by Jasper Kent
‘Your supper’s ready, colonel.’ After he had spoken he turned away from me, and I realized why he was behaving so strangely. His eyes were fixed upon Anastasia – she hadn’t been visible from where he was at the door. It was understandable. She was a pretty girl. All the same, I felt a sudden urge to be protective of him. If he’d been my son, she wasn’t the kind of girl I’d like him to know.
‘I’m going to bed,’ said Nadya. ‘We’ve already eaten. Anastasia, I’ll walk you downstairs.’
‘I can do that,’ said Syeva quickly.
‘I know the way, thank you,’ snapped Anastasia. She calmed instantly. ‘Please, I don’t want to be any bother.’
She walked to the door. Syeva quickly limped over to hold it for her, even though it was already open. At the threshold she turned. ‘Thank you both for letting me stay. I’ll find somewhere of my own soon, I promise.’
She left. Syeva hovered. He was going in the same direction, but he’d been told not to accompany her, and so he had to leave a respectable gap between them. He didn’t wait long. By my estimation – and, I presumed, his – he would be close enough to be able to watch her as she descended the stairs.
Nadya headed for the door too. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said.
I went to the dining room and ate what Syeva had put out for me: more black bread and a bowl of thin broth. It didn’t take me long. I went downstairs and tapped on Anastasia’s door. I heard the sound of the lock turning, and then her face appeared.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘Of course.’
She stepped back, opening the door. I went inside. The room was much as I remembered it. There was an iron bedstead, which had been made up. A chair and a table had been brought from somewhere else in the house. Anastasia had already changed into her nightdress. She sat down on the bed. I’d have felt more comfortable if she’d chosen the chair.
‘Madame Primakova said you’d be happy for me to stay here, Colonel Danilov.’ I wondered if she had deliberately chosen to emphasize the mismatch between our surnames; to remind me that I could not take the moral high ground.
‘And she was absolutely right. I’m quite happy about it. But there was one thing I wanted to ask you.’
‘Yes?’
She looked up at me with innocent eyes. I tried to think of a way to broach the subject. ‘Don’t you recognize me? From Saturday night?’
Her gaze fell to the floor. ‘I hoped you hadn’t remembered me. Please … don’t tell Madame Primakova.’
‘I won’t – of course I won’t. What’s important is that you’re safe. But I need to know what happened.’
‘What happened?’ She seemed to have no idea what I was talking about.
‘After I … left.’
Her face flushed a deep crimson. ‘You want me to tell you what he—?’
‘No. No. God, no.’ I felt my own face match the colour of hers. ‘I just mean: how did you escape?’
‘Escape? I didn’t need to escape. I let him do what he’d paid for, then he did up his trousers and went on his way.’
It was unpleasant language to hear from a girl of her age, but understandably she was trying to terminate the conversation. She’d realized that the more she managed to embarrass me, the sooner that end would come.
‘He didn’t try to hurt you?’
‘What? You mean with the knife? That was just playing. Some of them like that. Anyway, if he’d gone too far, it wouldn’t be me that got hurt.’
I scarcely noticed her move her hand, but an instant later she was holding a switchblade, open and pointed towards me. The time it had taken her to reach under her pillow and fetch it couldn’t have been much longer than it took for the spring to extend the blade to its full length. Clearly she knew how to defend herself, but such a weapon would be no use against a voordalak. She’d undoubtedly had a very lucky escape that night.
I didn’t press the issue any further. ‘Just remember,’ I said. ‘You never have to go on to the streets and do that again.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I have a place here now. Thank you.’
I was halfway back up the stairs before I realized the double meaning of what she’d said. She couldn’t have been serious, but if she’d meant it as a joke then it demonstrated that she had extremely quick wits, and extremely poor taste.
I quietly got into bed beside Nadya. I could tell she was awake, but I waited for her to speak first.
‘You don’t mind her staying, do you?’ she asked.
‘You could hardly leave her out there, could you – even at the best of times?’
She cuddled me. ‘I knew that’s what you’d say.’
‘But it’s still food that’ll be a problem. Two more mouths to feed.’
‘Two?’
I pinched her on the arm. ‘Don’t play dumb.’
‘You noticed then?’
‘It’s not obvious, but it’s showing. How far gone do you think she is?’
‘Three or four months, I suppose. She’s so young, it’s hard to tell.’
I could only wonder what we’d let ourselves in for.
The following day I went to the Tavricheskiy Palace again. If anything the crowds outside had grown, but they seemed harmless, at least for the time being. We were not the enemy and the people who gathered here did so more in the hope of being the first to hear any good news than with the intent of forcing their will upon those inside.
But what now might I mean by ‘those inside’? For eleven years the palace had been the home of successive Dumas – ours was the fourth to be elected in that time. All of them had proved utterly ineffectual in guiding the nation. And now at this turning point in history, when we had the opportunity to wield at last the power that the people had given us, we had a rival: the Soviet. In a sense it had a greater authority than we did: it had been elected by the people who were making the revolution, the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. But that was just the point. The job of a government wasn’t merely to do right by those who elected it, it was to do the best for everybody. I wasn’t convinced that the members of the Soviet would appreciate the point. I wasn’t sure all the members of the Duma did either.
