The Third Section (Danilov Quintet 3)

by Jasper Kent

  In the end, it was unnecessary. The vampire looked briefly in either direction, without even registering the approaching figure of a priest. He hung around for a few moments more and then headed off east, evidently concluding that Yudin had escaped him. Perhaps tonight his attention was more easily held by ideas of hunger than of vengeance. Yudin let him get a little way ahead and then followed, always one bend in the road behind, always just out of sight.

  The voordalak kept to the road for a little way, then turned left, cutting through one side street after another as he wended his way broadly northwards. They were well outside the centre of the city when the vampire, entirely as though this was the route he had planned, turned into a lane heading east. Yudin quickly ran up to the corner and looked round, but the street was empty. On the left-hand side there was a tavern. It seemed the likely destination, but Yudin couldn’t be sure – and wasn’t going to wait.

  The sight of a priest in a tavern wouldn’t be too unusual, and so Yudin chose not to change his disguise. He wrapped his scarf around the bottom half of his face, for fear of being recognized close to. At the tavern door, he paused. It could be a trap. He could have been led here deliberately. But to a tavern? He could hear the hubbub of many voices within. It was too crowded for them to act against him – unless all of them in there were voordalaki, expectant of his arrival. Just how many of them could have escaped Chufut Kalye?

  He went inside. It was as busy as any hostelry in the city at that time of night and at that time of year. A quick glance around identified the figure who had been following him, standing beside a table at the far end of the bar. He seemed to be introducing himself to the three men sitting there, and holding out a bottle of vodka, which he could only just have purchased, in the hope of gaining admittance to the group. His overtures were accepted and he sat down, filling the others’ glasses.

  Yudin went to the bar and ordered wine, and then sat in the furthest corner from the four of them, watching. He sipped his drink without enthusiasm, keeping his eyes on the table across the room, trying to fathom what the plan was. Those other three were humans, Yudin was sure of that; not comrades that the voordalak had arranged to meet, but potential victims that he had happened upon by chance. As far as Yudin could tell, they were drunks, like most Russians. The voordalak went back to the bar and ordered another bottle, drinking as freely as the others, and by the end of it they were all ‘mates’. Yudin could not have managed the deception, not even when he had been human. In his life he’d had few friends and no ‘mates’.

  Then the voordalak sprang his trap. Yudin could not hear a word of what was said, but he could guess every meaning. The vampire stood and signalled towards the door. He knew a great place where they could go. Maybe he was offering women; maybe more, cheaper vodka. Whatever the bait, one of the men bit. That it was only one would make it easier. The man stood and, arms round each other’s shoulders, he and the voordalak headed for the door, each using the other for support. A vampire couldn’t get drunk, however much he consumed, and it was clearly all for show. But it would make them easier to follow.

  Yudin let the door swing closed behind them and then got to his feet. As he exited, he saw the two figures, carrying on along the road in which the tavern stood. They were singing – the voordalak better than the man. He followed them, remaining stealthy, not letting the appearance of inebriation fool him into thinking that the vampire was not still on guard.

  The road they followed ran alongside the railway track, at the very beginning of the long route to the capital, high on an embankment so that the gradient would never be too steep. On that side of the street there were no houses, those that had once stood there wiped away and the occupants made homeless in the name of progress. Yudin smiled at the thought. At last they came to a church. It was a small, unimpressive place, in a sorry state of repair. Away from the road, the cemetery was quite extensive, but the line of the railway had cut it neatly in half. The vampire signalled to his new friend that this was where they had been headed, but the man appeared reluctant. The vampire went over and unlocked the main door in the side of the squat red-brick nave, then staggered back out to the street. He said a few more words to the man and then started singing again. The aria immediately became a duet, and the two figures, arms once again around shoulders, tottered inside. The door closed behind them and Yudin raced up and put his ear to it.

  The building screamed of being a vampires’ nest. It would have a crypt in which they could sleep during the day, comfortably, as undead among the dead. It was a little way from any other buildings, but not too far so that they wouldn’t be able to go out and find fresh meat. And the whole place smelled of voordalaki – or smelled of their victims. The one scent was never far from the other.

  From inside the sound of two voices in perfect discord reduced to one – the man, Yudin guessed. Then there was a thud and a shriek and another, louder thud, and all was silence. Next would come the feeding. That was good; it would make the voordalak unwary. Even so, Yudin would not enter by the door. He began to circle the church, looking for an alternative way in.

  They hadn’t sat at the dinner table. As soon as Konstantin had seen Tamara’s tears he had taken her over to a divan. He brought her a glass of wine and then sat beside her. Occasionally, he would go to the table and bring her something from the banquet that had been laid out for them, or bring something for himself, but then he seemed reluctant to eat in front of her. He appeared entirely discomforted by the whole situation, but never once annoyed by it.

