The Man From St. Petersburg

by Ken Follett

  Lydia studied her daughter critically. Charlotte stood in front of a large pier glass, trying on the debutante's gown she would wear to be presented at court. Madame Bourdon, the thin, elegant dressmaker, fussed about her with pins, tucking a flounce here and fastening a ruffle there.

  Charlotte looked both beautiful and innocent--just the effect that was called for in a debutante. The dress, of white tulle embroidered with crystals, went down almost to the floor and partly covered the tiny pointed shoes. Its neckline, plunging to waist level, was filled in with a crystal corsage. The train was four yards of cloth-of-silver lined with pale pink chiffon and caught at the end by a huge white-and-silver bow. Charlotte's dark hair was piled high and fastened with a tiara which had belonged to the previous Lady Walden, Stephen's mother. In her hair she wore the regulation two white plumes.

  My baby has almost grown up, Lydia thought.

  She said: "It's very lovely, Madame Bourdon."

  "Thank you, my lady."

  Charlotte said: "It's terribly uncomfortable."

  Lydia sighed. It was just the kind of thing Charlotte would say. Lydia said: "I wish you wouldn't be so frivolous."

  Charlotte knelt down to pick up her train. Lydia said: "You don't have to kneel. Look, copy me and I'll show you how it's done. Turn to the left." Charlotte did so, and the train draped down her left side. "Gather it with your left arm, then make another quarter turn to the left." Now the train stretched out along the floor in front of Charlotte. "Walk forward, using your right hand to loop the train over your left arm as you go."

  "It works." Charlotte smiled. When she smiled, you could feel the glow. She used to be like this all the time, Lydia thought. When she was little, I always knew what was going on in her mind. Growing up is learning to deceive.

  Charlotte said: "Who taught you all these things, Mama?"

  "Your uncle George's first wife, Belinda's mother, coached me before I was presented." She wanted to say: These things are easy to teach, but the hard lessons you must learn on your own.

  Charlotte's governess, Marya, came into the room. She was an efficient, unsentimental woman in an iron-gray dress, the only servant Lydia had brought from St. Petersburg. Her appearance had not changed in nineteen years. Lydia had no idea how old she was: Fifty? Sixty?

  Marya said: "Prince Orlov has arrived, my lady. Why, Charlotte, you look magnificent!"

  It was almost time for Marya to begin calling her "Lady Charlotte," Lydia thought. She said, "Come down as soon as you've changed, Charlotte." Charlotte immediately began to unfasten the shoulder straps which held her train. Lydia went out.

  She found Stephen in the drawing room, sipping sherry. He touched her bare arm and said: "I love to see you in summer dresses."

  She smiled. "Thank you." He looked rather fine himself, she thought, in his gray coat and silver tie. There was more gray and silver in his beard. We might have been so happy, you and I . . . Suddenly she wanted to kiss his cheek. She glanced around the room: there was a footman at the sideboard pouring sherry. She had to restrain the impulse. She sat down and accepted a glass from the footman. "How is Aleks?"

  "Much the same as always," Stephen replied. "You'll see--he'll be down in a minute. What about Charlotte's dress?"

  "The gown is lovely. It's her attitude that disturbs me. She's unwilling to take anything at face value these days. I should hate her to become cynical."

  Stephen refused to worry about that. "You wait until some handsome Guards officer starts paying attention to her--she'll soon change her mind."

  The remark irritated Lydia, implying as it did that all girls were the slaves of their romantic natures. It was the kind of thing Stephen said when he did not want to think about a subject. It made him sound like a hearty, empty-headed country squire, which he was not. But he was convinced that Charlotte was no different from any other eighteen-year-old girl, and he would not hear otherwise. Lydia knew that Charlotte had in her makeup a streak of something wild and un-English which had to be suppressed.

  Irrationally, Lydia felt hostile toward Aleks on account of Charlotte. It was not his fault, but he represented the St. Petersburg factor, the danger of the past. She shifted restlessly in her chair, and caught Stephen observing her with a shrewd eye. He said: "You can't possibly be nervous about meeting little Aleks."

  She shrugged. "Russians are so unpredictable."

