Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  ‘Oh, well, I’ll have to catch him later,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he’s a hard man to catch,’ the officer said, his voice full of pride. Pride and defiance, Ryzhkov thought.

  But hidden from all of them, from the other passengers on the tram, from Evdaev taking his midday nap with his mistress, from the squawking newsboys—the metronome was ticking. The sands were running out. Hidden from all of them, Ryzhkov was coming, an inevitable progression, coming closer. With each turn of the wheel, each house the tram passed on its relentless climb up Kamenoovstrovsky Prospekt. Closer … closer …

  He watched the number plates on the buildings glide away behind him, the numbers ascending until, up ahead he saw the intersection of Kronyerkskaya. Ryzhkov stayed on the tram, got off at the next stop and walked back along the pavement. Only an old man sitting on a bench, glaring up as he walked by. Did he know? Could he see the pistol slapping into his ribs with each step?

  Ahead of him was the orange bulk of Evdaev’s venerable mansion; set a little way back from the street, approached through an arched gate, surrounded by modest gardens, and a finely crafted wrought-iron fence that defied the mind with its whorls and twisted leaves. He knew it well—the stable house with its guest apartments, where he had waited for Vera during her long night. He tried to put the thought out of his mind as he crossed a side street to the corner.

  Pulled up beside the wrought-iron fence, a carriage, a small family crest on the side. Too far away to read, but somehow familiar. A quiet scene: the carriage waiting under the shade of the trees, the driver, even in the summer heat, smothered in his padded coat. Head dropped forward, sleeping like his horses. Everything calm.

  Except for the gendarme at the front entrance. There would be another one somewhere at the back, he thought. He walked around; it was an old neighbourhood, great mansions of merchant and noble families of Russia, high walls, gardens gone to riot. New money that had moved into the occasional pile, sandblasted the walls and put in conveniences. Motorcars parked along the street in the shade, their tops pulled back. Tradesmen and their wagons making deliveries in the lanes.

  He walked through the quarter for the remainder of the day, thinking it all through, stopped and ate at a modest restaurant and then tried to rest in the park. It was the white night, no darkness to hide in, just the glow that enveloped the city. He walked back towards Evdaev’s street and then turned down the lane.

  He had plenty of time. Time enough to walk down the entire lane and get a good look at the back of the mansion. It was older there, a wall that had been partially taken down and only repaired for a few feet of its length. To fill in the space someone had put up a rotting wooden fence there, and he climbed over finding his way behind a woodshed where he could see both the apartments over the stables and the main house, waited in the bushes, and tried to discover Evdaev’s window.

  He squatted there, took Kostya’s pistol out and checked it, returned it to the pocket of his jacket. Thought about having a cigarette, but since he didn’t have any he reached out and pulled out a strand of grass and chewed on the end of it, sat cross-legged there and watched the house and tried to learn its ways.

  He sat there like that for perhaps an hour, he may have even slept. It was hard to tell, things were so warm and dreamy. Only an occasional bird crying out, trying to decide what time it was.

  At some point a movement caught his eye. He came out of his reverie and saw a thin stream of smoke coming from an upstairs window on the end of the house—one of windows he thought most probable for Evdaev’s personal quarters. It was early, and he realized that, like him, Evdaev must have been awake all through the bright night.

  There was no one in the yard, no guards at the back doors, and he straightened and shook his legs out, like an athlete preparing for an important contest. When he could feel his feet again, he stepped out into the lawn and walked directly across to the stairs that led to an expansive terrace. It was the kind of place where you would take a girl out and look at the moonlight, but today it was a simmering oven of dark marble. He stood against the wall with his heart beating, looking back towards the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. Nothing from the gardener’s cottage, nothing from the garage, nothing from the stables.

  He suddenly became aware that the house was empty and stepped over to the doors and peered through. Nothing. He tried one of the latches, but it was locked, tapped a pane of glass three times with his elbow until it cracked across the middle, then winkled out the shards of glass, reached in and unlocked the door.

  He was in the ballroom of the great house. There was a circular settee that was covered with white dust sheets. The chandelier had been lowered on its pulley. The floor was dusty, as if the place had been abandoned or was caught up in some legal quagmire. Maybe Evdaev had left town.

