Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  I squinted through the window out into the darkness. I turned back to my letter but I wrote no words.

  The train’s brakes ground and squealed and we started to slow. We were coming into Wirballen. I finished my brandy and made to go back to Anna. The attendant stooped to look out of the window.

  ‘Strange,’ he said as the train came to a halt. ‘We’re not due in Wirballen for another twenty minutes.’

  The engine huffed. Steam billowed back, clouding the view.

  ‘Very strange,’ the attendant said, going off in search of someone who would tell him what was going on.

  I settled back into my seat. Ten minutes later the attendant returned. He had no explanation for the delay. I ordered another brandy.

  After an hour the train started up again. The lights of the town came into view. Was it possible Gan had discovered my escape route? Would Lychev have confessed? I debated with myself whether I should rouse Anna. Should we get off the train and try to find another way out of the country?

  ‘This is getting very odd,’ the attendant said.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re not pulling into the station.’ He scratched his head. ‘They’re putting us in a siding.’

  I looked out the window. Instead of the station platform I saw the silhouettes of sheds and cranes and industrial buildings.

  A passenger entered and asked why he couldn’t get off the train. Others behind him started to mutter and complain. After some moments the chief attendant came and explained the delay would be a short one and they would soon be at the station.

  ‘Why can’t we just get out here and walk the rest of the way?’ one of the aggrieved passengers said.

  ‘No one is allowed on or off the train,’ the chief attendant said firmly. ‘Those are our orders.’

  ‘What do you mean your orders?’ a passenger shouted back.

  I got up and went quickly to the sleeping car. Policemen were patrolling the track outside.

  Anna was profoundly asleep. I shook her once. She moaned but did not wake. Why bother her with this? I thought. There was nothing to be done, except to wait. I returned to the restaurant car, by now filled with bored and frustrated passengers.

  At 3.15 in the morning the train suddenly lurched backwards. Dozing passengers with the clammy sheen of sweat on their brows looked up hopefully. At once the attendant became the recipient of a score of shouted enquiries.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he kept protesting, ‘I don’t know anything.’

  We were being shunted back onto the main line. A cheer went up when we pulled forward again and the station came into view in the thin, early-morning light. I hurried for the sleeping car. Anna lay in exactly the same position as I had left her, as deeply asleep as the child the parent carries from carriage to bed after a long journey late at night. I ran through the possibilities: Had Lychev confessed? Had he revealed the details of our escape? Or was our delay simply a matter of the track’s integrity, the engine’s health, the timetable’s soundness? Trains in Russia were frequently late. I did not want to worry her. I returned again to the restaurant car.

  The train pulled into the station. Within a couple of minutes the car had emptied as passengers went to gather their luggage. I was again alone with the attendant.

  A man entered at the far end. He wore no hat but I did not recognise him at first because he was the last person I was expecting to see.

  Gregory Petrov slid into the seat opposite and offered me a cigarette.

  ‘What are you doing here, Gregory?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m here to offer you a deal on behalf of a third party.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘Who is this third party?’

  He licked his lips. ‘Peter Zinnurov.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were friends.’

  Petrov’s eyes were tired and sad. ‘I loathe everything about Zinnurov. Everything.’

  ‘But you have come on his behalf,’ I said. ‘At his bidding.’

  ‘Let me tell you about my brother,’ he said, putting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it. He inhaled deeply. ‘The one who was arrested with me when I was a kid.’

  ‘You told me you made that story up.’

  He blew out a jet of smoke and sniffed. ‘Sadly, no – it’s a true story.’ The facile grin he had fixed to his face gave way to a truer, melancholy expression. ‘The officer in charge of our case was as good as his word. Ivan and I were both sent to prison as subversives. We were children. I was sixteen – Ivan a year younger – but I knew, in my bones I knew, I would survive. Ivan was made differently. He was frightened. The guards were vicious, the cell was dark and cold. Sometimes when he cried I got angry and told him to pull himself together. He would just go silent. He was so skinny. Tiny, thin little arms, hollow cheeks and big eyes. He was so small.’

  The attendant brought us brandy. Petrov threw his down in one gulp and ordered another. On the platform the first bell sounded: fifteen minutes to departure.

