Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  ‘What you are describing is an impossible idyll.’

  ‘I said it was a dream, didn’t I?’ he answered sharply. ‘It’s never going to happen. My life is not like that. It never will be like that. But what’s wrong with having a harmless little dream?’

  ‘Does it help you solve the fundamental problem of your life?’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘I don’t know. You won’t tell me.’

  He stared at me belligerently. ‘You have no answers, do you? You can’t help me.’

  ‘I can’t help you until you trust me.’

  ‘How can I trust you? I can’t trust anyone.’

  ‘What about your comrades? Don’t you trust them?’

  He grunted. ‘Are you joking? The Party is a snake pit. Comrades stab each other in the back, they complain, they spread rumours, they manoeuvre against each other. You’ve heard of “King”, I take it?’

  ‘The spy?’

  ‘That’s what the meeting in Krakow was all about – who’s the traitor, who is King? God knows how many people he’s betrayed – Dzhugashvili was arrested yesterday. How many more are we going to lose because of King? There is anger, suspicion, resentment – and that’s my life with my comrades. Then there are the factory owners, the police, the government, Okhrana spies, all of whom would like to see me dead. My life is hellish.’

  ‘Then you must live another life.’

  ‘I can’t. I believe in what I am doing.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What am I doing?’ He threw me an indignant look. ‘I am fighting against hypocrisy, that’s what I’m doing. Russia is a Christian country. As is Germany, England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden – Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, but all Christian countries, and yet millions live in poverty. How do we justify this? How do we explain it? Christianity’s chief distinction is that it softens the human heart. It urges charity, brotherhood and common cause on believers. Yet it tolerates an economic and political system that runs diametrically counter to first impressions of right and wrong. This to me is utterly repugnant. Destroy Christianity. Destroy capitalism and autocracy. Only when hypocrisy is destroyed can there be justice. This is what I am doing, Spethmann.’

  ‘You have set yourself a very high target.’

  ‘You’re a doctor. I want you to make my lives possible.’

  ‘Your lives?’ I said.

  ‘Life. Lives. It feels like I’m having to live a hundred lives in one body, and it’s killing me. I want you to make my life possible. Can you do that, yes or no?’

  ‘Not if you continue to refuse to work with me.’

  Before I could say anything more, he took out his pocket watch and drew in a deep, weary breath. ‘I have to go,’ he said, getting up. He put a hand to his lower back and grimaced with discomfort. ‘I have to meet some workers in the naval yards.’

  ‘Minna will make another appointment,’ I said, seeing him to the door.

  He looked at me with sudden suspicion. ‘She doesn’t know who I am, does she?’

  From the very first, Petrov had insisted on absolute secrecy, fearing the mockery that would result if his enemies discovered he was consulting a psychoanalyst. We used the pseudonym Grischuk in the appointments book and in my notes.

  ‘I have not told Minna,’ I said, ‘but your face is well known. I can’t guarantee she hasn’t guessed.’

  ‘But you said she’s discreet?’

  ‘She is discretion itself.’

  After Petrov, my next patient was a young clerk at the foreign ministry. Addicted to sex with elderly prostitutes, he liked to scour the poorer quarters for the most degraded women he could find for his purposes. He recounted his activities in forensic and scatological detail. I was always relieved when his hour was up.

  That afternoon, while I was making up my notes, Minna came in. ‘I cannot find Rozental’s file,’ she said. ‘I’ve looked everywhere.’

  ‘I took it home with me last night,’ I lied. ‘I’ll bring it in tomorrow.’

  ‘The files are a terrible mess. I’ve been trying to sort them out all day.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was looking for something and got everything mixed up.’

  I wasn’t sure Minna believed me and she seemed hurt that I might be holding something back from her.

  When she’d gone, my eye fell on the chessboard and I found myself being drawn into the position. It would be a shame not to play for the win, yet I could find no satisfactory continuation. Exchanging on g5, as Lychev had said, was a dead draw.

  What was this?

  Spethmann–Kopelzon

  After 35 Rg2. Is this any good?

  This wasn’t the correct position. What was the rook doing on g2? The table must have been knocked and the piece jolted out of place. I was about to put the rook on its correct square – g4 – when I realised there was nothing accidental about its placement. I saw now that it was a very strong move.

  How on earth …? Kavi. The Cossack must have done it while I was waiting, eyes closed, for the thrust of his knife. There I was thinking he was going to kill me; instead he was considering a chess move.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Your daughter is here,’ Minna said, looking quite flustered, ‘and also –’

  Catherine pushed past and entered.

  ‘Catherine? Why are you here?’ I said. She had never before appeared at my office without prior arrangement.

  ‘Because I told her to come.’

  The voice was Lychev’s. The policeman came in behind her, as silently as the breeze. Two uniformed and armed gendarmes followed rather more noisily.

  ‘I have come to ask you and your daughter some questions,’ Lychev said in his nasal monotone.

  I reached for the telephone but one of the gendarmes intercepted me.

  ‘There will be no calls to your friends, Spethmann,’ Lychev said, pushing his fringe out of his eyes. He was holding a leather bag. It gave off a faintly chemical smell.

