by Jasper Kent
Raisa was gone. She must have been more alert than Tamara had given her credit for, and used the few moments of distraction to make her move. She could not have got past Tamara and the conductor as they stood in the centre aisle, so she must have gone the other way. Tamara ran along to the door at the end and opened it. In an instant she was out in the cold night air, standing on the metal platform at the end of the carriage. The moment she arrived, Raisa leapt. Tamara got just a glimpse of her hair and skirts as she landed beside the track and rolled away, but then she vanished from sight as the train moved on.
Tamara cursed her stupidity. For a human, such a jump might not prove fatal, but the risk of injury would be enough to put anyone off. For a voordalak there was no risk and no fear. Any injury would soon heal. She leaned over the rail and looked back. She could just see Raisa, bright in the darkness. She wondered whether she too should risk the fall, but watching the ground speed by she thought it too dangerous. Even if she survived, she might break a limb; or be knocked out, and find herself at the mercy of Raisa.
Then she heard the train whistle blow three times – they were stopping. She looked up and saw the green lanterns which marked the beginning of a bridge ahead; the one across the Skhodnya. Two trains were not allowed on a bridge at the same time, so it must be that another was crossing towards them, and that this one would have to wait.
She let the train slow, but did not wait for it to stop before jumping to the ground, running as she landed so as to keep upright. The conductor was too busy at the other end of the carriage operating the brake to notice her. The moon had set, but there was sufficient light from the train to see by, and Raisa made an easy target. She was only the train’s length away, walking back alongside the track, as if hoping to return to Moscow. The train had halted completely now, and stood there, waiting until the bridge was clear. Tamara walked briskly. The ground was too uneven for her to run, but even so she would soon catch Raisa.
Tamara called out to her, but it had no effect. She waited until she was a little closer and then called again. This time Raisa turned, looking straight back towards her. Then Tamara saw her body drop down a little as she simply sat beside the tracks, waiting for Tamara to catch up. Tamara slowed to a steady walk. She reached for the cap that covered the tip of her cane and threw it to one side. Then she drew the pistol from her bag.
It was when she cleared the last coach of the waiting train that Tamara realized they were not alone. On the other side of the track, someone else was walking, mirroring Tamara’s movements. For a moment she supposed that it was one of the conductors, come to see why two women had chosen to throw themselves from the train, but it was not. Once again, it was the woman who called herself Natalia, sticking to Tamara like a shadow.
‘Get away from here,’ Tamara called out, still walking, not looking at the woman, her eyes instead fixed on Raisa. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘You think I don’t understand that?’ asked Natalia.
‘You’re not one of them then.’ Tamara had not forgotten the possibility, given Natalia’s supposed death ten years before, but it seemed increasingly unlikely.
‘Toma!’ It was a personal affront.
‘But you’re not Natalia Borisovna either.’
‘No. That was just a name I borrowed.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wasn’t supposed to be in Moscow.’
Still Tamara marched on towards Raisa, knowing that she must not let these other matters distract her, but sensing also that this woman was vital to her understanding of what was really going on. ‘I meant, why her?’ she said.
‘Because she was around in 1812.’
‘And your ages matched?’
A pause. ‘She was a little younger – a friend of a friend.’
Tamara remembered Oleg Ilyich’s description of his mother’s friends – and their names. ‘A friend of Captain Petrenko?’ she asked.
‘Hardly.’ There was a touch of bitterness.
‘Then of Captain Danilov?’
‘It’s a long time since he was a captain.’
Tamara came to a halt. Raisa was now just a few paces ahead of her, still sitting on the ground. Tamara raised her hand to the old woman, indicating to her both to be silent and not to come across the tracks to them.
‘Stand up,’ said Tamara.
Raisa looked towards her. Her face was tear-stained. ‘What?’
‘Or die where you sit.’
‘Leave me alone.’ Raisa’s voice was sullen. This was not what Tamara had been anticipating. There was no fight in the woman, and without that, it was difficult to find reasons to hate her. Then she remembered one.
