Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

They did not speak until they reached the neat little garden in the lee of the boiler house wall and could see before them the lighted windows of what was once Department 10.

Anna waited at the door of the second hut while he visited the porter’s room and ordered the old man on to the ward. It was oppressively stuffy inside, the stove too large for such a small space, sparsely furnished and lit by a single smoky lamp. The porter had left his supper of bread and pickled herring on the table. Anna took off her coat and scarf and he could see she had made an effort with her appearance. Her dark brown hair was neatly arranged in a plaited crown in the traditional Ukrainian way and she was even wearing a little make-up. Dragging a chair from the table, she placed it facing him with her back turned to the window. They sat in awkward silence for a few seconds.

At last Anna said, ‘Well, how are you?’

‘As you see.’ His hands swept down his body. ‘But I’m careful not to present your comrades with another opportunity to finish me off.’

She stared at him solemnly, her eyes large in the dim light, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. ‘I knew nothing. I wasn’t in the city.’

‘Oh?’

‘You know that’s true,’ she said, leaning forward earnestly.

He said nothing, but gave her a sceptical look. He wanted her to feel guilty. He wanted her to apologise. Nothing of it:

‘Stop it,’ she said crossly, and her eyes were blazing. ‘I would never have permitted it, and you know it.’

He could not stop himself from smiling because she was just as he remembered her, so quick to take offence, and like many who have difficulty with words, ready to attack at the first opportunity. ‘You keep bad company,’ he said.

She looked down at her hands. ‘Will you tell me what happened to you?’ she asked in a low voice.

He described the attempt on his life to her and the weeks he had spent recovering in hospital and at his uncle’s house. ‘And so I am above suspicion now — well, almost. I suppose I have your Mikhailov to thank for exonerating me in the eyes of the police.’

‘He is not “my Mikhailov”.’ She paused for a moment, her face working as she struggled to control some strong emotion: ‘He’s been arrested.’

‘Arrested?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sorry?’

‘Of course I am,’ she said indignantly. ‘He was a good comrade. It’s a terrible blow to the party.’

A caustic remark was on the tip of Hadfield’s tongue but he managed to keep it locked behind his teeth.

‘I must go,’ she said, rising abruptly from her chair. ‘Things are difficult. People are frightened. They’re executing Kviatkovsky and Presnyakov at the fortress tomorrow.’

Hadfield picked up her old brown woollen coat — it smelt of the kitchen, something a little sharp — and helped her into it.

‘I wanted to be sure you knew,’ she said, turning back to him. And she smiled at him at last, her full lower lip trembling a little. How could she smile at him like that after so many months?

‘Are we going to meet again?’ he asked.

She gave him another, a broader smile. ‘Of course.’

He bent to kiss her, but she held a finger to his lips: ‘Not here against the window. I’ll send word.’

They stepped into the corridor to find the porter waiting at the door, resentful he had been put out of his room at supper time. Hadfield reached into his pocket for a rouble. ‘The lady’s honour, you understand.’

He nodded and pinched it from his hand ungraciously.

At the hospital entrance, Hadfield summoned a droshky from the rank and helped her up the step. ‘Where are you going?’

She leant forward to speak to the driver, huge in his padded blue coat and furs: ‘How much to the Anichkov Bridge?’

‘The usual,’ he growled. ‘From here — 20 kopeks.’

‘Ten.’

She turned to reach out her hand to Hadfield’s face and then the cab was gone.

Even before it turned out of sight, Hadfield had summoned another. He did not stop to think what purpose it would serve until he was rumbling along the Slonovaya Street, drops of rain driving into his face, but he knew he could not bear to let her out of his sight so soon. He was too late. There was no sign of her on the Anichkov. She had probably changed cabs as a precaution. He paid his driver and walked across the bridge with half a mind to treat himself to a supper at the Europe Hotel. It was raining quite hard now, pattering on to the felt of his top hat, and he quickened his pace, crossing Nevsky at the Ekaterininsky Garden.

Stopping before a brightly lit restaurant, he lifted his coat collar and was rearranging his scarf when he saw the reflection of a familiar face in the window. The man was striding along the wet pavement towards him, and although Hadfield could not remember his name he knew he recognised him — and that he had seen him in Anna’s company. A big fellow, in his late twenties, with a full brown beard and dressed as a worker in a short coat and peaked factory cap. Hadfield looked away, shifting his position a little so he could follow the man’s retreating back. The name sprang to his mind the moment he turned left into the Malaya Sadovaya and disappeared from view. Zhelyabov. Was it a coincidence or was he meeting Anna? Intrigued, Hadfield walked back to the corner, then on into the lane, but Zhelyabov had vanished. The legs of a drunk were protruding from a doorway close by and he could see a couple of bedraggled prostitutes sheltering beneath a carriage arch, but the rain and chill had driven everyone else from the pavement. There were popular taverns on both sides of the lane and he strolled to the bottom, peering through their lighted windows, searching for Zhelyabov among the flushed faces of civil servants and shopkeepers, peasants and prostitutes, but he was nowhere to be seen. Wet and cross with himself for chasing trouble aimlessly about the city, he gave up the idea of visiting the Europe and took a cab home.

The following day Anna sent a message to the hospital asking Hadfield to meet her in the usual place. He found his own way to the lane in Peski, nameless still, dark, rubbish-filled, the rickety wooden homes of the poor clinging to the stone buildings like fungus. The old Ukrainian woman greeted him with a deferential nod and a sly ‘you again’ smile. And she led him up the stairs to her corner — everything as he had remembered it to be. Anna did not want to talk but kissed him hungrily, pushing him away, drawing him back with her eyes closed, and they made love on the damp mattress and on the floor, her finger at his lips, always in control. And after, he held her, small in his arms, and whispered words of love in English that she did not understand but which made her smile. They did not speak of politics, the past or the future, grateful only for this moment. Then at eleven o’clock she told him she had to leave. He knew better than to ask why. They walked arm in arm through Peski to the cab rank in front of the Nikolaevsky Station. At Anna’s suggestion they shared a droshky, but only as far as the Ekaterininsky Garden. There she kissed him tenderly and promised there would be more time together, perhaps a weekend, at least a day. The driver whipped his horse on and, craning his neck over the folded canopy, Hadfield watched her cross Nevsky in the direction of the Malaya Sadovaya. He sat back in his seat. It was none of his business. Better not to know.

He did not hear from Anna for a few days. He spent his hours of leisure in the company of embassy folk, and there was a rowdy evening at an exotic club with some of the younger doctors at the hospital. His feelings seemed to oscillate alarmingly from quiet contentment to a state of jittery excitement that he characterised to himself as a type of neurosis. What if something happened to her? What if she changed her mind about him again? What if… ? At one of these fevered times, he found himself drawn to the place he had seen her last: the Malaya Sadovaya. It was a late morning in the middle of November and the first heavy snow of winter was falling on the city. Wrapped warmly in his coat, his scarf pulled over his face, he took a cab to the end of Nevsky and walked the rest of the way. The taverns on the Malaya Sadovaya were doing good trade even at that hour, its shops with their fine meats and wines and cheeses drawing servants from the best households and even gentlemen of quality. He took a table in a hostelry with a view of the lane and ordered bread and a glass of glühwein, which he sipped without pleasure for half an hour, watching the passers-by with no real expectation of seeing her.