The Cleansing Flames (35 page)

The carriage drew up on the Admiralty Quay. The Bolshaya Neva was freely flowing now, a vein of glistening darkness glutted with boats of every size. Across the water, the narrow end of the long university building was visible. He knew from his days as a student that a ferry left from where they had pulled up, and crossed directly to the University Quay on the other side, before heading onwards downstream past the Strelka.

Virginsky looked questioningly into Tatyana Ruslanovna’s eyes. Her gaze offered no answer and so he made to get out. She pulled him back. ‘No. You are to stay here. I will get out. But before I leave you, there is something I am obliged to do.’ There was a mischievous, almost cruel quality to her smile now. Virginsky felt a sudden pounding dread. She produced from her reticule a strip of black cloth. ‘You are to meet Dyavol,’ she explained. ‘But you are not to see him.’ The mischief in her smile softened, and he was no longer afraid. The renewed tenderness of her smile was the last thing he saw before the blindfold went on.

He heard the creak of the door and felt the bounce in the carriage’s springs as she got out. A moment later, the bounce was repeated, though this time it was deeper and more prolonged. The presence in the carriage beside him settled back. The door clicked to as the carriage was sealed.

‘
Good day, Pavel Pavlovich.
’ The greeting was whispered, a breath away from inaudibility, rendering impossible any attempt to identify the speaker. Even so, Virginsky had the impression he had heard that voice before.

‘Dyavol?’

Virginsky felt the jolt of the carriage pulling away.

‘You are to be congratulated,’ continued the whisper. At least that was what Virginsky thought he heard; with the steady cascade of hooves in the background, it was even harder to make out what was being said.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Virginsky. ‘I can barely hear you! Why must I wear this blindfold?’ His hands went up to loosen the cloth, but were restrained.

‘We must still take precautions. For your benefit, as much as mine.’ The man spoke more clearly now, though it seemed he was disguising his natural voice. ‘If you are caught, the less you know, the less you can give away. Still and all, we must do all we can to ensure that you are not caught. We will get you out of the country. Switzerland. Our people there will look after you.’

‘
Still and all?
Is it you, Botkin?’

Dyavol laughed. His laughter was the ordinary laughter of an ordinary man, unexpectedly amused. ‘Please, don’t insult me!’

‘You said “still and all”. That is one of Botkin’s characteristic phrases.’

‘I believe it is a common enough phrase. Besides, all our people have come under my influence, sometimes unconsciously.’

‘Yes, I heard Varvara Alexeevna use it once.’

‘There! I hope you will not accuse me of being Varvara Alexeevna!’

‘No. You are not Varvara Alexeevna.’ Virginsky waited a moment before committing himself: ‘You are Alexander Glebovich Tatiscev.’

‘Ah, my friend. I do wish you hadn’t said that.’ There was a note of sadness in the voice, but it was undisguised now, and clearly recognisable as that of Virginsky’s old professor.

‘May I not remove the blindfold?’

‘No. There are others here whom it would be better you did not see.’

‘Others?’

‘One other, let us say. A witness to our conversation, who will remain silent and report back to the central committee. I do not act on my own, you know. I am accountable.’

‘I thought you
were
the central committee,’ said Virginsky. More wistfully, he added, ‘At least now we may talk to one another naturally.’

‘Yes.’

‘But are you really Dyavol?’

‘Would it be so terrible to you if I were?’

‘Terrible, no. It’s just that I don’t understand. Dolgoruky told me that it was Dyavol’s idea for Kozodavlev to write the articles against you. In which case, you yourself urged Kozodavlev to attack you! Why would you do that?’

