by Jasper Kent
‘What do you make of Tamara Valentinovna?’ he asked, changing the subject.
She turned back to the desk, sitting opposite him. ‘I despise her.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Oh, she doesn’t know.’ Raisa was a little more enthusiastic now, then switched to a tone of mockery. ‘She thinks we’re friends.’
‘Keep it that way.’
‘For how long?’
Yudin considered, but he had no answer. His plans were not yet fully formulated. ‘For the time being,’ was the best reply he could offer. ‘And then, she can be yours. They all can, if you want them.’
Raisa’s eyes grew distant. Yudin could guess what she was thinking, and the idea aroused him just as it must have done her. Young blood was always to be relished, and Raisa worked and lived in a house that brimmed with it. Images of death and terror and blood-smeared flesh washed through his mind, delighting him. Perhaps, when the time came, he would not let Raisa have them to herself. Perhaps he would make her share.
‘You pretend you’re different, but you’re not,’ said Raisa, both guessing and interrupting his thoughts. There was no joining of their minds as there would have been if one had created the other, but after so many years she understood him better than he found comfortable.
He smiled slightly. ‘You and I are both different. That’s why we’re alive.’
‘What do you know of her?’ asked Raisa.
‘Tamara Valentinovna?’ He skimmed through the files on his desk and found Tamara’s, although he could remember perfectly well the basic information it conveyed. ‘Born in Moscow in 1821. Daughter of Valentin Valentinovich Lavrov – a cloth merchant – and Yelena Vadimovna. Married. Moved to Petersburg. Had children. Began affairs with numerous gentlemen of varying nobility. One of them was a senior figure within the Third Section – not myself, I hasten to add – and so we were soon making good use of her; just as all those others had been. Recently she requested a move to Moscow …’
‘Enough!’ said Raisa abruptly.
‘You asked.’
She stood and walked back over to the chest, reaching out her hand to pull off the blanket. As she grasped it she paused, looking back towards Yudin. ‘Aren’t you going to stop me?’ she asked.
Yudin shrugged.
She tugged at the cloth and it fell to the floor, revealing a mirror. There was nothing special about it. The frame was of gilded wood. Its three sections were joined with hinges, like a triptych. It would grace any lady’s dressing table – as once it had.
‘Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
‘Wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?’
Yudin smirked as he spoke the words of the Grimms’ fairy tale. It was utterly apposite, as Raisa gazed into the mirror, searching for her lost beauty. But it was not original. He must have uttered the words a hundred times, on every occasion he caught her standing despondently in front of a looking glass, which was often. He hated to repeat himself, but he knew how much it annoyed her, so he continued to say it.
She ignored him, or at least put on a good show of doing so. He got out of his chair and stood behind her, gazing like her into the glass. The windowless room was lit only by lamplight, but still every detail could be seen. His desk, his chair, the shelves upon shelves of books, the stairs up to the world outside, the doorway down to what lay below. The only thing missing was any trace of either him or Raisa.
‘You promised me,’ she said.
‘I’ll keep my promise,’ he replied – and he meant it, though he knew she had little basis for believing him.
‘When?’
‘When I know how.’
‘It’s been thirty years.’ Her voice bore the weariness of those years. ‘Thirty years in which I’ve never been able to look upon my own face.’
Yudin’s eyes scanned the mirror, coming to rest at the point where he imagined his reflection should be. It was there – he knew it. Years ago he had carried out experiments that proved that the reflected image of a vampire could be seen by man and vampire alike, but that the minds of both for some reason blocked out that image and replaced it with nothing – or rather with what the mind expected to see. He knew that the image he saw, behind where his body should be, was a construction of his own intellect, formed from memory and guesswork. He could see a door that was closed, but that was because it had been closed when he last glimpsed it. If, somehow, one of those sad wretches from the chambers below were to ascend the stairs and silently open the door, intent on revenge for what had been done to them, then he would be quite oblivious to it. His own imagination would continue with the happy illusion that the door remained safely shut.
He turned and looked, but the door – the real door – was still closed.
‘I’m getting close,’ he said, almost forgetting that it was Raisa and not himself he was speaking to.
‘I have no reason to believe you,’ she said, ‘except that I know you’re even more curious than I am.’ She understood him perfectly. He wasn’t in the least curious to see his own face in the mirror, but was desperate to understand the mechanism that prevented it.
‘I’m expecting a delivery soon,’ he explained. ‘A new piece of equipment. From Iceland!’ His enthusiasm was real – dimmed, but still surviving from when he had been … from before. But he also knew he had been down similar roads already, always to find a dead end. It was a simple idea: a looking glass that could reflect the face of a vampire. And yet it had eluded him for a quarter of a century.
