by Jasper Kent
And then it was as if the cell wall had hit me in the face. I bounced off it and fell back on to the cold stone floor. That blast had come from very near by – the bomb must have detonated somewhere in the fortress. I’d been thrown forwards and then back. I put my hand to my face and felt blood on it, but it wasn’t serious. There was still hope, though. The fortress made a clear target for any crew with the last of their payload to dispose of. Perhaps in a few seconds there would be a direct hit. The roof would cave in and my … our miserable existence would be ended once and for all. And there was nothing Iuda could do about it.
*
I leapt to my feet and strode to the door. It took no more than a moment to cross the cell. Whatever Danilov might think, there was something I could do about it. I banged on the door with the flat of my hand and shouted.
‘Guard! Guard!’
I pressed my face close to the grille and looked up and down the corridor, but could see no one. What would they care anyway? They didn’t have the brains to make a decision for themselves. They’d been told to keep us here and even if the place were in flames that was what they would do until they were instructed otherwise. Even so, I was surprised to get no response, not even a cheery, ‘Shut your fucking mouth, you filthy burzhooi.’
I went back to sit on the bed. I was hungry. It was then that I realized we’d not been given any breakfast. We’d not seen hide nor hair of a guard since the previous night. Even before the bombs had started dropping the whole place had been unnervingly quiet. I heard one more explosion in the distance, and listened as the sound of the machine – Danilov had called it a biplane – faded. Then all was silence. I went over and banged on the door again, but didn’t shout this time. Still there was no response. I stood with my ear at the grille for five minutes, but didn’t hear so much as a footstep.
It seemed that Danilov’s wish had been fulfilled. They’d left us here to rot.
It was the evening of the following day before we heard any other sound. No guards had looked in on us; we still hadn’t been fed, though we’d had the jug of water that they’d left us two nights back. It was already dark, but that did not mean it was late – we were still a few weeks short of the equinox. Brisk footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. I fancied I caught the light tapping of a shorter pair of legs trying to keep up. They stopped outside our cell and I heard keys jangle and then turn in the lock. The door opened.
The figure in the doorway – filling the doorway – was sporting the familiar leather coat that marked him out as a Bolshevik. I didn’t bother to take more than a glance at him. A few of them had visited over the months, asking the usual questions about who else I knew to be plotting counter-revolution. When Iuda had been asked those same questions, he refused to answer because he knew nothing. I had a few ideas, but I wasn’t going to help them – not least because I had no desire to be released for good behaviour.
‘Mihail?’
I turned. It was Dmitry. My legs weakened at the shock of seeing him – of seeing any familiar face. Somewhere inside me I felt a twinge of revulsion at being so happy at the sight of a creature such as him. Revulsion too to realize that he had proved one of my few true friends in the entire world. I rushed over to him, stumbling as I did, and found my arms cradled in his as he helped me to stay upright. I could find no words with which to greet him.
‘Mihail?’ he asked again, emphasizing the question.
I nodded. ‘For now,’ I said.
‘Who’s the president of the United States?’
‘Woodrow Wilson,’ I replied.
He eyed me suspiciously. ‘You might have picked that up from somewhere. You’ve been in here a long time.’
‘Does it matter?’
He shook his head.
‘What is the date, anyway?’
‘The third of March,’ he said. ‘Sunday.’
I let out a brief laugh. For all his genius, Iuda had been way off.
‘What?’
‘I’d thought it was still February.’
Now Dmitry laughed. ‘It is, in a way. Everything’s changing. They’ve switched to Western dates. No silly debates; they just decreed it. January the thirty-first was followed by February the fourteenth. It makes so much more sense. It’ll be the metric system next, mark my words.’
Dmitry should have possessed a better sense of history than I did, but to me his enthusiastic words smacked of the more lunatic extremes of the French Revolution. ‘You sure today’s not the tenth of Brumaire?’ I asked sourly. Somewhere at the back of my mind Iuda corrected my random guess at a Revolutionary date; today, apparently, would have been the twelfth of Ventôse.
‘It’s nothing like that. This is just sensible; doing the same as everyone else.’
‘You’re evidently working for them now.’ I indicated his coat.
‘I work for no one,’ he snapped. It reminded me – or perhaps Iuda – of years earlier, when Dmitry had denied working for Zmyeevich. ‘It’s convenient. And you were right. These aren’t the offspring of the Decembrists, but they could turn that way, with a little guidance.’
‘Is there a date for the elections yet?’
‘Elections?’
‘To the Constituent Assembly?’ It had been promised and then postponed and then promised again half a dozen times since the revolution. When it happened it would be the first truly democratic institution ever to govern Russia.
‘The elections have already taken place.’ Dmitry avoided my gaze as he spoke.
‘And?’
‘The assembly convened on January the fifth. It sat for thirteen hours. Then the Bolsheviks dissolved it.’ He couldn’t conceal his embarrassment at the announcement, but forced himself to be positive. ‘The Soviets are democratic bodies too. They’ll do just as well.’
