Master of Petersburg Page 19

  He cannot believe what has happened. He is directly over the channel, yet he has got it wrong! Is it a trick of parallax? Do some objects not fall vertically?

  ‘Now you’re in trouble!’ says a voice to his left, startling him. A man in a workman’s cap, old, greybearded, winks broadly. What a devil’s-face! ‘Won’t be safe to step on for another week at least, I’d say. What do you think you’re going to do now?’

  Time for a fit, he thinks. Then my cup will be full. He sees himself convulsing and foaming at the mouth, a crowd gathering around, and the greybeard pointing, for the benefit of all, to where the pistol lies on the ice. A fit, like a bolt from heaven to strike the sinner down. But the bolt does not come. ‘Mind your own business!’ he mutters, and hurries away.

  18

  The diary

  This is the third time he has sat down to read Pavel’s papers. What makes the reading so difficult he cannot say, but his attention keeps wandering from the sense of the words to the words themselves, to the letters on the paper, to the trace in ink of the hand’s movements, the shadings left by the pressure of the fingers. There are moments when he closes his eyes and touches his lips to the page. Dear: every scratch on the paper dear to me, he tells himself.

  But there is more to his reluctance than that. There is something ugly in this intrusion on Pavel, and indeed something obscene in the idea of the Nachlass of a child.

  Pavel’s Siberian story has been spoilt for him, perhaps forever, by Maximov’s ridicule. He cannot pretend that the writing itself is not juvenile and derivative. Yet it would take so little to breathe life into it! He itches to take his pen to it, to cross out the long passages of sentiment and doctrine and add the lifegiving touches it cries out for. Young Sergei is a self-righteous prig who needs to be distanced, seen more humorously, particularly in his solemn disciplining of his body. What draws the peasant girl to him can surely not be the promise of connubial life (a diet of dry bread and turnips, as far as he can see, and bare boards to sleep on) but his air of holding himself ready for a mysterious destiny. Where does that come from? From Chernyshevsky, certainly, but beyond Chernyshevsky from the Gospels, from Jesus – from an imitation of Jesus as obtuse and perverted in its way as that of the atheist Nechaev, gathering together a band of disciples and leading them out on errands of death. A piper with a troop of swine dancing at his heels. ‘She will do anything for him,’ said Matryona of the swine-girl Katri. Do anything, endure any humiliation, endure death. All shame burnt away, all self-respect. What went on between Nechaev and his women in the room above Madame la Fay’s? And Matryona – was she being groomed for the harem too?

  He closes Pavel’s manuscript and pushes it aside. Once he begins to write on it he will certainly turn it into an abomination.

  Then there is the diary. Paging through it, he notices for the first time a trail of pencil-marks, neat little ticks that are not in Pavel’s hand and can therefore only be in Maximov’s. For whom are they intended? Probably for a copyist; yet in his present state he cannot but take them as directives to himself.

  ‘Saw A. today,’ reads the ticked entry for November 11, 1868, almost exactly a year ago. November 14: a cryptic ‘A.’ November 20: ‘A. at Antonov’s.’ Each reference to ‘A.’ from there onward has a tick beside it.

  He turns the pages back. The earliest ‘A.’ is on June 6, save for May 14, where there is an entry, ‘Long talk to – – ,’ with a tick and a question-mark beside it.

  September 14, 1869, a month before his death: ‘Outline of a story (idea from A.). A locked gate, outside which we stand, hammering on it, crying to be let in. Every few days it is opened a crack and a guard beckons one of us in. The chosen one is stripped of everything he owns, even his clothes. He becomes a servant, learns to bow, to keep his voice down. As servants they select those they consider the most docile, the easiest to tame. To the strong they bar entry.

  ‘Theme: spread of the spirit among the servants. First muttering, then anger, rebelliousness, at last a joining of hands, swearing of an oath of vengeance. Closes with a faithful old retainer, white-haired, grandfatherly, coming with a candelabrum “to do his bit” (as he says), setting fire to the curtains.’

  An idea for a fable, an allegory, not for a story. No life of its own, no centre. No spirit.

