‘Mmm,’ she murmured, wondering, suddenly, if she had been naïve, ‘like tourists in the underworld.’
He looked surprised for a moment, and then snorted out his held breath with laughter, or relief; she couldn’t tell which. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his arm to her. ‘They gave me the creeps. Let’s get out of here too.’
They tramped on, faster, through the grimy black of the Petersburg Side, over Samson Bridge, into the equally miserable Vyborg Side and down Artillery Embankment. At least, she thought, breathless again, his arm was back around her.
It was only when they got to the stately Alexander Bridge and saw, over the water, the city of the novels – the longed-for iron lacework of palace gates guarded, on the ground, by shivering men in gold braid, and, on the rooftops, by eyeless statues – that they breathed easy. A car roared away, somewhere nearby.
The sky was heavy, the wind sharp again. But at least there were no policemen: no one at all, save the occasional drunk tottering home and once, in the distance, a noisy party of smart young men in evening clothes, singing. They fell silent, down Liteiny, each one listening to the rhythm of the other’s breath and footfalls. Both tired.
‘I’ve been wondering’ – he spoke quietly – ‘why am I telling people, Jews, to stay in Russia and demand their rights, when my own parents…?’
She could see the pain in his face as he looked at the square, at the litter twirling and flapping in the salty wind.
He brought his other arm around her.
She swung round, unresisting, aware of many things besides the tumult of blood, the giddy spin of it all: the snowflake melting on his eyelashes, their buttons clashing, heat …
He was trembling again, she thought tenderly.
‘Your hair smells of flowers,’ he whispered, before his lips found hers.
* * *
Inside, there were no sounds. The family was in bed. The lights were off.
Except in the kitchen where, in a pool of warm yellow light, Leman was half-asleep by the stove. He rubbed his eyes and stood up as Inna and Yasha sprang guiltily apart. He’s been worried, she realized, with a pang; not about Yasha, but because he didn’t know where I’d gone. Surprise and delight mixed with her contrition.
‘Ah,’ he said, without the anger she thought she deserved. ‘Here you are.’
Inna was hoping desperately he didn’t realize the enormity of her offence – not only sneaking out with Yasha till nearly dawn, but also ‘borrowing’ his wife’s papers. Her face burned.
‘We thought you’d be back in time for midnight tea,’ Leman said, in a voice carefully bleached of disapproval. ‘Horace came. He left you a note. I forced the children to leave you some cake. The tea will be cold, though. Forgive me if I don’t sit up with you.’
Inna wasn’t hungry, but it gave her shamed eyes somewhere to turn. The apple sharlottka was covered with a napkin, against which an envelope had been propped up.
Trying not to compound the offence she’d already given, she hesitated before picking it up. Cautiously, she asked: ‘What’s this?’
Leman didn’t look round. ‘What we were celebrating,’ he said as he left. ‘Your temporary residence permit.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Inna woke in a tangle of limbs to the slamming of grey wind and sleet against the window, to the warm stillness of a bed containing their two bodies.
Yasha was asleep. Looking at his peaceful face made her heart swell. She remembered how, last night, they’d lingered at the doorway, clung together, full of the glorious unknown, before … here; how he’d laughed a little as they shifted towards, then away again from his room; how he’d whispered, ‘I thought you were beautiful right from that first moment, when I opened the front door, and there you were.’
She ran her hands down his chest, marvelling at the newness of everything she now knew, at the happiness suffusing her, aware of the stir of his flesh.
‘Don’t,’ he whispered sleepily, taking her hand in his.
She kissed his ear. ‘Why?’ she breathed.
‘Because…’ he said, turning his head, opening his long dark eyes. Kissing her nose. ‘Because it should be you who goes downstairs first.’
She felt sudden heat on her cheeks and not unpleasurable coyness as the world beyond this nest of bedding came rushing back. Of course. Downstairs: the children; Madame Leman, perhaps already boiling up tea and making batter. She should get away from up here before Marcus got up, next door, in her old room. They didn’t need to know about this; not yet.
‘Your papers,’ Yasha prompted. How deep and relaxed his voice was. ‘You don’t want to look ungrateful.’
