R. Morris - The Cleansing Flames

‘Yes. We’re going to church.’

For some reason, he found the idea extremely funny and began to shake with uncontrolled hilarity.

‘You must calm down.’ The man’s voice was intensely serious.

Virginsky wanted to apologise. But all that came out was an incoherent slurring. He tried to concentrate. He tried to stop the bubbles of hilarity breaking out. He wanted these people to think well of him. He wanted to know whose hands were holding him up. He made a great effort of will to match the seriousness around him. But every time he thought he had got the better of his giddiness, another explosion of hiccup-like laughter shook him.

‘This is hopeless,’ said the man whose name he could not remember. ‘If he keeps this up, he will blow us all up before we get him out of the building.’

His old professor leaned into his face. The gesture cowed Virginsky into silence. ‘This will not do. We expect better of you. Tatyana Ruslanovna expects better of you. This is your destiny. You must face it like a man.’

Virginsky gasped at the rebuke. He felt on the verge of tears.

‘That’s better,’ said Professor Tatiscev.

A wave of relief crashed over him.

‘Now you must go with Totsky. You must do whatever Totsky tells you.’

Totsky! That was the man’s name. Virginsky grinned with delight. ‘Tot-skeeee!’

‘Enough!’ continued the voice of his old professor. ‘If you do not do as you are told, the baby will die. The only way to ensure that the baby lives is to do everything that Totsky tells you. Is that clear?’

Virginsky nodded. Solemnity had entered his bones like a chill. ‘Baby?’

‘The baby here. It has been decided that Botkin will kill it if you do not do as you are told. So, as you see, it is essential that you do as you are told.’

The hands under his arms guided him towards the door. The moment the hands released him, he swayed on his feet. Other hands shot out to steady him, those of the man called Totsky. Virginsky felt better knowing whose hands were holding him up. He remembered that Totsky had been carrying a steel suitcase, but saw that he wasn’t any more. He noticed the steel suitcase lying open on the floor, empty. He breathed in deeply, his chest expanding against the constriction he had felt earlier. He realised that it had a physical cause, that he was wearing something that was tightly bound around his torso, like a corset. He did not remember putting a corset on.

At the last moment, Tatyana Ruslanovna rose from the bed. ‘I will go with them.’

‘You do not trust me ?’ demanded Totsky.

Virginsky missed the subtleties of the look that was her response. By then it was all he could do to keep his caw down. And from now on he knew that this would be the whole focus of his being.

*

He was supported between Totsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna. His legs seemed to be executing a movement that approximated walking, though it could just as easily have been dancing. But it did not seem that they had anything to do with the forward motion of his body. He wanted to make a joke about it but could not quite think of the right words, so simply giggled to himself.

‘That will do,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna sternly.

What he had wanted to say came to him: ‘Is this the way the new people walk?’ But he no longer thought of it as a joke.

Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky ignored Virginsky’s question. They began to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.

‘He inhaled too much ether,’ said Totsky.

‘At least we can move him,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘Like this, he’s dangerous. He will attract attention.’

‘He looks like a drunk. A common enough sight in Russia.’

‘If we weren’t holding him up he would fall over. Which would be fatal.’

‘The ether will wear off,’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

‘Then we will have the opposite problem,’ warned Totsky.

‘May I remind you this whole adventure was your idea, Totsky.’

‘And still it may succeed,’ said Totsky, after a momentary pause. ‘Provided we exercise due caution at all times.’

Tatyana Ruslanovna began to laugh. Virginsky felt the shards of her laughter spike his soul, a thousand exquisite impalements. ‘I wonder, what is the correct amount of caution due when one is escorting a human bomb to an atrocity?’ she asked.

‘It is all very well for you to laugh,’ said Totsky. He looked at Tatyana Ruslanovna as if he had paid for her laughter with his blood. ‘You know that I am doing this for you.’

‘Then you are a fool. That is the worst conceivable reason to go to your death. For a woman such as me.’

‘No. Not for a woman such as you. For you.’

‘You should be doing it for the cause. For the people.’

‘Fine words. They mean nothing to me. I do this only to earn your admiration. I know I cannot hope for your love.’

It seemed to Virginsky that Totsky was speaking on his behalf, saying to Tatyana Ruslanovna precisely the words he wished to say, but was unable to.

‘What does it matter whether I admire you or not?’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.

And Virginsky felt every bit as devastated as Totsky must have, as if her stinging words had been directed at him.

He began to feel as though he was trapped in an ambulatory prison. He could not say with any certainty how long he had been confined between his captors, but there were moments when it was hard for him to remember a time before this forced march, and impossible to imagine it coming to an end. He had entered eternity and it was exhausting.

Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky handled him with a combination of extreme solicitude and utter disregard. The slightest trip on his part provoked the most anxious ministrations, and a tightening of their fingers around his upper arm. And yet they steadfastly refused to address any remarks to him directly.

‘What am I wearing?’ he ventured to ask at one point. But they would not answer his question. ‘I can feel something around my torso, like a corset. Why have you put a corset on me?’

They took him along the back streets, cutting through a network of connected courtyards, the secret spaces at the hollow heart of vast buildings, the chain that linked a hidden city. His progress through this private, inner St Petersburg corresponded to his return to a functioning consciousness. The streets began to appear more familiar to him, at the same time as the nausea lifted and he felt his feet connect more solidly with the ground. He felt the strain on his arms where Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky were holding him, as the anaesthetic effect of the ether wore off. There was a return, too, of his imaginative capacity to put himself in the place of others: he wondered at the tense ache they must have been experiencing in their locked hands. His sympathy for his tormentors at that moment struck him as absurdly inappropriate, and he was all at once overwhelmed by self-disgust. But the implications of his predicament were too much for him to take in. If anything, his headache increased in intensity.

‘What did you mean by that remark? When you said something about escorting a human bomb? How can I be a human bomb? Is it something to do with the corset?’

‘Silence! Remember the baby. Do as you are told or the baby will die,’ ordered Tatyana Ruslanovna.

He felt a soft explosion of emotion in his chest. It was not anger; it was the most tender, affectionate pity. It seemed he had become severed from himself. This fate, this inescapable death, was both his and not his. The part of him that would not suffer it, that would survive it, was able to look with pity — and, yes, love — on the part that would be inevitably destroyed. This was the soul’s pity for the body, he realised. Of course, such a realisation went against the whole tenor of his professed convictions, which until this moment had been unshakeably materialistic. He had not until now believed in the soul, or, rather, he had not known that he had. He did not feel confused by this, or angry. He felt no resentment for the years that had been taken from him. He felt at peace, elated almost.