by R. N. Morris
‘Steady,’ said another voice. He noticed for the first time that he was being held up by hands that didn’t seem to belong to anyone. ‘You have to be careful now. You must avoid any sudden movements or jolts – until we get you in the church. On no account must you fall over until you are inside the church.’ He had thought this man his enemy, and yet he was showing such solicitude towards him. It seemed he had misjudged him. He wanted to embrace the man, whose name had been swallowed up in the sweeping nothingness, to kiss him even. But the man seemed to be holding him at arm’s length.
He was aware of his mouth opening, and wondered if he was going to be sick. Instead, he heard something that surprised him: ‘Church?’
‘Yes. We’re going to church.’
For some reason, he found the idea extremely funny and began to shake with uncontrolled hilarity.
‘You must calm down.’ The man’s voice was intensely serious.
Virginsky wanted to apologise. But all that came out was an incoherent slurring. He tried to concentrate. He tried to stop the bubbles of hilarity breaking out. He wanted these people to think well of him. He wanted to know whose hands were holding him up. He made a great effort of will to match the seriousness around him. But every time he thought he had got the better of his giddiness, another explosion of hiccup-like laughter shook him.
‘This is hopeless,’ said the man whose name he could not remember. ‘If he keeps this up, he will blow us all up before we get him out of the building.’
His old professor leaned into his face. The gesture cowed Virginsky into silence. ‘This will not do. We expect better of you. Tatyana Ruslanovna expects better of you. This is your destiny. You must face it like a man.’
Virginsky gasped at the rebuke. He felt on the verge of tears.
‘That’s better,’ said Professor Tatiscev.
A wave of relief crashed over him.
‘Now you must go with Totsky. You must do whatever Totsky tells you.’
Totsky! That was the man’s name. Virginsky grinned with delight. ‘Tot-skeeee!’
‘Enough!’ continued the voice of his old professor. ‘If you do not do as you are told, the baby will die. The only way to ensure that the baby lives is to do everything that Totsky tells you. Is that clear?’
Virginsky nodded. Solemnity had entered his bones like a chill. ‘Baby?’
‘The baby here. It has been decided that Botkin will kill it if you do not do as you are told. So, as you see, it is essential that you do as you are told.’
The hands under his arms guided him towards the door. The moment the hands released him, he swayed on his feet. Other hands shot out to steady him, those of the man called Totsky. Virginsky felt better knowing whose hands were holding him up. He remembered that Totsky had been carrying a steel suitcase, but saw that he wasn’t any more. He noticed the steel suitcase lying open on the floor, empty. He breathed in deeply, his chest expanding against the constriction he had felt earlier. He realised that it had a physical cause, that he was wearing something that was tightly bound around his torso, like a corset. He did not remember putting a corset on.
At the last moment, Tatyana Ruslanovna rose from the bed. ‘I will go with them.’
‘You do not trust me?’ demanded Totsky.
Virginsky missed the subtleties of the look that was her response. By then it was all he could do to keep his caw down. And from now on he knew that this would be the whole focus of his being.
*
He was supported between Totsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna. His legs seemed to be executing a movement that approximated walking, though it could just as easily have been dancing. But it did not seem that they had anything to do with the forward motion of his body. He wanted to make a joke about it but could not quite think of the right words, so simply giggled to himself.
‘That will do,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna sternly.
What he had wanted to say came to him: ‘Is this the way the new people walk?’ But he no longer thought of it as a joke.
Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky ignored Virginsky’s question. They began to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.
‘He inhaled too much ether,’ said Totsky.
‘At least we can move him,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.
‘Like this, he’s dangerous. He will attract attention.’
‘He looks like a drunk. A common enough sight in Russia.’
‘If we weren’t holding him up he would fall over. Which would be fatal.’
‘The ether will wear off,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.
‘Then we will have the opposite problem,’ warned Totsky.
‘May I remind you this whole adventure was your idea, Totsky.’
‘And still it may succeed,’ said Totsky, after a momentary pause. ‘Provided we exercise due caution at all times.’
Tatyana Ruslanovna began to laugh. Virginsky felt the shards of her laughter spike his soul, a thousand exquisite impalements. ‘I wonder, what is the correct amount of caution due when one is escorting a human bomb to an atrocity?’ she asked.
‘It is all very well for you to laugh,’ said Totsky. He looked at Tatyana Ruslanovna as if he had paid for her laughter with his blood. ‘You know that I am doing this for you.’
‘Then you are a fool. That is the worst conceivable reason to go to your death. For a woman such as me.’
‘No. Not for a woman such as you. For you.’
‘You should be doing it for the cause. For the people.’
‘Fine words. They mean nothing to me. I do this only to earn your admiration. I know I cannot hope for your love.’
It seemed to Virginsky that Totsky was speaking on his behalf, saying to Tatyana Ruslanovna precisely the words he wished to say, but was unable to.
‘What does it matter whether I admire you or not?’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.
And Virginsky felt every bit as devastated as Totsky must have, as if her stinging words had been directed at him.
