The Cleansing Flames (36 page)

‘
With me?
’ His whispered consolation lacked conviction.

‘In the arms of a murderer. And now, you will betray me to the others. You will tell them of my fears, that I am losing heart, that I cannot be trusted. And so it will begin. They will come for me . . .’ She seemed to see her comrades closing in on her. Her voice brimmed with terror.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You need not be frightened of me. I am not like them. I am not a murderer.’

‘But you killed Porfiry Petrovich.’

He shook his head. ‘It was staged. I . . . I fired a blank cartridge. Porfiry is not dead.’

‘But they announced his death in the paper.’

‘Porfiry Petrovich has always been a great prankster.’

He sensed her relax in his arms. He had the impression that she fell asleep. He was alone with the crying of the baby, and the occasional incomprehensible barks of rage from the old man.

*

She was no longer in his arms when he awoke. It was morning. She was dressed and had opened the one low window to air the room, as if she wanted to dispel all trace of what had happened in the night. She seemed stubbornly reluctant to face him.

The intimacy of the first night was never repeated.

He dreamt one night that the merchant couple’s baby was dead. When he looked down, he saw that one of his hands was over the baby’s face. An atmosphere of unspeakable guilt pervaded the dream.

When he woke in the morning after the dream, he strained to listen for the baby’s cries. Instead he heard voices in the room outside. He sat up and pulled on his trousers, throwing the blankets onto the bed. Almost as soon as he had done so, there was a violent knocking on the door. Tatyana Ruslanovna admitted Botkin, Totsky and, to Virginsky’s surprise, Professor Tatiscev. Totsky was carrying a small suitcase made of polished steel, which he seemed reluctant to let out of his hands. The room was cramped with five people in it, and Botkin’s customary stench, of petrol and masculinity, was a sixth unwelcome presence, crowding them out.

Totsky and Virginsky remained standing, confronting one another across their rivalry for Tatyana Ruslanovna. Botkin pushed one of the chairs against the door and sat on it. Tatiscev took the other chair and Tatyana Ruslanovna sat on the bed.

‘Are you sure this is wise?’ began Virginsky. He glanced nervously towards Tatyana Ruslanovna, whose expression had become peculiarly set. ‘All of us here like this?’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Tatiscev quickly.

For a moment, no one spoke. Virginsky found the brisk determination of the men ominous; he picked up subtly unnerving signals in the glances that passed between them. He felt that he ought to have been frightened on Tatyana Ruslanovna’s behalf, but a strange fixity had come over her face that was more chilling than anything he saw on the men’s. She was the first to speak, and the flitting of her eye just before she did so told him that he would do better to be frightened on his own account.

‘It’s as we suspected. It was all a pretence.’ She tilted her head dismissively towards Virginsky. ‘
He
fired a blank cartridge. He is here to spy on us.’

Virginsky felt as if a cannonball had dropped inside him, forcing the wind out as it bounced into his solar plexus. She turned to face him with a look of brazen contempt.

Tatiscev merely nodded. Nothing Tatyana Ruslanovna had said seemed to surprise him.

Botkin leant forward in his chair, his heavy axe-shaped head looming towards Virginsky dangerously, as if even his consideration was something to be afraid of.

Totsky’s face lost what small amount of colour it had. His mouth was pinched into a disapproving dot. His hand tightened around the handle of his steel suitcase.

Tatiscev produced a small glass bottle from the inside of his jacket. He handed it to Botkin, who looked into it with an unseemly hunger, flashing a mocking grin towards Virginsky. ‘Come now, take your medicine like a good boy.’ Botkin took the stopper out and rose to his feet.

There was nowhere for Virginsky to go. Botkin was coming towards him, blocking the only way out. He climbed onto the bed. Botkin climbed up next to him. The mattress dipped and bounced like a stretch of river ice on the brink of cracking.

Tatyana Ruslanovna looked up at him. Her look was poised and finely balanced: some ravaged, pathetic part of him thought he detected a residue of love; but, of course, quite opposite emotions were also evident. Her expression seemed to fluctuate between one that believed in him and one that held him in utter contempt. He could not say in which manifestation she appeared more beautiful. All he knew was that her contempt cut him like a long blade driven beneath his fingernails.

He tried to struggle against Botkin’s grip but the man’s hand was locked around the back of his head, pulling him forward to the open bottle. The fumes rushed into him like wolves breaking cover. His head was the prey they ripped apart, tossing sloppy gobbets of his consciousness around the room. An expanding nothingness took over his insides. His limbs evaporated.

