Authors: Jasper Kent
‘What do you mean, no one inherited it?’ she asked.
‘She was a tenant, just as I am. I still pay the rent to the same man. Never met him. He’s called Makarov; Vasiliy Denisovich.’
Another step forward. ‘His address?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. I merely make payments to his bank – on Great Meshchanskaya Street.’
‘I see,’ she said. It wasn’t far from here, but she’d never get them to reveal information on their customers without a letter of authority from Yudin at the very least. ‘Who lives in the apartment now?’
The bookseller lowered his voice and glanced from side to side before speaking. ‘A young woman,’ he said. ‘She’s visited regularly by a major general. We exchange “good mornings”, but I don’t know her name. Not at all appropriate for the neighbourhood, but what can one do?’
Tamara took her leave.
‘I hope I haven’t shocked you,’ said the man in a raised voice as she departed, making Tamara suspect that he hoped he had. She went back to the door of the apartment and delivered her letter. The new tenant might have her reasons not to make any reply, but if they could get in touch, their shared profession might allow Tamara to elicit a little more from her than otherwise.
She turned back towards Nevsky Prospekt, but before she could move very far she heard a shout. She turned and saw the bookseller, his upper body protruding from the shop door and his hand waving a small piece of paper. She walked back over to him.
‘I remembered that I had this.’ He handed her the paper. ‘It was in case there was any mail, but there’s been nothing for years now.’
She reached into her bag and took out her notebook, jotting down the details. She thanked the man again and went on her way. This was a big step. The address the man had given her was less than half an hour’s walk away, and the name was one she already knew.
Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov.
‘Oh!’ said Tamara.
It was a large apartment, occupying the first and second storeys of a building overlooking the Fontanka. Tamara had asked whether Dmitry Alekseevich was at home. Given Yudin’s assertion that Dmitry was in Sevastopol, she did not expect a
positive
response, but her hopes were raised by the fact that the footman, without any real response, had led her straight through to a drawing room. After announcing her, he had shown her in, and Tamara had felt a sense of disappointment to discover only a woman of about forty seated on a divan.
‘Can I help you?’ said the woman. She was thin, to a degree that indicated she tried very hard so to be. Her hair was blonde, but almost certainly it was not her natural colour. Her eyes seemed instantly resentful of her visitor.
‘I was hoping to find Dmitry Alekseevich,’ said Tamara.
‘Major Danilov is fighting for his country.’
‘Of course. You must be very proud.’
‘Is your husband in the military?’
‘My husband is dead.’ Tamara immediately regretted saying it – not because the woman’s supercilious pride did not need deflating, but because it was an insult to Vitya to use his death as a pawn in a social encounter. Even so, it had the desired effect.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman, dropping her eyes to the floor. ‘Do please sit down.’ She offered her hand. ‘I’m Svetlana Nikitichna.’
Tamara took her hand briefly and then sat. ‘An unusual name,’ she said.
Svetlana smiled. Tamara guessed she had heard the comment before. ‘My parents were lovers of Zhukovsky.’ Four decades earlier Zhukovsky’s poem had begun to popularize the name; it fitted with Tamara’s estimation of the woman’s age.
‘I was actually here to enquire about your husband’s family,’ said Tamara, deciding that directness was the best approach.
The response was almost too quick. ‘My husband has no family – other than myself.’
‘His father is still alive.’
Svetlana’s eyes flared. ‘But he has the propriety to pretend otherwise. We’ve heard nothing from him for years.’
‘He never writes?’
‘In my opinion, it is his only expression of decency.’
‘You knew him?’ asked Tamara.
Svetlana shook her head. ‘We weren’t married until 1840.’ The same year as Tamara.
‘So you knew Marfa Mihailovna?’
‘Oh yes.’ Svetlana did not smile at the memory. ‘You know men and their mothers. We should have lived further away. Fortunately Mitka’s service took us abroad for much of the time.’
‘He must have been devastated when she died.’ Tamara had already gathered enough not to imply that Svetlana might also have been.
Svetlana’s eyes glared at the suggestion that Tamara might know her husband’s mind, but she controlled herself. ‘We were in Bessarabia,’ she explained. ‘Mitka was putting down the revolution.’
