Master of Petersburg (19 page)

‘
Wachsam, wachsam!
' whispers Nechaev meaningfully, and, over her head, wags the burned finger at him. Then he is gone.

It takes a moment to make sense of the strange syllables. Even after he has recognized the word he fails to understand. Vigilant: vigilant about what?

Matryona is at the window, craning down over the street. There are quick tears in her eyes, but she is too excited to be sad. ‘Will he be safe, do you think?' she asks; and then, without waiting for an answer: ‘Shall I go with him? He can pretend he is blind and I am leading him.' But it is just a passing idea.

He stands close behind her. It is almost dark; snow is beginning to fall; soon her mother will be home.

‘Do you like him?' he asks.

‘Mm.'

‘He leads a busy life, doesn't he?'

‘Mm.'

She barely hears him. What an unequal contest! How can he compete with these young men who come from nowhere and vanish into nowhere breathing adventure and mystery? Busy lives indeed: she is the one who should be
wachsam
.

‘Why do you like him so much, Matryosha?'

‘Because he is Pavel Alexandrovich's best friend.'

‘Is that true?' he objects mildly. ‘I think I am Pavel Alexandrovich's best friend. I will go on being his friend when everyone else has forgotten him. I am his friend for life.'

She turns away from the window and regards him oddly, on the point of saying something. But what? ‘You are only Pavel Alexandrovich's stepfather'? Or something quite different: ‘Do not use that voice when you speak to me'?

Pushing the hair away from her face in what he has come to recognize as a gesture of embarrassment, she tries to duck under his arm. He stops her bodily, barring her way. ‘I have to . . .' she whispers – ‘I have to hide the clothes.'

He gives her a moment longer to feel her powerlessness. Then he stands aside. ‘Throw them down the privy,' he says. ‘No one will look there.'

She wrinkles her nose. ‘Down?' she says. ‘In . . .?'

‘Yes, do as I say. Or give them to me and go back to bed. I'll do it for you.'

For Nechaev, no. But for you.

He wraps the clothes in a towel and steals downstairs to the privy. But then he has second thoughts. Clothes among the human filth: what if he is underestimating the nightsoil collectors?

He notices the concierge peering at him from his lodge and turns purposefully toward the street. Then he realizes he has come without his coat. Climbing the stairs again, he is all at once face to face with Amalia Karlovna, the old woman from the first floor. She holds out a plate of cinnamon cakes as if to welcome him. ‘Good afternoon, sir,' she says ceremoniously. He mutters a greeting and brushes past.

What is he searching for? For a hole, a crevice, into which the bundle that is so suddenly and obstinately
his
can disappear and be forgotten. Without cause or reason, he has become like a girl with a stillborn baby, or a murderer with a bloody axe. Anger against Nechaev rises in him again.
Why am I risking myself for you
, he wants to cry,
you who are nothing to me?
But too late, it seems. At the instant he accepted the bundle from Matryona's hands, a shift took place; there is no way back to before.

At the end of the corridor, where one of the rooms stands empty, lies a heap of plaster and rubble. He scratches at it halfheartedly with the toe of his boot. A workman stops his trowelling and, through the open door, regards him mistrustfully.

At least there is no Ivanov to follow him around. But perhaps Ivanov has been replaced by now. Who would the new spy be? Is this very workman paid to keep an eye on him? Is the concierge?

He stuffs the bundle under his jacket and makes for the street again. The wind is like a wall of ice. At the first corner he turns, then turns again. He is in the same blind alley where he found the dog. There is no dog today. Did the dog die the night he abandoned it?

He sets the bundle down in a corner. The curls, pinned to the hat, flap in the wind, both comical and sinister. Where did Nechaev get the curls – from one of his sisters? How many little sisters does he have, all itching to snip off their maiden locks for him?

Removing the pins, he tries in vain to tear the hat in two, then crumples it and stuffs it up the drainpipe to which the dog had been tied. He tries to do the same with the dress, but the pipe is too narrow.