  She had told him the story of her marriage and her time in Petersburg. Not the whole of it – she had missed off any mention of Prince Larionov or any of the other men she had met through him. But she told him of how she believed she was not the Lavrovs’ child, and of her search for her true parents. She had explained that she had been married to Vitya and had borne Milenochka, Stasik and Luka. She had told him about the epidemic of 1848, of her flight to Pavlovsk, of the deaths of Milena and Stanislav, and of the murder of Vitya. She told it all as she had previously told those few friends in whom she felt she could confide.

  But when it came to Luka, her youngest boy, for once she told the truth.

  ‘After I came back to Petersburg with Luka, and found that Vitya was dead, I fell ill again.’

  ‘Another attack of cholera?’ asked Konstantin.

  ‘No. Melancholia, some doctors said – others, hysteria. They say I screamed whenever they tried to bring Luka into the room, and hid my face in the pillows.’

  ‘“They say”?’

  ‘I don’t remember very much, but I do remember hating Luka. I can’t understand it now, but I hated him in the same way I hated myself – we’d both survived.’

  ‘Something to praise God for.’

  ‘For killing three and sparing two?’ she snapped. Konstantin did not try to defend the idea. ‘But in the end, I did learn to be thankful. Not to God, not to anyone, but I was overjoyed that Luka was alive, and that I was there to be with him.’

  ‘So why does seeing him make you cry?’

  ‘Because by that time they’d decided I wasn’t fit to keep him. How could they trust me, after the way I’d been?’

  ‘A mother can always be trusted.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me. And in the end, they persuaded me they were right.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Two doctors. They’d been friends of Vitya’s, so they understood what he would say.’

  ‘From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound as though they did,’ said Konstantin.

  ‘Perhaps not, but I believed them. They even let me meet the couple who were going to take Luka. Fine people. That’s how I recognized the mother today.’

  ‘The mother?’

  ‘When I saw her with Luka, on Nevsky Prospekt.’

  She felt him place his hand on top of hers between them on the divan. She looked up at him for the first time in several minutes. Konstantin gazed up at her over
his spectacles, looking small and not at all regal.

  ‘Was that the first time?’

  ‘No. They live in Petersburg, so I’ve seen him three or four times.’

  ‘Have you tried to see him?’

  Tamara smiled sadly. Konstantin was very astute. ‘Only once,’ she said, ‘on the spur of the moment. It was in the Summer Garden. I was sitting outside the coffee house and I saw them. All three of them. I don’t even know if I was going to approach them, or just walk past as close to Luka as I could. But she saw me and said something to her husband, and he bundled Luka away, and she stood and blocked my path. She didn’t say much. She had a strange look of confusion on her face. I don’t know which I hated more – the anger or the pity.’

  ‘It must be very difficult for them,’ he said. She looked at him almost as if he had betrayed her. She felt him squeeze her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently, ‘but it must. Nothing like what it must be for you though.’

  She smiled and squeezed his hand back.

  ‘You know their names? Where they live?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ That had been easy to find out. ‘But there’s nothing I can do.’ She lapsed into silence for a few moments, before adding, ‘They still call him Luka.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, then a little more brightly, ‘Do you think that’s why you’re so keen to find your parents?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the hope that one day Luka will do the same and look for you?’

  It had never occurred to her as plainly as that, but it could well be true. She allowed the scene of an adult Luka, having searched as she had searched, finally being reunited with her to play itself out in her mind, and felt her eyes well with tears. Then she felt Konstantin’s arm around her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘No. It was very perceptive.’

  ‘It’s not for me to tell you what you think,’ said Konstantin. ‘Not for anyone.’ He stood up and walked across the room, his hands clasped behind his back. Her eyes followed him. He kept his back to her as he spoke.

  ‘I lost someone very dear to me,’ he told her. ‘My favourite sister, Adini. She was only nineteen. Consumption.’

  Tamara thought to say the words ‘I’m sorry,’ but decided they were inadequate.

  ‘And then when I married Aleksandra, everyone said it was because she reminded me of Adini.’

  ‘Do you love her?’ asked Tamara. ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he turned and Tamara could see that he was smiling. He came back and sat beside her. ‘I mean really. Yes.’

  ‘Then why am I here?’

  ‘You’re nothing like my wife – or like Adini.’

  He suddenly looked very young and very innocent, though Tamara knew full well that he was nothing of the sort. She leaned forward and kissed his lips. He seemed for a moment surprised, but then his mouth opened and he pushed his body forward, as if to take charge. When they separated, she was reclining on the divan and he was above her.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked. He sounded genuinely curious.

  ‘You deserved it; for being happy to sit here and listen.’

  ‘I’d have done that for nothing,’ he replied.

  She believed him – that was why she was still here. ‘I deserve it,’ she said, and she meant that too. A little forgetful abandon would take her away from her troubles, if only for a while. It had been a long time since she had had the chance to sleep with a man for her own pleasure. She felt a warmth inside her at the prospect.

  ‘People don’t always get what they deserve,’ said Konstantin.

  ‘I think I will,’ she replied.

  Konstantin stood and took her hand and led her to a door at the side of the room.

  ‘I expected you earlier.’

