Field of Mars

by Stephen Miller

  And now …

  Now, he was moving faster than light, moving faster than time. Faster than the sound of the shots.

  Someone was shouting inside the house. Evdaev was shrieking for help, someone was pounding on the door. Maybe it was the confederate he didn’t know about, maybe it was the servants, the gendarme, or some other friend of … Sergei’s coming to take revenge. He stood and staggered back to the doorway. He had the gun now, the sheaf of papers was on the floor and he scooped them up. Evdaev was getting to his knees when he rushed him and jammed his knee into the man’s face. It was like hitting brick, the sound was a hard crack and it echoed through the garden. His leg was suddenly numb. Behind him the door was breaking and there was no time, no more sand in the hourglass.

  He stepped out on to the balcony, looked over the rail and immediately jumped into the softest place he could find, a trellis of roses that flanked a patio directly below him. The fall shook him for a moment but he recovered and began to run for the stables, only realizing when he was nearly all the way across the lawn that he must have smashed his ankle, that he was running with his legs askew, that something was wrong.

  He reached the stables, there was no one waiting inside, and he staggered out into the sloping lane, and began to limp down it, trying desperately not to run.

  The river was ahead of him. Across its breadth he could see the spire of the Admiralty, a golden needle pointed towards the heavens, gleaming in the bright sun; behind it the green copper roof of St Isaac’s. He hobbled down the hill, gingerly testing his weight on the ankle, shaking it every step or two, as if he could mend it that way, by jiggling it back into place. Feeling like a fool, a marionette covered in blood.

  He plunged his bleeding head into a trough of water at the end of the lane, threw the bloody jacket into the dark recess of a chicken coop, jammed the pistol down into the waistband of his trousers and covered it with his shirt. As he came out on to the next lowest cross street he saw a St Petersburg police motorcar whizzing past, changing gears and climbing the hill loudly, loaded down with gendarmes, one man furiously cranking the siren.

  Along the street everyone had stopped, looking up the hill towards Evdaev’s mansion. Ryzhkov walked into the crowd, skipped across the street and continued on, meandering towards the river, his ankle thickening up. He looked at his reflection in a shop window and then turned off the street, down the next lane.

  He untied his cravat and wrapped it around his head like a sweatband, hiding the cut. Opened the neck of his shirt and rolled his sleeves up. There was a manure rake leaning against a stack of firewood and he reached out and stole it, swung it over his shoulder and walked along trying to look like a labourer. He felt weak, as if he were going to faint. Sirens came and went on Kamenoovstrovsky, two streets away now.

  He continued on, his foot really hurting him now, crossed over the bridge to the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul. There was a little beach there down below the thick walls and he threw the rake aside and took his time, slowly climbed down the stairs one at a time, took off his clothes and went out into the river in his underwear and then came back and collapsed on the hot sand.

  His heart was still pounding. Crazy designs floated behind his eyelids; darkness that grew red as blood, overprinted with whirling, spiralling, flickering, tessellated patterns, all of it going down the drain.

  FORTY-FIVE

  He bathed his ankle in the cold Neva, testing his weight until he could hobble along in the sand. Washed the blood off his face and rested on the beach until his underclothes dried, then dressed. The ankle had swollen and he had to open his shoe to its widest and leave the laces loose. He strolled away from the fortress slowly, trying to limp as little as possible, casually, like a man taking his ease on a hot afternoon.

  He caught a tram back across the river and then another down the Nevsky, getting out and dodging behind a gendarme who was handing out leaflets bearing a series of photographs of himself, Dima and Hokhodiev. There was a fourth man’s likeness printed on the paper and it took him a moment to recognize the portrait of a very young Zezulin. Somehow he too must have been swept up in everything, and somehow he must also be on the run. So, the sleepy old man had had enough wits to make a break for it. The thought of it made him happy.

  To avoid the policeman he ducked into the Imperial Public Library. He waited there, finding himself a corner in the gigantic reading room, and, as the afternoon wore on, amassed a pile of books, notes, pamphlets, the better to understand the life of one Sergei Danilovich Andrianov.

  Evdaev’s confession was detailed enough to tell him most of what he needed to know and over a few hours he collected addresses, the names of the clubs to which Andrianov belonged, a list of his properties, anything that he thought would help to track him down, anything that would help him decide on the exact spot where he could wait in the shadows.

  He grew colder and colder as he did it, watching the conspirators’ privileged lives play out in front of him; watching them as boys, growing, acquiring knowledge, virtues, credentials, awards, titles. The inevitable accretion of greed, of vanity, the emergence of the Pan-Slavic ideology that came to dominate their class.

  So Evdaev had come to his Slavist ideology honestly. After all he had been born into that world, lost relatives in the war against the Turks, nearly lost his own life fighting against the Japanese because of Russia’s weakness; in reaction he had dedicated himself to the re-establishment of the Evdaev family in its position of primacy.

  But to actually turn the clock back in an empire like Russia’s you would need to have power, real power. And blocking him from that power was the anaemic House of Romanov. At this point his desires coincided with Andrianov’s and Nestor had decided that he could get what he wanted, for himself, for his own family, for his rejuvenated Russia, and for Slavs all over the world, by taking a shortcut.

