“There’s a man at the front door to see you, Princess,” she says.
So why has Mandy, the most hospitable of women, left him standing outside? “Is there something wrong with him?” I ask.
“Well, no. But I … er … heard your argument with your granddaughters this afternoon. Well, I mean, I couldn’t help it, and I thought they might have sent him.”
She’s a good girl, but she needn’t have worried.
“Edward and I will come for you ourselves,” Jennifer told me.
They wouldn’t entrust my incarceration to anyone else. They’ll want to be sure there isn’t any last minute dash for the wire.
“Thank you, Mandy,” I tell my flower-child neighbour. “I can handle it from here.”
I walk stiffly to the end of the corridor. The door’s open, but the chain is on. I peer through the six inch gap. I see him – and his white coat! He’s wearing a heavy, belted raincoat just like the men who used to pay late-night visits in Moscow.
Get a grip, old woman! I order myself. It isn’t the Nineteen Thirties, and we’re in England.
I raise my eyes from the mackintosh to his face. He’s quite a young man, with blunt features but lively, opportunistic eyes. Though I can’t remember where, I know I’ve seen him before.
“Princess Anna Mayakovsky?” he asks.
I suddenly remember why his face is familiar. “You were at Gregory Lovosky’s funeral.”
That freezing day in Highgate Cemetery four years ago, when I buried my last old friend. Yes, this young man was there, looking at me – staring at me – then turning and walking away. Leaving me trembling.
“I was there,” he admits readily. “I was doing a story on it. That’s when I first noticed you.”
Doing a story? So that’s who he is! The Man the Other Day – the journalist, my saviour. He looks too ordinary to be a saviour.
“And you want to do a story on me,” I say.
“That’s right.”
“So why did you wait four years?”
“I … er … couldn’t see the angle of the story before.”
“And now you can?”
He shrugs. “Times change, conditions change.”
He’s been carrying me around in his head for four years, and only now has he decided to confront me. The fear which gripped me in the cemetery returns. I want to close the door in his face, but I force myself not to. When our only hope is the Devil, it’s to the Devil we must turn.
“What do you mean? Conditions change?” I ask.
“Frankly, Princess, you’re more important than you were four years ago.”
“How can that be?”
“It’s a little difficult to explain on the step. Would you mind if I came in?”
Reluctantly, I unfasten the safety chain. He follows me down the corridor to my room. I gesture him to go inside.
“Mind the bits of china on the floor.”
“An accident?”
“In a way. Sit down.”
He looks around and sees there’s only one chair. “I don’t mind standing. You take the chair.”
“You’ll need to write. You do want to write something about me, don’t you?
“Well, not exactly write, but I do want to—”
“It’ll be easier for you to write if you’re sitting down,” I tell him firmly.
I lower myself onto the bed, unsure of whether the creaking is the old springs or me. The reporter has no pad and pencil. Instead, he produces a small black tape recorder. “I want you to tell me your history,” he says.
“All of it?”
“Certainly, all of it. But perhaps we could start with your life during the last months of the Provisional Government. Say … the days before the July Uprising.”
He seems very well informed. I like that.
“Which paper do you represent?” I ask. “The Sun? The Daily Mail?”
He looks at me blankly. Apart from his eyes, he really is a very nondescript young man. So why does he make me feel so uneasy?
“Or do you work for a local paper?” I continue.
Although I try to hide it from him, my voice is tinged with disappointment. The Kilburn Courier has no power to save me.
He’s still not spoken.
“Well,” I demand, irritation overcoming my misgivings, “which paper do you work for?”
“Several,” he says, sounding puzzled.
Why does he sound puzzled?
“And also for our national television,” he continues. “Are you all right, Princess?”
No, I’m not all right. I am suspended half-way between shock and anger with myself.
Stupid old woman! Ever since this man entered the house we’ve been speaking to each other in Russian.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It’s my personal history in the Revolution that he wants to hear, not a history of the Revolution itself, says the journalist. Well, if it’s my history he wants, that’s what he’ll get – all of it. Anyone I could harm with my stories is long dead, and personal shame is a luxury I abandoned years ago.
“When did you first really begin to believe that the Bolsheviks were destined for power?” he asks.
I know what he expects me to say – he expects to pick some significant historical event – but I don’t.
“When Peter Nechaev first came to our Party headquarters,” I tell him.
“Oh, yes.”
I wait for him to ask me who Peter Nechaev was, but he doesn’t. “Have you heard of him?” I say.
He nods.
I’m surprised. Peter played a big part in my life, and a significant role – for a while – in the Party, but in the grand sweep of history he’s not a great name. I am right to fear this man. He’s no ordinary journalist and this is no ordinary interview. He wants something which has nothing to do with his story. But what can it be? And how can I turn it to my advantage?
“When Peter Nechaev turned up at Bolshevik headquarters …” the journalist prompts.
There was no mob outside that day, condemning Lenin and demanding his execution. The scandal had died down, and new ones blown up to take its place. We were even beginning to regain some of our support.
