Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  Pyotr was behind her somewhere, she thought. Out there following in the cold air. Could he see her face in the little window? She pulled herself away from the two men, fanned herself and laughed. It could have gone either way, then. The two of them looked at her, angry for a moment, two aristocrats who weren’t used to being disappointed.

  ‘Come on,’ she pouted. ‘Let’s wait until we get to your place,’ reaching for the bottle. ‘You know, then we can make a little noise. Besides we might need a little more room, don’t you think?’ And the two of them settled back and laughed.

  And that served to delay the third act until they arrived at Evdaev’s mansion on Kronyerkskaya, the carriage entering through the back gate. And she almost thought she could hear a second carriage, clattering along on the cobbles, drive past the entrance, as the iron gates clanged shut.

  When Evdaev wanted privacy he used his ‘apartment’ over the stables. There were no horses there any more. They made their way up the outside stairs to a little door that you had to stoop to go through, and she found herself in a long room that was partitioned off into an entry, a nicely appointed kitchen and dining-room. Her little jacket ended up on a chair in the dining-room, and she found herself being guided to the sitting-room, decorated with animal skins and guns. All leather, fur and iron. There was a gramophone and Nestor put on the music, a hissing rendition of something that was supposed to be lively. Hartwig and another man were right behind them. They’d found another girl to bring along. Two of them for four.

  Artamonov had found some glasses and poured them the last of the bottle. ‘Don’t worry, Henry’s brought some more, my dear,’ he said and then kissed her, hard, before lifting his glass.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Have you ever had some of this?’ Digging in her little bag for the hashish.

  ‘Oh you are wicked,’ Artamonov said and lurched towards her again, trying to force his tongue down her throat. When he finished, she kept her lips to his, whispering, ‘It’ll make it better, you’ll see.’

  ‘She’s not like Boris’s side of the family, thank Christ …’ Artamonov said to Evdaev.

  ‘No,’ he replied, his voice low. Hungry.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she said, falling into her fictional biography. ‘I hate them all, they’re so … old … Not like you two,’ adding just a moment of tenderness. Artamonov struck a match and watched her inhale, then passed the little pipe along.

  She waited until it came around one more time and then asked for the cloakroom. It was at the end of the long garret and she took her bag with her, closed the door and snapped on the lights. Caught a long look at herself before she opened the bag, took out the vial and pulled out the sponge. Raised one leg on the lip of the toilet and pushed the sponge up her vagina, tamping it into place against her cervix, pulled her underwear back up and smelled her fingers. A little vinegary, but passable. So what, let them suffer, she thought. Another long look in the mirror, trying to remember who the beautiful angry woman was staring back at her. Oh, yes. Katya.

  And then, just for a moment, she almost cracked; the tears would have come but they weren’t in Fauré’s script. She was supposed to be happy, she was supposed to want what the men were planning. She was supposed to stay there and have fun, and listen. And learn.

  When she got out of the cloakroom, Hartwig had settled in, looking a little stiff and uncomfortable. He said no to the strange pipe with the exotic mixture, sat and tried to start up a conversation with her. Artamonov decided he was going to be her rescuer and put another disc on the gramophone. Something slower so that he could embrace her and they danced close while the others watched.

  Artamonov was ready, she knew. She could feel his cock banging against her thigh. His hands were massaging the cleft in her buttocks. She groaned and he pulled away for a moment. ‘Have you seen the turret?’ he whispered and looked down towards the bedroom.

  ‘I’d love too, but—’ she glanced toward the ambassador. Oh yes, she could see Artamonov thinking, my boss is here after all. ‘Yes … of course,’ he said quietly in her ear.

  She danced with Hartwig after that; he tried to make conversation at first, but fell silent and contented himself with staggering about the zebra skin rug and pressing his belly against her, in the belief that this would somehow be exciting.

  Through it all she did what she had been told, she listened; there was a good deal of meaningless chatter about upcoming festivals in Belgrade, work that would have to be accomplished as soon as they returned to the capital. Everyone bemoaned the fact that Smyrba wasn’t present, and did anyone know exactly what was going on there? They didn’t seem overly worried. Evdaev had been up to the turret with the other girl. He had taken off his uniform jacket and paraded about the room in his skin-tight breeches and undershirt, the buttons opened on top to reveal the dark hair of his chest. She decided to get them all as drunk as possible, maybe they’d pass out and she could go home.

  Each time one of them danced with her, she drank more champagne. They had smoked all the hashish, and at one point she found herself dancing alone to the music. It was something vaguely oriental, something languid from the south. And she swayed before the men—listening.

  ‘… more dangerous than ever. Nothing is secure any longer. Did you tell him?’ Hartwig was asking. She let herself turn, raised her hands above her head and repeated the dance she’d done as the Princess of Tahoo, the dance of the burning virgin.

  ‘… so everything is moved up …’ Hartwig was saying. He was a little deaf she thought. He turned his head away and squinted when someone was talking to him.

