Master of Petersburg (9 page)

As a child he used to spy on visitors to the household and trespass surreptitiously on their privacy. It is a weakness that he has associated till now with a refusal to accept limits to what he is permitted to know, with the reading of forbidden books, and thus with his vocation. Today, however, he is not inclined to be charitable to himself. He is in thrall to a spirit of petty evil and knows it. The truth is, rummaging like this through Anna Sergeyevna's possessions while she is out gives him a voluptuous quiver of pleasure.

He closes the last drawer and roams about restlessly, not sure what next to do.

He opens Pavel's suitcase and dons the white suit. Hitherto he has worn it as a gesture to the dead boy, a gesture of defiance and love. But now, looking in the mirror, he sees only a seedy imposture and, beyond that, something surreptitious and obscene, something that belongs behind the locked doors and curtained windows of rooms where men in wigs and skirts bare their rumps to be flogged.

It is past midday and his head still aches. He lies down, pressing an arm across his eyes as if to ward off a blow. Everything spins; he has the sensation of falling into endless blackness. When he comes back he has again lost all sense of who he is. He knows the word
I
, but as he stares at it it becomes as enigmatic as a rock in the middle of a desert.

Just a dream, he thinks; at any moment I will awake and all will be well again. For an instant he is allowed to believe. Then the truth bursts over him and overwhelms him.

The door creaks and Matryona peers in. She is clearly surprised to see him. ‘Are you sick?' she asks, frowning.

He makes no effort to reply.

‘Why are you wearing that suit?'

‘If I don't, who will?'

A flicker of impatience crosses her face.

‘Do you know the story of Pavel's suit?' he says.

She shakes her head.

He sits up and motions her to the foot of the bed. ‘Come here. It is a long story, but I will tell you. The year before last, while I was still abroad, Pavel went to stay with his aunt in Tver. Just for the summer. Do you know where Tver is?'

‘It's near Moscow.'

‘It's on the way to Moscow. Quite a big town. In Tver there lived a retired officer, a captain, whose sister kept house for him. The sister's name was Maria Timofeyevna. She was a cripple. She was also weak in the head. A good soul, but not capable of taking care of herself.'

He notices how quickly he has fallen into the rhythms of storytelling. Like a piston-engine, incapable of any other motion.

‘The captain, Maria's brother, was unfortunately a drunkard. When he was drunk he used to ill-treat her. Afterwards he would remember nothing.'

‘What did he do to her?'

‘He beat her. That was all. Old-fashioned Russian beating. She did not hold it against him. Perhaps, in her simplicity, she thought that is what the world is: a place where you get beaten.'

He has her attention. Now he turns the screw.

‘That is how a dog must see the world, after all, or a horse. Why should Maria be different? A horse does not understand that it has been born into the world to pull carts. It thinks it is here to be beaten. It thinks of a cart as a huge object it is tied to so that it cannot run away while it is being beaten.'

‘Don't . . . ,' she whispers.

He knows: she rejects with all her soul the vision of the world he is offering. She wants to believe in goodness. But her belief is tentative, without resilience. He feels no mercy toward her.
This is Russia!
he wants to say, forcing the words upon her, rubbing her face in them. In Russia you cannot afford to be a delicate flower. In Russia you must be a burdock or a dandelion.

‘One day the captain came visiting. He was not a particular friend of Pavel's aunt, but he came anyway and brought his sister too. Perhaps he had been drinking. Pavel was not at home at the time.

‘A visitor from Moscow, a young man who wasn't familiar with the situation, got into conversation with Maria and began to draw her out. Perhaps he was only being polite. On the other hand, perhaps he was being mischievous. Maria got excited, her imagination began to run away with her. She confided to this visitor that she was betrothed, or, as she said, “promised.” “And is your fiancé from the district?” he inquired. “Yes, from nearby,” she replied, giving Pavel's aunt a coy smile (you must think of Maria as a tall, gangling woman with a loud voice, by no means young or pretty).

