Master of Petersburg Read online

  He makes no effort to reply.

  ‘Why are you wearing that suit?’

  ‘If I don’t, who will?’

  A flicker of impatience crosses her face.

  ‘Do you know the story of Pavel’s suit?’ he says.

  She shakes her head.

  He sits up and motions her to the foot of the bed. ‘Come here. It is a long story, but I will tell you. The year before last, while I was still abroad, Pavel went to stay with his aunt in Tver. Just for the summer. Do you know where Tver is?’

  ‘It’s near Moscow.’

  ‘It’s on the way to Moscow. Quite a big town. In Tver there lived a retired officer, a captain, whose sister kept house for him. The sister’s name was Maria Timofeyevna. She was a cripple. She was also weak in the head. A good soul, but not capable of taking care of herself.’

  He notices how quickly he has fallen into the rhythms of storytelling. Like a piston-engine, incapable of any other motion.

  ‘The captain, Maria’s brother, was unfortunately a drunkard. When he was drunk he used to ill-treat her. Afterwards he would remember nothing.’

  ‘What did he do to her?’

  ‘He beat her. That was all. Old-fashioned Russian beating. She did not hold it against him. Perhaps, in her simplicity, she thought that is what the world is: a place where you get beaten.’

  He has her attention. Now he turns the screw.

  ‘That is how a dog must see the world, after all, or a horse. Why should Maria be different? A horse does not understand that it has been born into the world to pull carts. It thinks it is here to be beaten. It thinks of a cart as a huge object it is tied to so that it cannot run away while it is being beaten.’

  ‘Don’t . . . ,’ she whispers.

  He knows: she rejects with all her soul the vision of the world he is offering. She wants to believe in goodness. But her belief is tentative, without resilience. He feels no mercy toward her. This is Russia! he wants to say, forcing the words upon her, rubbing her face in them. In Russia you cannot afford to be a delicate flower. In Russia you must be a burdock or a dandelion.

  ‘One day the captain came visiting. He was not a particular friend of Pavel’s aunt, but he came anyway and brought his sister too. Perhaps he had been drinking. Pavel was not at home at the time.

  ‘A visitor from Moscow, a young man who wasn’t familiar with the situation, got into conversation with Maria and began to draw her out. Perhaps he was only being polite. On the other hand, perhaps he was being mischievous. Maria got excited, her imagination began to run away with her. She confided to this visitor that she was betrothed, or, as she said, “promised.” “And is your fiancé from the district?” he inquired. “Yes, from nearby,” she replied, giving Pavel’s aunt a coy smile (you must think of Maria as a tall, gangling woman with a loud voice, by no means young or pretty).

  ‘To keep up appearances, Pavel’s aunt had then to pretend to congratulate her, and to pretend to congratulate the captain too. The captain was of course in a fury with his sister, and, as soon as he got her home again, beat her without mercy.’

  ‘Wasn’t it true, then?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t true at all, except in her own mind. And – it now emerged – the man she was convinced was going to marry her was none other than Pavel. Where she got the idea I don’t know. Maybe he gave her a smile one day, or complimented her on her bonnet – Pavel had a kind heart, that was one of the nicest things about him, wasn’t it? And maybe she went home dreaming about him, and in no time dreamed she was in love with him and he with her.’

  As he speaks he watches the child sidelong. She wriggles and for a moment actually puts her thumb in her mouth.

  ‘You can imagine what fun Tver society had with the story of Maria and her phantom suitor. But now let me tell you about Pavel. When Pavel heard the story, he went straight out and ordered a smart white suit. And the next thing he did was to call on the Lebyatkins, wearing his white suit and bearing flowers – roses, I believe. And though Captain Lebyatkin didn’t at first take kindly to it, Pavel won him over. To Maria he behaved very considerately, very politely, like a complete gentleman, though he was not yet twenty. The visits went on all summer, till he left Tver and came back to Petersburg. It was a lesson to everyone, a lesson in chivalry. A lesson to me too. That is the kind of boy Pavel was. And that is the history of the white suit.’

