Midnight in St. Petersburg (22 page)

*   *   *

It was Sunday morning, and Yasha had made his own big plan for the day.

First he walked to the watchmaker's just down Moscow Prospekt, whose nephew had been supposed to deliver Kremer's forged travel papers more times in the last week than Yasha had fingers and toes for, but had failed to show up every time. He was all ready to be exasperated with the hunched-up old man, who in previous meetings had peered apologetically at him over his pince-nez, blinking like a tortoise, mumbling out excuses. He'd thought of quite a few frank things to say to him. But, to his astonishment, this time the man was scuttling across the floor almost before Yasha got to the door, and had pressed an envelope into his hand as if he wanted rid of this looming presence in his crowded workspace as much as he did of the compromising document.

In no time at all, Yasha was out on Moscow Prospekt with the envelope flapping in the wind, feeling almost cheated by his success. The contemptuous call-yourselves-activists-you-lot-couldn't-organize-your-way-out-of-a-paper-bag-
if-
you-had-a-map things he'd been going to say were still in his head, with no one to say them to.

Uncomfortably aware that even possessing this document was a crime, Yasha stuffed it inside his coat, down the torn lining. He didn't want to schlep it around for too long. But, having not really expected it today, Yasha hadn't planned to spend his day walking all the way to the poorhouse to deliver it to Kremer in person, either.

Kremer had taken up quite enough of his time already. Kremer could damn well wait.

Hunching his shoulders, Yasha set off towards the offices of the newspaper edited by a certain Yermansky. He'd had plenty of time to think in these past few days, and had gone round and round his painful thought like a dog trying to make a comfortable sleeping-place from a lumpy blanket. And, in the end, he'd managed it. He'd thought it all through. He loved old Kremer; the man had been like a father to him. But old Kremer had gone, and he was fed up to the back teeth with the rest of the brothers. Young Kremer was the biggest idiot of the lot. Some poor old bloke had died as a result of his exploding buckets, and now everyone was endangering themselves trying to get him out, and never so much as a sorry or a thank you; just me, me, me, when are you coming next? But then, Yasha had decided, they were all fools, the Bundists: not just because they were fighting a losing battle, but because they were so bad at fighting it. They were just playing at rebellion.

Yasha wasn't sure whether it was his parents leaving Russia that had opened his eyes, or Inna's instant dislike of young Kremer. All he knew was that, sometime in the early hours of one of those long nights this week, as he lay awake listening to Marcus snoring, he'd decided to leave Kremer and his friends in the Bund. Inna was right to say you should be fighting for the whole of the underclass, not just the Jews. It was only here in the city that he'd really understood how many people needed to be saved. The struggle was bigger than the Bund and so was he. He'd join the socialists instead.

Today was the day. It had to be now, because he wanted to have something to tell her, something as important as her music test today, so they could both be proud by tonight, and each have something to admire in the other. That was the thought keeping his jealousy at bay; keeping it from demeaning him.

He'd known for a long time how you joined at least one group of socialists. Old Kremer had told him. You just went to Yermansky, who'd be at his newspaper office, and you told him you were
one of us.
And Yermansky took you in hand, and showed you the rest.

*   *   *

Inna picked up her violin.

She could feel the social smile set on her face, the nervousness of it.

She could half see the two bearded heads together on the sofa: Leman's dark, with its handsome grey frosting; the other, thinner man's a sable grey under a glistening, freckled bald pate. They were facing towards her, but chatting quietly to each other. They had eaten dinner, and Horace had gone to help Madame Leman open some French champagne. Marcus was in the kitchen, grinding coffee beans. (Everyone was still pretending they always ate and drank like this. Everyone except the children, that was, who'd been sent to bed. ‘Delicious grapes, Mam,' Agrippina had giggled. ‘I like the Yeliseyevsky pineapples better, though, as a rule. Can't we have one of those tomorrow?')

How hot she was. How fast her heart was beating.

Yasha would be along any minute, surely. It was nearly eight already. She couldn't think why he hadn't got back in time for the meal. But she couldn't think about this now. He knew, surely he knew, for he'd been present at every single strategy discussion all week – and every breakfast, supper and tea break had been a strategy discussion – that now, this after-dinner moment, was the one that counted.

Very quietly, she started to tune up, playing a long A, twisting the sticky peg to change the pitch. Her bow arm was shaking, bouncing like a skimming pebble on water. She couldn't keep the bow lying flat on the string.

It wasn't as if Monsieur Auer was
expecting
a concert, she told herself. It wasn't as if it mattered, to him, one way or another. As far as he knew, this was just going to be a little after-dinner music. She could even pretend he wasn't there. She could play over here, and not look at them, and tell herself she was practising, as usual, alone in her room.

