The People's Will

by Jasper Kent

  He thought back over what he knew – not recent discoveries, but the things his mother had told him, the things Aleksei had told her. Any connections there might be to Dmitry in Petersburg – anywhere he might go. There was the apartment on Konyushennaya Street where Dmitry had grown up, but that had come to nothing. He tried to think if there might be any remaining military connections with the city, but it was unlikely; the comrades of Dmitry’s days fighting in the Crimea would be old men now. He would not have been able to keep in touch with them, or they would have commented on his eternal youth.

  Dmitry had no children, at least not that Aleksei had known about. But then, what would he know? He had been in exile for the best part of Dmitry’s adult life. He and Dmitry had not communicated with each other – or at least the attempts they had made to communicate were intercepted by Iuda. It was quite possible that there were children – other Danilovs – Mihail’s own cousins. But where to start?

  Then he realized how stupid he was being. The answer was obvious, and it was valid regardless of whether Dmitry had fathered children or not. He had been married. Tamara had visited the woman. Svetlana – that was her name, though there was little more that Mihail could bring to mind. It did not matter.

  He leapt to his feet and went over to his trunk. Tamara had been an obsessive woman, not least when it came to this. In it were all the notes she had written down, every fact that she could remember; she had told him – but had recorded it as well. It was almost as if … well, she had known, known about the thing growing in her lungs, known that it would kill her. It was just a question of when.

  He leafed through the pages. They were not well organized, but he could recall seeing what he wanted, high on a left-hand page, about a third of the way in. He soon found it.

  Svetlana Nikitichna Danilova,

  Apartment 4,

  Fontanka 134

  Mihail was familiar enough with Fontanka 16, the Ohrana headquarters, but Fontanka was a long thoroughfare, following the entire path of the river from which it took its name. He didn’t know quite where number 134 stood, but he would easily find it.

  He returned to his bed. It was a fragile straw, but he gladly grasped at it. Svetlana Nikitichna might be long dead. She might have moved away. Even if she were there, why should she know anything of a husband she had buried twenty-five years before? But for the first time since he’d looked down at Iuda’s severed ear, intact and undamaged, Mihail went to sleep with some sense of hope.

  CHAPTER XX

  NUMBER 134 STOOD about halfway along the fontanka’s seven-verst arc through the city, on the southern bank. The river split from the Neva to the south just a little way downstream from where its far mightier sister, the Great Nevka, split to the north. It rejoined the main river just at the point where the Great Neva discharged into the Gulf of Finland.

  Mihail looked up at the nondescript building. His mother might have described it to him, but he had forgotten. There were many like it in the city. This was one of the better appointed ones, but as with them all, a dvornik sat in his little room, close to the door.

  ‘I’m looking for a woman named Danilova,’ Mihail explained. ‘Svetlana Nikitichna. She used to live here, I believe.’

  The man grunted. ‘Still does, if you can call it living.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s a bit … you know … in the head.’ He pointed to his own head in case Mihail still failed to understand.

  ‘Does she accept callers?’

  ‘No one ever tries. I take up her food but she’s not a good tipper.’ His hand came out as he said the final word.

  Mihail slipped him five kopeks. ‘It’s number four, isn’t it?’

  The coin vanished. ‘That’s right. First floor.’

  Mihail went up. The door was much the same as the others on the staircase, but as he approached it he could sense an unpleasant smell. It was nothing too stomach-churning, but not what he would have expected in a block like this one.

  He knocked.

  There was no answer, so he knocked again. This time there came an indistinct shout from within – a woman’s voice – but still no one came to the door. He tried the handle; it wasn’t locked.

  The smell was stronger inside: unwashed clothes, an unwashed body, rotting discarded food, perhaps even rotting flesh – a rat that had died and not been cleared away. He looked around. Nothing had been cleared away in here for a long time. Dust and cobwebs hung everywhere. Beneath them Mihail could see the remnants of a once well-decorated set of rooms; but that had been a long time ago.

  He was in a small hallway. Stairs ascended to another floor, and three doors led off.

  ‘Madame Danilova?’ he called.

  ‘Ici!’ She spoke in French. Was that because of the way he had addressed her, or a throwback to a time when ladies of her stature spoke only that language? Mihail was reminded of the old man he had met in Senate Square, and who he had turned out to be. He was not expecting to encounter a vampire here, but in his bag he still carried the arbalyet.

  The voice had come from the door straight in front of him. He went through. The room beyond was in much the same state as the hall. Even his feet falling on the carpet threw up a cloud of dust that caught his nostrils and gave him the urge to sneeze. At least in here, it was bright. Tall windows stood along one wall, unshuttered, looking out on to the street and the river, though no sunlight fell directly into the room. It faced north, slightly to the west. Perhaps it would receive a smattering of the sun’s rays, on summer afternoons.