‘It was cholera?’ Tamara hated saying the word.
Svetlana nodded. ‘We couldn’t even get back for the funeral. It had to be done … quickly.’
‘Did you inform Aleksei Ivanovich?’
‘Of course – but he maintained his silence. If it hadn’t been for Vasya, I don’t know how Mitka would have managed.’
‘Vasya?’ Tamara already had an inkling of who it might be.
‘Actual State Councillor Yudin – he’s an old family friend.’
Tamara already knew of the connection with Dmitry, but perhaps it went further. ‘He knew Aleksei?’
Svetlana suddenly became annoyed. ‘I’ve really no idea – and why should I tell you if I did?’
‘I just want to find out about Aleksei Ivanovich.’
‘Well, he’s Mitka’s father, not mine.’
Tamara rose. She would get no more from Svetlana. ‘Perhaps I should call when he returns.’
‘You could try. I don’t imagine he’ll be leaving Sevastopol soon though.’
Tamara offered her hand and tried to smile in a way that wouldn’t further anger Svetlana. It seemed to work. Svetlana took it and managed a brief smile in return.
‘I’m sorry to have been so intrusive, Svetlana Nikitichna. But the Decembrists are still important.’
‘Not to me – but Mitka’s father is certainly important to him. I’m sure he’ll speak to you on his return, though as I say, that may not be for a very long time.’
Tamara left and headed back to her hotel. It had not been a hugely productive day, but she had learned one more name – Vasiliy
Denisovich
Makarov. And she held a much greater hope of Dmitry returning soon than his wife seemed to – but then she probably wasn’t as au fait with the military situation as Tamara. From what Tamara had heard, Sevastopol would fall within days.
Even from the grave, Bonaparte had reached out and taken his revenge on Russia. All the pieces were in place: a French army led – however remotely – by a new Napoleon; a desperate retreat by a broken army; a rickety bridge which men, horses and civilians must cross in order to escape. Admittedly the weather was different – late summer rather than the depths of a freezing winter – but other than that it was the Berezina reborn. And there was one other difference: today it was Russia, not France, who retreated.
Defeat, when it came, had come quickly. It was only the previous day that Dmitry had shouted orders for his men to fire on the French infantry as they advanced remorselessly towards the third bastion. They’d been lucky. The attack had been repelled. In a moment of calmness Dmitry had looked to his right, towards the fourth bastion, and seen that there too Totleben’s defences had held against the British onslaught. But then he had looked to his left. He saw no soldiers advancing, no barrage of artillery, no collapsing battlements. What he did see told him, without room for debate, that Sevastopol was defeated.
Atop the Malakhov Tower, red, white and blue, the French tricolour fluttered in the breeze.
He had paced back through the deserted streets of the city towards the naval barracks, where he knew other officers would be assembling, a dark anger descending upon him. For the first time in the whole war, he hated the French and hated the British and hated all of them who had come to deprive Russia of her rightful access to the Black Sea. He had suffered the war, with its disease and death, but in the end it was defeat that he could not stomach. He felt, for once, like a patriot.
At headquarters there was no dissent over the conclusion that the loss of the Malakhov would mean the loss of the city within days – perhaps hours. The eventuality had been planned for. Work on the pontoon bridge stretching north from Fort Nikolai had begun in the summer. Everyone knew its purpose, but few
dared
to speak of it. The pretence of hope was a greater comfort. Details of how to phase the evacuation were carefully drawn up. No one spoke of comparisons with the Berezina.
Dmitry felt his movement come to a halt. He opened his eyes and gazed upwards. It was dark now – he could see the stars and the looming figures of the three men who carried him, using his greatcoat as a stretcher. Although they were no longer moving, he still felt a gentle sensation of rocking from side to side, as though he were on a boat. He could only guess that they were dead centre of the bridge by now. Most of the city had already escaped across it – escaped north across the Sea Harbour to the Severnaya where they might retrench; or at least where their further retreat was not blocked by so immovable a geographical feature.
