The Man from St. Petersburg (16 page)

“I should be most interested to meet him. I understand he’s terribly energetic and forward-looking. His Trans-Siberian Railway project is marvelous. But people say he’s not very refined.”

“I’m sure Sergey Yulevich Witte is a loyal servant of our adored sovereign,” Lydia said politely.

“No doubt,” Highcombe said, and turned back to the lady on his other side.

He thinks I’m boring, Lydia thought.

A little later she asked him: “Do you travel a great deal?”

“Most of the time,” he replied. “I go to Africa almost every year, for the big game.”

“How fascinating! What do you shoot?”

“Lion, elephant … a rhinoceros, once.”

“In the jungle?”

“The hunting is in the grasslands to the east, but I did once go as far south as the rain forest, just to see it.”

“And is it how it is pictured in books?”

“Yes, even to the naked black pygmies.”

Lydia felt herself flush, and she turned away. Now why did he have to say that? she thought. She did not speak to him again. They had conversed enough to satisfy the dictates of etiquette, and clearly neither of them was keen to go further.

After dinner she played the ambassador’s wonderful grand piano for a while; then Kiril took her home. She went straight to bed to dream of Feliks.

The next morning after breakfast a servant summoned her to her father’s study.

The count was a small, thin, exasperated man of fifty-five. Lydia was the youngest of his four children—the others were a sister and two brothers, all married. Their mother was alive but in continual bad health. The count saw little of his family. He seemed to spend most of his time reading. He had one old friend who came to play chess. Lydia had vague memories of a time when things were different and they were a jolly family around a big dinner table; but it was a long time ago. Nowadays a summons to the study meant only one thing: trouble.

When Lydia went in he was standing in front of the writing table, his hands behind his back, his face twisted with fury. Lydia’s maid stood near the door with tears on her cheeks. Lydia knew then what the trouble was, and she felt herself tremble.

There was no preamble. Her father began by shouting: “You have been seeing a boy secretly!”

Lydia folded her arms to stop herself shaking. “How did you find out?” she said with an accusing look at the maid.

Her father made a disgusted noise. “Don’t look at
her
,” he said. “The coachman told me of your extraordinarily long walks in the park. Yesterday I had you followed.” His voice rose again. “How could you act like that—like a peasant girl?”

How much did he know? Not everything, surely! “I’m in love,” Lydia said.

“In love?” he roared. “You mean you’re in heat!”

Lydia thought he was about to strike her. She took several paces backward and prepared to run. He knew everything. It was total catastrophe. What would he do?

He said: “The worst of it is, you can’t possibly marry him.”

Lydia was aghast. She was prepared to be thrown out of the house, cut off without a penny and humiliated; but he had in mind worse punishment than that. “Why can’t I marry him?” she cried.

“Because he’s practically a serf and an anarchist to boot. Don’t you understand—you’re ruined!”

“Then let me marry him and live in ruin!”

“No!” he yelled.

There was a heavy silence. The maid, still in tears, sniffed monotonously. Lydia heard a ringing in her ears.

“This will kill your mother,” the count said.

Lydia whispered: “What are you going to do?”

“You’ll be confined to your room for now. As soon as I can arrange it, you’ll enter a convent.”

Lydia stared at him in horror. It was a sentence of death.

She ran from the room.

Never to see Feliks again—the thought was utterly unbearable. Tears rolled down her face. She ran to her bedroom. She could not possibly suffer this punishment. I shall die, she thought; I shall die.

Rather than leave Feliks forever she would leave her family forever. As soon as this idea occurred to her she knew it was the only thing to do—and the time to do it was now, before her father sent someone to lock her into her room.

She looked in her purse: she had only a few rubles. She opened her jewelry case. She took out a diamond bracelet, a gold chain and some rings, and stuffed them into her purse. She put on her coat and ran down the back stairs. She left the house by the servants’ door.

She hurried through the streets. People stared at her, running in her fine clothes, with tears on her face. She did not care. She had left society for good. She was going to elope with Feliks.

