The Man from St. Petersburg (15 page)

His preaching phase had ended in 1899, during the national student strike, when he was arrested as an agitator and sent to Siberia. The years of wandering had already inured him to cold, hunger and pain; but now, working in a chain gang, using wooden tools to dig out gold in a mine, laboring on when the man chained to his side had fallen dead, seeing boys and women flogged, he came to know darkness, bitterness, despair and finally hatred. In Siberia he had learned the facts of life: steal or starve, hide or be beaten, fight or die. There he had acquired cunning and ruthlessness. There he had learned the ultimate truth about oppression: that it works by turning its victims against each other instead of against their oppressors.

He escaped, and began the long journey into madness, which ended when he killed the policeman outside Omsk and realized that he had no fear.

He returned to civilization as a full-blooded revolutionist. It seemed incredible to him that he had once scrupled to throw bombs at the noblemen who maintained those Siberian convict mines. He was enraged by the government-inspired pogroms against the Jews in the west and south of Russia. He was sickened by the wrangling between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the second congress of the Social Democratic Party. He was inspired by the magazine that came from Geneva, called
Bread and Liberty
, with the quote from Bakunin on its masthead: “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” Finally, hating the government, disenchanted with the socialists and convinced by the anarchists, he went to a mill town called Bialystock and founded a group called Struggle.

Those had been the glory years. He would never forget young Nisan Farber, who had knifed the millowner outside the synagogue on the Day of Atonement. Feliks himself had shot the chief of police. Then he took the fight to St. Petersburg, where he founded another anarchist group, The Unauthorized, and planned the successful assassination of the Grand Duke Sergey. That year—1905—in St. Petersburg there were killings, bank robberies, strikes and riots: the revolution seemed only days away. Then came the repression—more fierce, more efficient and a great deal more bloodthirsty than anything the revolutionists had ever done. The secret police came in the middle of the night to the homes of The Unauthorized, and they were all arrested except Feliks, who killed one policeman and maimed another and escaped to Switzerland, for by then nobody could stop him, he was so determined and powerful and angry and ruthless.

In all those years, and even in the quiet years in Switzerland that followed, he had never loved anyone. There had been people of whom he had grown mildly fond—a pig-keeper in Georgia, an old Jewish bomb-maker in Bialystock, Ulrich in Geneva—but they tended to pass into and then out of his life. There had been women, too. Many women sensed his violent nature and shied away from him, but those of them who found him attractive found him extremely so. Occasionally he had yielded to the temptation, and he had always been more or less disappointed. His parents were both dead and he had not seen his sister for twenty years. Looking back, he could see his life since Lydia as a slow slide into anesthesia. He had survived by becoming less and less sensitive, through the experiences of imprisonment, torture, the chain gang and the long, brutal escape from Siberia. He no longer cared even for himself: this, he had decided, was the meaning of his lack of fear, for one could only be afraid on account of something for which one cared.

He liked it this way.

His love was not for people, it was for
the
people. His compassion was for starving peasants in general, and sick children and frightened soldiers and crippled miners in general. He hated nobody in particular: just all princes, all landlords, all capitalists and all generals.

In giving his personality over to a higher cause he knew he was like a priest, and indeed like one priest in particular: his father. He no longer felt diminished by this comparison. He respected his father’s high-mindedness and despised the cause it served. He, Feliks, had chosen the right cause. His life would not be wasted.

This was the Feliks that had formed over the years, as his mature personality emerged from the fluidity of youth. What had been so devastating about Lydia’s scream, he thought, was that it had reminded him that there might have been a different Feliks, a warm and loving man, a sexual man, a man capable of jealousy, greed, vanity and fear. Would I rather be that man? he asked himself. That man would long to stare into her wide gray eyes and stroke her fine blond hair, to see her collapse into helpless giggles as she tried to learn how to whistle, to argue with her about Tolstoy, to eat black bread and smoked herrings with her and to watch her screw up her pretty face at her first taste of vodka. That man would be
playful
.