I elbowed my way through to the building without too much trouble. On a table in the hallway was a pile of newspapers, a title I’d not seen before:
ИЗВБСТІЯ
Izvestia. That one word – ‘The News’ – boldly summarized a more longwinded title: The News of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. They’d got to work quickly, but they had dozens of secret presses all over the city. Nikolai tried to have them closed, but others popped up just as rapidly. I glanced through it. It had reports of what was going on across Petrograd. There was plenty that I hadn’t heard, but nothing that surprised me. It made little attempt at neutrality, and why should it? It rejoiced at every victory by the people and denounced every act of oppression by the authorities. There was nothing there that I could disagree with. It called the Duma ‘feeble’, and even with that I could find little fault. The tone was distinctly Menshevik, but that was to be expected, given the make-up of the Soviet. The Bolsheviks had had their own paper for a while. They’d called it Pravda – ‘The Truth’. Both factions opted for a title that delivered the same simple certainty to readers. Why should there be any need for doubt that what they were reading was the truth? Pravda had been banned even before the war started. I doubted it would take long to re-emerge.
The Convention Hall was chaotic. There were various groups engaged in their own debates, but there was no order to it as there should have been at a time like this. I saw Rodzianko, sitting at the focus of the room in his formal position as chairman. He was alone and silent, gazing glumly into the hall, but seeing nothing. I went over.
‘Mihail Vladimirovich,’ I said.
He turned to me, but took a moment to take me in. When he did, his face suddenly broke into a smile.
‘Mihail Konstantinovich. Thank God you’re safe. What happened to
you?’
‘After the shooting started I got separated from the rest of you. I couldn’t get back across the square.’ I didn’t need to mention that I’d had better things to do. ‘What did His Imperial Highness have to say?’
Rodzianko’s face returned to its former despondency. ‘The Grand Duke won’t do anything without consulting his brother. We talked for a while, then he went to General Belyayev’s house to try to contact the tsar.’
‘There’s a telephone line to him?’
Rodzianko shook his head. ‘A Hughes Telegraph.’
‘And what did His Majesty say?’
‘He said to carry on as if everything were normal, or something that amounted to that. Grand Duke Mihail thinks he’ll be in a better position to act once he reaches Tsarskoye Selo, but it’ll be too late by then. He’s as good as lost his capital already.’
‘It’s as bad as that?’
‘There’s a few areas that are still putting up a fight against the mob.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Areas! That’s a nice way to put it. A few buildings, if I’m honest. The Winter Palace and the Admiralty, of course. And the General Staff building. Oh, and the Astoria Hotel. No one who can afford to stay there’s going to be happy to see the Romanovs fall.’
I don’t know whether Rodzianko had been conscious of it, but it was a grave admission. He wasn’t just worried about Nikolai losing power – now it was the whole dynasty.
‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘I’ve sent my own message to His Majesty. I’m waiting for a reply, but it’s hopeless. And the worst of it is, it won’t be us who take over. It’ll be them.’
I understood perfectly what he meant, but to emphasize the point he jerked his head in the direction of the other wing of the palace, towards the Soviet.
I spent most of the day in the Tavricheskiy Palace, wandering between the city’s two centres of power. The Executive Committee of the Soviet sat in the left wing of the palace; the Interim Committee of the State Duma remained in the right wing. It was probably a good reflection of their politics. The use of ‘left’ and ‘right’ dated back to that other revolution – the one in France. Ours seemed a very different affair: a distant echo of the French Revolution, a ripple that had taken more than a century to cross Europe, but the path was clear. The French Revolution, Bonaparte, the Decembrists, our humiliation in the Crimea, Aleksandr II’s reforms and assassination, and now this. There were other steps in between, and at every stage Russia – not just the tsars, the people too – had ignored the opportunity to take a different path.
The discussions of both these committees, from what little I could gather, were on the question of restoring order. In truth, only the Soviet had the ability to do so. The Interim Committee issued an order for soldiers to return to their barracks, but it was ignored. The men out in the streets were afraid they’d be punished for mutiny, and besides, they had no trust in the Duma. They’d created the Soviet and now they looked to it for leadership. But it wasn’t in the interests of the Soviet to have peace and calm return to the city – not yet. If that happened while the tsar was still in charge, even nominally, then what would have been achieved? Nikolai must have known he had lost, but by clinging on to power he was simply prolonging the turmoil. Even that did him better justice than he deserved. The idea of him clinging on to power gave the impression of some activity. Burying his head in the sand was a more apt image.
Outside the palace the mood of the crowd was still peaceful, but I didn’t want to bet on it staying that way. I went home early, before darkness fell. The streets seemed calmer now, though they still teemed with people. Thankfully no one was firing on them at the moment. It was as Rodzianko had said: there were just a few pockets of resistance remaining, and none of them was in this part of the city. I wondered how much of it could be put down to Dmitry and his comrades. They’d been eminently effective against the snipers, but now that the streets were silent I feared for where their attentions might turn.
