The House of Special Purpose

  We sat in silence and I looked across at Zoya, whose face was pale, her jaw set tightly as if she was afraid of how she might react to this if she allowed her emotions to be displayed. Any thought of violence, of death, of the moment when a life came to its end was enough to disturb her emotions and unsettle her, to drag the terrible memories back to the forefront of her mind. Neither of us spoke. Instead we waited for Sophie, who appeared more calm now that she was laying out the story for us, to continue.

  ‘He tried to run away,’ she said finally. ‘And of course that only made things worse. He got quite far, too, I think. He ran along the Rue de la Bonne and across into St Vincent, then turned back on himself, heading towards the St Pierre de Montmartre—’

  I drew a breath at this; my first home in Paris had been there, and the flat that Zoya and I had shared since our wedding was on the Rue Cortot, not far from the St Pierre; I wondered whether Leo had been hoping to find a safe haven with us.

  ‘—but by then there were six, perhaps seven gendarmes in pursuit of him, whistles blowing on every street, and they tackled him down, knocking him off his feet and sending him to the ground. Oh, Zoya,’ she cried, reaching out to her friend. ‘They beat him badly, too. One of his eyes is sealed shut and his cheek is almost purple with bruising. You would hardly recognize him if you saw him. They say it was necessary to restrain him, but it can’t have been.’

  ‘It was a terrible accident,’ said Zoya firmly. ‘Surely they can recognize that? And over something so trivial, too. The Spaniard, he was as much to blame.’

  ‘They don’t see it like that,’ Sophie said, shaking her head as the tears began again, a great depth of sobbing emerging from her very heart, her previously stilled emotions vanquished at last by the realization of what had taken place. ‘They see it as murder. He is to stand trial for it. He could be jailed for years – for his entire life, perhaps. Certainly his youth will be gone if he is ever released. And I cannot live without him, do you see that?’ she added, raising her voice hysterically. ‘I will not live without him.’

  I could see the café owner looking at us suspiciously, hoping that we would leave soon. He cleared his throat audibly and I nodded at him, threw a few francs on the table and stood up.

  Zoya and I took Sophie back to our flat, where we gave her two large draughts of brandy and sent her to our bedroom to rest. She went without protest and fell asleep quickly, although we could hear her tossing restlessly in the bed.

  ‘He can’t go to jail,’ said Zoya, when there were just the two of us together again. We were sitting at our small kitchen table, trying to think of a way to help them both. ‘It’s unthinkable. Surely there must be some way to save him?’

  I nodded, but said nothing. I was concerned for Leo, of course I was, but it was not the prospect of his being sent to jail that worried me. It was something worse than that. He was responsible for the death of an officer of the French police force, after all. Accident or not, such matters were not taken lightly. The punishment could be more severe than either my wife or Leo’s were currently willing to consider.

  The trial of Leo Raymer began three weeks later, in the second week of December, and lasted a mere thirty-six hours. It began on a Tuesday morning and by Wednesday lunchtime the jury had returned their verdict.

  Sophie had stayed in our apartment for a few days after the incident took place, but she went home after that, saying that it was pointless to sleep on our couch and be under our feet every evening when she had a perfectly good, if lonely, bed not four streets away. We allowed her to leave with minimal protest, but spent every evening with her nevertheless, either in her flat or ours, or, if we could afford it, in one of the cafés that were dotted around the nearby streets.

  Initially, she appeared to be close to hysteria about the sequence of events which had taken place; then she grew stronger and more optimistic, determined to do everything she could to secure Leo’s release. Soon after that, she grew depressed, and then angry at her boyfriend for causing all of this trouble in the first place. By the time the trial began, she was exhausted by her emotions, and had grown dark-eyed from lack of sleep. I became concerned as to how she would react if the trial did not have a happy resolution.

  I begged Monsieur Ferré for a day off on the Tuesday that the trial began and was unfortunate in that I appeared to have caught him at a bad moment, for he threw his pen down on the table, a splash of ink bouncing in my direction that caused me to jump back, and stared at me, breathing heavily through his nose.