He was whistling in the dark, but I had no desire to argue with him.
‘I hope you’ve not come here to set me free,’ I said. ‘Let me assure you now, while I can, that this is by far the best place for me to be. Iuda may tell you differently, if he gets the chance, but don’t believe him.’
‘I brought you these,’ he said, holding out his hand. He didn’t deny his reason for being here.
I instantly recognized what he was offering me. I snatched it off him with unnecessary haste. The silver box itself was of little interest. I opened it to examine the tablets within. I counted; there were seventeen of them. Despite the undemanding regimen of the gaol we’d had a number of attacks; sometimes when I was at the helm, sometimes Iuda. It had become almost as instinctive for him as it was for me to reach into our right pocket when the constriction came. We’d both tried not to use up the limited supply we’d been able to bring here, but there hadn’t been many to start with and the guards ignored our pleas for more when they’d finally run out.
‘Where did you get these?’ I asked. It had been so long that I couldn’t remember when I had last held the silver box.
‘They were at the Church on Spilled Blood, along with your coat and papers. I went back there to tidy up after you; to make sure there were no clues leading to you. And …’ He paused.
‘And what?’
‘To see if there was anything left of what they needed for the ceremony.’
‘Was there?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. I take it you’ve hidden Ascalon somewhere safe.’
‘Who’s to say I haven’t destroyed it?’
‘Have you?’ He moved his head slightly, his stare becoming a little more confrontational.
‘No. It’s safe.’ In truth I had no idea. I’d not seen it since they took it from me at Gorohovaya Street, but there was no reason to suppose it wasn’t still there. ‘You’ve been holding on to these for a long time,’ I said, showing him the pillbox before slipping it into my pocket.
‘For a long time I thought it better not to come and see you at all.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘The city’s being evacuated,’ he announced. Th
ere was no inflection to what he said. It was simply a statement of fact.
‘What?’
‘The Germans are getting too close – there’s nothing we can do to defend it. Better to leave them with just empty buildings.’
‘Or burn the city down – like Rostopchin did.’ I understood what I was talking about, but the thought was not mine. Iuda had been there, had seen it, though in a different century and a different city, when Moscow had been abandoned and then put to the flame, just to prove to Bonaparte that he had won nothing. Since then no enemy army had come close to the Russian heartland – until now.
Dmitry didn’t notice the sarcasm in my voice. ‘It’s been suggested, but it shouldn’t be necessary. The Germans will make peace – Trotsky’s sure of it – but they could get better terms if they held the capital. They won’t bother marching as far as Moscow, even if that’s where the government’s based.’
‘So Moscow’s going to be the capital again, after all these years?’ That dated back to long before even Iuda was born.
‘Only temporarily.’
‘Even so, Nikolai gets what he always wanted.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He hated having Petrograd as the capital.’ He wasn’t the only tsar to feel that way. For some it was too Western-looking, and deliberately so. Pyotr had wanted a European capital for a European nation. Every reactionary tsar preferred Moscow – every progressive one Petersburg. The move was suggestive of where the new regime stood.
‘They’ll come back here once there’s peace. The Germans will be straight off to fight in the west.’
‘In that case, I think I’ll take my chances here, thanks all the same.’ I went and sat resolutely down on the bed, making it clear I had no plans to go anywhere.
‘And what about Nadya?’
I turned away from him. I could hardly be surprised that he had worked out where my true concerns would lie, but it was still disconcerting to discover that he cared what became of either of us. I could only thank the Lord that he did. By hiding away here I’d put myself in a position where I could do nothing to help Nadya. I couldn’t even judge how serious things really were.
‘I can’t be with her,’ I insisted. ‘You know that.’
‘You think she’ll leave without you?’
He was right, but still I looked for another way out. ‘Are things really as bad as all that?’ I asked lamely.
‘The Germans are less than a hundred and thirty versts away. With the city abandoned they could be here in hours. You’ve heard what they do to civilian prisoners – especially the women.’
I turned to face him. ‘That’s just propaganda.’
‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’
I was a fool even to try to argue. At any moment things might change and it would be Iuda making the decisions. He was certain to choose to leave, but after that it was unlikely he’d offer any support to Nadya. But there was still one problem to be overcome.
‘I don’t even know where she’s living now.’
‘I do,’ Dmitry replied.
We had barely stepped through the door of the cell when I discovered that I was once again in command of our actions. I said nothing to Dmitry. He led us out of the fortress to the west. It seemed he had the authority to do it; no one even bothered to challenge him. There can’t have been more than a dozen guards left in the place. We stepped down on to the frozen Kronversky Channel for the short walk over to Petrogradsky Island.
‘Where are we going then?’ I asked, hoping the question sounded as if it came from Danilov.
‘She’s got an apartment on Fonarniy Lane. It’s not much, but it does for them.’
‘Them?’
‘Her and the dog,’ said Dmitry. ‘You’re Iuda now, aren’t you?’