‘You could have left Dmitry alone,’ she said.
‘He made his choice.’
‘After you’d fooled him.’
‘He still had a choice,’ said Raisa, ‘even at the end. Most men would have preferred to keep their dignity.’
Tamara considered. Raisa was right. However much the cards had been stacked against Dmitry, he’d still been in command of his own destiny. A stronger man would have turned back, however far he had gone down the path, when he realized where it would lead. But it did not matter.
‘Dmitry’s stupidity doesn’t lessen your guilt,’ said Tamara.
Raisa didn’t seem even to hear the comment. Instead she stood up and smoothed her dress. She took a step towards Tamara and then stopped, examining her face closely, as if seeing it for the first time. But when she spoke, her thoughts, as ever, were focused upon herself.
‘Am I beautiful?’ she asked.
‘I’d have said so, if I didn’t know you.’
‘So you see it?’
‘See what?’ asked Tamara.
‘What I truly am.’
‘I understand it. I don’t need to see it.’ As she spoke, Tamara heard in the distance a locomotive whistle. It was not the train from which they had disembarked, but one a little further away. It must have been the one for which they had stopped, now coming over the bridge.
‘I saw myself in a mirror today,’ said Raisa.
‘How can you?’
‘Oh, Vasiliy Innokyentievich is a very clever man. He can do anything.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘What you see,’ said Raisa simply. She turned towards the old woman on the other side of the tracks, taking half a step towards Tamara as she did so. ‘You!’ she called out to her. ‘You can be the judge. Which is the prettiest out of the two of us?’
‘Toma,’ said the woman, without a moment’s consideration, as if she had been asked to verify that two and two made four.
‘She understands, you see,’ said Raisa, ‘but we can soon change it. Look.’
She raised her hand to her face and pressed her nails against her cheek, drawing them down and dragging the flesh with them. She must have been applying a phenomenal force, for it was no mere scratch that she left behind. Tamara gagged at the sight of Raisa’s teeth and tongue, visible through the gaping hole in the side of her face. Somehow Raisa got a grip on her cheek and tore it away, hurling it on to the ground. The edge of her lip came with it, so that when she spoke, the gap spread from the right-hand corner of her mouth almost to her left ear.
‘Makes no difference, does it?’ she said, her words slurred almost beyond comprehension by the inability of her lips to properly form them. Tamara presumed she was referring to the fact that she would heal, but Raisa’s next words put a different interpretation on it. ‘What does my face matter? It’s not that which makes me ugly.’
‘No,’ said Tamara. ‘No, it’s not.’
The ground was shaking a little now as the train drew nearer. It was still out of sight, blocked by the rear end of the stationary train. Tamara heard another whistle, and that train began to move, the bridge ahead of it finally clear.
‘It wouldn’t be the same for you though, would it?’ As she spoke, Raisa reached across and put her hand to Tamara’s face. Tamara felt a searing pain as th
e fingernails pressed through the skin and dragged downwards, trying to do the same to Tamara’s cheek as they had done moments before to their owner’s. Tamara had been taken by surprise, and with Raisa so close to her, she could raise neither her pistol nor her cane to defend herself.
Then Raisa let go. Tamara’s cheek screamed at her as though it were on fire, and she could feel her own blood running down it. The pause in Raisa’s attack was down to the fact that the old woman had thrown herself upon her. She had little strength to fight the vampire, but it brought a momentary distraction. Raisa threw her off with a nonchalant swing of the arm, and she fell backwards on to the tracks. It was long enough for Tamara to raise her pistol and fire. She remembered Dmitry’s advice and aimed for the face, but thanks to Raisa’s self-mutilation there was little left to aim for. The bullet entered through the still-gaping hole of Raisa’s cheek, penetrating somewhere at the back of her mouth. It did not have quite the devastating effect that Dmitry had described, but the impact threw her backwards and she had to take a few steps to remain on her feet. She almost tripped on the rail, but managed to keep her balance.
