The House of Special Purpose

by John Boyne

  ‘I see,’ said Anastasia after a few moments. ‘Well, it has stood you in good stead, sliding across your lakes with those big, hardworking girls. I myself have been an accomplished skater for a number of years now.’

  ‘I can tell,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, you have met Prince Evgeny Ilyavich Simonov?’

  ‘On occasion,’ I said, recalling the handsome young scion of one of St Petersburg’s wealthiest families, a fellow blessed with maple-coloured skin, a thick head of blond hair and the whitest teeth I had ever seen on any living being. It was well known that half the young women in society were in love with him.

  ‘Yes, he taught me everything I know,’ said Anastasia with a sweet smile.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Almost everything,’ she conceded a few moments later, pursing her lips together as she looked at me, the closest we could come to a public kiss.

  ‘Let’s try a circle,’ I said, looking down at Alexei.

  ‘A circle?’

  ‘Yes, we can spin around. Your Highness,’ I continued, looking at Anastasia, ‘you take my hand too, so we three create a ring together.’

  She did as instructed and a moment later we were bonded together, skating this way and that in a small circle of three, a pleasurable dance that was interrupted only when the Tsaritsa began waving her arms in frustration at the edge of the lake and insisting that we return to safety. Sighing, wishing that the moment could continue for ever, I suggested that we should go back, but the moment that Alexei was safely returned to his mother’s arms, Anastasia grabbed my hand again and, faster now, sped along the ice with me as I struggled to match her speed and maintain my equilibrium.

  ‘Anastasia!’ cried the Tsaritsa, who was more than aware how unseemly it was for us to be skating alone together like this, but the sound of the Tsar roaring with laughter at how I had nearly tipped over was enough to convince me that such an escapade would be permitted, for a few moments at least.

  And so we skated. And the skate became a dance. We fell in line with each other, matching movement for movement, length for length. It lasted for no more than a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. When I think back to Tsarskoe Selo and the winter of 1916, it is this that I remember most vividly.

  The Grand Duchess Anastasia and I, alone on the ice, hand in hand, dancing to our own peculiar rhythms, as the red sun descended and darkened before us and her parents and sisters watched us from afar, ignorant of our passion, unaware of our romance. Dancing in time with each other, a perfect combination of two, wishing that this moment might never end.

  And now I must relate the great moment of shame in my life. I live with the memory of it by telling myself that I was young, that I was in love, not just with Anastasia but with the Imperial Family, with the Winter Palace, with St Petersburg, with the entire new life that had been so unexpectedly thrust upon me. I tell myself that I was drunk with selfishness and pride, that I did not want anyone else to become part of my new existence, that I wanted only to begin again. I tell myself all these things, but they are not enough. It was a sin.

  Asya was waiting for me at the time that we had said; I suspected that she had been there for much of the afternoon.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, looking her directly in the eye even as I betrayed her. ‘There’s nothing here for you. I asked, but there’s nothing that can be done.’

  She nodded and accepted what I said without complaint. As she vanished into the night I told myself that she would be better off in Kashin, where she had friends and family, a home. And then I put her from my mind as if she had been nothing more than a distant acquaintance and not a sister who loved me.

  I never saw or heard from her again. I must live with this memory, with this dishonour.

  1941

  I FAILED TO NOTICE the gentleman on the first three occasions when he appeared at the library, but on the fourth, Miss Simpson, who was much taken with him, pulled me aside with an exhilarated expression on her face.

  ‘He’s here again,’ she whispered, clutching me by the arm and looking out into the body of the library, before turning back to me eagerly; I had never seen her quite so animated before. She had the feverish excitement of a child on Christmas morning.

  ‘Who’s here again?’ I asked.

  ‘Him,’ she said, as if we had been engaged in a conversation about the fellow already and I was being deliberately obtuse by not acknowledging it. ‘Mr Tweed, as I call him. You’ve noticed him, haven’t you?’

  I stared at her and wondered whether she was going mad; the war, after all, was playing havoc with everyone’s mind. The constant bombings, the threat of bombings, the aftermath of bombings … it was enough to drive even the most rational soul towards lunacy. ‘Miss Simpson,’ I said, ‘I have no idea what it is you’re talking about. There’s someone here who you’ve seen before, is that it? A troublemaker of some sort? I don’t understand.’

  She grabbed me, dragging me away from the desk where I had been working, and a moment later we were hidden behind a shelf of books, staring at a man who was sitting at one of the reading tables, his attentions entirely engaged upon a large reference book. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him, other than the fact that he was dressed in an expensive tweed suit, hence Miss Simpson’s name for him. I suppose he was a rather handsome fellow too, with dark hair swept and lacquered away from his forehead. His tan suggested that he was either not English or had spent a lot of time abroad. Of course, the most unusual thing of all was that a man of his age – he was in his late twenties – was in the library at the British Museum at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. He should, after all, have been in the army.

  ‘Well, what about him?’ I asked, irritated by my young colleague’s enthusiasm. ‘What has he done?’

  ‘He’s been in every day this week,’ she said, nodding her head ferociously. ‘Haven’t you noticed him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t make it a habit to notice young gentlemen who choose to use the library.’

