Master of Petersburg (22 page)

‘Stop changing the subject! We are talking about Russia, not about Jesus. And stop trying to put the blame on me. If you betray me it will only be because you hate me.'

‘I don't hate you. I have no cause.'

‘Yes you do! You want to strike back at me because I open people's eyes to what you are really like, you and your generation.'

‘And what are we really like, I and my generation?'

‘I will tell you. Your day is over. Only, instead of passing quietly from the scene, you want to drag the whole world down with you. You resent it that the reins are passing into the hands of younger and stronger men who are going to make a better world. That is what you are really like. And don't tell me the story that you were a revolutionary who went to Siberia for your beliefs. I know for a fact that even in Siberia you were treated like one of the gentry. You didn't share the sufferings of the people at all, it was just a sham. You old men make me sick! The day I get to be thirty-five, I'll put a bullet through my brains, I swear!'

These last words come out with such petulant force that he cannot hide a smile; Nechaev himself colours in confusion.

‘I hope you have a chance to be a father before then, so that you will know what it is like to drink from this cup.'

‘I will never be a father,' mutters Nechaev.

‘How do you know? You can't be sure. All a man can do is sow the seed; after that it has a life of its own.'

Nechaev shakes his head decisively. What does he mean? That he does not sow his seed? That he is vowed to be a virgin like Jesus?

‘You can't be sure,' he repeats softly. ‘Seed becomes son, prince becomes king. When one day you sit on the throne (if you haven't blown out your brains by then), and the land is full of princelings, hiding in cellars and attics, plotting against you, what will you do? Send out soldiers to chop off their heads?'

Nechaev glowers. ‘You are trying to make me angry with your silly parables. I know about your own father, Pavel Isaev told me – what a petty tyrant he was, how everyone hated him, till his own peasants killed him. You think that because you and your father hated each other, the history of the world has to consist of nothing but fathers and sons at war with each other. You don't-understand the meaning of revolution. Revolution is the end of everything old, including fathers and sons. It is the end of successions and dynasties. And it keeps renewing itself, if it is true revolution. With each generation the old revolution is overturned and history starts again.
That
is the new idea, the truly new idea. Year One.
Carte blanche
. When everything is reinvented, everything erased and reborn: law, morality, the family, everything. When all prisoners are set free, all crimes forgiven. The idea is so tremendous that you cannot understand it, you and your generation. Or rather, you understand it only too well, and want to stifle it in the cradle.'

‘And money? When you forgive the crimes, will you redistribute the money?'

‘We will do more than that. Every so often, when people least expect it, we will declare the existing money worthless and print fresh money. That was the mistake the French made – to allow the old money to go on circulating. The French did not have a true revolution because they did not have the courage to push it all the way through. They got rid of the aristocrats but they didn't eliminate the old way of thinking. In our schools we will teach the people's way of thinking, that has been repressed all this time. Everyone will go to school again, even the professors. The peasants will be the teachers and the professors will be the students. In our schools we will make new men and new women. Everyone will be reborn with a new heart.'

‘And God? What will God think of that?'

The young man gives a laugh of the purest exhilaration. ‘God? God will be envious.'

‘So you believe?'

‘Of course we believe! What would be the point otherwise? – one might as well set a torch to everything, turn the world to ash. No; we will go to God and stand before his throne and call him off. And he will come! He will have no choice, he will have to listen. Then we will all be together on the same footing at last.'

‘And the angels?'

‘The angels will stand around us in circles singing their hosannas. The angels will be in transports. They will be freed as well, to walk on the earth like common men.'

‘And the souls of the dead?'

‘You ask so many questions! The souls of the dead too, Fyodor Mikhailovich, if you like. We shall have the souls of the dead walking the earth again – Pavel Isaev too, if you like. There are no bounds to what can be done.'