He can feel eyes boring into his back. He turns. From a second-floor window two children are staring down at him, and behind them a shadowy third person, taller.

He tries to pull the hat out of the pipe but cannot reach it. He curses his stupidity. With the pipe blocked, the gutter will overflow. Someone will investigate, and the hat will be found. Who would push a hat up a pipe – who but a guilty soul?

He remembers Ivanov again – Ivanov, called Ivanov so often that the name has settled on him like a hat. Ivanov was murdered. But Ivanov was not wearing a hat, or not a woman's hat. So the hat cannot be traced to Ivanov. On the other hand, might it not be Ivanov's murderer's hat? How easy for a woman to murder a man: lure him down an alley, accept his embrace against a wall, and then, at the climax of the act, search his ribs and sink a hatpin into his heart – a hatpin, that leaves no blood and only a pinprick of a wound.

He goes down on his knees in the corner where he tossed the hatpins, but it is too dark to find them. He needs a candle. But what candle would stay alive in this wind?

He is so tired that he finds it hard to get to his feet. Is he sick? Has he picked up something from Matryona? Or is another fit on its way? Is that what it portends, this utter exhaustion?

On all fours, raising his head, sniffing the air like a wild animal, he tries to concentrate his attention on the horizon inside himself. But if what is taking him over is a fit, it is taking over his senses too. His senses are as dull as his hands.

14

He has left his key behind, so has to knock at the door. Anna Sergeyevna opens it and stares in surprise. ‘Have you missed your train?' she asks. Then she takes in his wild appearance – the shaking hands, the moisture dripping from his beard. ‘Is something wrong? Are you ill?'

‘Not ill, no. I have put off my departure. I will explain everything later.'

There is someone else in the room, at Matryona's bedside: a doctor evidently, young, cleanshaven in the German fashion. In his hand he has the brown bottle from the pharmacy, which he sniffs, then corks disapprovingly. He snaps his bag shut, draws the curtain to across the alcove. ‘I was saying that your daughter has an inflammation of the bronchi,' he says, addressing him. ‘Her lungs are sound. There is also –'

He interrupts. ‘Not my daughter. I am only a lodger here.'

With an impatient shrug the doctor turns back to Anna Sergeyevna. ‘There is also – I cannot neglect to say this – a certain hysterical element present.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means that as long as she is in her present excited state we cannot expect her to recover properly. Her excitement is part of what is wrong with her. She must be calmed down. Once that has been achieved, she can be back in school within days. She is physically healthy, there is nothing wrong with her constitution. So as a treatment I recommend quiet above all, peace and quiet. She should stay in bed and take only light meals. Avoid giving her milk in any of its forms. I am leaving behind an embrocation for her chest and a sleeping-draught for use as required, as a calmative. Give her only a child's dose, mind you – half a teaspoon.'

As soon as the doctor has left he tries to explain himself. But Anna Sergeyevna is in no mood to listen. ‘Matryosha says you have been shouting at her!' she interrupts him in a tense whisper. ‘I won't have that!'

‘It's not true! I have never shouted at her!' Despite the whispering he is sure that Matryona, behind the curtain, overhears them and is gloating. He takes Anna Sergeyevna by the arm, draws her into his room, closes the door. ‘You heard what the doctor said – she is overexcited. Surely you cannot believe every word she says in that state. Has she told you the entire story of what happened here this morning?'

‘She says a friend of Pavel's called and you were very rude to him. Is that what you are referring to?'

‘Yes –'

‘Then let me finish. What goes on between you and Pavel's friends is none of my business. But you also lost your temper with Matryosha and were rough with her. That I won't stand for.'

‘The friend she refers to is Nechaev, Nechaev himself, no one else. Did she mention that? Nechaev, a fugitive from justice, was here today, in your apartment. Can you blame me for being cross with her for letting him in and then taking sides with him – that actor, that hypocrite – against me?'

‘Nevertheless, you have no right to lose your temper with her! How is she to know that Nechaev is a bad person? How am I to know? You say he is an actor. What about you? What about your own behaviour? Do you act from the heart all the time? I don't think so.'

