Midnight in St. Petersburg (25 page)

As she shouldered her way through, she felt a flicker of gratitude for Horace, her teacher.
Why, I've become a real Petersburger
.

*   *   *

It was only when the tea ran out, and Munya scuttled off to ask for the samovar to be refilled, that Inna got her chance to speak to Father Grigory one to one.

Looking frail and irritable, he was complaining about the crowd of journalists outside, about his enemy-in-chief Novosyolov and various other hostile reporters. ‘Don't they have anything to write about except me?' he muttered. His eyes were flickering around the room, as they had been all afternoon. ‘I'm a nobody. A fly! I don't understand why they won't just leave me alone.'

Inna leaned forward. Cutting across his voice, she said, urgently and emphatically, ‘Father Grigory, you shouldn't be here.'

She wanted to look him in the eye. She needed to be sure he was listening. She wanted to convey to him her sense that this city was as dangerous for him as being down south had been for her. She'd been lucky to find a refuge, even if it wasn't yet a permanent one, in these streets. She'd found welcome invisibility among the canals and palaces, where her Jewishness – for now at least – no longer had the power to define her and offend others. But it was the opposite for him. He stuck out among Petersburg people. He offended them as surely as she, simply by being of her race, had offended people down south. But she didn't like the pleading note creeping into her voice as she added, ‘You can see that, can't you?'

It seemed to get his attention. With relief, she saw that the deep-set eyes he now fixed on her were as attentive and intelligent as she remembered.

Then he said, in a quite different, more alert voice, ‘Go on.'

‘Don't stay here, Father Grigory,' she repeated. ‘This city isn't good for you; it's not safe to be near people who hate you. Go home to your family. Go back to your innocence.'

He nodded, and smiled, rather sadly. ‘Oh, I've tried. Don't think I haven't. I'm always trying. That's all I want.' He sighed. ‘But they're always pulling me back here. They're such unhappy souls, all these poor little rich folk. They need me. It makes no difference whether it's the ones who love me, or the ones who hate me – none of them will let me alone.'

This was true enough, Inna knew.

‘I just don't understand
why
they're all so obsessed with me, when all I want is to live in peace,' he added, plaintive again.

This was exactly what Inna had come to tell him. She'd even brought her copy of
The Silver Dove
with her. Now she got it out of her bag and held it out to him. He didn't take it, only looked at it in puzzlement. She knew he barely read. They said his followers had had to write down his prayers and homilies for the pamphlet he'd published.

But, Inna thought, he ought to know what people were talking about. She put it down by his glass of tea.

‘You should read this if you want to understand why they're all so hysterical with you.'

He shook his head, dully.

‘Look,' she said, trying to sound patient, ‘people have got this idea in their heads that there's a great darkness waiting to engulf us all, do you see? And some of them think all that will save them is a man of God, someone pure from the peasantry – someone like you. While at the same time there are plenty of other rich people who think they're about to be destroyed by someone just like you – a poor man who'll lead the poor against them. And it's all in here, or enough to see, in this book.'

He seemed almost frightened. ‘What, you mean journalists are writing whole
books
about me now?'

‘Not journalists; and not really about
you
– that's the point – but a kind of imitation; you'll see when you read it. What you need to realize is that they
think
that's what you're like. The truth won't ever matter.'

‘But I'm not one for books,' he said. ‘I never have been.'

Inna sighed. ‘Well … it was just an idea. I simply wanted you to see. The point is, they've written you, over and over again, every possible way they can think of. Or they think they have. So they'll always ignore the real you, whatever you say or do, because they can't see you for all the imitations. All they can see is the monster, or the saviour, whom they've created in their own heads. And so it seems to me that it can't be any easier being you, here, living with their expectations, than it was being that harmless brick-factory man in Kiev who everyone was convinced had killed a child to make his Passover matzos, just because they believed that was the kind of things Jews did. Which is why I think you need to watch out for yourself. And go away.'

She nodded at him, willing the man who'd helped her reach her safety to take her advice on finding his.