The door of the house was locked. I was glad of that. I imagined Nadya and Syeva safely within, with Polkan faithfully at their side. For a moment I forgot our new houseguest, but even before I’d opened the door I realized that Anastasia would be there with them too. As I turned the key I heard noises on the other side of the door which I presumed to be Syeva rushing to unlock it from the inside and save me the trouble. But I didn’t feel him pulling at the door in response to my push. When it was open, the hall was empty. The sound I’d heard had been Polkan’s claws scrabbling against the wood of the stairs as he came down to greet me.
‘All alone?’ I asked him.
He stood his ground a few feet from me, his tail swishing from side to side. I went over to the kitchen and he followed. I looked inside, expecting to see Syeva, most likely asleep, but the room was empty. I went back out to the hall.
‘Anyone home?’ I shouted. There was no response. I tried not to be concerned. Both Nadya and Syeva had reason enough to be out, and as I’d seen for myself, the streets were safer than they had been for days. I cared less for where Anastasia was, though I’d feel happier, for our sakes rather than for hers, if she was not alone in our house. Perhaps Nadya had taken her to help at the kitchen.
I went upstairs, Polkan running ahead of me as ever. I looked into the living room and confirmed that there was no one about, then went to the bedroom and sat on the bed to take off my boots. I put on some slippers and then wondered what to do with myself. I wasn’t used to being home alone. Even to do nothing other than sit quietly, if Nadya was there, felt like a good use of my time. The best thing that I could do was to wait.
I stood up and it was then that I noticed it. It was on the dressing table, left as though for me to find. I walked over and gazed down at it.
It was unmistakably Nadya. Her face stared directly out at me from the paper, smiling in that way she managed to do without actually needing to raise the ends of her lips. It was a simple drawing, charcoal on paper, but I could only be impressed at the skill of execution. She was reclining on a settee, probably the one in our living room, though little attention had been paid to its details. Nadya was the entire focus of the work. She was naked, her arms raised behind her head, pulling her breasts into more shapely mounds than those in which gravity attempted to make them lie. She looked beautiful, but there was no attempt at false flattery. Her belly sagged a little, revealing that hunger had not affected us as much as it had many in the city. The hair under her arms and between her legs was wild and unkempt. This was quite unlike the classical nudes of the Hermitage. There was nothing in it that I hadn’t seen before, nothing that Nadya wouldn’t willingly show me were I to ask, and yet seeing it here, through the eyes of another, recorded in permanence, added a certain excitement.
And I was in no doubt it was through the eyes of another; it was no self-portrait. Nadya was fascinated by art and had often tried drawing for herself, but was the first to admit that she had little talent. There was always the possibility that whoever had drawn it had not been working from life and had, beyond Nadya’s face, been using their imagination, but too many details were accurate for that to be the case. I knew every inch of her – every blemish and birthmark – and it was all here. There was no signature, but there were not many candidates for who could have drawn it. Syeva was an impossibility – his hands would have shaken too much. And that left only one other. Clearly Nadya was not ashamed of it; as far as I could tell, she had left it out for me to discover.
And yet as I looked down at the undoubtedly beautiful drawing, a sense of familiarity came to my mind. Obviously I recognized Nadya, but there was more to it than that. Perhaps it was the expression on her face or even the style of the drawing itself that reminded me of something or someone I had seen before. It wasn’t unlikely. I’d known other members of Nadya’s family; perhaps there was some trait that they shared, that I’d noticed here for the first time.
But there was another, more sinister possibility. Not all
of my memories were my own. I had shared Zmyeevich’s mind, if only for a few years, until he died. Might I be recalling something I had seen through his eyes, or even something that he had witnessed years before, which had infiltrated my memory? It wasn’t a pleasant idea at the best of times. Now I had to worry about why on earth the image of the woman I loved should feature in the memories of a monster such as that.
‘What do you think?’
I turned. Nadya stood at the door. She looked quite, quite different from the picture I held in my hand. The only flesh visible was her face, and moments later her hands as she removed her gloves. Every other inch of her was covered to protect her from the cold outside. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose glowed in the sudden warmth of being indoors.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘Anastasia’s work, I take it?’
Nadya nodded. ‘She’s talented, isn’t she?’
I put the drawing down and went over to kiss Nadya. I felt her arms squeeze me around the waist. ‘Inspired, I would say.’
She giggled and slapped me on the shoulder.
‘How ever did she persuade you?’ I asked, stepping away.
Nadya sucked her lower lip and then smiled. ‘You know, I’m not really sure. She started out just doing a portrait. Look.’ She went over to the dressing table and opened a drawer to take out a similar sketch, but this time only of her face.
‘But this isn’t the one you left out for me?’
She gave me a look of condescension. ‘Did I make the wrong choice?’
I shook my head, then sat down on the bed, indicating she should join me. She frowned, sensing I had something important to tell her. I was going back on what I’d said to Anastasia, but Nadya deserved to know the truth.
‘I saw Anastasia,’ I said. ‘A few days ago. Before you took her in.’
‘Really, where?’ Nadya was trying and failing to sound casual.
‘Near the Yekaterininsky Canal. In a courtyard. In a doorway. She was … working.’
