Midnight in St. Petersburg (9 page)

Inna was relieved when the bell rang, breaking the tension.

The two newcomers were men, who came in murmuring together. One was young and languid, with a mocking half-smile on his startlingly handsome dark face. The other, who had a frosting of grey in his black hair, was also tall and well set-up, but a little older: his carriage was athletic but somehow more solid, and he had laughter lines at his eyes. He had a bottle in his hand.

It was this second man to whom the peasant turned, much more cheerfully, to exclaim: ‘Mis-ter Wallick!' A foreign name. Father Grigory stood up. ‘Late, as usual.'

Unapologetically, Mr Wallick waved the wine. ‘I know you don't, Father, but I'm made of weaker stuff.'

The younger man only smirked, watching the greeting through heavy lidded eyes before wafting towards Munya to bend over her in a practised bow and murmur, ‘Why, darling girl…' and kiss her hand. There was no particular feeling in the kiss, Inna thought, and Munya submitted limply to it, though her mother nodded in satisfaction when the beautiful young man remained standing, looking casual and elegant, beside Munya's chair, ignoring Inna.

The foreigner, Mr Wallick, was bolder. He unstoppered the wine and helped himself to a glass, then a plate of sturgeon. That perked everyone up. As Mr Wallick poured a second glass and put it, with a nod, into his languid young friend's hand, the rest of the group moved eagerly towards the fish and started to eat, too.

The beautiful young man didn't touch the food, but he did sip at the wine before moving a few steps to murmur into Madame Golovina's ear. Something amusing, Inna thought, because that lady started to smile. The room quickly became so noisy with the clatter of talk and forks that it put even Munya a little more at her ease. Unexpectedly, she leaned forward and started confiding: ‘Sana sent
me
to the Father a couple of years ago, after a beloved friend of mine was killed in a duel. I'd been going to séances to speak to him from the Beyond … doing experiments in the raising of spirits…'

Half flattered by the confidence, half appalled, Inna nodded.

‘The Father was so straightforward.' Munya sighed. ‘So blessedly straightforward. He saw right to the heart of things … He just said, “Why?”'

Inna remembered the peasant's common-sense tone of voice from her talk with him the previous day. The memory reassured her. She tried not to smile.

‘And he said, “You know how long hermits pray to prepare themselves for visitations of the spirit, yet you want to commune with a spirit right in the middle of your social life…”' Munya opened her glistening eyes wider. ‘He said I'd drive myself mad like that.' She put both hands on her notebook, as though it contained every golden word of the peasant's advice (which Inna thought it probably did), and subsided back into a dreamy silence.

Inna thought this conversation was over. But, after a long pause, Munya suddenly added, ‘My friend who died was Felix's brother.' She nodded mournfully towards the beautiful young man, who must be Felix. ‘So now, you see, I'm hoping the Father will help
him
too.'

Inna couldn't see what help Felix could possibly need. He didn't look as though he had any secret sorrows. In fact, she'd never seen anyone so sleek and pleased with himself. She'd taken an instant dislike to him.

‘And his friend?' she asked. The foreign gentleman, up at the other end of the table, was being supplanted next to the peasant by other admirers. As they advanced, he shrugged and looked down the room at Felix, with what Inna thought was amusement. Felix grinned back.

‘Oh, him…' Munya said vaguely. ‘An Englishman, I think. He paints miniatures at Fabergé's: to go on the top of cigarette cases, you know … Felix is just back from Oxford, you see, and needs some gifts with English scenes. And they've made friends…' She sounded puzzled. ‘A very good person, of course, the Englishman,' she added, as if trying to convince herself. ‘If he's here with us, then he must be a believer…'

The peasant, meanwhile, was looking at his admirers without enthusiasm. ‘How to lead the good life, is that your question?'

Inna had the impression he was breathing deeply.

Everyone fell silent, as they waited expectantly for him to go on.

‘All anyone needs to do to find God is to walk right away from this stinking city, as far as they can, and stand in a field, where the air is clean,' he eventually growled. ‘No pips on the sleeve. No bickering or one-upmanship. No fancy ideas – and no fools. There'll be God in that field, all right.'