Father Grigory was looking back at her, shrewdly, as if he had indeed begun to understand, when Munya rushed back in with a jug of water, and started refilling and relighting the samovar herself.

Well, Inna thought, she'd done her best. Said her piece. She could only hope he'd take her advice. She got up to go.

‘Oh, do stay,' Munya breathed. ‘Mama will be down in a minute. And I've sent the maid out for some proper country black bread for you, dear Father.'

‘And you,' Father Grigory said, finally, so gently that Inna felt they were speaking to each other's souls, ‘what about you, now you're here? Are you safe?'

A part of her wanted to respond, in a warm rush, by telling him all about the violin she was making, and about the Lemans, and the children with their Roman names, and the bedroom she slept in, right among them, which she'd made so charming, and Madame Leman's kindness while she'd been so ill.

But instead, because there was so much else she didn't want to think about, or mention, she just nodded.

His face softened, as, slowly, he nodded, too. ‘Yes, you've got people who love you to protect you. I've seen that. That's good … good. And do you have someone
you
love?'

Inna blushed. No one had asked her that before. And then she surprised herself by replying: ‘I do.'

The lines around his eyes crinkled and deepened. ‘A good man?' he asked.

‘A craftsman.'

It was only as she said this that she realized she wasn't certain whom she'd meant. Gentle, witty, kind, peaceable Horace, who'd asked for nothing, but who'd devoted so much time to her; whose company she so enjoyed, even though she'd thought him too sophisticated to feel more than compassion for her, but who, she was only just beginning to realize, might have been waiting for her to notice the feelings behind his great kindness? Or idealistic, impulsive, handsome Yasha, whom Rasputin had seen her with; Yasha, who Leman said had vanished into the revolutionary underground, without a farewell word?

No, she couldn't have meant Yasha, she told herself. Not possibly. Why, Yasha wasn't even a craftsman any more. He'd given up music, given up violin-making, and chosen to be a revolutionary strongman instead. Marcus had told her what his father had found out. Yasha had chosen conflict over love.

Her heart ached.

‘I must be off,' she said hastily, fussing over her bag. ‘Heavens, the time…'

But Father Grigory was still looking at her with that gaze of his. ‘Yes,' he said slowly. ‘You've changed, I see that. You've found your way forward. You haven't found perfect happiness, maybe; though who does, in this vale of tears? But you've chosen peace.'

He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. She felt the brush of whiskers on her cheeks as he kissed them. ‘And I should too,' he added. ‘You're right about that. There's nothing keeping me here. And how I miss my home: my village, my family. There's a train tonight. I could just go.'

But the phone started ringing again when Inna was in the hall. She stopped and looked round.

Father Grigory was striding energetically to the vibrating instrument of torment, clearly ready to give the next nuisance caller a piece of his mind.

‘What do you want?' he rasped into the mouthpiece. He didn't hold the instrument close enough to block out the answering sounds.

Then, unexpectedly, as he took in what the disembodied voice at the other end – a court lady's voice – was saying, he smiled. ‘You won't know me,' the tinny miniature voice was saying. ‘
Fascinated
by the Unseen …
enthralled
by the schismatic movement … your mastery, wisdom … I obtained your phone number from a friend … wondering …
such
an honour … pay you a visit?'

‘Why, of course,' Father Grigory said, and Inna, from the doorway, saw Munya relax. ‘Tomorrow … Eleven.'

He was dictating his address by the time Inna slipped away. So he wouldn't be taking a train tonight, after all. His curiosity had been tickled by a new admirer, his vanity flattered. Inna sighed. It wasn't just the Emperor and Empress who had him shackled to their side.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was late, but not quite late enough at night for the theatres to come out, so the Stray Dog hadn't yet come to life. No one was ready to perform. Horace liked the quiet. He liked being able to see the carefree shabbiness of the place, and to have it confirmed in his mind that people didn't come here for smart chandeliers and slick waiters and imperial grandeur, just interest in all the unusual, free-thinking other people they'd meet in this rare place.

And Inna would be along in a minute.

