by Jasper Kent
Polkan stood up as I left and began to growl softly. I tried to soothe him, partly out of affection, partly out of fear that he would rouse Nadya, but his unease about me of the night before seemed to have strengthened. I closed the bedroom door and hurried downstairs. I went into the kitchen and pulled out one of the drawers completely. Taped underneath it was an envelope, bulging with roubles. I took half of them and returned the remainder of our savings to their hiding place. It would be better to have my own money to spend than to give Iuda the need to steal from somebody else.
Then I went out to the street, and began to walk.
*
I’d given Danilov a lot to think about, but that was no excuse for him to completely abandon all awareness of the world around us. They must have picked us up as soon as we left his house. There were two of them; I could see that much. I couldn’t make Danilov turn his oafish head to check for any more. One thing was plain; they weren’t vampires. It was getting on for midday when we set off, thanks to the enduring needs of Nadya Vadimovna, and so the sun was high. Danilov had taken us along the Fontanka without showing any real intention of where he was heading. One of the men kept behind us. The other one was easier to spot, even though he remained the whole time on the far bank of the river. It seemed likely that there would be others.
I don’t think it even occurred to Danilov that his route would take us close to the bathhouse that had been the scene of such merriment the previous night. He just needed to walk, to attempt to clear his mind. When we got close he realized and was about to turn away, but it was at that moment that I once more gained the opportunity to decide where our legs would take us. His idea that he might get arrested for murder was an interesting one, which might solve many of his problems. I knew he objected to having his name tarnished – much as I objected to someone else getting the credit for my good work – but if I pushed too hard it might prove to be for him the lesser of two evils.
I turned down the little canal again and stopped at the baths. There was a lot of activity. Two gendarmes stood at the door, preventing me from going in. I was pleased to note that they were regular police, not soldiers as we’d seen at the Church on Spilled Blood, so it seemed they hadn’t connected the two incidents yet.
‘Can’t I come in for a bath?’ I said.
‘You a regular here?’ one of them asked.
‘No. Do I need to be?’
‘It’s just there’s been a murder – several murders.’
‘My goodness, how awful.’ I tried to peer past them at what was going on inside, toying with the possibility that I would be recognized, not that I had any desire whatsoever to be arrested. No one that we had encountered face to face had survived, but we hadn’t killed everyone in the building. Someone might have caught a glimpse of me. It was only a slight chance, but I enjoyed the thrill of the risk I was taking.
‘I wouldn’t, sir. It’s not a pretty sight.’
I gave a slight grimace and then departed, heading back the way I’d come. One of my pursuers had followed me to the bathhouse and then walked innocently past when I stopped. By doubling back I might have lost him, but when I reached the Fontanka again I saw that the other one was still waiting for me, unmistakable in his leather coat. I crossed the river by the nearest bridge and made for the centre of town. The leather-coated man came with me. I was feeling hungry. Danilov had felt it too, but had done nothing about it. Perhaps he was trying to starve himself to death. It wouldn’t work – he’d never keep control of himself for long enough.
I found a little place on the Haymarket for lunch, nothing like as grand as the Hôtel d’Europe, but it would suffice. Much as I would have enjoyed irritating Danilov by committing further burglaries, it was far easier to use the money he had provided, and I knew we ought to make it last. The man in the leather coat didn’t come in. I looked out of the window, but couldn’t see him. I was sure he was there. I ordered blini filled with mushrooms and fried onions. As soon as I bit into it a memory rushed back to me that at first I couldn’t quite place. Somehow it was coupled with Danilov, but the precise connection was elusive.
Then it hit me. It was in another café, not unlike this, in Moscow this time, years before; it must have been soon after the end of the Crimean War. Similar blini with a similar filling had been on the table, but it had not been I who was eating – that was what had confused me. It was a young woman. I pictured her in my mind and smiled to myself. She was not unlike Nadya. They were about the same age, the same shapely build – not fat, but well rounded. For different reasons I knew that each of them was physically strong. Even the faces bore similarities. The hair, though, was different; Nadya’s was straight and dark, while that of the woman in my memories was a wavy auburn. It was not uncommon for a man to choose a partner who looked like his mother, even though he would rarely acknowledge it. But Danilov would not have known his mother, Tamara, until she was older. How that woman must have hated me, to make her son hate me so.
