The Master of Petersburg

  ‘May God have mercy on his soul.

  ‘F. M. Dostoevsky.

  ‘November 18th, 1869.’

  Trembling lightly, he hands over the paper to Nechaev.

  ‘Excellent!’ says Nechaev, and passes it to the other man. ‘The truth, as seen by a blind man.’

  ‘Print it.’

  ‘Set it,’ Nechaev commands the other.

  The other gives him a steady interrogative look. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Truth? What is the truth?’ Nechaev screams in a voice that makes the whole cellar ring. ‘Set it! We have wasted enough time!’

  In this moment it becomes clear that he has fallen into a trap.

  ‘Let me change something,’ he says. He takes the paper back, crumples it, thrusts it into his pocket. Nechaev makes no attempt to stop him. ‘Too late, no recanting,’ he says. ‘You wrote it, before a witness. We’ll print it as I promised, word for word.’

  A trap, a devilish trap. He is not after all, as he had thought, a figure from the wings inconveniently intruding into a quarrel between his stepson and Sergei Nechaev the anarchist. Pavel’s death was merely the bait to lure him from Dresden to Petersburg. He has been the quarry all the time. He has been lured out of hiding, and now Nechaev has pounced and has him by the throat.

  He glares; but Nechaev does not give an inch.

  17

  The poison

  The sun rides low in a pale, clear sky. Emerging from the warren of alleys on to Voznesensky Prospekt, he has to close his eyes; the tumbling dizziness is back, so that he almost longs for the comfort of a blindfold and a guiding hand.

  He is tired of the maelstrom of Petersburg. Dresden beckons like an atoll of peace – Dresden, his wife, his books and papers, and the hundred small comforts that make up home, not least among them the pleasure of fresh underwear. And this when, without a passport, he cannot leave! ‘Pavel!’ he whispers, repeating the charm. But he has lost touch with Pavel and with the logic that tells him why, because Pavel died here, he is tied to Petersburg. What holds him is no longer the memory of Pavel, nor even Anna Sergeyevna, but the pit that has been dug for him by Pavel’s betrayer. Turning not left towards Svechnoi Street but right in the direction of Sadovaya Street and the police station, he hopes testily that Nechaev is on his tail, spying on him.

  The waiting-room is as crowded as before. He takes his place in the line; after twenty minutes he reaches the desk. ‘Dostoevsky, reporting as required,’ he says.

  ‘Required by whom?’ The clerk at the desk is a young man, not even in police uniform.

  He throws up his hands in irritation. ‘How can I be expected to know? I am required to report here, now I am reporting.’

  ‘Take a seat, someone will attend to you.’

  His exasperation boils over. ‘I don’t need to be attended to, it is enough that I am here! You have seen me in the flesh, what more do you require? And how can I take a seat when there are no seats?’

  The clerk is clearly taken aback by his vehemence; other people in the room are watching him curiously too.

  ‘Write my name down and be finished!’ he demands.

  ‘I can’t just write down a name,’ replies the clerk reasonably. ‘How do I know it is your name? Show me your passport.’

  He cannot restrain his anger. ‘You confiscate my passport and now you demand that I produce it! What insanity! Let me see Councillor Maximov!’

  But if he expects the clerk to be overawed by Maximov’s name, he is mistaken. ‘Councillor Maximov is not available. Best if you take a seat and calm down. Someone will attend to you.’

  ‘And when will that be?’

  ‘How can I say? You are not the only person with troubles.’ He gestures toward the crowded room. ‘In any event, if you have a complaint, the correct procedure is to submit it in writing. We can’t get moving until we have something in writing – something to get our teeth into, so to speak. You sound like a cultured person. Surely you appreciate that.’ And he turns to the next in the line.