  July 6, 1869: ‘In the mail, ten roubles from the Snitkina, for my name-day (late), with orders not to mention it to The Master.’

  ‘The Snitkina’: Anya, his wife. ‘The Master’: himself. Is this what Maximov meant when he warned against hurtful passages? If so, then Maximov should know this is a pygmy arrow. There is more he can bear, much more.

  He leafs back further to the early days.

  March 26, 1867: ‘Bumped into F. M. in the street last night. He furtive (had he been with a whore?), so I had to pretend to be drunker than I was. He “guided my steps home” (loves to play the father forgiving the prodigal son), laid me out on the sofa like a corpse while he and the Snitkina had a long whispered fight. I had lost my shoes (perhaps I gave them away). It ended with F. M. in his shirtsleeves trying to wash my feet. All v. embarrassing. This morning told the S. I must have my own lodgings, can’t she twist his arm, use her wiles. But she’s too frightened of him.’

  Painful? Yes, painful indeed: he will concede that to Maximov. Yet if anything is going to persuade him to stop reading, it will be not pain but fear. Fear, for instance, that his trust in his wife will be undermined. Fears, too, for his trust in Pavel.

  For whom were these mischievous pages intended? Did Pavel write them for his father’s eyes and then die so as to leave his accusations unanswerable? Of course not: what madness to think so! More like a woman writing to a lover with the familiar phantom figure of her husband reading over her shoulder. Every word double: to the one, passion and the promise of surrender; to the other, a plea, a reproach. Split writing, from a split heart. Would Maximov have appreciated that?

  July 2, 1867, three months later: ‘Liberation of the serf! Free at last! Saw off F. M. and bride at the railway station. Then immediately gave notice at these impossible lodgings he has put me in (own cup, own napkin-ring, and a 10:30 curfew). V. G. has promised I can stay with him till I find another place. Must persuade old Maykov to let me have the money to pay my rent directly.’

  He turns the pages back and forth distractedly. Forgiveness: is there no word of forgiveness, however oblique, however disguised? Impossible to live out his days with a child inside him whose last word is not of forgiveness.

  Inside the lead casket a silver casket. Inside the silver casket a gold casket. Inside the gold casket the body of a young man clothed in white with his hands crossed on his breast. Between the fingers a telegram. He peers at the telegram till his eyes swim, looking for the word of forgiveness that is not there. The telegram is written in Hebrew, in Syriac, in symbols he has never seen before.

  There is a tap at the door. It is Anna Sergeyevna, in her street clothes. ‘I must thank you for looking after Matryosha. Has she been any trouble?’

  It takes him a moment to collect himself, to remember that she knows nothing about the abominable uses Nechaev has put the child to.

  ‘No trouble at all. How does she seem to you?’

  ‘She’s asleep, I don’t want to wake her.’

  She notices the papers spread out on the bed.

  ‘I see you are reading Pavel’s papers after all. I won’t interrupt.’

  ‘No, don’t go yet. It is not a pleasant business.’

  ‘Fyodor Mikhailovich, let me plead with you again, don’t read things not meant for your eyes. You will only hurt yourself.’

  ‘I wish I could follow your advice. Unfortunately that is not why I am here – to save myself from hurt. I have been going through Pavel’s diary, and I came to an incident that I remember all too well, from the year before last. Illuminating, to see it now through another’s eyes. Pavel came home in the middle of the night incapable – he had been drinking. I had to undress h
im, and I was struck by something I had never noticed before – how small his toenails were, as though they had not grown since he was a child. Broad, fleshy feet – his father’s, I suppose – with tiny nails. He had lost his shoes or given them away; his feet were like blocks of ice.’

  Pavel tramping the cold streets after midnight in his socks. A lost angel, an imperfect angel, one of God’s castoffs. His feet the feet of a walker, a treader upon our great mother; of a peasant, not a dancer.

  Then on the sofa, his head lolling, vomit all over his clothes.

