David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Sofya, still holding Irina’s hand said, ‘Irisha, this is my cousin, Pavel Sergeyevich. Pavel… Irina Antonovna Kuzmina.’

‘Your cousin?’ Irina said playfully, looking from Paul back at Sofya. A smile teased the corners of her mouth. ‘You have never mentioned a cousin named Pavel, Sofya.’

‘ No , Irina,’ said Sofya emphatically, ‘it’s not what you think. He is the son of my late uncle Sergei.’

‘Oh,’ said Irina, blushing. ‘Forgive me.’

‘He has come from England,’ Sofya explained.

‘From England ?’

Paul nudged Sofya with his elbow. She glared at him.

‘I have no secrets from Irina,’ she told him. Then to her friend, ‘We are leaving Petersburg to find my brother.’

‘But you can’t travel now!’ Irina said. ‘It is not safe. Haven’t you heard? Uritsky was murdered yesterday.’

‘That’s nothing to do with us,’ Paul said.

‘Yuri Alekseev told me I should stay indoors. He said there might be trouble on the streets.’

‘We will be careful,’ Sofya assured her.

‘Who is Yuri Alekseev?’ Paul asked.

‘Y.A.Shevchenko,’ Irina said. ‘He is a member of the Constituent Assembly,’ adding, ‘and a… friend.’

‘A Menshevik,’ Sofya explained without enthusiasm.

‘He is a good man,’ Irina insisted.

Paul laughed. ‘I’m not surprised Mikhail doesn’t—’

‘Enough, Pavel,’ Sofya said sternly.

The woman’s chin began to wobble and tears had formed in her eyes. One rolled down Irina Kuzmina’s chubby cheek.

‘Don’t take it so personally, Irina,’ Sofya said crossly. ‘We do what we have to do. No one blames you.’

‘Of course you do!’ Irina said. ‘It was all right for you, you had your brother. My Sasha was killed!.’

‘Mikhail’s not here,’ Sofya reminded her.

‘Even more reason,’ Irina persisted. ‘And you have had your chances. There were men who would have been pleased to protect you. It was that brother of yours! Even though he is not here—’

‘No more! Irina, please,’ Sofya said firmly. ‘That is history. Things are different. No one blames you.’

‘Your brother does.’ She was crying now, the tears smearing what was left of her make-up.

‘Stop it, Irisha,’ Sofya said with more tenderness. She put her arms around Irina and gave her a hug. ‘We have to go now.’

Irina clung to her, snuffling back her tears. ‘Where will you go?’

‘South,’ said Paul, before Sofya could say anything else.

‘You will write to me,’ Irina insisted. ‘Let me know where you are. Things will improve. I know they will. They say there is fighting in the east. An army is coming to put things right.’

‘Of course they will come,’ Sofya assured her, ‘but we have to go now.’ She kissed Irina again and disentangled herself from the woman’s grip.

Paul wouldn’t have minded staying a little longer, to see what Irina knew about Uritsky being shot, and what her friend, Shevchenko, knew of the present political situation. As a Constituent Assembly member — even though it had been dismissed — Shevchenko presumably had his finger on the pulse. When it wasn’t on the plump Irina. But Sofya was pulling him towards the door. He said goodbye to Irina. Sofya was halfway down the stairs.

‘You seem very keen to leave all of a sudden,’ he said when he caught up with her.

Sofya walked to the end of the alley. She peered into the street.

‘If that fool Shevchenko has told Irina not to go out things must be dangerous.’

‘It might have been useful,’ Paul said, ‘to find out if Irina knows what’s going on. If Shevchenko is a member of the Constituent Assembly he must have an idea.’

‘Shevchenko knows nothings,’ Sofya said dismissively. ‘He is an idiot. Comrade Lenin abolished the Constituent Assembly as soon as he thought he could get away with it. Any of the members who had any sense got out of Petersburg. Shevchenko, needless to say, stayed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t in the Petropavlovka by now. He’s like all those other fools who expected the Constituent Assembly to solve everything! They probably still believe in miracles, too. Perhaps now they know better. Sometimes I think Lenin is the only man with a political brain left in Russia. It’s a pity he wasn’t a monarchist.’

Paul stared at her in astonishment.

‘But you said the tsar was an idiot!’

‘What would you call him given the mess he left us in?’

Paul felt bewildered. It should have come as no surprise that Sofya, having been brought up in a political household, had a grasp of politics. It was just that she seemed to hold contradictory views, some of them even radical.

‘Where are we going then?’ she asked now her own business was concluded and abrogating any further responsibility for their direction. ‘You’re the one who insisted we leave my house.’

‘I have an address,’ he said.

‘An address, where?’

He fished the piece of paper Miss Henslowe had given him out of his pocket. She said he should only use it for a day or two. Given he wasn’t sure what he should do next, he needed time and somewhere to consider his options.

Sofya took the paper from him. The address, written in the Russian style and upside down to Paul’s English way of thinking, began with the city and worked down through the district to the street, and finally the house number.

There was no name.

‘It’s in the Peski district,’ Paul said, having checked the address on Berglund’s map. ‘Near the Alexander Nevski Monastery.’

‘How is it you know someone there?’ Sofya asked. ‘Can you trust them?’

‘I was given it in London. I don’t know who lives there.

‘How do you know it’s safe?’

‘I don’t, but if you think it’s dangerous it might be better if you go back to Irina’s. We can meet somewhere later.’

‘I can’t stay with Irina. Not with those men there all the time.’

‘Friends, then.’

‘I don’t have any friends,’ she said sullenly. ‘They have all left Petersburg.’

Suddenly frustrated by her, he shut his eyes. She was as bad as she had been as a child, stubbornly maintaining one thing and then doing another; never doing what she should.

‘Here,’ he said on impulse, digging into his pocket. He pulled out a fistful of roubles and pushed them into her hand. ‘Perhaps you’ll be better off with Feldmann.’

‘You’d leave me with Feldmann?’

‘If you don’t want to come with me,’ he said.

‘Fool! How long do you think you’d last without me?’ She pushed the money back at him. ‘Even your Russian gives you away. They’ll know you’re a spy as soon as you open your mouth.’

‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake!’ Paul warned. ‘Are you doing it on purpose?’

But he took the money back. He was confident that he could find the address without her — he had found the Rostov palace, after all. And he didn’t see that his Russian was so bad that it would immediately give him away. It had been good enough to fool Fedorova. She had swallowed his story about being a teacher. At least, she acted as if she had.

Nevertheless he was relieved that Sofya was staying with him. He didn’t care for the thought of losing her. The idea of her being swallowed up in the crowds like those he had seen swarming into Petersburg at the Finland Station was oddly disturbing.

‘Here,’ she said, pulling him around another corner. ‘This way. We’ll go to the Obvodni Canal. The streets are too quiet. If we can find a boatman it’ll be the safest way to travel. The Alexander Nevski Monastery is next to the Cathedral of the Trinity. The address is probably on the other side of the railway line.’