‘Politically, Kozodavlev and I were close allies. And yet, in our personal lives, enemies. The enmity was not on my side, you understand. I had nothing against him. Indeed, I only ever wished him well, for so long as he was loyal to the cause. But Kozodavlev nurtured a deep and bitter resentment. It was all very well for him to declare himself a new man and to say that he would not stand in the way of his wife’s happiness. However, in reality, he could not get past the fact of his hatred for me. I knew that deep in his heart Kozodavlev wished to kill me, and certainly would have betrayed me at the first opportunity. No matter how much we talked things over as new men, and vowed allegiance to the cause, always rankling deep inside him was his hatred for me. I suggested that he write the articles as a way of exorcising his negative feelings, so that we could go on together in the work that really mattered. I urged him to make the attacks as vitriolic and personal as he could.’

‘But . . . what did you have to gain by his attacking you?’

‘My reasons were psychological rather than political.’

‘What about Lebezyatnikov? Why did you have Kozodavlev lampoon him?’

‘Oh, that was not my idea. It was Dolgoruky who suggested that.’

‘Dolgoruky? He wanted his old tutor to be publicly ridiculed?’

‘That is the kind of man Dolgoruky was. The central committee were happy to go along with it as it drew attention away from our people. Lebezyatnikov really was a straw man. I was something a little more subtle. I was . . . well, I was a leader of the revolution pretending to be a straw man!’

‘But did it not make life difficult for you?’

‘You forget. I am a respected professor of jurisprudence, with friends in the Ministry of Justice. Some of whom were my former students. Besides, there was nothing of substance in the attacks. The authorities were quick to see that. And I was very careful.’

‘Careful? What about Pseldonimov? Was
that
careful?’

‘That was necessary. Necessity always drives us harder than caution.’

‘According to Botkin, Pseldonimov was killed to bind the group together.’

‘That is correct. In particular, we wished to secure Kozodavlev’s loyalty. My earlier . . . stratagem had not worked. He had poured out his vitriol – without inhibition – but still he hated me. I rather think it was the fact that I approved of what he was doing that undermined the exercise. He needed to hurt me – really hurt me. The problem was, if he hurt me, he hurt the cause. We could not allow that. And so, we needed to secure his loyalty another way. By binding him to the group in mutual guilt.’

‘But that didn’t work either, did it?’

‘Kozodavlev was not cut out for such deeds. When Pseldonimov’s body came to light, he panicked. He revealed to Dolgoruky that he was intending to inform. Of course, Dolgoruky passed on that information to me.’

‘Therefore Kozodavlev had to die?’

‘He had been warned. They had all been warned.’

‘Ah yes! You’re talking about
Swine
! Dolgoruky told me you wrote it as a warning. Most people took it as a warning to society. But in fact it was written for a very select group of men. A pity that Kozodavlev chose to ignore it.’

‘What you must understand is that up until that moment I had nothing but the highest esteem for Demyan Antonovich.’

‘That didn’t prevent you from seducing his wife, or ordering his death.’

‘Come, come. As for the former, what makes you so certain it was a question of my seducing her? We were both adults, and she was in a relationship which, in theory at least, allowed her absolute freedom as far as the dictates of her heart were concerned. Neither of us did what we did in order to hurt Demyan Antonovich. We did it rather to please ourselves than to hurt another. And as for the latter point, his death was approved by the central committee. It was not a question of my ordering it.’

Blindfolded as he was, Virginsky had the sense that all that Tatiscev’s words contained was being trampled and churned in the ceaseless rotation of hooves. ‘What happened to her?’

Tatiscev hesitated a moment before answering: ‘She died. Her death seemed to unhinge Kozodavlev. He became unreliable. I felt – the central committee felt – that he was becoming a liability. His hatred towards me was getting out of hand. It seemed he held me responsible for her death, and for all manner of other evils. He had come to believe the propaganda he had written.’

‘And
were
you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Responsible for her death?’

‘Not at all,’ Tatiscev answered calmly, as though it were a perfectly reasonable question, and perfectly reasonable that he might have been. ‘She died of consumption. We were no longer in contact. I had not seen her for many years. It was Kozodavlev who informed me of her death. I had moved on from my relationship with her; Demyan Antonovich had been unable to do so, it seemed.’

