J.M. Coetzee - The Master of Petersburg

Then she is before him, inspecting him curiously -not Matryona but the Finn. 'Are you unwell, Fyodor Mikhailovich?'

Embarrassed, he shakes his head.

'Then come,' she says.

She conducts him, as he feared she would, westward along the canal toward Stolyarny Quay and the old shot tower. Raising her voice above the wind, she chatters amicably. 'You know, Fyodor Mikhailovich,' she says, 'you did yourself no credit by talking about the people in the way you did this afternoon. We were disappointed in you – you, with your background. After all, you did go to Siberia for your beliefs. We respect you for that. Even Pavel Alexandrovich respected you. You shouldn't be relapsing now.'

'Even Pavel?'

'Yes, even Pavel. You suffered in your generation, and now Pavel has sacrificed himself too. You have every right to hold your head up with pride.'

She seems quite able to chatter while keeping up a rapid trot. As for him, he has a pain in his side and is breathing hard. 'Slower,' he pants.

'And you?' he says at last. 'What of you?'

'What of me?'

'What of you? Will you be able to hold your head up in the future?'

Under a crazily swinging lamp she stops. Light and shadow play across her face. He was quite wrong to dismiss her as a child playing with disguises. Despite her shapeless form, he recognizes now a cool, womanly quality.

'I don't expect to be here long, Fyodor Mikhailovich,' she says. 'Nor does Sergei Gennadevich. Nor do the rest of us. What happened to Pavel can happen to any of us at any time. So don't make jokes. If you make jokes about us, remember you are joking about Pavel too.'

For the second time this day he has an urge to hit her. And it is clear that she senses his anger: in fact, she pokes out her chin as if daring him to strike. Why is he so irascible? What is coming over him? Is he turning into one of those old men with no control over their temper? Or is it worse than that: now that his succession is extinct, has he become not only old but a ghost, an angry, abandoned spirit?

The tower on Stolyarny Quay has stood since Petersburg was built, but has long been disused. Though there is a painted sign warning off trespassers, it has become a resort for the more daring boys of the neighbourhood, who, via a spiral of iron hoops set in the wall, climb up to the furnace-chamber a hundred feet above ground level, and even higher, to the top of the brick chimney.

The great nail-studded doors are bolted and locked, but the small back door has long ago been kicked in by vandals. In the shadow of this doorway a man is waiting for them. He murmurs a greeting to the Finn; she follows him in.

Inside, the air smells of ordure and mouldering masonry. From the dark comes a soft stream of obscenities. The man strikes a match and lights a lamp. Almost under their feet are three people huddled together in a bed of sacking. He looks away.

The man with the lamp is Nechaev, wearing a grenadier officer's long black cloak. His face is unnaturally pale. Has he forgotten to wash off the powder?

'Heights make me dizzy, so I'll wait down here,' says the Finn. 'He will show you the place.'

A spiral staircase winds up the inner wall of the tower. Holding the lamp on high, Nechaev begins to climb. In the enclosed space their footsteps clatter loudly.

'They took your stepson up this way,' says Nechaev. 'They probably got him drunk beforehand, to make their task easier.'

Pavel. Here.

Up and up they go. The well of the tower beneath them is swallowed in darkness. He counts backwards to the day of Pavel's death, reaches twenty, loses track, starts again, loses track again. Can it be that so many days ago Pavel climbed these very stairs? Why is it that he cannot count them? The steps, the days – they have something to do with each other. Each step another day subtracted from Pavel's sum. A counting up and a counting down proceeding at the same time – is that what is confusing him?

They reach the head of the stairs and emerge on to a broad steel deck. His guide swings the lantern around. 'This way,' he says. He glimpses rusty machinery.

They emerge high above the quay, on a platform on the outside of the tower bounded by a waist-high railing. To one side a pulley mechanism and chain-hoist are set into the wall.

At once the wind begins to tug at them. He takes off his hat and grips the railing, trying not to look down. A metaphor, he tells himself, that is all it is – another word for a lapse of consciousness, a not-being-here, an absence. Nothing new. The epileptic knows it all: the approach to the edge, the glance downward, the lurch of the soul, the thinking that thinks itself crazily over and over like a bell pealing in the head: Time shall have an end, there shall be no death.

He grips the rail tighter, shakes his head to chase away the dizziness. Metaphors – what nonsense! There is death, only death. Death is a metaphor for nothing. Death is death. I should never have agreed to come. Now for the rest of my life I will have this before my eyes like ghost-vision: the roofs of St Petersburg glinting in the rain, the row of tiny lamps along the quayside.

Through clenched teeth he repeats the words to himself: I should not have come. But the nots are beginning to collapse, just as happened with Ivanov. I should not he here therefore I should be here. I will see nothing else therefore I will see all. What sickness is this, what sickness of reasoning?

His guide has left the lantern inside. He is intensely aware of the youthful body beside his, no doubt strong with a wiry, untiring kind of strength. At any moment he could grasp him about the waist and tip him over the edge into the void. But who is he on this platform, who is him?

Slowly he turns to face the younger man. 'If it is indeed the truth that Pavel was brought here to be killed,' he says, 'I will forgive you for bringing me. But if this is some monstrous trick, if it was you yourself who pushed him, I warn you, you will not be forgiven.'

They are not twelve inches apart. The moon is obscured, they are lashed by gusts of rain, yet he is convinced that Nechaev does not flinch from him. In all likelihood his opponent has already played the game through from beginning to end, in all its variations: nothing he can say will surprise him. Or else he is a devil who shrugs off curses like water.

Nechaev speaks. 'You should be ashamed to talk like that. Pavel Isaev was a comrade of ours. We were his family when he had no family. You went abroad and left him behind. You lost touch with him, you became a stranger to him. Now you appear from nowhere and make wild accusations against the only real kin he had in the world.' He draws the cloak tighter about his throat. 'Do you know what you remind me of? Of a distant relative turning up at the graveside with his carpet-bag, come out of nowhere to claim an inheritance from someone he has never laid eyes on. You are fourth cousin, fifth cousin to Pavel Alexandrovich, not father, not even stepfather.'

It is a painful blow. Roughly he tries to push past Nechaev, but his antagonist blocks the doorway. 'Don't shut your ears to what I am saying, Fyodor Mikhailovich!

You lost Isaev and we saved him. How can you believe we could have caused his death?'

'Swear it on your immortal soul!'

Even as he speaks, he hears the melodramatic ring to the words. In fact the whole scene – two men on a moonlit platform high above the streets struggling against the elements, shouting over the wind, denouncing each other – is false, melodramatic. But where are true words to be found, words to which Pavel will give his slow smile, nod his approval?

'I will not swear by what I do not believe in,' says Nechaev stiffly. 'But reason should persuade you I am telling the truth.'