  ‘A day off during the week, Jachmenev?’ he asked me. ‘Another day off? I thought that we had reached an understanding, you and I.’

  ‘We have, sir,’ I replied, not expecting him to react so violently to my simple request. I had been a model employee since my reprimand and thought that he would happily allow me to be absent from work for a single day. ‘I’m sorry to ask for it, only—’

  ’Your wife must realize that the world does not—’

  ‘This is not about my wife, Monsieur Ferré,’ I said quickly, growing angry that he would have the audacity to criticize Zoya. ‘This has nothing to do with what happened all those months ago. I think I told you about my friend? Monsieur Raymer?’

  ‘Ah, the murderer,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Yes, I remember. And of course I’ve read about the case in the papers.’

  ‘Leo is no murderer,’ I replied. ‘It was a terrible accident.’

  ‘In which a man died.’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘And not just a man, but a man whose responsibility it was to protect the citizenry. Your friend will find it difficult to secure his release, I imagine. Popular opinion is against it.’

  I nodded and tried to control my emotions; he was only repeating what I already knew. ‘May I take the day off or not?’ I asked, looking up and fixing my gaze to his, holding it there for as long as I dared, until finally he broke away and threw his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said. ‘You may take one day off. Unpaid, of course. And if there are reporters at the courthouse, as there will no doubt be, do not tell them that you work in this establishment. I don’t want my bookshop associated with such a sordid business.’

  I agreed to his terms, and on the morning that the trial began accompanied Zoya and Sophie to the courthouse, where we took our seats in the gallery, aware that every eye was turned in our direction. I could tell that it made Zoya uncomfortable and I took her hand in mine, squeezing it twice for luck.

  ‘I don’t like all this attention,’ she said quietly. ‘A reporter asked me on the way in to identify myself.’

  ‘You’re not obliged to tell them anything,’ I replied. ‘Neither of us is. And remember, they’re really not interested in us at all. It’s Sophie they want.’

  I felt callous making such a remark, but it was the truth, and I wanted to reassure my wife that we were safe. Perhaps if she believed it, then I would believe it too.

  The courtroom was full of interested spectators and it was not long before there was an audible intake of breath around the pews, as a door opened and Leo was led in, surrounded by several gendarmes. He scanned the room quickly in search of us, and when he found us, he offered a brave smile which I was certain masked the anxiety he felt inside. He looked more pale and thin than the last time I had seen him – the night before the incident, when we had sat in a bar together, just the two of us, drinking too much red wine; the night he had told me that he planned to ask Sophie to marry him on Christmas Day, a fact that she was still unaware of – but he held himself bravely, looking straight ahead when the charge was read and answering in a clear voice when he asserted his plea of ‘not guilty’.

  The morning was filled with a series of tedious legal discussions between the judge, the prosecutor and the court-appointed lawyer who was representing our friend. In the late afternoon, however, it grew more interesting as several witnesses were called to the stand, including the elderly woman whom t
he Spaniard had tried to remove from her place. She sang the praises of Leo, of course, and blamed the gendarme for the accident – as well as the Spaniard himself, who was unnecessarily harsh in his condemnation of Leo, perhaps on account of his wounded ego. A few others made an appearance, men and women who had been on the steps of Sacré-Coeur at the time of the incident and had given their names to the investigators. A lady who had been only inches from the dead man when he fell. The doctor who had first examined him. The coroner.

  ‘It went well, don’t you think?’ Sophie asked me that night and I nodded my head, believing there was nothing to be lost with this supportive lie.

  ‘Some of the testimony was helpful,’ I admitted, stopping short of adding that most of it portrayed Leo as being impetuous and bullying in the way that he had behaved, his impulsive conduct leading to the death of an honest and innocent young man.

  ‘It will all go well tomorrow,’ said Zoya, hugging her as we parted that night. ‘I am sure of it.’

