When she saw her, Madame Courilof seemed extraordinarily upset; she hesitated for a moment, then made a deep curtsey. The woman looked at her, studying first her golden hair, then her powdered cheeks, then her mouth. She sighed softly, then raised her eyebrows, shaping her pale lips into a sarcastic little smile.
“Is His Excellency feeling better?” she finally murmured angrily.
“My husband is feeling better, yes, Your Highness,” Madame Courilof replied.
There was a brief silence, and the visitor went into the bedroom. Madame Courilof stood in the middle of the room for a moment, not knowing what to do, then slowly walked away. As she passed by me, she smiled sadly, shrugged her shoulders and whispered, “How oddly these women dress, don’t you think?”
When I looked at her closely, I noticed that she looked exhausted and tears had welled up in her eyes.
On another occasion, I met an elderly man in the minister’s bedroom who was wearing a white summer uniform. I subsequently learned that it was Prince Nelrode. When Courilof spoke to the prince, his voice changed, becoming as deep and soft as velvet.
When I went in, I saw Courilof half sitting in bed; he’d raised himself up with difficulty, so his features looked strained and pale, but he smiled while nodding his head seriously, with a sort of respectful affection. As soon as he noticed me, his expression changed; he let his head fall grandly back on to the pillow and said under his breath: “In just a moment, Monsieur Legrand, just a moment…”
I showed him the injection I had prepared.
The visitor gestured. “I’ll leave you now, my dear friend.”
He looked at me with curiosity, raising his pince-nez to his eyes, then letting them drop down again.
“Yes, Langenberg told me you had a new doctor.”
“A very skilful one,” Courilof said graciously. But then immediately, he gave me a haughty, weary look. “Off you go, Monsieur Legrand, I’ll call for you.”
I was becoming familiar with how Courilof behaved—with his inferiors, his peers, with people he respected or needed. And all his little gestures, his expressions, the words he used—they were all classic, predictable to a certain extent. But every evening when I went into his room and found him alone with his wife, I realised how human nature is truly bizarre.
At night, I would sleep in the same room as he, stretched out on a chaise-longue next to the alcove. I would go up to bed late. The house was usually filled with the sound of footsteps, voices—but hushed, muted, out of a sense of deferential fear, but still audible, like the humming of a beehive. In the evening, everything was silent. It was cold, as it often is in St. Petersburg at the end of spring, when the icy winds run down from the north along the Neva River. I remember going into the bedroom where all you could hear was the crackling and spitting of logs in the wood-burning stove. A pink lamp burned in the corner of the room. Next to the bed, sitting on a small, low armchair, Madame Courilof held her husband’s hands. When she saw me, she exclaimed in her shrill little birdlike voice: “Eleven o’clock already? Time for you to get some rest, my darling.”
I would sit down with a book by the window. Within a few minutes, they would forget I was there and quietly continue their conversation.
Gradually I would look up and, in the darkened room, study their faces. They seemed different. He would listen to her endlessly, pressing her hand against his forehead, a faint smile hovering at the corner of his lips (those stony lips that hardly seemed designed to smile). Sometimes even I enjoyed listening to her. Not that she was intelligent, far from it, but she had a way of rambling on that was fascinating, almost as if she couldn’t stop herself; it was as relaxing as the steady sound of a brook, or a bird singing. However, she knew when to be silent, how to be still, how to anticipate his every desire, like an old, wise pussycat. Beneath the pinkish light, half hidden in shadow, what stood out were her beautiful eyes and golden hair, its colour fading. Every so often she would give a little cry, shrug her shoulders with the inimitable sound of a woman who has seen all there is to see of life. Sometimes she would let out a kind of involuntary sigh, a cry of: “Oh! My God, the things I’ve seen!” and then she would gently stroke Courilof’s hand.
“My darling, my poor darling…”
For they would forget I was there and would speak to each other endearingly; she would call him “my sweetheart…my love … my darling…” Such words spoken to Courilof, to the “ferocious, voracious Killer Whale,” moved me.
“Oh!” she said one day. “Do you think I don’t know? I never should have listened to you. What was the point of getting married? We were happy as we were.”
Suddenly, she fell silent: she had undoubtedly remembered I was there. But I sat totally still.
She sighed. “Valia, do you remember?” she said softly. “Do you remember how it used to be?”
“Yes,” he replied curtly.
She hesitated, then whispered with a note of fear and hope in her voice, “What if they get their way … Who knows? If you weren’t a minister any more, we could leave the country, we could go and live in France, the two of us.”
When she said that, I saw Courilof’s face change, tense up. Something harsh and inhuman came over his features, a look in his eyes.
“Ah!” he said, his voice pompous and solemn, gradually growing louder as he spoke. “Do you actually think I want to stay in power? It’s a burden. But as long as the Emperor needs me, I will carry out my duties to the end.”
She bowed her head sadly. He was starting to get restless, tossing and turning in the bed.
“I’ll leave you alone,” she murmured.
He hesitated, then opened his eyes and looked at her. “Sing me a little song before you go, anything…” he asked sweetly.