But not then. Then she had trusted me, like all of them do for a while. On that occasion, in Moscow, Tamara had not been alone. She had been dining with Dmitry, her half-brother. He’d been human then – in the last days of it. I’d rushed in and interrupted them in order to hand him a letter that would send him off across the country in chase of a wild goose that would ultimately end in his death – and rebirth. It had gone precisely as I’d planned it, and I’d spent a long time planning it. Only after that had things started going wrong. I had not been a vampire for so very long then. Had it already jaded me? Had I forgotten how to strategize, how to make the players dance around me with just a few softly spoken words which they didn’t even have to believe, but would still be forced to act upon? I’d only been human again for a few days now and yet had already come close to convincing Susanna I was someone quite different, and put a barrier between Danilov and his lover that he would never find a way around. Perhaps I’d do better to remain human for a little while. It was a shame Danilov’s body was so old, but it was good for another ten years or so. And now I knew the trick, I could take any body I chose, with a little work. Eternal life was no longer the preserve of the voordalak.
But I’d been fooled too in my life. I hadn’t even known then that Tamara was Lyosha’s daughter. I pictured her again and him, comparing their faces. It should have been obvious.
He’s just as I imagined him.
I realized more quickly this time that the words were not spoken in the room. It was Danilov, his thoughts breaking through into mine. I sensed that he was happy, remarkably so. It took me a moment to understand why. These were my memories, but they meant more to him than they ever would to me. For him to see his mother again, from before he ever knew her, must have been a joy – like looking through an album of family photographs. And to see his grandfather – his hero, Lyosha – for the first time would be a greater delight still.
I decided to indulge him. What memory of his grandfather – of his grandparents – would I treat him to? There were so many moments of Lyosha’s humiliation that I could allow him to visit, but not yet. Let him first witness a triumph – though not a complete triumph. Perhaps Lyosha at his most brutal, just so that Danilov would know how to really be a man.
It was back in 1812, again in Moscow, in a house that had long been abandoned as its owners fled Bonaparte’s advance. We – a group of voordalaki and myself, the oprichniki – had made it our home. We’d boarded up the windows to keep the sunlight out, and even dug down to the sewers so that we could come and go without ever stepping outside. We’d led Lyosha to the place, to trap him, and now we had him. I was there, and two of the oprichniki – Pyetr and Andrei – and Lyosha’s friend, Dmitry Fetyukovich. Lyosha was resourceful. He had an icon – an image of Christ – on a chain round his neck and he’d used it to try and scare us. Andrei ripped it from him and threw it across the room, but it had been distraction enough. Lyosha drew his sabre and swung it into Andrei’s throat, cutting more than halfway through. It wa
sn’t enough to kill him, but he could barely move.
Then Lyosha had leapt across the room and managed to climb up one of the boarded windows, bringing down the panel of wood, allowing a beam of sunlight to split the room in two: a barrier that no voordalak could cross, and with Lyosha on the other side of it. Of course, it made no difference to me; I was human then. I almost marched through to get at Lyosha, but thankfully the other two held me back and I remembered that I didn’t want to give myself away. And then Lyosha had shown his true magnificence. He rammed the hilt of his sword into Andrei’s stomach, causing the dazed voordalak to double up. Then he brought the blade down with all his might on the back of Andrei’s neck. At first I thought it hadn’t been enough, but then he gave his sword a savage twist and Andrei’s head came free. It was dust before it even hit the floor.
I left the memory there. I could tell that Danilov was enjoying it, enjoying seeing his grandfather do what he himself so much enjoyed – killing vampires. Lyosha was luckier than his grandson; for him, once dead, vampires didn’t come back.