  At the far end of the room, close to the window, sat the apartment’s occupant. She was thin – almost childlike in build, though it was hard to judge her height. Her hair was long, straight and lank. He remembered Tamara had told him it was blonde, and perhaps she had kept that colour. More likely it had turned to white, and the grease that mingled with it had returned it to its former hue. It was difficult to discern any individual strand. Instead the hair was matted into a single block, glistening slightly. Mihail was reminded of rancid butter. Her skin was thin, but not excessively wrinkled. There was no colour to it, but for the blue of her veins.

  ‘Come closer,’ she said, still speaking French.

  Mihail walked across the room and stood a few feet away from her. She looked him up and down. He had worn his uniform, hoping that it would impress.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘You have news; from Sevastopol. Why else would you come? It can’t be good. He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘My husband!’

  Mihail had been warned by the dvornik. Svetlana was not well in her mind. She was living in the past. Momentarily he pictured a different life for himself. This was just an elderly eccentric aunt who as a child he had been forced to visit and now did so out of sympathy, but rarely stayed long. Such visits would be commonplace for many families, but a closed door for Mihail. He allowed himself only a moment’s regret.

  ‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘He died bravely.’

  ‘I knew it. I knew it when she came to see me.’

  ‘When who came?’

  ‘That woman, with her questions.’ Svetlana leaned forward in her chair. There was even less to her frame now that it could be seen clear of the upholstery. ‘You look like her. Are you related?’

  ‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin,’ he told her. ‘I’m a lieutenant.’

  ‘In Dmitry’s regiment.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why have they sent you?’

  Mihail could provide no answer.

  ‘What’s the date?’ she asked.

  ‘19 February.’

  ‘What year? What year?’

  ‘1881.’ He could not lie to her.

  She sat back, a look of surprise on her face. ‘He’s been dead a long time, then,’ she said simply.

  Mihail nodded, hoping she was returning to reality.
‘Twenty-five years.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly seeming to plead with him. ‘I coped,’ she said, ‘for a while. I was even courted. I could have done well for myself. But he wouldn’t leave me alone.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘Mitka. He walked past in the street.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘He never even bothered to look up, but it was him. I told them, and they said they understood. They didn’t believe me, so I made sure they’d listen. Then they didn’t come back.’

  ‘When was this?’

  She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, years …’ She paused. ‘Then he stopped walking past, and there was just me. I preferred it when he was there.’ She raised her head towards the ceiling. Her irises disappeared under her eyelids and Mihail could see only the blank whiteness of her eyeballs staring at him. Then her head dropped and she looked at him more normally. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’

  ‘I think …’ Mihail had no answer. If she was mad she had been driven mad. Her husband was undead – it was quite conceivable that she had seen him, but what was she supposed to make of it?

  ‘I wish I were,’ she moaned. ‘When I was mad, I believed it when I saw him. Now I’m sane, I know he’s not real, even when I do see him.’

  It was an unfathomable contradiction, but she was bound by no law that insisted she should make sense.

  ‘You still see him?’ asked Mihail eagerly.

  ‘Don’t tease me. I know he’s not real.’

  She pushed down hard on the arms of her chair and rose unsteadily to her feet. Mihail noticed a faint peeling sound as the fabric of the dress separated from that of the chair, as if she had not moved for a very long time. She walked, taking the smallest of steps, over to a high table, or perhaps a dresser, in the corner of the room; it was impossible to clearly discern its shape. A sheet had been thrown over it, now thick with the ubiquitous stratum of dust, and it was covered with rags and junk. The journey took half a minute, during which neither of them said a word. She was purposeful in her motion and Mihail did not want to distract her.

  When she reached the table she lifted the sheet and reached beneath it, her fingers stretched. A sound emerged and Mihail realized he had been mistaken. It was neither a table nor a dresser, but a piano – unrecognizable among the furniture and rubbish that had been piled around it and on it. The tune she played was mournful, made even more deathly by the instrument’s untuned strings. It was Chopin’s Marche Funèbre, though Svetlana was playing only the melody. Even so, she managed to invest the short, repeated phrase with far more melancholy than Mihail had ever heard in it before.

  ‘He loved Chopin above anyone,’ she said. ‘Even me, I think. I wonder if he still plays.’

  ‘Where do you see him?’ asked Mihail.

  Svetlana raised her hand from the piano and the tune stopped. She turned and made the same slow, steady progress as before; this time towards the window. Mihail walked over to join her, arriving long before she did. The foetid smell was stronger when she stood beside him.

  ‘He walks along the embankment, just here,’ she said, pointing to the street below. ‘You’d think he’d look up, just for old times’ sake, but he never does.’

  ‘Where does he go?’

  ‘He crosses by the Egyptian Bridge, but then I lose sight of him.’

  ‘This is in the evenings?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, with a casual certainty that made Mihail suspicious. To him the fact it was evening made perfect sense, but there was no reason it should for her. Did she guess?

  ‘And does he come back?’ Mihail asked.

  ‘I wait up until I see him safely return. He usually does, but not always.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘He stopped for a while, but then he started again.’

  ‘Recently?’

  She began to nod, but then her head came to a standstill. She turned to him and gave a puzzled frown. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ asked Mihail.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dmitry Alekseevich – your husband.’

