by James Meek
He crossed the bridge and saw Anna Petrovna’s house. He stopped. There was nothing to force him to go in. There was much to encourage him to turn back and go to bed. It was late, ten o’clock perhaps, although who knew? The time signal from Irkutsk only came as often as the telegraph line was up. Tomorrow he would have to account to Matula for the death of the shaman, and the captain would still be looking for the missing horses. Anna Petrovna didn’t care if he came or not. Did she? The doubt hurt and intimidated him. Less painful than approaching her house before she’d yielded to him, but then it had been a pain of being alive, and this was not that. He’d shared her bed seven times, four times until first light, three creeping away while it was still dark, feeling the walls and the furniture with his fingertips, trying not to wake Alyosha, hearing Anna smothering laughter when he made a floorboard creak, and then making the board creak on purpose just to hear her laugh. After the seventh time she told him she wouldn’t let him stay any more. No, couldn’t, that was what she said, and never explained.
A dog barked. Mutz began to count to ten. If the dog barked again before he finished, he’d go forward. He reached ten. The dog didn’t bark. He walked forward, as he’d known he would. He was prisoner enough already without being a prisoner of dogs.
He walked to the back of the house, went through the gate and across the yard and entered by the unlocked back door, into the warm, bright kitchen. Broucek sat at the head of the small table, hands clasped around a cup of tea, his rifle leaning in the corner like a broom. Anna was sitting facing the door in a dark blue dress. She smiled and greeted Mutz and didn’t unfold her arms. Broucek put the cup down and got to his feet. Mutz closed the door behind him. He shouldn’t have come.
Anna got up, came round the table to him and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Broucek was telling me about the visitor,’ she said.
Mutz looked at Broucek. ‘Since when did you speak Russian so well?’ he asked.
Broucek grinned and shrugged, picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder.
‘Don’t fuss,’ said Anna to Mutz. ‘People find ways to talk. Sit down.’
Mutz sat down in Broucek’s place. The wooden chair was warm. Broucek drained his cup, thanked Anna Petrovna, touched his cap to Mutz, who nodded, and left.
‘I wouldn’t call him a visitor,’ said Mutz. Anna put a cup in front of him and he raised it to his mouth with both hands. He realised he was mimicking Broucek and lowered it without drinking.
‘Well, tell me,’ said Anna, sitting back down and leaning forward. Mutz tried to concentrate. How strange that the more time you spent thinking about a face, the more you were shocked to see it.
‘His name is Samarin. Kyrill Ivanovich.’
‘From?’
‘Somewhere west of the Urals, originally. Black earth country. Near Penza, I think.’
‘Age?’
‘About thirty, I’d guess.’
‘How hopeless you are at finding things out. What does he look like? Is he clever? He must be starving after wandering in the forest. No wonder the ones who made a revolution were prisoners. I would’ve been a revolutionary if they’d put me in prison.’
‘If you mean the Bolsheviks, the ones who made a revolution weren’t prisoners,’ said Mutz. ‘They were exiles. It’s not the same. As far as his looks are concerned, he looks like a matinee idol.’
Anna hit his knuckles with a teaspoon. ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ she said.
‘He’s tall, and thin,’ said Mutz. ‘I saw him change. I saw him as a convict, beaten and exhausted. And then he was something else. In a moment. A persuader. Someone who takes action, who makes others do it.’
‘Go on,’ said Anna. Mutz had paused. He felt reluctant to say any more about Samarin, and regretted what he’d already said.
‘How do we know which was the true Samarin, and which was him performing?’ he said.
‘Maybe both of them were really him.’
‘Maybe neither of them were.’
‘You don’t like him,’ said Anna.
Mutz recognised it was true, but didn’t want to admit it. ‘You can go and see him tomorrow if you like,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a hearing in front of Matula. Samarin will have to account for himself. You’ll have to get Matula’s permission.’
‘Fu!’
‘It’s up to you.’
Anna fidgeted with her ring. ‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘I’ll take him some food.’
Mutz buried his face in the cup and felt a pleasant inner surge which he couldn’t identify but which was related to the photograph in his pocket.