He poured himself a drink, but didn't touch it. He liked the cheerful expectancy in the atmosphere as the waiters prepared for the rush. He hoped that coming into this vibrant, imaginative place again would help Inna regain some of her old energy.

He sat, nursing the glass, remembering that other happy place, the Botanic Garden in Calcutta, planted with Himalayan ferns, palms and rhododendrons, by Grandpa Nat. It was known as Wallick's Pet, and was always full of picnickers, with bright cloths, chapattis, cucumber sandwiches, laughter.

How different from England. He recalled his father, stuck in that little house in South Norwood, desperate to have his oceanography papers read out at the Linnaean Society – all those travels in the Atlantic, so many notebooks filled – but never getting anywhere, because they only wanted Darwin, now. He recalled the frustrated, petulant twist to Father's chin, the disapproving Kentish servants, and Marmaduke and Collings, his brothers, drifting around not sure what jobs they were suited for back home, wondering listlessly whether to take themselves off to Canada, or Australia, and start again. And his sister Beatrice, the only one to have found a niche in England, married to a vicar, living in a Warwickshire rectory with seven children, so far away. He loved her, but if he went back, would he ever even see her?

He hadn't meant to reminisce about Wera, in the house next door at Springfield Road, but this melancholy train of thought always led back to her. She had been the only life in that whole dull place: energetic, green-eyed, undisciplined, scrambling up the tree between their gardens with her favourite ornament in her patched apron pocket, grinning down at him. Her bird cry: ‘Come and see!'

He'd never seen anything like that ornament: a glittery egg-shaped pendant, striped in gold and pink-and-white enamel, with a chain attached to its top and its bottom end studded with a tiny diamond. On each side, the curly letter ‘W' – once for ‘Wera' and once for ‘Wiensienska', he supposed. ‘Faberrrgé,' Wera breathed, with her exotic accent, those heavily rolled Rs. ‘Papa bought it when I was borrrn.'

Poor Wera, who'd been so bursting with vitality. She'd been nothing like his family, the Wallicks. She hadn't been lost at all, however disconcerted she might have been expected to feel by all her mother's marriages and moves, by all those half-sisters from all over Europe, by all those financial crises. She'd just made plans – her endless plans – with bright eyes. Parrris! Arrrt school! Escape!

He didn't like to think of the quiet marker in the churchyard; all that was left of her. Today, it was easier to think how thrilled she'd have been to know he'd made it here. And how happily she'd have laughed to see him with his client of this morning, Felix, that supremely elegant young man with the hooded eyes of the Tatar princes of old. Horace had flattered him that morning into giving him a tour of the family palace overlooking the Moika canal, and Felix had shown him one treasure after another, with a characteristic mocking twist of the lips and careless flick of the cuffs. He could almost hear Wera's voice, trembling with pride: ‘Akh, you'll never be borrred in Rrrrussia.'

No, he wouldn't go back – not to South Norwood, or anywhere else in England. Not at the age of thirty-eight, after living away so long. And not now that he'd found another young woman with that same green-eyed, electric will to live.

He looked up.

‘I'm sorry I'm late,' Inna was saying hurriedly. ‘I ran all the way.'

He stood to kiss her hand and quickly memorized her image, there in front of him, before, keeping that mental picture in his mind's eye, he bowed his head.

She still looked too thin, and anxious, but more alive than yesterday at the Mariinsky. She met his gaze and, even if it was only because she'd been hurrying, she had pink in her cheeks again.

‘Not to worry,' Horace said reassuringly. ‘As you see, nothing's started yet.' She was beginning to move easily between worlds, he thought. They might, if she would only agree, do well together. He raised his glass.

But even while he was admiring the colour in her face, his thoughts were still partly in that magnificent, absurdly overwrought house on the Moika that he'd visited this morning. Even the servants there had been exotic: Arabs, Tatars and Kalmuks with olive skins, wearing multicoloured costumes. Even the basement – a labyrinth of rooms lined with sheets of steel, with a device for flooding them in case of fire – had been packed with fine wines, plate and china for receptions, and what seemed hundreds of spare objets d'art for which there was no room upstairs.