by A J Allen
Walking over to the side table where there was a flask of water and a glass he poured himself a drink. Hardly daring to breathe Madame Pobednyeva watched as Kavelin looked round the room, spied the sleeping baker and smiled.
If he turns around any further, she told herself, he can hardly fail to see me and that would be extremely embarrassing.
She was trapped. She could hardly copy Izminsky’s example and feign sleep. It would be just too inelegant. To her relief she saw Kavelin consult his pocket watch and then drain his glass. Putting the glass gently back on the tray so as not to wake Izminsky, the timber merchant smoothed down the front of his waistcoat and followed in his mistress’s footsteps down the stairs to the lobby.
Madame Pobednyeva fanned her face in relief. It was now a confirmed fact: Leonid Kavelin and Irena Kuibysheva were adulterous lovers. This was news indeed, and far more significant than her discovery about the banker’s reading habits or the poor quality of almond biscuits. This needed no note to remind her of the details.
Quietly rising from her chair she crossed the lounge to the landing beyond. Stooping, she peered down the staircase. The hotel lobby was empty. Kavelin had either gone into the dining room or he had left the hotel.
It was only as she was removing her outdoor coat from its peg on the wall of the lobby that she recalled the original purpose of her visit to the hotel. Clutching the luncheon list, she cautiously opened the door of the dining room and peered inside. The room was almost deserted. At one table sat Sasha and the younger waiter, smoking cigarettes and folding napkins. From the doorway Madame Pobednyeva beckoned to Sasha and waved her list.
“Sasha!” she called out as the head waiter rose obediently from the table and came towards her. “I really can’t wait any longer. Please give this to Fyodor Gregorivich as soon as you see him. He will know what to do with it.”
With an apologetic bow the head waiter took the folded piece of notepaper from her and bade her a good afternoon. Professional courtesy prevented him from suggesting to her that she could speak to the hotel’s proprietor herself if she would but wait until his boss had changed the ensemened sheets in Room Number Four. As he confided to his protégé when he had returned to folding the napkins, tact and discretion were the hallmarks of their calling.
Tatyana Kavelina walked quickly along the raised boardwalk that bordered Menshikov Street. Her visit to Raisa had upset her greatly and she wanted nothing more than to get home, close her front door behind her and shut the world out. The gloom of the winter afternoon was fast fading into the darkness of evening, making figures and the outlines of the buildings indistinct in the ill lit street. A couple passed her, walking arm in arm, and greeted her by her name but Tatyana ignored them, averting her face as if she did not wish to see, or to be seen.
How could Raisa say such rude and hurtful things to me, she thought angrily, or even believe them to be true? Olga Nadnikova and Lidiya Pusnyena, yes, I can believe it of those frustrated old cats, but dear Raisa? Doesn’t she realise how unlikely the idea is that Irena would ever set her cap at Lyonya? The idea is more than ridiculous, it is absurd.
All the same, thought the timber merchant’s wife, Raisa’s point had been well made. Leonid would quickly recognise that these rumours, as insulting as they were, would be as damaging to his commercial interests as they were to his personal reputation. There were plenty of people in the town who would be only too prepared to deny him their trade if he was believed to be an adulterer. She would have to speak with her husband, even if it meant a beating. The risk was negligible. In all probability he would stay his hand. She hoped that he may even join her in laughing at their foolishness. Even if he did hit her, it mattered very little. Poor Lyonya had no talent for cruelty and little skill in violence. He was not quite as tall as she was and, perhaps because of this, in all their married life he had only attacked her three times, mostly with slaps around her head and bruising punches to her arms and legs like a young boy in a school playground. On each occasion she suspected he had been ashamed of himself afterwards. She considered him, in many ways, as being only half a man, for which she was profoundly grateful. It made it all the more unlikely that he would have the courage to attempt to seduce such an attractive and sharp-witted woman such as her friend Irena.
Reaching the alleyway that ran along the northern side of their house, out of habit Tatyana looked up and saw the face of her daughter gazing at her from one of the upper windows. Instinctively she raised her hand. The young girl raised her hand in response, and in that instant a wave of misery and anxiety, so powerful that she almost cried out in anguish, washed over her. The thought that anyone could deliberately wish to destroy the child’s happiness made her falter. Collecting herself she gingerly descended from the boardwalk, crossed the alley and ascended the steps that led to the entrance to the grounds of their house that lay secure behind the high wooden fence.
When she reached the door she was surprised to see her daughter waiting for her, standing in the doorway.
“Hello Mama!”
“Where is Nadya?” she responded irritably as she swept past the child into the warmth of the hallway. “She is paid to open the door, not you.”
“Papa wants a bath and she has been busy boiling water in the copper.”
Tatyana frowned as she removed the pin from her hat and carefully laid the hat on the small console table in their hallway.
It was customary for her husband to take his weekly bath on Sunday mornings so that he could be clean for church and it struck her as strange that he should break his routine. Absentmindedly she patted her daughter fondly on the shoulder and made her way along to the hall towards the back of the house.