  ‘In the end I couldn’t stand being in the same cell, just couldn’t bear it any longer. Guilt, I suppose.’ His eyes were moist. He chewed his lower lip. ‘I bribed a guard with a few cigarettes to move me to another cell. It was a Saturday, in the afternoon. The next morning the guard came into my new cell. “Your brother’s dead,” he said. “He hanged himself during the night.” He was fifteen. Another month and he would have been sixteen.’

  Petrov stared at me. ‘There’s a lesson for you there, Otto. Never confess. If your brother hangs himself, that’s his business – not yours.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

  ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘How else does a man live in the real world?’

  He stubbed out his cigarette and put his elbows on the table, interlacing his fingers.

  ‘I often think to myself: What would have happened had Ivan not killed himself like that? My life would have been very different. At the time I despised myself for still being alive. I wanted to kill myself like Ivan. I wanted to hang myself. Someone came to me. He was omnipotent. Maybe everyone seems omnipotent to the prisoner, but I tell you, Otto, the minute I laid eyes on him I sensed his power, his absolute power. He was still, he hardly moved a muscle, and he looked at me with calm eyes. Sometimes you come across someone and they know everything about you, they know the secrets in your soul. He was like that. I couldn’t beat him in an argument. In everything I said he got the better of me. And he twisted what had happened with Ivan until he had me believing it was not me who was responsible for the fact he ended up dangling from the bars of a prison cell with a rope he made from his own shirt, but the Party. The Party killed Ivan. That’s what he persuaded me to believe. I never thought it would be possible to hate myself even more than I hated myself after Ivan died.’

  ‘You too, Gregory?’ I said.

  He nodded slowly. ‘Colonel Gan always finds your weakness, and once he has it, he never lets go.’

  I had only ever seen Petrov as a man with an unbreakable addiction to the crude and vigorous life, a troubled and, to a very large degree, self-loathing patient, fatigued in body and spirit by the very irascibility and high-spiritedness that, notoriously, made him who he was. I had sensed in him a desperate need to unburden himself but he never let me get close. He had once offered an analogy: a married man who loved his wife and was devoted to his children who nevertheless conceived a passion for another woman. That man was torn and confused. How could I have overlooked what he had been saying? He had been telling me all along: Petrov was in thrall not to a wife and mistress, but to two masters – Gan and Lenin; the Okhrana and the Party.

  The second bell rang: five minutes to departure. The train would leave immediately after the third bell.

  ‘Gan and Zinnurov are very angry, Otto,’ he said, a smile playing on his lips. ‘Have you any idea how difficult it is to kill a tsar? Have you any idea of what Gan was having to do to make the assassination look like it was carried out by Jew
ish terrorists? It’s a conjuring trick, a juggling act. And just when he’s got all the balls in the air, you go and shoot the most important one out of his hand. They underestimated you, Otto. I warned them not to but they didn’t listen. When they found Kopelzon, they couldn’t believe you’d killed him. You were his best friend!’

  He shook his head with amusement, and then sighed heavily.

  ‘Sadly, neither Gan nor Zinnurov shares my sense of humour. Gan gave an order for you to be assassinated.’

  He enjoyed the reaction the news provoked in me.

  ‘It’s all right, Otto. I intervened. I persuaded them to let you live.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I said that if anything happened to you I would go to the Bolshevik delegation in the Duma, confess that I have been spying for the Okhrana all along, and resign. Gan is a rational man. He saw at once that I am worth much more than your death, which, after all, would be a pure act of spite.’

  ‘Why would you bargain for my life?’

  He said nothing for some moments, then he looked at me with something like mild annoyance for my lack of understanding. ‘You helped me, Otto,’ he said quietly. ‘I would have killed myself had it not been for you.’

  I heard my name called. Anna was approaching the table.

  ‘Go back to the sleeping car,’ I said.

  Petrov got to his feet and bowed courteously.

  ‘What is he doing here?’ she said, looking at Petrov with a mixture of anxiety and distaste. ‘Did you know he was on the train?’

  ‘Actually I wasn’t on the train,’ Petrov said. ‘I came by a later one.’

  ‘Go back to the sleeping car, Anna,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Petrov said, ‘It’s better if she stays.’ He looked apologetically at me. ‘If it were up to me, Otto, I’d be happy to let the two of you go.’

  My hand moved to the gun in my coat pocket.