  He walked quietly but his weight still made clacking sounds on the parquet. When he got to the stairs he listened. Distinctly from the upstairs he heard the sounds of a gramophone. A long plaintive violin. Something tragic and Russian.

  He started up the carpeted stairs, taking them two at a time. A pause at the landing to locate the source of the music, and then a few steps down the long corridor. He passed an open bedroom, the covers strewn all over the floor. A meal had been served in there and abandoned. A half-empty bottle of wine.

  The music was coming from behind the next door and he fumbled in his pocket for the gun, jerking it free so that the fabric of his pocket tore, pulling back the hammer, and flinging open the wide double-doors to what turned out to be the library.

  The room was darkened, only dusty light pouring in through narrow slits in the thick curtains, around the edges of the windows. The room was surrounded by tall shelves crammed with books that hadn’t been read in a century; once it had been a working library, with a ladder on rollers to reach the highest shelves, wide tables to display the maps and atlases. A globe in one corner of the room was long out-of-date.

  He could see Evdaev sitting in the large chair at the desk, it had been swivelled around so he could read something in the light from the window behind him. A curl of smoke from a forgotten cigarette still burning in the ashtray. A half-finished glass of brandy. Something nagged at his consciousness as he pushed through the door, and now Ryzhkov was walking, three steps over to the edge of the desk, raising his arm, planning to shoot him right through the back of the chair … but … something not right, not right at all. No …

  ‘Congratulations,’ said a voice from behind him, and he whirled and peered into the darkness. ‘Put the gun down, please,’ said the voice again and then he saw Evdaev, set up in a little hide he’d built out of books piled high around a desk in the far corner of the room, given away only by the dull silver gleam of the muzzle of his hunting rifle. Reflexively, Ryzhkov whirled again, but the man at the desk had not moved … and then he understood.

  All done, then.

  Behind the books Evdaev straightened. He was wearing a silk dressing-gown, his face stricken. Hair gone awry. He must have been living in the room for hours, for days … waiting. He had never actually seen Evdaev before, not closely. Now he was mesmerized by the flawless skin, the sharpened moustaches, the predator’s eyes, the smile of triumph. His face like ice, shaking his head as he moved around from behind the books, the black hole of the muzzle growing larger with each step.

  ‘Sergei, Sergei, Sergei … First he sends a killer, and then a new killer to check up on the first killer. He thinks I’m a fool. A coward, that’s what he thinks. Poor Sergei. Now, please put the pistol on the floor, yes?’

  The last grain of sand falling through the hourglass.

  There was no choice, he did as Evdaev said, watching him as he walked about the room. He might have been tired from waiting for his quarry, but he moved smoothly, always balanced, the rifle held easily, confidently. Never wavering from Ryzhkov’s chest.

  ‘He doesn’t have to send thugs to kill me, I was going to save him the trouble, but he wouldn’t recogniz
e something like that. He wouldn’t know honour if it slapped him in the face.’ Evdaev had reached the desk by the window and spun the chair with one hand. There was a body there, a man felled by what looked like one shot through the heart, a blank expression on his face, eyes open, an infinite stare like the stuffed heads that rimmed the ceiling of the room. A tradesman’s face, something ordinary. And dead.

  ‘He’s starting to smell. We’re going to move him out on to the balcony.’ Evdaev gestured by pointing the rifle and Ryzhkov obeyed, moving to the corpse. There was hardly any smell at all, only the smell of the imagination, but the body was stiff. As he was levering the man out of the chair, his mind was racing through the possibilities. It was awkward carrying him, the legs caught under the desk and he had to push the chair back against the window. Evdaev kept his distance. He had all the time in the world. On the blotter was a sheaf of papers, as if the dead man had been writing a long letter but hadn’t had a chance to finish.

  ‘I’m here under house arrest, but … surely you know that,’ Evdaev said with a little chuckle. He was looking away now, relaxing a little while Ryzhkov dragged the man across the carpet. He paused at the door and Evdaev reached forward to open the wide doors, used his toe to kick them open. ‘Put him out there, by the flower boxes.’

  The sun was boiling down. If there was no smell now, it wouldn’t take long.