  Eight

  Lychev ordered the gendarmes to remain with Minna in the outer office and then heaved the bag on to my desk; it was evidently quite heavy.

  ‘How was the wine at the Imperial Yacht Club?’ he asked slyly. ‘I hear they keep an excellent cellar.’

  Catherine looked at me. The Imperial Yacht Club? What had I been doing at such a place? Sensing her reaction, Lychev went on in the same crafty tone: ‘Didn’t you know your father has friends in high places? He only has to click his fingers and archdukes, generals and Baltic Barons snap to do his bidding.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Catherine told him.

  Turning his pale eyes on me, he said, ‘You didn’t tell Catherine about your friendly little chat with the Mountain?’

  Catherine turned to regard him. They were about the same height and equally slight, but Catherine seemed to dominate the space between them.

  ‘The Mountain?’ Catherine said.

  ‘I understand Colonel Gan himself was also at the club last night?’ Lychev continued in the same heavily ironic tone. ‘Did you and the colonel discuss ways to stop the terrorist bombings? Did he try to recruit you as an informer for the secret police?’

  ‘Do your superiors know you are here, Lychev?’ I demanded.

  He ignored me and, getting down to business, addressed Catherine. ‘I must ask you if you know a man by the name of Yastrebov?’

  ‘Do not answer him, Catherine,’ I said. ‘He has no authority to question us. When his superiors find out he is here, he will be in a great deal of trouble.’

  ‘Do you know a man by the name of Yastrebov?’ he repeated.

  I protested again but Catherine turned to me and asked, ‘Is this the same person you asked me about this morning? Because if it is, I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘He was a revolutionary, a terrorist,’ Lychev said, ‘a very dangerous young man.’

  Catherine gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘In the view of the police, ever
y worker in Russia is a terrorist and every Jew a revolutionary.’

  ‘I have reason to believe you knew Yastrebov,’ Lychev went on, ignoring her provocation.

  ‘I can assure you I did not,’ Catherine replied.

  ‘Just so there is no mistake …’

  Lychev turned to the leather bag and slowly undid the two enclosing straps. The chemical odour became more noticeable.

  ‘There can be confusion over names,’ he said. ‘After all, what is a name? Documents and identities are easily forged. The revolutionary organisations have whole departments dedicated to their manufacture. Names can be changed. Physical features, on the other hand, may be modified and disguised but they are not so easily transformed.’

  He needed both hands to withdraw the contents. His back was to us but I glimpsed a large glass jar filled with an opaque liquid together with some solid, dark, unspecific matter. He settled the jar on the desk and stood aside.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ I demanded.

  The colour had drained from Catherine’s face like water from a sink. We were looking at a human head pickled in formaldehyde.

  At that moment, when my thoughts and senses ought to have been focused on the matter in hand, I was nevertheless conscious of the sensations produced by contact with a human body. Other than to shake hands with friends and colleagues or to receive Kopelzon’s extravagant embraces, it had been more than two years since I had touched another person. As a child, Catherine had submitted to hugs rather than given herself wholly to them; when I used to lift her up and clasp her to me, the little child became rigid and would bend her knees into my chest to keep us apart. Yet now she was in my arms, her face buried in my chest. I kissed the top of her head. I stroked her hair and closed my eyes, as if the mere fact of our nearness could insulate us against the horror Lychev had brought into our lives.

  ‘Look carefully, Miss Spethmann,’ Lychev said, placing the bag on the floor so as not to obscure the view. ‘This is the man we know as Alexander Yastrebov. I have reason to believe, however, that this is not his real name. It is imperative that I establish his true identity, and do so as quickly as possible.’

  He waited for what he may have considered a decent interval and then said evenly, but with finality, as though refusal were not an option, ‘I must insist.’

  Catherine kept her face turned away but I sensed her beginning to recover from the shock.

  ‘Do you recognise this man?’ Lychev repeated, his patience running out.

  By degrees Catherine brought her gaze to the object before us. The glass’s convexity distorted the features somewhat, adding to their blood-drained, ghoulish quality.

  ‘No,’ she answered in a firm voice, ‘I do not recognise him.’

  She turned to look Lychev boldly in the eye. It was the policeman who in the end had to turn away.

  In the elevator car I tried to regard Catherine not as a father does his daughter, but as a man who must extract the truth from one determined to conceal from him what he needs to know.

  ‘I want you to be truthful,’ I whispered to her while the attendant pretended not to listen. ‘We are in danger. If you are not completely truthful, we will not escape. Who was the man in the jar?’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was murdered a few days ago and his body dumped in the river.’

  The elevator car stopped with a jolt. The attendant opened the doors to the lobby.

  Though she had rallied well, the ordeal had obviously taken a lot out of her. She was still pale, and unusually placid in both speech and movement, and yet she managed to fix me with a defiant look.

  ‘I never saw him before,’ she said.

  With the help of the doorman I saw Catherine into a taxi. Before the driver pulled away, I warned her not to leave the house or speak to anyone under any circumstances but to await my return.