  ‘I gave him an old pair of boots, and watched him go off in the morning, very grumpily, with the boots in his hand. And that was that, I thought. An awkward age, though, eighteen, nineteen, awkward for everyone, when they are fullgrown but can’t leave the nest yet. Feathered but unable to fly. Always eating, always hungry. They remind me of pelicans: gangling creatures, ungainliest of birds, till they spread those great wings of theirs and leave the ground.

  ‘Unfortunately, that is not how Pavel remembered the night. In his account there is nothing about birds or angels. Nothing about parental care either. Parental love.’

  ‘Fyodor Mikhailovich, you do no good by lacerating yourself like this. If you aren’t prepared to burn these papers, at least lock them away for a while and come back to them once you have made your peace with Pavel. Listen to me and do what I tell you, for your own sake.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear Anna. I hear your words, they go to my heart. But when I talk about saving myself from hurt, when I talk about why I am here, I do not mean here in this apartment or in Petersburg. I mean that I am not here in Russia in this time of ours to live a life free of pain. I am required to live – what shall I call it? – a Russian life: a life inside Russia, or with Russia inside me, and whatever Russia means. It is not a fate I can evade.

  ‘Which does not mean that I claim some great importance for it. It is not a life that will bear much scrutiny. In fact, it is not so much a life as a price or a currency. It is something I pay with in order to write. That is what Pavel did not understand: that I pay too.’

  She frowns. He can see now where Matryona gets the mannerism. Little patience with the tearing out of entrails. Well, all honour to her for that! Too much tearing out of entrails in Russia.

  Nevertheless, I pay too: he would say it again if she would suffer hearing it. He would say it again, and say more. I pay and I sell: that is my life. Sell my life, sell the lives of those around me. Sell everyone. A Yakovlev trading in lives. The Finn was right after all: a Judas, not a Jesus. Sell you, sell your daughter, sell all those I love. Sold Pavel alive and will now sell the Pavel inside me, if I can find a way. Hope to find a way of selling Sergei Nechaev too.

  A life without honour; treachery without limit; confession without end.

  She breaks his train of thought. ‘Are you still planning to leave?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I ask because there has been an inquiry about the room. Where will you go?’

  ‘To Maykov in the first place.’

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t go to him.’

  ‘He will lend me money, I’m sure of that. I’ll tell him I need it to get back to Dresden. Then I’ll find somewhere else to stay.’

  ‘Why not just go back to Dresden? Won’t that solve all your problems?’

  ‘The police still have my passport. There are other considerations too.’

  ‘Because surely you have done all you can, surely you are wasting your time in Petersburg.’

  Has she not heard what he has said? Or is she trying to provoke him? He stands up, gathers the papers together, turns to face her. ‘No, my dear Anna, I am not wasting my time at all. I have every reason to remain here. No one in the world has more reason. As in your heart I am sure you must know.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmurs; but in the voice of someone ready to be contradicted.

  ‘There was a time when I was sure you would conduct me to Pavel. I pictured the two of us in a boat, you at the prow piloting us through the mist. The picture was as vivid as life itself. I put all my trust in you.’

  She shakes her head again.

  ‘I may have been wrong in the details, but the feeling was not wrong. From the first I had a feeling about you.’

  If she were going to stop him, she would stop him now. But she does not. She seems to drink in his words as a plant drinks water. And why not?

  ‘We made it difficult for ourselves, rushing into . . . what we rushed into,’ he goes on.

  ‘I was to blame too,’ she says. ‘But I don’t want to talk about that now.’

  ‘Nor I. Let me only say, over the past week I have come to realize how much fidelity means to us, to both of us. We have had to recover our fidelity. I am right, am I not?’

  He examines her keenly; but she is waiting for him to say more, waiting to be sure that he knows what fidelity means.

  ‘I mean, on your side, fidelity to your daughter. And on my side, fidelity to my son. We cannot love until we have their blessing. Am I right?’

  Though he knows she agrees, she will not yet say the word. Against that soft resistance he presses on. ‘I would like to have a child with you.’

  She colours. ‘What nonsense! You have a wife and child already!’

  ‘They are of a different family. You are of Pavel’s family, you and Matryona, both of you. I am of Pavel’s family too.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘In your heart you do.’