  There is no doubt in his mind that, if he could see Maximov now, he would trade Nechaev for his passport. If he hesitated at all, it would only be because he is convinced that to be betrayed – and betrayed by him, Dostoevsky – is exactly what Nechaev wants. Or is it worse, is there a further twist? Is it possible that behind the all too many insinuations Nechaev has let fall about his, Dostoevsky’s, potential for treachery lies an intent to confuse and inhibit him? At every turn, he feels, he has been outplayed, and outplayed, perhaps, because he wants to be outplayed – outplayed by a player who, from the day he met him or even before then, recognized the pleasure he took in yielding – in being plotted against, ensnared, seduced – and harnessed that knowledge to his own ends. How else can he explain this stupid passivity of his, the half-drugged state of his conscience?

  Was it the same with Pavel? Was Pavel in his deepest being a son of his stepfather, seducible by the voluptuous promise of being seduced?

  Nechaev spoke of financiers as spiders, but at this moment he feels like nothing so much as a fly in Nechaev’s web. He can think of only one spider bigger than Nechaev: the spider Maximov sitting at his desk, smacking his lips, looking ahead to his next prey. He hopes that he will make a meal of Nechaev, will swallow him whole and crush his bones and spit out the dry remnants.

  So, after all his self-congratulation, he has sunk to the pettiest vengefulness. How much lower can he fall? He recalls Maximov’s remark: blessed, in an age like this, the father of daughters. If there must be sons, better to father them at a distance, like a frog or a fish.

  He pictures the spider Maximov at home, his three daughters fussing about him, stroking him with their claws, hissing softly, and against him too feels the acutest resentment.

  He has been hoping for a speedy answer from Apollon Maykov; but the concierge is adamant that there has been no message.

  ‘Are you sure my letter was delivered?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, ask the boy who took it.’

  He tries to find the boy, but no one knows where he is.

  Should he write again? If the first appeal reached Maykov and was ignored, will a second appeal not seem abject? He is not yet a beggar. Yet the unpleasant truth is, he is living from day to day on Anna Sergeyevna’s charity. Nor can he expect his presence in Petersburg to remain unremarked much longer. The news will get around, if it has not already, and when it does, any of half a dozen creditors could initiate proceedings to have him restrained. His pennilessness would not protect him: a creditor might easily reckon that, in the last resort, his wife or his wife’s family or even his writer-colleagues would raise the money to save him from disgrace.

  All the more reason, then, to get out of Petersburg! He must recover his passport; if that fails, he must risk travelling on Isaev’s papers again.

  He has promised Anna Sergeyevna to look in on the sick child. He finds the curtain across the alcove open and Matryona sitting up in bed.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.

  She gives no reply, absorbed in her own thoughts.

  He comes nearer, puts a hand to her forehead. There are hectic spots on her cheeks, her breathing is shallow, but there is no fever.

  ‘Fyodor Mikhailovich,’ she says, speaking slowly and without looking at him, ‘does it hurt to die?’

  He is surprised at the direction her brooding has taken. ‘My dear Matryosha,’ he says, ‘you are not going to die! Lie down, have a nap, and you will wake up feeling better. In just a few days you will be back at school – you heard what the doctor said.’

  But even while he speaks she is shaking her head. ‘I don’t mean me,’ she says. ‘Does it hurt – you know – when a person dies?’

  Now he knows she is serious. ‘At the moment?’

  ‘Yes. Not when you are completely dead, but just before that.’

  ‘When you know you are dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He is overcome with gratitude. For days she has been closin
g herself off to him, retreating into obtuseness and childishness, indulging her resentments, refusing him the precious memory of Pavel she bears within her. Now she has become herself again.

  ‘Animals don’t find it hard to die,’ he says gently. ‘Perhaps we should take our lesson from them. Perhaps that is why they are with us here on earth – to show us that living and dying are not as hard as we think.’

  He pauses, then tries again.

  ‘What frightens us most about dying isn’t the pain. It is the fear that we must leave behind those who love us and travel alone. But that is not so, it is simply not so. When we die, we carry our loved ones with us in our breast. So Pavel carried you with him when he died, and he carried me, and your mother. He still carries all of us. Pavel is not alone.’

  Still with a sluggish, abstracted air, she says: ‘I wasn’t thinking of Pavel.’

