Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  ‘Your fame knows no boundaries, Reuven.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ he said without irony. ‘Let me introduce you. He’s a fascinating man. There’s not a subject under the sun he can’t talk about – philosophy, politics, economics, religion. He’d love to meet you.’

  ‘Perhaps later,’ I said.

  ‘As you please,’ he said, sounding disappointed. ‘By the way, are you coming to my recital at the Mariinsky next week? I’m going to be playing a selection of Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas. I’m told the tsar himself is coming. Don’t tell anyone – they don’t like these things to get out too far in advance. All very exclusive’ – he jabbed me jocularly in the ribs – ‘but I’ll get them to make an exception and allow you in. Put it in your diary. The 26th. I’ll arrange the tickets.’

  He clapped me on the back and made me promise not to go before he could effect an introduction to Lasker.

  For an hour I made uneasy small talk with acquaintances from the St Petersburg Chess Union. I exchanged a few pleasantries with Herr Tarrasch when we were briefly introduced, and with the Englishman Blackburne who, it turned out, had been to Yegorov’s and found the experience wonderfully invigorating.

  I asked a servant if I could use the telephone. I dialled the number of the apartment on Bolshoy Prospect but the telephone bell just rang and rang. I thought about calling Anna at home, but I did not want to risk having her husband answer. I dialled another number.

  ‘Where are you?’ Catherine said.

  ‘At Saburov’s. It’s the opening ceremony tonight. Has anyone called for me?’

  ‘No. Were you expecting someone?’

  ‘Not especially,’ I lied. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘I had a visitor,’ she said.

  ‘That’s nice. Who was it?’

  ‘Mintimer Sergeyevich.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lychev. That’s his name – Mintimer Sergeyevich Lychev.’

  ‘What did Mintimer want?’ I asked acidly.

  Catherine was unexpectedly serene. ‘Nothing – just to talk. It wasn’t anything to do with Leon or the murders. It turns out he’s really quite unusual, for a policeman. To hear him talk about the conditions of the workers in the Vyborg you’d think you were listening to Petrov.’

  ‘Catherine,’ I said. ‘Listen to me. He had no right to call on you. If he tries to talk to you again, you must refuse to see him. Do you understand?’

  There was a long silence. I imagined her mouth setting and that single dark line of eyebrow coming down.

  ‘You always accuse me of never telling you anything,’ she responded sharply. ‘And what happens when I do? You immediately start to interfere and order me around.’

  ‘I am not ordering you around,’ I said. ‘But Lychev is a very dangerous man. I forbid you to see him.’

  ‘And who are you seeing?’ she asked, a note of triumphal vengefulness in her voice.

  ‘Catherine, this is about your welfare. It is about your safety.’

  ‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’

  I was in no mood to take a scolding from my daughter. ‘We can talk about Anna Petrovna later if you like, but I am telling you: stay away from Lychev.’

  ‘You swore to me you would never see her again but she has been your patient for almost a year –’

  ‘Enough, Catherine. This doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘And the fact she is your lover? Does that concern me?’

  Even good fathers become exhausted. ‘No,’ I said with harsh finality, ‘it does not.’

  Catherine put down the telephone.

  As I waited to collect my hat and coat I became aware of someone standing next to me. Turning, I saw Peter Arseneyevich Zinnurov.

  ‘What gives you the right to dig around in other people’s lives, Spethmann?’

  I was in no mood to take lectures from the Mountain either. With my coat over my arm and my hat in hand I made to push past him. He put a hand up to my chest.

  ‘Kazan is in the past. No one cares. We have enough problems in the present. We have terrorists and revolutionaries. Germany and France threaten war. The people are hungry. What is Kazan compared with this?’

  How did he know about Kazan? He read my thoughts at once.

  ‘You really don’t know my daughter at all,’ he said. ‘She told me everything. Yes, Spethmann, she came to see me. She told me how you wore her down and bullied her and put words in her mouth.’

  I didn’t know what to think but I knew I had heard enough. This time when he tried to stop me I pushed him away. He staggered backwards but recovered quickly. The servants looked over, ready to intervene.