  ‘My husband’s dead,’ she said and turned away. She resumed her slow shuffle back towards her chair. When she reached it she turned and sat down, emitting a small, contented sigh. Then she looked up, as if catching sight of Mihail for the first time.

  ‘You have news?’ she asked. ‘From Sevastopol?’

  Mihail left without another word.

  Blood – that was what he craved. Not milk. Blood. And she gave it to him. He could not understand why, nor did he care. He needed blood and Susanna provided it. She had wept when she saw him and he had tasted the salt of her tears on his dry lips. He’d still been unable to recall the word, even to mouth it let alone utter it, but she had understood. She had removed her coat and undone her blouse so that the smooth white expanse of her breasts was revealed. He remembered a time when that had interested him, a stolen moment when Susanna had first persuaded him to touch her, but now it meant nothing. She revealed her bosom only as a consequence of revealing her throat. That was what concerned him now and she knew it.

  She leaned over him, pressing her hands against her chest so that her breasts did not brush against his delicate exposed lungs. She raised her chin, stretching the skin of her neck close to his lips, but much as he craved to lift his head and taste her, he could not; he did not have muscles or bones to do it, even if he’d had the energy.

  She understood and pressed closer, so that his lips gently kissed her flesh. He could feel the pulse of the blood in her veins, just the thickness of human skin away from him. He parted his jaws and bit, but the glorious, warm satisfaction of flowing blood did not cascade into his mouth. He tried again, but still there was nothing. His teeth did not even have the strength to pierce the delicate skin of this fragile, willing girl.

  She straightened up. He tried to keep his lips pressed against her, but was still unable to move.

  ‘You poor thing,’ she said, still with tears in her eyes. She unbuttoned her left cuff and rolled up the sleeve. It was wrong; he despised drinking from there, though he knew it would still nourish him. But he could not complain; Susanna was in complete control. From her bag she took a small knife – an ordinary thing with a single blade. She cut across the inside of her forearm, close to the crook of the elbow. She let out a little grunt.

  The blood flowed fast, spilling on to the stones and running, wasted, into the sewer. She moved quickly, holding her arm above his face so that the blood began to splatter over it. Even that was nourishing. Every cell of his body craved it, and in the absence of better means, would assimilate it directly. But it would be most effective in his mouth. She moved her arm until the blood flowed between his open lips, trickling off the tip of her elbow. Now he could taste it. Memories came flooding to him, each recalling the pleasure of consuming human blood. He did not swallow, but allowed the warm liquid to fill his mouth, surrounding and caressing his tongue, until it overflowed and ran down his cheek.

  Then he opened his pharynx and the liquid flowed down his throat. It was not really swallowing – he was not yet capable of that. It was simply the removal of a hindrance, allowing gravity to do its work. The blood did not have far to go, spilling out on to the ground beneath him from his incomplete oesophagus. Even there though he felt himself drawing nutrition from it, as the intricate folds of his half-formed lungs proved capable of absorbing more than just oxygen from their surroundings, sucking up the spreading blood like a mop cleaning dirty, spilled water.

  Susanna pushed her arm down towards him and his lips sealed around the wound. He played at it with his tongue, hoping to inveigle more blood out of it. She yelped – which he enjoyed – but then pulled her arm away.

  ‘Gently,’ she murmured, then returned her arm to his mouth. He did not disobey her.

  After a few minutes, she pulled it away again. Still he tried to move his head and still he could not. He watched as she bandaged her wound wi
th a strip of cloth from her underskirt.

  ‘No more,’ she said. ‘Not today.’

  ‘Please,’ he mouthed. It was not an easy word for him at the best of times.

  She shook her head. ‘Where would you be if you took it all?’ she asked.

  She stood and departed. He lay still. Even the little blood she had given, which he had so feebly absorbed, had done him good. He closed his eyes, trying to sense the shrivelled extremities of his own body. It was working, he could feel it. Morsel by morsel, cell by cell, his body was renewing itself.

  It was on the fourth night of watching that Mihail finally saw Dmitry taking the path that his wife had described. He’d hidden himself on the northern side of the Fontanka, where Nikolskiy Lane joined Great Podyacheskaya Street. As he arrived, just before dusk, he noticed he could look along Podyacheskaya Street and see in the distance the dome of Saint Isaac’s, perfectly aligned as though the road had been built to point at it. He had been wise to abandon his post at the cathedral and take up this new position. Tonight, a little before midnight, he gained his reward.

  Dmitry came from the south, emerging from Izmailovsky Prospekt and turning left along the embankment. As he passed beneath the windows of his former home Mihail thought he perceived a flicker of movement at them, but Dmitry did not look up, just as Svetlana had been so keen to point out. As she had described, he crossed the river via the Egyptian Bridge and carried on north. It would be too risky to follow his path directly, so Mihail too headed north, along a parallel street. Soon he found himself at the corner of the square containing the Saint Nikolai Cathedral, its blue and white plaster and small golden domes making it a quite different style of building from Saint Isaac’s, but Mihail had no time to take it in. Looking along the stretch of canal that bordered the square, he saw that Dmitry had now turned east, and was heading towards him.