She sang French love songs, old arias from operettas, swinging her legs, swaying her body, moving her head as if she were in the spotlight, undoubtedly as she had been in the past, in the little cabarets in the Iles. And yet, her voice was still beautiful. I turned away so I couldn’t see her, so I could just hear her sweet, sonorous song. Looking at her was horrible; she made me feel pity and scorn. But how did he feel when he looked at her? I wondered if she had really once been so beautiful that… There wasn’t a single picture of her in the house.
He watched her without moving, lost in some vague, passionate dream. “Ah! No one sings like that any more!”
I remember he took her hands, almost stroking them, with an affectionate kind of indifference, as if they were the hands of a friend, a child, a wife of many years. But his eyes were closed, and, little by little, memories from the past surely came back to him. I could see him press her hands more tightly, forcing the blood to rush away from her fingers. She smiled, a bitter, melancholy little grimace on her face.
“The good times are all in the past, my darling.”
He sighed. “Life passes quickly,” he said, sounding troubled and anxious.
“It’s slow enough now. It’s youth that goes so quickly.” She whispered a few words to him that I couldn’t make out, then shrugged her shoulders. “Really?” she said.
Her words and gesture must have surely had some special meaning for them both in the past, for she started to laugh, but sadly, as if she were implying Do you remember? I was young then …
And he imitated her tone of voice and said again: “Really? What was that? Really? My darling little one.”
When he laughed, his chin trembled and the expression in his eyes became clear and soft.
Then Courilof’s children came in: Ina and the boy, Ivan, who was fat and weak, just like Courilof, with pale cheeks, big ears, easily short of breath.
Courilof spoke to the boy with deep affection. He hugged him, stroked him, held him to him for a long time while sighing, “Ah! This is my son, my heir.” He gently stroked his hair, his arms.
“Look, Monsieur Legrand, he’s anaemic,” he added.
And I still remember how he would lower the boy’s pale lips and eyelids for
me to see.
The girl said nothing, her face was cold and impassive. Nevertheless, she looked like Courilof; she had his mannerisms and voice. She constantly fiddled with a gold necklace she was wearing. Courilof displayed such coldness towards her that he was virtually hostile. He hissed at her when he spoke, looked at her with an expression of annoyance and anger.
The children kissed his hand. He made the sign of the cross on their bowed heads, as well as on the powdered face of his ageing mistress.
Finally, all three of them left.
CHAPTER 11
COURILOF AND HIS wife were in the habit of writing to each other from their bedrooms; the servants would carry books or fruit from one end of the house to the other until very late at night, with little notes written in pencil.
I sometimes read them out to him, at his request, for he was proud of his wife; he enjoyed having me see her handwriting and style. She wrote in a rambling fashion, teasing and melancholy, that was actually similar to the way she spoke and was quite charming. She often reminded him to ask me about his medicines, treatments, or diet, along with endearments like: “Good night, my one and only darling! Your old, devoted Marguerite.”
Or: “I cannot wait until tomorrow: a new day is always precious at our age, and tomorrow means I will be able to see you again.”
Once, I read: “My darling, would you please see an elderly woman, for my sake. She’s the widow Aarontchik, who has come a long way from the provinces to seek justice from you. In the past, and long before I had the joy of knowing you, this woman was my lodger in Lodz, and she looked after me devotedly when…”
Then followed a series of initials that I read out to Courilof, without understanding what they meant. He frowned and his face took on that sad, sour look I was beginning to know so well.
He let out a deep sigh. “File it.”
That same night he thought for a moment, then asked me, “Don’t you find that French women have an innately graceful and elegant sense of style?”
He didn’t wait for my reply but continued, “Ah! If only you could have seen Marguerite Eduardovna in La Perichole, when I first met her!”
“Was that a long time ago?” I asked.
He always seemed upset and surprised when I asked him a question, like someone who blushes in embarrassment for a rude person. I recall one day, during the Revolution, when I was interrogating one of the grand dukes. Which one was he? I’ve forgotten his name, but he was elderly. He’d been in prison in the Kresty jail for more than a year and was dying of hunger when he was brought to me. But he remained cool and calm, treating his guards with meticulous, ironic politeness, seeming to bear his misfortunes with extraordinary stoicism. Right up until the moment when I came into the room. I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, and I sat down opposite him without the customary formalities. This man—whose face had been half smashed by one of the guards—blushed, not out of anger, but rather out of embarrassment, as if I had taken all my clothes off in front of him. Poor Courilof had also picked up certain mannerisms from Alexander III; he too sometimes looked like a dictator.
I waited while he stared at me for a moment with a haughty, anxious look in his pale, wide eyes.
“It’s been fourteen years,” Courilof said at last. He thought for a moment, then added, “I was young then too … A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.”
At night, as I have already mentioned, I slept in his room. He was patient and never complained. He often couldn’t sleep, and I would hear him quietly tossing and turning, moaning as he tried to pick something up from the table.
