Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

‘Stop!’ hissed Aleksei. There was an urgency to his voice that demanded instant compliance. Dmitry paused, the toe of his left boot barely kissing the ground where he had begun to lift it. He looked around him, turning only his head, expecting to see some snake sidling towards him through the dirt, if not worse. There was nothing.

Aleksei came up to him quickly and knelt down beside him, staring at the ground as though he were a doctor attending to a patient prostrate on a couch. Then his eyes scanned the surrounding area, glancing at trees, and often at the hut – at the landscape itself. He stood and walked a few paces back the way he had come, picking up a stick of wood from the ground before returning. He scanned his surroundings again, in the same way as before, and then began to draw markings in the soil. It was a very simple shape.

Four straight lines, forming a rectangle, slightly taller than the height of a man, and slightly wider than a man’s shoulders.

Aleksei stood and stared silently at his work for a few moments, then headed towards the hut, skirting around the rectangle rather than walking across it. Dmitry, still poised in his frozen stance, relaxed and let his foot return to the ground. Then he followed his father – followed his route exactly. He could easily guess what those lines in the earth represented.

‘It hasn’t changed,’ said Aleksei.

He stood in the doorway of the hut, his hand clutching the loop of rope that served as a door handle. His eyes scanned the walls and ceiling. He stepped inside, and Dmitry followed. The strangeness in his father’s mood that had gradually come upon him during the last few versts of their journey had not abated. There was a madness to him – to the look in his eyes – an almost deliberate madness that he had brought upon himself so that he might confront his fears; as if he had reasoned that only a madman would return here.

‘He’s not here yet,’ observed Dmitry.

‘Who?’ His father turned his head, bringing those crazed eyes on to Dmitry’s own.

‘Whoever wrote the message.’

‘Oh, Maks you mean? Maks is still here. He was there.’ Aleksei pointed to the centre of the room. ‘There was a chair.’ He walked in a small circle around the room, as if searching in its dark corners. ‘Can you see a chair?’ There was nothing. Dmitry did not comment on the obvious.

‘Then he was there,’ Aleksei continued, now pointing to a corner of the hut, across from the open doorway. ‘Of course, he didn’t need a chair then. He was dead. And now he’s-’ Aleksei stopped abruptly. His back was turned to Dmitry, and his body scarcely moved, even to breathe.

‘And now he’s buried outside,’ said Dmitry.

Aleksei turned and nodded. His eyes were no longer insane, but frightened, like a child’s.

‘We marked it with a cross,’ he said, ‘but that’s gone – just like the chair.’

‘We’ll make another one,’ said Dmitry.

Aleksei walked over and placed his hand on the side of his son’s face. ‘You’re a good lad, Mitka,’ he said. Dmitry could feel his father’s thumb and two fingers stroking his hair, and felt the stubs of the two others against his cheek. He could not remember a time before Aleksei had lost them. He must have been about three, perhaps older. There had been an occasion around that time when his mother had been distraught, and he associated that with her hearing the news, but that was the rationalization of an adult. He remembered – it could not have been very much later – being surprised that other boys’ fathers had five fingers on their left hand, and remembered Aleksei trying to explain it to him. He remembered Aleksei allowing him to touch the gnarled stubs. It had fascinated him. His father had said that it didn’t hurt at all, but as he grew older, Dmitry began to wonder if that was not just one of the things fathers say. No man wants to let his son know that he can cause him pain.

The contact lasted only a moment, and then Aleksei walked away.

‘We’ve got plenty of time before whoever it is is due here,’ said Dmitry. He instantly regretted the implication – that the making of a new monument for Maks’ grave would be simply a way to pass the time. But before he could make amends, his father spoke.

‘I don’t think he’s coming.’

Dmitry turned. The room had darkened slightly, and Dmitry now saw that it was because his father had closed the door. Aleksei was looking at the wall revealed behind it, and Dmitry followed his gaze.

9 – 8 – 13 – M – Π

Dmitry stared at the message. As far as he could tell, it was in the same hand as the one daubed on the walls of their home in Petersburg. This, however, was much smaller, intended simply to inform, not to impress. Again, the same red pastel had been used.

‘That’s the same place Maks put his message,’ said Aleksei.

‘The eighth of September, one o’clock in the afternoon,’ said Dmitry. Aleksei nodded. ‘But that’s before he even wrote the message at home.’

‘That’s why I don’t think he’s coming,’ explained Aleksei. ‘He put the message here first, then gave us the second message so that we’d come here. Not to meet him, but to see this.’

‘But what’s the point of that? Just to tell us he was here? It’s like something some schoolkid scratches in the bark of a tree.’ Dmitry thought for just a fraction of a second; when he spoke again, his voice had an air of hushed realization. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t just to tell us he was here, but to tell us he wasn’t alone. That’s not just signed “M”, but “M” and “Π”. So the question is, who was, who is, “Π”?’

‘He was alone,’ said Aleksei, walking away from the door back towards the centre of the hut. He was completely himself again now, a puzzle of the present having dismissed the ghosts of the past. ‘Π is not a person; “Π” is for “peesmo”.’

‘A letter?’ said Dmitry.

‘Precisely. Give me a leg-up.’

Dmitry did not follow exactly what was meant, but his father mimed the action, and Dmitry copied, bracing the fingers of his two hands together to form a stirrup. Aleksei stepped into it, his head now almost touching the low wooden ceiling. Dmitry was quite able to take the weight, but resented his father nonetheless, not for this, but for his arrogant dismissal of Dmitry’s line of reasoning moments before. He was not to know that Π meant ‘peesmo’, but his father was happier to show himself as right rather than complimenting Dmitry on having a good idea. It had always been so.

‘Here we are,’ said Aleksei, jumping to the ground and clutching a small envelope he had plucked from between one of the rafters and the sloping planks of the roof.

‘How did you know it would be just there?’

‘Because that is where Maks placed his letter. So the more important question is…’

‘Is, how did whoever it is know where Maks put it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Aleksei. ‘Only Maks and I knew that.’

‘And Uncle Dmitry.’

‘True. But he’s dead too. So, logically, only I could have placed this envelope there.’ He grinned, and tore open the thin paper. Inside was a single stiff piece of card. Dmitry could not see what was written on it, but it took his father only moments to read. His eyes flicked up and met Dmitry’s.

‘Another appointment,’ he said.

‘The same code as before?’

‘No, somewhat different. Hardly a code at all.’ He handed the slip of card over for Dmitry to read.

The Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow

presents

Cendrillon

by

Fernando Sor

26 September 1825. Row 5. Seat 15.

‘You said you wanted to go,’ observed Dmitry.

‘I don’t think I’ll have my full attention on the ballet.’