Of course! The papers! She scrambled up, hastily buttoning her crumpled blouse. Why, she hadn’t even opened the envelope – it would still be lying where she’d dropped it on the kitchen table, untouched.
Mercifully the kitchen was still empty when she got downstairs.
Inna stuffed the envelope hastily into her waistband while she whisked back into her new room. She changed her shirt and linen, went into the kitchen again, lit the samovar and the stove and mixed blini batter – a penance; something Madame Leman would appreciate – before she allowed herself to examine it.
Not bothering with Horace’s note on the outside, she tore open the envelope and flicked down to the date on the document inside. Three months: she was here till the end of the year!
‘Your eyes are popping right out of your head, did you know?’ said a loud treble voice. She heard a giggle behind her and turned round.
Two blond heads were in the doorway: Barbarian and Agrippina, in nightgowns, staring and prodding each other and wriggling.
Behind them, bustling footsteps could be heard in the corridor. It was Madame Leman, who followed the children into the kitchen. She didn’t, to Inna’s relief, look angry, just relieved to see her.
‘Wherever did you two get to last night?’ she asked.
‘You see, I was worried about Yasha,’ Inna said to placate her. ‘He rushed out in such a rage, right after you. I wanted to calm him down, but he was going so fast I couldn’t catch up. And then I got lost, and he went on and on for miles – all the way to the islands…’
She stopped, thinking she was babbling, and guiltily saying far too much.
‘The islands!’ Barbarian cried rapturously. ‘Really?’ His eyes were round.
‘And did they all have green faces and creep through keyholes out there?’ Agrippina asked slyly. Inna laughed and shook her head. ‘Or whisper socialism in your ear?’ Agrippina dropped her own piercing voice to a mocking whisper and quoted her father quoting whatever novel it was he was always quoting.
Still grinning, Inna nodded: Yes, a bit.
‘Well, you must be careful, dear,’ Madame Leman said, stirring the batter and checking for lumps. ‘We were worried for you. You didn’t even have papers.’
Inna looked down. She felt obscurely pleased at the idea Madame Leman had been worried for her. ‘Yes,’ she said as Madame Leman got out the frying pan and put it on the stove. ‘I’m sorry.’
She still had the document in her hand, and started to say, ‘But now I do,’ intending to thank Madame Leman, but she didn’t get a chance, because the children swept noisily on, in chorus, ‘And is it true that you had the Empress’s holy man to tea?’ (Agrippina); ‘Putnik, Rasputnik?’ (Barbarian); ‘Mama said he’d been hit on the head by a bishop?’ (Agrippina).
Head bowed, feeling her cheeks redden, Inna nodded again: Sort of.
‘It’s so unfair. Everything interesting always happens while we’re out,’ Agrippina said, exchanging envious glances with her brother.
There was a hiss as the first spoonful of batter went into the pan.
‘Horace thought it was funny that you didn’t even realize, the other day,’ Madame Leman said, ‘that it was Rasputin you were visiting.’ Her voice was unemotional. She was concentrating on her blin, which went wrong, as they always do, first time. With pink che
eks, she scraped it out of the pan.
‘Mam’s embarrassed to admit it, but she rather liked him,’ Agrippina informed Inna. ‘Rasputny.’
Madame Leman smiled faintly at the pan. A pin tinkled out of her hair. ‘Horace thinks he’s got something, too,’ she admitted.
The arrival of Leman and a very silent Yasha, with the morning papers and some fresh bread, not only spared Madame Leman’s blushes, but also gave Inna a chance to try and make the pretty thank-you speech she’d been failing to start on with Madame Leman.
Without looking at her, Yasha sat down at the kitchen table and opened the paper. Inna was laughing inside at their secret, as he must be. She couldn’t look at him, either.
‘Oh, don’t thank me,’ Leman said breezily before she’d got more than a few words out.
She stopped, sensing Yasha’s alertness behind the Stock Exchange Gazette.
‘Thank Horace,’ Leman went on, twinkling at her. ‘It was all his idea.’
Yasha lowered his paper as Madame Leman turned to smile at her from the other side of the kitchen. The children were giggling.