‘A sad story.’

‘Yes.’

‘But his death was in no way connected to your affair with his wife,’ stated Virginsky, as if to reassure himself on that point. He continued: ‘In this case, your reasons were political rather than psychological.’

Tatiscev seemed to take offence at Virginsky’s need to clarify this. ‘Of course. How could it be otherwise?’ A note of icy restraint entered his voice.

‘Well, it’s just that he must have embarrassed you, as cuckolds embarrass us all. And his enduring love for the woman you had taken from him and then callously abandoned . . . Perhaps you saw it as a reproach? One that you could not bear.’

‘You’re a young man. Stupidly romantic. The fact of the matter is more prosaic. He had become unreliable. The central committee makes these decisions. Not I.’

‘Tell me, who set the fire? It was not Botkin. Or you?’

‘Of course not. We used an escaped convict called Rodya, a semi-literate and easily manipulated fellow. He had got hold of certain of our manifestos and believed that he was helping to initiate the revolution every time he shat inside a church. He was not averse to committing murder on our behalf, and did not need a very compelling reason to do so. A few roubles usually did the trick. Surprisingly few.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘We have had neither sight nor sound of him since the fire. Perhaps, considering the deaths of the children, he considered it wise to go to ground.’

Virginsky felt that the supposed death of Porfiry Petrovich gave him licence to ask anything. ‘What is your attitude to their deaths?’

‘Regrettable. But unavoidable.’

‘I wonder, is there any point in regretting that which is unavoidable?’ Virginsky was perhaps a little carried away by the idea of Porfiry’s death.

‘You sound like Botkin! I can see how you were able to shoot your colleague. Didn’t that cause
you
some regret?’

‘I take no particular pleasure from Porfiry Petrovich’s death.’ It was a statement Virginsky could only make believing Porfiry Petrovich to be still alive. ‘However, an act such as this was necessary to initiate the next stage of our great task.’

‘Ah yes, the next stage. Rest assured that everything is in place to capitalise on your singular deed.’

‘You intend to perpetrate an atrocity?’

‘I am not in a position to share details with you. In the meantime, the central committee has decided that it would be best if you were moved.’

‘I see.’

‘Now that the magistrate has died, there will be a renewed effort to track you down. Your presence in a married couple’s apartment can only attract suspicion. We have found a new apartment for you. You will live there with Tatyana Ruslanovna as man and wife. You will be provided with forged papers. I trust that will be agreeable to you?’

‘It will be a satisfactory arrangement.’

‘You are to have no further communication with the other grouping. Do you understand? You are ours now. We are claiming you as one of our people.’

‘You will not talk to them at all?’ Virginsky’s heart pounded. It was a dangerous gambit, considering the grouping did not in fact exist.

‘There is only one central committee. Ours. These people you were mixed up in, it is best that you forget them.’

‘Very well.’

The carriage slowed and stopped. Virginsky heard the door open and felt the bounce of the springs as Tatiscev got out. The door slammed shut once more. But he sensed that he was not alone. ‘May I take off my blindfold now?’

There was no answer. He raised his hands to the blindfold. No other hands restrained him. When he slipped the blindfold off, he saw Tatyana Ruslanovna sitting opposite him, her smile sealed with secret irony. ‘A
satisfactory
arrangement?’ Her words were charged with mock outrage.

‘You were there?’

‘All the time.’

‘You lied to me.’

Her eyebrows bobbed upwards.
Better get used to it
, the gesture seemed to indicate.

