The Jewel of St Petersburg (30 page)

“Did you, Arkin?” Elizaveta Ivanova asked again.

“No, madam.” They had just passed a row of four shoeshine boys in the square, busy with their brushes and impudent smiles, hungry for kopecks. “I was brought up on a farm.”

Behind him he heard a small sigh of approval, as though life on a farm were something to be desired.

“What made you leave?” she asked.

“The lure of the big city.”

“Petersburg is very beautiful, I admit. Did it live up to your expectations?”

“Yes,” he lied. But her ears were sharp and she laughed.

“I hope you’re happy here,” she said after a moment’s thought. “And happy working for my husband.”

“Of course. I couldn’t ask for better.”

“I hope that’s true, Arkin, and that you’re not just saying it to please me.”

“It is true.”

He half-turned his head, one eye still on the road, and caught a glimpse of her in her black fur coat, sleek as a panther’s pelt. She was smiling. Oddly, it pleased him to see it.

“I have a favor to ask of you.”

The way she said it, he knew immediately it had nothing to do with chauffeuring.

“Madam, I am always at your service.”

“Stop the car a moment.”

He pulled into the curb and it happened to be opposite a fish stall so that the smell of dead fish on the slabs drifted into the car. He swiveled around in his seat and noticed the tiny lace handkerchief in her hand. She dabbed at her nose.

“How can I help you, madam?”

Her eyes considered him for a moment, and he saw uncertainty in them. She was wondering how far could she trust him.

“It is ... a delicate matter,” she said, and her cheeks colored. She glanced away, and the black feathers on her hat bobbed as she moved. “I don’t know who else to ask.”

“I am discreet,” he said quietly.

He thought of the times he had collected any of Minister Ivanov’s young mistresses in the car or even driven his employer to his favorite brothel down by the Golden Apple nightclub where the French gypsy girl, Mimi, awaited the minister’s favors. Oh yes, Arkin had learned to keep his mouth shut.

“I will help you if I can,” he offered.

Her gaze studied his gloved hand where it lay on the back of the seat as if it held an answer for her. She swallowed awkwardly. “I want you to find out whether my elder daughter is seeing . . . someone.”

Arkin almost laughed. She wanted to turn him into an Okhrana spy. It was ironic.

“Who is this person?” he asked, genuinely interested.

“The Danish engineer she was trapped with in the tunnel. His name is Jens Friis.”

So that was it. He suddenly felt sorry for this proud woman, reduced to such snooping on her daughter.

“I’ll find out what I can,” he agreed, and immediately her eyes lifted from his hand to his face.

“We understand each other?” she asked.

“Perfectly.”

She smiled at him, but he reminded himself who she was and what she stood for. He didn’t want to like her.

“Shall I drive on now, madam?” he asked, suddenly formal.

“Yes.” But as he turned to the snow-covered road ahead once more, she added in a low voice, “I’m grateful, Arkin. For this . . . and for the other day when I was . . .”

“You are welcome, madam,” he interrupted.

He preferred not to think about it. It did not help the cause to feel sorrow for your class enemy. It was dangerous. Yet he couldn’t help it.

T
HE MORNING WAS BRIGHT AS POLISHED GLASS. NO HINT of fog today, just an endless arc of sky and the smell of the sea in the air. It made Arkin restless. He was waiting beside the car outside the front steps for Valentina to emerge, with the Turicum gleaming as gaudy as a kingfisher in the sunshine.

“Good morning, Arkin.”

“
Dobroye utro,
Miss Valentina, good morning,” he said as she crossed the gravel. She looked thin and pale. She was dressed in a plain coat and headscarf, yet there was a nervous energy in her step as though she were in a hurry.

“Miss Valentina, I’m glad to see you have recovered and are looking so well.”

The comment took her by surprise. “Thank you, Arkin.”

“I hope Miss Katya passed on my good wishes to you when you were ill.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Still he stood there, forgetting about the car. She moved to climb the step into its interior, but he raised a hand that, even without touching her, made her stop.

“What is it, Arkin?”

“The men who caused the explosion in the tunnel would not have wanted to harm you in any way. Those people are fixed on a goal. You were in their path, that’s all.” He wanted her to know.

“So tell me, Arkin, what is their goal?”

He dropped his voice. “Their aim is to build a new and fairer society. They want to bring down the tsar. Not to endanger young women.”

“Is that what you believe in too, Arkin? In bringing down our tsar?”

“No, Miss Valentina.”

“Good. If you believed in that, you would be arrested.”

She stepped past him into the car and sat on the sleek blue leather, staring straight ahead. He started the engine with the crank handle and jumped up in front of her. Neither of them spoke.

V
ALENTINA WAS THANKFUL TO CLIMB OUT OF THE CAR half a mile from the hospital and send it back home for her mother’s use. She enjoyed the short walk and tried to fix her mind on what she was to say, rather than on all that had been said last time. She entered St. Isabella’s Hospital and went through the same procedure as before, the name checking at the window hatch and following the green trail of worn linoleum down the corridor to the door marked GORDANSKAYA. She knocked.

“Vkhodite.
Come in.”