Peter had chosen to wear a suit for the occasion – a good one, but fairly well worn. He looked no better dressed than most of the Bolshevik intellectuals who inhabited the building. “I have a meeting with Comrade Stalin,” he told me. “You’re to come too.”
Stalin was sitting behind a paper-strewn desk, the pipe in his mouth belching out clouds of thick, grey smoke. He gestured us to sit down, and turned immediately to Peter.
“The weapons,” he said, without preamble.
“Stored in my textile factory,” Peter replied. “Under bales of cotton. Both rifles and machine guns.”
Stalin nodded coldly. He did everything coldly. I have often seen him smile, but never with real pleasure. “Mr Nechaev tells me you worked with him in the Petrograd underground before the fall of the Romanovs, Lyudmila,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He tells me that between you, you managed to extract valuable information from the Okhrana and to feed them misinformation in return.”
“That’s correct.”
I wasn’t doing a very good job, and I knew it. I didn’t want lying, scheming, ruthless Peter in the Party. But if I opposed him now, I’d lose. The time to fight was later, when I had a better arsenal at my command.
Stalin stroked his bushy moustache reflectively. “Would you say that Mr Nechaev would make a good Party member?”
“I would say he’s already proved himself worthy of membership,” I replied, trying to pull back a little ground. “He’s a businessman, but businessmen – millionaires, even – have helped us in the past. He’s done excellent work in the underground, and is deeply committed to the triumph of the workers’ revolution.”
It sounded wooden, but it was the best I could do.
“Thank you, Lyudmila,” Stalin said, to signify that
the interview was over.
I looked into his cold, hard eyes, and saw that he hadn’t believed a single word I’d said. But I saw also that it didn’t matter a damn. Stalin had found in Peter both a kindred spirit and a man he could use. He would see to it that Peter encountered no difficulties in making the transition from industrialist to Comrade Nechaev.
Perhaps Peter hadn’t read our future leader’s eyes as well as I had. The moment there was a door between us and Stalin, he grabbed me by the arm – hard – and began to drag me down the corridor. The first three or four rooms we passed were occupied, but we finally found one which was empty. Peter pulled me inside. He was still keeping a tight grip on my arm. He leant over me so that our faces were almost touching.
“You little bitch!” he said.
“I … I did what I promised.”
“A guard dog that only whimpers is worse than no dog at all.”
“You’re hurting me,” I told him through clenched teeth. “Let … go of … my arm.”
“You know Lenin,” Peter said. “You can get me to him. At a time like this, there’s a fortune to be made if you have the right contacts. But I won’t get them unless you play your part properly.”
“I’ll do better next time, you bastard!” I promised. “Now let go of my bloody arm.”
“The threat of getting you kicked out of the Party isn’t enough, is it?” Peter asked. “I need something else.” He thought for a second. “We need to talk, but not here. Be at the apartment at three o’clock.”
He meant the apartment we’d so often met at before – the apartment in which I’d always felt so ashamed – and yet so excited.
“What if I don’t come?” I asked.
“You’d better,” he threatened, “or I’ll see that Stalin gets that Okhrana dossier on you – whatever it costs me.”
He released my arm at last, and stormed away.
It was still early enough in the day for Sasha and I to be able to find a secluded corner in the Bolshevik canteen. We sat down opposite each other, and as Sasha began to eat his meal – boiled beef, liberally covered with cabbage soup – I steeled myself to speak. Because there was no way around it – Sasha had to be told.
“Peter’s joining the Party,” I said, as calmly as I could.
Sasha’s spoon fell from his hand and landed with a plop in his bowl. Cabbage soup spattered onto his jacket. “He’s j … joining the Party?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“But he’s the very enemy we’re f … fighting.”
“He knows which way the wind’s blowing,” I said, leaning across and drying Sasha’s lapel with my handkerchief. “He knows we’re going to win.”
“I’ll d … denounce him,” Sasha said.
After all those years, how little he still knew about the way Peter worked. “It won’t do any good,” I told him. “Peter will only find a way to discredit you instead.”
“Then I’ll k … kill him.”
He was ready to murder Peter at that very moment. He had a gun and the other man didn’t. But Peter needed no weapon – he had me. He’d known exactly how Sasha would react, I suddenly realized, and how I would, too. He could almost have written this conversation for us. I felt a grudging admiration for the big peasant who’d built up a business empire from nothing. If only he’d been really on our side. If only he’d had some basic humanity.
“If you killed Peter, you’d be dead yourself within an hour,” I said. “Do you think Peter hasn’t got plans to cover that? Peter has plans for everything.”
Sasha looked down at his bowl. “It d … doesn’t matter if I die.”
“It does,” I assured him, reaching across the table and taking his hand in mine. “What good can you do for the cause if you’re dead?”
“Getting rid of Peter will d … do the cause some good.”
“Peter doesn’t want to destroy the Revolution,” I argued desperately. “Just to make money out of it. The Party will be better off with both of you in it than with neither.”
Sasha raised his head again and looked at me. His eyes burned with loathing, but also, I thought, with sorrow. “He t … took my land”.