He had never seen the city so empty. Yes, there were people about, but they moved like ghosts, solitary and without substance, sealed off from one another, their faces drained of emotion and hope. They seemed to breathe desolation; it was the element in which they moved. For the first time, he realised that everything in this city was too big: vast squares and avenues of vertiginous breadth that could never be filled except with countless regiments of parading soldiers, as if the whole point of raising an army was to ward off this terrible sense of desolation. Even the sprawling palaces and tenements could not fill the emptiness, but simply section it. They stood like aspirations, shell-like structures that overwhelmed the merely human, that were in fact hostile to it. Virginsky was reminded that it was a city that had been built on nothing, or almost nothing – on marshland. It had been dreamt into existence, an act of will, one man’s vision which could only demoralise those who came to live in it, as it had destroyed so many of those who had built it. The premeditation of the place sapped the life from its inhabitants. One was presented everywhere with straight lines and purpose, universal direction imposed by the city’s first planner, still dictating their lives even after his death. It was no wonder that most people chose to keep off the streets. Virginsky imagined them cowering in basements, huddled together as far as possible from the excessive scale and expanse outside. But he could not be sure of their presence even there, so great was the sense of abandonment he felt.

He looked across at the woman facing him in the moving carriage. The space that had opened up between them was equal in vastness to any outside. And he was as alone here as he was anywhere in St Petersburg.

*

The driver must have been paid in advance, or was perhaps one of ‘our people.’ At any rate, he didn’t ask for money, and none was offered. The carriage pulled away with a disconsolate lurch. Virginsky looked around to get his bearings but did not recognise the deserted lane they had been left in. The district was poor, and his sense was that it was far from the centre. He had been too distracted to follow consciously the route they had taken. A strange reticence prevented him from looking at Tatyana Ruslanovna, though she was the cause of his distraction. Tongue-tied, he waited for her to take the lead.

But it seemed that she was affected by an equal shyness. When at last he dared to glance at her, he saw that she had her eyes fixed on the ground. He tried to think of something to say to set her at her ease. But all that came to mind was, ‘Where do we go?’ Even to his own ear his voice sounded harsh and unforgiving.

She looked up, her glance still shy. ‘They have taken rooms for us in a tenement building around the corner from here. I did not think it would be advisable for us to be seen arriving by carriage. We are to pose as a poor working couple.’

He understood now her peasant clothes. Somehow they lost their charm for him, striking him as suddenly calculating. He almost hated her for them.

They began to walk. An unbroachable space was maintained between them, the result of a magnetic repulsion that kept them from touching. More to the point, there was an equal space between the couple they were now and the couple they had been that morning. At that moment, it was unimaginable that she would ever appear naked to him again, or that he would ever know again her clinging embrace around his quaking flesh.

Somehow, he had fallen from grace. Perhaps it was because he had asked her about Totsky. Something like rage rose up in him. No – he was not to blame, or at least not solely. She had acted deceitfully to him. Not only that, she had shrugged off the lie in which she had been caught.

Their position, he realised, was entirely false, and that was what had changed between them. To be thrown together by the central committee in this sham marriage pre-empted whatever natural feelings might have developed. Furthermore, Tatyana Ruslanovna must have known of the central committee’s intentions when she gave herself to him, as was proven by the clothes she came to him wearing. Besides which, she was a member of the central committee. It was evidence of further deceit on her part. He couldn’t fathom what she had meant by that act but felt that there must have been more to it than he had first thought. It was not, in other words, a simple declaration of love, and there was no trust implied in it at all.

And then it struck him: she had wanted him simply because she believed he had killed a man. It was curiosity rather than love that had driven her, and now that her curiosity had been satisfied, there was no possibility of the act being repeated.

Had she been disappointed in the experience? Or had she simply got all that she wanted from him?

She must have noticed the unhappiness in his expression. ‘What is wrong, Pavel Pavlovich?’

Her question provoked him. ‘How long are we to remain living this lie?’

‘Until the central committee decides –’

He cut her off with an anguished, derisive cry.

‘Until the central committee decides,’ she resumed patiently, ‘that it is safe for you to be removed from Petersburg.’

‘So we must wait for the central committee to decide our fate?’

