Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  ‘There’s nothing here about it being murder,’ I said.

  ‘The murderers attempted to conceal their crime by passing it off as an accident. Evidently they succeeded in fooling the press.’ He indicated the newspaper and said, ‘Did you know Gulko?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You never met him?’

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘Why? Is there some connection between the two murders?’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said, his voice like a shrug.

  ‘Why was Yastrebov murdered?’

  ‘Like Gulko’s murder, it’s still unclear,’ he replied in the same unemphatic way. I noted with relief that he was moving towards the door.

  ‘I really have no idea how he got hold of my card,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.’

  ‘I will see you tomorrow afternoon at police headquarters,’ he announced matter-of-factly. ‘Be there at five.’

  ‘What for?’ I objected. ‘I’ve already told you – I know nothing about this Yastrebov.’

  ‘Perhaps we will discover that you know more than you think you know. Surely you, as a psychoanalyst, will understand that.’

  ‘It’s impossible. I have appointments tomorrow.’

  ‘Would you prefer to come with me now?’ I did not answer. Lychev looked at me squarely. ‘Five o’clock tomorrow, then.’

  I was still in something of a trance when he indicated the photographs on the wall. ‘Who is this woman?’ he asked, tapping the larger of the two.

  ‘My wife Elena,’ I said.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be “my late wife”?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said when I had absorbed the crassness of his provocation, ‘my late wife Elena.’

  ‘And this would be your daughter Catherine?’ he said, tapping the second photograph.

  The thought of this odious and slyly menacing man being aware of Catherine’s existence induced in me a sensation of sinking.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly, as though hoping he would not hear my admission.

  ‘Bring your daughter with you tomorrow.’

  I do not think I uttered a single word for a minute or more but stared uncomprehendingly at my unwelcome visitor, and he back at me. Even when the shock subsided I did not ask why he wanted to see Catherine, or what he thought Catherine had to do with Gulko or Yastrebov or this business of the accident or murder, or whatever it was.

  Lychev glanced back at the chessboard. ‘You are not losing,’ he said. ‘At least not yet.’

  I turned to follow his gaze. When I turned back he was sweeping his lank fringe out of his eyes. He carefully patted his hair and put on his hat.

  ‘I will see you tomorrow, Dr Spethmann,’ he said, and with that he was gone from the office.

  Three

  With my patients I am the good father: attentive, kind, calm, fair, strict, unreproachful and present. It would dismay them to discover that the man to whom they impute almost preternatural wisdom and serenity is, in reality, no more immune than they to anxiety or excitement, or other more turbulent and dangerous emotions. But this is the truth of me.

  My most intriguing patient at that time – and here I include Rozental – was Anna Petrovna Ziatdinov. I was first introduced to her in the spring of 1913, at a levee for the German ambassador. Thirty-seven years old, she was one of St Petersburg’s most famous beauties.

  I had gone only at Kopelzon’s urging.

  ‘You must get out more, Otto,’ he had said in his brisk, no-nonsense way. ‘I know you are still mourning but it’s been a year. No one will think ill of you – and besides, there’s a woman I’m on the point of seducing and I want your opinion of her.’

  ‘I should stay in with Catherine. She’ll be lonely without me.’

  ‘Catherine has battalions of young friends. Whole armies. Get your coat!’

  The embassy building was colossal and monolithic, carved, it almost appeared, out of a single block of Finland granite. Everything was about scale, power and domination: the massive architraves, the gigantic walls and, on the roof, the bronze giants holding the bridles of two huge horses, their manes long and flowing, their nostrils flared. War was on the horizon and tensions ran high.

  ‘How can you bear to be in such a place?’ I whispered to Kopelzon as we accepted our first drinks.

  ‘Because only here can I speak to my true love,’ he said airily, casting his eye about the room. ‘There she is. Come. If her husband sees her alone with me, the game will be up.’ He took me by the elbow and steered me in her direction. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?’

  Anna Petrovna was of average height, with a fair complexion, full lips and large, honey-coloured eyes, the whites of which were very bright. Her black hair was lustrous but the hairline was low, making for a rather paradoxical beauty, an effect accentuated by an upper middle tooth that seemed to come from the gum slightly at an angle, the single rogue in what was otherwise a perfectly symmetrical arrangement. I was taken with the imperfection of hairline and tooth; they suggested another, faintly piratical side to her, as though behind the decorousness there was something secret and knowing. Or perhaps it was simply that I was generally relieved to find flaws in others, being so conscious of my own.

  She seemed pleased enough to see Kopelzon but, to my eye, was more bemused than flattered by his attentions. He brought the same dedication to his seductions as he did to his recitals; his playing, however, was infinitely more subtle. After a time, Anna Petrovna excused herself.

  ‘What do you think of her?’ Kopelzon asked. ‘Worth the risk, no?’

  ‘The husband, you mean?’

  ‘God no!’ Kopelzon exclaimed with a dismissive wave. ‘Boris Ziatdinov is a nasty piece of work but he’s just a little lawyer with a violent temper. The risk is the father.’

  ‘Who is the father?’