  ‘Have you seen the police and soldiers out there?’ Petrov said. ‘Are you going to shoot them all? Please, sit down and listen to what I have to say.’

  Neither Anna nor I moved.

  ‘Please,’ Petrov said.

  Slowly we took our places, side by side. Anna put her hand in mine.

  ‘The Mountain wants his daughter,’ Petrov said, looking to Anna.

  I clutched Anna’s hand. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never.’

  Petrov peered through the window as though looking for someone. We saw the head guard in his silver and red braid checking his pocket watch.

  ‘Take a look out there,’ Petrov said.

  Anna and I looked out to the platform. Among the passengers, policemen and porters were two tall, elderly men, one dressed in topcoat and hat, the other in the uniform of the Household Cavalry.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Anna cried, ‘they’ve got Catherine.’

  I jumped to my feet. Petrov held me by the wrist. He said quickly, ‘It’s all right, Otto. Trust me. Catherine will be fine as long as you do as they say.’

  Zinnurov pushed Catherine forward. She looked tiny compared to the men. Her head was bare and her jaw set.

  I wrenched free from Petrov and put my hands to the window. ‘Catherine!’ I shouted.

  I made for the aisle but Petrov got up to block my way. ‘You can have her, Otto,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, you can have her. I’ve arranged everything.’

  I looked at him, not understanding what I was hearing. Then comprehension came, and with it an awful, shuddering jolt.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I ran the length of the restaurant car, barging past passengers struggling with their baggage, and got to the door.

  ‘Father!’ Catherine shouted. She started forward, only to be pulled back by Gan.

  ‘Let her go!’ I shouted.

  ‘My daughter for yours, Spethmann,’ Zinnurov said calmly.

  Petrov was behind me. ‘They were going to kill Catherine and snatch Anna back by force,’ he whispered urgently. ‘I negotiated this deal for you. Don’t let me down, Otto. It’s the best you can get in the circumstances.’

  The head guard was looking along the length of the train, checking that everyone was aboard.

  I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the Mauser’s butt.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Petrov said, his voice hardening. ‘You and Catherine will both be killed.’

  The guards began slamming the doors shut as the last of the embarking passengers climbed aboard. I glanced back inside the restaurant car. Anna was gone. I rushed inside. She wasn’t there.

  The head guard rang the final bell. Anna was on the platform.

  ‘Anna!’

  I ran back to the door where Petrov was waiting. Anna was slowly walking towards her father.

  A guard came to close the door but Petrov held it open.

  ‘Catherine, come! Now!’ Petrov shouted and held out his hand, as the train started to crawl forward. Zinnurov released her and she ran towards us. I swung her aboard. She clutched me ferociously to her and would not let go.

  ‘Goodbye, Otto,’ Petrov said, leaping out onto the platform.

  The train picked up speed. I looked back over Catherine’s shoulder. Anna’s eyes met mine and her lips moved. Her hand rose slowly, a forlorn leave-taking. Then Zinnurov put his arm around his daughter and led her away.

  The attendant reached past us and pulled the door to. The train accelerated and the lights of the station started to fall behind. I led Catherine into the restaurant car. On the table was a single chess piece. It was the white king from my Jaques set, the final confession from the patient I failed most.

  ‘They say they’ll kill Mintimer if we say anything about what happened,’ Catherine said when I got her settled.

  ‘And if we don’t?’ I said.

  The question had not been intended seriously. Whatever we did, whatever we said, Gan and Zinnurov would go unpunished. They would destroy as many people as they had to, guilty and innocent, in pursuit of their ambitions.

  I put my arms around Catherine and kissed her. She rested her head on my shoulder. We did not speak.

  By mid-morning we were passing across the great plain of Poland. Desolate villages rolled past one after another. The poverty here had made Kopelzon cry. Kopelzon was a hypocrite, but he was probably telling the truth about his tears. Kopelzon was a hypocrite but his questions remained: What do you do if you are born into misery and deprivation? How do you look at your firstborn and not curse yourself for having brought flesh of your flesh into this place? And for those of us not born as they are, who do not know the fields of weeping, is the question any less urgent? What do we do? What do we do when we know that the time will come when fathers and mothers will no longer accept that their children have to have the lives they have lived? Rage and numbers will force the issue. It cannot be avoided. Nothing Colonel Gan or Zinnurov or Maklakov or the tsar or any of his ministers or generals could do would prevent a settling of accounts. They could tighten the chains: they could arrest, imprison, persecute and denounce. Or they could loosen the chains: they could mollify, apologise and promise. It would make no difference. They were in zugzwang. When things reach this pitch we are all in zugzwang. Past wrongs will not be forgiven. Rage and numbers will tell.

