Authors: Jasper Kent
‘
Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo
,
‘
Zheevyet myelneek na krayoo
.’
There was a growl to the old woman’s singing voice, brought on by her age and her injuries, but the tune and the words in an instant brought back memories far stronger than any Tamara had found in her face. It all came back to her. She was in her bedroom in the Lavrovs’ house – not the main room but the tiny room off it, with the little child’s bed. She could hear that same voice – the voice of her long-forgotten nanny – so much younger then, singing the same lullaby, a silly story about a miller and his children at carnival time. She picked up the next two lines.
‘
On nye byedyen, nye bogat
,
‘
Polna gorneetsa rebyat
.’
The old woman smiled perhaps the broadest smile that Tamara had ever seen. Except that she was not ‘the old woman’ any more. Neither was she ‘Natalia Borisovna’. At last Tamara knew her.
‘Domnikiia Semyonovna,’ she whispered.
Domnikiia could not smile any more widely, so instead she nodded. ‘You do remember!’ she said.
‘I do now. I didn’t when I saw you before.’
‘Neither did I,’ said Domnikiia, ‘not right away. We chose not
to
know. But when I came to Moscow … I only went there to remember.’
‘Went where?’
‘To Degtyarny Lane. I was on my way back.’
‘Back?’
‘To Irkutsk. I had to deliver a letter for Lyosha – to Tsarskoye Selo. Everything we sent was censored, so he said I should come. It was safer for me than him. I hated to leave him, but I knew it was a chance to see you – just to look at you.’
‘A letter?’ asked Tamara.
‘When we heard about the tsar’s death. Lyosha knew that Iuda would go after Tarasov. We had to warn him.’ Her voice became urgent. ‘Is he all right? Did Iuda get him?’
Tamara had no idea how to provide an answer to the question, but Domnikiia clearly needed one. ‘He’s fine,’ she said soothingly. ‘He’s fine.’
‘And then I set off back to Irkutsk, but I stopped in Moscow on the way. I heard about the murder – went to Degtyarny Lane. And then I saw you. I didn’t know it was you, but the hair reminded me. And then when you said it was your birthday, I knew it must be you.’ She coughed and Tamara saw blood on her lips. Domnikiia tried to raise her hand to wipe them, but it was impossible. She didn’t seem to understand that her arms were useless. Tamara cleaned the blood away for her.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I wanted to, Toma. How I wanted to! But I was as much an exile as Lyosha. If I’d been recognized, I’d have been arrested. And then what could I have done?’
‘But now you’ve come back.’
‘We both have. He’s free again and we’ve both come home, to see Dmitry and to see you.’
‘Aleksei’s in Moscow?’ Tamara felt a thrill deep inside her. The news was not striking in any rational way, but it was the event that she had been anticipating for months. It seemed too good to be true. So many questions would be answered.
‘We arrived today. I came straight to find you, but he wanted to see Dmitry. You understand?’
Tamara felt the urge to squeeze her former nanny’s hand, but
she
knew it would only cause pain. Instead, she stroked her face. ‘Of course I understand,’ she said. ‘Dmitry’s not your son. They deserve some time together.’ Tamara quietly contemplated the horror of Aleksei’s potential encounter with his son. She could only pray that it would never happen. ‘But you saved my life by coming to find me.’
‘I didn’t understand why you ran. Then I realized you were following that woman. I guessed what she was, and when you shot her I knew for sure.’
‘You’ve met them before?’
Domnikiia smiled again. ‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘That was always Lyosha. Do you think he’ll be proud of me?’
‘Of course he will,’ said Tamara, her enthusiasm only a little forced. ‘He’ll be so, so proud.’
‘You’ll tell him?’
‘
You’ll
tell him,’ insisted Tamara.
Domnikiia chuckled, as best she could, and shook her head. ‘You’re a good liar, Toma, just like Lyosha. You always took after him more than me, but neither of you could ever fool me. I’m not going to be seeing him again; not here. At least I’ve seen you.’ She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side, but Tamara was scarcely listening to her any more.