  ‘Good, good. So … now I am trying to decide what to do with you,’ Evdaev said. Ryzhkov lowered the dead man to the tiles, stood there waiting for instructions. ‘Cover him up with this.’ Evdaev stepped back into the library and dragged out a bearskin rug. It must have been twelve feet square, too heavy to pick up. Ryzhkov dragged it across the stones and draped it over the corpse. ‘Now, what I think I am going to do, is get you to tell your side of the story, yes?’

  Ryzhkov shrugged. He didn’t have any idea what Evdaev was talking about.

  ‘They called me back, they arrested me. I have no friends. What is it? Victory has a hundred fathers. Defeat? He’s just a bastard.’ A laugh, a shake of the head. ‘After all the lies and the rumours, after all the shit that’s been spread about me, the Tsar wouldn’t even talk to me. He may still decide to hang me, it’s treason after all. So …’ There was a trace of a smile. Evdaev gestured for him to come in from the balcony. ‘Here, sit. Pick up the pen. We’re going to correct the record. You can write, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, a touch of defiance creeping into his voice, then his knees buckled and he did as he was told. Found himself being enclosed by the soft volume of Evdaev’s great leather chair.

  ‘Excellent. Then take a blank sheet, put down your name, where you live … go on …’

  Evdaev took a few steps back, leaned against one of the tables, the barrel of the rifle sinking lower. Now Ryzhkov could see the fatigue. ‘It’s all evidence, you see? Put down about how he first hired you, when you had your first meeting, how he filled your head with … ideas.’ Evdaev was looking away. He straightened suddenly, not even really paying attention to Ryzhkov, even turning his back as he walked over and stooped to pick up the pistol from the floor, abandoning the heavy rifle on the library table. ‘And make sure to include a summary of the investments he made on your behalf, how you were … persuaded, how you were a dreamer, a child … a girl listening to fairy stories.’

  Ryzhkov had stopped writing and suddenly Evdaev spun screaming, ‘Go on, put it all down! We don’t have that much time, do we?’

  He bent to the paper and started writing, trying to concentrate on his name, his address … he really didn’t have either any more, did he?

  ‘But be sure to write down how you got on to the train, how you were seduced, how you decided that you were going to intervene, that you were going to be the avenging angel … You don’t know the why of any of this, do you? You don’t have ideas, you don’t see the future, you improvise instead of plan. You’re an old woman! You’re ruled by your heart, not your fucking head, man!’ Evdaev reached out and knocked on Ryzhkov’s skull with his knuckles. ‘You’re romantic, not pragmatic. No, worse!’ Evdaev shook his head, laughing in little hisses. He wasn’t looking at Ryzhkov any more, but around at the stacks of books, the cracked oil paintings, the antique flags dangling from the ceiling. ‘Dumb as an ox …’ He looked down to where Ryzhkov was struggling to compose his sentences.

  ‘I love it! Sergei thinks he’s so brilliant, and I’ve played him perfectly. You see, he knows nothing of war, real war. What it means to be a warrior. He doesn’t understand the concept. A warrior doesn’t mind dying, a warrior makes a pact with his God, to die on the field of battle, to give up his life for something higher. Sergei wouldn’t give up anything unless it was in hard currency. He wants it all and then a percentage. And now he sends you people to hunt me down and shut me up? I love it.’ Watching as Ryzhkov scribbled away on the note.

  ‘People like him. Think you can do whatever you want, think you know what’s best. And then you fall into the trap, the same trap we all made for ourselves, eh?’ Ryzhkov looked up at him. ‘Aren’t you done yet? Use smaller words,’ Evdaev said and turned away to wander through the library, still carrying the gun, walking easily like a fencer or a gymnast; a big man who was lighter on his feet than you might think. Even so, his attention would come in and out. After a moment Evdaev fell silent and there was only the scratching of the pen, then Ryzhkov would look up and Evdaev would be watching him.

  ‘I ought to kill you like you people killed Gulka. That’s what you deserve, an anonymous death, a simple disappearance, yes?’ Evdaev said bitterly and took a step closer. ‘I knew it, too. I knew it in my heart. I knew a bunch of merchants couldn’t pull something like this off. You think, you really think that money and a few killers is all it takes to overthrow the greatest nation on earth?’ For a moment Ryzhkov thought he was going to club him with the pistol. Then he stopped; there was a script somewhere he was following, a plan for the hunt, for sharing out the spoils and mounting the trophy. Probably there was no struggle written into it. Evdaev stood staring at him for a moment and then laughed. ‘I told Alexandr Ivanovich that Sergei was soft, a fucking mama’s boy, scared to go all the way. Now it’s gone all wrong, and I knew it … I knew it.’

