‘Take it, and don’t be a fool.’ She drops the bracelet into the girl’s handbag. ‘Don’t ever be a fool again.’
FORTY-EIGHT
She told him all about it. Interrupting and cutting through his rage and his worry when she came through the door. Handed him the itinerary she’d been given. Still stunned by it all, really. He was silent, looking at her finally, and then setting the papers aside rather formally, uncreasing them because after all … they were important.
He held her for a long moment and she felt his head against her chest, the hair in her fingers. Nothing would ever erase it, she thought. She could always have that. Just that. Then she took his arms away because there was no time and they both knew it, locked the door behind her, paid the man an extra two roubles to leave him alone, and then went out to get food.
When she got back he was at the desk at one end of the room, writing with pen and paper that he must have made the porter bring up. He didn’t even look around when she came in. She made sandwiches for them, uncorked a bottle of wine, tore off a corner of the butcher’s paper to use as a plate, and put it on the edge of the desk where he could reach it. Watched him for a moment and then walked back, propped up all the pillows and sat there in the bed, eating and looking at him.
Eventually she fell asleep, and when she woke he was still at the desk writing. When he heard her stirring he looked around and smiled. A tired smile with sad eyes.
‘This is the last thing, I’ll ask of you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to finish with this, and then …’ Suddenly the eyes changed, she thought. They went from being sad to something much, much colder, and she saw the secret policeman emerge right before her; come out from the inside of him and take over.
‘And then … I think after that, Vera, you’ll have to go.’ His face cracked for a moment, a little ripple across his mouth and he blushed. She got off the bed and went to him. ‘You will,’ he said weakly. ‘Who knows what he’s got going, if they find you, they’ll kill you too.’
She buried his face against her to keep him quiet. ‘You can’t even walk,’ she said.
Later, in the bed, they found themselves just staring at each other. Reaching for something. Trying to remember always the eyes, the mouth, the touch. As if by staring at the loved one, it would all be captured with photographic perfection, so that no matter what happened, so that even years later, it would be something, maybe the one good thing still left to them. One last good memory they might hold.
And because there was no time, she let him get up and go back to the desk and show her the papers; a series of letters, he told her; some of them necessarily lengthy, specifying everything that had been uncovered in Fauré’s investigation, all of the crumpled pages he’d saved from Evdaev’s mansion. It had all started with the girl, with Katya, did she remember?
‘Yes … oh, yes …’ She let her head fall over on to the pillows and watched him sitting there at the desk, naked. The long bones of his arms, the spine with its uneven little knots. The muscles flinching in his shoulders as he moved the pen across the paper. When it came time for her to leave for the club, she just let it pass. Larissa would say something, tell some lie and save her one more time.
When he was done, he brought the letters over to the bed and carefully told her about each one. It was like a man making out his will, she thought. And she sat there listening to him, trying to hold herself together, trying to be what he needed, which was a strong partner, an ally. Now he really was going to go, she realized. He was going to go out of her life, change his name and lose himself. She just looked at him and tried to focus on the details of what he was saying, but the whole time it was growing inside her, this frightful unerring knowledge that they would never see each other again.
‘… this one is for the Austrian embassy. Everything I know about the assassination, about the Black Hand and who, from here, was involved. Everything … his visits to Sarajevo, all the names, the aliases, everything is here. Good. Now …’ he said, putting the letter aside. ‘Now, this one is …’
What did he think she would be able to do about it? Why was he telling her all this? Did he think that she would be able to get the ear of embassy officials if he couldn’t? It was too late. The archduke was dead. Dead. Didn’t he understand that? It was like the death of a thousand cuts.
‘… another copy of all this is for our own Foreign Ministry, since it’s their policy that is being … subverted. Perhaps if they know, then they should be able to prosecute Andrianov and his friends … you see?’
‘Yes.’
She couldn’t understand why he had come back, why he might choose to die for all this, for all these letters to other men. It was so pathetic that she wanted to scream. Instead she sat there and made her face blank, sat there and acted for him, pretended to listen.
‘… and this one I want to be taken to the Minister of Justice, since one of their own … since Boris was killed for it …’
‘Yes, of course.’ Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Naturally. Whatever you say.
‘He should be told about all of it … about a conspiracy within, how Evdaev and Andrianov were attempting … attempting a coup, really. You see, Vera, that’s what it is—a coup d’état.’ He was looking at her with those big eyes. Trusting and sad, like a dog who had found an old bone in the garden and, tired from the digging, only wanted to lie down beside his master.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A coup, yes.’ Of course.
He smiled and looked at her for a moment, then turned to the last letter.
‘This is a copy of all of it,’ he said, and by his expression, the gravity of the way he held the pages, she knew it was his last card, the most important of the letters. ‘This one tells what I am doing, says who has been sent the other letters, says what they’re all about. It’s for you.’
‘Me?’
‘I want you to keep it, to hold on to it, put it somewhere safe, not in your apartment, but maybe … somewhere else.’
‘I can hide it in the dressing-room, the place is a mess. Izov never cleans up, you can’t find anything in there.’