  He is unsettled, he does not understand; but a moment more has to pass before he can appreciate how comprehensively he does not understand.

  ‘Who are you thinking of then?’

  ‘Of the girl who was here on Saturday.’

  ‘I don’t know which girl you mean.’

  ‘Sergei Gennadevich’s friend.’

  ‘The Finnish girl? You mean because the police brought her? You mustn’t lie here worrying about that!’ He takes her hand in his and pats it reassuringly. ‘Nobody is going to die! The police don’t kill people! They will send her back to Karelia, that is all. At worst they will keep her in prison for a while.’

  She withdraws her hand and turns her face to the wall. It begins to dawn on him that even now, perhaps, he does not understand; that she may not be asking to be reassured, to be relieved of childish fears – may, in fact, in a roundabout way, be trying to tell him something he does not know.

  ‘Are you afraid she is going to be executed? Is that what you are afraid of? Because of something you know she has done?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Then you must tell me. I can’t guess any further.’

  ‘They have all taken a vow they will never be captured. They vow they will kill themselves first.’

  ‘It’s easy to take vows, Matryosha, much harder to keep them, particularly when your friends have deserted you and you are all by yourself. Life is precious, she is right to hold on to it, you mustn’t blame her.’

  She ruminates again for a while, fiddling abstractedly with the bedsheets. When she speaks, she does so in a murmur, and with her head bent, so that he can barely catch the words: ‘I gave her poison.’

  ‘You gave her what?’

  She brushes her hair aside, and he sees what she has been hiding: the slightest of smiles.

  ‘Poison,’ she says, just as softly. ‘Does poison hurt?’

  ‘And how did you do that?’ he asks, marking time while his mind races.

  ‘When I gave her the bread. No one saw it.’

  He remembers the scene that had affected him so strangely: the old-fashioned curtsy, the offering of food to the prisoner.

  ‘Did she know?’ he whispers, his mouth dry.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure? Are you sure she knew what it was?’

  She nods. And, recalling now how wooden, how ungrateful the Finn seemed at that moment, he cannot doubt her.

  ‘But how did you lay your hands on poison?’

  ‘Sergei Gennadevich left it for her.’

  ‘What else did he leave?’

  ‘The flag.’

  ‘The flag and what else?’

  ‘Some other things. He asked me to look after them.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The child clambers out of bed, kneels, gropes among the bedsprings, and comes up with a canvas-wrapped parcel. He opens it on the bed. An American pistol and cartridges. Some leaflets. A little cotton purse with a long drawstring.

  ‘The poison is in there,’ says Matryona.

  He loosens the drawstring and pours the contents out: three glass capsules containing a fine green powder.

  ‘This is what you gave her?’

  She nods. ‘She was supposed to have one around her neck, but she didn’t.’ Deftly she slips the drawstring around her own neck, so that the purse hangs between her breasts like a medallion. ‘If she had had it they wouldn’t have caught her.’

  ‘So you gave her one of these.’

  ‘She wanted it for her vow. She would do anything for Sergei Gennadevich.’

  ‘Perhaps. That is what Sergei Gennadevich says, at any rate. Still, if you had not given her the poison it would have been easier for her not to keep the promise to Sergei Gennadevich that is so particularly hard to keep – wouldn’t it?’

  She wrinkles her nose in an expression he has come to recognize: she is being pushed into a corner and does not like it. Nevertheless, he goes on.

  ‘Don’t you think that Sergei Gennadevich deals out death rather too freely? Do you remember the beggar who was killed? Sergei Gennadevich did that, or told someone else to do it, and that person obeyed, just as you have obeyed.’

  She wrinkles her nose again. ‘Why? Why did he want to kill him?’

  ‘To send a message into the world, I suppose – that he, Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev, is a man not to be trifled with. Or to test whether the person he ordered to do the killing would obey him. I don’t know. I can’t see into his heart, and I no longer want to.’

  Matryona thinks awhile. ‘I didn’t like him,’ she says at last. ‘He stank of fish.’

