The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  Arkin pulled into a side street and stopped the car. “Are you unwell, madam?”

  The fur coat didn’t move. Just the low moan that went on and on. He stared at her crumpled figure and found himself breathing awkwardly. He climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood on the icy pavement, the wind snatching at his peaked cap.

  “Madam?” he said.

  The moaning broke off. Still the sable coat remained hunched forward, but quivers ran through it and quiet sobs began to leak between her fingers. Instinctively he slid into the seat beside her. It broke all the rules, but to hell with the rules. He sat next to her, not touching, not speaking, just being there. When the quivering finally ceased and one of her gloved hands reached into the small gap between them, he placed his own hand over it. Glove on glove, the faintest of comforts, and they remained like that. Minutes passed. Several pedestrians glanced at them with a surprised expression, but Arkin ignored them.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Slowly, Elizaveta Ivanova hauled herself back to an upright position and took a long shuddering breath. She didn’t look at him or remove her hand, but her back was ramrod straight once more and the tears had stopped.

  “She may still be alive,” Arkin said quietly.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Don’t give up hope.”

  Her mouth pulled into a faint parody of a smile. “I gave up hope years ago.”

  “There’s no need to. Hope is what keeps us going.”

  “Hope for what?”

  “For a daughter still alive. For a life worth living.”

  She turned her face toward him, and he saw the cold loneliness in her blue eyes. Her fur hat was crooked and a strand of fair hair had come unpinned, hanging in a curl across her cheek. He wanted to straighten both for her. To straighten her life for her.

  “Is your life worth living?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She inspected him, taking in as if for the first time the dark spikes of his hair under his hat, the line of his mouth, and the careful expression in his eyes. Still her hand lay under his.

  “Thank you, Spasibo,” she said again.

  She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes. Beneath the almost transparent skin of her eyelids he could see her eyes moving, restless as his own heartbeat, and he waited quietly while she found in herself whatever it was she needed to go on. When it started to snow, he removed his hand, returned to the front seat, and drove her home.

  JENS FRIIS CAME BACK TO THEM. VALENTINA WAS THE FIRST to sight the faint glow of the lamp, the first on her feet, the first to greet him and to see that the Jens who returned was not the same Jens who’d left them. His face had changed. In some indefinable way the bones sat differently, as if they had been taken apart while he was gone and reassembled by an unfamiliar hand. His eyes had sunk deeper in his head and a hard line ran down from each corner of his mouth. He was brusque. Unapproachable. He explained in brief sentences what he’d seen.

  “The tunnel is completely blocked back there by rocks and rubble.”

  Valentina studied his hands. Gloves in tatters, blood oozing down his wrist.

  “It is too much to remove. The roof is unstable. No rescue teams will be coming that way because more of the tunnel roof could come crashing down at any time.”

  “Did you find anybody?” Nurse Sonya asked.

  The Duma man backed off to the gully and vomited into the water.

  “There were bodies,” Jens acknowledged. His mouth was tight. No one asked for more.

  “Now,” he said, “we wait.”

  DO YOU SWIM?”

  Valentina’s stomach flipped over. “Yes.” In the creek in the summer, back in the days when her sister could kick. “Yes, I can swim.”

  “Good.”

  “Will it come to that?”

  “It could.”

  She imagined the cold water. “I don’t think my nurse can swim.”

  “Then we shall keep her afloat between us. Don’t look so worried. It most likely won’t be necessary.”

  “I hope not. Will the water be filthy?”

  “Probably.”

  WHEN THE OIL LAMP WAS LIT, THEY LIVED IN ONE KIND of world. Valentina paced up and down the cavern to the limit of the lamp’s range, but she didn’t venture beyond it. That would be too much. She was thirsty, her throat dry. The older women remained seated on the damp ground, quietly discussing the desirability of a hot bath. Jens stood by the gully water and smoked cigarette after cigarette. His leather hat had disappeared and his red hair had turned a dirty gray, flattened to his head by the weight of brick dust. At intervals he walked over to the young surveyor, studied the flushed face, and exchanged a few words with Nurse Sonya.