‘Good, put it there. I want you to keep it … for a month. If you haven’t seen anything about any of this in any of the papers, I want you to take it to Kylberg at the Kopek Gazette.’
‘That’s good, yes,’ she said, trying to make her enthusiasm plausible.
‘He’s supposed to be a liberal, if he can’t actually put it in his newspaper, he might …’
‘He might pass it to others in the Duma.’ She was gradually working up to something approaching optimism, playing the part of the encouraging comrade. All she had wanted to do was kill Andrianov, send him to his dog’s death and be done with it.
He put the last letter—her letter—on the bed covers and reached out to her. From where he was sitting, they could not properly embrace. Their foreheads touched, knocking together, but she held him there. Perhaps their thoughts could jump through that little portion of skin and bone, then she would know why all of this was happening.
‘Vera …’ he started, and she pushed forward and kissed him so that he would not say anything more. No more plans, no more words about tragically necessary things. She hadn’t even made any plans and now suddenly nothing was working out right. He pulled away, held her face.
‘Vera … I’m so sorry,’ he said again. It was all going too quickly. She bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry but she began to cry anyway. He was explaining how he would send her a postcard when he got his feet back on the ground, he’d send it to the Komet. It wasn’t a question of money, between the two of them they had enough money to get a ticket for her. But for now … for now …
‘Vera, you have to go,’ he was saying. ‘Go, before they find me. No one stays in places like this overnight, they’ll be looking. Go—’ He had pulled her up off the bed. For a moment she thought he would hit her. This was it, she realized. This was the exit.
‘Go!’ he said, louder, shaking her. She couldn�
�t have left even if she wanted to, he was holding her so tightly. She nodded, said she would, pressed her mouth to his, and his hands released her. He stood there limply until she stepped away from him, afraid to hold her again. Afraid to say any more.
She stumbled about the room looking for her costume, her props. He handed her the letters to post and the other, the most important letter. She had stopped crying, a triumph of self-control, she thought. Where was the applause for that? There should be applause. There should be cheers and bowing. Flowers at the curtain call.
She jammed her hat down over her eyes, stood there with her hand on the doorknob. Turned, chin held high. A true princess.
‘And you … where are you, what are you … ?’
He looked up at her and she had never seen him so pale. Now she saw a boy, a little lost boy trapped inside the body of a man.
‘I’m going now, too,’ he said softly. A shrug. With only the faintest of smiles to reassure her. His voice gone wistful, tinged with amazement at the words that were coming out.
‘I’ll come with you,’ but he was shaking his head before she finished.
‘No.’ His photograph was everywhere and the populace had been whipped up by spy fever to suspect even their closest neighbours. ‘I know where he is and I’ll get him and I’ll get out. I’ll do it, and … I’ll, I’ll send for you. I will,’ he said and then suddenly stopped. He jerked his head down, his face constricted in pain and confusion, and she thought for a moment that he was about to choke.
Then there was the last kiss; everything passing too quickly now, a ritual speeding up, out of control. She reached up and touched his poor cheek, tried to memorize his eyes, and then, before it went on too long and she ended up making a big scene out of it, she turned and opened the door and left the shabby room, not looking back, because of what it might do to him; make him weak, slow him down, blunt the edge of the sword with which he was going to smite down evil. Instead, like a good actor, she would get off his stage cleanly, wait in the darkness where no one could see her tears. Bite her lip and cheer.
That was her role, to hold his letters and his love next to her heart, and carry them to their destiny.
Khulchaev was drunk, giddy. Laughing and improvising his speech of prosecution. At the end of every clause the Professor emphasized the words with pounding chords from the newly-tuned piano. Others shouted hurrahs. War!
Glory was in the air. To hear them you would have thought it a grand exercise. A celebration. Something everyone really wanted to happen. Something triumphant. She’d had nowhere else to go, had come in and been given a drink right away. And another. Caught Larissa looking at her with concern in her eyes. Smiled and raised her glass in a toast of forgiveness, and to deflect all that mothering. She didn’t need that any more.
Kushner was screaming at them now: ‘… working men in Germany will be killing working men in Russia so that the honour of their royal masters will be assuaged, and the only ones who will get anything out of it are the Putilovs, and the Krupps, and the Schneiders. The Rockefellers and the Rothschilds …’
And Dmitri drunkenly ignoring everything that Kushner had said to them, laughing it off (how smooth he was!) and going on with his little obsessive comedy, raising his voice to condemn Tika for all the death that Kushner had just foretold.
Soon there would be a verdict. It was all too ugly. She had an inch of brandy left to go, then she could leave.
‘… and I submit that the defendant should be given a reprieve—’ there were howls of protest from Kushner and his revolutionary faction. ‘Yes, comrades, a pardon. A pardon based on the patriotic necessity, the necessity of protecting the soul, the very essence of Mother Russia, the strong heart of her manhood, the purity of her motherhood. Now, more than ever we need royal blood.’
‘Christ,’ she said, not actually meaning to say it out loud and everyone turned and laughed at her.
