The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  The streets grew narrower, the houses meaner till dirt and despair hung in the damp air. A pack of three feral dogs snapped at the horse and received the tip of Hero’s metal shoe in exchange. Jens gazed along the street at the pinched faces and the blackened buildings. The cold was so intense it had cracked windows.

  This was why he was here. Places like this. Streets that stank. No water to wash. Just wells that turned sour and backed up in the rain, and pumps that iced over. This was why he was here in Petersburg.

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING WHEN VALENTINA tapped the door with her fingertips.

  “Vkhodite, come in, my dear.” The voice was soft and welcoming.

  She turned the handle and entered Nurse Sonya’s private quarters, where shadows had settled on the carpet like tired dogs in the dim light.

  “Dobroye utro, good morning,” Valentina said in greeting.

  The nurse was in her fifties, seated in a rocking chair and tapping the floor with her foot in a steady rhythm to keep it in motion. Her large form was engulfed in a battered old housecoat and a Bible lay open on her lap, her finger trailing over each line she read.

  “How is she tonight?” Valentina asked at once.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  Sleeping? Or just pretending? Valentina knew that Nurse Sonya was not good at knowing the difference. Katya had endured three operations in the last six months to try to repair her shattered spine, and since the last one her mobility had definitely improved, but still she was unable to walk. Not that she ever complained. No, Katya wouldn’t. But purple hollows gathered under her eyes and a sallow bruised look to her face betrayed when the pain was bad.

  “What have you given her?” Valentina asked quietly.

  “A little laudanum, the usual dosage.”

  “I thought you were cutting back on it.”

  “I tried, malishka, little one. But she needs it.”

  Valentina made no comment. What do I know about laudanum? Just what I see in Katya’s eyes.

  The nurse stilled the rocking chair and studied Valentina’s face with a look of gentle concern. “Guilt is a terrible thing, my dear.” She shook her head, and her hand trailed across the wafer-thin page open on her lap. “God forgives us.”

  Valentina walked over to the window, pulled the heavy curtain to one side, and stared out into the night. Lights flickered as sleighs and carriages with bright torches continued to charge through the city that prided itself on its reputation for never sleeping, on its reputation for wild living and even wilder dying. St. Petersburg was a city of extremes. All or nothing. No one in St. Petersburg seemed to have any time for anything but their next drink, their next dissolute party, their next insane throw of the dice. She stared out at it all and craved something more for her life.

  “No,” she murmured to the nurse, “it’s not God’s forgiveness I want.”

  IT WAS STILL DARK. THE KIND OF DARKNESS THAT IS THICK and heavy, the kind that clogs the mind. The first muted sounds of the house coming to life drifted upstairs as servants laid fires and polished floors. Valentina was perched cross-legged on the end of Katya’s bed, a towel spread out over her lap.

  “I hear Papa has bought a new car while I was at school,” Valentina said.

  “Yes. It’s a Turicum. From Switzerland.”

  “Isn’t that fearfully expensive?”

  “I expect so. But Tsar Nicholas has just bought himself a new Delaunay-Belleville. You know what it’s like at court; they’ve made a big fuss of it and all rush to copy him.”

  “Who is driving it?”

  “Papa has hired a chauffeur. His name is Viktor Arkin.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Very smart in his uniform. Rather quiet but I suppose good looking in a serious sort of way.”

  “You always did like a man in uniform.”

  Katya laughed delightedly, and Valentina felt pleased. Some days it took more than that to make her sister smile. But she noticed that Katya’s eyes were blurry this morning, as though the fog had slunk up the Neva River and slid into her head overnight. One of her feet was propped on the towel and Valentina’s hands were massaging its delicate skin, manipulating the joints, bringing a semblance of life into the paralyzed limb. A fine sheen of lavender oil eased the repetitive movement and scented the air, disguising the odor of a sickroom.