He would also be
concerned.
He would wonder whether Lydia was happy. He would hesitate to pull the trigger for fear she might be hit by a ricochet. He might be reluctant to kill her nephew in case she were fond of the boy. That man would make a poor revolutionist.

No, he thought as he went to sleep that night; I would not want to be that man. He is not even dangerous.

In the night he dreamed that he shot Lydia, but when he woke up he could not remember whether it had made him sad.

On the third day he went out. Bridget gave him a shirt and a coat which had belonged to her husband. They fitted badly, for he had been shorter and wider than Feliks. Feliks’s own trousers and boots were still wearable, and Bridget had washed the blood off.

He mended the bicycle, which had been damaged when he dropped it down the steps. He straightened a buckled wheel, patched a punctured tire, and taped the split leather of the saddle. He climbed on and rode a short distance, but he realized immediately that he was not yet strong enough to go far on it. He walked instead.

It was a glorious sunny day. At a secondhand clothes stall in Mornington Crescent he gave a halfpenny and Bridget’s husband’s coat for a lighter coat that fitted him. He felt peculiarly happy, walking through the streets of London in the summer weather. I’ve nothing to be happy about, he thought; my clever, well-organized, daring assassination plan fell to pieces because a woman cried out and a middle-aged man drew a sword. What a fiasco!

It was Bridget who had cheered him up, he decided. She had seen that he was in trouble and she had given help without thinking twice. It reminded him of the great-heartedness of the people in whose cause he fired guns and threw bombs and got himself sliced up with a sword. It gave him strength.

He made his way to St. James’s Park and took up his familiar station opposite the Walden house. He looked across at the pristine white stonework and the high, elegant windows. You can knock me down, he thought, but you can’t knock me out; if you knew I was back here again, you’d tremble in your patent-leather shoes.

He settled down to watch. The trouble with a fiasco was that it put the intended victim on his guard. It would now be very difficult indeed to kill Orlov because he would be taking precautions. But Feliks would find out what those precautions were, and he would evade them.

At eleven a.m. the carriage went out, and Feliks thought he saw behind the glass a spade-shaped beard and a top hat: Walden. It came back at one. It went out again at three, this time with a feminine hat inside, belonging presumably to Lydia, or perhaps to the daughter of the family; whoever it was returned at five. In the evening several guests came and the family apparently dined at home. There was no sign of Orlov. It rather looked as if he had moved out.

I’ll find him, then, he thought.

On his way back to Camden Town he bought a newspaper. When he arrived home Bridget offered him tea, so he read the paper in her parlor. There was nothing about Orlov either in the Court Circular or the Social Notes.

Bridget saw what he was reading. “Interesting material, for a fellow such as yourself,” she said sarcastically. “You’ll be making up your mind which of the balls to attend tonight, no doubt.”

Feliks smiled and said nothing.

Bridget said: “I know what you are, you know. You’re an anarchist.”

Feliks was very still.

“Who are you going to kill?” she said. “I hope it’s the bloody King.” She drank tea noisily. “Well, don’t stare at me like that. You look as if you’re about to slit me throat. You needn’t worry. I won’t tell on you. My husband did for a few of the English in his time.”

Feliks was nonplussed. She had guessed—and she approved! He did not know what to say. He stood up and folded his newspaper. “You’re a good woman,” he said.

“If I was twenty years younger I’d kiss you. Get away before I forget myself.”

“Thank you for the tea,” Feliks said. He went out.

He spent the rest of the evening sitting in the drab basement room, staring at the wall, thinking. Of course Orlov was lying low, but where? If he was not at the Walden house, he might be at the Russian Embassy, or at the home of one of the embassy staff, or at a hotel, or at the home of one of Walden’s friends. He might even be out of London, at a house in the country. There was no way to check all the possibilities.

It was not going to be so easy. He began to worry.

