Not even a ‘good evening’, or a ‘thank you for the company’, Yasha thought as he trudged on alone up the stairs.
He flung himself on his bed. He wasn’t in the mood to play.
It was ten minutes before he heard the click of the door, and a violin.
Miserably, he listened. Three low Es, then another, a long sob of a note, and then another piece with three beats in the bar, but as far as could be from the zany waltzing of last night: in a minor key, dreamily sad and reflective …
Wait. It was Jewish.
It took him a phrase or two more before he recognized the melody. Yes, it was the piece the Lemans had been so impressed with at that open-air concert last spring, wasn’t it? Played by the thirteen-year-old wunderkind of the year, a new student at the Conservatoire, who’d drawn a crowd of twenty-five thousand and needed a police escort out afterwards to protect him from his screaming admirers; the Litvak boy who shared Yasha’s first name? Heifetz, Yasha recalled; and the music, named ‘Hebrew Melody’, was by another young Jew at the Conservatoire. Akhron.
Of course. Leman had bought the sheet music as soon as Josef Akhron had published it through whatever the name of the St. Petersburg society was that had been set up last year by Jews and anti-anti-Semites. It was just the kind of life-of-the-mind thing the Lemans did get involved in. It was called the Jewish Folk Music Society, he remembered, because the authorities had refused to register it simply as the Jewish Music Society.
He sat up, electrified by the realization that came to him next.
That’s what she’d been whispering about with Leman.
She must have been borrowing the music, to play up here, for him.
It was the haunting music bringing this lump to his throat, he told himself now as he reached for his violin, and took it in his arms. But all he could do was cradle it, and shut his stinging eyes (dust, he told himself fiercely), and listen.
She must be sight-reading, he realized. But she finished the sorrowful first part of the melody not only without a false note but with such intensity of feeling, such depth of emotion, that it took his breath away.
It was only in the second, faster, more restless melody, full of rushed demisemiquavers, trills and sobs, high on the E-string, that her sureness of touch left her; only when she was at the peak of the cadenza, a wilder still improvisation on that second theme, that her tone roughened into hoarseness, and then, unexpectedly, went quiet.
In the sudden silence, he heard her open her door.
The sadness of that music might silence anyone, Yasha thought, blinking. And it must bring back so much pain for her, especially, with the memories she must have.
Wrenched with pity, he got up, still holding his violin, and went out to the landing, half hoping …
But she wasn’t standing there in the dark, needing comfort. She was flying away from him, down the stairs, four at a time.
Yasha hesitated. Then he put his violin down on a leaflet box.
What must she remember? he wondered as he stood in the dark. His parents hadn’t had to tell him anything, in the end, because he’d learned how to find out for himself. He’d read the newspaper stories published in the foreign press, and translated back into Russian. He’d also read the survivors’ accounts, gathered by old Kremer for a pamphlet. So he knew everything that had happened at Zhitomir, where her family had lived, from the first rumours that Jews had poisoned their Christian servant, to the mysterious appearance in town of a St. Petersburg gendarmerie officer on the eve of Easter, to the printed handbills that started circulating, without interference from the police, telling people that an imperial ukaze had been published allowing the infliction of ‘bloody punishment’, and all the rest of the awful, usual story.
Whatever Inna might remember of those days, whatever her part in it had been, her memories now would be unbearable, he thought. His own painful childhood memories suddenly seemed trivial by comparison.
He put his hands to his face, overwhelmed with pity.
All at once, breaking into the calm of his breathing, something warm and heavy cannoned into his chest. He staggered back a step; then he steadied himself and looked down. Slowly he made out Inna, grimacing and picking at his chest. He hadn’t even heard her come back upstairs.
It took him a moment to realize she’d just caught her hair in his buttons.
‘Stay still,’ he muttered. ‘You’re only making it worse.’
Obediently, she stopped and stood before him with bowed head, very close.
She smelled so innocent; of lavender.