  We fought later, the first time that Zoya and I had ever raised our voices to each other. Although I had every intention of going to the courthouse, I made the mistake of mentioning that Monsieur Ferré would likely be very angry with me for taking a second day away from the bookshop, and she misinterpreted my concern for our future as selfishness and a lack of consideration for our friends, a charge that upset and wounded me.

  Later that night, having made up after our fight – so strange to remember, we both shed tears, so unaccustomed to argument were we – we lay in bed together and I urged Zoya to prepare herself for what was to come, that this matter might not end as we would wish it.

  She said nothing in reply, simply turned over to sleep, but I knew that she was not so naive as to fail to recognize the truth in my warning.

  We sat in the same seats the next day and on this occasion the courtroom was at full capacity to hear Leo’s testimony. He began nervously, but soon his familiar strength returned to him and he gave a performance of remarkable oratorical prowess that made me wonder for a moment whether in fact he might yet save himself. He portrayed himself as a hero of the people, a young man who could not stand by and watch an elderly woman – an elderly Frenchwoman, he pointed out – insulted and mistreated by a guest of his country. He spoke of how much he admired the work of the gendarmes, and said that he had seen the young man lose his footing and had in fact reached out a hand to save him, not push him, but it was too late. He had fallen. The courthouse sat in absolute silence as he spoke, and when he descended the stand he glanced towards Sophie, who smiled at him anxiously; he smiled back, before resuming his seat between the officers sent to guard him.

  The last witness, however, was the young policeman’s mother, who told the court of his movements that morning and portrayed her son – quite properly, perhaps – as a saint in waiting. She spoke proudly and with dignity, giving in to tears only once, and by the end of her testimony I knew that there was little hope.

  An hour later, the jury returned, announced a verdict of guilty to murder, and as the court broke into spontaneous applause, Sophie jumped to her feet and immediately fainted, leaving Zoya and me to carry her out into the hallway.

  ‘It can’t be, it can’t be,’ she said in a daze as she came back to consciousness on one of the cold stone benches that lined the exterior walls. ‘He is innocent. They can’t take him from me.’

  Zoya was in tears now too and the two women hugged each other, trembling violently. I could feel a spring rising behind my own eyes too. It was too much for me. I stood up, unwilling to allow them to see me break down.

  ‘I’ll go back inside,’ I said quickly, turning my back on them. ‘I’ll find out what happens next.’

  Stepping back into the courtroom, I had to fight my way through to a position where I could see for myself what was taking place. Leo was on his feet, a gendarme on either side of him, white-faced, looking for all the world as if he could not believe what had happened, certain that he would be released at any moment with the apologies of the court. But that was not to be.

  The judge banged his gavel on the bench for silence and proceeded with the sentencing.

  When I emerged from the courtroom a few moments later, I was sure for a moment that I was going to be sick. I ran quickly outside to gather as much air into my lungs as possible, and as I did so, the full horror of what I had just heard came home to me and I had to place my hand against the wall to steady myself, lest I collapse entirely and disgrace myself.

  Zoya and Sophie, a few feet away from me, turned and stopped crying for a moment, staring at me.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Sophie, running towards me. ‘Georgy, tell me! What has happened?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me!’ she repeated, shouting now. ‘Tell me, Georgy!’ She slapped my face, once, twice, three times, hard. She clenched her hands into fists and pummelled my shoulders, and I felt nothing, just stood there as Zoya pulled her away. ‘Tell me,’ she was continuing to scream, but the words were lost in such misery and sobbing that they were all but unintelligible.

  ‘Georgy?’ asked Zoya, looking towards me and swallowing nervously. ‘Georgy, what is it? We have to know. You have to tell her.’

  I nodded and looked at her, unsure how to put such a thing, such an unspeakable thing, into words.

  The execution took place early the following morning. Neither Zoya nor I was there to witness it, but Sophie was permitted to spend thirty minutes with her lover before he was brought to the courtyard and guillotined. I was shocked – beyond shocked – to learn that this was to be his punishment, that an instrument of death that I associated with the French Revolution was still in use, more than a century later, for those sentenced to death. It seemed barbaric. None of the three of us was able to believe that such a punishment could be meted out to our young, handsome, funny, vibrant, impossible friend. But there was no escaping it. The sentence was handed down and carried out within twenty-four hours.

