Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

And when the grounds of the Shurupinsky Palace were expropriated and became the Park of Culture and Rest it happened that, by some oversight or unresolved quirk of administrative demarcation, no provision whatsoever of any kind was made for the great house and its contents. No possessor or use for it was found. It was never emptied of its furnishings and equipment. Its library was never catalogued and relocated, its paintings never removed and rehung or stored away, and surprisingly little from the house was even stolen; at the time of the expropriation, and ever since, not only was there was no market for the cumbersome extravagances of the former aristocracy, they were dangerous to own, dangerous to be discovered with, and hideously inconvenient to export to the Archipelago, where buyers might still have been found though at a price that would scarcely have covered the illicit transportation cost. So the palace was simply abandoned, more or less in the condition the last prince left it, to moulder and slowly collapse.

Antoninu Florian had visited the Shurupinsky Palace once, before the expropriation, as a guest of the last prince. Prince Alexander Yurich Shurupin, landowner, moral philosopher, social reformer and author of prodigiously enormous, compendious, subtle novels, had shown Florian over the house and walked with him in the grounds, not in pride but in some bemusement and shame, because the Palace troubled him. An old man by then, his privilege troubled him. His own brilliant writings troubled him.

‘You have no idea how restful it is for me, talking to you, my friend,’ the Prince had said to Florian, striding along the avenue of yellow earth, hands in the pockets of his brown linen overalls, work boots flapping unlaced against his shins, beard and long grey hair flickering on the lilac-scented summer breeze. ‘It gives me a wonderful freedom to speak fully and truly, your not being tainted with humanness . In my experience, one can never talk to another human person with complete honesty, not really. It is impossible. Even the best of them, they take the truth so personally . But you, you have a fine intelligence but you stand completely apart. You are not engagé , you are not parti pris . You hear my words simply as words. My thoughts are simply thoughts, not the thoughts of wealth and fame and a name. Not the thoughts of one who could be of help to you, or could wound and insult you with a careless dismissive phrase that is intended to be of general application, not personal at all. You bring the disinterested clarity of perspective that comes from standing elsewhere. I value that, my friend. I value it tremendously.’

The last prince had died soon after Florian’s visit in obscure circumstances, but Florian, who had barely listened to Prince Shurupin’s words at all but paid close attention to the man, returned to the abandoned palace from time to time, to prowl its fading rooms and read in the library, until large parts of the roof had collapsed, the floors became unsafe and the stench of damp and mildew and fungal growth too depressing to bear. Even when he’d stopped going into the palace, he still made visits to the park. Too large by far for the two men employed by the city to maintain them, the greater part of the former gardens had reverted to thicketed, brambled wilderness, the marble temples and mythographical statuary imported from the Archipelago by the early princes soot-blackened and mossy green, submerged under a tide of thorn and glossy mounds of rhododendron. For Florian it was a cool, earthy, leafy, sap-rich, owl-hunted refuge from the city.

And he had come there now, in the dark and snow-muffled night, to nurse the gunshot wound in his belly.

Relieving himself of the discomfort of human clothes and human form, Florian nosed his way into the shelter of a stand of pine trees in the centre of the park and curled himself up on a patch of bare earth. The wound was a dull ache. It was almost healed, only a tender puckered crust remained, but the effort of driving the bullet out had cost him energy and he needed rest. He rasped at the place with his tongue until the last taste of dried blood had gone, then stretched out and closed his eyes.

The watchfulness of the world was all around him, the living awareness of earth and trees reaching out in all directions to the edge of streets and the river and beyond. The connective tissue of the park and the city was earth and water and air and roots, and Florian merged himself into the flow and tangle of it, surrendering, letting the constant work of holding together a pseudo-human consciousness relax and blur away. No words, no structured thoughts. No names for things. He was what he was, and only that. The hurt in the belly was not his hurt, it was simply hurt, a thing that was there, that existed, but without implication. No before-time and nothing to come: and without that, no fear.

Lom woke in the morning to find the curtain pulled back and the attic filled with brilliant early light. The sky in the window was a bright powdery eggshell blue. Maroussia was already gone. He got up and dressed. There was broken ice in the washbowl. He splashed his face and looked out of the window. Snow mounded the rooftops of the raion and filled the silent streets. Nothing moved but wisps of smoke from chimneys. The broken moons, faint and filmy, silver-blue against blue, rested at anchor, day-visible watermarks in the liquid paper sky.

Lom went out into the corridor and tried to retrace his steps back to Elena’s kitchen but found himself in parts of the house he hadn’t seen before. A wide staircase took him down to an entrance hall: red tiles and threadbare rugs, a stand for coats and hats, umbrellas and galoshes. Fishing rods. The scent of polish and leather. Morning sun streamed in through the coloured-glass skylight over the door, kindling dust motes and splashing faint lozenges of colour across the floor. He unbolted the door and opened it onto foot-thick snow. Crisp bitter air spilled inwards, caught at his nose and throat and made his breath steam. He stepped out into crisp blue illumination. Every colour was saturated. The snow glistened, translucent, refracting tiny diamond brilliances. He stomped his way round the side of the house, looking for the entrance they’d used last night. Nothing moved in the streets. The snow muffled all sound, except for the morning bells, the calling of the rooks and the rhythmic crunch of his own feet.

He made his way round to the gate into the garden and pushed it open. As he was passing the wide low loggia, a figure stepped out to confront him.

‘Yes? Who are you?’

It was a man of about sixty, leaning on a malacca cane. Wisps of un-combed grey hair, a heavily embroidered morning coat, gold-rimmed spectacles. An ugly intelligent face. He was standing on the step under the canopy. Worn, turned carpet slippers on his feet.

‘Sorry,’ said Lom. ‘I’m staying in the house. We’re with Elena Cornelius. I got myself lost. I was trying to find my way back to her apartment.’

‘Ah,’ said the man. He lit a black cigarette with a match. Wraiths of cheap rough tobacco smoke drifted in the cold air. ‘That’s it then. You are one of our guests in the attic. I fear it will have been cold for you up there among the rafters.’ He came down the step and held out his hand. ‘I am Sandu Evgenich ter-Orenbergh Shirin-Vilichov Palffy and this is my house. You are welcome. Of course.’

Lom took the offered hand.

‘Lom,’ he said. ‘Vissarion Yppolitovich Lom.’

Palffy made a slight, formal bow.

‘You were taking a walk in the snow before breakfast, perhaps?’ he said.

‘I guess,’ said Lom. ‘You don’t see snow much, where I come from. Just rain. Always rain.’