  On the table in front of Ryzhkov was the class annual for the Corps des Pages of the year of 1896. In each volume were representatives of all of the ruling families of the empire. He was riffling through the book when the name Andrianov leapt out at him and he suddenly found himself staring at a young version of Sergei. Then, after a moment, he checked himself, realizing his mistake; he was looking at a portrait of Andrianov’s younger brother, who had graduated from the school and promptly been assigned to the Black Sea Fleet.

  There were photographs of the faculty and he saw that Major A.I. Gulka had been a professor of history at the academy. Ryzhkov stared at the severe face that glowered directly at the camera; hearing in his memory the dreamy voice singing to his lovely Sarajev-ooo.

  In the photograph Andrianov’s mentor was stronger, leaner. The hair much darker and the moustache very dark indeed. He must have been a fearsome instructor. It was a very contained world at the top, he thought. A world where personal relationships were the basis for everything. Where family was at least as important as riches, a world where codes of behaviour meant more than codes of law. A world gushed over by society columnists, a world served by tailors, equerries, jewellers and clerics. That was the real Petersburg. The filthy streets in spring, the frozen bodies of the peasants in winter, the suicides floating downstream to the Gulf—all of it might as well be on another planet.

  For a moment Ryzhkov’s old bitterness surfaced and he shook his head at the injustice, wondering how different his own life would have been if he had been allowed to attend the academy of the Corps des Pages. Maybe Gulka would have been his teacher, too. Perhaps he would have learned that Slavic purity was the greatest philosophy ever invented. Maybe he could have been Evdaev’s friend, something like a brother, living in the big house with the stables at the back, the mistress on the Moika. Everything would have been different; there would have been no Filippa, no rainy nights waiting in the darkness for an informer to show up. Life wouldn’t have included a stint as a gorokhovnik on the run, that much was sure.

  Paging through the year books, the faces gliding by, he suddenly had a vis
ion of his father. It came as something only half-remembered, a flash of the old man bent over his drawing table. The characteristic way he would look up, seemingly perplexed at the slightest interruption. His calculations, his intricate designs inked out in front of him, his barrier and refuge from reality. His father looking up, startled—as if he didn’t even recognise the face of his own son, as if he didn’t even know where he was, once he had been awakened from his paper labyrinth.

  Always dreaming up something fantastic, something no other engineer had even conceived. Fortifications too far-fetched to be constructed, barracks that would house only fantasy legions. His life a mystery of frustration, a self-created puzzle, because finally he had never understood why he had not progressed any further. He’d never understood that he aspired to a world from which he would always be excluded; an Olympus where effort and inventiveness didn’t matter, where the hat one chose to wear was of more interest than the brain it sheltered. Yes, his father had craved a glittering world perpetually just out of reach; like the sound of music emanating from a spectacular party to which one had not been invited.

  And he never knew it.

  I’m the same way, Ryzhkov thought sadly. I’ve inherited his closed-mindedness. I’m just like him, blind as a bat. Tilting at windmills, pushing boulders up hills, chasing my own tail. The realization stopped him for a moment, depressed him even more, as he gazed down at the photographs of Russia’s young aristocrats.

  Well, it was too late to change, he told himself, as he shook the depression off. He didn’t want any of it anyway. He didn’t want to be like any of the men whose photographs were in the books. He’d seen too much to want any of that.

  He had Evdaev’s published pamphlets, nearly a dozen altogether—revisionist histories that traced the Slavic race’s rise to power in ancient Russ, attempted to justify their displacement from the Mediterranean by the treacherous Moors, fulminated against their denial of the Aryan homelands of India by the British. Always surrounded, thwarted, displaced. A slow rhythm of frustration that permeated all of Evdaev’s adulthood. The books were stacked on the corner of Ryzhkov’s table, printed on the highest quality paper, bound in blue morocco with gilt lettering. And beneath the signature on the title page the colophon of Andrianov’s publishing houses. Suddenly the Apollo Bindery made sense.

  After that it was just a matter of finding the right books in the stacks; the annual of the Imperial Yacht Club. And in only a few minutes, as he opened the fine leather binding, as he turned through the heavy pages, let his gaze scan the happy faces of the members in their carefully posed photographs—Ryzhkov found the conspirators at play.

  Yes, Andrianov’s mentor had started in the army, in his beloved Corps des Pages. He had become an aficionado of history, a specialist in conspiracy and in the dark arts. Perhaps it was then that he began his long love affair with the sea. With the great Russian dream to possess Constantinople, to open the Black Sea. Perhaps Gulka had seen himself as a catalyst, hoping to play a part in the creation of a new Peter the Great, a great navigator, the founder of a New Russia. When Andrianov had given Gulka the opportunity to ascend to the top of the Third Branch he had accepted it at once, smoothly. Gracefully, invisibly with no pomp or ceremony.

  The Third Branch had been Gulka’s own personal Constantinople, the strategic fulfilment of his own ambitions. A way to shape destiny to his way of thinking. Control. Perhaps it was the illusion of being in control of the elements that drew Gulka to the sea. Perhaps it was the feeling of freedom.