  He gives her an unblinking stare, which she candidly returns.

  ‘But you like Sergei Gennadevich.’

  ‘Yes.’

  What he means to ask, what he cannot bring himself to ask, is: Do you love him? Would you too do anything for him? But she understands his meaning perfectly well, and has given him his answer. So that there is really only one question left to ask: ‘More than Pavel?’

  She hesitates. He can see her weighing them, the two loves, one in the right hand, one in the left, like apples. ‘No,’ she says at last with what he can only call grace, ‘I still like Pavel best.’

  ‘Because they couldn’t be more different, could they, the two of them. Like chalk and cheese.’

  ‘Chalk and cheese?’ She finds the idea funny.

  ‘Just a saying. A horse and a wolf. A deer and a wolf.’

  She considers the new similitude dubiously. ‘They both like fun – liked fun,’ she objects, slipping up on the verb.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, you make a mistake there. There is no fun in Sergei Gennadevich. There is certainly a spirit of a kind in him, but it is not a spirit of fun.’ He bends closer, brushes the wing of hair back from her face, touches her cheek. ‘Listen, Matryosha. You cannot hide these from your mother.’ He gestures towards the instruments of death. ‘I will get rid of them for you as I got rid of the dress. No matter what Nechaev says, you can’t keep them. It is too dangerous. Do you understand?’

  Her lips part, the corners of her mouth quiver. She is going to cry, he thinks. But it is not like that at all. When she raises her eyes, he is enveloped in a glance that is at once shameless and derisive. She draws away from his hand, tossing her hair. ‘No!’ he says. The smile she wears is taunting, provocative. Then the spell passes and she is a child as before, confused, ashamed.

  It is impossible that what he has just seen has truly taken place. What he has seen comes not from the world he knows but from another existence. It is as though for the first time he has been present and conscious during a seizure; so that for the first time his eyes have been open to where he is when he is seized. In fact, he must wonder whether seizure is any longer the right word, whether the word has not all along been possession – whether everything that for the past twenty years has gone under the name of seizure has not been a mere presentiment of what is now happening, the quaking and dancing of the body a long-drawn-out prelude to a quaking of the soul.

  The death of innocence. Never in his life has he felt more alone. He is like a
traveller on a vast plain. Overhead the storm-clouds gather; lightning flashes on the horizon; darkness multiplies, fold upon fold. There is no shelter; if once he had a destination, he has long since lost it; the longer the clouds mass, the heavier they grow. Let it all break! he prays: what is the use of delaying?

  It is six o’clock and the streets are still thronged when he hastens out bearing his parcel. He follows Gorokhovaya Street to the Fontanka Canal, and joins the press of people crossing the bridge. Midway he stops and leans over the ledge.

  The water is frozen over by now, all but a ragged channel in the centre. What a clutter there must be under the ice on the canal-bed! With the spring thaw one could trawl a veritable harvest of guilty secrets here: knives, axes, bloodstained clothing. Worse too. Easy to kill the spirit, harder to dispose of what is left after that. The burial service and its incantations directed, if the truth be told, not at the soul but at the obstinate body, conjuring it not to arise and return.

  Thus, gingerly, like a man probing his own wound, he readmits Pavel to his thoughts. Under his blanket of earth and snow on Yelagin Island, Pavel, unappeased, still stubbornly exists. Pavel tenses himself against the cold, against the aeons he must outlast till the day of the resurrection when tombs shall be riven open and graves yawn, gritting his teeth as a bare skull does, enduring what he must endure till the sun will shine on him again and he can slacken his tensed limbs. Poor child!

  A young couple have paused beside him, the man with his arm around the woman’s shoulders. He edges away from them. Beneath the bridge the black water courses sluggishly, lapping around a broken crate festooned with icicles. On the ledge he cradles the canvas parcel, tied with string. The girl glances at him, glances away. At that instant he gives the parcel a nudge.

  It falls on to the ice just to one side of the channel and lies there in full view of everyone.