  Katya snuggled into her pillows, her hair a haze of pale gold around her head. “Tell me again about the tsar.” She watched Valentina’s busy hands. “What was he like?”

  “I’ve told you already. He was handsome and charming and complimented me on my playing.”

  Katya narrowed her blue eyes, as if she were peering at something very small. “Don’t think I can’t see through your lies, Valentina. What happened yesterday? Why didn’t you like His Imperial Majesty?”

  “Of course I liked him. Everyone likes the tsar.”

  “I shall call for Nurse Sonya to throw you out of here if you don’t...”

  Valentina laughed and paused in working oil into the pale toe-nails. Her sister’s foot lay on her palm as dead as a doll’s. “All right, all right, I admit it. You know me too well. You’re correct, Katya, I didn’t like Tsar Nicholas yesterday. But only because he strutted into the room as if he owned the whole world, not just the Romanovs’ half of it. Gaudy as a peacock. A small man in big shoes.”

  Katya suddenly banged her hand on her forehead with mock annoyance. “Of course, I remember now. He told you he wanted you to play the piano for his wife and children when he heard you play before at the school two years ago. Didn’t he?”

  “Yes. And I was stupid enough to believe him then. I practiced and practiced and practiced, waiting for the summons. But it never came.” She moved Katya’s foot down onto the sheet. “I have far more sense this time.” She smiled at her young sister. “You can’t trust a tsar. Lies come too easily to his royal tongue.”

  Katya’s eyes opened wide. “Was he there again?”

  “Who?”

  “I remember that you told me there was a man with Tsar Nicholas when you played for him before.”

  “No, I said no such thing.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Valentina picked up the other foot, placing it on the towel. She dipped her fingers in the warm oil and started to massage the dry skin on the heel. “What on earth are you talking about?” She kept her eyes on Katya’s toes as she gently eased them apart, one by one.

  “There was a man. With the tsar two years ago when he visited your school,” Katya insisted. “I remember, you said he was...”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “You told me he looked like a Viking warrior.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “With fiery hair and green eyes.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “No, you told me. He stood by the door, and you said...”

  Valentina laughed and tweaked a toe. “I said a lot of silly things when I was fifteen.”

  But Katya’s gaze was fixed on her sister. “You told me you had fallen in love with him.”

  Valentina’s fingers pummeled the scrap of flesh behind the ankle bone. “If I said such a thing, it was just schoolgirl nonsense. I didn’t even speak to him. I scarcely recall now what he looked like.” But the blood had risen to her cheeks.

  “You told me,” Katya said softly, “that you intended to marry this tall Viking warrior.”

  “Then I was a fool,” Valentina insisted. “I don’t ever intend to marry.”

  Four

  KATYA WAS RIGHT. ABOUT THE VIKING. VALENTINA HAD tried to laugh about it but couldn’t. She was angry at him now. He didn’t remember her, it was obvious, but that didn’t matter. Why should she expect him to, after the way she’d played when she was fifteen?

  No, that wasn’t what irked her. It was the way that he’d walked out yesterday. As soon as she’d finished playing, he had left with an eagerness that was insulting: he’d jumped to his feet and, after a f
ew words with the tsar, had loped for the door as though he couldn’t get out fast enough. Was he so disappointed that he couldn’t bear to stay? But she had been so proud of her performance this time. His indifference to it was like a bee sting in her flesh.

  She sat down hungrily at the piano in her parents’ music room and as always stroked its surface. It was a beautiful glossy black Erard grand, which she loved. She let her fingers touch the keys and immediately the tension swerved out of her body, like a train jumping the tracks. As instant as that. It was always the same. Her fingers caressed the ivory and started to flow steadily up and down its length, moving at different speeds, rising and falling, warming the muscles, stretching the tendons. The rich exuberant sound that rose from the body of the Erard soothed her, calmed some of her excitement. Because she was excited, but for all the wrong reasons. She wanted to see the Viking again.

  Katya was right about that.