I moved on to a different memory, just three weeks later. There were things that Danilov had to know. The remnants of Bonaparte’s Grande Armée were fleeing Russia. They were crossing a frozen river – the Berezina – except that a late thaw had meant the ice of its surface wasn’t quite so solid any more. Lyosha had caught up with me and chased me out on to the ice and knocked me into the freezing water. I clung on to his booted foot. He shouted down at me.
‘So, was it Margarita or Domnikiia you were with?’
I’d fooled him so utterly. He’d seen me at a window with a woman, but he’d only seen her from behind. It could have been either of them: Margarita, the cheap whore, or Dominique, the … other cheap whore, but also the woman he happened to love, who was to become Tamara’s mother. The woman and I had gone through the steps that would transform her into a vampire – if only I had then been a vampire. He had seen it all and been able to do nothing. Over the weeks I had manipulated his mind into thinking first one thing, then the other. That the woman he’d seen was Dominique, then Margarita, then Dominique again. Now he could never know, because he could never believe that what I told him was the truth, whichever side I settled upon. I had given him the punishment of eternal indecision.
As I stared up at him from the icy water I chose a name at random. ‘It was Margarita,’ I shouted.
I yanked his leg, knocking him over and sending us both into the foaming water. We surfaced close to each other. It was hard to believe how little I cared for my own life as long as I had the opportunity of tormenting him.
‘I can’t lie to you any more, Lyosha,’ I said. ‘It was Dominique.’ I always preferred the French form of her name.
I dived down, deciding I’d done enough and now intent on escape, but the current took me.
I crashed into the makeshift wooden bridge that Bonaparte’s sappers had so recently built. I managed to crawl out of the water and clambered through the open slats of wood. Lyosha was already on the bridge, edging towards me. He was almost upon me when I leapt out into the water again on the downstream side of the bridge. I thought I’d escaped him, but he managed to grab a handful of my hair. I could scarcely feel the pain of it tugging against my scalp, I was so cold. I dangled there, the water up to my neck, his fingers entwined in my hair the only thing holding me. I’d heard the whole story before, of course, from Mama, who’d heard it from Aleksei himself, but it was a joy to actually witness it as a memory, even if not my own memory. There were details here that Mama could not have known. And to actually be able to see my grandfather, to look up into his face and to feel his hand on me, was something I had never dreamed possible. There was a look of righteous anger in his eyes that I knew had been in mine when I thought I had killed Iuda. We even shared the same failure in that respect.
‘Tell me the truth!’ he screamed.
‘I have told you the truth,’ I laughed.
‘When?’ he demanded.
‘Often,’ I said, revelling in my own ingenuity.
He pushed me under the water for a few seconds. The cold was all-consuming, but I knew this was not the end, not quite. Seconds later he pulled me up.
‘Tell me!’ he shouted again.
‘You can’t torture me, Lyosha. I have the ultimate protection that you’ll never believe me. I’ve told you everything – not just everything that’s true, but everything else as well. All I can offer you is the ultimate enlightenment; not just what is, but what could be. To know everything is to know nothing. What’s the point in asking any more? What’s the point in forcing it out of me? You might as well torture a coin and expect it to turn up tails.’
He pushed my head back under the water. That, I thought, would be it. However brilliant my plan had been, it would result in my own death, and yet I cared nothing for that. But then he pulled me out again.
‘You’re slow today, Lyosha. Do you still think you can get the truth out of me?’
He paused and shook his head, then thrust his hand down again and me with it. This time I was certain it would be the end.
I raised my head and looked around the café. I did not want to know the end of the story, of Iuda’s lucky escape. But the rest of it had been a joy. It gave me no pleasure to feel a sense of gratitude towards Iuda, but feel it I did. In the depths of my misery he had shown me some slight benefit that could come from this wretched existence. He had shown me my mother, whom I had not seen in forty years, and my grandfather, and others whose names I had only heard mention of. I’d seen a glimpse of Dmitry Fetyukovich, the man whose ambiguous attitude towards the voordalak I was beginning to emulate. Would Iuda show me Vadim and Maks too? And what of the greater prize? I hadn’t entirely understood the conversation, but both of them had mentioned her. Would Iuda at last allow me, in this strange way, to meet my grandmother, Domnikiia?