  When the lamp was off, they lived in a different kind of world, one that released the demons that fled from daylight. The small group sat in a circle again, feet touching.

  “Try to sleep,” Jens ordered.

  He crouched down beside Valentina, took off his coat, and draped it over her.

  “Spasibo. Let’s share it,” she said.

  In the total darkness she felt the touch of his hand as he spread the heavy coat over their laps. As time crawled past and voices quieted, the incessant swirl and flow of the water filled her mind and she pictured it rising, slowly, implacably, until she was drowning in her sleep.

  “Hush.”

  Jens’s voice in her ear. Jens’s hand on her chin. Her eyes jerked open but met only blackness.

  “Hush,” he murmured again.

  She was aware of his body leaning over hers.

  “You were whimpering. Bad dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “This place invites bad dreams.”

  The blackness was thicker than pitch. She could make out no trace of his face, but she heard him swallow and felt the soft brush of his lips on hers. There one moment, then gone. So brief she wasn’t certain. Tentatively she touched his face and her fingers found the high forehead, the straight line of one eyebrow, and slid down to explore his eyelid and the dense fringe of eyelashes. She had never touched a man’s face before.

  “When will the water come?” she whispered.

  “Soon, I imagine. They have to evacuate the tunnels that we need to escape through and rid them of water.”

  She breathed carefully, drawing in the air they shared.

  “Do you know what I would like now?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Four slices of cool refreshing pineapple, sweet and tangy. Two for you, two for me.”

  She laughed with surprise.

  “Sleep now,” he murmured. “No more dreams. Don’t worry, I’ll listen for the water.”

  THE WATER CAME, JUST AS JENS HAD KNOWN IT WOULD. His sharp ears picked up the change in its voice, a sudden shift in note long before it reached them: a distant sound rattling through pipes and tunnels far off in the system. Water was being redirected, sluices opened and closed. Certain tunnels had to be emptied before the trapped group could escape, and now the sound of the water grew louder.

  “Just remain calm,” he told them. “As soon as the water is through this chamber, we can all climb up into the higher tunnel and walk our way out. Watch your heads; the ceiling height will be low. Keep together and take a firm hold on the rope.” It wasn’t a rope. It was their belts fixed together into a long line to stop anyone being swept away.

  “How deep will it be?” the nurse asked. Her teeth were chattering.

  “Not deep at all. Hold on to the rope.”

  They stood in a line behind him. The wounded surveyor was belted onto Jens’s back, just conscious enough to grip around his neck. He was a skinny young man, not too much weight, but Jens worried about the open wound on his leg in the foul water. Next to him stood the nurse, dropping prayers from her lips like rosary beads. Jens raised the lamp in one hand and took a grip on her arm with the other. On the far side of her stood Valentina. He would have given much to be able to seiz
e her hand and not release it, but he had given his word to help her nurse. One on each side of her, he’d promised, but all the time he’d be watching Valentina. He’d put Davidov behind her, then Davidov’s wife, followed by the Duma couple.

  When the water came, it rose out of the gully and sneaked across the floor of the chamber as black as oil, but no one panicked. There were raw gasps as the icy flow increased to a flood, crawling over their feet, sliding up their shins, and swirling around their knees. When it reached Valentina’s thighs, billowing her skirt around her, her eyes sought his. Her hands held tight onto the rope and onto Nurse Sonya as a rat swept past them, swimming frantically.

  Jens judged it carefully. “Now,” he shouted.

  He raised the lamp and set off. They followed meekly, up the four stone steps to the higher-level tunnel where the outflow had slowed to a knee-high slick of freezing filth. The stench was suffocating and the roof level low. Davidov crunched his head against bricks and swore, but Jens led them as fast as he dared, pulling the makeshift rope behind him. Once in this channel, it was not far to an exit.

  “All well?” he shouted out.