‘So you don’t know Samarin?’ he said.
Anna looked at him without understanding. He felt helplessly, remotely tender towards her, like someone at a conjuring show who sees another member of the audience, who has been enjoying herself, made fearful when the conjuror calls her up on stage. He recognised the surge now, when it was too late: malice. Now she could only ask why, and he would have to tell her.
‘He was carrying a photograph of you.’ Mutz took it out and gave it to Anna. She went pale when she saw it and put her hand to her mouth.
‘Where did the convict get this?’
‘He said he found it in the street. You didn’t lose it, did you?’
‘Not in Siberia. Have you seen Gleb Alexeyevich tonight?’
‘Balashov? Yes. He was worried about you, for some reason.’
‘Did you see him before or after this Samarin was arrested?’
‘After. Yes, after. Why?’
Anna put the picture down, planted her elbows on the table and ran her fingers through her hair, staring ahead of her without focusing.
‘Anna, I’m sorry – I feel as if I’ve done you some wrong,’ said Mutz. He reached out to touch her shoulder.
‘Don’t,’ she said, moving his hand away gently.
‘Perhaps there’s no need to tell me.’
‘This photograph was my husband’s. He always carried it. I thought it’d been lost when he died, in his last battle. It’s the only print. I broke the negative. I haven’t seen it for five years.’
‘Anna, please – if you say you don’t know Samarin, I believe you. I don’t want to make you think about your husband.’
Anna was nodding, not listening to him. He’d grown so used to her refusal to talk about what had happened between the death of her husband and the Czechs’ arrival in Yazyk that to see her now, brooding on an old photograph and events in her life that he knew nothing about, made him feel just partly loved once, that all their night whisperings and jokes and confidences and shared memories, even the sounds and movements she made with him in bed, were abridged, altered for an uninitiated lover.
‘But whatever you can tell me,’ said Mutz, hopelessly. The more distracted she was the more he wanted her to desire him again.
Anna looked up, smiled in an empty way, and took Mutz to the parlour. The enclosure of her warm palm and fingers, the remote pull of her body, replaced the present for him. Leading him by the hand, sitting him down in the divan, darting forward, kissing him on the mouth, darting back, laughing, then him finding her mouth and running his hand under her skirt and between her thighs, that was how it had begun, under that ugly painting of her husband in full hussar’s uniform, with the black mourning band across the corner. Now this was like a clumsy rehearsal long after the final performance. He found himself alone on the divan, watching Anna sitting at the writing desk on the other side of the room, laying the photograph on her lap, then lifting it to her face, fascinated. Her mouth opened a little and she frowned as she held the picture at a distance, brought it slowly closer, moved it away again.
Anna remembered how hot the light had been. A friend had arranged for her to use one of the new electric spotlights at Kiev Opera before it had been fitted. An enormous, focused, burning lamp shining on her face in a tiny, stuffy room. She’d kept switching it on and off to stop her skin being scorched and to stop the room becoming intolerably close
. Of all the exposures and poses, this had been the only one which worked. That was why she’d been smiling: she knew she’d got it, the moment when of all the many possible truths of light and shade and skin and eyes, she’d found the one that humbled the others. She’d given the picture to her husband just before the war began. She wondered if it was only tonight that other men had seen it.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Mutz, knowing he would praise her skill.
‘A brilliant work of art,’ said Mutz, eagerly.
‘What did the convict say? Samarin? What did he make of it?’
Mutz paused, wondering why Anna cared. Anna noticed that he paused. Mutz said: ‘Beauty.’
‘“Beauty”? He said that?’
‘He said it as if it was your job. As if you were the village beauty, going about your rounds.’
‘Hm. Arrogance! D’you think I’m the village beauty, Josef?’
Mutz feared invitations for easy praise from the women he loved. Anna listened while he hestitated. She wondered if Mutz had represented the convict accurately; if not, why not? An educated young Russian man come among them, like a messenger from a more normal world.
‘Was that all he said?’ she asked. Again, Mutz hesitated, for longer this time. Not all, then.