  When I got back to the office Lychev had dismissed the gendarmes and was replacing the glass jar in the leather bag.

  ‘Was that really necessary?’ I asked. ‘You must have photographs you could have shown us.’

  ‘You thought my display over-theatrical?’ His thin lips spread in a grin.

  ‘I thought it unnecessary and cruel.’

  ‘The times we live in are cruel, don’t you think?’ he said, closing and strapping up the bag with methodical attention. ‘Last month I arrested a man, a member of one of the so-called combat detachments of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He had poured sulphuric acid over the face of one of his comrades, whom he suspected to be working for the Okhrana. The victim is horribly deformed – his nose is gone, the left eye is gone. The skin on the whole left side of his face has been burnt away. Acid attacks seem to be quite the fashion now among revolutionaries.’

  Lychev continued, ‘When I arrested the attacker I thought to myself, if you believed your comrade to be a spy why not just shoot him and be done with it? Why pour acid into his face? To borrow your own words, Spethmann, it seemed unnecessary and cruel. I encounter much cruelty, you see, most of it beyond comprehension.’

  ‘I do not envy you your world, Lychev.’

  He shrugged and heaved the leather bag to the floor, and indicated the chessboard.

  Spethmann–Kopelzon

  After 35 Rg2. ‘Worthy of a master.’ But is it really good enough to win?

  ‘Those backwards moves are always hard to find,’ he said, indicating the rook on g2. ‘It’s worthy of a master. I had no idea you were such a strong player.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve been getting some help, perhaps?’ he said, throwing me a sly look. ‘Do you still think Capablanca will win the tournament?’

  ‘I have no interest in discussing this, Lychev,’ I said. ‘Nor have I any interest in seeing you again now that my daughter and I have answered your questions. I shall of course be making your visit known to the minister of the interior.’

  He smiled. ‘You are correct, Spethmann. I do not believe either you or your daughter can be of any more help to me. I hope you will understand that I was only doing my duty.’

  Was it possible I was seeing the last of him? At the door he bade me good day. Relief flooded into my heart. I waited a minute or two to make sure he was gone before telephoning the number Zinnurov had given me. A secretary answered and asked me to hold. Eventually the Mountain came to the telephone.

  ‘Lychev was here,’ I said. ‘He came to my office and brought my daughter with him.’

  Judging from the pause that followed, it was clear Zinnurov was equally surprised. ‘Did he indeed?’

  ‘I understood Minister Maklakov had ordered him to leave me alone?’

  ‘You are correct in your understanding, Spethmann,’ he said. ‘I will contact the minister at once and find out what happened.’

  ‘What happened is that he came to my office and in front of my daughter produced Yastrebov’s pickled head. In front of my daughter!’

  ‘I do hope she was not unduly upset.’

  ‘She was shocked,’ I said, outrage growing in my voice. ‘It was horrific.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Zinnurov said smoothly. ‘I’ll look into it. Either Lychev is acting without proper authority or he has gone above Maklakov’s head. Either way, he’ll be restrained. I promise you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘We have a lot in common, after all.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘We are fathers who dearly love our daughters.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Anna?’

  ‘I’m seeing her this evening.’

  ‘Good,’ Zinnurov said. ‘Let me know what she says.’

  He rang off. I waited another fifteen minutes to give Catherine time to get home before calling.

  ‘She went to bed as soon as she came in, Doctor,’ Lidiya said. ‘I’ve never seen her so utterly exhausted. Will you be home soon?’
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br />   ‘I have an appointment,’ I said. ‘I shall be home by ten, Lidiya. Please make sure Catherine does not leave the house before I return.’

  Minna was still in the outer office. It was obvious she wanted to talk about what had happened but I had no time and was rather offhand and impatient with her.

  I hurried to my car, which I had left in Sadovaya Street. The Renault was dusted with snow. I cleared the windscreen, cranked the engine and got in. I blew into my hands, pulled on my gloves and pressed the starter. But as I pulled away, I was thinking not of Anna but of Catherine. She had lied to me. She had recognised Yastrebov’s pickled face. I saw it in her reaction. And Lychev was too observant of human nature not to have seen it too.

  Nine

  Anna was waiting at the corner of Admiralty Prospect. She was wearing a long, black woollen coat and black fur hat. The snow was dancing in light flurries, a last hurrah of winter. I pulled up in front of her and climbed out of the Renault to open the passenger door.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I said.

  I felt her eyes on me as I helped her into the car and placed a rug over her lap.

  ‘I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind,’ she said, ‘about seeing me.’

  Why were we seeing each other? The ambiguity was disconcerting and I felt awkward under the frankness of her gaze. She seemed to sense the equivocation in me. I patted down the rug then got back into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  With everything that had happened, I had not had time to think of where to go. We would have to be careful. Like many big cities, St Petersburg was a small town. I was with a married woman, a patient. The chances of running into a neighbour or colleague were always high.

  An idea struck me. ‘My favourite place,’ I said.

  She smiled, pleased at the thought that I was taking her to a place that had significance for me. ‘Where?’