The previous evening it had all seemed so straightforward – as if to plan was the same as to act. Dmitry remembered that no man had looked into another’s eyes as they spoke, as if it might allow them to forget what was to become of the city once they departed.
Then someone had muttered the name of Rostopchin.
All understood the implication. Again it went back to 1812, but this time not to Napoleon’s retreat but, just months earlier, to his occupation of Moscow. Dmitry had heard the story countless times from his father. Moscow’s governor, Fyodor Vasilievich Rostopchin, had given orders, before his departure, that fires should be set throughout the city. The inferno had raged for five days, razing two thirds of the buildings. Some now doubted whether it had actually been Rostopchin who gave the order, but it made no difference to the outcome. Moscow had become untenable; Napoleon had been forced to retreat, and therein had lain his downfall. Whoever had issued the command, they had shown the truest love for the city – preferring to see it destroyed over falling into the hands of another.
Dmitry did not know how deeply he loved Sevastopol, but he had been one of the first to volunteer to lead a party of fire-starters. As the multitude had moved north, towards Fort Nikolai and the bridge that would lead them to safety, Dmitry and teams like his had spread out through the city. They set the first fires in the south, in areas that had already been evacuated. Even there they found some who continued to hope; to believe that the city
could
be saved. They were sailors mostly, for whom Sevastopol had been the only home they had ever really known; the only home that didn’t rock from side to side with the motion of the sea. A blow from the stock of a musket or a poke from its bayonet moved them on and Dmitry hoped they would have the sense to leave with the rest of the evacuees – or at least not to come back here.
Each time he thrust a flaming torch into the piles of tinder and paraffin that he and his men had laid he almost laughed at the futility of it. Enemy cannon had already flattened more than half of the city’s buildings – and there had been no let-up in the shelling even today. Who could it benefit to see the other half reduced to ashes? And yet Dmitry was beyond rationality. The sense of purposelessness that had held him when he arrived in Sevastopol was now doubled. Briefly he had thought that Tyeplov had given him a reason to carry on, but Tyeplov had betrayed him. Now, all Dmitry had to fulfil him was his duty. And if duty meant to destroy what the French wanted to take, then that was all the better.
‘Time to go, sir,’ his sergeant had shouted as dusk began to fall. Dmitry, the sergeant and three
ryadovye
had been out there for hours. They’d started a dozen conflagrations, but had not stayed to see the outcome of any. Already they’d heard the shouts of advancing troops, just streets away from them.
‘Just one more,’ Dmitry replied, looking up at the edifice in front of him. They were in the east of the city, on the other side of the Sea Harbour from the naval barracks. Dmitry knew the house well enough. It was to there that he had followed Ignatyev and Tyeplov and their unwitting victim, so many weeks before; there that he had seen Ignatyev feeding; there that he had seen Tyeplov gazing into a mirror – and understood what he truly was. It would make a fitting farewell to the city, and to his memories of it.
They set the fire quickly. The sergeant had pointed out that the back of the house was bombed out anyway, but by then they’d done most of the work. Dmitry stood and watched as the flames took hold – despite his men’s pleas that they should get away. It was an ending for him. Tyeplov might be anywhere, but for
Dmitry
he was nothing any more. Dmitry truly believed it.
Then the gunfire had begun. The redcoats were on them in seconds – ten of them; more likely a reconnaissance party than an occupying force. One of the
ryadovye
dropped to the ground in the first volley, but Dmitry knew their only hope was to counterattack before the British could reload. They raced down the street, sabres raised. Dmitry heard a yell form in his throat that was taken up by his comrades. Almost as they fell upon the enemy, Dmitry dispatched two of them with swift strokes of his blade. His pistol dealt with another. Then the butt of a gun caught him under the chin and he fell backwards. Around him he could see his comrades continue to fight, but they were outnumbered. The Englishman who had knocked him down stood over him, his
shtutser
reloaded with the same speed that Tyeplov had displayed months before. Dmitry could see straight down the length of the rifled barrel, and beneath it a finger coiling around the trigger. He tried to raise himself up, but his head still swam from the blow. He began a prayer that he knew he would not have time to complete.