‘It is not a question of that. You placed yourself in their hands when you killed your colleague and declared it a revolutionary act.’

‘What do you mean? Of course it was a revolutionary act. What else could it be?’

‘Perhaps you had other reasons for wanting him dead. Please don’t take offence. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. You must trust the central committee.’ After a moment she added, ‘You must trust me.’

They came to a broad avenue, again unknown to Virginsky. The street was muddy, and occupied mostly by manufacturing premises and cheap restaurants. She led him across it to another narrow lane, overshadowed on both sides by the looming black walls of vast tenement buildings.

He followed her into the yard. The ground was swimming in waste matter. The yardkeeper, who had the physique of a young man, but the face of someone much older, was busy shovelling the filthy mud away to the sides. But it always seemed to settle back, covering the area he had just cleared. At the sight of the yardkeeper’s prematurely aged face, Tatyana Ruslanovna gripped Virginsky’s arm and pulled him to her. He felt the sinews of his heart ripple, as his misery slipped from him. It no longer mattered that it was a lie. All that mattered was that she was holding on to him.

*

The ‘rooms’ that had been taken for them turned out to be one room on the fourth floor. To be more precise, it was a partitioned area within a larger room, which was subdivided into four small rooms in total. But at least they had a door, and therefore the possibility of privacy. The room was surprisingly clean, although sparsely furnished. There was a narrow bed, a deal table with two chairs and a small wardrobe. One half of a large, ugly stove butted through the partition, like a prurient intruder. The only other items were an icon of a grey-bearded saint and the icon lamp before it.

The occupants of the other rooms, the tenants from whom the central committee had rented Virginsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna’s lodging, were a couple of the merchant class. The husband – if indeed they were married – was much older than his wife, who had a submissive demeanour, as if she were in constant expectation of a beating. They greeted Virginsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna in silence, only bowing to them and averting their eyes immediately. The couple kept a servant, an ancient hunchbacked woman who spent all her time slumbering on the massive stove. It seemed to be to everyone’s relief when Virginsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna took themselves into their room.

Tatyana Ruslanovna opened the wardrobe, and closed the door on its emptiness immediately. Virginsky looked up at the icon.

‘How appropriate,’ said Tatyana.

Virginsky frowned.

‘St Nikolai. He is my favourite saint.’

‘I am surprised to hear that you have a favourite saint.’

‘Of course, it is all nonsense,’ said Tatyana, almost regretfully. ‘But as a child, a very young child, I was always attracted to St Nikolai. I was taken in by the stories, I suppose. The idea of his giving up his parents’ wealth and devoting his life to the poor and the sick struck a chord with me. It appealed to my undeveloped instincts for social justice.’ Tatyana Ruslanovna frowned. ‘Since then, I have learnt that the Church conspires in the oppression of the people and therefore no symbol or representative of the Church can truly stand for social justice. Still and all . . .’ She smiled self-consciously and blushed as she met his gaze. ‘Yes,
still and all
, it is hard to shake off these childhood associations. The movement must learn to make use of them, I believe. It is the only way to bring the people with us.’

There was the smell of cooking from the next room. Virginsky found himself distracted by it. ‘Have they provided any food for us?’

‘The old woman will cook for us.’

He nodded tersely. ‘You knew all about this, this morning . . .’

‘Yes, I knew. Does it matter?’

Virginsky shook his head, though without conviction. It was more as if he was shaking off his resentment than answering her. ‘All that matters is the cause,’ he said.

He looked down and saw that she was sitting on the bed, reaching out to him with both hands. ‘It’s not all that matters,’ she said.