  ‘I think he must be sweet on me,’ she said, giggling and looking back at him again with an appreciative smile. ‘How do I look, Mr Jachmenev? Is my lippy all right? It’s been months since I even had any and then this morning I found an old tube at the back of my dresser and thought That’s for luck, so I put it on to cheer myself up. What about my hair? I have a brush in my bag. What do you think, should I give it a quick run-through?’

  I stared at her and felt my sense of irritation growing. It wasn’t that I was immune to the frivolity that some of the younger people engaged in from time to time; after all, in recent years daily life had become both more difficult and frightening for all of us. The last thing I wanted was to deny anyone a moment of fun on the rare occasions when one could be found. But there was a limit to how much jollity I could endure. It was, to put it plainly, annoying.

  ‘You look fine,’ I said, stepping away from her in an attempt to return to my work. ‘And you’d look even better if you got on with your job and stopped wasting time with such silliness. Don’t you have anything to be getting on with?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘But come on, Mr Jachmenev, there’s precious few men in London as it is and just take a look at him, he’s gorgeous! If he’s coming in here every day to see me, well, I’m not going to say no to him, am I? Perhaps he’s just too shy to talk. There’s an easy way around that, of course.’

  ‘Miss Simpson, please, can’t you—?’

  But it was too late. She picked up a book from the shelf and began walking towards him. Despite my better instincts, I found myself watching out of a morbid desire to see what might happen next; there was always a certain voyeuristic thrill to be had from Miss Simpson’s behaviour and, on occasion, I indulged in it. She swaggered across the floor, her hips swaying left and right with all the confidence of a film star, and when she reached him, she dropped the book purposefully to the ground, its hard covers crashing on the marble flooring with an enormou
s booming sound that echoed around the chamber, causing me to roll my eyes in my head. As she reached over to pick it up, she offered anyone who was near by a very clear view of both her posterior and the top of her stockings. It was almost indecent, but she was a pretty girl and it would have taken a stronger man than I to look away.

  Mr Tweed reached for the book and I saw her laugh and say something to him, her fingers caressing the shoulder of his jacket for a moment, but he shrugged her off quickly and muttered a terse reply before replacing the dropped volume in her hands. Another question followed; this time he simply turned the front cover of his own book to display the title and she leaned over to look at it, offering him a clear view of her ample bosom. He seemed unmoved by the spectacle, however, and averted his eyes in a most gentleman-like fashion. From where I was standing, I could see that he been engaged in a study of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and I wondered whether he was an academic or a professor of some sort. Perhaps he had an illness that prevented him from enlisting. There were any number of reasons why he might have been there.

  It was not surprising that Miss Simpson was taking such an interest in him. A few years before, there would have been any number of young men passing through the library or the museum on any given day, but life had changed considerably since the outbreak of the war and the presence of an eligible young man at one of our reading tables, when so many of his number had been led away from the cities as if by a military Pied Piper, was certainly worthy of note. Our lives were governed by rationing, curfews, and the sound of the air-raid sirens every night. Walking along the streets, one was confronted by groups of two or three girls together, all nurses now, stepping quickly between makeshift hospitals and their digs, their faces pale, their eyes dark and hollow from lack of sleep and exposure to the broken, ripped-asunder bodies of their countrymen. Their white skirts were often flecked with scarlet but they seemed not to notice any more, or not to care.

  For two years I had been expecting the library to be closed indefinitely, but it was one of those symbols of British life about which Mr Churchill maintained a stubborn defiance, and so we remained open to the public, often as a sanctuary for adjutants from the War Office, who sat in quiet corners of the reading room, consulting maps and reference books in an effort to impress their superiors with historically proven strategies for victory. We operated with a much smaller staff than before, although Mr Trevors was still with us, of course, for he was too old to enlist. Miss Simpson had come to us at the outbreak of hostilities; the daughter of some well-connected businessman, she had been given this position on account of the fact that she ‘couldn’t bear the sight of blood’. There were a couple of other assistants, none of whom were of fighting age, and then there was me. The Russian fellow. The émigré. The man who had lived in London for almost twenty years and was suddenly distrusted by almost everyone for one simple reason.

  My voice.

  ‘Well, he plays his cards close to his chest, that’s for sure,’ said Miss Simpson, returning to the desk where I was standing once again, having grown bored of observing her flirtation.

  ‘Does he indeed,’ I remarked, attempting to sound uninterested.

