Master of Petersburg

by J. M. Coetzee

  Nechaev seems disappointed. ‘Ah!’ he says. ‘Excuse us! Come in!’

  But the woman stays where she is. Under her arm she bears something wrapped in a white cloth. The children’s noses are keener than his. All together, without a word, they slither down from the bed and slip past the two men. The girl tugs the cloth loose and the smell of fresh bread fills the room. Without a word she breaks off lumps and gives them into her brothers’ hands. Pressed against their mother’s skirts, their eyes blank and vacant, they stand chewing. Like animals, he thinks: they know where it comes from and do not care.

  16

  The printing press

  He bows to the woman. From beneath the silly hat a rather timid, girlish, freckled face peers out. He feels a quick flicker of sexual interest, but it dies down. He should wear a black tie, or a black band around his arm in the Italian manner, then his standing would be clearer – to himself too. Not a full man any longer: half a man. Or on his lapel a medal with Pavel’s image. The better half taken, the half that was to come.

  ‘I must go,’ he says

  Nechaev gives him a scornful look. ‘Go,’ he says. ‘No one is stopping you.’ And then, to the woman: ‘He thinks I don’t know where he is going.’

  The remark strikes him as gratuitous. ‘Where do you think I am going?’

  ‘Do you want me to spell it out? Isn’t this your chance for revenge?’

  Revenge: after what has just passed, the word is like a pig’s bladder thumped into his face. Nechaev’s word, Nechaev’s world – a world of vengeance. What has it to do with him? Yet the ugly word has not been thrust at him without reason. Something comes back to him: Nechaev’s behaviour when they first met – the flurry of skirts against the back of his chair, the pressure of his foot under the table, the way he used his body, shameless yet gauche. Does the boy have any clear idea of what he wants, or does he simply try anything to see where it will lead? He is like me, I was like him, he thinks – only I did not have the courage. And then: Is that is why Pavel followed him: because he was trying to learn courage? Is that why he climbed the tower in the night?

  More and more it is becoming clear: Nechaev will not be satisfied till he is in the hands of the police, till he has tasted that too. So that his courage and his resolution can be put to the test. And he will come through – no doubt of that. He will not break. No matter how he is beaten or starved, he will never give in, not even fall sick. He will lose all his teeth and smile. He will drag his broken limbs around, roaring, strong as a lion.

  ‘Do you want me to take revenge? Do you want me to go out and betray you? Is that what it is meant to achieve, all this charade of mazes and blindfolds?’

  Nechaev laughs excitedly, and he knows that they understand each other. ‘Why should I want that?’ he replies in a soft, mischievous voice, giving the girl a sidelong glance as if drawing her into the joke. ‘I’m not a youth who has lost his way, like your stepson. If you are going to the police, be frank about it. Don’t sentimentalize me, don’t pretend you are not my enemy. I know about your sentimentalizing. You do it to women too, I’m sure. Women and little girls.’ He turns to the girl. ‘You know all about it, don’t you? How men of that type drop tears when they hurt you, to lubricate their consciences and give themselves thrills.’

  For someone of his age, extraordinary how much he has picked up! More even than a woman of the streets, because he has his own shrewdness. He knows about the world. Pavel could have done with more of that. There was more real life in the filthy, waddling old bear in his story – what was his name? Karamzin? – than in the priggish hero he so painfully constructed. Slaughtered too soon – a bad mistake.

  ‘I have no intention of betraying you,’ he says wearily. ‘Go home to your father. You have a father somewhere in Ivanovo, if I remember. Go to him, kneel, ask him to hide you. He will do it. There are no limits to what a father will do.’

  There is a wild snort of laughter from Nechaev. He can no longer remain still: he stalks across the cellar, pushing the children out of his way. ‘My father! What do you know about my father? I’m not a ninny like your stepson! I don’t cling to people who oppress me! I left my father’s house when I was sixteen and I’ve never been back. Do you know why? Because he beat me. I said, “Beat me once more and you will never see me again.” So he beat me and he never saw me again. From that day he ceased to be my father. I am my own father now. I have made myself over. I don’t need any father to hide me. If I need to hide, the people will hide me.