‘He asked me to pass on his compliments, and said that your picture will outlive us,’ said Mutz.
Anna nodded and tried not to let Mutz see how delighted this made her. She failed. She was surprised herself that she cared so much. She was surprised she found it so difficult, so inconvenient, that Mutz still yearned for her. She looked down again at the five-year-old photograph of herself lying on the writing desk, the picture her husband had carried, and like a reflex her thumb touched her teeth. That was the instant she realised that inside the desk she held a terrible power to resolve this. It hadn’t occurred to her to use it before: it hadn’t occurred to her it was something she could use, that it was anything other than a curse.
Mutz saw. He saw the quick little movement of her touching her teeth with the tip of her thumb, held there for a few seconds, then the thumb slowly lowered as the thought settled in her, and she turned to look at him, as if to make sure he was still there. Mutz felt foolish – his mind volunteered a recording of him imploring Anna to come to Prague with him – then grief, then dread. Something fearful was about to happen. He was ready to do anything to delay it, but he had no idea what to do. Tell a story? Run from the house? Stride over to Anna and kiss her, even if she struggled? Beg?
‘Josef,’ said Anna. ‘I never told you what you wanted to know, why I was here, and why I stopped seeing you in the old way.’
She was taking out a key. She was unlocking a drawer in the desk. Mutz knew that she was planning to introduce some evil into his life that she had protected him from before and that he would never be able to get rid of. He got up. ‘Anna,’ he said. He took a few steps forward, and stopped. ‘Anna. My darling. Please. Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be now.’
Anna paid no attention. She was reaching into the drawer and pulling out a thick bundle of paper. She turned to Mutz.
‘When you read this, you’ll see why I came here, but perhaps not why I stayed,’ she said. She gave a sob, and shook her head, smiled and went on. ‘He built this secret, but it was me who locked myself in, as if I could ever live there, as if I could change it. What a fool! As for you, Josef, of course it makes what we did a disgrace, but hardly compared to his own. At times I’ve pitied him and despised him, at times felt shame at myself, and our affair was in one of the despising times, but it wasn’t just the pity coming back which made me stop with you.’ She paused. ‘Listen to me. I sound so earnest. Like him. But that isn’t a bad thing, is it? Is it?’
‘No,’ said Mutz. Every cell in his body felt misaligned.
‘The most important thing,’ said Anna, ‘is that Alyosha doesn’t know. If possible, I don’t want him ever to know. Is that clear? Do you promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘He likes you. I think you like him, don’t you? But you never talk to him. Anyway. Take it. I don’t want to be here while you’re reading it. Will you read it?’
Mutz nodded. He couldn’t speak.
‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ said Anna, and went out.
Mutz took the papers and began to read the neat lines of handwriting.
The Husband
My dearest Anna, my star,
I have burned dozens of pages – nothing can be left for others to see – trying to find a way to tell you about the way I have changed, and at last, here is the telling I have settled on. It will seem confused and perhaps there will be parts you cannot understand. In the beginning I thought I would not tell you everything, but I have decided not to hide anything from you, no matter how hard it is for me to write and how hard it will be for you to read. The words are for you, and they are for me, too. Even now when so much is written and read and forgotten, in the writing of a thing, it becomes in some way sacred.
Did you think I was dead? I am sorry. Yes, for that, I am sorry, and I beg you to forgive me. I can see your beloved face all twisted up in crying for me being dead, and I want to be there and show you that I am alive, more than alive, far more! So I am sorry for that. When I tell you how I have changed, I understand that you may wish I had died. (Don’t be frightened.) What you must understand is that I cannot ask your forgiveness for what I have done, because I can only ask your forgiveness for sins, and what I have done is not a sin before God. On the contrary it is an escape from sin. My regret is not for the way I have changed but that it took so long before I found out how I should change. And I regret that I have had to leave you and Alyosha behind. Now I understand how it must feel to be saved from a shipwreck when your loved ones have not been saved, when you know they are still treading the cold water out there, shouting for help but not knowing from where it might come. I should tell you that we, those among whom I live now, call our community a ‘ship’. Anna, I live among angels here. It seems natural for me to write that, and to tell you that I am an angel, too, but when I read the words I have just written, I remember that you might think I have gone out of my mind. So I must tell you everything, without shame or fear.
