by John Boyne
‘Do you notice the scent in the air?’ Zoya asked me eventually as we finished the last of our tea.
‘The scent?’
‘Yes, there’s a … it’s hard to describe it, but when I close my eyes and breathe in slowly, I can’t help but be reminded of childhood. London always smelled to me of work. Paris smelled of fear. But Finland, it reminds me of a much simpler time in my life.’
‘And Russia?’ I asked. ‘What did Russia smell of?’
‘For a time it smelled of happiness and prosperity,’ she said immediately, without needing to pause to consider it. ‘And then of madness and illness. And religion, of course. And then …’ She smiled and shook her head, embarrassed to finish her sentence.
‘What?’ I asked, smiling at her. ‘Tell me.’
‘You’ll think me foolish,’ she replied with an apologetic shrug, ‘but I’ve always thought of Russia as a sort of decaying pomegranate. It hides its putrid nature, red and luscious on the outside, but split it in two and the seeds and arils spill out before you, black and repugnant. Russia reminds me of the pomegranate. Before it went rotten.’
I nodded but remained silent. I had no particular feelings about the scent of our lost country, but the people, the houses and the churches that surrounded me in Finland reminded me of the past. These were simpler notions, perhaps – Zoya had always had a greater tendency towards metaphor than I, perhaps because she was better educated – but I liked the idea that I was near home again. Close to St Petersburg. To the Winter Palace. Even to Kashin.
But how I had changed since I had last set foot in any of those places! Glancing in the mirror as I washed my hands after our lunch, I caught sight of an old man staring at his reflection, a man who had been handsome once, perhaps, and young and strong, but was none of those things any more. My hair was thin and wispy, pure white strands clumped together at the side of my head, revealing a liver-spotted forehead that bore no resemblance to the clear, tanned skin of my youth. My face was thin, my cheeks sunken, my ears appeared to be unnaturally large, as if they were the only part of my physiognomy not in retreat. My fingers had become bony, a lean layer of skin covering the skeleton beneath. I was fortunate in that my mobility was not suffering as I had often feared it would, although when I awoke in the mornings it took much longer now before I could muster all my strength and resources to drag myself from our bed, perform my ablutions and dress. A shirt, a tie, a pullover every day, for my life from the age of sixteen had been constructed on formality. I felt the cold more and more as every month passed.
At times I thought it strange that a man as old and ravaged as I could still command the love and respect of a woman as beautiful and youthful as my wife. For she, it seemed to me, had barely changed at all.
‘I’ve had an idea, Georgy,’ she said as I returned to our table, wondering whether I should risk sitting down again or wait for her to rise.
‘A good idea?’ I asked with a smile, deciding on the former, since Zoya herself showed no sign of standing.
‘I think so,’ she replied hesitantly. ‘Although I’m not sure what you will think.’
‘You think we should move to Helsinki,’ I said, predicting what she was about to say and laughing a little at the absurdity of the idea. ‘Live out our final days in the shadow of the Suurkirkko. You’ve fallen in love with Finnish ways.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head and smiling. ‘No, not that. I don’t think we should stay here at all. In fact, I think we should keep going.’
I looked at her and frowned. ‘Keep going?’ I asked. ‘Keep going where? Further into Finland? It’s possible, of course, but I would worry that the travelling might—’
‘No, not that,’ she said, interrupting me, keeping her voice clear and steady as if she did not want to risk my refusal by appearing overly enthusiastic. ‘I mean we should go home.’
I sighed. It had been a concern of mine when we set off from London that this trip would prove too much for her and she would regret her decision to leave, and long for the warmth and comfort of our familiar Holborn flat. We were not children any more, after all. It was not easy for us to spend so much time in transit.
‘Are you feeling ill?’ I asked, leaning forward and taking her hand, searching her face for any signs of distress.
‘No worse than I was.’
‘The pain, has it become too much for you?’