It would put me in his debt, and that was not a pleasant situation to be in. I would have to ensure that I was not too keen to see what he could show me, that I did not allow him to manipulate me. If I could manage it, it would be I who used him.
I looked down at my plate. I’d finished my blini without being aware of it. Outside the door I could see the man in the leather coat who had been following us. He’d been joined by another. That was a small but significant victory over Iuda too. He’d thought I hadn’t seen them, but I had, and had ignored them and managed to keep that knowledge from Iuda. It was a skill I would have to hone. I didn’t think Iuda understood the significance of the leather coat, but I did. And I’d been warned.
I stood up and put a few notes down on the table to pay for my meal. Then I went to the door and stepped outside. The two of them had watched me through the glass as I crossed the café. The one on the left put his hand on my chest to stop me. I pushed against him, not with any hope of getting past, but out of anger at his impertinence. He said nothing. The other one put two fingers in his mouth and whistled down the street. A car that had been parked on the corner began to move and pulled up opposite us. Another man got out – more a boy; he couldn’t have been older than twenty. He too was wearing the ubiquitous leather coat. He stood in front of me and his comrade dropped his hand from my chest.
‘Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov?’ asked the youth.
It was a moot point, but I gave him the simple answer. ‘Yes.’
He moved quickly. I caught the glint of metal across his knuckles just before his fist buried itself in my stomach. I doubled up, pain and nausea filling my body, but he pulled me up by the hair so that he could speak to me.
‘Welcome to the new Russia.’
CHAPTER XIX
THEY BUNDLED ME into the car and we drove off. I wasn’t too badly hurt. The idea had been to shock me enough so that I wouldn’t offer any resistance. They weren’t to know I was intending to hand myself in. We went a little way down Sadovaya Street then turned left on to Gorohovaya. I was sitting in the back between two of them, but through the windscreen I
could see the spire of the Admiralty building, marking the conceptual centre of the city. The three main arteries – Gorohovaya Street and Nevsky and Voznesensky Prospekts – all converged upon the Admiralty, and the Great Neva flowed past it. It was a reflection of how deeply Pyotr had valued the navy. Both Saint Isaac’s, Petrograd’s spiritual hub, and the Winter Palace, its seat of royal power, were near by, but it was to the military and specifically naval heart that all travellers were drawn.
We turned on to Admiralty Square and then immediately stopped. I recognized the building. It was on the corner of the block and so although the entrance we were using was on Admiralty Square, it was officially situated on the street we had just turned off: Gorohovaya Street 2 – not as infamous an address as Fontanka 16, but that was only because it had not had so long to establish itself. And yet this building shouldn’t have been in use at all. It was only after the failed revolution of 1905 that the Ohrana – the tsar’s secret police – had moved here from Fontanka 16. But the Ohrana had not lasted very long in its new home. After the revolution in February the Soviet had insisted on the organization’s dissolution. Now, though, it seemed the Bolsheviks had chosen to resurrect it.
I was taken inside and up two flights of stairs to a windowless room. It was no different from any other government office. There was a desk with a leather chair on one side of it and a wooden one on the other. There were two telephones, an ashtray and some piles of paperwork. On the wall behind was a map of Petrograd. There was a pair of filing cabinets in the corner and beside them another door, which was closed. Everything but the desk and chairs had a thin layer of dust on it. The new regime had only just moved in.
They searched my pockets and put what they found on the desk. One of them listed the items on a piece of paper. Then they pushed me on to the wooden chair and cuffed my hands behind my back. They left me. It was ten minutes before anyone came in. He was in his thirties and dressed, as they all were, in the brown leather coat; his just a little longer than a jacket, but not long enough to be called an overcoat. He clearly styled himself on Trotsky: the same spectacles, the same carefully sculpted beard and moustache. His hair was slicked back with pomade, which somewhat tainted the image. A lit cigarette protruded from his lips. He sat down in the leather chair and studied the document he had come in with, then read through the list of my possessions that they had left for him. Finally he looked up at me.