  Dmitry felt as though he were a guest in his own house. The footman, Konyev, had only been employed a few months before his last departure, so although they recognized one another, Dmitry felt immediately that Konyev was more at home in the apartment than he was. He was shown to the drawing room, where Svetlana was sitting, waiting for him. She had scarcely looked up as she spoke.

  He stood still, like a child being upbraided by its mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I … I … I didn’t know what you’d make of me.’ Was that the reason? He doubted that was the whole thing, but it was in there somewhere.

  She raised her head sharply. ‘Make of you?’

  He held his stick a little towards her to make it clear, and with his left hand indicated his ankle. Then he walked across the room with, he knew, exaggerated fortitude and dropped himself into the armchair beside her with a loud sigh of relief. She leaned forward and clasped his hand in hers.

  ‘Oh Mitka, I’m sorry. I never thought. I’ve been so worried, wondering how bad it was for you. It never occurred to me that you’d be thinking of how it affected me.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Mind? How could I mind? It makes you look quite distinguished. Everyone will know I’m married to a hero now.’

  ‘You used to think you were married to a god.’ He suddenly feared that she would give him the honest answer, and say how she gave up on that long ago, but, as ever, she would make no admission that anything was wrong.

  ‘You still are a god, Mitka. One with feet of clay.’ He didn’t smile, so she tried another approach. ‘It’s only a limp.’

  ‘Only!’ His outrage was affected, but he knew she would be expecting it.

  ‘From the outside, I mean,’ she pleaded. ‘I know it must hurt you terribly, but it’s not like some horrible scar or as if you’ve lost an arm or even …’

  Dmitry knew why she had stopped. She was about to mention his father’s missing fingers. Svetlana had never met Aleksei, but Dmitry had told her about the disfigurement, and she had been unable to hide her disgust. If his ankle was causing her disgust now, she hid it better. And perhaps she was right – a wounded soldier could seem all the more valiant, but as the scars grew deeper and more obvious, he would become in the eyes of the world a monster.

  He stood and walked over to the piano, now doing his best not to limp, but that made it hurt more. He sat down, resting his cane at the top end of the keyboard, and considered what to play.

  ‘You said in your letters that you managed to play down there,’ said Svetlana.

  ‘There was a piano in the mess, but I had to wait my turn. And it wasn’t in tune.’ His mind drifted to the memory of his playing for Tyeplov, and he forced it out. ‘I didn’t get a chance on the journey home.’

  He began to play the fast triplets of Chopin’s nineteenth prelude. It was a moderately easy work, suitable for fingers that had not been stretched for many weeks. They moved swiftly and nimbly, as though they had been playing the piece only yesterday. The piano was out of tune – Svetlana didn’t understand these things, however much he explained them – but that could be remedied in a few days, and he could hear enough through the slight clashes between strings of the same note, especially on the high Eb, to know that he was playing well. Then, after about four bars, he suddenly stopped, snatching up his leg and rubbing his ankle.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Svetlana.

  ‘I can’t bloody pedal!’ he shouted, slamming his hand on the keys to produce a raucous crash of notes. Although his ankle could take most of his weight now, it had very little movement. He’d not even thought about it, and gone at the piece pressing the pedal on almost every beat. The pain had been sudden and searing, forcing him to stop.

  ‘You could play something else.’ She meant it sincerely – she had no idea. He put his hands back on the keyboard and played a Bach invention, going as fast as he was capable. It was written for harpsichord, before the concept of controlling the sustain of a note after the key had been released, and of letting the other strings resonate with it, had ever been thought of. It led to music that was complex, but had no soul. He could learn to pedal with his l
eft foot, but it would take months, and it would never feel natural.

  He stood up and walked back to his seat beside Svetlana. ‘You just need to exercise it,’ she said. ‘It took you long enough to be able to walk.’ She leaned forward and lifted up his foot. He was wearing a laced boot, which he found unfashionable and effeminate, but his ankle was still too stiff to pull in and out of a normal riding boot. She untied the laces and took it off, placing his foot in her lap. She put one hand under his heel and gripped the foot with the other, just below his toes. Then she began to rock it backwards and forwards, with very slight movements, stopping and reversing direction as soon as she hit resistance.

  ‘Ow!’ he said petulantly, although it didn’t really hurt very much, and felt as though it would do him good.

  ‘A woman came to see you,’ she said after a few minutes.

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘She was asking about your father.’

  ‘Ah! Tamara Valentinovna. I saw her in Moscow.’

  ‘What does she want to know?’

  ‘Some historical case that Papa was investigating – before …’

  ‘You make him sound like more of a policeman than a soldier.’

  ‘He was a bit of both,’ said Dmitry.

  ‘She’s pretty.’

  ‘Who?’ Dmitry felt pain in his foot as Svetlana bent it a little further forward than it wanted to go. It had been a mistake for him to play dumb.

  ‘Tamara. Wonderful hair.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said. Like everyone else, Svetlana did not seem to notice the similarities between them that Dmitry had found so obvious. It was the hair that was the most striking thing about her. Neither Aleksei nor Domnikiia had had red hair but that didn’t lead Dmitry to doubt for a moment that they were her parents.