  "He's not very Russian."

  She smiled at her husband, but their moment of intimacy had passed, and now there was just the usual qualified affection in her heart.

  The door opened. Be calm, Lydia told herself.

  Aleks came in. "Aunt Lydia!" he said, and bowed over her hand.

  "How do you do, Aleksey Andreyevich," she said formally. Then she softened her tone and added: "Why, you still look eighteen."

  "I wish I were," he said, and his eyes twinkled.

  She asked him about his trip. As he replied, she found herself wondering why he was still unmarried. He had a title which on its own was enough to knock many girls--not to mention their mothers--off their feet; and on top of that he was strikingly good-looking and enormously rich. I'm sure he's broken a few hearts, she thought.

  "Your brother and your sister send their love," Aleks was saying, "and ask for your prayers." He frowned. "St. Petersburg is very unsettled now--it's not the town you knew."

  Stephen said: "We've heard about this monk."

  "Rasputin. The Czarina believes that God speaks through him, and she has great influence over the Czar. But Rasputin is only a symptom. All the time there are strikes, and sometimes riots. The people no longer believe that the Czar is holy."

  "What is to be done?" Stephen asked.

  Aleks sighed. "Everything. We need efficient farms, more factories, a proper parliament like England's, land reform, trade unions, freedom of speech . . ."

  "I shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to have trade unions, if I were you," Stephen said.

  "Perhaps. Still, somehow Russia must join the twentieth century. Either we, the nobility, must do it, or the people will destroy us and do it themselves."

  Lydia thought he sounded more radical than the Radicals. How things must have changed at home, that a prince could talk like this! Her sister, Tatyana, Aleks's mother, referred in her letters to "the troubles" but gave no hint that the nobility was in real danger. But then, Aleks was more like his father, the old Prince Orlov, a political animal. If he were alive today he would talk like this.

  Stephen said: "There is a third possibility, you know--a way in which the aristocracy and the people might yet be united."

  Aleks smiled, as if he knew what was coming. "And that is?"

  "A war."

  Aleks nodded gravely. They think alike, Lydia reflected; Aleks always looked up to Stephen; Stephen was the nearest thing to a father that the boy had, after the old Prince died.

  Charlotte came in, and Lydia stared at her in surprise. She was wearing a frock Lydia had never seen, of cream lace lined with chocolate-brown silk. Lydia would never have chosen it--it was rather striking--but there was no denying that Charlotte looked ravishing. Where did she buy it? Lydia wondered. When did she start buying clothes without taking me along? Who told her that those colors flatter her dark hair and brown eyes? Does she have a trace of makeup on? And why isn't she wearing a corset?

  Stephen was also staring. Lydia noticed that he had stood up, and she almost laughed. It was a dramatic acknowledgment of his daughter's grown-up status, and what was funny was that it was clearly involuntary. In a moment he would feel foolish, and he would realize that standing up every time his daughter walked into a room was a courtesy he could hardly sustain in his own house.

  The effect on Aleks was even greater. He sprang to his feet, spilled his sherry and blushed crimson. Lydia thought: Why, he's shy! He transferred his dripping glass from his right hand to his left, so that he was unable to shake with either, and he stood there looking helpless. It was an awkward moment, for he needed to comp
ose himself before he could greet Charlotte, but he was clearly waiting to greet her before he would compose himself. Lydia was about to make some inane remark just to fill the silence when Charlotte took over.

  She pulled the silk handkerchief from Aleks's breast pocket and wiped his right hand with it, saying, "How do you do, Aleksey Andreyevich," in Russian. She shook his now-dry right hand, took the glass from his left hand, wiped the glass, wiped the left hand, gave him back the glass, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and made him sit down. She sat beside him and said: "Now that you've finished throwing the sherry around, tell me about Diaghilev. He's supposed to be a strange man. Have you met him?"

  Aleks smiled. "Yes, I've met him."

  As Aleks talked, Lydia marveled. Charlotte had dealt with the awkward moment without hesitation, and had gone on to ask a question--one which she had presumably prepared in advance--which succeeded in taking Orlov's mind off himself and making him feel at ease. And she had done all that as smoothly as if she had had twenty years' practice. Where had she learned such poise?