“He what?”
“When I was sent to S … Siberia, I had debts. What muhzik hadn’t? And my f … family couldn’t pay them off, so Peter did – and he took my land in exchange.”
Ah, his land. Even Sasha, who would have been prepared to give up everything for the Revolution, still felt the earth tugging at his soul. Is it any wonder then that lesser men than Sasha killed millions of their own animals rather than have them collectivized under Stalin?
“That’s when I became a r … revolutionary,” Sasha continued, “a real revolutionary. I hate everything he st … stands for. I’d rather die than see him prosper.”
“He won’t,” I said soothingly. “Not in the end. Once he’s in the Party, where we have some influence, we’ll be fighting on more equal terms. We’ll find a way to destroy him.”
“When?” Sasha demanded.
“It may take a while,” I admitted. “You’ll just have to try and be patient. Will you try?”
He nodded. “I’ll be p … patient.”
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”
He looked shocked at first, then the widest smile I’d ever seen spread across his face. “That’s w … wonderful. We’ll g … get married right away.”
“You already have a wife and children,” I reminded him.
“I h … haven’t seen them for over ten years. They c … could all be dead by now, and even if they’re not, they’ll have f … forgotten me. I love you, Anna. M … marry me.”
I was tempted. I didn’t love him in the way I’d once loved Misha, nor in the way I’d always love Konstantin – but there are many kinds of love. I respected him more than any man alive. He was kind, he was caring. But …
But I couldn’t do it to Nicky – couldn’t let Nicky see another man take his father’s place, couldn’t break my promise to my son that he’d be both father and brother to the new baby. Besides, what if the baby was not Sasha’s, but Peter’s? Despite his best intentions, Sasha would come to hate it, as he hated everything which came from his old rival.
“Anna?”
“I … I … Sasha, I just can’t.”
I was breaking his heart and there was nothing I could do about it. “You d … don’t have to make up your mind now,” he said miserably. “W … will you think it over?”
“I’ll think it over,” I lied.
Should I have told him then that though he assumed he was the father, I had no way of being sure? I couldn’t bear to hurt him any more at that moment. And though I’d talked him out of killing Peter for joining the Party, I knew there was nothing I could have said to prevent him if he’d realized there was even the slightest chance that the baby might be Peter’s.
I reached Peter’s secret apartment just after three and let myself in with my own key. Peter invariably got there first. Sometimes he’d be waiting for me in the sitting room, a glass of vodka in his hand and a self-satisfied smirk on his face. At other times, he’d be in the bedroom – already naked.
He wasn’t in the sitting room that day. For a moment, I actually thought of turning around and leaving. Then I remembered his threats that morning. And – yes damn it – if I’m honest, I wanted him. Cursing my own weakness, I walked over to the bedroom and opened the door.
It was the pile of clothes I saw first. They lay at the foot of the bed, the man’s mingled haphazardly with the woman’s. They told a tale of burning passion – of being stripped off hurriedly and cast aside without a second’s thought, so that desire could be satisfied.
The man and the woman were on top of the bedclothes, she lying on her back with her legs locked tight around his behind, he ploughing away with a relentless ferocity. I saw the woman’s face at the same time as she saw mine – and wondered if I was going mad!
&nb
sp; Innumerable times, I’d lain on this bed and let Peter do to me just what was being done to her. But I wasn’t there now – I was standing by the door. Watching, not taking part. I was all one, not split into two. And yet the face looking up belonged to me.
I raised my arm and grasped the door to steady myself. The woman on the bed smiled – widely, triumphantly, maliciously – and the spell was broken.
Gripped by passion, her face had been mine, but the smile had transformed it back into its old, familiar expression. Now, though she still looked similar, very similar, anyone seeing us together would soon have noticed the difference. There was a certain tightness about her skin which was so like her mother, a certain sulkiness about the eyes, even at a moment like this. It would have been obvious to any impartial observer that though we might have been twins, we were far from identical.
The man was still thrusting, unaware of the change that had come over his partner, unaware there was a third person in the room. His back was muscular, but it was a young back, without the massive strength of Peter’s. A delicate back it was – an aristocratic back.
The man realized that something was wrong, sensed my presence in the doorway. His body slackened and he turned to look over his shoulder. When he saw me, his mouth fell open and his eyes became huge with horror.
“Hello Mariamna,” I said, thinking as I spoke how foolish it was to go through the normal social niceties in a situation like this. “Hello Misha.”
Misha rolled off his sister. Flat on his back, he became aware of his nakedness and his hand shot down to cover his genitals. I don’t think that he was shy, it was just that he felt so unprotected, so … vulnerable.
Mariamna raised herself on one elbow. The smile was still in place. “So you finally know,” she said. “I’m glad you found out.”
Misha’s mouth was opening and closing, and like a landed fish, he made no sound.
“This … this is nothing to do with me,” I said. “I’ll go. But you’d better be careful, Peter’s supposed to be coming here.”
The Silent Land Page 26