  Evdaev’s face contorted and then he did hit him, a sharp little slap with the side of the pistol that came so quickly that Ryzhkov didn’t even see it. Everything went black for a moment and he fell back into the chair. There was a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away; it sounded like a long continuous siren, or the howling of a dog that never ran out of breath, someone screeching on a flute … It didn’t really hurt, but the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes were little dark circles of his own blood dripping on to his trousers.

  Evdaev was still muttering. He had put the rifle down across the chart table. It was only a few feet away. A leap across the desk, a desperate lunge—across the carpet Evdaev had the pistol in his hands and was checking its action. ‘Think I’m a fool … telephoning me, oh, yes … not to worry. We take care of our own. I’m sending someone over, Nestor. Not to worry. I love you. I’m sending money, the Andrianov companies will provide whatever is needed. After all, I’m your friend. I’m your brother,’ Evdaev recited, his voice growing more constricted. Was he crying? In the gloom Ryzhkov couldn’t see.

  ‘So … three little letters, then. One from you, one from me, one from him out there. Everything nice and set out in good order, written clearly with signatures, and then Nicholas will know that I have not died with this stain on my honour. That I lived to serve Russia … and my Tsar.’

  Evdaev was standing there with an ethereal smile on his face. He looked so peaceful that it happened automatically; an instinct to ingratiate, to grant him some kind of forgiveness, to speak a friendly word in his last moments, just like the executioner on the train had said. Or maybe it was just to keep him talking. To stall for time. ‘Who was he?’ Ryzhkov asked. ‘Him? The one out there?’ He inclined his head in the direction
of the balcony.

  Evdaev flinched. Shook himself like a dog. ‘Shut up!’ he suddenly screamed, and then whirled away from the view. ‘Hurry up, damn it! Read it back to me—hurry up! I know there’s more of your confederates watching! I know someone’s out there waiting for you to finish the job. I’m not stupid!’ Evdaev bellowed and then abruptly crossed behind the desk to check out the window to the gardens. ‘It’s a confession. Make your confession. “… and I freely admit that I, conspiring with others, did engage in acts of treason against his Most Holy Majesty”—Put that in.’ Evdaev said and then turned and came back to the desk, looking at the papers, the eyes asking, pleading for something, whatever it was he thought would save … his honour. For an exit he could die with, for salvation.

  ‘Go ahead … The ending—’ Evdaev pushed the barrel of the gun against his neck.

  ‘Yes, fine. I’ll write it. What do you want me to say?’ Ryzhkov said, a little peevishly. Maybe a little too peevishly.

  ‘“… and I name …”’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said, writing it.

  ‘“Sergei Danilovich Andrianov as my associate and fellow conspirator …”’ Watching as Ryzhkov made the name, the gun in the side of his head pushing him into illegibility.

  ‘Good, good. Sign it.’ And when his hand shook Evdaev pushed the muzzle against his neck, harder so that he was leaning over in the chair. ‘Sign-the-fucking-letter!’ he shouted.

  Time stopped finally. Ryzhkov could see it stop. See the moment when there was no moment. The space between heartbeats, as he reached out with his pen to sign his name on the paper—the space between Evdaev’s wheezing breath—a bird flicking from its resting place on the stonework of the balcony—his own eyes following the loops of his signature, the last act in the script.

  ‘Here,’ he said, signing the letter and gathering the papers up with one hand, as if to hand them to Evdaev and then—Ryzhkov was up now, launching himself out of the chair, his hand slapping the gun away from his own neck, pushing himself up into Evdaev who pulled the trigger an instant before they collided so that it felt like an explosion between the two of them, something bursting behind his head. The bullet slammed into the window, and then they were falling back against the doors, and the finely crafted mullions that could not hold their weight, and Ryzhkov was clawing to bend the gun back out of the bigger man’s hand as they tumbled out on to the tiles of the balcony. As they landed he had turned the pistol away from himself and there was a second gunshot, Evdaev screamed and jerked away, a fountain of blood gushed on to the tiles and Ryzhkov saw that he had shot himself in the hand, losing his grip, the gun sliding away across the tiles, and …