He considered following Walden around. It might be the best he could do, but it was unsatisfactory. Although it was possible for a bicycle to keep pace with a carriage in London, it could be exhausting for the cyclist, and Feliks knew that he could not contemplate it for several days. Suppose then that, over a period of three days, Walden visited several private houses, two or three offices, a hotel or two and an embassy—how would Feliks find out which of those buildings Orlov was in? It was possible, but it would take time.

Meanwhile the negotiations would be progressing and war drawing nearer.

And suppose that, after all that, Orlov was still living in Walden’s house and had decided simply not to go out?

Feliks went to sleep gnawing at the problem and woke up in the morning with the solution.

He would ask Lydia.

He polished his boots, washed his hair and shaved. He borrowed from Bridget a white cotton scarf which, worn around his throat, concealed the fact that he had neither collar nor tie. At the secondhand clothes stall in Mornington Crescent he found a bowler hat which fitted him. He looked at himself in the stallholder’s cracked, frosted mirror. He looked dangerously respectable. He walked on.

He had no idea how Lydia would react to him. He was quite sure that she had not recognized him on the night of the fiasco: his face had been covered and her scream had been a reaction to the sight of an anonymous man with a gun. Assuming he could get in to see her, what would she do? Would she throw him out? Would she immediately begin to tear off her clothes, the way she had used to? Would she be merely indifferent, thinking of him as someone she knew in her youth and no longer cared for?

He wanted her to be shocked and dazed and still in love with him, so that he would be able to make her tell him a secret.

Suddenly he could not remember what she looked like. It was very odd. He knew she was a certain height, neither fat nor thin, with pale hair and gray eyes; but he could not bring to mind a picture of her. If he concentrated on her nose he could see that, or he could visualize her vaguely, without definite form, in the bleak light of a St. Petersburg evening; but when he tried to focus on her she faded away.

He arrived at the park and hesitated outside the house. It was ten o’clock. Would they have got up yet? In any event, he thought he should probably wait until Walden left the house. It occurred to him that he might even see Orlov in the hall—at a time when he had no weapon.

If I do, I’ll strangle him with my hands, he thought savagely.

He wondered what Lydia was doing right now. She might be dressing. Ah, yes, he thought, I can picture her in a corset, brushing her hair before a mirror. Or she might be eating breakfast. There would be eggs and meat and fish, but she would eat a small piece of a soft roll and a slice of apple.

The carriage appeared at the entrance. A minute or two later someone got in and it drove to the gate. Feliks stood on the opposite side of the road as it emerged. Suddenly he was looking straight at Walden, behind the window of the coach, and Walden was looking at him. Feliks had an urge to shout: “Hey, Walden, I fucked her first!” Instead he grinned and doffed his hat. Walden inclined his head in acknowledgment, and the carriage passed on.

Feliks wondered why he felt so elated.

He walked through the gateway and across the courtyard. He saw that there were flowers in every window of the house, and he thought: Ah, yes, she always loved flowers. He climbed the steps to the porch and pulled the bell at the front door.

Perhaps she will call the police, he thought.

A moment later a servant opened the door. Feliks stepped inside. “Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, sir,” the servant said.

So I
do
look respectable. “I should like to see the Countess of Walden. It is a matter of great urgency. My name is Konstantin Dmitrich Levin. I am sure she will remember me from St. Petersburg.”

“Yes, sir. Konstantin … ?”

“Konstantin Dmitrich Levin. Let me give you my card.” Feliks fumbled inside his coat. “Ach! I brought none.”

“That’s all right, sir. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.”

“Yes.”

“If you will be so good as to wait here, I’ll see if the Countess is in.”

Feliks nodded, and the servant went away.