  ‘And Maria?’

  ‘Maria? Maria is still in Tver, as far as I know.’

  ‘But does she know?’

  ‘Does she know about Pavel? Probably not.’

  ‘Why did he kill himself?’

  ‘Do you think he killed himself?’

  ‘Mama says he killed himself.’

  ‘No one kills himself, Matryosha. You can put your life in danger but you cannot actually kill yourself. It is more likely that Pavel put himself at risk, to see whether God loved him enough to save him. He asked God a question – Will you save me? – and God gave him an answer. God said: No. God said: Die.’

  ‘God killed him?’

  ‘God said no. God could have said: Yes, I will save you. But he preferred to say no.’

  ‘Why?’ she whispers.

  ‘He said to God: If you love me, save me. If you are there, save me. But there was only silence. Then he said: I know you are there, I know you hear me. I will wager my life that you will save me. And still God said nothing. Then he said: However much you stay silent, I know you hear me. I am going to make my wager – now! And he threw down his wager. And God did not appear. God did not intervene.’

  ‘Why?’ she whispers again.

  He smiles an ugly, crooked, bearded smile. ‘Who knows? Perhaps God does not like to be tempted. Perhaps the principle that he should not be tempted is more important to him than the life of one child. Or perhaps the reason is simply that God does not hear very well. God must be very old by now, as old as the world or even older. Perhaps he is hard of hearing and weak of vision too, like any old man.’

  She is defeated. She has no more questions. Now she is ready, he thinks. He pats the bed beside him.

  Hanging her head, she slides closer. He folds her within the circle of his arm; he can feel her trembling. He strokes her hair, her temples. At last she gives way and, pressing herself against him, balling her fists under her chin, sobs freely.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she sobs. ‘Why did he have to die?’

  He would like to be able to say: He did not die, he is here, I am he; but he cannot.

  He thinks of the seed that for a while went on living in the body after the breathing had stopped, not yet knowing it would never find issue.

  ‘I know you love him,’ he whispers hoarsely. ‘He knows that too. You have a good heart.’

  If the seed could only have been taken out of the body, even a single seed, and given a home!

  He thinks of a little terracotta statue he saw in the ethnographic museum in Berlin: the Indian god Shiva lying on his back, blue and dead, and riding on him the figure of a terrible goddess, many-armed, wide-mouthed, staring-eyed, ecstatic – riding him, drawing the divine seed out of him.

  He has no difficulty in imagining this child in her ecstasy. His imagination seems to have no bounds.

  He thinks of a baby, frozen, dead, buried in an iron coffin beneath the snow-piled earth, waiting out the winter, waiting for the spring.

  This is as far as the violation goes: the girl in the crook of his arm, the five fingers of his hand, white and dumb, gripping her shoulder. But she might as well be sprawled out naked. One of those girls who give themselves because their natural motion is to be good, to submit. He thinks of child-prostitutes he has known, here and in Germany; he thinks of men who search out such girls because beneath the garish paint and provocative clothes they detect something that outrages them, a certain inviolability, a certain maidenliness. She is prostituting the Virgin, such a man says, recognizing the flavour of innocence in the gesture with which the girl cups her breasts for him,
in the movement with which she spreads her thighs. In the tiny room with its stale odours, she gives off a faint, desperate smell of spring, of flowers, that he cannot bear. Deliberately, with teeth clenched, he hurts her, and then hurts her again and again, watching her face all the time for something that goes beyond mere wincing, mere bearing of pain: for the sudden wide-eyed look of a creature that begins to understand its life is in danger.

  The vision, the fit, the rictus of the imagination, passes. He soothes her a last time, withdraws his arm, finds a way of being with her as he was before.

  ‘Are you going to make a shrine?’ she says.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it.’

  ‘You can make a shrine in the corner, with a candle. Then you can put his picture there. If you like, I can keep the candle lit while you are not here.’

  ‘A shrine is meant to stand forever, Matryosha. Your mother will want to let this room when I am gone.’

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘I am not sure yet,’ he says, evading the trap. And then: ‘Mourning for a dead child has no end. Is that what you want to hear me say? I say it. It is true.’