  Valentina had been stunned when he’d walked into the hall just behind the tsar yesterday, tall and upright in his frock coat. She hadn’t expected him. He was the tallest man in the room by far, lean and broad shouldered with an air of invincibility about him. Two years ago at the Ekaterininsky Institute concert he had strolled in among a party of the tsar’s courtiers and dazzled her fifteen-year-old eyes with his energy and his fiery red hair. His vivid green eyes had swept the room with a look of amusement, as though the whole situation were too absurd to take seriously.

  On that occasion she’d watched him, all through the singing and the dancing, wanting to catch his eye, but she’d seen that he was bored by the performances and had eyes for no one except the beautiful woman by his side, dressed in green silk and fine emeralds. When her own turn came to play, Valentina had been determined not to bore him, but his presence had made her nervous and she hadn’t played well. At the end he’d applauded politely, smiling at his companion as if at a secret joke. Valentina had been furious with herself. But you couldn’t love someone you’ve never even spoken to, someone you’ve just seen across a room. It was impossible.

  Her fingers abandoned the exercises and launched into Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, a piece she always relished, but abruptly she lifted her hands from the keys. There were times, odd, uncomfortable moments when she was playing and the music was really seizing hold of her, that she would break off like this. Aware that her mother considered her passion for the piano to be excessive and therefore unbecoming in a young woman. She knew her mother could never understand why she had no interest in going shopping with her, choosing dresses, all the things young ladies were meant to do, instead of sitting at home on a piano stool hour after hour. Worse, Valentina sometimes feared that her mother felt that if she wasn’t going to behave like a proper girl, she might as well have been the longed-for boy.

  She wished Katya had been there to hear her yesterday. With a sudden movement she rose, drew a chair from beside the wall, and placed it next to her piano stool. The chair was padded in a creamy brocade and had slender fluted mahogany arms. She sat again on her stool, then rested first one hand on the chair and then the other. Without using her legs at all she tried to swing herself off the stool toward the chair seat, but missed it completely. Her arms became entangled and the chair edge stabbed her shoulder blade as she tumbled like a rag doll to the floor. She glared at her legs as if the fault were theirs.

  “Chyort!”

  It took five awkward attempts, but finally she succeeded. Her heart was racing and her arms shook with the effort.

  “Chyort!” she swore again. Then she stood up and ran up the stairs to her room.

  IN FRONT OF HER AT HER DESK VALENTINA HELD A LIST, NEATLY written out on a sheet of ivory-tinted paper. It was a list she had drawn up four months ago and which she kept locked in the drawer of her table away from prying eyes. Maids peeked into everything. But the paper was already dog-eared at the edges because she liked to handle it, to remind herself. Her eyes traveled down each point methodically.

  1. Contact every spine specialist in Europe.

  With painstaking care she’d scoured medical journals in the library for articles on spinal damage, and she’d written to doctors as far away as Berlin, Rome, Oslo, even London. Few had bothered to reply.

  2. Make Katya happy.

  She smiled at that one. Such a simple aim. Four months ago, making Katya happy after her operations had seemed the easiest of all on her list: she would read to her, play cards with her, whisper secrets, and pass on the latest tittle-tattle from school or from the servants’ hall downstairs. She brought her ribbons and jigsaws, as well as the latest books from Belizard’s bookstore. From the parks or the riverbank she collected magpie feathers and the first coppery maple leaves of autumn. She smuggled in chocolate from Wolf & Beranger’s or risked the sticky confections from the bazaar at Gostiny Dvor.

  But now she understood that making Katya happy meant far more than that. It meant creating a whole new future for her. Those words in the silence of her head felt huge.

  So what next?