  Lydia caught her husband's eye. He too had noted Charlotte's graciousness, and he was smiling from ear to ear in a glow of fatherly pride.

  Feliks paced up and down in St. James's Park, pondering what he had seen. From time to time he glanced across the road at the graceful white facade of Walden's house, rising over the high forecourt wall like a noble head above a starched collar. He thought: They believe they are safe in there.

  He sat on a bench, in a position from which he could still see the house. Middle-class London swarmed about him, the girls in their outrageous headgear, the clerks and shopkeepers walking homeward in their dark suits and bowler hats. There were gossiping nannies with babies in perambulators or overdressed toddlers; there were top-hatted gentlemen on their way to and from the clubs of St. James's; there were liveried footmen walking tiny ugly dogs. A fat woman with a big bag of shopping plumped herself down on the bench beside him and said: "Hot enough for you?" He was not sure what would be the appropriate reply, so he smiled and looked away.

  It seemed that Orlov had realized his life might be in danger in England. He had shown himself for only a few seconds at the station, and not at all at the house. Feliks guessed that he had requested, in advance, that he be met by a closed coach, for the weather was fine and most people were driving open landaus.

  Until today this killing had been planned in the abstract, Feliks reflected. It had been a matter of international politics, diplomatic quarrels, alliances and ententes, military possibilities, the hypothetical reactions of faraway Kaisers and Czars. Now, suddenly, it was flesh and blood; it was a real man, of a certain size and shape; it was a youthful face with a small mustache, a face which must be smashed by a bullet; it was a short body in a heavy coat, which must be turned into blood and rags by a bomb; it was a clean-shaven throat above a spotted tie, a throat which must be sliced open to gush blood.

  Feliks felt completely capable of doing it. More than that, he was eager. There were questions--they would be answered; there were problems--they would be solved; it would take nerve--he had plenty.

  He visualized Orlov and Walden inside that beautiful house, in their fine soft clothes, surrounded by quiet servants. Soon they would have dinner at a long table whose polished surface reflected like a mirror the crisp linen and silver cutlery. They would eat with perfectly clean hands, even the fingernails white, and the women wearing gloves. They would consume a tenth of the food provided and send the rest back to the kitchen. They might talk of racehorses or the new ladies' fashions or a king they all knew. Meanwhile the people who were to fight the war shivered in hovels in the cruel Russian climate--yet could still find an extra bowl of potato soup for an itinerant anarchist.

  What a joy it will be to kill Orlov, he thought; what sweet revenge. When I have done that I can die satisfied.

  He shivered.

  "You're catching a cold," said the fat woman.

  Feliks shrugged.

  "I've got him a nice lamb chop for his dinner, and I've made an apple pie," she said.

  "Ah," said Feliks. What on earth was she talking about? He got up from the bench and walked across the grass toward the house. He sat on the ground with his back to a tree. He would have to observe this house for a day or two and find out what kind of life Orlov would lead in London: when he would go out and to where; how he would travel--coach, landau, motor car or cab; how much time he would spend with Walden. Ideally he wanted to be able to predict Orlov's movements and so lie in wait for him. He might achieve that simply by learning his habits. Otherwise he would have to find a way of discovering the Prince's plans in advance--perhaps by bribing a servant in the house.

  Then there was the question of what weapon to use and how to get it. The choice of weapon would depend upon the detailed circumstances of the killing. Getting it would depend on the Jubilee Street anarchists. For this purpose the amateur dramatics group could be ignored, as could the Dunstan Houses intellectuals and indeed all those with visible means of support. But there were four or five angry young men who always had money for drinks and, on the rare occasions when they talked politics, spoke of anarchism in terms of expropriating the expropriators, which was jargon for financing the revolution by theft. They would have weapons or know where to get them.

  Two young girls who looked like shop assistants strolled by his tree, and he heard one of them say: " . . . told him, if you think just because you take a girl to the Bioscope and buy her a glass of brown ale you can . . ." Then they were past.

