Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  Obediently he bent his neck. She wound the scarf about it, then up across his jaw and the lower half of his face, hiding the bloody gash. ‘Keep it up high. If anyone sees it we’re gonners. We’ll catch a tram – tuck your head down and sit still.’ A tram clanked around the corner, ground to a halt. She pulled him by the hand. ‘Here we are – hurry, do–’

  * * *

  She took him to the Vyborg district, to the north of the city, an industrial area of mills, factories and working-class slums through which Sasha had come many times by train whilst travelling to or from Finland but in which, in common with many of his class, he had never before set foot. They jumped from the tram as it slowed to turn a corner. It clanked on, leaving them alone in a wide and dirty thoroughfare flanked by what looked like warehouses and a huge factory wall.

  Sasha’s companion took his hand. ‘This way.’ She led him across the road and down a narrow alley, dark even on this midsummer’s evening. The drizzle had stopped, though the sky was still milky with cloud. The walls between which they passed were black with soot and with grime, Sasha’s boots squelched on God knew what kind of rubbish that was strewn across the cobbles. He heard the rustling scuttle of what could only be rats. The girl turned a corner, and another. They passed the open doorways of neglected tenements; dark and squalid stairways reached into shadow. The smell was abominable.

  Sasha’s jaw was throbbing. Blood had congealed and hardened upon the scarf; too late he wondered how clean the tattered thing might have been. Too late also he began to feel apprehensive. What in God’s name was he doing in a place like this with a girl he’d never seen in his life before and surrounded by presumably hostile strangers? Not that anyone took any notice of the hurrying pair. The rain had stopped. Men lounged about in groups on corners, smoking and talking; women, shawled and scarved, sat on the stairs or on battered chairs outside the tenement doors gossiping and watching the children play in the filth of the streets. Occasionally someone called a greeting to the girl and she replied, brusquely as seemed her habit, but did not stop. No-one showed the slightest interest in Sasha. On the contrary, backs were turned, eyes averted; only later did he realize that in this district a hurrying man with blood on his face was best ignored, for what a man did not know could not be beaten out of him.

  They turned a corner into a small, dirty square, almost a courtyard, surrounded on three sides by tall tenement houses. The girl towed Sasha across it to a door. As they entered, the smell enveloped him, suffocating, disgusting, like filthy water closing over his head. He put his hand to his face, covering his nose, pretending to rub his eyes. The girl glanced at him, her grin telling him that she was not fooled. Boiled cabbage, rotting food, the rank smell of urine; he held his breath for a moment. How could people live like this?

  The girl had led him along a corridor and was tapping at a scarred wooden door. ‘Nikita? It’s Valentina. Open the door.’

  Silence.

  The girl rapped again, impatiently. ‘Nikita! Open the door!’

  There was movement. The door opened. A slight young man in shapeless woollen jumper and trousers and wearing wire-rimmed glasses peered into the shadows. Valentina pushed past him. ‘The march was broken up. Bloody Cossacks. We’ve got a casualty. I think he needs sewing up.’

  Sasha flinched.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Valentina was shrugging out of her muddy coat. ‘Nikita’s a medical student. A very good one.’ She laughed a little, with no great humour. ‘And he’s had a lot of experience of this kind of thing.’

  The young man had taken Sasha’s chin in his hand and turned his face to the light of a flickering gas jet. ‘It’s not too bad. Valentina’s right. A couple of stitches will do it.’

  Sasha pulled away from him. ‘Perhaps – if I could just clean it? It seems to have stopped bleeding. The hospital, perhaps – or my own doctor?’

  The young man stepped back.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Valentina was reaching up to a shelf, obviously knowing her way around. ‘Get near one of the city hospitals at the moment with a wound like that and you’ll be arrested on sight. As for a private doctor – you can’t trust any of them, you know. They’re all informers. Didn’t you know that?’