  Paris held no more beauty for us after that. I offered my resignation in writing to Monsieur Ferré, who tore up my letter without reading it and told me that it did not matter what it said, I was dismissed anyway.

  It didn’t matter.

  Sophie came to see us only once before she left the country, thanking us for what we had done to help her, promising to write when she arrived at wherever it was that she was going.

  And Zoya and I decided to leave Paris for good. It was her decision, but I was happy to acquiesce.

  On our last night in the city, we sat in our empty flat, staring out of the window towards the spires of the many churches that littered the streets.

  ‘It was my fault,’ she said.

  The Journey to Yekaterinburg

  WHEN I WENT to bed that night in one of the small cots that lined the walls of the guards’ carriage, I was sure that I would find it impossible to sleep. The day had grown chaotic as the Tsar had sunk into a silent depression, and those of us who formed his entourage were embarrassed and disconsolate. I am not too proud to admit that I wept as I placed my head on the pillow, for my emotions were in a heightened state, and although I did eventually close my eyes, my dreams were tormented and I woke several times in the night, disoriented and upset. As the hours passed, however, I settled into a deeper slumber, and when I opened my eyes again, not only had the night vanished, but most of the morning too. I blinked and waited for the events of the previous day to dissolve as dreams do, but rather than fade away in confusion, they clarified and reasserted themselves and I realized that it was all true and that the unimaginable had actually happened.

  Sunlight seeped through the windows. I glanced around to see who else was sharing the carriage with me and was surprised to discover that I was entirely alone. This part of the train was almost always filled with other members of the Leib Guard, sleeping, trying to sleep, dressing, talking, arguing. For it to be so serene was disconcerting. An eerie quiet surrounded me as I climbed out
of bed slowly, pulled on my shirt and trousers and looked warily out at the cold, endless forest that stretched for hundreds of miles on either side of the train.

  Marching quickly through the dining car, the games saloon and the carriages which were the private domains of the Grand Duchesses, I made my way to the Tsar’s private study, where the previous afternoon he had signed away his own birthright and that of his son, and knocked on the closed door. There was no response from within and I leaned closer to it, my ear to the wood, straining to hear any conversation inside.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ I called, determined still to address him by this title as I knocked again. ‘Your Majesty, can I assist you with anything?’

  There was no answer, so I opened the door and stepped inside to discover the room as empty as my sleeping quarters had been. I frowned and tried to imagine where the Tsar might be; he spent every morning locked away in his private study working on his papers. I couldn’t imagine that would have changed, even in the new circumstances in which we found ourselves. There were still letters to be written, after all, papers to be signed, decisions to be made. Now more than ever it was important that he looked to his business. Looking back along the corridor to ensure that no one was coming, I stepped over to his desk and rifled quickly through the papers that remained there. They were complicated, political documents that meant nothing to me and I turned away from them in frustration, before noticing that the portrait of the Tsar’s family which always stood on the desk had been removed from its frame, leaving nothing but the silver casing behind. I stared at the empty frame for a moment and picked it up, as if it might offer me some clues as to the Tsar’s whereabouts, but replaced it a moment later and decided that I should disembark immediately.

  The train had not moved since the night before, and as I jumped off, my boots crunched loudly on the stones beside the sleepers. Further along I could make out the figure of Peter Ilyavich Maksy, another member of the Leib Guard, who had been part of the Tsar’s retinue since before I had first come to St Petersburg; we had never got along well and for the most part I avoided him. Another former member of the Corps of Pages, he resented my presence on the Imperial staff; he had been particularly incensed when I had been relieved of what he considered my ‘babysitting’ duties in respect of the Tsarevich and been brought here as part of the Tsar’s retinue. Still, he appeared to be the only person left, so I had little choice but to talk to him.