  A peculiar feeling came over Feliks. He wondered whether the girls had caused it--but no, they meant nothing to him. Am I apprehensive? he thought. No. Fulfilled? No, that comes later. Excited? Hardly.

  He finally figured out that he was happy.

  It was very odd indeed.

  That night Walden went to Lydia's room. After they had made love she slept, and he lay in the dark with her head on his shoulder, remembering St. Petersburg in 1895.

  He was always traveling in those days--America, Africa, Arabia--mainly because England was not big enough for him and his father both. He found St. Petersburg society gay but prim. He liked the Russian landscape and the vodka. Languages came easily to him but Russian was the most difficult he had ever encountered and he enjoyed the challenge.

  As the heir to an earldom, Stephen was obliged to pay a courtesy call on the British ambassador, and the ambassador, in his turn, was expected to invite Stephen to parties and introduce him around. Stephen went to the parties because he liked talking politics with diplomats almost as much as he liked gambling with officers and getting drunk with actresses. It was at a reception in the British Embassy that he first met Lydia.

  He had heard of her previously. She was spoken of as a paragon of virtue and a great beauty. She was beautiful, in a frail, colorless sort of way, with pale skin, pale blond hair and a white gown. She was also modest, respectable and scrupulously polite. There seemed to be nothing to her, and Stephen detached himself from her company quite quickly.

  But later he found himself seated next to her at dinner, and he was obliged to converse with her. The Russians all spoke French, and if they learned a third language it was German, so Lydia had very little English. Fortunately Stephen's French was good. Finding something to talk about was a bigger problem. He said something about the government of Russia, and she replied with the reactionary platitudes that were two-a-penny at the time. He spoke about his enthusiasm, big-game hunting in Africa, and she was interested for a while, until he mentioned the naked black pygmies, at which point she blushed and turned away to talk with the man on her other side. Stephen told himself he was not very interested in her, for she was the kind of girl one married, and he was not planning to marry. Still she left him with the nagging feeling that there was more to her than met the eye.

  Lying in bed with her nineteen years later, Walden thought: She still gives me that nagging feeling; and he smiled ruefully in the dark
.

  He had seen her once more that evening in St. Petersburg. After dinner he had lost his way in the labyrinthine embassy building, and had wandered into the music room. She was there alone, sitting at the piano, filling the room with wild, passionate music. The tune was unfamiliar and almost discordant; but it was Lydia who fascinated Stephen. The pale, untouchable beauty was gone: her eyes flashed, her head tossed, her body trembled with emotion, and she seemed altogether a different woman.

  He never forgot that music. Later he discovered that it had been Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B flat minor, and since then he went to hear it played at every opportunity, although he never told Lydia why.

  When he left the embassy he went back to his hotel to change his clothes, for he had an appointment to play cards at midnight. He was a keen gambler but not a self-destructive one: he knew how much he could afford to lose, and when he had lost it he stopped playing. Had he run up enormous debts he would have been obliged to ask his father to pay them, and that he could not bear to do. Sometimes he won quite large sums. However that was not the appeal of gambling for him: he liked the masculine companionship, the drinking and the late hours.

  He did not keep that midnight rendezvous. Pritchard, his valet, was tying Stephen's tie when the British ambassador knocked on the door of the hotel suite. His Excellency looked as if he had got out of bed and dressed hastily. Stephen's first thought was that some kind of revolution was going on and all the British would have to take refuge in the embassy.

  "Bad news, I'm afraid," said the ambassador. "You'd better sit down. Cable from England. It's your father."

  The old tyrant was dead of a heart attack at sixty-five.

  "Well, I'm damned," Stephen said. "So soon."

  "My deepest sympathy," the ambassador said.

  "It was very good of you to come personally."

  "Not at all. Anything I can do."

  "You're very kind."

  The ambassador shook his hand and left.

  Stephen stared into space, thinking about the old man. He had been immensely tall, with a will of iron and a sour disposition. His sarcasm could bring tears to your eyes. There were three ways to deal with him: you could become like him, you could go under, or you could go away. Stephen's mother, a sweet, helpless Victorian girl, had gone under, and died young. Stephen had gone away.