She had been blind, but now her mother –
her mother
– had explained it all. ‘
You always took after him more than me
.’ More like Aleksei than Domnikiia – more like her father than her mother. Aleksei was an old friend of Vadim Fyodorovich – his closest comrade. Who else but Vadim’s daughter, Yelena, would he choose to care for his bastard daughter? And little wonder she could not distinguish the hazy memories of her nanny and her mother – they were one and the same: Domnikiia Semyonovna. What better way to ensure that the mother could keep watch over the child, and yet never have the truth discovered?
It was only the Decembrist Uprising and Aleksei’s exile that had spoiled things. Tamara recalled how she had once scorned the idea that her father might be a Decembrist, but the more she had learned about Aleksei, the more she had grown to see him as a great man, of whom any child would be proud. ‘A brother and an unhailed hero of the nation,’ that was how Prince Volkonsky
had
described Tamara’s father in one of his letters. Tamara was still to discover precisely what he’d meant by that, but soon she would know. Soon she would speak to Aleksei himself.
A mother and a father and one other; a brother too – Dmitry. A brother no more – he had died before she had even known him for what he was. Now he was nothing to her. She pushed the thought from her mind. She already had too much joy and too much sorrow to bear. She threw herself down and hugged her mother, squeezing as tightly as she dared, scarcely caring about the pain she inflicted, knowing that she would gladly suffer the same and more to feel the warm body of one so long separated from her. She felt her mother attempt to return the embrace, despite her broken arms, but then she fell back. Tamara raised herself up and looked at the ancient, wrinkled, beloved face beneath her.
‘I had to go with him, Toma.’ Domnikiia’s eyes flicked frantically across Tamara’s face. ‘You must understand.’
‘I do. Of course I do,’ said Tamara. She had not stayed with her husband in Petersburg, and had never seen him again. Domnikiia’s was the wiser choice. ‘You left me in good hands.’
‘We knew they’d look after you. Because of Vadim.’
‘I’ve heard all about Vadim,’ said Tamara, feeling the sting of tears on her cheek as they infiltrated the wounds that Raisa had given her. ‘And Maks and Dmitry.’
Domnikiia closed her eyes again, but her voice was still clear, if quiet. ‘I don’t think I ever spoke to Vadim, but I know that to Lyosha he was the greatest man in the whole world. I knew Maks, and Dmitry. Maks was lovely. Marry a man like Maks, Toma, not one like Lyosha.’
‘I married a doctor – he’s called Vitaliy.’ There was no need to go into details.
Again Domnikiia’s smile spread, and then descended into a cough. Now the blood that came with it seemed not to bother her, and there was too much for Tamara to wipe away. When she had recovered, Domnikiia spoke again, quieter than ever. ‘Children?’
Tamara managed to produce the standard answer. ‘Three,’ she replied. Domnikiia said nothing, but nodded slightly, her eyes still closed. ‘Milenochka is fifteen now,’ continued Tamara. ‘Almost a woman. She’s so beautiful.’ It was so easy, and so wonderful,
to
lie about it. Domnikiia would never know of the deceit, and Tamara could experience the pleasure of pretending to someone else; something that usually she could only enjoy alone. ‘Stasik is thirteen. He wants to be a doctor, like his papa.’ Would he have wanted that? Would she have been disappointed if not? Would she and Vitya have tried to force him down that path? It did not matter; she was liberated from all such worries. She looked down at Domnikiia, but there was no response.
‘Luka’s only ten,’ she went on. ‘The other two tease him, but I think they love him even more than we do. I took him down Nevsky Prospekt a few weeks ago.’ The memory was blatantly stolen. ‘He stopped at every toyshop, and pressed his nose against the window. We spoil him – me more than Vitya, though I think Vitya buys him things and makes him promise not to tell me.’
It was pointless now. Domnikiia was dead. Tamara wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, but she was certain she had died happily with thoughts of her phantom grandchildren filling her mind.