*

The emptiness inside him was being tightened, squeezed so much that it solidified into pain. His sides ached. His chest ached. Even his head ached, though there was no tightness there, just the dull pounding of a hangover. He did not want to be where the pain was. Perhaps if he opened his eyes he would escape it, but he could not be sure. There was always the possibility that he would open his eyes to even more pain.

He could hear voices, murmuring.

The voices sickened him. If he opened his eyes, he would have to face the voices. The more he listened to them, the more nauseated he felt. If he opened his eyes, he would be sick. The voices would draw the vomit out of him. Out of his eyes and his ears, as well as his mouth. He imagined the vomit pouring out of every opening in his body, so pervasive was his nausea.

Now it became important to him to keep his eyes closed.

But the voices were saying his name, calling his name. And one of the voices was hers.

He squeezed his eyes tightly, forcing back the nausea. Then, without realising that he would, he simply opened his eyes. So easy was it, in the end, to pass from one mode of being to another.

He saw the face of his old professor frowning at him. He felt inordinately saddened because it seemed that he had disappointed Professor Tatiscev. But then he heard a voice that matched the face say, ‘Good.’ The word seemed to come to him from far away, reverberating through an endless corridor that reminded him of his university days. The association brought with it an idiotic happiness that swept over him and lifted him to his feet.

It surprised him how far away his feet were, so far away that looking down at them brought on a wave of vertigo. He was surprised also to see that he was now fully dressed. He did not remember putting on the unbelted
kosovorotka
shirt he was wearing.

‘Steady,’ said another voice. He noticed for the first time that he was being held up by hands that didn’t seem to belong to anyone. ‘You have to be careful now. You must avoid any sudden movements or jolts – until we get you in the church. On no account must you fall over until you are inside the church.’ He had thought this man his enemy, and yet he was showing such solicitude towards him. It seemed he had misjudged him. He wanted to embrace the man, whose name had been swallowed up in the sweeping nothingness, to kiss him even. But the man seemed to be holding him at arm’s length.

He was aware of his mouth opening, and wondered if he was going to be sick. Instead, he heard something that surprised him: ‘Church?’

‘Yes. We’re going to church.’

For some reason, he found the idea extremely funny and began to shake with uncontrolled hilarity.

‘You must calm down.’ The man’s voice was intensely serious.

Virginsky wanted to apologise. But all that came out was an incoherent slurring. He tried to concentrate. He tried to stop the bubbles of hilarity breaking out. He wanted these people to think well of him. He wanted to know whose hands were holding him up. He made a great effort of will to match the seriousness around him. But every time he thought he had got the better of his giddiness, another explosion of hiccup-like laughter shook him.

‘This is hopeless,’ said the man whose name he could not remember. ‘If he keeps this up, he will blow us all up before we get him out of the building.’

His old professor leaned into his face. The gesture cowed Virginsky into silence. ‘This will not do. We expect better of you. Tatyana Ruslanovna expects better of you. This is your destiny. You must face it like a man.’

Virginsky gasped at the rebuke. He felt on the verge of tears.

‘That’s better,’ said Professor Tatiscev.

A wave of relief crashed over him.

‘Now you must go with Totsky. You must do whatever Totsky tells you.’

Totsky!
That was the man’s name. Virginsky grinned with delight. ‘Tot-skeeee!’

‘Enough!’ continued the voice of his old professor. ‘If you do not do as you are told, the baby will die. The only way to ensure that the baby lives is to do everything that Totsky tells you. Is that clear?’

Virginsky nodded. Solemnity had entered his bones like a chill. ‘Baby?’

‘The baby here. It has been decided that Botkin will kill it if you do not do as you are told. So, as you see, it is essential that you do as you are told.’

The hands under his arms guided him towards the door. The moment the hands released him, he swayed on his feet. Other hands shot out to steady him, those of the man called Totsky. Virginsky felt better knowing whose hands were holding him up. He remembered that Totsky had been carrying a steel suitcase, but saw that he wasn’t any more. He noticed the steel suitcase lying open on the floor, empty. He breathed in deeply, his chest expanding against the constriction he had felt earlier. He realised that it had a physical cause, that he was wearing something that was tightly bound around his torso, like a corset. He did not remember putting a corset on.

At the last moment, Tatyana Ruslanovna rose from the bed. ‘I will go with them.’

‘You do not trust
me
?’ demanded Totsky.

Virginsky missed the subtleties of the look that was her response. By then it was all he could do to keep his caw down. And from now on he knew that this would be the whole focus of his being.