SIX

T
he Queen Anne bureau-bookcase was one of Lydia’s favorite pieces of furniture in the London house. Two hundred years old, it was of black lacquer decorated in gold with vaguely Chinese scenes of pagodas, willow trees, islands and flowers. The flap front folded down to form a writing table and to reveal red-velvet-lined pigeonholes for letters and tiny drawers for paper and pens. There were large drawers in the bombe base, and the top, above her eye level as she sat at the table, was a bookcase with a mirrored door. The ancient mirror showed a cloudy, distorted reflection of the morning room behind her.

On the writing table was an unfinished letter to her sister, Aleks’s mother, in St. Petersburg. Lydia’s handwriting was small and untidy. She had written, in Russian:
I don’t know what to think about Charlotte
and then she had stopped. She sat, looking into the cloudy mirror, musing.

It was turning out to be a very eventful season in the worst possible way. After the suffragette protest at the court and the madman in the park, she had thought there could be no more catastrophes. And for a few days life had been calm. Charlotte was successfully launched. Aleks was no longer around to disturb Lydia’s equanimity, for he had fled to the Savoy Hotel and did not appear at society functions. Belinda’s ball had been a huge success. That night Lydia had forgotten her troubles and had a wonderful time. She had danced the waltz, the polka, the two-step, the tango and even the Turkey Trot. She had partnered half the House of Lords, several dashing young men, and—most of all—her husband. It was not really chic to dance with one’s own husband quite as much as she had. But Stephen looked so fine in his white tie and tails, and he danced so well, that she had given herself up to pleasure. Her marriage was definitely in one of its happier phases. Looking back over the years, she had the feeling that it was often like this in the season. And then Annie had turned up to spoil it all.

Lydia had only the vaguest recollection of Annie as a housemaid at Walden Hall. One could not possibly know all the servants at an establishment as large as that: there were some fifty indoor staff, and then the gardeners and grooms. Nor was one known to all the servants: on one famous occasion, Lydia had stopped a passing maid in the hall and asked her whether Lord Walden was in his room, and had received the reply: “I’ll go and see, madam—what name shall I say?”

However, Lydia remembered the day Mrs. Braithwaite, the housekeeper at Walden Hall, had come to her with the news that Annie would have to go because she was pregnant. Mrs. Braithwaite did not say “pregnant,” she said “overtaken in moral transgression.” Both Lydia and Mrs. Braithwaite were embarrassed, but neither was shocked: it had happened to housemaids before and it would happen again. They had to be let go—it was the only way to run a respectable house—and naturally they could not be given references in those circumstances. Without a “character” a maid could not get another job in service, of course; but normally she did not need a job, for she either married the father of the child or went home to mother. Indeed, years later, when she had brought up her children, such a girl might even find her way back into the house, as a laundry-maid or kitchenmaid, or in some other capacity which would not bring her into contact with her employers.

Lydia had assumed that Annie’s life would follow that course. She remembered that a young undergardener had left without giving notice and run away to sea—that piece of news had come to her attention because of the difficulty of finding boys to work as gardeners for a sensible wage these days—but of course no one ever told her the connection between Annie and the boy.

We’re not harsh, Lydia thought; as employers we’re relatively generous. Yet Charlotte reacted as if Annie’s plight were my fault. I don’t know where she gets her ideas. What was it she said? “I know what Annie did and I know who she did it with.” In Heaven’s name, where did the child learn to speak like that? I dedicated my whole life to bringing her up to be pure and clean and decent, not like me
don’t even think that
—

She dipped her pen in the inkwell. She would have liked to share her worries with her sister, but it was so hard in a letter. It was hard enough in person, she thought. Charlotte was the one with whom she really wanted to share her thoughts. Why is it that when I try I become shrill and tyrannical?

Pritchard came in. “A Mr. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin to see you, my lady.”

Lydia frowned. “I don’t think I know him.”

“The gentleman said it was a matter of urgency, m’lady, and seemed to think you would remember him from St. Petersburg.” Pritchard looked dubious.

Lydia hesitated. The name was distinctly familiar. From time to time Russians whom she hardly knew would call on her in London. They usually began by offering to take back messages, and ended by asking to borrow the passage money. Lydia did not mind helping them. “All right,” she said. “Show him in.”