There was a knock at the door. He turned from her open arms. It was the young merchant woman, who was now nestling a tiny baby, virtually a newborn, in the crook of one arm. Virginsky was disproportionately shocked by the sudden appearance of the baby, although the simple explanation must have been that it was sleeping out of sight when they arrived. He understood in a flash that the old man was not the girl’s husband, and indeed that their relationship and the existence of their child was in some way deeply problematic. He saw all this in the way her eyes steadfastly avoided his, and also in the uneasy, complicated gaze she bestowed on her child. ‘We are about to eat. Will you join us?’ Her voice trembled. It was almost as if she questioned her own right to speak.

Virginsky deferred to Tatyana Ruslanovna, her hands now folded demurely across her lap, apparently incapable of reaching out in longing to any man. Her nod was barely perceptible.

A meal of cabbage soup, beef and
pirogi
was laid out on a table in the main room. Virginsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna murmured appreciative comments, which were ignored by the old merchant and seemed to pain the young woman, who gave a small wince whenever she was addressed. And so the company quickly lapsed into silence.

Virginsky watched the baby grope the air, fascinated by its perfect fingers and minuscule fingernails. The young mother seemed strangely unwilling to engage with her child. The gently curving hands restlessly sought out something to grip, and it would have been natural for her to slip a maternal finger into their reach. It was an inclination she resisted. The baby’s innocent animation was in contrast to the adults’ stiff constraint and seemed almost to offend the old man. When it began to cry, the merchant set down his cutlery with a disapproving clatter and looked sharply up into the corner of the room, averting his gaze as far as possible from the sound. The child’s mother took this as her cue to sweep the child away from the table, carrying it off into the couple’s bedroom. The old man continued his meal as if the child, and its mother, had never existed.

*

In the night she answered all his fears with wordless consolations. And although their position was fraught with difficulties and deception, there was honesty in what they gave to one another in the darkness. And what they gave had a voice, a bleating presence ratcheting the infinite night, pulling it tighter around them, making a black blanket of the void.

Afterwards, he realised that the sound he had heard was the baby crying in the next room. He realised too that Tatyana Ruslanovna was also crying. He held her and was shocked by the tremors of her weeping, her tears damp on his chest. ‘What is it? What’s the matter, my darling Tanya?’

‘I’m afraid.’ Her voice was so small it was almost not there at all.

‘Don’t worry. I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.’ His eyes were wide open as he lied.

‘I’m afraid,’ she repeated. ‘What if . . . what if we are wrong?’

The bleating of the baby had become something inhuman and incomprehensible. The old man shouted something that Virginsky could not make out. ‘What do you mean?’ His murmur was for Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘I was thinking of the children who died.’

He thought of the answer he ought to give, the argument of social utility, of a price that has to be paid, of sacrifices that have to be made.

It was almost as if she had heard his thoughts: ‘Oh, I know what Botkin would say. But what if Botkin is wrong? Men like Botkin frighten me.’ For a moment, she allowed the child’s cries to speak for her. ‘Men like you frighten me.’

‘I?’

‘It frightens me that we need murderers. Somehow it seems to undermine every argument we make that we must have men of blood to put them forward for us.’

Virginsky tensed. He felt a reciprocal tensing in her body. Beads of sweat began to break out between them. ‘But surely I don’t frighten you?’

She did not answer. He frowned in the darkness, his brows compressing around the idea that it was fear that had prompted her to give herself to him; that the sexual act was, for her, a way of overcoming her fear.

‘You know what they are planning next?’ she continued.

‘An atrocity of some kind?’

He felt her head move in anguished confirmation. ‘What if other innocents die?’

A shudder of revulsion was the only answer he could give.

‘Sometimes,’ she went on, ‘I cannot understand how it came to be that I am involved with such men.’ She clung onto him, and the feel of her nakedness and need against him was enthralling. It empowered him.

‘But you were in Paris, in the Commune?’

‘Yes, I was there. And what I saw terrified me. And what I did – what I saw I was capable of – terrified me even more.’ Her body shook with what could have been laughter, the bitterest. ‘I sometimes think the only reason I was there was to shock my parents. It was an act of childish rebellion. And look where it has got me!’