  ‘The Mountain,’ Kopelzon said in a low voice.

  His look was serious, and with good reason. Peter Arseneyevich Zinnurov was one of St Petersburg’s richest industrialists and was suspected of secretly funding the Black Hundreds; certainly, he had no difficulty defending their violent attacks on Jews and Jewish property. He would not be amused were he to discover that his only daughter was the object of a Jewish violin player’s sexual attentions.

  ‘Alas,’ Kopelzon sighed, ‘it does not look as though Anna Petrovna will be coming to my bed, not tonight anyway, and as I, unlike you, consider a night alone to be a night wasted …’

  He had already turned his gaze on a full-bodied woman of about forty. I clapped my roguish friend on the back and wished him luck.

  I was on my way out when I heard a voice say, ‘Are you leaving so soon, Dr Spethmann?’

  It was Anna. She introduced me to her companions, who were perfectly nice and friendly. They were rather categorical admirers of Blok.

  ‘You’re getting restless, Dr Spethmann,’ Anna said after a while. She had by degrees turned her back on her friends so that we were in effect detached from them and their speculations on lyrical poetry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should go home to my daughter.’

  ‘I hope she’s not unwell?’

  ‘Not at all, thank you, but she’s young and she recently lost her mother.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Anna said, touching my arm. ‘How terrible for you both. How old is your daughter?’

  ‘She will be eighteen in August. She does not like me to be away from her and I promised I would be back by nine.’

  ‘Then you must go home at once,’ she said.

  Before this, I had thought her talk witty and well informed but I also felt it had something of the salon about it, something rehearsed, reviewed and honed for the next performance. Her solicitousness now, however, seemed to come from a nearer reality.

  ‘It has been a pleasure to meet you, Dr Spethmann,’ she said, putting out her hand. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘From Kopelzon?’

  Anna smiled. ‘Yo
ur friend really is quite unremitting. Tell me, do his sieges ever succeed?’

  ‘They never fail, so far as I know.’

  An amused look came into her eye. I held her hand in mine. We can usually find a way to get the information we want, and this is what I wanted to know: that Anna would not sleep with Kopelzon. I was not aware of it, at least not fully, as I stood in front of her and only later admitted to myself that I had proposed Kopelzon as the source of her information about me only so as to get her to talk about their affair, if that’s what it was. In the year since Elena died I had felt nothing, unless exhaustion can in this context be described as a feeling. Only Catherine’s contradictory need for me kept me going: she both wanted me and claimed to be suffocated by me. She would throw herself into my arms and tell me she loved me; and she would scream that I was the cruellest father since Abraham, the worst husband since Adam. I intend no melodrama, nor do I mean that even in the emptiest reaches of the night I ever had any intention of seeking out death. But had death come looking for me, I am not sure I would have put up a fight or attempted to flee.

  Now I was looking at a woman and I was thinking that I would like to know her better. I felt confused, and also ashamed, as I bade her goodnight.

  I next saw Anna five or six months later when I bumped into her at the Mariinsky Theatre during the interval of a performance of Don Quixote with Vaganova. I was with Catherine who, that night, was carefree and talkative. That night I was the best father since Abraham.

  ‘Hello, Dr Spethmann,’ Anna said, coming up to us. She appeared rather tired and had noticeably lost weight. ‘How nice to see you again.’

  I was secretly delighted that Anna should meet Catherine now, when she not only looked so heartbreakingly beautiful but was also in such a charming mood. But once the formalities were done, Catherine lapsed into a sullen silence and, for the duration of our small talk, cleaved to me with the force of a guard taking hold of a prisoner. I saw Anna’s gaze slide over Catherine’s stiff fingers digging into my arm. Her expression gave nothing away but I knew she understood what was going on. She said she hoped we would meet again soon and graciously excused herself.

  ‘Who was that awful woman?’ Catherine said when she’d gone.

  ‘Did you think she was awful?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Certainly. Who is she?’

  ‘Anna Ziatdinov. Her husband’ – I made sure to mention her husband – ‘is the lawyer Ziatdinov.’

  ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘I don’t really know her at all.’

  ‘Don’t you? She was exceptionally intimate for a stranger.’

  ‘I hardly think so,’ I said lightly.

  ‘That’s how you used to get out of it with mother,’ she spat at me with sudden vehemence, ‘by pretending you had no idea what she was talking about.’

  ‘Shall we go back to our seats?’

  But Catherine would not be diverted. ‘You broke her heart the way you flirted with other women in front of her.’ Those nearest us stopped talking and took a sudden interest in their shoes. ‘You’re shameless. You disgust me.’

  ‘Catherine, please –’

  She turned on her heels. I followed her down the red-carpeted stairs, through the ticket hall and out to the deserted square, where I found her standing stock still, her back to the theatre, staring at nothing in particular. I came up behind her. It was early September but melting flakes of wet snow were feathering her white-blonde hair. Be attentive, I told myself. Be calm and unreproachful. A daughter’s anguish demands no less of a father.

  She turned to me and said, ‘Promise me you will never see that woman again.’

  I did not hesitate. ‘I promise,’ I said.