Her belief that homes were more influenced by their male owners than their female chatelaines was born out by her own house, which was a living monument for the utility and beauty of wood. She and her family lived in wooden panelled rooms, walked on finely sanded and stained wooden floorboards, ate, drank and slept on expensively fashioned wooden furniture behind decoratively carved and lacquered wooden doors. It was, said Raisa, borrowing an image from a French translation she had read of the satirical Irish novel Gulliver’s Travels, like living within a highly polished cigar box.
The kitchen, scullery and bathroom were situated at the rear of the house. As she entered the kitchen, her maid Nadya was occupied in sorting out a pile of laundry on the kitchen table. Tatyana’s sudden appearance took her by surprise and she stepped guiltily away from the table.
“Good evening Nadya.”
“Good evening Ma’am.”
“What is this?” asked Tatyana, pointing to the clothes.
“The master’s clothes, Ma’am. They need washing.”
Tatyana gave a puzzled smile.
“On a Saturday night? But how will they dry? We can’t put them out to dry on a Sunday.”
“No Ma’am.”
“Leave them with me. There’s nothing here that can’t wait until Monday.”
Nadya looked down at the pile of washing on the table and then back up at Tatyana. She appeared flustered by her instruction.
“Mr Kavelin did say to do them today…” she said and then fell silent.
“Where is my husband?”
“Taking his bath, Ma’am.”
“I see. Well, don’t worry about these. Leave them where they are, I’ll look after them. You get on with preparing the supper.”
Walking through the scullery, Tatyana tapped peremptorily on the door that led to the bath room.
There was a pause and then she heard her husband’s querulous voice.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Leonid, it’s Tanya,” she called out.
“Tanya! Back so soon?”
“Yes. What are you doing in there?”
“Having a bathe, of course. It will be a momentous day tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” she repeated.
“Yes. Big day what with the civic reception and everything. We m
ay have to be ready early, so I thought I would bathe today.”
Pursing her lips, Tatyana nodded at the door panels as if in agreement.
“All right. I am going upstairs. Do you have your robe in there?”
“Yes thank you,” came the cheerful response.
Turning, she retraced her steps back to the kitchen. With one sweep of her arms she gathered up the pile of laundry from the kitchen table. Nadya opened her mouth as if to protest but her employer shook her head and held up a finger against her lips, commanding her silence. The maid nodded and, with a dismissive shrug, turned back to her task of peeling vegetables in the scullery sink.
Tatyana carried the bundle of soiled clothes up to the bedroom she shared with her husband and dropped them onto the large bed. She looked down at them for a moment and then, with a deep sigh, picked up the pair of Leonid’s trousers. As she began to fold them she heard a rattling sound come from one of the pockets. Reaching into his right hand pocket she retrieved a small box of safety matches decorated with the pompous monogram of the Hotel New Century. Tossing the matches aside she searched in the other trouser pocket and found they were empty. Holding up the legs of the trousers she pressed them to her face and breathed in. They smelt of him, of his sweat and his wood yard and the tobacco from his cigarettes. Shuffling the garment in her fingers she turned the trousers inside out, bent her head again and sniffed at the crotch. She could smell only stale urine, and the faint musky scent of his body odours.
Folding the trousers neatly she replaced them on the bed and rummaged in the pile of linen until she had found his long undergarments. Disentangling them for the other clothes she peered inside them and noted that there was fresh staining on the inside of the crotch. Without hesitation she picked them up and pressed them deliberately to her face. There was the unmistakable dull tang of sexual juices; a combination of her husband’s sperm and the body fluids of another person, a woman.
A cold feeling of dread and self-disgust gripped her. Flinging the garment away from her, she scrabbled through the remaining pile of garments until she had found his shirt. For a moment she hesitated and then, as if accepting a profane sacrament, she slowly raised the shirt to her face. The unmistakable scent of Apres l’Ondee rose to meet her, filling her nostrils with its memory of orange blossom and violets.
Chapter Nineteen
Sunday 11th February 1907
Berezovo
Janinski leant against the iron handrail at the top of the narrow staircase and watched as, with a desperate slowness, the two prisoners struggled to raise the heavy bureau up another step. It was a large piece of furniture and awkward to handle, being too wide and too heavy for one man to lift. He heard one of the prisoners cried out in pain as his hand was caught for a second time between a corner of the bureau and the wall.
“Get a move on!” the warder growled.
The two men redoubled their efforts. Their physical stamina had been weakened by their spell on their prison diet. By the time they had hauled the bureau up to the landing, they were spent. Sitting down on the top step, they mopped their brows and tried to regain their breath but their overseer would have none of it. Bringing his knout down onto the top of the bureau with a thump, Janinski jerked his thumb menacingly towards the bottom of the steps and, wearily, they climbed to their feet and went to fetch their next load.