39
The inexplicable corpse
He began to feel as though he was trapped in an ambulatory prison. He could not say with any certainty how long he had been confined between his captors, but there were moments when it was hard for him to remember a time before this forced march, and impossible to imagine it coming to an end. He had entered eternity and it was exhausting.
Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky handled him with a combination of extreme solicitude and utter disregard. The slightest trip on his part provoked the most anxious ministrations, and a tightening of their fingers around his upper arm. And yet they steadfastly refused to address any remarks to him directly.
‘What am I wearing?’ he ventured to ask at one point. But they would not answer his question. ‘I can feel something around my torso, like a corset. Why have you put a corset on me?’
They took him along the back streets, cutting through a network of connected courtyards, the secret spaces at the hollow heart of vast buildings, the chain that linked a hidden city. His progress through this private, inner St Petersburg corresponded to his return to a functioning consciousness. The streets began to appear more familiar to him, at the same time as the nausea lifted and he felt his feet connect more solidly with the ground. He felt the strain on his arms where Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky were holding him, as the anaesthetic effect of the ether wore off. There was a return, too, of his imaginative capacity to put himself in the place of others: he wondered at the tense ache they must have been experiencing in their locked hands. His sympathy for his tormentors at that moment struck him as absurdly inappropriate, and he was all at once overwhelmed by self-disgust. But the implications of his predicament were too much for him to take in. If anything, his headache increased in intensity.
‘What did you mean by that remark? When you said something about escorting a human bomb? How can I be a human bomb? Is it something to do with the corset?’
‘Silence! Remember the baby. Do as you are told or the baby will die,’ ordered Tat
yana Ruslanovna.
He felt a soft explosion of emotion in his chest. It was not anger; it was the most tender, affectionate pity. It seemed he had become severed from himself. This fate, this inescapable death, was both his and not his. The part of him that would not suffer it, that would survive it, was able to look with pity – and, yes, love – on the part that would be inevitably destroyed. This was the soul’s pity for the body, he realised. Of course, such a realisation went against the whole tenor of his professed convictions, which until this moment had been unshakeably materialistic. He had not until now believed in the soul, or, rather, he had not known that he had. He did not feel confused by this, or angry. He felt no resentment for the years that had been taken from him. He felt at peace, elated almost.
He looked up to see the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary towering over him.
And then he understood that all that he had just experienced was the last trace of ether disintegrating in his blood. His ruthless clarity returned to him. He was about to die. There was no soul. Nothing would survive the imminent incineration of his body. He was, in effect, already dead.
The elation left him. His body went into spasm. He became a flimsy marionette whose strings were being jerked by an angry puppet master. He slipped out of the grip of his escorts, and even threw one clenched hand into Tatyana Ruslanovna’s face.
‘Hold onto him!’ shouted Totsky.
It was surprise that had shaken him out of their hands, and a momentary rush of strength. His fingers pulled at the kosovorotka, lifting the bottom hem up over his head. With his free hand he felt what seemed to be rows of glass capsules sewn into the unfamiliar undergarment into which he had been bound.
‘No!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imperious tone stayed his hand, for the moment at least. He released the hem of the shirt and it fell back into place.
‘If you take that off, you know what Botkin will do,’ continued Tatyana Ruslanovna. ‘Will you condemn that baby to death?’
As Virginsky struggled to take in what she had said, Totsky’s hand came up towards his face. He expected Totsky to strike him, but his hand fell short of a blow. Then Virginsky noticed the vitreous flash of the bottle the other man was clutching, and he felt once again the wolf-like fumes devour the membranes of his nostrils. He staggered back, arms flailing the suddenly viscous air.
‘It’s alright! He’s had too much to drink!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna shouted excitedly into the godless void in front of the church. ‘Grief. He was very close to the deceased, you see.’
Their hands were on him again. ‘Deceased?’ cried Virginsky. ‘Who is deceased?’
‘Someone you killed, that’s all,’ answered Tatyana Ruslanovna.
‘Porfiry Petrovich, do you mean? But he isn’t really dead. You know that. He wouldn’t go through with this!’
Tatyana Ruslanovna tilted her head back, in an expression of high disdain. Apart from a slight spasm at the corner of the mouth, it was the only answer she volunteered.
*
He had never seen so many candles. The tiny glimmering flames seemed to form a sea of light out of which the congregation was rising. And then he realised that each member of the congregation was holding a candle in front of them. He wanted more than anything to have a candle of his own but the service had already begun. And Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky hurried him into the church as if there was no time for that.
In his confusion, he connected the glow of the candles with the sound of chanting, as if the burning of wicks suspended in wax produced an auditory effect, as well as a visual one. Then he realised that it was the people holding the candles who were producing the sounds, which truly were as beautiful and soothing to his ears as the candlelight was to his eyes. A slowly soaring melody ranged over the upper registers of his emotions like a high majestic bird riding eddies; beneath it, a deep bass drone persisted, its beauty sombre, powerful and enduring. There could be no arguing with that bass. It vibrated viscerally, physically, taking hold not just of his internal organs but of the frame that contained them.