‘No, Georgy,’ she replied, offering a small laugh. ‘I feel perfectly fine. Why do you say that?’
‘Because you want to go home,’ I said. ‘And we can, of course we can, if it’s what you really want. But we have only four days remaining of our trip anyway. It might be easier to return to Helsinki and rest there until it’s time for our flight.’
‘I don’t mean go back to London,’ she said quickly, shaking her head as she looked towards the children again, playing noisily in the mounds of snow. ‘I don’t mean that home.’
‘Then where?’
‘St Petersburg, of course,’ she replied. ‘We’ve come this far, after all. It wouldn’t take too many hours more, would it? We could spend a day there, just a day. We never imagined that we would stand in Palace Square again, after all. We never thought we would breathe Russian air. And if we don’t go now, when we are so close, we never will. What do you think, Georgy?’
I looked at her and didn’t know what to say. When we had decided to undertake this journey, there had undoubtedly been a part of both of us that had wondered if this conversation would arise and if so, which of us would suggest it first. The idea had been to come to Finland, to go as far east as the weather and our health would allow, and to look into the distance and perhaps to make out the shadows of the islands in the Vyborgskiy Zaliv once again, even the tip of Primorsk, and remember, and imagine, and wonder.
But neither of us had spoken aloud of travelling the last few hundred miles to the city where we had met. Until now.
‘I think …’ I began, rolling the words slowly over my tongue uncertainly before shaking my head and starting again. ‘I wonder …’
‘What?’ she asked me.
‘Is it safe?’
The Winter Palace
I WAS STRUGGLING to stop myself from trembling too visibly.
The long, third-floor corridor of the Winter Palace, where the Tsar and his family made their home when they were in St Petersburg, stretched out coldly on either side of me, its golden walls fading into an intimidating darkness as the candles dimmed and flickered in the distance. And at its centre was a young boy from Kashin, who could hardly breathe for thinking of all those who had passed along these hallways in the past.
Of course, I had never witnessed such majesty before – I had scarcely believed that such places existed outside of my imagination – but glancing down, I could see the knuckles on both my hands turning white as they clutched the arms of my chair in a tight embrace. My stomach was alive with tension and every time I halted my right foot from tapping upon the marble floor in anxiety, it lay still for only a moment before beginning its nervous dance once again.
The chair itself was an object of the most extraordinary beauty. Its four legs were carved from red oak, with intricate detailing flowering along the ridges. Set into the wings were two thick layers of gold and they, in turn, were encrusted with three different types of jewel, only one of which I recognized, a dotted trail of blue sapphires that sparkled and changed colour as I examined them from different angles. The fabric was wrought tight against a cushion heavily stuffed with the softest feathers. Despite my anxiety, it was difficult not to emit a pleasurable sigh as I rested upon it, for the previous five days had offered no consolation, save the unforgiving leather of the saddle.
The journey from Kashin to the capital of the Russian empire had commenced less than a week after the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich had journeyed through our village and suffered the attempt on his life. In the days that followed, my sister Asya had changed the dressing on my shoulder twice daily, and w
hen the discarded bindings were no longer spotted with blood, the soldiers who had been left behind to escort me to my new home announced that I was fit for travel. Had the bullet entered my body a little more to the right, my arm might have been paralysed, but I had been fortunate and it took only a day or two for harmony between the shoulder, elbow and wrist to be restored. From time to time, a stinging pain just above the healing wound offered a sharp rebuke as a reminder of my actions and I grimaced at such moments, not out of tenderness but in consideration for how my impetuous actions had cost the life of my oldest friend.
The body of Kolek Boryavich had remained where the soldiers had hanged him, swinging from the yew tree near our hut, for three days before the soldiers gave permission to his father, Boris Alexandrovich, to cut him down and allow him a decent burial. He did so with dignity, the ceremony taking place a mile or so from our village on the afternoon before I left.
‘Do you think we could attend the interment?’ I asked my mother the night before, the first mention I had made to her of my friend’s death, so guilty did I feel at what I had done. ‘I’d like to say goodbye to Kolek.’
