Authors: Leo Perutz
At last he found the right place. He was instructed to enter the name and personal particulars of the officer in question on a preprinted buff card. A surly-looking clerk tossed the completed card on to a plate overflowing with crusts of bread and cigarette ends and told Vit¬torin that he could either wait or come back in an hour's time. Then he turned on two old ladies who were scrubbing the floor.
"Get a move on!" he snapped. "Hurry it up - and stop jabbering in French all the time!"
An hour later the card was back in Vit¬torin's possession. There it was in black and white: Mikhail Mikhailovich Selyu-kov, formerly a staff captain in the Semyonov Regiment, resided on the third floor of No. 15, Tagansky Square. The accuracy of this information was attested by the registrar's signature and the imprint of a greasy thumb.
That night Vit¬torin spent two hours standing outside No. 15, Tagansky Square. The faint glow issuing from the third-floor windows suggested that Selyukov was still awake. With bloodshot eyes and murderous thoughts revolving in his brain, the enemy of mankind must be restlessly pacing his apartment, robbed of sleep by the dead. Or did he sense the danger that threatened him? No, Selyukov had no cause for concern, now that he had sided with the Revolution. "We have no finer associates than the officers of the old imperial army," a Bolshevik orator had recently told a rally in Arbat Square. "Last year they helped us to put down the Social Revolutionaries. After all, what have we deprived them of? Just their gold epaulettes, nothing more." No, Selyukov would no longer be wearing his gold epaulettes and Order of Vladimir. Instead, he would be bowling through the streets of Moscow in a car driven by a tipsy sailor, tossing his coat to a Red Army orderly, issuing orders, signing death warrants, herding defenceless bourgeois into camps, ordering careworn petitioners out of his office, sending drunken soldiers into villages to carry off the peasants' horses or womenfolk at gunpoint. Such was the Selyukov who now paced the third floor of No. 15, riding crop in hand.
Vit¬torin realized that it would be folly to barge in on Selyukov alone and unarmed, with no means of enforcing his will. If he did, his enemy would find it only too easy to humiliate him yet again.
Pashol?
No, not this time. He must adopt a different approach and lay his plans with care. He already had a scheme in mind, and he proceeded to put it into effect the very next morning.
He paid another visit to the labour exchange. There were vacancies for engineers, unskilled workers, persons who could read and write, and persons with special linguistic and commercial skills. Vit¬torin declined a post as accountant at a timber yard and requested a personal interview with the director of the labour exchange. Thereafter, armed with a recommendation from the latter, he betook himself to the metallurgical section of the Public Health Commissariat, which was looking for an "expert in West European languages".
The head of this section was a handsome old man -whose finely chiselled features and bohemian shock of hair suggested a cross between a scholar and an artist. He examined Vit¬torin's papers, found them in order, and engaged him in a conversation that ranged from food shortages in the Balkan States to Swedish pig-iron exports and, after touching on numerous other subjects, culminated in a discussion of Taine's ideas on the philosophy of history. He then expressed satisfaction that Vit¬torin was a German and, thus, not the kind of person to idle as soon as he secured a job. He knew the Germans, he added; he had spent three years working in the Hamburg docks.
Vit¬torin's task was to synopsize the financial sections of the leading English, American and German newspapers. He signed on at eight every morning and remained at his desk until late at night.
His work found favour. After a week he was given a bigger food ration, a certificate stating that he was a government employee, a voucher for two shirts and sundry other garments, twelve hundred Soviet roubles in crumpled notes, and, since he had no legal abode, a permit entitling him to requisition a room in a bourgeois apartment.
That had been his objective all along, and that was why he had toiled at his desk until all hours, day after day. It was possible, nay, certain, that Selyukov enjoyed exemption from billeting orders, but no matter; Vit¬torin was uninterested in acquiring a room or "legal abode". The permit, that wondrous little piece of paper, would empower and authorize him to enter Selyukov's apartment. "Do my eyes deceive me, or is it you, Mikhail Mikhailovich? What a fortunate coincidence! We still have some unfinished business to discuss ..."
The hour had struck; his dream, his recurrent dream, was about to come true. Escorted by a brace of Red Guards with Mauser pistols in their holsters and hand-grenades in their belts, he set off for Selyukov's apartment.