  “Da.”

  “Not much farther.”

  “How long?”

  But Jens’s ears had caught a sound, a rumble. Above the noise of legs splashing through the water came a distant but distinct rumble.

  “Faster,” he ordered.

  He lengthened his stride. “Almost there,” he called out.

  “What’s that noise?” Davidov yelled.

  The panic swept out of nowhere. One moment they were orderly and then suddenly they were running through the filth, stumbling and sprawling, all realizing what the rumbling heralded. The rope was abandoned. The surveyor tightened his grip till he was throttling Jens, but Jens still clutched the nurse and saw that Valentina had an arm around Madam Davidova, who was having difficulty breathing. Her husband was up ahead.

  “Take that opening up there on the right. You may see daylight from it,” Jens called to him.

  Daylight. It was only a word. Daylight. Jens had saved it till now. It brought hope in its wake. They hurried, scrambling and splashing to the side recess, turned the corner into it, and immediately Jens heard shouts. He came through last, dragging Nurse Sonya with him, and immediately saw what he’d known would be there. An iron ladder, a metal trapdoor above it. Daylight seeping through the small holes, air that was clean. A cheer went up, and tears were rolling down Madam Davidova’s cheeks.

  The rumble of water burst into a roar right behind them.

  “Up,” Jens ordered sharply.

  Davidov climbed first. He raised the metal trapdoor with his shoulders, so that it clattered open onto the roadside and white air billowed in, making those in the tunnel squint as they stared upward. Quickly Jens hoisted the surveyor off his back and onto the ladder, so that Davidov could haul him up, followed by the Duma man and his wife. The water was rising fast now, up to Jens’s waist already.

  “Valentina, climb!”

  But she pushed the nurse onto the lowest rung. Nurse Sonya was shivering so fiercely her plump hands could scarcely hold the metal.

  “Bistro! Quickly!” Jens shouted.

  He hooked an arm around Valentina’s shoulders and lifted her onto the rung as a surge of water cascaded through the tunnel.

  “Go,” he said. He gave her sodden boot a push.

  He seized Madam Davidova’s wrist and placed her hand on the ladder. Saw her fingers curl around it. A dozen more steps and it would be over. But that was when the torrent hit. A great churning wall of water crashed into them, ripping the ground from under them, leaping up the ladder, tearing fingers from metal. The lamp went. The world blacked out. Jens was hurled into the water. Filth in his mouth. His head cracked against a wall. His lungs burned as he fought his way up toward the square of light, but something or somebody crashed against him, submerging him again.

  He seized a flailing arm underwater and dragged it back to the surface. For a brief moment he held it and caught a glimpse of a terrified face before the roaring current ripped it away. It was Madam Davidova. Valentina was screaming at him. Her dark figure leapt over him, into the water.

  “No!” he bellowed, “Valentina, no!”

  He lashed out and caught her long hair; his fingers twisted into it and yanked it toward him against the rush of the current. Her body was small and slight, but Valentina was kicking at him. “Let me go,” she screamed, dragging them under. He didn’t let her go; he would drown before he let her go. A hand stretched out from the ladder, hurling a coat onto the water’s surface. He snatched at a sleeve and was hauled in toward the metal rungs by the Duma man.

  “Spasibo,” he grunted.

  Valentina was quiet now, locked in the circle of his arms, staring back along the path of the water’s torrent. Madam Davidova was gone. A low moan seeped out of Valentina, an animal sound of grief, but she didn’t resist when he lifted her up the ladder. In the cold gray light of a winter’s morning, they stood in a battered huddle, wet and exhausted, in the empty road. Davidov dropped to his knees, his face in his hands. Jens was not ready yet to look at the extent of his own failure. That time would come, when he was alone, away from the eyes of the world. For now he held Valentina’s trembling body against his and stroked the filth out of her hair.

  “I could have saved her,” she whispered, the words shivering on her tongue.

  “No,” he said. “You couldn’t.”