Outside in the courtyard Prison Director Dimitri Skyralenko, wearing his dress uniform, slapped his hands and stamped his boots on the freshly fallen snow in an effort to keep warm. Not far from him a trio of prisoners, shackled together by leg irons, were doing their best to unload a small dining room table from the back of one of Lepishinsky’s delivery carts under the bored gaze of two warders armed with rifles. Far in the distance, the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s bell began to toll, summoning its congregation to the morning service.
“Hurry them up,” Skyralenko ordered to the guards impatiently. “They are taking too long.”
Unslinging their rifles, the warders began to prick the backs of the prisoners with the points of their bayonets.
“You heard the Director. Faster!”
With a last heave, the table came free from the tailgate of the cart. Hampered by their leg irons, and their frozen hands, the prisoners lost their grip. There was the sound of a crash followed by that of splintering wood. Skyralenko groaned aloud. Undismayed, the men began to drag the broken bits towards the warmth of the jailhouse.
When at last all the furniture had been distributed amongst the cells, the prisoners were told to collect their belongings and present themselves for the Director’s inspection. Lined up against the courtyard wall, they listened as Skyralenko read out their Order of Parole before dismissing them. A few, including the prisoner Arkov, did not hesitate to take him at his word, but the majority were disposed to remain where at least food and shelter were guaranteed.
“Where can we go, without any money?” one cried.
“Why is the Little Father casting us out?” asked another. “Haven’t we been model prisoners?”
“What right have strangers to usurp us?”
In the end, Skyralenko had to order the warders to drive them out of the prison: by boot and rifle butt if necessary. But as his sleigh took him up Alexei Street, towards the church, some of the more determined prisoners ran alongside, beseeching him with real tears in their eyes to show mercy. Exasperated, the Prison Director, his arms flailing like windmills, swore that if they were still visible on the street when he came out of the church, he would have them shot on sight. Dejectedly, the remainder of the newly liberated prisoners slunk away.
Entering the church, Skyralenko paused in the narthex, allowing his eyes to adjust themselves to the candlelight while he determined at what point the service had reached. He became aware of a figure breaking away from the main body of the congregation and moving towards him.
“Good morning, Dimitri Borisovich,” Colonel Izorov greeted him softly.
“Good morning, Konstantin Illyich.”
“Is everything prepared at the prison?”
“Yes, it is done.”
For a moment the two men stood side by side, listening to the indistinct sepulchral voice of the aged priest rising and falling.
“The text the good Father has chosen,” Colonel Izorov informed him in a whisper, “is from the book of Holy Revelations. It tells us we should be ready to meet the Anti-Christ and his agents and defeat them.”
“How fortuitous!” Skyralenko whispered back.
“One does what one can,” said the Colonel modestly.
On the left side of the church in the women’s section of the nave, Tatyana Kavelina knelt and made her prostration before the altar. Weary from a sleepless night and tormented by her discovery of her husband’s betrayal, she felt herself to be too full of anger to pray for God’s grace.
She should have killed him, she thought. She should have held his head down beneath the water in the bath and drowned him. She should have snatched up one of the kitchen knives and stabbed him, like that woman in the French revolution had done, knifing him repeatedly in the chest and neck, one stab wound for every year of their marriage, until his blood swirled red in the scummy water. She should have gone into the backyard and picked up the small wood hand axe and used that, raining blows on his head and arms while he cried out with pain and fear. She should have butchered the pig like he had butchered her heart.
As another woman came to kneel behind her, Tatyana buried her face in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut against her tears. She took a deep shuddering breath, and then another.
She must not cry in public, she told herself. Nobody else must know of her shame. These dreadful thoughts of anger were not good; they only felt good because they fed the illusion that she possessed the power and the authority to avenge her shame. She did not. These illusions came from the Devil and she must not listen to him, however seductive his voice. Instead she must collect herself, show respect f
or the Holy Father’s house and ask for His help and His guidance.
“Tatyana,” said the woman kneeling next to her, her voice low but distinct against the chanting of the congregation of women standing around them.
Quickly wiping the tears away from her eyes with her fingertips Tatyana lowered her hands and, turning to see who had spoken to her, saw that it was Lidiya Pusnyena, the wife of the general merchant Serapion Alexeyevich Pusnyen. Some ten years older than Tatyana and a close confidante of Olga Nadnikova, Lidiya Pusnyena, in her own reserved and distant way, had always shown her kindness and respect. Tatyana was surprised that she had chosen this moment to approach her.
“Glory to Jesus Christ,” Tatyana greeted her.
“Glory for ever,” responded the older woman automatically, adding, “how are you, Tatyana? You look troubled, my dear.”
Tatyana shook her head.
“No more troubled than anyone else, thank you. Please excuse me.”
Before Lidiya could reply Tatyana got up from her knees and began threading her way through the crowd of standing chanting women. When she felt that she had gone far enough she looked back to where she had been kneeling. Lidiya Pusnyena was no longer there. Craning her neck Tatyana searched for her over the heads of the other women in the congregation and saw that she was now standing near the centre of the nave, conversing earnestly with Olga Nadnikova and Raisa Izminskaya.