She quickly became exhausted and slowed to a walk. Suddenly the whole affair did not seem so disastrous. She and Feliks could go to Moscow, or to a country town, or even abroad, perhaps Germany. Feliks would have to find work. He was educated, so he could at least be a clerk, possibly better. She might take in sewing. They would rent a small house and furnish it cheaply. They would have children, strong boys and pretty girls. The things she would lose seemed worthless: silk dresses, society gossip, ubiquitous servants, huge houses and delicate foods.

What would it be like, living with him? They would get into bed and actually go to sleep together—how romantic! They would take walks, holding hands, not caring who saw that they were in love. They would sit by the fireside in the evenings, playing cards or reading or just talking. Any time she wanted, she could touch him, or kiss him, or take off her clothes for him.

She reached his house and climbed the stairs. What would his reaction be? He would be shocked, then elated; then he would become practical. They would have to leave immediately, he would say, for her father could send people after them to bring her back. He would be decisive. “We’ll go to X,” he would say, and he would talk about tickets and a suitcase and disguises.

She took out her key, but the door to his apartment hung open and askew on its hinges. She went in, calling: “Feliks, it’s me—oh!”

She stopped in the doorway. The whole place was in a mess, as if it had been robbed, or there had been a fight. Feliks was not there.

Suddenly she was terribly afraid.

She walked around the small apartment, feeling dazed, stupidly looking behind the curtains and under the bed. All his books were gone. The mattress had been slashed. The mirror was broken, the one in which they had watched themselves making love one afternoon when it had been snowing outside.

Lydia wandered aimlessly into the hallway. The occupant of the next apartment stood in his doorway. Lydia looked at him. “What happened?” she said.

“He was arrested last night,” the man replied.

And the sky fell in.

She felt faint. She leaned against the wall for support. Arrested! Why? Where was he? Who had arrested him? How could she elope with him if he was in jail?

“It seems he was an anarchist.” The neighbor grinned suggestively and added: “Whatever else he might have been.”

It was too much to bear, that this should have happened on the very day that Father had—

“Father,” Lydia whispered. “Father did this.”

“You look ill,” the neighbor said. “Would you like to come in and sit down for a moment?”

Lydia did not like the look on his face. She could not cope with this leering man on top of everything else. She pulled herself together and, without answering him, made her way slowly down the stairs and went out into the street.

She walked slowly, going nowhere, wondering what to do. Somehow she had to get Feliks out of jail. She had no idea how to go about it. She should appeal to the Minister of the Interior? To the Czar? She did not know how to reach them except by going to the right receptions. She could write—but she needed Feliks
today
. Could she visit him in jail? At least then she would know how he was, and he would know she was fighting for him. Maybe, if she arrived in a coach, dressed in fine clothes, she could overawe the jailer … But she did not know where the jail was—there might be more than one—and she did not have her carriage; and if she went home her father would lock her up and she would never see Feliks—

She fought back the tears. She was so ignorant of the world of police and jails and criminals. Whom could she ask? Feliks’s anarchist friends would know all about that sort of thing, but she had never met them and did not know where to find them.

She thought of her brothers. Maks was managing the family estate in the country, and he would see Feliks from Father’s point of view and would completely approve of what Father had done. Dmitri—empty-headed, effeminate Dmitri—would sympathize with Lydia but be helpless.

There was only one thing to do. She must go and plead with her father for Feliks’s release.

Wearily, she turned around and headed for home.

Her anger toward her father grew with every step she took. He was supposed to love her, care for her and ensure her happiness—and what did he do? Tried to ruin her life. She knew what she wanted; she knew what would make her happy. Whose life was it? Who had the right to decide?

She arrived home in a rage.

She went straight to the study and walked in without knocking. “You’ve had him arrested,” she accused.

“Yes,” her father said. His mood had altered. His mask of fury had gone, to be replaced by a thoughtful, calculating look.

Lydia said: “You must have him released immediately.”

“They are torturing him, at this moment.”