She shakily stood and raised the glass to her lips, toasted Tika. ‘She’s not pure, no one is pure …’ It sounded very profound as she said it. Very royal in her delivery. She drank off the last of the brandy during the applause and began planning her exit through the tangle of chairs.
As she was finding her way out of the labyrinth, they decided to take a vote. Deliberations were instantaneous; guilty was the shouted response. Guilty, and the sentence the Professor intoned, standing now at his keyboard, must be death. Death so that the crime of Mother Russia herself would not be replicated, so that Tika would not breed, so she wouldn’t spread her filth into the future.
‘But first get her some food!’ someone called to Izov, as Vera walked by. ‘It’s her last meal.’ And there was more laughter. More applause.
She was finished with them all now. To dance while the world collapsed all around her was … Well, she had grown past all that now. Maybe she had listened to Kushner a little too much. Maybe some of it had seeped in. Maybe she was really becoming a Social Revolutionary in fact.
At her table in the dressing-room there were cards, little souvenirs, clippings from favourable critics. Wedged in behind the mirror, propped up behind her pots and vials. She paused there, looking at the mirror. Maybe she should take them. Just to prove she had done all the things, been all those characters. A scrap of paper to prove she really had opened at the Alexandra.
The mirror was clean, perfect except for a diagonal crack at the top right corner. Sometimes she liked to pose so that the reflection of her face was bisected by the crack. It made her look strange, fragmented. Crazy. She liked looking crazy sometimes. Liked seeing on the outside the way she felt inside. Liked having it affirmed by the evidence of her eyes.
To hell with the critics and their yellowed clippings, she thought. If she didn’t believe them when they were wrong, why believe them when they were right? She had a raincoat there, it was the only thing she cared about, and she reached up and took it off the peg, thinking that she would go to the bank, take everything out, get a cab for the station. Odessa, here I come; Get ready, Roma. Maybe even somewhere really exotic, Cairo, or Japan …
She stood there with the coat over her arm, thinking she really should leave a note for Larissa. Give her free pick of everything she wanted out of the little apartment. Maybe she’d stop in on the way to the station, throw some underclothes in a bag.
She sat back down at her table, looked up and leaned so that her face was cut by the crack in the mirror. The vision of her cleft face caused her to smile, proved that she really was … well, eccentric, let’s say. She tore a page out of their most recent script and began to write on the back of it with grease pencil:
My dearest Larissa—
By the time you get this I will be gone on my long-promised great adventure. There is nothing here and I am worn out …
She thought about Pyotr, about his going, about the pain of it and if it would ever go away. Maybe he would land on his feet somewhere safe, maybe he would write. Then again, the promised postcard might never come. She’d be sitting there waiting when she was an old woman. An old, eccentric woman, waiting for a message from the only man that she’d ever truly … She’d be the kind of woman everyone whispered about; yes, she used to be pretty, they’d say, and she used to be a dancer, a good dancer. A dancer in Russia, back when that meant something. No, she couldn’t wait.
She couldn’t, still—
… and it may be that I get some correspondence. If so, could you do me the great favour of forwarding …
She couldn’t live a life counting on Pyotr, a life of always waiting. She was going to stop all that now. She would never wait for anyone again.
And she wasn’t going to the river, either. From now on it was going to be Vera, Vera, Vera. She was going to be happy, she was going to feel the sun on her shoulders in January. She was going to fall asleep in a perfumed garden.
… hope you will always know that I thank you for all your blessings, all the gifts you have given me. And now, please do not hate me—now I am leaving you to c
lean up once again …
Suddenly, looking up at her mirror, the carefully plucked arch of her brows, the straight nose, the blush of her lips, she became aware of her beauty. She was good as a blonde, she was beautiful, yes. Yes, she was. A man would see her beauty instantaneously, a woman too, given the right kind of light. It was in the eyes, the wide dark eyes. The carriage of her head, the way she looked at herself. She was brave now. All of it had conspired to make her brave and beautiful. She had won.
And, then, she remembered the packet, the letters Pyotr had given her. She took them out of her bag and held them in her hands, turning the envelopes over and over. Inspected his writing, the sharp way he formed his letters. Some little thing inherited from the engineer-father. Fine, then. For you, my only one, for you …
One last thing to do on her way out of town.
And so, thank you, my darling. Thank you for all the generous things you have done, all our good times. Wish me well … V
She stood, then. Pushed his envelope into one of the big pockets in her raincoat. Now the mirror reflected her chest, the crack splitting her between the breasts, and she took a breath, thinking it might be an omen. A sign that her heart was breaking? That she would be struck dead before she could leave, before she could break free?
At the door Izov saw her, frowned. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Where have you been the last few days? Remember you’ve got a show in less than an hour, girlie …’
She didn’t even bother smiling at him.
As she walked by the edge of the stage they were proceeding to hang the cat. Someone had rigged up a gallows made of empty wine crates topped with a mop handle. She looked around just as the Professor sprung the trap and Tika fell and swung between the tables.
For a moment the whole room was silent, riveted on the animal swinging there, her legs stuck straight out, wriggling her hind quarters, trembling as if an electric current was being passed through her, claws extended.
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