‘To keep up appearances, Pavel's aunt had then to pretend to congratulate her, and to pretend to congratulate the captain too. The captain was of course in a fury with his sister, and, as soon as he got her home again, beat her without mercy.'

‘Wasn't it true, then?'

‘No, it wasn't true at all, except in her own mind. And – it now emerged – the man she was convinced was going to marry her was none other than Pavel. Where she got the idea I don't know. Maybe he gave her a smile one day, or complimented her on her bonnet – Pavel had a kind heart, that was one of the nicest things about him, wasn't it? And maybe she went home dreaming about him, and in no time dreamed she was in love with him and he with her.'

As he speaks he watches the child sidelong. She wriggles and for a moment actually puts her thumb in her mouth.

‘You can imagine what fun Tver society had with the story of Maria and her phantom suitor. But now let me tell you about Pavel. When Pavel heard the story, he went straight out and ordered a smart white suit. And the next thing he did was to call on the Lebyatkins, wearing his white suit and bearing flowers – roses, I believe. And though Captain Lebyatkin didn't at first take kindly to it, Pavel won him over. To Maria he behaved very considerately, very politely, like a complete gentleman, though he was not yet twenty. The visits went on all summer, till he left Tver and came back to Petersburg. It was a lesson to everyone, a lesson in chivalry. A lesson to me too. That is the kind of boy Pavel was. And that is the history of the white suit.'

‘And Maria?'

‘Maria? Maria is still in Tver, as far as I know.'

‘But does she know?'

‘Does she know about Pavel? Probably not.'

‘Why did he kill himself?'

‘Do you think he killed himself?'

‘Mama says he killed himself.'

‘No one kills himself, Matryosha. You can put your life in danger but you cannot actually kill yourself. It is more likely that Pavel put himself at risk, to see whether God loved him enough to save him. He asked God a question – Will you save me? – and God gave him an answer. God said: No. God said: Die.'

‘God killed him?'

‘God said no. God could have said: Yes, I will save you. But he preferred to say no.'

‘Why?' she whispers.

‘He said to God: If you love me, save me. If you are there, save me. But there was only silence. Then he said: I know you are there, I know you hear me. I will wager my life that you will save me. And still God said nothing. Then he said: However much you stay silent, I know you hear me. I am going to make my wager – now! And he threw down his wager. And God did not appear. God did not intervene.'

‘Why?' she whispers again.

He smiles an ugly, crooked, bearded smile. ‘Who knows? Perhaps God does not like to be tempted. Perhaps the principle that he should not be tempted is more important to him than the life of one child. Or perhaps the reason is simply that God does not hear very well. God must be very old by now, as old as the world or even older. Perhaps he is hard of hearing and weak of vision too, like any old man.'

She is defeated. She has no more questions. Now she is ready, he thinks. He pats the bed beside him.

Hanging her head, she slides closer. He folds her within the circle of his arm; he can feel her trembling. He strokes her hair, her temples. At last she gives way and, pressing herself against him, balling her fists under her chin, sobs freely.

‘I don't understand,' she sobs. ‘Why did he have to die?'

He would like to be able to say: He did not die, he is here, I am he; but he cannot.

He thinks of the seed that for a while went on living in the body after the breathing had stopped, not yet knowing it would never find issue.

‘I know you love him,' he whispers hoarsely. ‘He knows that too. You have a good heart.'

If the seed could only have been taken out of the body, even a single seed, and given a home!

He thinks of a little terracotta statue he saw in the ethnographic museum in Berlin: the Indian god Shiva lying on his back, blue and dead, and riding on him the figure of a terrible goddess, many-armed, wide-mouthed, staring-eyed, ecstatic – riding him, drawing the divine seed out of him.

He has no difficulty in imagining this child in her ecstasy. His imagination seems to have no bounds.

He thinks of a baby, frozen, dead, buried in an iron coffin beneath the snow-piled earth, waiting out the winter, waiting for the spring.