*

He was supported between Totsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna. His legs seemed to be executing a movement that approximated walking, though it could just as easily have been dancing. But it did not seem that they had anything to do with the forward motion of his body. He wanted to make a joke about it but could not quite think of the right words, so simply giggled to himself.

‘That will do,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna sternly.

What he had wanted to say came to him: ‘Is this the way the new people walk?’ But he no longer thought of it as a joke.

Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky ignored Virginsky’s question. They began to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.

‘He inhaled too much ether,’ said Totsky.

‘At least we can move him,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘Like this, he’s dangerous. He will attract attention.’

‘He looks like a drunk. A common enough sight in Russia.’

‘If we weren’t holding him up he would fall over. Which would be fatal.’

‘The ether will wear off,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘Then we will have the opposite problem,’ warned Totsky.

‘May I remind you this whole adventure was your idea, Totsky.’

‘And still it may succeed,’ said Totsky, after a momentary pause. ‘Provided we exercise due caution at all times.’

Tatyana Ruslanovna began to laugh. Virginsky felt the shards of her laughter spike his soul, a thousand exquisite impalements. ‘I wonder, what is the correct amount of caution due when one is escorting a human bomb to an atrocity?’ she asked.

‘It is all very well for you to laugh,’ said Totsky. He looked at Tatyana Ruslanovna as if he had paid for her laughter with his blood. ‘You know that I am doing this for you.’

‘Then you are a fool. That is the worst conceivable reason to go to your death. For a woman such as me.’

‘No. Not for a woman such as you. For you.’

‘You should be doing it for the cause. For the people.’

‘Fine words. They mean nothing to me. I do this only to earn your admiration. I know I cannot hope for your love.’

It seemed to Virginsky that Totsky was speaking on his behalf, saying to Tatyana Ruslanovna precisely the words he wished to say, but was unable to.

‘What does it matter whether I admire you or not?’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

And Virginsky felt every bit as devastated as Totsky must have, as if her stinging words had been directed at him.

He began to feel as though he was trapped in an ambulatory prison. He could not say with any certainty how long he had been confined between his captors, but there were moments when it was hard for him to remember a time before this forced march, and impossible to imagine it coming to an end. He had entered eternity and it was exhausting.

Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky handled him with a combination of extreme solicitude and utter disregard. The slightest trip on his part provoked the most anxious ministrations, and a tightening of their fingers around his upper arm. And yet they steadfastly refused to address any remarks to him directly.

‘What am I wearing?’ he ventured to ask at one point. But they would not answer his question. ‘I can feel something around my torso, like a corset. Why have you put a corset on me?’

They took him along the back streets, cutting through a network of connected courtyards, the secret spaces at the hollow heart of vast buildings, the chain that linked a hidden city. His progress through this private, inner St Petersburg corresponded to his return to a functioning consciousness. The streets began to appear more familiar to him, at the same time as the nausea lifted and he felt his feet connect more solidly with the ground. He felt the strain on his arms where Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky were holding him, as the anaesthetic effect of the ether wore off. There was a return, too, of his imaginative capacity to put himself in the place of others: he wondered at the tense ache they must have been experiencing in their locked hands. His sympathy for his tormentors at that moment struck him as absurdly inappropriate, and he was all at once overwhelmed by self-disgust. But the implications of his predicament were too much for him to take in. If anything, his headache increased in intensity.

‘What did you mean by that remark? When you said something about escorting a human bomb? How can I be a human bomb? Is it something to do with the corset?’

‘Silence! Remember the baby. Do as you are told or the baby will die,’ ordered Tatyana Ruslanovna.

He felt a soft explosion of emotion in his chest. It was not anger; it was the most tender, affectionate pity. It seemed he had become severed from himself. This fate, this inescapable death, was both his and not his. The part of him that would not suffer it, that would survive it, was able to look with pity – and, yes, love – on the part that would be inevitably destroyed. This was the soul’s pity for the body, he realised. Of course, such a realisation went against the whole tenor of his professed convictions, which until this moment had been unshakeably materialistic. He had not until now believed in the soul, or, rather, he had not known that he had. He did not feel confused by this, or angry. He felt no resentment for the years that had been taken from him. He felt at peace, elated almost.

He looked up to see the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary towering over him.

And then he understood that all that he had just experienced was the last trace of ether disintegrating in his blood. His ruthless clarity returned to him. He was about to die. There was no soul. Nothing would survive the imminent incineration of his body. He was, in effect, already dead.