  ‘You say there are no limits to what a father will do. Do you know that my father shows my letters to the police? I write to my sisters and he steals the letters and copies them for the police and they pay him. Those are his limits. It shows how desperate the police are, paying for that kind of thing, clutching at straws. Because there is nothing I have done that they can prove – nothing!’

  Desperate. Desperate to be betrayed, desperate to find a father to betray him.

  ‘They may not be able to prove anything, but they know and you know and I know that you are not innocent. You have gone further than drawing up lists, haven’t you? There is blood on your hands, isn’t there? I’m not asking you to confess. Nevertheless, in the most hypothetical of senses, why do you do it?’

  ‘Hypothetically? Because if you do not kill you are not taken seriously. It is the only proof of seriousness that counts.’

  ‘But why be taken seriously? Why not be young and carefree as long as you can? There is time enough afterwards to be serious. And spare a thought for those weaker fellows of yours who made the mistake of taking you seriously. Think of your Finnish friend and of what she is going through at this very moment as a consequence.’

  ‘Stop harping on my so-called Finnish friend! She has been looked after, she isn’t suffering any more! And don’t tell me to wait to be old before I am taken seriously. I have seen what happens when you grow old. When I am old I won’t be myself any longer.’

  It is an insight he could have imagined coming from Pavel, never from Nechaev. What a waste! ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘I could have heard you and Pavel together.’ What he does not say is: Like two swords, two naked swords.

  But how clever of Nechaev to have forewarned him against pity! For that is just what he is on the point of feeling: pity for a child alone in the sea, fighting and drowning. So is he wrong to detect something a little too studied in Nechaev’s sombre look (for he has, surprisingly, fallen silent), in his ruminative gaze – more than studied, in fact: sly? But when was it last that words could be trusted to travel from heart to heart? An age of acting, this, an age of disguise. Pavel too much of a child, and too old-fashioned, to prosper in it. Pavel’s hero and heroine conversing in the funny, stammering, old-fashioned language of the heart. ‘I wish . . . I wish . . .’ – ‘You may . . . You may . . .’ Yet Pavel at least tried to project himself into another breast. Impossible to imagine Sergei Nechaev as a writer. An egoist and worse. A poor lover too, for sure. Without feeling, without sympathy. Immature in his feelings, stalled, like a midget. A man of the future, of the next century, with a monstrous head and monstrous appetites but nothing else. Lonely, lone. His proper place a throne in a bare room. The throne of ideas. A pope of ideas, dull ideas. God save the faithful then, God save the ruled!

  His thoughts are interrupted by a clatter on the stairs. Nechaev darts to the door, listens, then goes out. There is a furious whispering, the sound of a key in a lock, silence.

  Still wearing her little white hat, the woman has sat down on the edge of the bed with the youngest child at her breast. Meeting his eye, she colours, then lifts her chin defiantly. ‘Mr Ishutin says you may be able to help us,’ she says.

  ‘Mr Ishutin?’

  ‘Mr Ishutin. Your friend.’

  ‘Why should he have said that? He knows my situation.’

  ‘We’re being put out because of the rent. I’ve paid this month’s rent, but I can’t pay the back rent too, it’s too much.’

&nbs
p; The child stops sucking and begins to wriggle. She lets him go; he slithers off her lap and leaves the room. They hear him relieving himself under the stairs, moaning softly as he does so.

  ‘He’s been sick for weeks,’ she complains.

  ‘Show me your breasts.’

  She slips a second button and exposes both breasts. The nipples stand out in the cold. Lifting them up between her fingers, she softly manipulates them. A bead of milk appears.

  He has five roubles that he has borrowed from Anna Sergeyevna. He gives her two. She takes the coins without a word and wraps them in a handkerchief.

  Nechaev comes back. ‘So Sonya has been telling you of her troubles,’ he says. ‘I thought your landlady might do something for them. She’s a generous woman, isn’t she? That was what Isaev said.’

  ‘It’s out of the question. How can I bring –?’