  Spethmann–Kopelzon

  St Petersburg, 1913–14

  l.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 6.Nge2 e5 7.h4 h5 8.Nd5 Nce7 9.Nec3 Nxd5 10.Nxd5 Be6 11.c4 Bxd5 12.cxd5 Bh6 13.b4 Bxcl 14.Rxcl b6 15.Bh3 Nh6 16.Qd2 Kf8 17.0–0 Kg7 18.f4 exf4 19.Rxf4 Re8 20.Qb2+ Re5 21.bxc5 bxc5 22.Rxc5 g5 23.hxg5 Qxg5 24.Rc2 Kh7 25.Rg2 Rg8 26.Qf2 Qe7 27.Rf6 Kg7 28.Rf4 Kh7 29.Bf5+ Nxf5 30.Rxf5 Rxf5 31.Qxf5+ Kh6 32.Qf4+ Rg5 33.g4 hxg4 34.Rxg4 Kh5 35.Rg2 Rxg2+ 36. Kxg2 Qc7 37.Qf5+ Kh638.Qf6+ Kh7 39.Kg3 Kg8 40.Kh4 Qb6 41.Kh5 Kf8 42.Kh6 Ke8 43.Kh7 Qc5 44.Qg7 Ke7 45.Qg5+ Ke8 46.Kg8 Qc7 47.Qh6 Qe7 48.Qg7 a6 49.a3 a5 50.a4 Kd8 51.Qf8+ Qe8 52.Kg7 1–0

  Those with an eye for these things may notice that the game bears a remarkable similarity to King–Sokolov, Swiss Team Championship, 2
000.

  Acknowledgements

  I have said before that when conflicts arise between historical fact and the demands of the novel, the novelist settles them in favour of the latter. There was a great chess tournament held in St Petersburg in April–May 1914 (the games were annotated by Siegbert Tarrasch in the tournament book (reprinted by Caissa in 1993)), but there was no participant called Avrom Chilowicz Rozental; chess enthusiasts will have their opinion on the identity of the man on whom they think he is based. I owe the interpretation of ‘master of the fly’ to an article by Grandmaster Nigel Davies in the Jerusalem Post.

  Similarities may also be observed between Zugzwang’s Gregory Petrov and the real-life Bolshevik militant Roman Malinowski, aspects of whose strange career are described in David Shub, Lenin (Pelican, 1976), Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (OUP, 1980), and most recently in Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).

  For the general social and political background of late-Tsarist Russia, the most important works on which I drew included: Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (Penguin, 1979); Sidney Harcave, First Blood: the Russian Revolution of 1905 (Bodley Head, 1964); W. Bruce Lincoln, In War’s Dark Shadow: the Russians before the Great War (Dial Press, 1983); Christopher Read, Religion, Revolution & the Russian Intelligentsia, 1900–1912 (Macmillan, 1979); S. Stepniak, Life Under the Tzars (Downey, n/d); Vera Broido, Apostles into Terrorists (Maurice Temple, 1977); Norman M. Naimark, Terrorists and Social Democrats (Harvard, 1983); Derek Offord, The Russian Revolutionary Movement of the 1880s (CUP, 1986); Maurice Baring, A Year in Russia (Methuen, 1907); Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs (3 vols, Octagon edn, 1970); and Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: sex and the search for modernity in fin-de-siècle Russia (Cornell, 1992).

  For St Petersburg: Boris Ometev & John Stuart, St Petersburg: Portrait of an Imperial City (Cassell, 1990); I.A. Egorov, The Architectural Planning of St Petersburg (Ohio, 1969); Nigel Gosling, Leningrad: history, art, architecture (Studio Vista, 1965); Julie A. Buckler, Mapping St Petersburg (Princeton, 2005); W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight (Basic Books, 2000); Robert B. McKean, St Petersburg Between the Revolutions (Yale, 1990).