“No,” Lydia whispered. “Oh, no.”

“They are flogging the soles of his feet—”

Lydia screamed.

Father raised his voice, “—with thin, flexible canes—”

There was a paper knife on the writing table.

“—which quickly cut the soft skin—”

I will kill him—

“—until there is so much blood—”

Lydia went berserk.

She picked up the paper knife and rushed at her father. She lifted the knife high in the air and brought it down with all her might, aiming at his skinny neck, screaming all the while: “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—”

He moved aside, caught her wrist, forced her to drop the knife and pushed her into a chair.

She burst into hysterical tears.

After a few minutes her father began to speak again, calmly, as if nothing had happened. “I could have it stopped immediately,” he said. “I can have the boy released whenever I choose.”

“Oh, please,” Lydia sobbed. “I’ll do anything you say.”

“Will you?” he said.

She looked up at him through her tears. An access of hope calmed her. Did he mean it? Would he release Feliks? “Anything,” she said, “anything.”

“I had a visitor while you were out,” he said conversationally. “The Earl of Walden. He asked permission to call on you.”

“Who?”

“The Earl of Walden. He was Lord Highcombe when you met him last evening, but his father died in the night so now he’s the Earl. ‘Earl’ is the English for ‘Count.’ “

Lydia stared at her father uncomprehendingly. She remembered meeting the Englishman, but she could not understand why her father was suddenly rambling on about him. She said: “Don’t torture me. Tell me what I must do to make you release Feliks.”

“Marry the Earl of Walden,” her father said abruptly.

Lydia stopped crying. She stared at him, dumbstruck. Was he really saying this? It sounded insane.

He continued: “Walden will want to marry quickly. You would leave Russia and go to England with him. This appalling affair could be forgotten and nobody need know. It’s the ideal solution.”

“And Feliks?” Lydia breathed.

“The torture would stop today. The boy would be released the moment you leave for England. You would never see him again as long as you live.”

“No,” Lydia whispered. “In God’s name, no.”

They were married eight weeks later.

“You really tried to stab your father?” Feliks said with a mixture of awe and amusement.

Lydia nodded. She thought: Thank God, he has not guessed the rest of it.

Feliks said: “I’m proud of you.”

“It was a terrible thing to do.”

“He was a terrible man.”

“I don’t think so anymore.”

There was a pause. Feliks said softly: “So, you never betrayed me, after all.”

The urge to take him into her arms was almost irresistible. She made herself sit frozen still. The moment passed.

“Your father kept his word,” he mused. “The torture stopped that day. They let me out the day after you left for England.”

“How did you know where I had gone?”

“I got a message from the maid. She left it at the bookshop. Of course she didn’t know of the bargain you had made.”

The things they had to say were so many and so weighty that they sat in silence. Lydia was still afraid to move. She noticed that he kept his right hand in his coat pocket all the time. She did not remember his having that habit before.

“Can you whistle yet?” he said suddenly.

She could not help laughing. “I never got the knack.”

They lapsed into quiet again. Lydia wanted him to leave, and with equal desperation she wanted him to stay. Eventually she said: “What have you been doing since then?”

Feliks shrugged. “A good deal of traveling. You?”

“Bringing up my daughter.”

The years in between seemed to be an uncomfortable topic for both of them.

Lydia said: “What made you come here?”

“Oh …” Feliks seemed momentarily confused by the question. “I need to see Orlov.”

“Aleks? Why?”

“There’s an anarchist sailor in jail—I have to persuade Orlov to release him … You know how things are in Russia; there’s no justice, only influence.”

“Aleks isn’t here anymore. Someone tried to rob us in our carriage, and he got frightened.”

“Where can I find him?” Feliks said. He seemed suddenly tense.

“The Savoy Hotel—but I doubt if he’ll see you.”

“I can try.”

“This is important to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re still … political?”

“It’s my life.”

“Most young men lose interest as they grow older.”

He smiled ruefully. “Most young men get married and have a family.”