Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  ‘Who are you, Lychev?’

  ‘My name is Mintimer Sergeyevich Lychev and I am a detective of the St Petersburg police.’

  ‘Police detectives do not murder agents of the Okhrana. You and Colonel Gan are on the same side. You uphold law and order.’

  Lychev sniffed, took off his hat, swept his fringe back and patted his hair before carefully replacing his hat. ‘I like to think I uphold law and order, and I also like to think I am a servant of justice.’ He threw me a sideways glance. ‘You think that sounds pompous?’

  ‘It sounds ridiculous and hypocritical after what I saw you do last night.’

  ‘I am disappointed, Dr Spethmann. If I may say so, you are making a very superficial judgement. Surely such a respected psychoanalyst would understand that what lies on the surface is never the full story.’

  ‘I saw you kill an Okhrana agent,’ I said deliberately.

  ‘And in your view that renders my claim to be a servant of justice invalid?’

  ‘Unless murder and justice are now compatible.’

  He smiled as at an inward joke. ‘Colonel Gan planned and ordered Gulko’s murder. Don’t you think justice dictates he be brought to account?’

  ‘Policemen are usually aware of the value of a blind eye, particularly when it involves the misdeeds of the powerful.’

  ‘I commit murder while Gan commits “misdeeds”?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

  Lychev stared out at the ships on the water. ‘In the twenty years he has run the Okhrana,’ he began, ‘Gan has ordered more murders than you can possibly imagine – politicians he thought dangerous, trade unionists, teachers, doctors, journalists, even policemen who took an undue interest in his affairs. You’d have to gouge out both eyes not to see what was in front of you.’

  ‘So you are determined to take on one of the most powerful men in the empire?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think I have already answered that.’

  ‘I forgot: you are a servant of justice.’

  Lychev laughed thinly. ‘I admit it does sound pompous.’

  ‘You can’t win,’ I said. ‘You can’t beat Gan.’

  Lychev shrugged. ‘Gan is powerful, as you say, but he has enemies in the government and at court, especially among the pro-French faction. If I can produce evidence that he was behind Gulko’s murder, Gan will fall.’

  ‘Only if Gulko was innocent.’

  ‘There are many good reasons to kill journalists,’ he said with a sly, sideways look, ‘but Gulko’s only crime was to discover something Gan did not want made public.’

  He stopped and put his hand out. I took it, but not just out of politeness. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. ‘Please give my compliments to your charming daughter.’

  I watched the strange little man as he made his way back the way we had come. His footsteps were delicate and light, his stride short. It was odd, but I found myself beginning to respect him.

  Nineteen

  The apartment on Bolshoy Prospect belonged to a friend of Anna’s who had gone to the Caucasus to be with her husband, an artillery officer. The living room was spacious enough but rather overstuffed with heavy furniture. Deep reds and blues dominated in the velvet drapes, the ottoman rugs and wall-hangings; an entire wall was covered in a mosaic of gilt-framed photographs. Altogether there was an almost suffocating sensation of constriction.

  The same was true of the bedroom, but here constriction was welcome. I took Anna’s right nipple between my lips and licked it with my tongue. We had already made love and she was lying on her back. I widened my mouth and brought my fingers up between her legs. Her head was all the way back, her chin pointing almost at the ceiling. She cupped her left breast with her hand, the thumb running back and forth over the nipple. I sucked more of her breast into my mouth.

  ‘Slowly,’ she said.

  She lay with her head in my lap. I wanted nothing more than to stay under the spell of intimacy and contentment our love-making had cast. What did it matter what happened in Kazan all those years ago? What if Zinnurov had killed his mother? I was no detective, I was no servant of justice. Some secrets, Zinnurov had said, were better left undisturbed, and I was afraid that in disturbing this one I would be doing more than going over dangerous ground. I was afraid of what I might find out about the woman I had fallen in love with.

  ‘Are you sure you were thirteen when you went to Kazan with your father?’

  I felt her stiffen.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Why are we talking about this?’

  Because, although I was afraid, I had to know the truth.

  ‘I told Lychev.’

  She sat up suddenly. She stared at me. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I told him there was a murder of an elderly woman in Kazan in August 1889. I did not tell him how I found out. I did not mention your name.’

  ‘Lychev? But he’s the man who’s been persecuting you!’

  ‘He’s not entirely what he seems,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she shot back, incredulous.

  I could have said it meant that I saw him kill a man. What I did say was ‘I know it sounds ridiculous but I think he can be trusted, in some things.’

  ‘But why did you tell him about Kazan?’

  ‘Because if you are to get well we have to get to the bottom of what happened there.’

  ‘I am well,’ she said. ‘I’m better now, really. Much, much better.’

  ‘Anna, no one recovers from a trauma like the one you witnessed just like that.’

  ‘You’re making too much of it.’

  ‘I’m making too much of a murder?’

  My tone was scolding and sarcastic. I had slipped. I was not the good father now. She responded by turning away and refusing to talk.

  ‘Anna, please. Trust me. I know the pain it causes you to talk about this, but for your own sake – for our sake – we must.’