  3. Find employment.

  She ran a finger over the word employment and her stomach lurched. For years she’d had a dream. Ever since she was a gawky gap-toothed child she had planned it, while others giggled in corners and played with toys. To be a concert pianist. That was her aim. To tour the greatest concert halls and palaces of Europe, performing before heads of state in Rome and Paris, London and Vienna. But it was gone. Blown apart by the bomb. It couldn’t happen now. It would mean years of dedicated work at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, and she no longer had that luxury. She had to care for Katya. She stared at her fingers, at their strong tendons and well-rounded pads, and she felt disloyal to them. Disloyal to herself. She had to forget the dream.

  But how? How could she tear it out of her head when she could still see herself at the keys, pouring her heart into the music, then rising from the piano, her audience on their feet? She would wear a scarlet Parisian gown, a single strand of pearls in her hair, and she would play the finest concerts in Europe. She could actually see herself. Feel her heart thudding.

  “Forget the dream.” She said it aloud.

  The paper in her hand shook. Find employment. Yes, she had made her decision about that.

  She must talk to Papa. She knew that wives and daughters of distinguished families didn’t go out to work and that Papa would be ashamed if she did so. He would regard it as demeaning to the Ivanov name. But she would explain to him, persuade him to agree.

  4. Make Papa forgive me.

  One day, Papa. One day.

  What saddened her most was that she and her father had always had a quiet understanding, and now that was gone. He had never been an attentive parent and constantly put his work before everything, but he and she had always had a special bond between them. Katya was the one he petted, indulged, and smiled at most, and Valentina understood why: she was the image of her mother when she was young—blond, blue-eyed, and with a gentle smile. Whereas Valentina was like her father: dark-haired, brown-eyed, and possessed of a single-mindedness that matched his own.

  Over the years he had made no secret of the fact that he often found his elder daughter maddening, but even when he was reprimanding her for some misdeed, there was a gleam of pride in his eye, a hint of respect in his voice. The way he might feel about the son he never had. But since the bomb he had withdrawn from her, and she felt the loss keenly. He needs someone to blame, her mother had said, but it didn’t seem right that it was her.

  One day, Papa, one day, you will forgive me.

  5. Obey Mama.

  She was still working on that one.

  6. Play the piano better every day.

  What was the point now?

  7. Play for the tsar.

  She laughed at herself and drew a line through it.

  8. Marry the Viking.

  The words were already crossed out with fierce black strokes of ink. A silly girl’s fancy. She shrugged it off, ignoring the heat that rose up her
neck.

  9. Buy a gun.

  She stared at that one and felt her pulse quicken. She’d not yet worked out a way to do it. The revolutionaries had come once. They could come again, the way bad dreams came back when you thought they were gone. But next time she would be ready for them. Number 9. She underlined it in black ink. Buy a gun. She sat with her eyes fastened on the list and thought out each point in detail. Finally she picked up her fountain pen and wrote one more:

  10. Find a Bolshevik.

  Find the Bolshevik. That was what she really meant. The promises of the police and of her father to make the bombers pay for their crime had proved as meaningless as the lies of the tsar himself. The men in hoods had vanished into thin air. Oh yes, pockets of known Bolsheviks had been rounded up and questioned, but no one knew anything of the ghosts who walked in the forest.

  Find a Bolshevik.

  DOBROYE UTRO, GOOD MORNING, MINISTER.”

  “Dobriy den, good afternoon, Minister.”

  “Dobriy vecher, good evening, Minister.”

  Those were words that Viktor Arkin liked least. Instead of “Good morning, comrade.”

  “Yes, master. Da, barin.”

  “No, master. Nyet, barin.”

  Those were words that grated in his gut.

  Every day Arkin drove Minister General Nicholai Ivanov in the Turicum along the Embankment in St. Petersburg to the Ministry of Finance, and each day he listened to the words that were spilled in the back of the car. The minister had a loose tongue. Often he would talk too openly with colleagues as Arkin drove them across the city to meetings. Once Minister Ivanov had even been fool enough to leave his attaché case lying on the seat in the car after too many brandies at the Donon. Arkin had read its contents meticulously and made notes for an hour before he returned it to the minister.