The elation left him. His body went into spasm. He became a flimsy marionette whose strings were being jerked by an angry puppet master. He slipped out of the grip of his escorts, and even threw one clenched hand into Tatyana Ruslanovna’s face.

‘Hold onto him!’ shouted Totsky.

It was surprise that had shaken him out of their hands, and a momentary rush of strength. His fingers pulled at the
kosovorotka
, lifting the bottom hem up over his head. With his free hand he felt what seemed to be rows of glass capsules sewn into the unfamiliar undergarment into which he had been bound.

‘No!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imperious tone stayed his hand, for the moment at least. He released the hem of the shirt and it fell back into place.

‘If you take that off, you know what Botkin will do,’ continued Tatyana Ruslanovna. ‘Will you condemn that baby to death?’

As Virginsky struggled to take in what she had said, Totsky’s hand came up towards his face. He expected Totsky to strike him, but his hand fell short of a blow. Then Virginsky noticed the vitreous flash of the bottle the other man was clutching, and he felt once again the wolf-like fumes devour the membranes of his nostrils. He staggered back, arms flailing the suddenly viscous air.

‘It’s alright! He’s had too much to drink!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna shouted excitedly into the godless void in front of the church. ‘Grief. He was very close to the deceased, you see.’

Their hands were on him again. ‘Deceased?’ cried Virginsky. ‘Who is deceased?’

‘Someone you killed, that’s all,’ answered Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘Porfiry Petrovich, do you mean? But he isn’t really dead. You know that. He wouldn’t go through with this!’

Tatyana Ruslanovna tilted her head back, in an expression of high disdain. Apart from a slight spasm at the corner of the mouth, it was the only answer she volunteered.

*

He had never seen so many candles. The tiny glimmering flames seemed to form a sea of light out of which the congregation was rising. And then he realised that each member of the congregation was holding a candle in front of them. He wanted more than anything to have a candle of his own but the service had already begun. And Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky hurried him into the church as if there was no time for that.

In his confusion, he connected the glow of the candles with the sound of chanting, as if the burning of wicks suspended in wax produced an auditory effect, as well as a visual one. Then he realised that it was the people holding the candles who were producing the sounds, which truly were as beautiful and soothing to his ears as the candlelight was to his eyes. A slowly soaring melody ranged over the upper registers of his emotions like a high majestic bird riding eddies; beneath it, a deep bass drone persisted, its beauty sombre, powerful and enduring. There could be no arguing with that bass. It vibrated viscerally, physically, taking hold not just of his internal organs but of the frame that contained them.

The solemnity of the sound made a deep impression on him. And yet something about it struck him as inappropriate, almost ludicrous.

He glanced to either side of him and noticed that Tatyana Ruslanovna was no longer holding onto him. In fact, she was backing away towards the door. Totsky was still there by his side, gripping his upper arm tightly.

‘Where is she going?’ cried Virginsky to his one remaining captor. His shout went off like a firecracker. It drew disapproving frowns from those around him.

‘Pavel Pavlovich? Is that you?’ The voice hissed from just in front of him.

Virginsky turned to see the familiar face of Nikodim Fomich, which seemed to float out of the sea of candle flames. The apparition acted on him like an emotional lodestone. His eager, deprived gaze latched onto it. Feelings that he was not aware of harbouring surged out from the core of his being to its surface. He searched for reassurance and succour in insignificant details. And yet there was something that jarred in the Chief of Police’s face, an inexplicable hostility squeezing his mouth into an uncharacteristically sour pucker.

Virginsky felt the hand around his arm tighten. Totsky was looking nervously over his shoulder at Tatyana Ruslanovna, who was lurking by the door, ready to make a break for it when the time came. Virginsky could not be sure whether it was Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imminent flight, rather than Nikodim Fomich’s intervention, that had prompted Totsky to increase his grip.

Certainly Nikodim Fomich’s appearance had the effect of sobering Virginsky, of concentrating his mind. There was now a danger, he realised, that Totsky would panic, that he would be pushed into acting precipitously. He had to think – and act – quickly. The vital thing was to remain on his feet for as long as possible, and to keep out of the press of the congregation. He felt himself to be remarkably in control of his actions. He shook his head warningly to Nikodim Fomich.

At that moment the priest began to lead the congregation in the Kontakion to the Departed: ‘
With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant . . .
’

The words of the Kontakion continued to reverberate in the vast sounding box of the cathedral, voices overlapping with voices to create a rising bed of sound on which the meaning was borne up, as if to Heaven: ‘
. . . where sickness and sorrow are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.
’

Now Nikodim Fomich shook his head, in a grave, slow, momentous sweep. The gesture was imbued with unexpected pity, and therefore left no room for hope.