The solemnity of the sound made a deep impression on him. And yet something about it struck him as inappropriate, almost ludicrous.
He glanced to either side of him and noticed that Tatyana Ruslanovna was no longer holding onto him. In fact, she was backing away towards the door. Totsky was still there by his side, gripping his upper arm tightly.
‘Where is she going?’ cried Virginsky to his one remaining captor. His shout went off like a firecracker. It drew disapproving frowns from those around him.
‘Pavel Pavlovich? Is that you?’ The voice hissed from just in front of him.
Virginsky turned to see the familiar face of Nikodim Fomich, which seemed to float out of the sea of candle flames. The apparition acted on him like an emotional lodestone. His eager, deprived gaze latched onto it. Feelings that he was not aware of harbouring surged out from the core of his being to its surface. He searched for reassurance and succour in insignificant details. And yet there was something that jarred in the Chief of Police’s face, an inexplicable hostility squeezing his mouth into an uncharacteristically sour pucker.
Virginsky felt the hand around his arm tighten. Totsky was looking nervously over his shoulder at Tatyana Ruslanovna, who was lurking by the door, ready to make a break for it when the time came. Virginsky could not be sure whether it was Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imminent flight, rather than Nikodim Fomich’s intervention, that had prompted Totsky to increase his grip.
Certainly Nikodim Fomich’s appearance had the effect of sobering Virginsky, of concentrating his mind. There was now a danger, he realised, that Totsky would panic, that he would be pushed into acting precipitously. He had to think – and act – quickly. The vital thing was to remain on his feet for as long as possible, and to keep out of the press of the congregation. He felt himself to be remarkably in control of his actions. He shook his head warningly to Nikodim Fomich.
At that moment the priest began to lead the congregation in the Kontakion to the Departed: ‘With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant . . .’
The words of the Kontakion continued to reverberate in the vast sounding box of the cathedral, voices overlapping with voices to create a rising bed of sound on which the meaning was borne up, as if to Heaven: ‘. . . where sickness and sorrow are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.’
Now Nikodim Fomich shook his head, in a grave, slow, momentous sweep. The gesture was imbued with unexpected pity, and therefore left no room for hope.
Virginsky yanked himself free of Totsky’s hold. And if he had thought about it, he might have been surprised by how easily his freedom was achieved. But he was beyond that now. He did not even care that he was jostled as he pushed his way through the crowd of standing mourners to the front of the church.
Around the coffin were placed four great manoualias, each densely packed with fine candles giving a thick cluster of flames. The candle-stands were arranged one at the head, one at the foot of the coffin, and one on either side, forming the branches of a flaming cross. Virginsky could not yet bring himself to confront what lay within. His eye went instead to the memorial table nearby, on which were placed the dish of koliva that the mourners would eat after the service. He understood the symbolism well enough. Although he was an atheist, he was still a Russian. The wheat of the koliva represented rebirth through death. The grain had to fall to the ground before it could give forth fruit, just as the faithful had to die before the eternal life of the soul could come into being.
But Virginsky saw only a glutinous mound of cold boiled wheat. As food it was unappetising; as a religious symbol it repelled him. The burning tapers – small fragments of the greater flame – that projected from it were like the cheap tricks of a bad stage conjuror. Had Porfiry really invested the core of his being in such counterfeit props? Virginsky had never given much thought to his superior’s faith. It was something he had taken for granted; out of respect, he had held hims
elf back from challenging it. At the same time, he had not taken it entirely seriously either. He had thought of it as another of Porfiry’s eccentricities, almost as an affectation. But now, for the first time, it struck him that his faith was the one thing of which Porfiry would never have made light. It was inconceivable that he would have deceived the church authorities into conducting a bogus funeral, and equally inconceivable that they would have gone along with such a charade.
He turned, at last, from the memorial table to the coffin, as if to demand an answer. And in the moment of turning his head to make that confrontation, he thought of all the other confrontations with death that Porfiry Petrovich had forced on him: heads severed from their bodies, naked corpses laid out on slabs, and most recently the drenched and partly saponified corpse of Pseldonimov.
At first, he could not understand what he saw. The body in the coffin was that of a woman, a tiny, old woman, as frail as the long stems of the roses with which it was strewn. Virginsky laughed out loud once in savage delight. He turned to the congregation, to see if they were in on the joke. From the stern faces that met his gaze, it seemed that they were not.
Virginsky shook his head in amazement. Surely they had noticed that the body in the coffin was not that of Porfiry Petrovich? And then it occurred to him: he was the only one there who had expected it to be Porfiry.
Virginsky looked down at the old woman again. She was dressed like a doll in a costume that was too big for her, and which appeared never to have been worn before. Her tiny body was swamped by an elaborate gown of the kind worn by ladies of the Court, encrusted with braiding and padded with quilting. Banks of pearls concealed her neck. As if to draw attention away from the deep wrinkles of her face, her head was adorned with a high, crescent-shaped kokoshnik headdress, so that her head seemed massive in comparison to the rest of her body. Virginsky’s eye was drawn to the paper crown that had been placed beneath the kokoshnik. On it were written the words of the Trisagion: Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