  Whether because she picks up a change in his tone or because he has found a raw nerve, she flinches noticeably.

  ‘If you were to die your mother would mourn you for the rest of her life.’ And, surprising himself, he adds: ‘I too.’

  Is it true? No, not yet; but perhaps it is about to be true.

  ‘Then may I light a candle for him?’

  ‘Yes, you may.’

  ‘And keep it burning?’

  ‘Yes. But why is the candle so important to you?’

  She wriggles uncomfortably. ‘So that he won’t be in the dark,’ she says at last.

  Curious, but that is how he has sometimes imagined it too. A ship at sea, a stormy night, a boy lost overboard. Beating about in the waves, keeping himself somehow afloat, the boy shouts in terror: he breathes and shouts, breathes and shouts after the ship that has been his home, that is his home no longer. There is a lantern at the stern on which he fixes his eyes, a speck of light in a wilderness of night and water. As long as I can see that light, he tells himself, I am not lost.

  ‘Can I light the candle now?’ she asks.

  ‘If you like. But we won’t put the picture there, not yet.’

  She lights a candle and sets it beneath the mirror. Then, with a trustingness that takes him by surprise, she returns to the bed and rests her head on his arm. Together they regard the steady candle-flame. From the street below come the sounds of children at play. His fingers close over her shoulder, he draws her tight against him. He can feel the soft young bones fold, one over another, as a bird’s wing folds.

  8

  Ivanov

  He enters sleep, as he enters sleep each night, with the intent of finding his way to Pavel. But on this night he is woken – almost at once, it seems – by a voice, thin to the point of being disembodied, calling from the street below. Isaev! the voice calls, over and over, patiently.

  The wind in the reeds, that is all, he thinks, and slips gratefully back into sleep. Summertime, the wind in the reeds, a blue sky flecked with high cloud, and he tramping along a stream, whistling, a cane in his hand with which he idly lashes the reeds. A whirr of weaver-birds. He halts, stands still to listen. The song of the grasshoppers ceases too; there is only the sound of his breathing and the reeds shaking in the wind. Isaev! calls the wind.

  He gives a start and is at once wide awake. It is the dead of night, the whole house is still. Crossing to the window, peering into moonlight and shadow, he waits for the call to be renewed. At last it comes. It has the same pitch, the same length, the same inflection as the word that still echoes in his ears, but it is not a human call at all. It is the unhappy wail of a dog.

  Not Pavel, then, calling to be fetched in – only a thing that does not concern him, a dog howling for its father. Well, let the dog-father, whoever he is, go out in the cold and dark and gather in his arms his gross, smelly child. Let him be the one to soothe it and sing to it and lull it to sleep.

  The dog howls again. No hint of empty plains and silver light: a dog, not a wolf; a dog, not his son. Therefore? Therefore he must throw off this lethargy! Because it is not his son he must not go back to bed but must get dressed and answer the call. If he expects his son to come as a thief in the night, and listens only for the call of the thief, he will never see him. If he expects his son to speak in the voice of the unexpected, he will never hear him. As long as he expects what he does not expect, what he does not expect will not come. Therefore – paradox within paradox, darkness swaddled in darkness – he must answer to what he does not expect.

  From the third floor it had seemed easy to find the dog. But when he reaches street level he is confused. Does the crying come from left or from right, from one of the buildings across the street or from behind the buildings or perhaps from a courtyard within one of the buildings? And which building? And what of the cries themselves, which now seem to be not only shorter and lower but of a different timbre altogether – almost not the same cries, in fact?

  He searches back and forth before he finds the alley used by the nightsoil carriers. In a branch of this alley he at last comes upon the dog. It is tethered to a drainpipe by a slim chain; the chain has become wrapped around a foreleg, jerking the leg up awkwardly whenever it tightens. At his approach the dog retreats as far as it can, whining. It flattens its ears, prostrates itself, rolls on its back. A bitch. He bends over it, unwinds the chain. Dogs smell fear, but even in the cold he can smell this dog’s rank terror. He tickles it behind the ear. Still on its back, it timidly licks his wrist.