Behind Raisa, the old woman was lying on the track, moaning in pain. The ground beneath her was shaking ever more violently as the train from Petersburg approached, building up speed now that it was off the bridge. The woman sensed what was happening and rolled away to the other side.
Tamara had five shots remaining, none of which could possibly be fatal to Raisa but which together, so the plan had been, might just be sufficient to incapacitate her long enough for Tamara to use the cane. Now the plan had changed, but it would take some precise timing. Tamara fired again, still aiming for the head. The bullet hit Raisa between the eyes. Her head jerked back and again she took a few steps, but when her neck straightened, she was smiling – her lips already healed enough for her to do so. Blood oozed from the neat, circular opening in her forehead. Tamara fired a third shot and again Raisa backed away. She was between the two sets of tracks now. Tamara took a few steps forward, keeping as close as she dared.
‘You always were a stupid woman, Tamara Valentinovna,’ Raisa said, her voice a mixture of despair and spite. ‘And now, thanks to me, you’re a stupid, ugly woman.’
Tamara fired again, and now Raisa was in the middle of the southbound track. Still the ground shook.
‘Two bullets left, and I’m not dead,’ continued Raisa. Her cheek was completely healed now, as was the wound between her eyes. She took a step forward and was again between the two tracks. ‘What are you going to do when those run out?’
Tamara needed only one. She waited a moment and then fired again, aiming for the middle of Raisa’s nose. She didn’t see where the bullet hit, but once again Raisa took a step backwards, and the oncoming train hit her.
She flew into the air and disappeared from view, falling on to the far side of the track as the engine steamed past, its pistons pounding in and out, driving its wheels ever onwards. The impact would have broken every bone in Raisa’s body, but it would not have killed her. Tamara had hoped to dive on her instantly and administer a final, fatal blow, but the train, raging onward towards Moscow, kept them apart.
Tamara dropped down and lay parallel with the track to look under the train at what was happening. With luck Raisa’s injuries would be severe enough that she would still be unable to fight back when Tamara finally got across the track. Wagon after wagon rolled by, causing Tamara’s view to flicker as it was obscured by the train’s wheels and then became clear in the gaps between them. Luck was not on her side; Raisa was already on her feet, though not steady on them. She was upright now; Tamara could not see her face, but only the lower part of her body, broken by the impact, her legs skewed like a cripple. Tamara could not even tell which direction she was facing.
Then Tamara saw another skirt and another pair of legs, running towards Raisa. It could only be the old woman, Natalia. Raisa must have been facing away from her, since she made no attempt to react to the woman’s approach. Natalia’s legs disappeared from view as she hurled herself through the air, and then both of them were visible, on the ground, close to the track, as still the wheels rolled by, alternately blocking and revealing what was happening.
Natalia was on top. Her hand was upon Raisa’s face and her eyes were filled with hatred, enough to give her the strength that no woman of her age should possess. Even so, Raisa must still have been weak from the impact of the train – or from the strange melancholy that afflicted her – otherwise she would have easily thrown the old woman off. Tamara glanced down the line; there were only a few coaches left to pass now. The train hadn’t slowed and clearly the driver had noticed nothing of the collision. Through the wheels she saw that Natalia had managed to raise herself up a little higher above Raisa and now had both hands over the younger woman’s face. Summoning the last ounces of her strength she pushed forward, and Raisa’s head hit the rail.
There was a clunk as some part of the train connected with one or both of them. Natalia was thrown back and vanished from view, but Raisa lay still, just where the old woman had left her. Within seconds the train had passed and Tamara rushed across the shaking tracks.
Raisa’s body did not move, apart from a gradual collapse as her remains decayed within her gown. The only visible part of her flesh was her hands, and already they protruded from her sleeves like the arms of skeletons. The collar of her dress lay neatly level with the rail and had already closed up, with no neck to keep it open. Raisa’s head, which the train’s wheel had so neatly severed, was gone.