  The girl – can her name really be Sonya? – looks away in embarrassment. Her dress, which is of a cheap floral material quite inappropriate to winter, buttons all the way down the front. She has begun to shiver.

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ says Nechaev. ‘I want to show you the press.’

  ‘I am not interested in your press.’

  But Nechaev has him by the arm and is half-steering, half-dragging him to the door. Again he is surprised by his own passivity. It is as though he is in a moral trance. What would Pavel think, to see him being used thus by his murderer? Or is it in fact Pavel who is leading him?

  He recognizes the press at once, the same old-fashioned Albion-of-Birmingham model that his brother kept for running off handbills and advertisements. No question of thousands of copies – two hundred an hour at most.

  ‘The source of every writer’s power,’ says Nechaev, giving the machine a slap. ‘Your statement will be distributed to the cells tonight and on the streets tomorrow. Or, if you prefer, we can hold it up till you are across the border. If ever you are taxed with it, you can say it was a forgery. It won’t matter by then – it will have had its effect.’

  There is another man in the room, older than Nechaev – a spare, dark-haired man with a sallow complexion and rather lustreless dark eyes, stooped over the composing table with his chin on his hands. He pays no attention to them, nor does Nechaev introduce him.

  ‘My statement?’ he says.

  ‘Yes, your statement. Whatever statement you choose to make. You can write it here and now, it will save time.’

  ‘And what if I choose to tell the truth?’

  ‘Whatever you write we will distribute, I promise.’

  ‘The truth may be more than a hand-press can cope with.’

  ‘Leave him alone.’ The voice comes from the other man, still poring over the text in front of him. ‘He’s a writer, he doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘How does he work then?’

  ‘Writers have their own rules. They can’t work with people looking over their shoulders.’

  ‘Then they should learn new rules. Privacy is a luxury we can do without. People don’t need privacy.’

  Now that he has an audience, Nechaev has gone back to his old manner. As for him, he is sick and tired of these callow provocations. ‘I must go,’ he says again.

  ‘If you don’t write, we’ll have to write for you.’

  ‘What do you say? Write for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And sign my name?’

  ‘Sign your name too – we’ll have no alternative.’

  ‘No one will accept that. No one will believe you.’

  ‘Students will believe – you have quite a following among the students, as I told you. Particularly if they don’t have to read a fat book to get the message. Students will believe anything.’

  ‘Come on, Sergei Gennadevich!’ says the other man. His tone is not amused at all. There are rings under his eyes; he has lit a cigarette and is smoking nervously. ‘What have you got against books? What have you got against students?’

  ‘What can’t be said in one page isn’t worth saying. Besides, why should some people sit around in luxury reading books when other people can’t read at all? Do you think Sonya next door has time to read books? And students chatter too much. They sit around arguing and dissipating their energy. A university is a place where they teach you to argue so that you’ll never actually do anything. It’s like the Jews cutting off Samson’s hair. Arguing is just a trap. They think that by talking they will make the world better. They don’t understand that things have to get worse before they can get better.’

  His comrade yawns; his indifference seems to goad Nechaev. ‘It’s true! That is why they have to be provoked! If you leave them to themselves they will always slide back into chattering and debating, and everything will run down. Your stepson was like that, Fyodor Mikhailovich: always talking. People who are suffering don’t need to talk, they need to act. Our task is to make them act. If we can provoke them to act, the battle is half won. They may be smashed, there may be new repression, but that will just create more suffering and more outrage and more desire for action. That’s how things work. Besides, if some are suffering, what justice is there till all are suffering? And things will accelerate too. You will be surprised at how fast history can move once we get it moving. The cycles will grow shorter and shorter. If we act today, the future will be upon us before we know it.’

  ‘So forgery is permitted. Everything is permitted.’

  ‘Why not? There’s nothing new in that. Everything is permitted for the sake of the future – even believers say so. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the Bible.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t. Only the Jesuits say so, and they will not be forgiven. Nor will you.’