  ‘Goodnight, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight, Dr Spethmann,’ came a deep, soft voice from my left. The speaker wore the uniform of a colonel in the Household Cavalry. He extended his hand.

  ‘We haven’t been introduced,’ he said. The old soldier’s grip was precise and strong. ‘But I believe you knew one of my employees.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Who?’

  ‘Semevsky,’ he said.

  For a moment, even though I knew who I was speaking to, I thought he was about to tell me he was the building’s owner.

  ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, Dr Spethmann,’ Colonel Gan said with a bow before continuing upstairs to the ballroom with Zinnurov.

  I set off for my car, which I had parked in a yard behind Saburov’s house. It was almost ten o’clock and not yet fully dark. Soon we would have our beloved white nights. I was about to climb into the driver’s seat when Kopelzon hurried up to intercept me.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to introduce you to Lasker?’ he said with an aggrieved air.

  ‘I think it was you who wanted to arrange the introduction,’ I said, getting into the car.

  Kopelzon clutched at the door. ‘What could be so important that you’d pass up a chance to meet the World Champion? He’s the man Rozental has to beat, after all.’

  ‘What have you got yourself mixed up in, Reuven?’ I said.

  Kopelzon frowned as if at a simpleton and attempted another smile. ‘What are you on about, Otto?’

  ‘You’re a grown man so I suppose it’s your own business,’ I answered him, ‘but what I cannot forgive is that you’ve dragged Rozental into it as well.’

  A flash of alarm crossed his face. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  I stared at my friend. ‘I hope to God nothing happens to Rozental because of you. I don’t believe you would want that on your conscience.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about conscience, Otto,’ he spat back angrily. ‘My conscience is alive and well. Yours is another matter.’

  I let out the clutch and the car started to pull away. Kopelzon ran alongside for a little way, hanging onto the door with one hand.

  ‘Stay away from Rozental, Otto!’ he shouted. ‘I’m warning you.’

  I pressed the accelerator, the car speeded up and at last Kopelzon let go. I caught sight of him in the mirror breathing heavily and staring after me.

  At the corner of Liteiny Prospect I saw a poster advertising Kopelzon’s forthcoming concert at the Mariinsky. The last time I had seen him there his performance had been electrifying. Bouquets rained down on him. Like the playing of all truly great musicians, Kopelzon’s spoke to the higher instincts of men and women. That night I had the sense that I could be a better person and live the rest of my life without pettiness or spite or envy. Kopelzon enjoyed his triumphs in a way that was, perhaps, not quite as elevated as the sentiment he produced in his audience. I never held his pride or vanity against him. But now all I could think of was the scale of his betrayal.

  Twenty-Two

  It occurred to me that among those milling about the lobby of the Astoria there might be someone waiting to see who turned up to visit Rozental. I did not have time to worry about the possibility. I hurried to the elevators and rode to the fourth floor.

  I started down a long cor
ridor, lit by bright electric wall lamps. Mahogany tables with vases of white roses were set out at intervals; on the walls hung copies of Vereschagin’s battle scenes, as well as amateur watercolours of the city’s landmarks, including – I could not help but note – one of Politseisky Bridge, where Gulko was murdered.

  I got to Rozental’s room, number 442. I knocked and waited. There were shuffling movements from inside, but the door remained firmly shut.

  ‘Avrom Chilowicz,’ I called, rapping loudly. ‘It’s me, Dr Spethmann. I must speak with you.’

  After some moments the door opened to reveal a blinking, unshaven Rozental. He was wearing the trousers and waistcoat of a stained, dark-blue suit and a collarless shirt open at the neck. He was barefoot. His skin was puffy and had the sweaty pallor of a prisoner. He squinted, as though trying to place me.

  ‘May I come in?’ I said.

  He shuffled back to allow me entry, more out of passivity and ingrained habits of deference than curiosity or politeness.

  The room was overheated and in the stale air lingered a cloying mixture of cigarette smoke, leftover food and the odours of unventilated night and sleep. Clothes and towels were strewn over the divan, the gilt furniture and the oriental rugs on the floor. On an ornate, claw-footed table was a small chessboard and, beside it, scribbled notes on a spectacular disarrangement of dog-eared pages.