What a charlatan! Yet he no longer knows where the mastery lies – whether he is playing with Nechaev or Nechaev with him. All barriers seem to be crumbling at once: the barrier on tears, the barrier on laughter. If Anna Sergeyevna were here – the thought comes unbidden – he would be able to speak the words to her that have been lacking all this time.

He takes a step forward and with what seems to him the strength of a giant folds Nechaev to his breast. Embracing the boy, trapping his arms at his sides, breathing in the sour smell of his carbuncular flesh, sobbing, laughing, he kisses him on the left cheek and on the right. Hip to hip, breast to breast, he stands locked against him.

There is a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Nechaev struggles free. ‘So they are here!' he exclaims. His eyes gleam with triumph.

He turns. In the doorway stands a woman dressed in black, with an incongruous little white hat. In the dim light, through his tears, it is hard to tell her age.

Nechaev seems disappointed. ‘Ah!' he says. ‘Excuse us! Come in!'

But the woman stays where she is. Under her arm she bears something wrapped in a white cloth. The children's noses are keener than his. All together, without a word, they slither down from the bed and slip past the two men. The girl tugs the cloth loose and the smell of fresh bread fills the room. Without a word she breaks off lumps and gives them into her brothers' hands. Pressed against their mother's skirts, their eyes blank and vacant, they stand chewing. Like animals, he thinks: they know where it comes from and do not care.

16

He bows to the woman. From beneath the silly hat a rather timid, girlish, freckled face peers out. He feels a quick flicker of sexual interest, but it dies down. He should wear a black tie, or a black band around his arm in the Italian manner, then his standing would be clearer – to himself too. Not a full man any longer: half a man. Or on his lapel a medal with Pavel's image. The better half taken, the half that was to come.

‘I must go,' he says

Nechaev gives him a scornful look. ‘Go,' he says. ‘No one is stopping you.' And then, to the woman: ‘He thinks I don't know where he is going.'

The remark strikes him as gratuitous. ‘Where do you think I am going?'

‘Do you want me to spell it out? Isn't this your chance for revenge?'

Revenge:
after what has just passed, the word is like a pig's bladder thumped into his face. Nechaev's word, Nechaev's world – a world of vengeance. What has it to do with him? Yet the ugly word has not been thrust at him without reason. Something comes back to him: Nechaev's behaviour when they first met – the flurry of skirts against the back of his chair, the pressure of his foot under the table, the way he used his body, shameless yet gauche. Does the boy have any clear idea of what he wants, or does he simply try anything to see where it will lead?
He is like me, I was like him
, he thinks –
only I did not have the courage
. And then:
Is that is why Pavel followed him: because he was trying to learn courage? Is that why he climbed the tower in the night?

More and more it is becoming clear: Nechaev will not be satisfied till he is in the hands of the police, till he has tasted that too. So that his courage and his resolution can be put to the test. And he will come through – no doubt of that. He will not break. No matter how he is beaten or starved, he will never give in, not even fall sick. He will lose all his teeth and smile. He will drag his broken limbs around, roaring, strong as a lion.

‘Do you
want
me to take revenge? Do you
want
me to go out and betray you? Is that what it is meant to achieve, all this charade of mazes and blindfolds?'

Nechaev laughs excitedly, and he knows that they understand each other. ‘Why should I want that?' he replies in a soft, mischievous voice, giving the girl a sidelong glance as if drawing her into the joke. ‘I'm not a youth who has lost his way, like your stepson. If you are going to the police, be frank about it. Don't sentimentalize me, don't pretend you are not my enemy. I know about your sentimentalizing. You do it to women too, I'm sure. Women and little girls.' He turns to the girl. ‘You know all about it, don't you? How men of that type drop tears when they hurt you, to lubricate their consciences and give themselves thrills.'

For someone of his age, extraordinary how much he has picked up! More even than a woman of the streets, because he has his own shrewdness. He knows about the world. Pavel could have done with more of that. There was more real life in the filthy, waddling old bear in his story – what was his name? Karamzin? – than in the priggish hero he so painfully constructed. Slaughtered too soon – a bad mistake.