Pritchard went out. Lydia inked her pen again, and wrote:
What can one do when the child is eighteen years old and has a will of her own? Stephen says I worry too much. I wish—

I can’t even talk to Stephen properly, she thought. He just makes soothing noises.

The door opened, and Pritchard said: “Mr. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.”

Lydia spoke over her shoulder in English. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Mr. Levin.” She heard the butler close the door as she wrote:—
that I could believe him
. She put down her pen and turned around.

He spoke to her in Russian. “How are you, Lydia?”

Lydia whispered: “Oh, my
God
.”

It was as if something cold and heavy descended over her heart, and she could not breathe. Feliks stood in front of her: tall, and thin as ever, in a shabby coat with a scarf, holding a foolish English hat in his left hand. He was as familiar as if she had seen him yesterday. His hair was still long and black, without a hint of gray. There was that white skin, the nose like a curved blade, the wide, mobile mouth and the sad soft eyes.

He said: “I’m sorry to shock you.”

Lydia could not speak. She struggled with a storm of mixed emotions: shock, fear, delight, horror, affection and dread. She stared at him. He was
older.
His face was lined: there were two sharp creases in his cheeks, and downturning wrinkles at the corners of his lovely mouth. They seemed like lines of pain and hardship. In his expression there was a hint of something which had not been there before—perhaps ruthlessness, or cruelty, or just inflexibility. He looked tired.

He was studying her, too. “You look like a girl,” he said wonderingly.

She tore her eyes away from him. Her heart pounded like a drum. Dread became her dominant feeling. If Stephen should come back early, she thought, and walk in here now, and give me that look that says Who is this man? and I were to blush, and mumble, and—

“I wish you’d say something,” Feliks said.

Her eyes returned to him. With an effort, she said: “Go away.”

“No.”

Suddenly she knew she did not have the strength of will to make him leave. She looked over to the bell which would summon Pritchard. Feliks smiled as if he knew what was in her mind.

“It’s been nineteen years,” he said.

“You’ve aged,” she said abruptly.

“You’ve changed.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected this,” he said. “That you would be afraid to admit to yourself that you are happy to see me.”

He had always been able to see into her soul with those soft eyes. What was the use of pretending? He knew all about pretending, she recalled. He had understood her from the moment he first set eyes on her.

“Well?” he said. “Aren’t you happy?”

“I’m frightened, too,” she said, and then she realized she had admitted to being happy. “And you?” she added hastily. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel much at all, anymore,” he said. His face twisted into an odd, pained smile. It was a look she had never seen on him in the old days. She felt intuitively that he was telling the truth at that moment.

He drew up a chair and sat close to her. She jerked back convulsively. He said: “I won’t hurt you—”

“Hurt me?” Lydia gave a laugh that sounded unexpectedly brittle. “You’ll ruin my life!”

“You ruined mine,” he replied; then he frowned as if he had surprised himself.

“Oh, Feliks, I didn’t mean to.”

He was suddenly tense. There was a heavy silence. He gave that hurt smile again, and said: “What happened?”

She hesitated. She realized that all these years she had been longing to explain it to him. She began: “That night you tore my gown …”

“What are you going to do about this tear in your gown?” Feliks asked.

“The maid will put a stitch in it before I arrive at the embassy,” Lydia replied.

“Your maid carries needles and thread around with her?”

“Why else would one take one’s maid when one goes out to dinner?”

“Why indeed?” He was lying on the bed watching her dress. She knew that he loved to see her put her clothes on. He had once done an imitation of her pulling up her drawers which had made her laugh until it hurt.

She took the gown from him and put it on. “Everybody takes an hour to dress for the evening,” she said. “Until I met you I had no idea it could be done in five minutes. Button me up.”