‘Have you lost your reason, Georgy?’ she asked, her brow furrowing as she turned to look at me. She had been attentive towards me over the last few days, showing more consideration than she had over the previous sixteen years, and I wondered whether my brush with death had caused her to regret our virtual estrangement. ‘We would not be welcome there.’
‘But he was my closest friend,’ I insisted. ‘And you have known him since the day that he was born.’
‘From that day until the day he died,’ she agreed, biting her lip. ‘But Borys Alexandrovich … he has made his feelings clear.’
‘Perhaps if I spoke to him,’ I suggested. ‘I could visit him. My shoulder is healing. I could try to explain—’
‘Georgy,’ she said, sitting down on the floor beside me and placing her hand flat against the muscle of my uninjured arm, her tone softening to a point where I thought she might even be moved towards humanity. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you, can’t you understand that? He isn’t even thinking about you. He has lost his son. That is all that matters to him now. He walks the streets with a haunted expression on his face, crying out for Kolek and cursing Nicholas Nicolaievich, denouncing the Tsar, blaming everyone for what has happened except himself. The two soldiers, they’ve warned him about his treasonous words but he doesn’t listen. He’ll go too far one of these days, Georgy, and end up with his head inside a noose too. Trust me, it’s best that you stay away from him.’
I was tortured with remorse and could hardly sleep for guilt. The truth was that I didn’t really believe it had been my intention to save the life of the Grand Duke at all, but rather I had hoped to prevent Kolek from committing an action which could only result in his own death. The irony that in doing so I had cost him his life was not lost on me.
To my shame, however, I was almost relieved by his father’s decision to refuse me an audience, for had I been allowed to speak I doubtless would have apologized for my actions, which might have resulted in the guards realizing that I was not quite the hero that everyone believed me to be and my proposed new life in St Petersburg might have come to an early end. I couldn’t allow this, for I wanted to leave. The possibility of a life outside of Kashin had been placed before me and as the week drew to a close and the moment of my departure loomed, I began to wonder whether it had even been my intention to save Kolek at all, or whether I had been hoping to save myself.
On the morning that I emerged from our hut to begin the long journey towards St Petersburg, I could see my fellow moujiks staring at me with a mixture of admiration and contempt. It was true that I had brought great honour on our village by saving the life of the Tsar’s cousin, but every man and woman who watched me gather my few belongings together and place them in the saddlebags of the horse which had been left behind for my journey had watched Kolek grow up on these very streets. The fact of his untimely death, not to mention my part in it, lingered in the air like a stale odour. They were loyal subjects of the Romanovs, this was true. They believed in the Imperial family and the right of autocracy. They credited God with putting the Tsar on the throne and believed his relatives to exist in a state of glory. But Kolek was from Kashin. He was one of us. In such a situation, it was impossible to decide where loyalties should lie.
‘You will come back for me one day soon?’ Asya asked as I prepared to leave. She had been negotiating with the soldiers for several days to allow her to accompany me to St Petersburg, where she, of course, hoped to begin her own new life, but they would hear nothing of it and she was facing up to a lonely future in Kashin without her closest confidant at hand.
‘I will try,’ I promised her, although I didn’t know whether I meant this or not. I had no idea, after all, what lay in store for me. I could not commit to making plans for others.
‘Every day I will await a letter,’ she insisted, clutching my hands in hers and staring at me with imploring eyes that were ready to spring forth with tears. ‘And with one word, I will set off to find you. Don’t leave me here to rot, Georgy. Promise me that. Tell whoever you meet about me. Tell them what a worthy addition I would be to their society.’
I nodded and kissed her cheek, and those of my other sisters and mother, before walking over to shake my father’s hand. Daniil stared at me as if he did not know how to respond to such a gesture. He had made his money off me finally, but with his profit came my departure. To my surprise, he looked stricken by this fact, but it was too late for reparation now. I wished him well but said little more before mounting the fine grey stallion, offering a last goodbye and riding out of Kashin and away from my family for ever.