  She moved away, not too far, so that she could still hear the men. All of it going into a little corner of her mind. Now she was dancing in the window, the light illuminating her dress for the men behind her. This is for you, Pyotr, this is my dance of love everlasting, my marriage dance, my dance of penance, my dance of death.

  ‘… I’ll let him know as soon as we get back. We don’t need Smyrba, it might not be so bad. And there are only so many opportunities …’

  ‘Come on … I don’t want to wait any longer.’ Artamonov had come up behind her, his hands had come around to clutch her breasts.

  ‘What?’ she said. Putting on a naive pose. Make him put it into words, make him put a label on his lust.

  ‘Let’s go, I’ll show you the turret.’

  ‘What’s wrong with here?’ she said, whirling in his arms, one hand reaching into his pocket. Keep on shocking him.

  ‘No …’ he almost growled, and pulled her away from the window and they started towards the bedroom.

  ‘Be careful with that,’ Evdaev called out behind them.

  The turret was really a bedroom with a lot of stained-glass windows. A trapeze dangling there with velvet loops for your legs and a seat so that you could do all sorts of tricks.

  She finished with Artamonov in a matter of minutes; he came in a short little ripple of yelping, not even making it into her. ‘Oh, good Christ, you’re a bloody good bitch,’ he moaned in her ear. A compliment, she supposed.

  She walked out of the turret first, wearing the special French underwear, the ambassador and Evdaev watching her, and then turning to each other and saying something she couldn’t hear. ‘Well … as much as I’d like to …’ Hartwig said, and very courteously lifted her hand and kissed it.

  ‘Stay if you want,’ she said. She could hear the other girl moaning around the corner.

  ‘No … no …’ A shy man. Or maybe he was afraid, or too old, or too drunk.

  She walked to the window while Evdaev saw the ambassador to the stairs, looked out on to the courtyard. It was as still as death. No birds, no breeze, no squirrels … Somewhere a door was closing.

  ‘Come here,’ Evdaev said behind her, and she turned to see him naked. A strong man, a flat belly and big thighs.

  ‘You’re in the cavalry aren’t you,’ she remembered, coming forward to meet him.

  ‘Take this off.’ He began to pull the
camisole away.

  ‘I enjoy riding too,’ she said. She saw Artamonov come out of the turret and light a cigarette. He stood in the shadows and watched.

  ‘Good …’

  She pushed Evdaev down on to the sofa and guided his cock into her. Began to rock back and forth while his fingers pinched her. She looked down at him and his face was blank, almost dazed, as if he were trying to put together a strange puzzle. She pushed harder, pulled his hands away.

  ‘I know who you are …’ she said, said it cruelly, scaring him for a moment. ‘I know what you think … I know what you want …’

  ‘God …’

  ‘I know all your crimes … I know all your secrets …’ Artamonov had come up to the sofa and was stroking himself.

  ‘I know both of you,’ she said, looking up at Artamonov’s blushing face.

  And she went ahead and did what she had to do, and before the morning had arrived, she did it again. Until the men were asleep like pigs in a barnyard, curled up in a tangle, and she could retrieve her expensive foreign clothes and leave them to their snoring and their dreams.

  THIRTY

  They let her douche, and they let her bathe, and they let her sleep for a few hours. It was a long room with a window at the gable end with branches of trees scraping against the glass when the breeze came up. Little green buds trying to escape the chill; more promises, more waiting, she thought. The doctor came in and asked her if there was any blood. There wasn’t. She’d got away easy, she told herself. They let her douche again, brought her some breakfast, and then they came in, hats in hand.

  Fauré sat for a few moments looking at her. Tomlinovich looked around for a chair and then took up a post beside the window. Pyotr was gone. Who knew where. She’d been used. She knew that now. All along she had just been used. Dragged down by degrees, just look through the pictures, just play a little part, just tell me all you know. And now they were going to use her some more.

  ‘We need to go through it all, of course,’ Fauré said. She watched the young one, the thin one with the glasses take out his pad and pencil.

  And so … she went through it all, remembering each conversation, every mundane detail of the rooms above the Evdaev stables—‘It may have been one of their habitual meeting places,’ Fauré explained.

  So, she told him about the skins on the wall, the turret, the skylight in the turret …

  They took a break. The woman brought her some tea. Everyone went to the lavatory. She wanted to ask where Pyotr was, but decided that she was not going to care about that any longer. She went back to the bed and got under the covers, and under the covers she just overflowed in tears. The woman came back to check on her, pulling the covers back but she knocked her hand away.

  ‘Go down and tell them I’m ready.’

  She went over it again and again. A day went by. And then another. She looked at more pictures. Walked around the woods surrounding the little clinic with Sinazyorksy to guard her. They didn’t talk, which was fine with her. She dredged up everything, sometimes she thought she manufactured the details out of her dreams. Still they listened to everything. There were stenographers who came and went in shifts. She was not to worry about her job, they told her. It didn’t matter, she’d almost forgotten about all of that. And Larissa who she didn’t blame at all. Not really.