Virginsky yanked himself free of Totsky’s hold. And if he had thought about it, he might have been surprised by how easily his freedom was achieved. But he was beyond that now. He did not even care that he was jostled as he pushed his way through the crowd of standing mourners to the front of the church.

Around the coffin were placed four great
manoualias
, each densely packed with fine candles giving a thick cluster of flames. The candle-stands were arranged one at the head, one at the foot of the coffin, and one on either side, forming the branches of a flaming cross. Virginsky could not yet bring himself to confront what lay within. His eye went instead to the memorial table nearby, on which were placed the dish of
koliva
that the mourners would eat after the service. He understood the symbolism well enough. Although he was an atheist, he was still a Russian. The wheat of the
koliva
represented rebirth through death. The grain had to fall to the ground before it could give forth fruit, just as the faithful had to die before the eternal life of the soul could come into being.

But Virginsky saw only a glutinous mound of cold boiled wheat. As food it was unappetising; as a religious symbol it repelled him. The burning tapers – small fragments of the greater flame – that projected from it were like the cheap tricks of a bad stage conjuror. Had Porfiry really invested the core of his being in such counterfeit props? Virginsky had never given much thought to his superior’s faith. It was something he had taken for granted; out of respect, he had held himself back from challenging it. At the same time, he had not taken it entirely seriously either. He had thought of it as another of Porfiry’s eccentricities, almost as an affectation. But now, for the first time, it struck him that his faith was the one thing of which Porfiry would never have made light. It was inconceivable that he would have deceived the church authorities into conducting a bogus funeral, and equally inconceivable that they would have gone along with such a charade.

He turned, at last, from the memorial table to the coffin, as if to demand an answer. And in the moment of turning his head to make that confrontation, he thought of all the other confrontations with death that Porfiry Petrovich had forced on him: heads severed from their bodies, naked corpses laid out on slabs, and most recently the drenched and partly saponified corpse of Pseldonimov.

At first, he could not understand what he saw. The body in the coffin was that of a woman, a tiny, old woman, as frail as the long stems of the roses with which it was strewn. Virginsky laughed out loud once in savage delight. He turned to the congregation, to see if they were in on the joke. From the stern faces that met his gaze, it seemed that they were not.

Virginsky shook his head in amazement. Surely they had noticed that the body in the coffin was not that of Porfiry Petrovich? And then it occurred to him: he was the only one there who had expected it to be Porfiry.

Virginsky looked down at the old woman again. She was dressed like a doll in a costume that was too big for her, and which appeared never to have been worn before. Her tiny body was swamped by an elaborate gown of the kind worn by ladies of the Court, encrusted with braiding and padded with quilting. Banks of pearls concealed her neck. As if to draw attention away from the deep wrinkles of her face, her head was adorned with a high, crescent-shaped
kokoshnik
headdress, so that her head seemed massive in comparison to the rest of her body. Virginsky’s eye was drawn to the paper crown that had been placed beneath the
kokoshnik
. On it were written the words of the Trisagion:
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.

For the first time, he wondered who she was. Something about her extraordinarily diminutive structure seemed familiar. He thought of Tatyana Ruslanovna’s words to him just before they entered the church:
Someone you killed, that’s all
.

Had she said it simply to make him think of Porfiry Petrovich? She knew as well as he did that Porfiry was not really dead, and that therefore Virginsky could not in any way be said to have killed him.

Indeed, there was no one whose death could be laid at his door.
Unless one counted Dolgoruky
.

Of course. Now he recognised the woman in the coffin as Princess Dolgorukaya, Dolgoruky’s mother. So Princess Dolgorukaya had died. But how could he be held responsible for her death?

The chanting had come to a stop. Virginsky turned to face the sea of candle flame. Without the auditory accompaniment, the light seemed wan and almost incomplete. The faces of the mourners were turned towards him, in anxious expectation. He saw a number of men in police and gendarme uniforms assembled at the front, forming a kind of human barricade around one part of the congregation. The officers shifted nervously. Among them he recognised Major Verkhotsev, whose expression was wary, although again Virginsky noticed the unmistakable presence of pity. Verkhotsev was standing at the head of the bank of men; immediately next to him, to Virginsky’s surprise, was Totsky. If it was not such an absurd idea, he might have thought the two of them had just been in conference.

Virginsky cast a glance towards the back of the cathedral, seeking out Tatyana Ruslanovna, as if the sight of her face would explain everything. But instead of an explanation, he saw only contempt.