She turned away from the mirror to face him. ‘So am I still beautiful?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said. He wondered if she even thought it worth listening to him. For one thing, he could so easily lie, and for another, he did not know whether he any longer had the ability to judge. Every sensation, every human desire, had been dimmed when he had made that transition and become a voordalak. The hunger for food and the thirst for drink were gone, as was the desire for the touch of female flesh. For Yudin, such things had always been weaknesses – base, animal desires that acted only as a distraction from what truly interested him. But with hunger came the appreciation of the work of a great chef; with thirst came a palate that recognized a fine vintage; with lust came the admiration of a beautiful face. His intellect understood that Raisa Styepanovna was beautiful, but his heart felt nothing. He saw her as though through a glass, darkly, and was glad of it. He had lost all his visceral human yearnings and replaced them with one: a taste for blood that he could easily control. But what had remained of him? The only thing in himself that he had ever loved: his curiosity.
Raisa raised her hands and put them to her face, running her fingertips across her pale skin. ‘I feel … old,’ she said.
Yudin peered at her. He genuinely couldn’t see it, but he knew that he could not trust himself. And it was a possibility. A vampire could be forever young, but only if it remained well fed. He looked into her eyes and saw a smile in them. He knew what she was asking, and since he had not completely banished his own corporeal desires, he was happy to indulge her – and himself. Their conversation had given him a thirst.
He turned and went to the door behind them, unlocking it with a key that he kept inside his jacket on a chain. He opened the door and held out his hand, showing Raisa Styepanovna that she should lead the way. She lifted her skirts slightly and began to descend the narrow stone staircase. Yudin closed the door behind them and followed her down, down to a department of the Third Section that not even Dubyelt had the first inkling existed.
It was a journey Tamara knew she had to make. The house where she had grown up, still her parents’ home, was scarcely two versts from where she now lived – and worked. She certainly wasn’t going to make the suggestion that they should visit her. She hadn’t written to say she was moving back and so they had not heard of her by any means for quite some time. They knew as well as she did that they were not her parents, but she had no doubt they possessed as much love for her as they did for
her brother, Rodion Valentinovich – whose pedigree she had no reason to question.
She crossed Great Nikitskaya Street, the halfway point of her short journey, and felt suddenly more nervous. She stepped back into a doorway to light a cigarette, taking off her mitten so that she could hold it. The match flared brightly, illuminating her face, but nobody was near to see it. She breathed in, enjoying the noxious, sulphurous smell in anticipation of what it portended. She felt instantly calmer. A man walked past and glanced at her through the dancing snowflakes. She noticed a look of outrage beginning to form on his face, but then he walked briskly past. People could object as much as they wanted. A word from her could have him arrested. She enjoyed the sense of power, even though she had never used it so trivially.
Emboldened, she stepped out into the street and continued walking, cigarette in hand. In the case of the gentleman who had just passed, she realized, there would have been no need to threaten arrest. He had recognized her, and she him. She had seen him at least twice at Degtyarny Lane – he might even be heading there now. Tobacco was nothing in comparison with his vices.
Would Valentin Valentinovich and Yelena Vadimovna ever have the slightest chance of understanding her, she wondered. She hoped she would never find out. Yelena at least would be prepared to listen, perhaps to sympathize, but it was difficult to envisage in similar circumstances her doing the same, even to protect her own husband.
Vitaliy Igorevich had been Tamara’s first love, and her only love. She had moved to Petersburg to be with him when they married, in 1840, when she was nineteen. He had been twenty-eight. On the eve of their wedding he had, a strict traditionalist, presented her with his diary. She had stayed up almost the whole night reading it, reading of the seven lovers he had previously known, of his feelings towards her as expressed to himself and of his hope for the future, not only for them, but for Russia. By morning she had discovered ways in which she loved him that she had never guessed, without any diminution of the ways in which she already loved him. That evening she discovered yet another way to love him, and for him to express his love for her.
It was in 1844, when Milenochka was three and Stasik was nearly one – Luka not even dreamed of – that things changed. Up until then Tamara had always felt a liking for Prince Larionov, not least for the fact that he was her husband’s most enthusiastic sponsor. Vitaliy was a physician. He did not come from a wealthy family – Tamara herself had probably brought more money to the marriage – and so he spread his work between meagre employment at the Army Medical Academy and more lucrative private practice. Prince Larionov, a regular patient, recommended Vitya’s services widely to his friends, and even occasionally paid for those services when his friends saw fit to ignore their medical bills.
But in 1844 Larionov had called on Tamara during the day, while Vitya was at the Academy. There was nothing so unusual in that, but the story he told her was concerning. There had been a death a few weeks earlier in the Academy hospital. A young soldier had been horribly burned when a cannon exploded near him. The tragedy was that it had not even taken place on the battlefield, merely during artillery training at Volkovo Polye. Whether much could have been done to save him was a moot point, and Vitya had been just one of several doctors who had tried, but the soldier had come from a noble family and his death might have ramifications. Tamara remembered the word as it had formed on Larionov’s lips – ‘ramifications’.
Essentially, as Larionov had tactfully explained, it was possible that rumours might spread that would mean Vitya was never welcomed again as a doctor in a private house, either in Petersburg or in Moscow. And then Larionov had added that there also existed the possibility that such rumours might not spread.
In retrospect, Tamara realized that Larionov was probably a little taken aback by the naivety of her response. She was genuinely touched by his concern and desperately hoped that together they could find some way to save Vitya’s career.