  She turned. She was tall and very slim. Her narrow, dirty face was pale and freckled. She had pulled the bright scarf from her head; her light brown hair, thick and wavy, was cut short, her eyes were dark and very bright. It was a striking face, by no means pretty, but alive with intelligence and with a certain rueful, almost mocking, laughter. He remembered it as he had seen it as she had marched bravely in front of the Cossack ponies, chanting defiantly.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  She clucked impatiently. ‘Your doctor. Are you sure you can trust him? They aren’t exactly known for their sympathy towards us, are they?’

  ‘Us? But –’ He stopped.

  She came to stand beside him, smiling into his face that was almost on a level with his. ‘I promise you, Nikita can do it, and with no danger. He’s done dozens worse. You’ll be as good as new. I owe you that. Trust me.’

  The operation was brief and exorbitantly painful, yet certainly, to Sasha’s relief, the young man Nikita did seem to know his business. As he worked Valentina talked, telling him of the demonstration and its bloody end, of Sasha’s intervention. ‘Have you seen any of the others? I lost sight of Lev when I started to run, though I saw Christina get away. The Pharoes must have been waiting on the Liteini. Bastards.’ She said the last word with no particular rancour. Sasha swivelled his eyes to look at her. He had never heard a woman swear before.

  ‘Keep still,’ said his tormentor, sharply. ‘Can you manage? Valentina can hold your head if you can’t.’

  ‘No.’ Sasha spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘There’s a meeting next week. Are you coming?’ Valentina was tidying the bloodied rags of sheeting that Nikita had used to clean the gash.

  ‘Yes.’ Nikita was preoccupied with his task. ‘Sorry. Did that hurt? If you could just keep still for a moment longer? Valentina, pass me the bowl and swab, will you?’

  The girl handed him the implements. ‘Goodness, what a lovely neat job. You could get employment as a seamstress!’

  The young man laughed, went to the bowl on the table to wash his hands.

  Sasha, to his embarrassment, was trembling. The effort to sit still, not to cry out, had taken more strength than he had realized. He stood up.

  With an easy camaraderie Valentina came and slipped an arm about his waist, supporting him. ‘Are you all right? You’re awfully pale.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘He needs a cup of tea,’ Nikita said. ‘Or something stronger if you’ve got it.’

  She nodded briskly. ‘Tea I’ve got. And I think Lev left some of that dreadful brew we were drinking the other night. Coming?’

  Nikita shook his head. ‘Exams tomorrow. I have to study. I’ll see you later, perhaps.’

  ‘Fine.’ Valentina turned to the door.

  ‘Wait.’ Sasha put his hand into his pocket. ‘I haven’t paid you.’

  The young man cocked his head. His eyes looked tired behind the glasses, his face was thin, his clothes as shabby as any Sasha had seen that day. He shook his head. ‘Buy Valentina some flowers,’ he said.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Medicine should be for all,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not something to be bought and sold by those who can afford it. The day will come when it is so. Until then I try to practise what I preach.’

  ‘But – you have to live –’

  ‘My friends keep me,’ he said, simply.

  ‘And in exchange he patches us and sews us up,’ Valentina said, cheerfully, from the door. ‘And stops hotheads from getting hotter. Oh, do come along – I need a cup of tea if you don’t.’

  * * *

  She took him to the room, two floors up, where she lived. She shared it, she explained, with another girl called Nin
a, who came and went in her own time and with no questions asked. Valentina had not seen her for the past three days. They both worked part time in the mill up the road. Valentina had come to St Petersburg as a student but when her father had died the money had stopped coming. ‘So, I had to keep body and soul together. I went to the mill.’ She handed Sasha a glass of tea, turned to rummage on a cluttered shelf. ‘I’ve got some biscuits here somewhere, I think.’

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t bother. I’m not hungry.’ In fact he was starving; he had intended to eat with Margarita that night. But the ill-furnished room with its bare floorboards and dirty curtains that were worn ragged illustrated well its occupier’s finances.

  She turned, hands on hips. ‘You know your trouble?’ That mocking laughter was back.