Trying not to think how close she was, or how warm, or how full of turbulent emotion she must be, he got out a match and lit it, holding it away from her head, working out which button – one on his shoulder, he could see – her hair was tangled in. Then he held out the box, and – as calmly as he could, given this unsettling physical proximity – told her to go on lighting matches until he’d set her loose.
She reached for it. But she couldn’t take it. She already had something in her hand.
‘What’s that?’ he asked as she let it fall to take the matches.
He was looking at her face in the sudden circle of flickering light. There were no tears on it, he realized; no sign of upset; just frustration at being trapped.
‘A mute,’ she answered, sounding far more self-possessed than he expected, or felt himself. ‘I wanted a mute for the next bit. I remembered there was one on the piano.’
‘Oh,’ Yasha heard himself say, not at all the decisive male rescuer he wanted to be.
She went on quite conversationally. ‘Because the music was marked con sordino, in the next section, and I wanted to do it right. It’s such a beautiful tune.’
‘I thought that the music must have upset you…’ Yasha muttered, trying to make his hands gentler, ‘reminded you of your parents…’
She turned up her trapped face, cautiously, so she could look at him. ‘My parents?’ she said, sounding astonished. ‘Why would it?’
‘Because it’s Jewish music, and you sounded so sad.’
She laughed, awkwardly he thought. ‘Oh, I’m afraid I don’t really even remember my parents. Just Aunt Lyuba, who brought me up. And she wasn’t Jewish at all. The flu took her off too,’ she added, after a moment. ‘I do miss her. But not when I hear Jewish music.’
It was Yasha’s turn to stare. What did she mean, the flu had taken her aunt off too? Surely she didn’t think this was what had happened to her parents, when everyone knew—
Suddenly the trapped hair came loose.
‘There,’ he said, his blood still pounding through him, and stepped quickly away from her flower scent, and the questions he couldn’t ask. It was a relief.
She was free. She stepped back too, pushed open her door for the welcome lamplight, and stopped in the doorway, silhouetted in that square of light, so he could only see her outline.
‘Why did you think I’d be upset by that Jewish tune?’ he heard her ask curiously. ‘They were never at all observant, you know, my parents. Aunty Lyuba said.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to say.’
‘Say what?’
She stepped forward, right up to him, so close that his senses were filled with flowers again.
He was so overwhelmed by the desire to take her in his arms that it made him angry. ‘You must know what! They died in the Zhitomir pogrom! I thought that the music might have made you think of it and caused you pain!’
She went still. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, her voice a shocked whisper.
‘You were nearly killed too,’ he said softly. ‘I heard about that pogrom all through my childhood. We all did. All the cousins, everyone – it terrified us! And my parents used to say … well, that’s not the point…’
She stepped back. His body yearned to step after her, to keep her close. But he stayed where he was.
The light caught her stern profile as she came to rest against her doorframe. She stood there for a wh
ile, looking down at her hands, with the white bands across the palms.
‘It sounds like a story from one of your Jewish freedom fighters’ leaflets,’ she said eventually. Her voice was quiet. ‘If it were true,’ she added, sounding more openly sceptical, ‘wouldn’t at least one of all those grieving relatives you’re talking about have thought to get in touch – even if not to train me for your heroic fight for Jewish rights, maybe just to offer to bring me up? Because, you know, no one ever did. Aunty Lyuba was only a neighbour. She didn’t have to have me. It was just that there wasn’t anyone else offering.’
Her lonely logic defeated Yasha. No, he realized, miserably, of course they hadn’t offered: they’d all have been too scared. For a moment, he almost spoke up for his parents, to remind her that after Aunty Lyuba had died, they had taken her in. But in the end he said nothing. Because even he could see that they’d only done it because they’d had a room free and needed a reliable paying guest. They’d taken her rent money, and left her behind when they ran off. How grateful would anyone be for that?
He blinked.