I smiled to myself. He was very astute. ‘For the time being,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we just cut across the ice?’ We were heading west along the bank of the Kronversky Channel; it wasn’t the fastest route.
‘You’ll see.’
A few moments later I understood. We cleared the fortress and the view across to the far bank of the Neva opened up. Where I had expected to see a smooth, snow-covered expanse instead lay a rugged landscape of scattered boulders – boulders made not of rock but of ice, like icebergs breaking off from a glacier, except they were not free to float away. They would have been difficult enough to scramble over, but I knew that that was not the real danger.
‘It’s from the air raid yesterday,’ said Dmitry. ‘Even if we could get past, the ice still won’t have frozen properly. We could easily fall through. And there’s always the chance of another raid.’
‘It’ll be a long way round if we stick to the bridges.’
He gave me a look of confusion, but said nothing. I soon understood why. After only a few more minutes of walking I saw stretching ahead of us a wooden bridge that I’d never seen before, spanning the Lesser Neva just at the point where it split from its broader sister. We crossed it and arrived on Vasilievskiy Island, close to the stock exchange. There had always been a need for a bridge at that point, but it was another sign of how much had changed in the years I had been … absent.
The streets were busy, and we seemed to be going against the flow. Every form of transport that could be drummed into service had been. The modern motor cars were few and far between; I could only guess that that was because they were the most desirable and so had been taken first, as well as moving fastest. Around us even horse-drawn carts were a rarity. Those that there were had been piled high with crates and cases, so that the horses strained and had to be pulled or beaten by their owners to get them to move. People tried to clamber on to some of the emptier wagons, but soon gave up, realizing they could travel faster under their own steam, on foot. It was their property that needed transporting. Mostly, though, the streets were clogged with small handcarts, pulled by one or two people – generally the men of the family, dragging their few possessions behind them as their wives and daughters walked alongside.
I’d seen it all before – a century before, and then not in Petrograd but in Moscow. Then it had been the threat of a French invasion that had set the people to flight; this time it was the Germans they feared. Then what had seemed like a humiliating retreat had in fact been a stroke of tactical genius. I doubted that the same applied here. For a start, Russia was failing to make use of her greatest ally – winter. In Moscow it had been winter that had closed the trap which the Russians had set. Now winter was almost over. If the Germans arrived, it would be to witness the first green shoots of spring. And I wasn’t too sure just how empty they’d find the city. I couldn’t really judge from the hordes that we passed, but my guess was that there would be many in Petrograd who would welcome the arrival of a foreign occupier. For anyone with a little money it would mean a much better life than they had under the Bolsheviks. The Germans might even restore the tsar.
But there was one other difference from Moscow in 1812. Not a single wounded soldier was part of the retreat – at least not that I saw. There had been no Borodino, no heroic last stand. This was not a military retreat, it was a political one; a government fleeing because it could not muster its own defence, and a population scurrying after them for fear of being left behind.
We walked along the embankment, close to the university, close to the house where I had killed the professor and his wife. I glanced at Dmitry, but he gave no sign of associating the crime with me, if he’d even heard of it. I didn’t need to mention it. I recalled standing at that high window and trying to step forwards at Danilov’s volition, only to thrust myself back moments later under my own will. Neither of us had realized it then, but if we had died then thanks to the blood of my erstwhile body that ran in our veins we would have risen again as a voordalak. Now that was no longer the case. I could only guess at how long it took for the alien blood to disperse, but our time in the fortress had been more than enough. Now I had to be wary of death; and that meant that Dani
lov would welcome it, though not just yet – not while his beloved Nadya was in danger. And she was in danger – more so than he realized.
‘Come on!’ I said to Dmitry, quickening my pace. He glanced at me and began to walk with long strides, so fast that I could barely keep up. There was nothing to be gained by telling him that I was now myself again. Iuda’s thoughts had not been clear, but they frightened me. I knew that Nadya was at risk from the advancing Germans. That was reason enough for me to fear for her, but Iuda seemed to understand that there was some other, even greater threat to her. And yet how could he know anything that I did not?
We crossed the Moika and then walked along its bank, before turning inland again. Soon we were on Maksimilianovsky Lane. ‘You remember this place?’ I asked.
Dmitry nodded, then looked up at one of the houses. ‘It’s where Luka used to live.’ There was a weariness to his voice. I knew how he felt, though it must have been worse for him. Between us – Dmitry, Iuda and myself – we had lived for over three hundred years, and all spent much of our time in Petrograd. I was the youngest, and even for me the memories weighed heavily; memories like those of Luka, my half-brother, who had been a member of the People’s Will – and murdered by them. How much more profound must the sensation have been for Dmitry and Iuda? It was a banal question: ‘You remember this place?’ I could have asked it on almost any street in the city and for at least one of us – often for all three – it would have meant something: a petty victory or a minor defeat. In the end all that those years amounted to were the three of us here together; Iuda and I inescapably bound, Dmitry through some sense of guilt or familial loyalty that I would never fathom.