  He was an experienced mariner; the librarian brought Ryzhkov a dozen previous annuals that all revealed Gulka with his yachting friends, born high and low. A giddy celebration with Gulka lifting a silver plate awarded for a second place in the Petersburg to Stockholm race for 1909. Evdaev had been on the crew. Ryzhkov followed his voyages through the years, the boats getting larger and larger. A photograph of Gulka and his late wife, standing with a group of other happy sailors. In the most recent annual, for 1913, he came across Andrianov, a little too well dressed for a day’s sailing, smiling tightly as he held on to one of the stays of the yacht, Evdaev and Gulka posed beside him, armin-arm like brothers. All of them smiling in the sun.

  There was the sound of a drumroll and a clattering outside as a squadron of cavalry passed by the windows, and, as he looked out on to the dusty street, a great settling came over Ryzhkov. He had been staring out of the window for some minutes without realizing, because he only snapped out of it when the librarian came over.

  ‘Anything else, sir? We are closing in just a few moments.’

  He shook his head politely and the librarian smiled at him.

  Even with his bruised face and dishevelled clothing, he must have resembled the kind of patron she liked. Well-mannered, gentle. Civilized. An enthusiastic reader who knew what he was looking for, sat quietly, and didn’t fold over the corners of the pages.

  FORTY-SIX

  ‘Oh, God … look at you. Stay here, I’ll get her,’ he heard a woman saying. It took him a second or two to place the voice—Larissa. When he opened his eyes, she had gone, and after a moment he realized he was in the back lane behind the Komet. He must have fallen asleep in the rubbish. Then he thought that Larissa seeing him was a mistake, something he should have been careful to avoid. He couldn’t let anyone see him. Even as Pravdin he had been too afraid to register for a room in Petersburg. Too late now … And then, bone-tired, he tried to get up, in order to leave before anyone else came along. And by that time Vera had come out and was helping him stand up.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘Are you completely crazy? You can’t come back here, you have to leave, Pyotr. The police come around here all the time now.’ She was looking down the lane to make sure they hadn’t been seen; over her shoulder he saw Larissa guarding the door. The two women glanced at each other and Larissa nodded, waved them away and ducked back inside.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Vera said. ‘I know a place.’ And he found himself staggering down the alley in the pearly light, propped up by her strong dancer’s legs.

  The place she knew was a flea-bitten hotel with rooms rented by the hour. She left him outside while she made the deal with the receptionist. He went past the counter with his head down, face turned away, just another drunk, embarrassed, married man.

  At the top of the steps he grabbed her, spun her around. What he wanted to do was kiss her, to hold her and beg for everything to be like it was, or like he had wanted it to be. What he really wanted to do was go back in time. He would never see her again, he was thinking. Never.

  ‘Don’t, Pyotr,’ she said quietly. He had already let her go and she looked down and fiddled with the key, unlocked the door. He went into the cramped room, stood at the window, found himself reflexively watching the street. Going to the Komet had been insane, he thought, but there was no other choice. Where else could he go? But he needed her and so he couldn’t stay away. One more time, that’s all he had wanted. Just one more time.

  There was a knock on the door, and he heard her open it and bring in the samovar. A tinkling of glasses.

  ‘You’d better drink that tea before it gets cold,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Thanks … I’m going to be leaving,’ he said as he kicked off his shoes, began fumbling with his trouser buttons.

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you seen this?’ She dug a sheet of paper out of her bag, unfolded it. It was leaflet printed by the police; a smudgy photograph occupied most of the page. There he was—younger, unfathomably more innocent, staring into the camera with a slight air of superiority, as if the whole thing were just a waste of time. Below it his life had been reduced to a list of dates and addresses and a warning that he was considered armed and dangerous and that any information leading to his arrest would fetch a substantial reward.

  ‘You should grow your moustache out,’ she said. ‘I can bleach your hair for you, if you want.’ For the first time he realized she h
ad turned herself into a blonde.

  ‘It’s nice,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Did you get the roses I sent? I was running. I couldn’t say much of anything on the card.’

  ‘Oh yes. I didn’t try to find you, but of course I didn’t know … I didn’t know anything. I still don’t.’

  He gave her back the police leaflet. ‘I can’t stay here, there’s nothing here anyway, I’m sure Filippa’s lawyers have taken everything. I’d only get killed if I tried to get back my part of it …’ He was talking nonsense.

  ‘So?’ she said quietly.

  ‘So … Pyotr is dead,’ he shrugged. Then he sat there with one leg in his trousers and one out and told her the long story, starting from the explosion in the street that took Fauré and the entire team, Gulka and the race to Sarajevo, Hokhodiev on his lonely mountaintop, and the bloodstained confessions he’d grabbed when he fled Evdaev’s.

  ‘Do they know about me?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. If Andrianov really thought you were dangerous he would have had his contacts pick you up already. Gulka’s gone, so he doesn’t have access to all the information—’ He was suddenly seized with a fit of coughing. She passed him the tea, he took another drink and the coughing stopped.