  ‘No?’ He was wary.

  ‘You’re too good-mannered for your own good. And from that, and the fancy accent, I surmise –’ she put her head on one side, narrowed her eyes, pointed a finger ‘– that you aren’t what you appear to be.’

  Ridiculously he felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  She laughed, went back into the curtained alcove that concealed what passed for a kitchen. ‘I think you do.’

  The table at which Sasha was sitting was covered in heaps of papers. Deciding on silence as the most sensible answer, he started to clear a space for his tea. A page, battered, much scribbled-upon, caught his eye. He cocked his head to read it.

  In painful moments often I’ve believed

  That no God lives, no order rules our world.

  But then the sound of laughter,

  The sight of tears,

  Touches me.

  Is He there?

  ‘What are you doing?’ She had come back into the room; moved swiftly around the table towards him.

  ‘You wrote this?’ he asked.

  ‘Scribbled it, more like.’ She snatched it from him, screwed it up and tossed it back upon the table.

  He watched her. The little poem had not been scribbled; it had been written and rewritten, minutely and carefully. ‘May I see the rest?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shortly. Then, less abrasively, ‘Have some more tea. Unless you can stand Lev’s concoction?’ She held a bottle in her hand, half full.

  He grinned, suddenly enjoying this odd adventure. ‘Why not?’

  She put two chipped glasses on the table, poured two hefty tots. ‘You’re going to look like a pirate, you know, with that scar on your face. How will you explain it?’

  The liquor hit his stomach like fire. He managed, just, not to choke. Moments later an absurd feeling of well-being spread through him. ‘A duelling scar,’ he said, lightly.

  ‘Aha!’ She pointed a thin, bony finger. ‘Like I said! Not what you seem.’ Her dark eyes flickered to the well-worn but far from inexpensive clothes he wore. ‘I don’t suppose you work for a living by any chance?’

  Without analysing the thought, he knew he had not the slightest intention of admitting to a profession that he was certain would come between him and this surprising girl like the edge of a sword. His gaze flickered back to the heaps of paper. He raised innocent eyes, toasted her with his already half-empty glass. ‘I’m a poet,’ he said, solemnly and carefully, Lev’s concoction having had a somewhat surprising effect on his tongue. ‘Like you.’

  He kept telling himself – and Valentina – that he must leave. But he did not. They talked for hours; talked the night away. They talked of poetry and of literature; she adored Tolstoy, disliked Dostoevsky – the amicable argument that followed saw the clock tick on inexorably past midnight. They talked of music, and found themselves united on Glazunov and Tchaikovsky, at odds on Rimsky-Korsakov. Oddly, they did not speak of themselves. A little hazily Sasha thought it was like being cast upon an island, remote from the world, two people with nothing, and yet everything, in common.

  ‘You remind me of my sister,’ he said.

  ‘Your sister’s an anarchist?’ she asked, pulling a small, funny face.

  He frowned a little, concentrating. ‘No. Of course she isn’t. Is that what you and your friends are?’

  She measured him with narrowed eyes, playing with her glass. ‘It’s the label others fix upon us sometimes.’

  ‘Explain,’ he said.

  * * *

  The clouds had cleared, a smudged sun had rolled around the horizon and was lifting again through the fog of smoke and industrial haze that hung permanently over the district when Valentina walked him through the streets to the tram stop. The cobbles echoed to the boots of the workers. People hurried by. A factory whistle sounded. Girls ran past them, calling to each other and laughing.

  She stood with him, waiting for the tram. ‘I don’t think I’ve convinced you,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘You’ve convinced me of many things.’ His mouth smiled. His eyes were deadly serious.

  She looked away, gave her head a small shake that moved her thick, short hair about her face.

  The tram wound its noisy way towards them, blue sparks cascading from the wires, bright in the early morning gloom. ‘I want to see you again,’ he said.

  She shook her head again, sharply this time.

  ‘Please.’ He had vowed he would not ask her.