  ‘All I did was ask him his name,’ she continued, ignoring my tone, ‘and he said wasn’t that very forward of me and I said, Well I call you Mr Tweed on account of the fact that you wear that gorgeous tweed suit every day. Present from your wife, was it, I asked him, or your girlfriend? I’m afraid that would be telling, he says to me then, all airs and graces, and I said I hoped he didn’t think I was being inquisitive, only it’s not so often we get the likes of him in here of an afternoon. The likes of me? he asks then. What do you mean by that? Well, I didn’t mean any offence, I told him, only he seemed like a superior sort of chap, that was all, someone with good conversation, perhaps, and for what it was worth I was free myself later this evening and—’

  ‘Miss Simpson, please!’ I snapped, closing my eyes and rubbing my thumbs against my temples in irritation, for she was giving me a headache with her incessant prattle. ‘This is a library. A place of erudition and learning. And you are here to work. It is not a forum for gossip or flirtation or silly chatter. If it’s at all possible, could you kindly reserve your—’

  ‘Well, pardon me and no mistake,’ she snapped, standing tall with her hands on her hips as if I had just offered her the worst type of insult. ‘Hark at you, Mr Jachmenev. Anyone would think I was after giving State secrets away to the Gerries, the way you carry on.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I was abrupt,’ I said with a sigh. ‘But really, this is too much. There are two trolleys of books over there that have been waiting to be cleared since early morning. There are books left on tables that haven’t been returned to their shelves. Is it really asking that much for you simply to do your job?’

  She glared at me for a moment longer and pursed her lips, sticking her tongue into the corner of her mouth before shaking her head and turning around, marching away with as much dignity and outrage as she could muster. I watched her for a moment and felt slightly guilty. I liked Miss Simpson, she meant no harm to anyone and was, for the most part, pleasant company. But I shuddered at the idea of Arina ever turning into a young woman like that.

  ‘She’s quite a piece,’ said a quiet voice a few moments later and I looked up to see him, Mr Tweed, standing in front of me. I glanced down to take his book, but he wasn’t holding any. ‘A bit of a handful, I would imagine.’

  ‘Her heart’s in the right place,’ I replied, feeling enough solidarity of the workplace to avoid criticizing her to a stranger. ‘I suppose most of the young people have precious little to entertain themselves with these days. However, I do apologize if she was bothering you, sir,’ I added. ‘She’s an excitable thing, that’s all. I think she’s flattered by your interest in her, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘My interest in her?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘The fact that you’ve been coming in every day to see her.’

  ‘That’s not why I’ve been coming in,’ he said in a tone which made me look at him afresh. He had a curious air about him, one that implied that he was not perhaps the academic I had taken him for.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Is there something I can—’

  ‘It’s not her I’ve been coming in to see, Mr Jachmenev,’ he said.

  I stared at him and felt my blood run cold. The first thing I tried to decipher was whether or not he had an accent. Whether he was an émigré, too. Whether he was one of us.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ I asked calmly.

  ‘It is Mr Jachmenev, isn’t it? Mr Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev?’

  I swallowed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Me?’ He sounded a little surprised, but then shook his head and looked away for a moment before leaning in closer. ‘I don’t want anything. It’s not me who wants your help. Who needs your help.’

  ‘Then who?’ I asked, but he said nothing, just smiled at me, the type of smile that – had she not been finally engaged upon her work in a separate part of the reading room – might have been the undoing of Miss Simpson.

  The lightning war over London had been going on for months and had accelerated to the point where I thought it might drive us all mad. Every night we waited in terror for the wail of the air-raid sirens to begin – the anticipation was almost worse than the fact of them, for nobody could feel safe in the kinetic silence until they finally and inevitably began to sound – and when they did, Zoya, Arina and I would run towards the deep-level shelter at Chancery Lane, the two long parallel tunnels of safety which quickly filled with residents of nearby streets, to find a place to call our own.

  There were only eight such shelters in the city, far too few for the number of people who needed to find refuge there, and they were dark, unpleasant places, stinking, noisy, fetid underground passages that, ironically, made us feel even less safe than we had in our own homes. Despite the stric
t rules regarding which shelter each enclave was supposed to go towards, people started to arrive at the stations in the early evening from the more distant areas of London, waiting outside in order to secure their own position, and there was often an unseemly rush to get through the doors when they opened. Unlike the popular legend which has built up over time, stoked by the flames of patriotism and the tranquillity of safe recollection, I can recall no cheerful moments in those shelters, few nights when there was any type of solidarity on display between us poor mice, driven underground by the overhead bombing. We rarely talked, we didn’t laugh, we never sang songs. Instead, we gathered in small family groups, trembling, anxious, tempers fraying, occasional outbursts of violence pricking the fretful atmosphere. There was a constant terrifying sensation that at any moment the roof might collapse above our heads and bury us all in rubble-topped graves beneath the streets of the demolished city.

  By the middle of 1941, the bombing had started to grow a little less frequent than six months previously, but one never knew the night, or the time of night, when the sirens might go off, a situation which left us in a constant state of exhaustion. Although everyone hated the sound of the bombs exploding, tearing down our neighbours’ homes, creating deep chasms in the streets and killing those poor souls who failed to make it to the shelters on time, Zoya found them particularly agonizing. Any notion of firepower or slaughter was enough to send her spirits desperately low.

  ‘How long can this go on?’ she asked me one night as we sat in Chancery Lane, counting the minutes until we could emerge safely from our tomb to examine the damage of the previous night’s bombing. Arina was asleep, half tucked inside my overcoat, seven years old by now, a child who thought the war was simply a normal part of life, for she could scarcely remember a time before it had been central to her world.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ I replied, wanting to offer her some notion of hope but unwilling to create false optimism. ‘Not much longer, I think.’