Tamara glanced along the track and saw it, rolling along with the momentum it had picked up from the train, like a ball casually kicked away when the child was called in for tea by his mother. It bounced a little as it hit each sleeper, becoming smaller as dust flew off it. By the time it came to a stop it was no bigger than a walnut, and even that soon withered to nothing.
The dress lay beside the track, flat against the ground now that the body had decayed, like some sick warning against the dangers of the railway. But as for its owner, Raisa Styepanovna was no more.
CHAPTER XXV
TAMARA DASHED ACROSS the tracks and looked around. The old woman had been wearing a dark dress and with the moon gone and the trains departed, there was little light to see by. Thankfully, she was not far from the rails, lying face down in the grass. Tamara ran over to her. Her arms were laid out on either side of her, level with her head. Her hands were covered with blood and it looked as though both forearms were broken, smashed by the train’s wheel as she had held Raisa’s head down under it. It was a miracle they had not been severed. On her right wrist was a heavy ring of dark, roughly forged iron – somewhere between a bracelet and a manacle. Tamara turned her over. There was blood on her face too, her grey hair matted against it, and her nose was broken. But she was alive. She was breathing, albeit with shallow, halting rasps. Only one side of her chest seemed to rise and fall. The other lay still – a physical reminder that the woman was half dead already.
Tamara knelt down and wiped the hair away from the old woman’s face. Her eyes were closed and there seemed little trace of consciousness. Tamara pulled her head up a little and rested it on her lap, stroking her cheek. She still felt the pain where Raisa’s nails had gouged at her own face, but she did not dare touch it and discover the damage.
‘Toma.’ The woman’s voice was weak, but perfectly clear.
Tamara looked down and tried to smile. She felt tears begin to form in her eyes. ‘How do you know me?’ she asked.
‘You think I’d forget you?’
‘It seems I’ve forgotten you.’ It was a simple statement of fact, but it was loathsome for Tamara to say it to this woman who had sacrificed her own life to save hers.
‘You don’t recognize me?’
Tamara looked hard into the woman’s face, desperate to see what it seemed she was meant to see. The woman had been beautiful once, that was obvious, and in a way still was. And yes – much as Tamara w
anted to believe it, it was true – there was something that she recognized in that face. Then she realized. There was a resemblance, slight and foolish though it might be, to the Duchess of Parma, once, long ago, wife of the Emperor Napoleon. Tamara had seen a portrait of her, painted not long before she died. Ten years on, this might have been her. She wished the memory had been more personal.
‘Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo,
‘Zheevyet myelneek na krayoo.’
There was a growl to the old woman’s singing voice, brought on by her age and her injuries, but the tune and the words in an instant brought back memories far stronger than any Tamara had found in her face. It all came back to her. She was in her bedroom in the Lavrovs’ house – not the main room but the tiny room off it, with the little child’s bed. She could hear that same voice – the voice of her long-forgotten nanny – so much younger then, singing the same lullaby, a silly story about a miller and his children at carnival time. She picked up the next two lines.
‘On nye byedyen, nye bogat,
‘Polna gorneetsa rebyat.’
The old woman smiled perhaps the broadest smile that Tamara had ever seen. Except that she was not ‘the old woman’ any more. Neither was she ‘Natalia Borisovna’. At last Tamara knew her.
‘Domnikiia Semyonovna,’ she whispered.
Domnikiia could not smile any more widely, so instead she nodded. ‘You do remember!’ she said.
‘I do now. I didn’t when I saw you before.’
‘Neither did I,’ said Domnikiia, ‘not right away. We chose not to know. But when I came to Moscow … I only went there to remember.’
‘Went where?’
‘To Degtyarny Lane. I was on my way back.’
‘Back?’
‘To Irkutsk. I had to deliver a letter for Lyosha – to Tsarskoye Selo. Everything we sent was censored, so he said I should come. It was safer for me than him. I hated to leave him, but I knew it was a chance to see you – just to look at you.’