Whatever she had been expecting, it was not what she found. The large figure of
Medsestra
Gordanskaya seemed to have ballooned further inside her white uniform since their last meeting, and she was leaning against a row of filing cabinets with a pair of long-handled tweezers clenched between her fingers. Her attention shifted to Valentina for no more than a second.

“Ah, yes, the little aristocrat who thinks she has the makings of a nurse.” She grinned into the mirror propped up on the cabinet, but it had nothing to do with humor. Valentina realized she was inspecting a side tooth that was black and broken.

“Good morning,
Medsestra
Gordanskaya.”

“Know anything about teeth?”

“No,
Medsestra.”

“Not much use to me then, are you?”

“I’m good with tweezers.”

“Here.” The woman thrust the instrument at Valentina.

Valentina took it and wondered whether the
medsestra
initiated all her would-be nurses with this exercise. But then she wouldn’t have a tooth left in her head.

“Friends in high places, I gather,” Gordanskaya said, but without rancor, as though it were a fact of life. “But of course you would have. Look at you.” She laughed a deep laugh that wobbled her cheeks. “You can’t hide behind a headscarf and a servant’s mended gloves. I know what you are.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I want to be a nurse. To do something more with my life than arrange flowers and drink tea. I promise you I know how to work hard, and I am already familiar with Dupierre’s book on human anatomy. I’ve nursed my younger sister and practiced bandaging.”

“You talk too much. You educated ones always do. Learn to keep quiet.”

Valentina nodded. “Yes,
Medsestra.”

“If you were applying to be a soldier, I’d call you cannon fodder, but instead I call you—and all the other chits like you—bedpan fodder. That’s what you’ll be dealing with most of the time, and that’s what will finish you off in the end. Bedpan fodder, the lot of you. Dear Mother of Christ, why don’t they send me some young women able to work? Not just these whey-faced milksops.”

Valentina didn’t make a sound.

Gordanskaya snatched up one of Valentina’s hands, turned it over to inspect the palm, and prodded its pale pads with her thumb. Valentina felt like a farm animal in the marketplace.

“Skin as white as a piglet’s tits.” The
medsestra
shook her head. “But there’s muscle in there. What is it you do with them?”

“I play the piano.”

Gordanskaya burst out laughing. “Dear God, give me strength.” Abruptly she opened her mouth wide and pointed to a black tooth that was hanging half loose. “Pull it.”

One quick jerk with the tweezers and the black stump slid out like a nail from rotten wood. A tail of blood followed it and a whiff of pus. A flicker of relief passed over the nurse’s broad face, and she pointed to the chair in front of her desk. Valentina sat down and she placed the tweezers, still clutching the tooth, within Gordanskaya’s reach.

“You’ve been recommended to me for training by Dr. Fedorin,” Gordanskaya said briskly. “I will need your parents’ consent as you are under twenty. Now read this form and get them to sign it,” she ordered before adding with a sly lopsided smile, “I take it you can read and write?”

“Medsestra
Gordanskaya,” Valentina said, “I can do whatever it takes.”

Nineteen

I
T IS STRANGE, VALENTINA THOUGHT, HOW LITTLE IT TAKES to tilt the world. As she retraced her steps along the mottled green floor and down the front steps of the hospital, nothing looked the same. As though she had been viewing it through a distorting mirror before but now saw it clear and pin-sharp. Her heart felt tight, drumming loudly in her ears.

Before leaving she had stopped at the heavy swinging doors to one of the wards and peered through its glass panel, astonished at the huge size of the room. It seemed to stretch away forever with endless rows of beds like long white coffins. She was tempted to push open the door, to enter this unfamiliar world where pale faces lay on rumpled pillows. Some were talking; others lay flat and silent with eyes closed.

“Out of my way.”

A young nurse barged out of the ward, holding an enamel bowl piled to the brim with bloodied bandages.

“What are you gawking at? Got your lover in there?” the girl grinned. “Don’t worry, I give ’em all a kiss good night. He’s in safe hands with me. I’m Nurse Darya Spachyeva, in case you don’t know.”

She was taller than Valentina and wiry as a weasel, with the broad cheekbones and swarthy skin of a southerner. Black stalks of hair escaped from under her headdress, but her hands looked capable, a peasant’s large-knuckled hands. Her smile was open and easy.

“Got a tongue in your head?” she demanded.

“I’m going to be training as a nurse here.”

The girl raised the bowl of bandages, thrusting it under Valentina’s nose. It stank. “Get a whiff of that. That’ll be your new perfume when you work here.”

“I’ve smelled worse.”

The untidy nurse rolled her black eyes in her head. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Valentina smiled. “I won’t.”

“It’s hard on the legs too.”

“My legs are strong.” All those years of horse riding. “If it’s so bad, why are you here?”

The girl wiped a hand on her apron, adding a stain to the others. “It beats milking fucking goats halfway up a fucking mountain.” She tucked the bowl in the crook of her arm as naturally as if it had been one of her newborn goats and scurried off on muscular legs.

Valentina had never heard a woman swear like that. She smiled and hurried down the front steps of the hospital, and that was when she saw Jens. He was standing stiff and stern in the shade of a lime tree, arms folded across his chest, face unsmiling. Waiting for her.