  She turned to me. Her face was ugly with anger. ‘I made it up,’ she said brutally. ‘I made it all up. Everything. Saying goodbye to my mother at the station, the cavalry officer on the train, the people staring at us as if we were a married couple. None of it happened. I made it all up.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘It was a dream I had, a fantasy. My father ignored me as a child. I wanted nothing except to be with him and for him to take notice of me, but he was always too busy. He never had time. And so I used to imagine us on a long trip together, alone, without my mother, so I could be with him. I used to imagine it when I went to bed at night, going over the same thing night after night, embellishing the details, until the journey was so real I began to think it had actually happened.’

  ‘Why would you imagine he had killed your grandmother?’

  ‘To punish him,’ she said. ‘To punish him for ignoring me.’

  Psychoanalysts usually interpret dreams as disguised forms of wish fulfilment but with Anna I had proceeded as if the dream were the literal truth, not a secret code, and that she had been dreaming real events as they had really occurred. Perhaps in this I had been in serious error. Perhaps I should have followed known theory.

  ‘You made it all up?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. Then she said, ‘Do you believe me?’

  I looked into her eyes. They were fierce with challenge, pride and anger.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. She looked back at me, unflinching. ‘I believe you,’ I said.

  She lay down. I drew the sheet over her shoulders. She turned on her side, her back to me, her knees drawn up, a carapace against me. I turned the Tiffany lamps off and in the darkness fell profoundly asleep.

  *

  She wasn’t in the bed. I sat up. It was still dark.

  ‘Did you hear that, Papa?’ I heard her whisper from somewhere in the room.

  I reached over and turned on the lamp. She was by the window,
naked, crouching by the drapes. Her voice was strange and remote.

  ‘Someone’s calling my name, Papa. Listen.’

  There was, of course, nothing. I got up and led her back to bed. I checked her expression: it was vague and frozen. Her eyes were open but unblinking; if she saw anything it was not her present surroundings.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you go to the kitchen and get some water?’

  ‘They’re talking.’

  ‘Who’s talking?’

  ‘Babushka and Papa.’

  ‘They won’t mind. Are you still thirsty? Shall we go to the kitchen?’

  ‘They’re shouting.’

  ‘Are they having an argument?’ She did not say anything. ‘What are they arguing about? Can you hear them?’

  ‘Make them stop, please!’ she cried. ‘Make them stop!’

  I put my arms around her. She was stiff, resisting in a way that reminded me of Catherine as a child, all knees and elbows and torque, but eventually she became still. She blinked and looked about, determining where she was.

  ‘Have I been dreaming?’ she said. ‘I think I heard voices.’

  ‘There’s no one here,’ I said. ‘Just us.’

  ‘I was in my grandmother’s house,’ she said, sounding amazed and apprehensive.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said, guiding her head to the pillow and pulling up the covers.

  Anna’s account was confused and incomplete, and it took the rest of the night and much of the following morning to piece together the story of what had happened that night in Kazan. Even then there were gaps. Even then I could not be sure if it was true. Was she making it up? Was it the fantasy with which she had consoled herself as a child? I had no idea. I don’t think Anna did either.

  In Anna’s story, she and her father arrived at the railway station, tired after the long journey from St Petersburg to Moscow and on to Kazan. At her grandmother’s house, on the northern outskirts of the city, Anna remembered being greeted by her grandmother with kisses and hugs. Between mother and son, the atmosphere was affectionate though restrained, as if the old woman was afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing around the only child she had brought into the world.

  She recalled a small garden at the back of the little wooden house. There were vegetables and hens. She remembered her father setting out a table. They had supper as the sun went down. The adults drank some vodka and Anna pleaded to be allowed to try it. Her father gave in and poured her a glass. She listened to her father and grandmother talk about things from the past. She could remember no details but she did remember being fascinated, for at home her father never talked of his childhood and all of this was strange and thrilling.

  Menstruating for the first time, Anna felt bloated and barely ate. The vodka did not help. She went to bed early. It was stiflingly hot, even with the window open. Her father sat on the edge of the narrow bed and tucked her in. He told her this used to be his bed. She claimed she smelled his smell on the sheets. He was a handsome man in his prime.

  She fell asleep as soon as he’d gone but woke with a desperate thirst. She could hear voices from the kitchen. Her grandmother and father were still up.

  She went to the door, but just as she put her hand to the latch she heard a crash, as though a door had been broken open. It was followed by shouting. She did not move, not wanting to interrupt the argument between her father and grandmother. But she was terribly thirsty. She put her hand again to the latch.

  At that very moment she heard a bang. She did not understand what was going on. There was a second explosion. Someone screamed. She heard banging and clattering, like pots and pans falling to the floor. The wooden walls shuddered. And then there was silence.

  Anna could not bring herself to raise the latch. It was still dark. Morning seemed a long way off.

  She forced herself to open the door. It swung inwards on crude, creaking hinges. Squinting into the darkness, she could just make out the sack of corn stored at the top of the stairs. She inched forward, crouching as she went under the low roof. The heat was even worse and sweat poured down her face. She called for her father but he did not come. She descended the narrow staircase that led to a storeroom, off which was the kitchen. For a long time she was unable to bring herself to open the door.