  ‘Not be forgiven? Who will know? We are talking about a pamphlet, Fyodor Mikhailovich. Who cares who actually writes a pamphlet? Words are like the wind, here today, gone tomorrow. No one owns words. We are talking about crowds. Surely you have been in a crowd. A crowd isn’t interested in fine points of authorship. A crowd has no intellect, only passions. Or do you mean something else?’

  ‘I mean that if you knowingly bring down suffering on those wretched children next door, in the name of the future, you will not be forgiven, ever.’

  ‘Knowingly? What does that mean? You keep talking about the insides of people’s minds. History isn’t thoughts, history isn’t made in people’s minds. History is made in the streets. And don’t tell me I am talking thoughts right now. That is just another clever debating trick, the kind of thing they confuse students with. I’m not talking thoughts, and even if I am, it doesn’t matter. I can think one thing at one minute and another thing at another and it won’t matter a pin as long as I act. The people act. Besides, you are wrong! You don’t know your theology! Haven’t you heard of the pilgrimage of the Mother of God? On the day after the last day, when everything has been decided, when the gates of hell have been sealed, the Mother of God will leave her throne in heaven and make a pilgrimage to hell to plead for the damned. She will kneel and she will refuse to rise till God has relented and everyone has been forgiven, even the atheist, even the blasphemer. So you are wrong, you are contradicted out of your own books.’ And Nechaev casts him a blazing look of triumph.

  Forgiveness of all. He has only to think of it and his head spins. And they shall be united, father and son. Because it comes from the foul mouth of a blasphemer, shall it therefore not be the truth? Who shall prescribe where she may make her home, the Mother of God? If Christ is hidden, why should he not hide here in these cellars? Why should he not be here at this moment, in the child at the breast of the woman next door, in the little girl with the dull, knowing eyes, in Sergei Nechaev himself?

  ‘You are tempting God. If you gamble on God’s mercy you will certainly be lost. Don’t even think the thought – pay heed to me! – or you will fall.’

  His voice is so thick that he can barely pronounce the words. For the first time Nechaev’s comrade looks up, inspecting him with interest.

  A
s if sensing his weakness, Nechaev pounces, worrying him like a dog. ‘Eighteen centuries have passed since God’s age, nearly nineteen! We are on the brink of a new age where we are free to think any thought. There is nothing we can’t think! Surely you know that. You must know it – it’s what Raskolnikov said in your own book before he fell ill!’

  ‘You are mad, you don’t know how to read,’ he mutters. But he has lost, and he knows it. He has lost because, in this debate, he does not believe himself. And he does not believe himself because he has lost. Everything is collapsing: logic, reason. He stares at Nechaev and sees only a crystal winking in the light of the desert, self-enclosed, impregnable.

  ‘Be careful,’ says Nechaev, wagging a finger meaningfully. ‘Be careful what words you use about me. I am of Russia: when you say I am mad, you say Russia is mad.’

  ‘Bravo!’ says his comrade, and claps his hands in languid mockery.

  He tries a last time to rouse himself. ‘No, that’s not true, that’s just sophistry. You are only part of Russia, only part of Russia’s madness. I am the one’ – he lays a hand on his breast, then, struck by the affectedness of the gesture, lets it drop again – ‘I am the one who carries the madness. My fate, my burden, not yours. You are too much of a child to begin to bear the weight.’

  ‘Bravo again!’ says the man, and claps: ‘He has got you there, Sergei!’

  ‘So I will make a bargain with you,’ he pushes on. ‘I will write for your press after all. I will tell the truth, the whole truth in one page, as you require. My condition is that you print it as it stands, without changing a word, and send it out.’

  ‘Done!’ Nechaev positively glows with triumph. ‘I like bargains! Give him pen and paper!’

  The other man lays a board over the composing table and sets out paper.

  He writes: ‘On the night of October 12th, in the year of our Lord 1869, my stepson Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev fell to his death from the shot tower on Stolyarny Quay. A rumour has been circulated that his death was brought about by the Third Section of the Imperial Police. This rumour is a wilful fabrication. I believe that my stepson was murdered by his false friend Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev.