The House by the Dvina Read Online Free PDF Page A

develop that strange elusive substance often referred to as the “Russkaya dusha” or “Russian soul”. It has stayed with me always, overshadowing the Scottish side of my being.
    Quietly flowed our provincial life these days in this backwater. No one at all appeared to be aware of the distant rumble of the approaching storm.
    If they were, they never said so.

CHAPTER
THREE
    In 1903, when my father, Gherman Aleksandrovich Scholts was 23, it was decided that he should go abroad. After three years at the University of Riga, he felt ready to take his late fatherТs place in the family timber business. His guardian Ч Uncle Adolf Ч and his mother thought differently.
    He would get some experience abroad first. Dundee was chosen because firms there traded with Archangel in flax and timber, and there were relatives there whom my grandmother imagined might keep an eye on her, at times, irresponsible son.
    On his first day in Dundee, Gherman was standing at the window of his hotel room Ч he used to recall that the clean streets, solid stone buildings and tidy pedestrians gave him a lasting impression of order and stability. People were strolling in the warm sun. Horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds trundled up and down the cobbled street. As he stood absorbed, he saw a young woman in a lilac suit and a white flowered hat on the opposite side of the street, walking with her fox terrier. The dog stopped, attracted by a lamp-post. Gherman found himself willing the girl to look up at him. She did so, and he saw a look of faint surprise on her face. For a moment their eyes met. Then, turning her head abruptly and giving the lead an impatient tug, she went on her way.
    Gherman found lodgings in Broughty Ferry and was taken on for two years by a firm of flax merchants. Having a natural flair for languages, he was soon talking English quite fluently, and even adopting local idioms. He travelled daily into Dundee by train and was soon accepted in their own special circle by the group of young men with whom he used to share a compartment. One day, his cousin Bertram took him to a charity dance in Broughty Ferry. It was the interval when they arrived. Young men were escorting their partners back to their places. Gherman appeared to be gazing at someone at the opposite end of the hall. “Tell me,” he asked, “who is that girl beside the one in blue?” “That,” Bertram explained, “is Nelly Cameron, the local beauty. The one in blue is her sister Agnes, and the two young men are their brothers. IТm acquainted with the family. The parents are known to be extremely strict and the brothers can be difficult. I suspect,” he concluded in a bantering tone, “you would like to meet Nelly Ч if so, I can introduce you.”
    They sauntered casually across the floor. Gherman was introduced to the two young women, their elder brother Stephen, and Henry, twin brother to Agnes.
    Nelly did not belie BertramТs description. Slim, of medium height, a flawless complexion accompanied by the classical beauty of finely chiselled features, blue eyes and dark hair coiled high in smooth perfection, she appeared to stand out above all others. Agnes, a plainer version of her sister, kept up a cheerful flow of small talk until the interval was over and the strains of a Viennese waltz came floating over the room. Couples were taking to the floor. Gherman crossed over to Nelly and bowed. A long time after, when my mother was quite old, hearing the melodies of these old-fashioned waltzes on the radio, she said to me, “No one could waltz like your father. He had a style of his own. He took long gliding steps and swung you round and round until you felt as if you were floating, your feet hardly touching the ground.”
    They danced in silence for some time. Then suddenly he asked her: “We have met before, have we not?”
    She laughed. “Yes, we have. You were the man in the window.” They danced all night after that, completely oblivious of others circling