  Is this what I will be doing for the rest of my days, he wonders: peering into the eyes of dogs and beggars?

  The dog gives a heave and is on its feet. Though he is not fond of dogs, he does not draw back from this one but crouches as its warm, wet tongue licks his face, his ears, licks the salt from his beard.

  He gives it a last stroke and gets up. In the moonlight he cannot make out his watchface. The dog tugs at its chain, whining, eager. Who would chain a dog outdoors on a night like this? Nevertheless, he does not set it loose. Instead he turns abruptly and departs, pursued by forlorn howls.

  Why me? he thinks as he hurries away. Why should I bear all the world’s burdens? As for Pavel, if he is to have nothing else, let him at least have, his death to himself, let his death not be taken from him and turned into the occasion of his father’s reformation.

  It is no good. His reasoning – specious, contemptible – does not for one moment take him in. Pavel’s death does not belong to Pavel – that is just a trick of language. As long as he is here, Pavel’s death is his death. Wherever he goes he bears Pavel with him, like a baby blue with cold (‘Who will save the blue baby?’ he seems to hear within him, plaintive words that come from he does not know where, in a peasant’s singsong voice).

  Pavel will not speak, will not tell him what to do. ‘Raise up that least thing and cherish it’: if he knew the words came from Pavel he would obey them without question. But they do not. That least thing: is the least thing the dog, abandoned in the cold? Is the dog the thing he must release and take with him and feed and cherish, or is it the filthy, drunken beggar in his tattered coat under the bridge? A terrible hopelessness comes over him which is connected – how, he does not know – to the fact that he has no idea what time it is, but whose core is a growing certainty that he will never again go out in the night to answer a dog’s call, that an opportunity for leaving himself as he is behind and becoming what he might yet be has passed. I am I, he thinks despairingly, manacled to myself till the day I die. Whatever it was that wavered toward me, I was unworthy of it, and now it has withdrawn.

  Yet even in the instant of closing the door upon himself he is aware there is still a chance to return to the alley, unchain the dog, bring it to the entryway to No. 63, and make some kind of bed for it at the foot of the stairs – though, he
knows, once he has brought it so far it will insist on following him further, and, if he chains it again, will whine and bark till the whole building is roused. It is not my son, it is just a dog, he protests. What is it to me? Yet even as he protests he knows the answer: Pavel will not be saved till he has freed the dog and brought it into his bed, brought the least thing, the beggarmen and the beggarwomen too, and much else he does not yet know of; and even then there will be no certainty.

  He gives a great groan of despair. What am I to do? he thinks. If I were only in touch with my heart, might it be given to me to know? Yet it is not his heart he has lost touch with but the truth. Or – the other side of the same thought – it is not the truth he has lost touch with at all: on the contrary, truth has been pouring down upon him like a waterfall, without moderation, till now he is drowning in it. And then he thinks (reverse the thought and reverse the reversal too: by such Jesuitical tricks must one think nowadays!): Drowning under the falls, what is it that I need? More water, more flood, a deeper drowning.

  Standing in the middle of the snow-covered street, he brings his cold hands to his face, smells the dog on them, touches the cold tears on his cheeks, tastes them. Salt, for those who need salt. He suspects he will not save the dog, not this night nor even the next night, if there is to be a next night. He is waiting for a sign, and he is betting (there is no grander word he dare use) that the dog is not the sign, is not a sign at all, is just a dog among many dogs howling in the night. But he knows too that as long as he tries by cunning to distinguish things that are things from things that are signs he will not be saved. That is the logic by which he will be defeated; and, feeling its iron hardness, he is at his wits’ end, like a dog on a chain that breaks the teeth that gnaw it. And beware, beware, he reminds himself: the dog on the chain, the second dog, is nothing in itself, is not an illumination, merely an animal likeness!

  With his fists bunched in his pockets, his head bowed, his legs stiff as rods, he stands in the middle of the street feeling the dog’s spittle turn to ice on his beard.