  In the distance he could hear cars speeding toward them. But the future he had prepared for himself was speeding away from him, as out of control as the raging flood in the tunnels below St. Petersburg.

  Seventeen

  VALENTINA LAY SUNK DEEP IN HER PILLOWS. DRIFTS OF snowflakes buffeted the window as icy patterns clung to the corners of the glass, delicate as spiders’ webs, cold and unwanted as the thoughts in her head.

  Time was passing. She wasn’t sure how long. Two weeks, three weeks? More? She’d been ill, the days blurred; a fever burned inside her, drenching the bedclothes with sweat, tying her limbs in knots in the sheets. She’d welcomed it. In her more conscious moments she knew it was a lung infection from the sewer water, but in her wilder spasms she was certain it was a punishment. Madam Davidova had drowned, her body washed up against a sluice grid, while Valentina had survived because she had climbed that ladder ahead of her.

  At times the woman’s gentle face came to Valentina in her dreams and said sweet words. But other times, at night when the darkness grew too hot and heavy inside her head, Madam Davidova came like a fiend out of hell. Eyes blazing fire. Mouth spitting obscenities. Then Valentina screamed. Nurse Sonya was always there, telling her, “Ssh, malishka, quiet now.”

  Something cold on her brow, a sip of liquid on her lips. Sometimes the bitter taste of laudanum.

  The door opened quietly and there was the whisper of wheels on carpet. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes. Good morning, Katya. You’re looking well.”

  It was true, Katya did look well. Her skin had color, her hair was freshly washed, and she was sitting more upright in her chair.

  “I’ve brought you some pineapple. Look.”

  She placed a dish on Valentina’s side table. Inside a bowl lay two slices of canary-yellow pineapple, their fragrance drifting around the wintry room and turning it into summertime.

  “How are you feeling?” Katya asked.

  “Better.”

  “Good. Will you come downstairs today?”

  Valentina closed her eyes. “No. I have a thumping headache.”

  “Nurse can give you something for it. You could get up and—”

  “No. Not today, Katya.”

  There was a long silence. The window danced and rattled in its frame. Valentina felt her hand lifted by Katya’s fingers.

  “Valentina, you can’t go on like this.”

  More silence. Thicker this time, harder to breathe.

  “Nurse tells me,” Katya said gently,
“that your fever is cured. That you are better.”

  “But I feel weak.” Eyes still closed.

  “Too weak to walk downstairs?”

  Valentina nodded.

  The small fingers soothed her own with soft feathery strokes. “I hear you, my sweet Valentina, I hear you every night.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do. I hear you creep past my room every night when you think the whole house is asleep. You go downstairs and you play the piano. Sometimes for hours, even for most of the night.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You creep back just before the servants start to stir. Admit it.” Katya squeezed her hand hard, jerking Valentina’s eyes open. “So,” Katya said, “now you will look at me?”

  Valentina looked. This wasn’t her Katya, this was someone who had slid under her sister’s skin. The blue eyes were cold and pale as moonstones. This person was masquerading as Katya, getting it all wrong.

  “Valentina, what is the matter with you? What is it that has paralyzed you as totally as the bomb paralyzed me? You’re not hurt. You’re not ill. Yet you’re hiding away up here. You didn’t even bother with your birthday. Where has all your spirit gone?”

  “It was washed away in the sewers.”

  “You’re alive. You weren’t crushed and you didn’t drown, nor did you lose part of your leg like the surveyor did.”

  “The surveyor? Lost his leg?”

  “Below the knee. Amputated.”

  Valentina recalled his young face. Sweat-covered. Frightened. His arms around Jens’s neck, tight as tentacles.

  “He’ll be able to walk with a crutch,” Katya said.

  “Madam Davidova will never walk again.”

  “No.”

  “I saw her die, Katya. I watched this good woman drown.”

  Katya’s hand slackened its grip, and her tone grew gentler. “Grieve for her. Yes, that’s your right, but don’t stop living because of her.”