  ‘In my heart I don’t! What are you proposing? That I bring up a child whose father lives abroad and sends me an allowance in the mail? Preposterous!’

  ‘Why? You looked after Pavel.’

  ‘Pavel was a lodger, not a child!’

  ‘You don’t have to decide at once.’

  ‘But I will decide at once! No! That is my decision!’

  ‘What if you are already pregnant?’

  She bridles. ‘That is none of your business!’

  ‘And what if I were not to go back to Dresden? What if I were to stay here and send the allowance to Dresden instead?’

  ‘Here? In my spare room? In Petersburg? I thought the reason you can’t stay in Petersburg is that you will be thrown in jail by your creditors.’

  ‘I can wipe out my debts. It requires only a single success.’

  She laughs. She may be angry but she is not offended. He can say anything to her. What a contrast to Anya! With Anya there would be tears, slammed doors; it would take a week of pleading to get back in her good books.

  ‘Fyodor Mikhailovich,’ she says, ‘you will wake up tomorrow and remember nothing of this. It was just an idea that popped into your head. You have given it no thought at all.’

  ‘You are right. That is how it came to me. That is why I trust it.’

  She does not give herself into his arms, but she does not fight him off either. ‘Bigamy!’ she says softly, scornfully, and again quivers with laughter. Then, in a more deliberate tone: ‘Would you like me to come to you tonight?’

  ‘There is nothing on earth I want more.’

  ‘Let us see.’

  At midnight she is back. ‘I can’t stay,’ she says; but in the same movement she is shutting the door behind her.

  They make love as though under sentence of death, self-absorbed, purposeful. There are moments when he cannot say which of them is which, which the man, which the woman, when they are like skeletons, assemblages of bone and ligament pressed one into the other, mouth to mouth, eye to eye, ribs interlocked, leg-bones intertwined.

  Afterwards she lies against him in the narrow bed, her head on his chest, one long leg thrown easily over his. His head is spinning gently. ‘So was that meant to bring about the birth of the saviour?’ she murmurs. And, when he does not understand: ‘A real river of seed. You must have wanted to make sure. The bed is soaked.’

  The blasphemy interests him. Each time he finds something new and surpri
sing in her. Inconceivable, if he does leave Petersburg, that he will not come back. Inconceivable that he will not see her again.

  ‘Why do you say saviour?’

  ‘Isn’t that what he is meant to do: to save you, to save both of us?’

  ‘Why so sure it is he?’

  ‘Oh, a woman knows.’

  ‘What would Matryosha think?’

  ‘Matryosha? A little brother? There is nothing she would like more. She could mother him to her heart’s content.’

  In appearance his question is about Matryosha; but it is only the deflected form of another question, one that he does not ask because he already knows the answer. Pavel would not welcome a brother. Pavel would take him by his foot and dash his brains out against the wall. To Pavel no saviour but a pretender, a usurper, a sly little devil clothed in chubby baby-flesh. And who could swear he was wrong?

  ‘Does a woman always know?’

  ‘Do you mean, do I know whether I am pregnant? Don’t worry, it won’t happen.’ And then: ‘I’m going to fall asleep if I stay any longer.’ She throws the bedclothes aside and clambers over him. By moonlight she finds her clothes and begins to dress.

  He feels a pang of a kind. Memories of old feelings stir; the young man in him, not yet dead, tries to make himself heard, the corpse within him not yet buried. He is within inches of falling into a love from which no reserve of prudence will save him. The falling sickness again, or a version of it.

  The impulse is strong, but it passes. Strong but not strong enough. Never again strong enough, unless it can find a crutch somewhere.

  ‘Come here for a moment,’ he whispers.

  She sits down on the bed; he takes her hand.

  ‘Can I make a suggestion? I don’t think it is a good idea that Matryosha should be involved with Sergei Nechaev and his friends.’

  She withdraws her hand. ‘Of course not. But why say so now?’ Her voice is cold and flat.

  ‘Because I don’t think she should be left alone when he can come calling.’

  ‘What are you proposing?’

  ‘Can’t she spend her days downstairs at Amalia Karlovna’s till you get home?’