  ‘Swear! Swear on your life.’

  ‘I swear I will never see her again.’

  We returned to get our coats, then walked to my motorcar and drove home.

  The following morning a liveried messenger brought a note from Anna Petrovna asking if I would accept her as a patient.

  Four

  Ten minutes after Inspector Lychev departed, Anna stepped into my office. She settled on the couch. I sat, as the practice was, at the head of my patient.

  To look at Anna one would never have imagined that she was other than contented and personally and socially confident. Her story as she had revealed it during our first interviews was that during her late teens she had experienced periodic and partial numbness in her right hand. The lack of sensation would last for anything between an hour and a week. The solemn and expensive society doctors her father summoned were unable to find any physical cause, but noted that the numbness tended to come on a day or two before Anna was visited by nightmares of such terror that she feared to sleep. They concluded that her illness was hysterical but, the condition being then little understood, were unable to prescribe effective treatments.

  Anna herself could think of no particular incident that might have provoked the numbness or her nightmares, nor could she think of any reason why, in her early twenties, they should just as suddenly have ceased. For more than ten years she had been free of them and, as her health recovered, had indeed forgotten all about them. Both the nightmares and the deadness of feeling in her right hand had, however, recently returned. She was sick with anxiety and fatigue.

  We know that dreams provide the master key to illness of this kind, though the patient will often resist being brought to its discovery. Anna and I discussed her nightmares, which seemed to contain both literal and symbolic elements, at great length. However, she claimed to remember little beyond the fact that they usually involved a large, rambling house, beautiful but fallen into ruin. She also recalled a compelling sensation of thirst. We discussed the possibility that the house was her own body and that its ruinous condition represented the natural anxiety we feel about the body’s integrity, health and attractiveness as we get older. She did not dismiss my interpretation but I could see she was not convinced. Exploring further, she recounted that on feeling so thirsty she began to explore the house in search of water. However, the more she went from room to room, the more convinced she became that someone lurked. She approached the doors with mounting terror until she found herself quivering violently, terrified of what she would find on the other side. In her dreams she did not always open the door but when she did it was not to encounter a ghoul but to find food – smoked fish, bread, caviar, fruits and vodka – set out on a table. At this point she would wake up screaming.

  Such was Anna’s dread of what I needed her to confront – and such was her resistance to hypnosis and free association – that we made less progress than I had hoped. After consultation with colleagues, I decided to put aside her dreams and return to her life history. Psychoanalysis is like panning for gold, and in an earlier session I thought I had detected a nugget. It concerned a dimly remembered journey Anna had undertaken as a child to visit her grandmother in Kazan. She had mentioned the journey in passing only, and when later I pressed her for details she started to become anxious. I began to suspect that something significant might have occurred during the journey.

  Unsettled by Lychev’s visit, I was not sure I would be able to bring sufficient concentration to our session. But Anna looked so exhausted that I felt it would be inexcusable to postpone it.

  She flinched when I brought up the journey. ‘Why do you want to know about that? It was nothing, just a trip I took when I was a child.’

  ‘The fundamental rule of psychoanalysis is to ignore nothing, no matter how apparently trivial.’

  ‘It was years before I started having the nightmares.’

  ‘Tell me what you can remember.’

  ‘I’m not sure I remember anything much, really.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I was thirteen and two months.’

  ‘You remember your age very precisely. Did something memorable occur?’

  She hesitated for a moment only. ‘I menstruated for the first time.’

  ‘How
did you react to this?’

  ‘I was curious.’

  ‘What were you curious about?’

  ‘Becoming a woman.’

  ‘Did you travel alone to Kazan?’

  ‘No, with my father.’

  ‘Where was your mother?’

  ‘She didn’t come. I don’t know why. It was just the two of us.’

  ‘How did you feel about being alone with him?’

  She paused to reflect. ‘At home Father was always so busy,’ she began slowly. ‘Sometimes I didn’t see him for days on end. Now I had him all to myself and I was excited. I remember at Nicholas Station when we were boarding the train people were looking at us admiringly. Almost as if we were…’ She stopped, then added quickly, ‘He was in his prime and very handsome.’

  ‘Almost as if you were …?’ I prompted her. ‘Finish the sentence.’

  ‘It’s foolishness,’ she protested. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

  ‘You haven’t yet said anything.’

  ‘As if we were husband and wife rather than father and daughter.’ She gave an embarrassed little laugh, reprimanding herself for the absurdity. ‘They didn’t really think that, of course. I was thirteen and he would have been … forty-four. But the fact that the possibility crossed their minds, or so I imagined, was flattering to me. That and my secret – that I had begun to menstruate – made me feel very grown-up.’

  ‘What else do you remember about the journey?’

  ‘Nothing, except that it was long – first to Moscow, then on to Kazan.’

  I would not accept that she remembered nothing, and when I pressed her it turned out she was in fact able to recall some details about other passengers – a glamorous woman in a blue coat who smiled at her and an elderly cavalry officer who tried to patronise her father – but there was nothing of particular help to me. However, I sensed a reluctance on her part to arrive, as it were, at her destination.