‘No,’ Inna was saying, insistently. ‘The truth is that my parents died in the epidemic. It took off a lot of people in Zhitomir that winter. Aunt Lyuba’s husband, too. So she took me in, and we went to live in Kiev. Kiev’s the only place I remember. Aunt Lyuba was my only real family. What you were suggesting is’ – and, for a moment, her calm broke and her face twisted in pain – ‘politics.’ She put her hand on the door-handle and stepped inside.
‘Your mute … your rosin…’ he appealed. They were still on the floor.
‘I won’t be needing them,’ he heard before the door shut and the light vanished.
CHAPTER NINE
There was a woman screaming somewhere nearby.
Inna woke, full of dread, wondering where the noise was coming from, and found Yasha gazing down at her, very close.
It was nearly light, the soft grey of a winter morning. The reading lamp was still on, but its yellow was so weak that she couldn’t make out his face – just the stubble on his chin, and the stare of his eyes. He was sitting on her bed.
At least the screaming had stopped.
She pulled herself up on to one elbow. ‘What…?’
She didn’t understand what was happening. He seemed to have his hands on her shoulders; and now his arms, in the striped blue flannel of a nightshirt, were tightening around her, and she was clinging to his chest, with her head full of his heartbeat. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ she heard him murmur, as if she were a frightened child, though he was the one trembling. ‘It was just a dream.’
It took her another long moment to realize the screaming must have been coming from her.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ she heard him say. ‘I never thought you wouldn’t know. I’ve been so sorry.’
She could feel his fingers on her scalp. He was stroking her hair.
She shut her eyes. She didn’t have to wake up. All she had to do was stay here, in this dreamlike state, in the warm of her bed, against his warmth, being held …
She’d avoided talking to Yasha since that night. Not that she hadn’t been aware of his stricken looks in the workshop, not that she wanted to quarrel with him, even though he was wrong. Because he had been wrong; he had to have been. She had no reason not to believe what she’d always been told, no reason to mistrust Aunty Lyuba, who’d been so good to her.
And now here they were, in something blessedly wordless. She felt the heat of relief go through her that the other thing had passed. His arms tightened; she moved closer.
She hadn’t played the violin for days, either, and not just because she now felt that trying to meet him halfway by playing him a Jewish tune had been a mistake. Through the thin wall, knowing he’d be listening, it had all felt too intimate. She’d shut herself in her room every evening instead and read the novel Horace had brought her.
She caught sight of it now, half covered by the quilt: a green volume, with a silver dove drawn on the front. The peasant mystic book.
The part of Inna that knew that this new thing was happening, and knew, too, that somewhere beyond the tight control of her consciousness she had, after all, shown the weakness of a victim – had, shamefully, whimpered, and cried out, and woken Yasha up – latched on to that glimpse of book jacket with joyful relief. I’ve had a nightmare, she thought, because of the book.
Yes, that was it … She’d stayed up late, finishing it. She must have drifted away after finishing the murder scene, whose brutal last words she still remembered now.
In the sullen light of barely breaking dawn, the yellow flame of a candle danced on the table; in the cramped room stood sullen, unmalicious people, while on the floor Pyotr’s body breathed in spasms; without cruelty, with faces bared, they stood over the body, examining with curiosity what they had done: the deathly blueness and the trickle of blood that oozed from his lip, which, no doubt, he had bitten through in the heat of the struggle.
Yes, it was coming back: how she’d gone to sleep with her head full of the fictional young man’s terror as they closed in. And, even more, of how they had been afterwards. Her eyes had closed, last night, on the disgusted thought, Was that really how people would be, after … doing that?
‘I shouldn’t have been reading that book so late, that’s all.’ Her voice sounded throaty with sleep. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
But, even as she looked at Yasha’s face, so close, she also knew that it hadn’t only been the murder in the book that she’d been screaming about. With another part of her mind, she could still, just, recall the dissolving fragments of her dream.