I remember certain nights in Switzerland, sleepless nights when you listened for every sound, the blood rushing through your veins, the quick pulse at your temples, times when you could smell death oozing from your body, when you were so very weary… and at those times, life seemed so wonderful and the nights so long.
“Can’t you sleep?” I once asked.
I’d been listening to him for nearly an hour, turning his pillow over and over, no doubt unable to find a cool place on the pillowcase. I knew that feeling very well. He seemed unbelievably happy to hear the sound of my voice. I pulled back the screen that separated the chaise-longue where I slept in the alcove from the rest of the bedroom. He sighed softly.
“Good Lord, I’m in so much pain,” he said, his voice breathless and trembling. “It feels like a razor’s cutting into me.”
“That’s usually what it feels like when you have your attacks,” I said. “It will pass.”
He nodded several times with visible difficulty.
“You’re brave,” I said.
I had already noticed that this man had a pathological, childish need to be praised. He blushed slightly, sat up, leaned against his pillow and pointed to a chair next to his bed where I should sit down.
“I am extremely religious, Monsieur Legrand; I know that young people today lean more towards rationalism. But the courage you are kind enough to recognise in me, and that even my enemies acknowledge as indisputable, comes from my trust in God. Not a single hair falls from anyone’s head without his permission.”
He fell silent and we watched the mosquitoes buzzing around, attracted by the light of the lamp. Even now, in summer, whenever I see mosquitoes flying about and twitching their greedy noses, my thoughts return to those nights in the Iles. I can still hear the metallic, lyrical hum of their delicate wings above the water.
I closed the window, saw he was burning up with fever; he didn’t seem able to sleep. I offered to read to him. He accepted, thanking me. I took a book down from the shelf. After a few pages, he stopped me.
“Monsieur Legrand, aren’t you sleepy? Really?”
I said that I slept badly when the nights were light like this.
“Would you help me?” he said. “I have a lot ofwork to catch up on. I’m very worried about it. Don’t say anything to Langen-berg,” he continued, forcing a smile.
I brought him the stack of letters he pointed out; I passed them to him one at a time, and he scribbled notes in the margins in different coloured pencils that he chose with the utmost care. I furtively glanced at the letters as I handed them to him: they were letters from strangers, for the most part, full of suggestions about suppressing revolutionary ideas in the secondary schools and universities; and an unbelievable number of denunciations, by teachers of students, students of other students. Secondary school students, university students, head teachers, schoolmasters: it seemed as if everyone in Russia spent their lives spying and denouncing each other.
Then came the reports. One of them described serious disruptions in the university in one of the provincial cities (Kharkov, I think); the minister asked me to take down his reply; it was the text of an order he was planning.
He was sitting up against his pillows; the more he dictated, the more severe and cold his face became. He spoke each word individually, with an air of dignity, punctuating them with the same wave of his hand. He ordered them to cancel the lectures. Then he thought for a while, and a grim smile hovered over his lips and in the corners of his half-closed eyes.
“Write this down, Monsieur Legrand: ‘The time wasted in useless political discussions will be made up during the forthcoming holidays: these will be shortened by the duration of the disruptions. If, in spite of this, the disruptions continue into the autumn, the exam results will be null and void; all the students, whatever their grades may have been, will be required to start their course over again from the beginning.’ “
Once he’d hissed that out, he looked at me smugly.
“That will make them think twice,” he said, sounding threatening and scornful. “The next one, please, Monsieur Legrand.”
For this one he dictated a memo intended for school-teachers: “During Russian Literature and History lessons, you must take advantage of every opportunity to use the facts in order to awaken in the tender souls of your young students a passionate love for HM the Emperor and the Imperial Family, as we
ll as an indissoluble attachment to the sacred traditions and institutions of the Monarchy. In addition, the words and actions of all the teachers will be designed to be an example of Christian humility and true orthodox charity to your students. It goes without saying that any statements, reading, and, in general, any subversive actions you have the opportunity of noting amongst the students entrusted to your care, must, as always, be punished most severely.”
Next there were requests for appointments. I saw a letter signed by Sarah Aarontchik, begging His Excellency to arrest someone called Mazourtchik, who was guilty of having “corrupted” her sixteen-year-old son by making him read Karl Marx. Valerian Alexandrovitch, who seemed transformed from the minute he was dealing with his correspondence, made a gesture. His eyes were gleaming behind his glasses; his wide, shiny forehead shone bizarrely, lit up by the lamp.
“Wait a moment. Pass me that note from my wife.”
He re-read it closely, placing it in a coloured folder where various other papers were organised. Then he took out fifteen or so documents and requests for appointments and spread them out on the bed.
“This is the batch for tomorrow and the next day,” he said with pride.
I continued passing him the letters I held in my hand. Finally he stopped me, saying he was tired. He lay there, stretched out, his eyes closed, and sighed. A severe, weary expression came over his face, an expression I knew very well. The night when they had brought the bodies for him to see, in the courtyard of the university, he had had the same nervous tension in his lips, the same rigidity of his features.
“Is it true that the army killed six students last month?” I asked suddenly. “What did they do?”