It was never a secret to you that I was a strong believer, that I believed in the truth of every word of the Gospels, that when the words of apostles and prophets seemed to contradict each other, it was my own lack of wisdom which made me fail to understand them. I think you knew how I believed in Paradise, the state of Heaven and of Earth, too, before Adam and Eve tasted the Forbidden Fruit. That was the Paradise I imagined, Eden, not Heaven, where you and I and God would walk together in the forest, talking, and you and I would ride alongside angels across a boundless meadow. I do not think you knew how much it troubled me how unlike Eden our world is, and how unlike angels you and I were. I hated to see how so many of the peasants expected they would live so badly forever; how they drank and beat each other and went hungry, how their babies would stop breathing at their mothers’ breasts from disease or famine, and how they could travel hundreds of miles through black mud to kiss a famous icon. I hated to see how our factories were taking peasants and turning them into parts in a machine. I hated the way everyone lied; the lawyers lied as their profession, the bureaucrats lied about how honest they were, the priests lied about being good, the doctors lied about being able to heal the sick, the journalists lied about all the other liars. I hated the way people hurt their horses. They seem more dignified than us, closer to the horses of Eden than we are to the man and woman of Eden. They manage to be what we cannot be, proud and humble at the same time. The Colonel loved horses. He treated them well and made his men treat them well. He was killed, by the way, did you know? When I saw the Hussars for the first time I wanted to be one of them. Their horses and their clothes were so beautiful, and even their faces – they seemed more made for love than for war. Fierce love, a love that wanted to conquer, but love all the same, and I was only seven
teen, it was the kind of love I wanted to carry to the world sewn on a banner. I was very ignorant and foolish. I really thought there would be no more wars, and if there were, somehow, those beautiful Hussars and their beautiful horses would be too fine to spoil with bullets. And it was only later that I found out how many of the Hussars were drunkards and gamblers and brutes to women. Anyway at that time I believed the Tsar to be especially close to God, in a way none of the priests I met were, and to serve the Tsar seemed to be a way to serve God as becoming a monk was not. Besides, if I had become a monk, I would never have been able to be with you.
You knew the officer I spent most time with, of course, Chernetsky, the one who was always trying to prove he had Mongol blood, even though he was blond, with blue eyes. We went on picnics together, didn’t we? There was a meadow by the river with rushes and flowers. He spilled wine on your dress and pretended he was going to shoot himself. We laughed a lot, I remember. I should say you and Chernetsky and someone I once was laughed a lot. I suppose I don’t laugh so much now I’m an angel. Only for joy, not for mockery.
There was another man in the regiment I did not tell you about. His name was Chanov. He was the farrier. He was short, thin and strong, with a tanned face and high cheekbones and a moustache that never grew beyond a few curly hairs. You could not say how old he was, or whether the wrinkles that radiated out across his face from the bridge of his nose were caused by age or the sun or both. He was from Siberia. He worked at the forge from first light to dusk and sometimes into the night, and that, together with the fact that he knew everything there was to know about horses, saved him from punishment for his caprices. He would never salute an officer, so they kept him hidden when a general came to visit, and he refused to go to delousing with the rest of the men, when everyone would strip in a hut and be sprayed and showered. He’d leave the barracks and come back a few hours later with some spravka from a private bathhouse in town, saying that he’d been sprayed and showered there. He seldom spoke. I had heard rumours about him before I met him, that he was a former convict who had served ten years’ hard labour for murder, that he had lost his whole family in the famine, and that he was not Orthodox, or Jewish, or Catholic, or a Muslim, but a member of one of those queer mystical sects you read about. They said he was a khlyst, a flagellant, that he beat himself and whirled around like a top in secret ceremonies which ended in orgies. I knew he was a vegetarian, and didn’t drink, which is a mark of these non-conformists, but he was also to be seen at every Orthodox church service.