He drew a deep breath as he stood outside the door on the third floor of No. 15 and saw Selyukov's name on the brass plate: "M. M. Selyukov" - Mikhail Mikhailovich. His heart was pounding. He didn't ring the bell yet, he took his time and waited for the turmoil in his chest to subside. Then he heard the strains of a violin! Who the devil could be playing a Bach gavotte in Selyukov's apartment? Stupidly, his heart continued to thump. It had all been so simple: an inquiry at the records office, No. 15, Tagansky Square, and now, three floors up, "M. M. Selyukov". So simple - almost too simple.
He rang the bell at last. Selyukov was beyond that door.
Selyukov beyond that door? All at once it struck Vit¬torin as strange and well nigh incredible that Selyukov should be inside. It had all been too easy. No last-minute snags or hitches. Up three flights of stairs and there it was, a door like any other. Was it really possible that his great moment should seem so mundane? There it was on the brass plate: "M. M. Selyukov". Selyukov, staff captain, Semyonov Regiment. There could only be one such, but still the violin played on.
Vit¬torin rang the bell once more - calmly and imperturbably this time. His hand had ceased to tremble.
And then, as the strains of the violin died away and shuffling footsteps approached, he knew, without being able to account for his absolute certainty, that the door wouldn't open on Selyukov after all.
The tall, gaunt man in the doorway looked somewhat ridiculous in his cherry-red dressing-gown and embroidered slippers. He started back in alarm when he made out the two uniformed figures on the gloomy landing. For a moment he stood there transfixed, but he regained his composure almost at once. He ran a hand over his sunken cheeks as if merely put out that visitors should have found him unshaven.
"Can I help you?" he said in a tone of polite inquiry.
"I've been instructed to requisition a room in your apartment," Vit¬torin told him, rather at a loss. "Here's my permit."
The man took the piece of paper and held it in his hand without even glancing at it. His haggard face broke into a courteous smile.
"You're welcome to a room here. Please come in."
"Your name is Selyukov?" Vit¬torin asked.
"Selyukov? Yes, that's right. Mikhail Mikhailovich Selyukov."
"How many bedrooms are there in this place?" one of the soldiers demanded sternly.
"Three. Two large and one small - it's more of a dressing-room, really."
"Do you do any kind of work that entitles you to an apartment with a dressing-room?" the soldier pursued.
"No, I don't work, I just live from hand to mouth," the man in the dressing-gown replied. After a pause he added, "There used to be three of us, but now I'm on my own."
The other soldier, who had been standing in silence at the head of the stairs, said abruptly, "Vanka, let's have that light." He took the torch from his companion and shone it on the face of the owner of the apartment. Then, with a hoarse, unpleasant laugh, he said, "My respects, Excellency."
The light went out.
"So it's you, Kolya," said the man in the cherry-red dressing-gown, his voice devoid of surprise or alarm. "Sober for once, I note. Well, you've certainly come to the right place this time."
"Your most humble and obedient servant, Excellency," the soldier said, still chuckling. "I recognized Your Excellency at once."
"You're a trifle late, Kolya," the man in the dressing-gown rejoined. "Natalya Alexeevna and little Lussya are beyond your reach, but I'm still here, so off you go at the double. They'll pay you in full for me, I'm sure - every last kopeck."
The soldier turned to Vit¬torin and clicked his heels.
"If your requirements in respect of a room have been met, comrade, we'll be going. Come on, Vanka. My respects, Excellency!"
"You just witnessed a bizarre reunion," the man in the dressing-gown told Vit¬torin when they were alone together. "Kolya used to be a manservant of mine, but I threw him out of the house for persistent pilfering. He doesn't remember me kindly, so he'll take his revenge. Well, let him. I'm not Selyu-kov, as you've gathered; I'm Baron Pistolkors, formerly a gentleman-in-waiting to the Tsar. The Bolsheviks have done me the honour of putting a price on my head - rightly so, since I was a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the Fatherland and caused them a certain amount of trouble.
You're a foreigner. Have you come to observe our revolution in progress - to find a Russian Danton or Robespierre? Believe me, our Dantons and Robespierres are an unedifying sight at close quarters. This apartment? I bought it from an officer in the Semyonov Regiment, together with his papers. That's right, his name was Selyukov. In Petersburg everyone knew me, but here I could hope to lose myself in the crowd, that's why I bought his papers. Natalya Alexeevna was still alive then."
His face became even greyer and more sunken. He stared silently into space for a moment.