Inna wasn't sure she liked either the worshipful way the ladies looked at the peasant or the theatrical flavour of his grumpiness. Why did he let all these people into his home, she caught herself wondering, if he disliked them so? And why did he dress up for them in his odd silken finery? He'd seemed more genuine yesterday.

But a blissful look spread over almost every face (though Inna didn't dare look at Felix or the Englishman). Munya scribbled.

‘Which is exactly what
I'm
planning…' the peasant was continuing, scowling around at his admirers, when there was a ring.

Everyone shifted. Munya stopped her feverish writing and stared around with scared rabbit eyes. The peasant stumped towards the door. So did the fat young man in the morning coat, as if he was trying to get there first. But languid Felix, who was mischievously eyeing them both, was closer.

What Inna was most aware of was the hands of the ladies coming out to the table to restock plates with those delectable-looking petits fours and fruits. They weren't so holy when no one was looking, Inna thought.

She was expecting the peasant to disappear and then return from the front door with a new guest. Instead, he went towards a box on the wall in the doorway. The ringing was coming from there, she realized.

With an oddly disrespectful swerve of the shoulder, the young man barged in front of the peasant. Looking amused, Felix, who was taller, beat them both to it. He reached out a long arm, unhooked a device from the front of the box and put it to his ear. As he did, he grinned at the fat man, who stared balefully back.

Inna realized that, unimpressive though this room was, the peasant had a telephone installed in it, just like Olya Morozova's father.

Felix's triumphant grin quickly turned to comical bewilderment when he listened to the noises coming out of the receiver. Then his lips formed an ‘o,' like a naughty child caught in a prank, and he hastily passed the instrument back to his fat rival. ‘Pistolkors here; I'm listening,' the fatty said in a loud, self-important voice. ‘Put her through.' Then, in an utterly different and repellently obsequious tone, he smarmed, ‘Why, delighted,
utterly
delighted, dear lady … Of course, he's right beside me.' He held out the mouthpiece to the peasant, who grabbed it.

‘Yes,' he grunted.

A shiver of – what? excitement? satisfaction? passed through the room. Munya looked proudly at Inna and muttered: ‘Tsarskoye Selo…'

Inna knew what that was: the Emperor's out-of-town palace, just outside Petersburg, where she'd heard he and his Empress preferred to live than in town. Did the peasant have friends at the palace, too? The voice, now faintly audible crackling out from the other end of that instrument, was female. For all Inna knew, they might be eavesdropping on a call from the Empress herself. She gasped.

‘What, all the way to Livadia?' the peasant was saying – crossly, Inna thought, and definitely with much less smarm than Pistolkors had mustered. She was already laughing at herself for having fancied that he might have been talking with the Empress. ‘What for? I was planning to go home.'

After a moment: ‘But they need me in my village of Pokrovskoye too. I haven't seen my own family for—'

Then he nodded, a few more times. Reluctantly.

When he put the mouthpiece back on its hook, he looked even more disgruntled. ‘Anya.' He sounded as though he were talking to himself. He sounded unhappy. But every head nodded respectfully as he collected himself, and added, in a firmer tone, ‘She says she's sorry she couldn't be here. We're getting the Yalta train tonight.'

‘To Livadia,' Inna's companions echoed. Pistolkors even bowed his head, as if in the imperial presence.

Inna looked around the room: she hadn't been so wrong, after all, to imagine the peasant had been talking to the Empress, or someone close to her. Livadia was the Tsar's summer palace, down south in the Crimea. Inna knew that the imperial family had, after leaving Kiev, sailed on to Livadia for some autumn sunshine. She didn't know who Anya was, but it was clear that the peasant had been summoned to attend on the family, and that everyone here felt this to be a tremendous honour.

Their excitement made Inna feel an outsider. Not just a child, or a provincial, but something more extreme. To her, the Tsar was hardly real: just the stuff of the patriotic photo portraits held by those men, mumbling their talk in the puddles with their candles. Even when she'd seen the Tsar with her own eyes, that one time in Kiev, he'd still seemed more of a photograph than a living man, standing to attention in his box after the two gunshots, motionless, while the panicking crowd boiled below.

