When Stepan was out and on the solid ice, it broke where the captain was lying, and the captain went in. The men on the bank threw a rope. They got him out quickly, but it was the hardest frost of the winter, and there was no fire to be had for hours, and the captain's clothes froze on him before they could get them off. Stepan carried him on his back to a peasant's house far down the river. The captain lived for 3 days.
The fever went into his lungs. Stepan sat with him the whole time. He says the officers wrote fever in their letter because it was true and because it was simpler, but it was not the fever that killed the captain. It was Stephen. She had to stop.
Then she pressed her lips together and breathed and went on. He says, "The captain gave his life for mine. That is the truth. That is the thing I have carried across all that land and all that sea to put into your hands. I am the reason your brother is dead.
I have come so that you would know it from my own mouth and not from paper. You may do with me what you think right. The fire cracked. Nobody moved. The Duke stood very straight beside the mantlepiece and his face was white and he made no answer.
Then Stepan spoke again and his voice was different. It was lower and uncertain, and it was not in Russian. Anna did not understand at first. She thought he had fallen into some country dialect she did not know. Then she heard it, and the hair rose on her arms.
They were English words. They were English words spoken by a man who did not know a single word of English. They were sounds learned by ear, the vowels bent and flattened by a Russian mouth. Every syllable set down carefully in its place like something very old and very breakable. Tell Lori, Stepan said.
I was wrong to go like that. I wrote every day in my head. Tell him. Open the windows. There was a long silence.
The rain beat against the glass. He says the captain made him learn those sounds on the last night. Anna whispered. He does not know what they mean. He has said them to himself every night since, so that he would not lose a single piece of them.