The journey itself passed with little incident; it was simply five days of riding, resting, with little or no conversation to relieve the tedium. Only on the second-to-last night did one of the soldiers, Ruskin, show me a little sympathy as I sat around our campfire, staring into the flames.
‘You look unhappy,’ he said, taking his place beside me and poking at the burning sticks with the toe of his boot. ‘You aren’t looking forward to seeing St Petersburg?’
‘Of course,’ I said with a shrug, although in truth I had given it little thought.
‘Then what? Your face tells me a different story. You’re scared, perhaps?’
‘I’m afraid of nothing,’ I snapped immediately, turning to stare at him, and the smile that crept across his face was enough to dilute my anger. He was a big man, strong and virile, and there was no question of dispute between us.
‘All right, Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said, raising the palms of his hands before him. ‘No need to be so angry. I thought you wanted to talk, that was all.’
‘Well I don’t,’ I said.
A silence lingered between us for some time and I wished that he would return to his friend and leave me alone, but finally he spoke again, quietly, as I knew he would.
‘You blame yourself for his death,’ he began, not looking at me now but staring into the flames. ‘No, don’t be so quick to deny it. I know you do. I’ve been watching you. And I was there on that day, remember, I saw what happened.’
‘He was my oldest friend,’ I said, feeling a great wave of remorse building up inside my body. ‘If I hadn’t ran across to him like that—’
‘Then he might have killed Nicholas Nicolaievich and he would have been executed for his crime just the same. Perhaps worse. If the Tsar’s cousin had been murdered, perhaps all of your friend’s family would have been killed too. He had sisters, did he not?’
‘Six of them,’ I said.
‘And they live because the General lives. You tried to stop Kolek Boryavich from committing a heinous act, that is all. A moment earlier and none of this might have happened. You cannot blame yourself. You acted for the best.’
I nodded my head, able to hear the sense in what he said, but little good it did. It was my fault, I was convinced of it. I had
caused the death of my dearest friend and no one could tell me otherwise.
My first view of St Petersburg came the following night as we finally entered the capital. What I would soon recognize to be the glory of Peter the Great’s triumphant design was diminished somewhat by the darkness of the evening, although that did not prevent me from staring in amazement at the breadth of the streets and the number of people, horses and carriages that travelled past me in all directions. I had never seen such activity before. Along the side of the roads, men stood by caged wood fires, roasting chestnuts and selling them to the gentlemen and ladies who passed, each of whom was wrapped in hats and furs of the most exquisite quality. My guards appeared to be oblivious to these sights – I suppose they were so accustomed to them that they had lost their power to impress – but for a sixteen-year-old boy who had never before travelled more than a few miles outside the village of his birth, it was dazzling.
A crowd was gathered in front of one such fire and we stopped next to an elaborate carriage, pulling up our horses as the people parted to allow the guards through. I hadn’t eaten in almost a day and longed for a bag of chestnuts, my stomach rumbling in anticipation of a warm supper. Around us the people were laughing and joking; at their head was a middle-aged lady who bore a severe expression, and next to her stood four identically dressed girls – sisters, obviously – each one a little younger than the next. They were quite beautiful and despite the hunger that pressed upon my stomach, my eyes were drawn to their faces. They were entirely unaware of me until one, the last in line – a girl of about fifteen, I imagined – turned her head and caught my eye. Typically, I might have blushed at such a moment, or looked away, but I did neither of these things. Instead I held her gaze and we simply stared at each other, as if we were old friends, until she became suddenly aware of the warmth of the bag she was holding and she let out a cry as it fell from her grip, half a dozen chestnuts rolling along the ground towards me. I stooped to gather them up and she ran over to collect them, but a stern rebuke from her governess halted her in her tracks and she hesitated for only a moment before turning back to join her sisters.