‘What can we do?’ she’d asked.
Larionov had smiled, and Tamara saw in him for the first time the hint of something vile. ‘How well you put it,’ he said. ‘Because your husband’s fate depends very much upon what you and I do – together.’
At the same moment Larionov had placed his hand upon her leg and his smile had widened, but only on one side, and Tamara had understood everything. When Larionov left her house, seconds later, he could have been in no doubt as to how she felt about his proposal, but he displayed no diminution in his self-confidence. She should have told Vitya, but she could not imagine the words on her tongue. She didn’t have the openness that Vitya had shown when he gave her his diary. All she could do was hope that Larionov would accept defeat.
It was three weeks before Vitya mentioned that a number of patients – four, to be precise – had told him they no longer required his services. It was no great financial loss – Vitya never charged more than he knew his patients could afford, and these families were on the outer fringes of the aristocracy – but it troubled him that people who had once put so much trust in him could suddenly turn him away.
Tamara understood immediately. This was just Larionov flexing his muscles. Those families were not significant of themselves, but as soon as Larionov whispered his lies into the ears of a more respected household there would be no stopping the gossip.
The following day, Tamara had gone to visit Prince Larionov. He had screwed her there and then, in his salon, having told the footman to step outside. Tamara had tried to think of Vitya, but that only made it worse. As the weeks and months went by, she learned to think of nothing. But Vitya lost no more clients, and even gained a few, thanks to Larionov’s enthusiastic recommendation, as he never failed to explain to her. It was intended to make her feel worse, to feel more controlled by him than she already was – and it succeeded.
After about a year Larionov grew tired of her and passed her on to a friend – passed her on, like a book he had enjoyed and was pleased to recommend to another. But already she had heard things from Larionov’s lips that he would hope never made it to the ear of the tsar, but never dreamed she would be in a position to tell. It was through her fourth lover that she became connected with the Third Section. By then Larionov had long forgotten her, but she had acquired a reputation among men in a certain stratum of society, and while no one was as barefaced as Larionov about it, Tamara could not doubt that Vitya’s new-found success was in some way down to her own. And when she thought that, she hated herself more. Vitya was a brilliant man – he didn’t need her help to succeed.
The fourth man for whom Tamara acted as a harlot was Actual State Councillor Popov, of the Third Section – assistant to Dubyelt himself on all matters related to censorship. Tamara told Popov and Popov told Dubyelt and Dubyelt told Orlov and Orlov told His Majesty. Prince Larionov’s fall from favour was rapid, but not widely publicized. He was allowed to retire to his smallest country estate – a mere fifty serfs. Somewhere near Kazan, Tamara recalled. If he returned to Petersburg or Moscow he would be arrested. She would have liked that.
Popov tired of her body too, but not of her mind. He introduced her to General Dubyelt and her status as a courtesan became officially sanctioned. There was no way out of it for her now – whatever power Larionov might have had to destroy her and Vitya’s lives was as nothing compared with what Dubyelt might achieve. And, she convinced herself, she was acting for her country – and risking less in that cause than the common soldier did every day.
And then 1848 had come.
She stopped. She was outside the Lavrovs’ home – her home – in the south of the Arbat. She threw what remained of her cigarette to the ground and it hissed as the snow melted and then extinguished the glowing tip. Five weathered stone steps separated her from the front door of the house in which she had grown up. She looked up to the window above – the window of what had once been her bedroom – and then turned and gazed out across the snow-blanketed street. She always remembered it as snowy, and always remembered watchi
ng and waiting. Sometimes it was to stare longingly at the figure of a man departing, sometimes eagerly, knowing that he would soon return. And then the memory came to her of the man just standing there in the street, almost at the spot where she stood now, his neck craned, like hers, to look up at the window. But that had been a different man and the more she tried to recall him the more the memory made her feel afraid, and also protective; protective of … her mother?
The door opened, banishing her recollections.
‘Hello, Dubois,’ she said with half a smile to the butler who had evidently spied her presence before she had even needed to knock – the same French butler she had known since she was seventeen.
‘Madame Tamara.’ His speech was as understated as ever, but she could tell that he was surprised, and pleased.
He took her hat, coat and mittens and almost – but not quite – ran to announce her to her parents. They had changed little, in her eyes at least. Yelena Vadimovna was now sixty-two, but did not show it as she ran across the room to greet her daughter. Valentin Valentinovich moved more slowly, partly due to his age, partly due to his generally more restrained manner, but his embrace was as tight as Yelena’s had been.
They talked a lot about very little. At first they spoke of the war and of Rodion, Tamara’s brother. He was stationed at Helsingfors. Apparently, the British fleet in the Baltic was even larger than in the Black Sea, though the waters were unnavigable until spring. The whole family had been back for the New Year and they’d left the eldest boy, Vadim Rodionovich, to stay with his grandparents to be educated in Moscow – it was a shame he’d already gone to bed when Tamara arrived. Then, realizing perhaps that it revealed too much if they spoke only of her brother’s side of the family, they began to turn the conversation on to her.