  She hesitated. The tram stopped. She leaned quickly to him, brushed her lips across his cheek, light as the touch of a butterfly. ‘Go away,’ she said, and turned, leaving him. The tram clanged, started to move. Swearing, Sasha scrambled aboard. Valentina did not turn. He watched the tall, narrow back, the jaunty stride, until the tram turned a corner and she was lost to his sight.

  * * *

  It was ridiculously easy; Margarita had not been expecting him, so she had not missed him. She accepted his explanation of the wound on his face – an accident during over-enthusiastic sword practice – with no question. Why would she not? She even declared herself impressed with the change to his appearance: ‘Sasha! How very terrifying you look! Quite the bandit!’ and did not object too strenuously when, for the first and last time in their married life, he made love to her not in darkness and beneath the bedclothes but in the broad light of day on the living-room floor.

  He tried to forget his meeting with Valentina, and when he could not he tried to trivialize it. It had been an aberration. An odd accident. There had been no magic in that small, filthy room, no joining of souls. Shock and cheap liquor had combined to produce a fantasy. His life was with the regiment, and with Margarita.

  Alarmingly there was a small part of him that refused to play the game.

  His jaw healed, leaving only a faint, straight thread of a scar. Nikita had done his work well. Sasha wondered about him, sometimes. There were one or two more demonstrations as the summer wore on; Sasha thanked his God that he was not, in his official capacity, detailed to break them up.

  And still he struggled to forget her, and could not.

  * * *

  The first time he went back to the Vyborg Valentina was not there. He hung around the landing for a while, sustaining questioning and unfriendly glances – even the shabby clothes he had deliberately donned for the visit stood out like the gleam of gold in these surroundings – before running down the stairs to tap at Nikita’s door.

  Nikita blinked, understandably not recognizing him.

  Sasha turned his jaw. ‘I came to show you your handiwork.’

  That amused the young man. He grinned.

  Sasha put his hand into a capacious pocket, produced a bottle of vodka, held it up in silence.

  Nikita, still grinning, stepped back, inviting him in.

  Perched on rickety chairs beside a tiny stove they drank the vodka, and as they drank they talked. Of the campaign of civil disobedience in Finland, of the growing unrest in St Petersburg, of the Russian character and of Russian history and its strange habit of swinging from tyranny to chaos and back again. They did not speak of Valentina until the bottle was nearly empty.

  Then, ‘Stay away from
her, Sasha,’ Nikita said, in calm and friendly fashion. ‘You don’t belong together. Anyone can see it. You’ll only hurt her.’

  ‘Will you tell her I came?’

  Nikita shook his head.

  There was a long silence. ‘You’re right. It was stupid of me to come. I won’t come back.’

  Nikita picked up the bottle, tilted it, peered intently. ‘Have another drink.’

  But it was no use; he could not stay away; though in conscience he tried, and for weeks succeeded. Yet there was a sense of something unfinished, of something left unsaid, a nagging ache, like toothache, that would not leave him.

  The Vyborg in late autumn was a dreary place. There was sleet in the rain and a razor’s edge to the wind as Sasha stepped from the steamy warmth of the tramcar into the bleak cold of the street. This was it. If Valentina was not there this time he would take it as a sign; he was not meant to see her again.

  She opened the door, eyes and mouth round with surprise, her short thick hair limned in the light of the lamp behind her. For what seemed a very long time neither of them spoke. She stepped back, holding the door open for him. He walked past her, into the room he remembered so absurdly well. He heard the door shut behind him. Turned. She was leaning against the door, watching him. She had not smiled. ‘I’ll make tea,’ she said.

  They made love, later, in her tiny, freezing cold bedroom on a mattress laid upon the floor. Despite the surroundings, despite the cold, their lovemaking was fierce and warm and utterly satisfying.

  They lay afterwards, thin blankets pulled up to their chins, limbs still entangled. Valentina’s face was on Sasha’s shoulder. ‘You have a wife,’ she said, quietly. ‘Don’t you?’