"Diphtheria, so the doctors said," he went on, "and she took our little Lussya with her. Perhaps it was better that way - I'm a spiritual pauper compared to my wife. The real Selyukov? He's not in Moscow any longer - he left for the front with his regiment. On the other hand, perhaps he didn't. Who can tell where an apple rolls to these days?"
He asked Vit¬torin to be content with the smaller of the two bedrooms for a couple of days. After that he would have the whole apartment to himself.
"I'll be arrested," he said. "Kolya always was a rat. He'll go to the Cheka and denounce me, it's a foregone conclusion."
"You mean you're going to let them arrest you?" Vit¬torin protested. "Why give up without a struggle? You must leave at once, this minute - you can't stay here. Don't you have a friend who would put you up for the night? Tomorrow you can leave the city and go into hiding somewhere else."
The former courtier listened with polite attention. All that conveyed his low opinion of this advice was a dismissive little gesture.
"Thank you, friend," he said, "but why should I cling to my empty husk of a life? Ever since the morning when I laid little Lussya's body on a sledge - well, I've been a trifle lonely, a godforsaken burden to myself. Do you smoke? Here, please help yourself, they're old stock. I'll have one too, if you don't mind."
He lit a cigarette, then changed the subject.
The Revolution? He regarded it as a successful slave revolt, nothing more, and spoke with detestation of the Bolshevik leaders, whom he called "expropriators of human dignity". Lenin he loathed above all others. He went to the open window and pointed to the domes of the Kremlin, which were bathed in gold and purple by the setting sun.
"There sits Vladimir Ilyich, whetting his iron sickle," he said. "There used to be an old peasant prophecy: 'A priest and a gipsy will sit on the Tsar's golden throne.' Well, Vladimir Ilyich is no gipsy. He's more of a priest with no chasuble but plenty of incense. He has beguiled Russia with fine words and contaminated our young people with the poison of the age: 'Liberty, justice, the creative energy of the proletariat, the emergence of the anonymous masses from centuries of darkness into the sunlight of the new era . . .' What if it's all an idiotic lie - what then?"
The man whose fate had been sealed by Vit¬torin's great mission finished his cigarette in silence.
"Do you know the poems of Baratinsky?" he asked at length. "Yevgeny Baratinsky? You don't know his elegies?"
Proud city, erstwhile mistress of the world, pilgrims now pause with melancholy mien to marvel at the ruins of your splendour. Did victory's brave guardians forsake you? You linger, mute and silent, down the years, a sepulchre of nations long extinct.
"Baratinsky entitled that poem 'Rome', but today it should be renamed 'Petersburg'. I possess the original in his own handwriting."
Pistolkors opened a desk drawer and took out an ebony casket. It contained what he termed "flotsam of the centuries collected in the course of my travels - curios and treasures from every land and age". These he spread out on the desk with loving care. They were objects of disparate value: coloured copperplate engravings from England, Japanese woodcuts, Persian miniatures, a Durer print, a Rembrandt drawing, a self-portrait of E. T. A. Hoffmann dating from his time at Bamberg; two letters, one from Talleyrand to the King of Naples, the other from Balzac to a Polish noblewoman; two army orders from General Skobelev; a hotel bill from which it emerged that Stendhal had paid two thalers and eight silver groschen for a night's lodging, a cup of chocolate, and the ordering of a coach; a handwritten sheet of music from a youthful composition by Moussorgsky, no longer extant; and, finally, a hotch-potch of letters, petitions, diary sheets and verses by Russian poets, complete with a list of names.
When the owner of this miscellany noticed that Vit¬torin paid little heed to his remarks and kept trying to reopen the subject
of Selyukov, he replaced his "curios and treasures" in the casket
and the latter in the desk. Then he retired to his room.
Such was Vit¬torin's only conversation with Baron Pis-tolkors, a stubborn upholder of the
ancien regime
who had advised the Tsar - disastrously, as it turned out - to refuse the liberal members of the Duma an audience in January 1917 . . .
Pistolkors spent the ensuing days closeted in his room, playing the violin - Bach, for the most part, and the melancholy, impassioned melodies of the early Italians. Vit¬torin never again set eyes on him, perhaps because the baron regretted that lack of human companionship had prompted him to confide so fully in a stranger, or perhaps because he had no wish to disclose that the cherry-red dressing-gown was the only garment he possessed.