  And so, she told them all the little fragments, tried to remember the inflections, the attitudes. Told them about how there had been a statement that things were going to have to be moved up. Everything timed for the summer, all of it arranged through someone called Apis. A lot of animosity around PaȈsic, somebody named Sergei whose name kept coming up. No, they didn’t suspect anything about Smyrba.

  ‘Apis … The bull,’ Fauré said, leaning forward.

  ‘The bee, the bull …’ Tomlinovich muttered from his post at the window. He must be a birdwatcher, she thought.

  ‘Well, whoever Apis is, he’s in Belgrade, because Hartwig was going to speak to him when they returned.’

  ‘Speak to him?’

  ‘That’s what he said, speak. They were ready to have a meeting.’

  ‘Speak …’ Fauré muttered.

  When they finished there were no goodbyes. They just left the room with serious expressions, and it ended with her getting dressed and being driven across the city to her place on Sadovaya. She went in and sat in the empty rooms, soaked in a bath, and then walked up the street to the club thinking that she didn’t want to be alone.

  Inside Kushner was lecturing them again. He called it poetry but really it was a long list detailing the many failures of the Romanov autocracy, without, of course, saying anything that might get him arrested. One had to always remember to be careful, even if there was supposedly no censorship. In front of him Tika, the cat, had been enclosed in an intricately designed metal cage, on trial for its life. Kushner explained that any animal would do; a chicken, a hawk, a double-headed eagle … No double-headed eagles being available, today Tika would be standing in. There were less than a dozen people in the audience.

  ‘… for those who actually do the work that causes the beast of the state to continue in its lumbering pace. For those whose blood is the grease within the bloody machine. For those who, after being told there was light, still refused to look up … for those who believed they would go to hell if … for those who knew they would be beaten if … for those who knowing and were still afraid and could not continue because … for all those who—’

  No, the Komet was only marginally a political club. Those who considered themselves firebrands might stop by for a look-in, but the art was too artistic, the issues too vaguely drawn, they reported. To talk about anything substantial one had to find a place where one could talk freely, not a café. A friend’s apartment where there were no police informers listening to your fantastical plans to bomb the Winter Palace.

  She felt sick. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the life.

  She went in, smiled, embraced, moved to the back of the room. Dropped in and out of conversations, glanced at the headlines. There had been seventeen suicides over the weekend, including a boy who’d taken poison.

  She listened to Kushner, but from the moment she heard about the boy, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Just the idea of it lodged in her mind. Thinking about how it would have hurt, how he would have twisted and writhed as the chemicals tore at his insides.

  Poison.

  It was not the way she would plan it. Lately she couldn’t stop thinking about death. In her latest plan she had decided to wait until the weather got cold again, drink her head off and then go out to the centre of the Troitsky Bridge where there was a good current and hop over the side. The cold would numb her, the drink would calm her and the river would just … take her. And, with a bit of luck, perhaps it would be beautiful. Scenic, with silvery moonlight or a slow snowfall, and warm downlighting provided by the lanterns on the bridge. That was the way she was imagining it, floating down through the icy water before the weight of her clothing dragged her under, one last look at the stars … tryn-trava—who cares?

  Kushner did. Kushner cared very deeply and now he had talked Larissa into caring too. They were Bolsheviks, Maximalists they called themselves, and had begun obsessively reading everything they could get their hands on that was even remotely seditious. One night, giggling, tipsy, Larissa lifted up the floorboards in Kushner’s filthy bedroom, took out something wrapped in a remnant of red serge, started to unwrap it. For one queasy moment as the red cloth was unwrapped Vera saw the wooden handle like a dildo with its little iron ring, and she thought Larissa wanted something else. And then the cloth came all the way away and she saw it was a pistol.

  ‘It’s called a Mauser …’ Larissa breathed.

  An ugly thing, smuggled across the border by a student; all squares and angles, a pistol designed by an abstract artist. Something you might use to kill Martians. They had fourteen bullets they kept knotted in a silk handkerchief and neither of them had
ever fired it. Well, where could they? They practised cleaning it and taking it apart blindfolded, then they’d wrap it up and put it under the floor again.

  It didn’t matter what Vera said, Larissa was too far gone.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Vera had told Larissa. ‘All these books could land you in Kresty with some girls who won’t be as gentle with you as I was,’ she’d said, giving her a little tweak on the tit just to drive the point home. Because that was what was going to happen. Kushner was going to sink them all.

  ‘You should think for once, think about who you are for once,’ was all Larissa had said, not even laughing and that somehow made it worse.

  Oh, sure, sure, it all made sense. Of course it all made sense. Did they think that she actually believed in the divinity of the Romanov dynasty? Or the sanctity of the ‘pure’ church? And of course something had to change, something had to give. Everybody knew that. And everyone had someone they wanted to get back at, didn’t they?

  It was a war, a war between different classes of people, between rich and poor, healthy and lame, smart and stupid. Kushner’s solution was to hang them all from lampposts. A list that included, well … everybody—the members of the Duma, the judges, the lawyers, all the owners and managers, investors, bankers, accountants. But then who would be left to run things? That was easy; he’d turn it all over to the peasants, the only people who really understood the soil, the only representatives of the authentic heart of Russia.