‘I have to pack,' the peasant said roughly. ‘You'll all have to go.'

Inna got up. As she did so, she realized she'd been so carried away by the group in this room that she hadn't thought to ask the peasant her favour. And now it was too late.

The others were slower to move. It was only when Munya went to the door with a basket full of rusks – more peasant food – that the crowd seemed, finally, to accept that it was time to go, and began fussing with coats and bags. Munya knelt on the floor, lacing the guests into their boots with a rapturous smile. The acolytes lined up to kiss the Father's hand, one by one, murmuring, ‘Some rusks, Father,' and taking the burned bits of dry old bread as if they were Communion wafers. Some went on loitering outside, dragging out the wrapping of their rusks in scented handkerchiefs, hoping for a last glimpse. Felix stayed inside, smirking and watching Munya with enjoyment. Inna didn't think he was admiring his friend, though. There was mockery in his grin.

Inna was still half hoping for her own last private whisper with the peasant, so she hung around at the back. But the Englishman had glued himself to her.

‘You're new, aren't you?' he whispered as they shuffled forward in the line. His Russian, though accented, was impeccable. ‘Well, a word to the wise. When you get downstairs, leave by the back door. There were reporters out front when I got here.'

Reporters? Was that what those men waiting outside had been? But why? No, that was one question too many. She nodded.

The Englishman pushed her forward, and she took the rusk she was offered.

‘What was it you wanted to ask?' the peasant said suddenly, stepping back to look at her. His eyes sharpened.

But the Englishman was there behind her, and she carried on moving, as if in a dream. It was too late. She'd failed.

The Englishman caught up with her on the stairs.

He took off his hat. ‘So,' he said, without preamble. ‘What did you think?' His voice was a discreet murmur, but his eyes were dancing.

Inna wasn't sure what kind of answer was expected of her. ‘What do you mean?' she asked cautiously, before adding, because the Englishman's manner was so friendly and – compared with the other guests – he seemed so reassuringly normal: ‘I only met him yesterday, on a train. I hardly know him.'

‘I
see
,' the Englishman said. He nodded. ‘Well, all the more reason to ask, if you're coming to him with fresh eyes: do you think he's a phony?'

She looked properly at him. The English weren't supposed to be so frank, were they?

‘Felix does – my client, in there, Youssoupoff, you remember him? He's the one who's been bringing
me
, but I'm never sure,' he went on merrily. ‘All dressed up in those absurd silk kaftans, I know, looking like a charlatan; and telling the acolytes off and making them eat eggs; but still' – he twinkled down at her – ‘he's got
something
, hasn't he?'

‘He wasn't like that yesterday,' she whispered.

‘You weren't expecting
them
, I suppose,' he said, with a kindly understanding that she liked. ‘The freaks.' Despite herself, she almost smiled at the description. ‘I like them, personally, but then I've acquired a taste for the exotic, living here. I can see they're strong meat if you're new to them – and not least my client.'

He caught her eye. She thought, Why, he noticed I didn't like Felix Youssoupoff. And that surprising perspicacity, or just his interest in her reactions, warmed her.

He stopped at the last half-landing and pointed out the service door to the back courtyard. While she was still here, with this man who seemed so much a part of this strange, busy place with its rules that she didn't understand, she didn't feel such an outsider herself. She looked at the grey daylight outside the smeary glass. She didn't want to head towards the lonelier reality she'd managed to forget for the past hour or two.

‘I'd walk you home myself, but I promised Felix I'd wait for him,' the Englishman added – a polite dismissal, she thought. ‘And one has to look after one's clients. Oh, and by the way, I'm Wallick. Horace Wallick. We weren't introduced, were we? Never much in the way of formalities in there, I find.'

Dully, she introduced herself too.

‘Will I see you here again?' asked Horace Wallick. She thought, though she couldn't be sure, that there was more than politeness in his voice.

The question brought her close to tears. She shrugged, struggling for words. ‘I'm staying at Leman the violinmaker's,' she said eventually, ‘for a bit…'