Uncertainly she looked down at the residence permit, still in her hand. What could it possibly have to do with Horace? Surely she’d seen the Lemans’ address written down?
But as soon as she looked further down the page she saw that, although she lived here, she worked, according to the document, as a decorative box-maker for Fabergé.
‘He said that was the way he got his own papers sorted. After months of trouble from the ministry, he just got a letter from Fabergé,’ Leman was explaining, ‘which smoothed everything out at once. It’s sometimes easier for foreign firms, he said: the ministry men are scared to stick their noses in. He said it was worth trying with you, too – as soon as he heard about your troubles. He sent me round the Fabergé standard letter the very next morning, and very impressive it was, too: “Give this honoured craftsman your best help on his/her visit to St. Petersburg,” with red stamps, the lot. And see? It worked like a charm.’
Inna’s eyes were as wide as Barbarian’s had been earlier.
‘Why,’ she murmured, so overwhelmed with gratitude towards the Englishman that she thought she might cry. ‘How terribly kind of him…’
‘It’s only temporary,’ Leman said. ‘But it gives you a breather.’
‘He’s a very good man,’ Madame Leman agreed, lifting out half a dozen blini from the pan. ‘And now, shall we eat?’
A few minutes later, Yasha put down the paper he’d been hiding behind. ‘The newspapers don’t think your Rasputin is a very good man,’ he said, scowling at Inna.
Looking over his shoulder, she saw that article after article featured the attack on Rasputin – and not just in that paper but in the ones the Lemans were reading, too. There was no sympathy for him, or anger against the violent bishop, for the churchmen (or someone) had struck again with an anonymous pamphlet that offered ‘proof’ Rasputin was the Empress’s lover. Every article was dripping with poisonous malice, or so it seemed to Inna.
There were enough facts, just, to get the viciousness started. Rasputin was reported to have run straight from the bishop’s palace to the Central Post Office (though no one knew he had dropped off at the Lemans’ on the way) and telegraphed the Tsarina to denounce his attackers.
But it was the other stuff they were printing that defied belief. Yesterday’s Duma budget debate had been upstaged by the roughly copied anonymous pamphlet that started circulating in the streets before nightfall, containing what purported to be letters to Rasputin from female members of the imperial family. The lines the papers had quoted, with most evil-minded pleasure, were from the Empress. ‘I wish only one thing: to fall asleep forever on your shoulders, in your embrace … Will you soon be back by my side? Come back soon. I am in torment without you.’
Inna’s heart sank. Surely the letter was a forgery? Then again, any of the acolytes she’d met might easily write to Father Grigory in that hysterical vein. They’d think it displayed their exemplary spirituality. And why would the Empress be any different? She was an acolyte, too. But Inna could also see why the papers would prefer to call it a ‘love letter’, and link it to his enemies’ accusations that he had physically seduced the Tsarina’s untouchable imperial person.
The talk was that his holy-man rival, Iliodor, had written the pamphlet, and tried to blackmail the imperial family through the Empress’s lady-in-waiting, Anya Vryubova; but she’d walked away. So he’d passed it out among the buzzing parliamentarians in revenge.
There was another rumour that the pamphlet had got out after being given for safe keeping to the fashionable Tibetan healer, Pyotr Badmayev, whose usual job was supplying drugs to the upper classes, but who hadn’t been able to resist a little extra mischief on the side.
And there was more, much more. So much more that it made Inna almost weep with the sheer nastiness of it. A denunciation of Father Grigory, signed by a man called Novosyolov, asked the Synod how long they were going to tolerate ‘that sex maniac, Whipper and charlatan, and the criminal comedy that has victimized many whose letters were in his hands’. Articles headlined ‘Rasputin and Mystical Debauchery’. A malicious confection called ‘The Confession of N’ featuring a lady seduced by a lecherous religious peasant. And everywhere vicious cartoons of Rasputin, gloating or drinking or, in one, playing the pipes while the cuckold Tsar squatted obediently and kicked out his legs, Cossack fashion, dancing to the peasant’s tune.