  ‘Have you been eating, Avrom?’ I asked, indicating a tray of cold, untouched food on the bed. He glanced at it uncomprehendingly. ‘I was at the opening ceremony at Saburov’s house,’ I went on, trying a conversational gambit. ‘I thought you might be there.’

  He gave no sign that he’d heard me and wandered back to the chessboard. I had interrupted him and he was going to get back to work whether I was there or not. I recognised the position – it was from Marshall’s famous victory over Capablanca the year before at Havana and had been in all the chess magazines.

  ‘Avrom,’ I said, ‘I have to ask you about Kopelzon.’ He reached out to move a rook but seemed to hesitate. ‘Has Reuven Moiseyevich asked you to do something for him?’

  He took up the rook and started to scratch at his scalp.

  ‘What did he ask you to do, Avrom?’ I pressed, coaxing him as gently as I could. ‘I won’t tell anyone anything that you say. It will be strictly between us.’

  Rozental hung his head and started to mutter while his fingers raked his dark, close-cropped scalp.

  ‘Tell me, Avrom,’ I said. ‘What does Kopelzon want you to do?’

  Suddenly, like a child seized by a tantrum, Rozental hurled the rook at a standard lamp in the corner of the room, provoked, I assumed, by my questioning. But then he muttered, ‘Why exchange the rook here?’ He looked at me with a desperate plea in his eyes, as though begging me to solve a mystery that had been tormenting him all his life. ‘Why?’

  I looked again around the stuffy, disordered room and made my decision.

  I said, ‘Avrom, I want you to come with me. Don’t be alarmed. I’m going to take you home, to my house. I’m going to see that you’re properly looked after. You need to eat and rest so that tomorrow you will be ready for Marshall.’

  I don’t know if he understood what I was saying, but he did not resist as I guided him to the bed and, sitting him down, got him into his socks and shoes.

  ‘I’m going to pack your clothes now,’ I told him. ‘Why don’t you put away your chess set?’

  He watched, inert and bewildered, as I retrieved his valise and went around the room gathering up his clothes. Eventually, as though he had only just grasped what I had asked him to do, he went to the table and started to put the chessmen into their box.

  ‘There’s a rook missing,’ he said, looking about anxiously.

  ‘You threw it over there, Avrom,’ I said, indicating the lamp. ‘Remember?’

  He got down at once on his hands and knees to search. I was by the dresser, emptying out the drawers. That was when the door opened.

  Kopelzon was first to let himself in. He expressed no surprise on seeing me but stood aside to allow entry to a heavily built man of medium height. He had filled out somewhat from the notorious police photograph so beloved of the newspapers, and age had tamed and thinned his unruly hair. His thick moustache and respectable clothes gave him a solid, burgher appearance. Had I not had him in mind, I doubt I would have recognised the empire’s most wanted terrorist. Berek Medem was holding a gun in his left hand.

  His gaze fell on Rozental, still scrabbling around on the floor in search of his lost rook, oblivious to the new arrivals. Then he turned to examine me.

  ‘This is Spethmann, I take it?’

  Kopelzon nodded slowly. ‘Why did you have to come here, Otto?’ he said. ‘I warned you not to. Why couldn’t you just leave well alone?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t well, Reuven,’ I replied.

  Medem turned to Kopelzon. ‘If you hadn’t involved him in the first place he wouldn’t be here. What did you think you were doing, bringing Rozental to see a psychoanalyst?’

  The Polish terrorist’s voice was rather beautiful; it was sonorous, deep and confident. His Russian was perfect, without a trace of the usual gutturalness of Yiddish speakers. I would have taken him for a well-educated St Petersburger instead of the tough raised in Smocza Street in the Warsaw ghetto, the graduate of Pawiak prison, the murderer of so many policemen, tax collectors, informers and spies.

  ‘Rozental was going to pieces,’ Kopelzon protested indignantly. ‘You were in Moscow and I had to do something.’