No, it had been something … else. Worse. In the dream, there’d been someone lying down, she vaguely remembered, lying in the dark, but they’d had a great red wet smile, one so dreadful you couldn’t look at it without your gorge rising, without screaming—
And then Yasha’s lips closed on hers. And there was no room in Inna’s mind for anything except right now, right here.
‘Yasha!’ she heard, from far away.
His mouth left hers. He sat up.
It was Madame Leman.
‘Yaaasha!’
She was coming up the stairs from maybe one floor down. Inna could hear her slow footsteps. ‘I’ve got your laundry here – it’s terribly heavy, too. Can you take it up the rest of the way, dear?’ she called.
His eyes turned wildly to the door.
Inna could see him assessing what step Madame Leman would have reached by the time he got to the safety of his own room.
Then he bolted out on to the landing, running his hands over his head and patting at his nightshirt as he went.
Inna burrowed deep down inside the bed, under the blankets.
She could hear that Madame Leman was nearly at the top. She’d see where he’d been, there was no doubt about it …
The stair outside her door creaked. Yasha, she thought. But so did the top step. Inna screwed her eyes shut, expecting an explosion. ‘Ah, there you are, dear,’ she heard instead, right outside her door. ‘Here, take this basket, do. It’s breaking my back.’
She heard Yasha laugh, to her ears very uneasily, and his mumbled thanks. Then she heard him say, with new bravado, ‘You’re up early.’
But Madame Leman didn’t seem to hear. ‘And if you wouldn’t mind, dear, since you’re up too, could you get dressed quickly and come and give me a hand downstairs? I can’t reach the tops of the cupboards, and I’m spring-cleaning the yellow room. I need someone tall to fetch things down.’
It was only when Madame Leman was safely back downstairs that Yasha, now hastily dressed, tucking shirt into trousers under his shrugged-on jacket, stuck his head back round Inna’s door.
She was doing up her skirt hooks, hurrying too. She looked up.
‘Close,’ he said, grinning conspiratorially.
Her panic receded, as the dream had before. Nothing bad had happened.
Slowly, she smiled
back. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Horace took off his eyeglasses and put down his tiny paintbrush on his worktable. The goggle-rings left on his cheeks and forehead chafed. Experience told him they would look red and painful if he bothered to go and check in the glass. He looked around him. The other dark-suited gents were still hard at it under the gleaming floor-to-ceiling polished mahogany shelving. Solemn and heavy as church pews, the shelves contained many, many jewelled and enamelled fripperies in the making. Horace’s colleagues, straining their eyes through magnifiers at whatever precious tiny object they were working on, with whatever miniature instruments, were turning out more. There was an intent quietness in the back room: just the occasional mutter, in well-spoken English, or French, or playful Swiss-German. But the fine strokes of the latest layer of Horace’s latest dreaming-spires Oxford scene needed to dry. And his eyes needed a rest.
A dozen silver cigarette boxes to finish by Christmas for Prince Youssoupoff’s relatives, all with prettily idealized painted decorations of English scenes: the Radcliffe Camera dome, autumn trees, mist. Who better than Horace, who’d actually seen Oxford? Monsieur Fabergé had been pleased with the commission from the richest man in Russia. But Horace was doing them only slowly, between other orders. It’s dull doing the same thing, over and over again, he said lightly; I’ll spread them out. Anyway, he was also enjoying the outings he went on with the prince each time he delivered another box: a mystic one morning; a gypsy nightclub out in the sticks for the whole night, after an evening meeting. And then there was the time he’d sat for hours waiting for his client in some raffish bar off Nevsky, alone at the table, surrounded by packs of young officers drinking too hard and laughing like hyenas, watching the beautiful swaying singer, absent-mindedly admiring her pearls and décolletage as well as her husky voice and sinuous dancing, wondering what had become of Felix. It was only when the dark-haired beauty strolled past his table and dropped a rose on it – and winked – that he’d realized he’d been watching Felix all along, onstage.
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