Tamara continued to talk, telling stories about her children, Domnikiia’s head resting in her lap. Some of them were true – taken from their infancy – but most were just elaborations on the imaginings that had run through Tamara’s mind ever since. It was bliss to be reunited – mother with children. Domnikiia with Tamara, Tamara with Stasik, Milenochka and Luka.
At last she could speak no more. She hoisted the old woman up in her arms, surprised by how little she weighed. Then she began to trudge with her alongside the railway track, heading north-west towards the green lanterns, and the bridge, and the river far below.
It was the first woman he had consumed; Katyusha, if names mattered. Dmitry had followed her closely up the stairs to Milan’s rooms, eager to sense her reaction when she found what was up there, wondering whether she would perceive first the blood, or would see her lover on the couch and presume him asleep. Or would she instantly see the wounds to his neck, and understand what had befallen him? And after that, what would her reaction be with regard to Dmitry? Would she cower from him in fear, and
soon
discover her fear quite justified, or would she throw herself upon him for protection, only to find her trust in him betrayed?
What in fact resulted was merely irritating. She screamed; a loud, repeated scream that, whether by chance or design, was most likely to save her life by attracting the attention of neighbours. Perhaps he should have let them come, but instinct took him over and he hit her, his knuckles striking the line of her jaw and knocking it upwards into her skull. She fell to the floor like a pile of wet rags, and he saw blood trickling from her mouth. He knelt down. She was unconscious, but not dead. That at least would preserve the blood, but there would be little to enjoy in a victim whose awareness of her fate had lasted for so inconveniently brief a duration.
He dragged her over to the couch and hauled her up on to it, sitting her beside Milan. She didn’t groan or offer any resistance, as he had hoped. She made no movement at all. He slipped his hand inside her blouse and rested it below her breast, feeling her heartbeat. It was slow, very slow, as though she were supremely relaxed, but there was still life. Her jaw was broken and dislocated, twisted at a bizarre angle. She was no longer pretty. He would tell her that when she came round. Perhaps there was a mirror he could use to show her.
He went into Milan’s bedroom and soon found one – a simple hand-held glass in a wooden frame. He came back and sat next to Katyusha. He looked at her through the mirror, but she appeared much the same as in real life. Then he held it close to her face, so that her own reflection would be the first thing she would see when she came to. She remained oblivious to the world, but Dmitry noticed the glass become fogged by her breath. He waited, perhaps for an hour, in the hope that she would revive naturally. Perhaps she would awake only to scream again, but the pain of her broken jaw might persuade her to keep silent, at least until she realized what was about to befall her.
Eventually he became impatient. He took hold of her shoulders and began to shake her, hoping to force her back to consciousness. A strange scraping sound emanated from her broken jaw. Then at last he got some reaction; her body jerked from somewhere around her stomach, then again. A sound that he could not
make
out emerged from her throat, and then she convulsed again and retched. Unconscious as she was, and seated almost upright, there was small chance for anything to escape her body. A little of the vomit reached her mouth and dribbled down her chin. Dmitry could smell it, but he did not find the scent objectionable as he once might have done. In fact, there was much to be learned from it. He could tell that she had been eating potatoes, and cabbage, and a little chocolate.
Another spasm ripped her body, this time a cough. The reflex cleared her mouth, spattering flecks of half-digested food across the room. Afterwards she was still again. Dmitry had hit her too hard – he had been forced to act without thinking. She was, for most purposes, as good as dead. She would never come round and if he waited too long she might escape him for ever. In her current state, there was still some enjoyment to be gained from her.
He knelt beside her on the couch and pulled her hair to one side, away from her neck. Her face was now a parody of what it had once been, even Dmitry could tell that. Her jaw still hung loose and bent, but the rest of her face was limp, as if paralysed. Strands of bile still dripped from her lips. Dmitry pressed his face into her neck and bit, at first tasting the vomit that coated her skin, but then feeling his mouth fill with the warm, rich blood that spurted from her pierced vein. He drank deeply, and forgot his disappointments over the manner of his feeding.