‘You can't mean that. I do act from the heart. Once upon a time I may not have, but now I do – now above all. That is the truth.'

‘Now? Why all of a sudden now? Why should I believe you? Why should you believe yourself?'

‘Because I do not want Pavel to be ashamed of me.'

‘Pavel? Pavel has nothing to do with it.'

‘I don't want Pavel to be ashamed of his father, now that he sees everything. That is what has changed: there is a measure to all things now, including the truth, and that measure is Pavel. As for losing my temper with Matryona, I am sorry, I regret it and will apologize to her. As you must know, however' – he spreads his arms wide – ‘Matryona does not like me.'

‘She does not understand what you are doing here, that is all. She understood why Pavel should be living with us – we have had students before – but an older lodger is not the same thing. And I am beginning to find it difficult too. I am not trying to eject you, Fyodor Mikhailovich, but I must admit, when you announced you were leaving today, I was relieved. For four years Matryona and I have lived a very quiet, even life together. Our lodgers have never been allowed to disturb that. Now, ever since Pavel died, there has been nothing but turmoil. It is not good for a child. Matryona would not be sick today if the atmosphere at home were not so unpredictable. What the doctor said is true: she is excited, and excitement makes a child vulnerable.'

He is waiting for her to come to what is surely the heart of the matter: that Matryona is aware of what is passing between her mother and himself and is in a frenzy of possessive jealousy. But that, it seems, she is not yet prepared to bring into the open.

‘I am sorry about the confusion, sorry about everything. It was impossible for me to leave tonight as I had planned – I won't go into the reasons, they are not important. I will be here for another day or two at most, till my friends help me with money. Then I will pay what I owe and be gone.'

‘To Dresden?'

‘To Dresden or to other lodgings – I can't say yet.'

‘Very well, Fyodor Mikhailovich. But as for money, let us wipe the slate clean between the two of us right now. I don't want to belong to a long list of people you are in debt to.'

There is something about her anger he does not understand. She has never spoken so woundingly before.

He sits down at once to write to Maykov. ‘You will be surprised to hear, dear Apollon Grigorevich, that I am still in Petersburg. This is the last time, I hope, that I will need to appeal to your kindness. The fact is, I find myself in such straits that, short of pawning my coat, I have no means of paying for my lodging, to say nothing of returning to my family. Two hundred roubles will see me through.'

To his wife he writes: ‘I stupidly allowed a friend of Pavel's to prevail on me for a loan. Maykov will again have to come to the rescue. As soon as my obligations are settled I will telegraph.'

So the blame is shifted again to Fedya's generous heart. But the truth is, Fedya's heart is not generous. Fedya's heart –

There is a loud knocking at the door of the apartment. Before Anna Sergeyevna can open it, he is at her side. ‘It must be the police,' he whispers, ‘only they would come at this hour. Let me try to deal with them. Stay with Matryona. It is best that they do not question her.'

He opens the door. Before him stands the Finnish girl, flanked by two blue-uniformed policemen, one of them an officer.

‘Is this the man?' the officer asks.

The girl nods.

He stands aside and they enter, pushing the girl before them. He is shocked by the change in her appearance. Her face is a pasty white, she moves like a doll whose limbs are pulled by strings.

‘Can we go to my room?' he says. ‘There is a sick child here who shouldn't be disturbed.'

The officer strides across the room and whips open the curtain. Anna Sergeyevna is revealed, bending protectively over her daughter. She whirls around, eyes blazing. ‘Leave us alone!' she hisses. Slowly he draws the curtain to.

He ushers them into his own room. There is something familiar about the way the Finn shuffles. Then he sees: her ankles are shackled.

The officer inspects the shrine and the photograph. ‘Who is this?'

‘My son.'

There is something wrong, something has changed about the shrine. His blood runs cold when he recognizes what it is.

The questioning begins.

‘Has a man named Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev been here today?'

‘A person whom I suspect to be Nechaev, but who does not go under that name, has been here, yes.'