She looked in the mirror and tidied her hair while he fastened the hooks at the back of her gown. When he had finished he kissed her shoulder. She arched her neck. “Don’t start again,” she said. She picked up the old brown cloak and handed it to him.

He helped her on with it. He said: “The lights go out when you leave.”

She was touched. He was not often sentimental. She said: “I know how you feel.”

“Will you come tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

At the door she kissed him and said: “Thank you.”

“I love you dearly,” he said.

She left him. As she went down the stairs she heard a noise behind her and looked back. Feliks’s neighbor was watching her from the door of the next apartment. He looked embarrassed when he caught her eye. She nodded politely to him, and he withdrew. It occurred to her that he could probably hear them making love through the wall. She did not care. She knew that what she was doing was wicked and shameful but she refused to think about it.

She went out into the street. Her maid was waiting on the corner. Together they walked to the park where the carriage was waiting. It was a cold evening, but Lydia felt as if she were glowing with her own warmth. She often wondered whether people could tell, just by looking at her, that she had been making love.

The coachman put down the step of the carriage for her and avoided her eyes. He knows, she thought with surprise; then she decided that that was fanciful.

In the coach the maid hastily repaired the back of Lydia’s gown. Lydia changed the brown cloak for a fur wrap. The maid fussed with Lydia’s hair. Lydia gave her ten rubles for her silence. Then they were at the British Embassy.

Lydia composed herself and went in.

It was not difficult, she found, to assume her other personality and become the modest, virginal Lydia whom polite society knew. As soon as she entered the real world she was terrified by the brute power of her passion for Feliks and she became quite genuinely a trembling lily. It was no act. Indeed, for most of the hours in the day she felt that this well-behaved maiden was her real self, and she thought she must be somehow possessed while she was with Feliks. But when he was there, and also when she was alone in bed in the middle of the night, she knew that it was her official persona that was evil, for it would have denied her the greatest joy she had ever known.

So she entered the hall, dressed in becoming white, looking young and a little nervous.

She met her cousin Kiril, who was nominally her escort. He was a widower of thirty-something years, an irritable man who worked for the Foreign Minister. He and Lydia did not much like each other, but because his wife was dead, and because Lydia’s parents did not enjoy going out, Kiril and Lydia had let it be known that they should be invited together. Lydia always told him not to trouble to call for her. This was how she managed to meet Feliks clandestinely.

“You’re late,” Kiril said.

“I’m sorry,” she replied insincerely.

Kiril took her into the salon. They were greeted by the ambassador and his wife, and then introduced to Lord Highcombe, elder son of the Earl of Walden. He was a tall, handsome man of about thirty, in well-cut but rather sober clothes. He looked very English, with his short, light brown hair and blue eyes. He had a smiling, open face, which Lydia found mildly attractive. He spoke good French. They made polite conversation for a few moments; then he was introduced to someone else.

“He seems rather pleasant,” Lydia said to Kiril.

“Don’t be fooled,” Kiril told her. “Rumor has it that he’s a tearaway.”

“You surprise me.”

“He plays cards with some officers I know, and they were telling me that he drinks them under the table some nights.”

“You know so much about people, and it’s always bad.”

Kiril’s thin lips twisted in a smile. “Is that my fault or theirs?”

Lydia said: “Why is he here?”

“In St. Petersburg? Well, the story is that he has a very rich and domineering father, with whom he doesn’t see eye to eye; so he’s drinking and gambling his way around the world while he waits for the old man to die.”

Lydia did not expect to speak to Lord Highcombe again, but the ambassador’s wife, seeing them both as eligible, seated them side by side at dinner. During the second course he tried to make conversation. “I wonder whether you know the Minister of Finance?” he said.

“I’m afraid not,” Lydia said coldly. She knew all about the man, of course, and he was a great favorite of the Czar; but he had married a woman who was not only divorced but also Jewish, which made it rather awkward for people to invite him. She suddenly thought how scathing Feliks would be about such prejudices; then the Englishman was speaking again.