  She remembered it was so dark she had to put a hand to the wall for a guide. She had gone only a step or two when she stumbled and fell over something. Somewhere in the darkness someone was breathing roughly. Then there was a sharp exhalation – like the air released from a balloon – and then silence. Her hands felt sticky and wet where she had touched the floor. So was the side of her leg. She found a lamp and somehow managed to light the wick.

  The first thing she saw was the blood on her hands. Then she saw the blood on the wall in front of her. There were thick, uneven smeared trails on the floor.

  She was suddenly grabbed by her ankle. Looking down she saw a long, thin figure stretching out his hand and looking up imploringly at her. Blood flowed from a deep wound in his left cheek where there was a flap of skin turned back like a sheet, exposing bone and tissue.

  Slowly, her senses disordered and chaotic, Anna looked around the room.

  Her grandmother lay on the floor by the back door in a heap, like a coat shrugged from the shoulders. A second man lay face down and partially across her. The clothing on his back was in ribbons and the skin beneath was raw and bloody.

  The man at her feet tried to speak but only gurgled and choked. The last thing Anna remembered was asking him what he had done with her father.

  We sat at the breakfast table. I made tea for Anna. She sipped it periodically, but I could not persuade her to eat anything.

  ‘Is there anything else you can remember?’ I said.

  She looked past me for some moments, then shook her head.

  ‘When did you see your father again?’

  ‘I remember a hospital. He was lying in bed. But I don’t know if it was St Petersburg or Kazan or Moscow.’

  I poured tea for myself and drank it.

  ‘Why did you tell me that your father killed your grandmother?’

  ‘I was angry,’ she said. She looked worn down and contrite. ‘I think I have always blamed him for what happened to my grandmother.’ She reached for my hand. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she said. ‘I can tell from your face.’

  Thirteen-year-old Anna had tried to wipe the trauma from her memory, and she had succeeded. But only for a time. Trauma cannot be held at bay indefinitely or completely. Dreams may be disguised and censored but they cannot be banished. The body also responds, in Anna’s case with head aches and, especially, numbness: numbness in the same hand that opened the door to reveal the slaughter in her grandmother’s kitchen in August 1889. This was one reading of the story she had told me. It was the reading I wanted to believe.

  ‘According to the police records in Kazan there were five murders in August 1889. None of them involved an elderly female victim.’

  She leaned her head against my shoulder. We were both very tired. ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ she whispered. ‘Why would I make it up?’

  ‘I believe you,’ I said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she said softly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Does Catherine know you have been seeing me?’

  ‘I think she has probably guessed,’ I said.

  ‘She hasn’t said anything?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Have you said anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She wouldn’t be interested,’ I lied.

  ‘I think she would be very interested.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything because after Elena died she was insecure and unhappy. She’s much better now.’

  ‘Then you could tell her,’ she said, raising her head from my shoulder. She took my hand and kissed it. ‘If she’s better now, you could tell her.’

 
‘Why do you want me to tell her?’

  ‘It will make us closer. I want to be close to you. I want to be with you, always.’

  ‘Are you going to tell your husband?’

  She let go of my hand.

  ‘Why are you being horrible?’

  ‘Let’s talk about this later,’ I said.

  I got up and went to the telephone. I called Minna and said I would be in late, again, and asked her to shuffle the appointments as best she could.

  ‘Did you get hold of Rozental?’ I said.

  ‘I telephoned him at the Astoria three times,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t answer.’

  ‘Try again,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about him.’

  I went back to Anna. ‘You’re punishing me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘It feels like it. You think I’m making up the whole story about my father and you’re punishing me for it.’

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Will you come to me tonight?’

  ‘I have to go to Saburov’s house for the opening ceremony. Rozental will be there and I have to see him.’

  ‘Will you come when it’s over?’

  ‘It will be late,’ I said.

  She gave me a key to the apartment and we kissed briefly. It was almost midday by the time I left.

  Twenty

  I crossed to the left bank over Nicholas Bridge and stopped in at the Architects’ Club to use the telephone. Lychev answered at the first ring.

  ‘I’m looking at young Leon Pikser as we speak,’ he said. I heard a sound like a pencil tapping on glass and thought of the jar Lychev had brought to my office. ‘I don’t think he was anything like as handsome as Catherine says, do you?’

  ‘He wasn’t at his best when I saw him,’ I said.

  ‘Was Catherine in love with him?’ he said. ‘I mean, really in love?’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Good question,’ he said with a thin laugh. He went on, ‘Pikser published some of his own poems in Moscow. They suggest he believed indulgence in vodka and sex was an act of political rebellion. His other theme appears to be that art’s first duty is to reflect the great issues confronting society. There’s a poem called Manifesto for the Soul – an aesthetic disaster, of course, but he takes his argument a step further: writers not only have a responsibility to speak out, they must participate. It’s all very tedious and juvenile.’