This is as far as the violation goes: the girl in the crook of his arm, the five fingers of his hand, white and dumb, gripping her shoulder. But she might as well be sprawled out naked. One of those girls who give themselves because their natural motion is to be good, to submit. He thinks of child-prostitutes he has known, here and in Germany; he thinks of men who search out such girls because beneath the garish paint and provocative clothes they detect something that outrages them, a certain inviolability, a certain maidenliness.
She is prostituting the Virgin
, such a man says, recognizing the flavour of innocence in the gesture with which the girl cups her breasts for him, in the movement with which she spreads her thighs. In the tiny room with its stale odours, she gives off a faint, desperate smell of spring, of flowers, that he cannot bear. Deliberately, with teeth clenched, he hurts her, and then hurts her again and again, watching her face all the time for something that goes beyond mere wincing, mere bearing of pain: for the sudden wide-eyed look of a creature that begins to understand its life is in danger.

The vision, the fit, the rictus of the imagination, passes. He soothes her a last time, withdraws his arm, finds a way of being with her as he was before.

‘Are you going to make a shrine?' she says.

‘I hadn't thought of it.'

‘You can make a shrine in the corner, with a candle. Then you can put his picture there. If you like, I can keep the candle lit while you are not here.'

‘A shrine is meant to stand forever, Matryosha. Your mother will want to let this room when I am gone.'

‘When are you going?'

‘I am not sure yet,' he says, evading the trap. And then: ‘Mourning for a dead child has no end. Is that what you want to hear me say? I say it. It is true.'

Whether because she picks up a change in his tone or because he has found a raw nerve, she flinches noticeably.

‘If you were to die your mother would mourn you for the rest of her life.' And, surprising himself, he adds: ‘I too.'

Is it true? No, not yet; but perhaps it is about to be true.

‘Then may I light a candle for him?'

‘Yes, you may.'

‘And keep it burning?'

‘Yes. But why is the candle so important to you?'

She wriggles uncomfortably. ‘So that he won't be in the dark,' she says at last.

Curious, but that is how he has sometimes imagined it too. A ship at sea, a stormy night, a boy lost overboard. Beating about in the waves, keeping himself somehow afloat, the boy shouts in terror: he breathes and shouts, breathes and shouts after the ship that has been his home, that is his home no longer. There is a lantern at the stern on which he fixes his eyes, a speck of light in a wilderness of night and water. As long as I can see that light, he tells himself, I am not lost.

‘Can I light the candle now?' she asks.

‘If you like. But we won't put the picture there, not yet.'

She lights a candle and sets it beneath the mirror. Then, with a trustingness that takes him by surprise, she returns to the bed and rests her head on his arm. Together they regard the steady candle-flame. From the street below come the sounds of children at play. His fingers close over her shoulder, he draws her tight against him. He can feel the soft young bones fold, one over another, as a bird's wing folds.

8

He enters sleep, as he enters sleep each night, with the intent of finding his way to Pavel. But on this night he is woken – almost at once, it seems – by a voice, thin to the point of being disembodied, calling from the street below.
Isaev!
the voice calls, over and over, patiently.

The wind in the reeds, that is all, he thinks, and slips gratefully back into sleep. Summertime, the wind in the reeds, a blue sky flecked with high cloud, and he tramping along a stream, whistling, a cane in his hand with which he idly lashes the reeds. A whirr of weaver-birds. He halts, stands still to listen. The song of the grasshoppers ceases too; there is only the sound of his breathing and the reeds shaking in the wind.
Isaev!
calls the wind.

He gives a start and is at once wide awake. It is the dead of night, the whole house is still. Crossing to the window, peering into moonlight and shadow, he waits for the call to be renewed. At last it comes. It has the same pitch, the same length, the same inflection as the word that still echoes in his ears, but it is not a human call at all. It is the unhappy wail of a dog.

Not Pavel, then, calling to be fetched in – only a thing that does not concern him, a dog howling for its father. Well, let the dog-father, whoever he is, go out in the cold and dark and gather in his arms his gross, smelly child. Let him be the one to soothe it and sing to it and lull it to sleep.