder now, a deafening percussive beat.  It was Pyotr's urge to be conquered, ridden into the ground, churned in the mud…

Then Vronsky folded as though he'd been punched, as though all the air had been forced out of him.  "What can I do?"  His voice was flat and small.  And abruptly it was over.

Pyotr reached out and brushed the sleeve of Vronsky's coat.

"Don't touch me, ever again."

Pyotr suppressed a smile.  There was something unstable about the man - to arrive in this way.   His unwashed smell made Pyotr's nostrils twitch and what was it on his uniform, a stain of beetroot?

The old servant came in at that moment with tea, placing the samovar on the little table, ignoring the disarray of the room.  Her lips moved as she lit the wick of the little spirit heater beneath the samovar, screwing up her face with concentration.  She straightened up and smiled at them, a fraction longer than necessary.

"That will do Lyudmila, thank you," said Pyotr, moving towards the table.  "Tea Vronsky?"  And the china cups tinkled aridly as he held them up to the samovar.