‘I have no intention of betraying you,' he says wearily. ‘Go home to your father. You have a father somewhere in Ivanovo, if I remember. Go to him, kneel, ask him to hide you. He will do it. There are no limits to what a father will do.'

There is a wild snort of laughter from Nechaev. He can no longer remain still: he stalks across the cellar, pushing the children out of his way. ‘My father! What do you know about my father? I'm not a ninny like your stepson! I don't cling to people who oppress me! I left my father's house when I was sixteen and I've never been back. Do you know why? Because he beat me. I said, “Beat me once more and you will never see me again.” So he beat me and he never saw me again. From that day he ceased to be my father. I am my own father now. I have made myself over. I don't need any father to hide me. If I need to hide, the people will hide me.

‘You say there are no limits to what a father will do. Do you know that my father shows my letters to the police? I write to my sisters and he steals the letters and copies them for the police
and they pay him
. Those are his limits. It shows how desperate the police are, paying for that kind of thing, clutching at straws. Because there is nothing I have done that they can prove – nothing!'

Desperate. Desperate to be betrayed, desperate to find a father to betray him.

‘They may not be able to prove anything, but they know and you know and I know that you are not innocent. You have gone further than drawing up lists, haven't you? There is blood on your hands, isn't there? I'm not asking you to confess. Nevertheless, in the most hypothetical of senses,
why do you do it?
'

‘Hypothetically? Because if you do not kill you are not taken seriously. It is the only proof of seriousness that counts.'

‘But why be taken seriously? Why not be young and carefree as long as you can? There is time enough afterwards to be serious. And spare a thought for those weaker fellows of yours who made the mistake of taking you seriously. Think of your Finnish friend and of what she is going through at this very moment as a consequence.'

‘Stop harping on my so-called Finnish friend! She has been looked after, she isn't suffering any more! And don't tell me to wait to be old before I am taken seriously. I have seen what happens when you grow old. When I am old I won't be myself any longer.'

It is an insight he could have imagined coming from Pavel, never from Nechaev. What a waste! ‘I wish,' he says, ‘I could have heard you and Pavel together.' What he does not say is: Like two swords, two naked swords.

But how clever of Nechaev to have forewarned him against pity! For that is just what he is on the point of feeling: pity for a child alone in the sea, fighting and drowning. So is he wrong to detect something a little too studied in Nechaev's sombre look (for he has, surprisingly, fallen silent), in his ruminative gaze – more than studied, in fact: sly? But when was it last that words could be trusted to travel from heart to heart? An age of acting, this, an age of disguise. Pavel too much of a child, and too old-fashioned, to prosper in it. Pavel's hero and heroine conversing in the funny, stammering, old-fashioned language of the heart. ‘I wish . . . I wish . . .' – ‘You may . . . You may . . .' Yet Pavel at least tried to project himself into another breast. Impossible to imagine Sergei Nechaev as a writer. An egoist and worse. A poor lover too, for sure. Without feeling, without sympathy. Immature in his feelings, stalled, like a midget. A man of the future, of the next century, with a monstrous head and monstrous appetites but nothing else. Lonely, lone. His proper place a throne in a bare room. The throne of ideas. A pope of ideas, dull ideas. God save the faithful then, God save the ruled!

His thoughts are interrupted by a clatter on the stairs. Nechaev darts to the door, listens, then goes out. There is a furious whispering, the sound of a key in a lock, silence.

Still wearing her little white hat, the woman has sat down on the edge of the bed with the youngest child at her breast. Meeting his eye, she colours, then lifts her chin defiantly. ‘Mr Ishutin says you may be able to help us,' she says.

‘Mr Ishutin?'

‘Mr Ishutin. Your friend.'

‘Why should he have said that? He knows my situation.'