  ‘Well, you did the wrong thing,’ Medem said matter-of-factly. He pinched his trousers at the thigh and sat down, resting the gun in his lap. ‘And now I am going to have to tidy up.’

  ‘Tidy up?’ Kopelzon said.

  ‘In case you haven’t understood, Reuven,’ I said, ‘he’s going to kill me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Kopelzon snorted, turning to Medem.

  Medem shrugged. ‘He knows. He’s worked it out.’

  ‘Impossible!’ Kopelzon shot back.

  ‘The only reason I didn’t see it from the very start –’ I began.

  ‘Don’t say any more, Otto! You don’t know, you don’t know.’

  ‘Pretending I don’t know isn’t going to save my life, Reuven. Your friend here has already made up his mind.’

  Kopelzon threw his head back and let out a melodramatic groan.

  ‘The only reason I didn’t see it earlier is because it’s so implausible and outrageous,’ I said.

  ‘Those are the plans that tend to succeed,’ Medem said smoothly, a smile playing around his lips. ‘They take people by surprise.’

  ‘Whose idea was it?’ I said, looking between them.

  Kopelzon was the first to speak. ‘When I heard the tsar would be receiving the winner of the tournament at the Peterhof,’ he said, ‘it set me thinking. The winner all alone in a room with the great tyrant? It’s the perfect opportunity.’

  ‘And did you think you were going to turn Rozental into an assassin?’

  We looked at the chess player, now reaching under a dresser to pat blindly for his missing piece; he had begun to whimper in distress.

  ‘We thought about asking him – he’s a Pole and a Jew, after all,’ Medem replied. ‘And we sounded him out, without being too specific, suggesting it as a joke almost.’

  ‘No doubt he jumped at the chance to embrace martyrdom for the cause of Polish freedom,’ I said.

  ‘No, actually,’ Medem replied with a straight face, ‘he became rather upset. I hadn’t realised he was so highly strung.’

  ‘Fortunately, you had prepared for the eventuality,’ I said, ‘with a double.’

  Medem permitted himself a smile. ‘Not too hard to find. There are hundreds like Rozental in the ghetto – stocky, dark types, remarkable only for their uniformity. I myself have two or three uncles who look like him. In fact, one of my aunts bears more than a passing resemblance.’ He chuckled at his own joke. ‘The guards at
the Peterhof won’t be suspicious of a mere chess player. Our man will get past them easily. I heard you yourself mistook him for Rozental, at a restaurant?’

  ‘Rozental found out there was a double, didn’t he?’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Kopelzon said defensively. ‘I arranged for him to be taken out to dinner so the double could come here and try on his clothes. But then Rozental suddenly walked in and found his twin standing in front of him, dressed in his own clothes, his hair and moustache cut exactly the same way. He got terribly agitated. That’s when I brought him to you.’

  Rozental let out a cry of frustration and the three of us turned again in his direction.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Medem asked.

  ‘He’s looking for a chess piece,’ I said, ‘a rook.’

  Medem studied the scrabbling, prostrate figure for some moments.

  ‘For your plan to work,’ I said, ‘it needed Rozental to win the tournament. That’s an awful lot to leave to chance.’

  Kopelzon answered vehemently, ‘It’s nothing to do with chance. Chess is a game of pure logic and Rozental is at the peak of his powers. For the last two or three years he’s been virtually untouchable.’

  ‘Things go wrong in every tournament,’ I snapped back at him. ‘Upsets happen. Strong players lose to weaker ones. If you need proof, look at our game. I’ve never beaten you before, Reuven – you’re a much better player than I – but I’m winning, on this occasion at least.’

  ‘I’ve said before you’ve overestimated your position, Otto,’ Kopelzon replied. ‘That much should be clear to you by now.’

  Berek Medem stood up. I did not move. He said, ‘Put up a fight, if you want. By all means shout for help. All that will happen is that anyone who intervenes will die. And of course you will die with them, an hour or so before your time.’

  Certain of my senses were sharper – smell, for example – and others duller – hearing and touch. I remember that my vision was blurred at the periphery; I saw only straight ahead and narrowly, as though looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Berek Medem seemed to be addressing me from a faraway place.