‘I’m going to him,’ Inna said. She couldn’t get the picture of Father Grigory, her Father Grigory, bruised and defenceless at this table, out of her head. The Lemans had all been murmuring what a shame it was, but no one was actually suggesting action. And she was burning with indignation. ‘I want to show my support.’
‘But you can’t,’ Madame Leman said quickly.
‘Why?’ Inna asked, all ready to wave her passport.
‘Didn’t you see Horace’s note?’ Leman said, rather chidingly.
Slowly she reached for the envelope, still lying on the table among the newspapers.
‘He’s coming by to take you out to lunch,’ Madame Leman said, more gently. ‘To celebrate.’
Inna bowed her head over the spiky writing with all the hard and soft signs of the Russian alphabet charmingly muddled. Of course, she owed Horace. That should come first. She could go to Rasputin later: after work, maybe, or tomorrow.
* * *
A few hours later, Inna was sitting opposite Horace in the Astoria restaurant. Looking around, she thought she’d never seen so much starched, folded, draped and pleated white linen. It hung on tables and on the haughty waiters’ arms and rustled solemnly in her lap. Or cut glass, come to that. On the table in front of her, wine glasses and champagne glasses and water glasses sparkled among the flash of jugs and the glitter of chandeliers above.
There was ruched muslin at the tall windows, and heavy gold silk, too. The great array of cutlery was polished bright silver. And there were diamonds at every female throat.
The champagne was French, like the murmur of conversation all around.
‘Ah, the widow; I love the widow,’ Horace was saying, smiling to himself as the waiter poured. And now there were bubbles in her glass as well as stars etched on its edges.
She would watch carefully when the soup came, when the tiny birds in their pastry cases came, and when the flambéed pancakes came too, to see which eating iron Horace picked up.
She was glad Madame Leman had lent her that crisp pin-tucked blouse, because everyone at the tables around them was dressed in uniform, or in silks and chiffons. There was gold braid everywhere, and medals winked in the daytime candlelight. The ladies seemed indescribably beautiful, and most had tiny dogs on their laps.
Horace lifted his champagne glass. Looking very kindly at her, he said: ‘To your future success, my dear.’
With beating heart, she lifted hers too, and sipped.
She quickly forgot her nerves, and soon they
were talking animatedly about the Stray Dog evening, and Bryusov’s demonic philandering, and what Anya Akhmatova had been like when she was Gorenko the schoolgirl; about Monsieur Fabergé’s caustic tongue; and about Horace’s childhood in India.
When the cheese came, she even felt confident enough to broach the Rasputin scandal in the newspapers. ‘The Lemans said he’d been to you, right after the fight?’ Horace replied, sounding intrigued. He laughed at the idea that Madame Leman, and possibly Yasha too, had fallen at least partly under Rasputin’s spell. ‘It’s a dreadful mess, all of it. I feel for him, poor fellow.’
She wanted him to come with her and visit Father Grigory after they’d eaten. But he said, ‘I think we won’t; I hear the Tsar’s personally ordered police put at his door, for his own protection; and he’ll have the fools all mooning about, anyway. He doesn’t need your support. And your papers are too temporary to bear much examination. You have too much at stake, and too much to do, I think.’ It made her feel so considered that she acquiesced.
‘What do you mean, I have too much to do?’ she asked, leaning forward.
‘Well,’ Horace went on, and he was twinkling now, just as Leman had been earlier, ‘I have a suggestion, you see, and if you like the idea I imagine you’ll be pretty busy in the next few days…’
Horace’s plan, explained over tiny cups of sweet Turkish coffee, was this: that Inna should use the three months’ space the temporary passport had won her to start violin lessons with Leopold Auer, the greatest master of the instrument that the city could offer.
‘You know of him, of course?’ Horace asked. ‘Oh, my dear girl … He’s the first violinist to the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres: the Ballet and the Opera, Peterhof, the Hermitage. He’s the man all the composers write the violin solos especially for: Pugni, Minkus, Drigo, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov.’
Nodding, and pleased that her ignorance hadn’t condemned her in Horace’s eyes, and that he was explaining everything so kindly, she eventually broke through his stream of praise and asked, ‘But surely such a great man would have no time for teaching? Let alone teaching me?’
Midnight in St. Petersburg Page 15