It wasn't even as if Monsieur Auer, or Monsieur Leman, or even Horace had taken much notice of her. They'd talked exclusively to each other all through dinner, swapping anecdotes about Conservatoire luminaries unfamiliar to Inna. There'd been a lot of talk, for instance, about the arrogance of a piano pupil who'd only scraped through the Conservatoire composition class, and, quite unabashed by failure, was still churning out new works with names like Sarcasms, works so scandalously chromatic and dissonant that the audience had actually walked out of one première, saying things like, ‘The cats on the roof make better music!' They all laughed at that.

For a moment, Inna let herself imagine what it would be like if Leopold Auer
were
to fix his solemn attention on her.

She lifted her bow arm a little higher, to play the D and A strings together. One step at a time … She made her arm heavy and slow. But the legato sound she expected didn't come, and her bow just skittered off the strings altogether.

They hadn't noticed. But they would if she started to play properly.

She looked around. No, no one was coming through the door. Any minute now, she'd have to begin. She tried to call the Prelude to mind, but she was too breathless to be able to remember it. She couldn't think of anything except the shallow, hurried air coming through her nostrils; the panicky sickness inside; how her muscles had turned to razorblades, and how her hands would not stop shaking.

*   *   *

Horace took both her hands in his.

He could barely see her face, bowed away from the lamp, with her long back drooping like a wilted flower. She'd retreated to the sofa at the back of the yellow room as soon as Leman had taken Auer out for an after-dinner smoke before her musical interlude. She'd been like this for, oh, maybe, fifteen minutes, though it felt an eternity. But she was letting him hold her hands.

‘It isn't important, the fear you're feeling,' he said gently. ‘However crippling it must seem now, it's temporary … it will pass.'

She turned her head. ‘Do you think so?' Her voice was hollow.

He squeezed her hands, which were still and dry and cool as paper, wanting to transmit some of the warmth he could feel in his own flesh.

Leman had noticed the colour Inna had gone straight away, and had taken Auer downstairs, chuckling in a fat after-dinner way, ‘Would you like to see where our real work happens?' and was showing him the workshop and loitering down there, or in the courtyard or the stairwell, with him, over a quiet cigar.

They might yet come back and find her, upstairs, playing merrily away as if nothing had happened. Auer might just hear her on the stairs – a nightingale in the attic – as he had, himself, a few weeks ago.

Horace flattened out her hands to trace the scar lines she'd marked across her own flesh. ‘Look,' he whispered. ‘What do those scars tell you? What future did you write in your hands?'

She was wearing an innocent, girlish scent: he could smell roses in it. He glanced across at her, hoping she was about to give some positive answer about how she'd chosen to be the kind of person who would seize this opportunity for salvation. But all he could see was the shadowy line of her profile. Eyes cast down, gazing soundlessly at his fingers stroking her palm. Motionless.

And then the door squeaked, and Inna's eyes turned towards it, and Horace could see how hopeful she suddenly looked.

Horace felt a flicker of irritation. The last thing he wanted now was for her head to be filling with thoughts of escape. He'd asked Madame Leman to leave them, because he thought, even now, that he could persuade her …

But it wasn't Madame Leman. It was the cousin, who hadn't been at dinner. Tall and slightly menacing, he advanced on them.

‘What's going on?' the cousin said. His dark eyes were flashing angrily. For an unpleasant moment, Horace thought he was going to make a scene about the way Inna's hands had been in his. But he wasn't touching Inna's hands any more: she'd leaped up as soon as the cousin's head had poked round the door and run straight towards him. When she got close enough, the cousin put his hands on her upper arms, as if to catch her and stop her disappearing out of the door altogether.

‘Yasha,' she was saying desperately. ‘You should have been back hours ago. Where have you been?' and then, ‘I can't do it. I can't.'

From where he was standing, Horace could no longer see Inna's face. But he could see the cousin nodding. After a bit of apologetic mumbling about ‘trying to find a man called Yermansky' and ‘I didn't mean to be late' and ‘I gave it up in the end, till later', he started to say things that were more to the point, like ‘stage fright, eh?' and ‘butterflies in the tummy?'; all quite lightly though, as if he didn't really understand that this was important, and her fear was nothing much out of the ordinary. Yasha had kept Inna's upper arms in that tight grip, an arm's length from himself. None of it seemed the right approach to Horace, yet, as he watched, it seemed as though the strength was flowing out of Yasha and into Inna, who stopped stammering and fell quiet. ‘Come on, now,' Yasha added, after another moment, taking no notice of Horace. Horace could see his face was lively and encouraging. ‘It's not so bad if you're not on your own, eh? Why don't I get my violin out too?'

Guessing that Inna was at least considering this thought – if for no other reason than because she'd stopped saying, ‘I can't, I can't,' and her back looked less rigid with terror – Horace felt a glimmer of hope.

‘What an excellent idea,' he said, addressing Yasha over the top of Inna's head with much more enthusiasm than he'd expected ever to feel for the young man. ‘Yes indeed. It would be very helpful if you would warm up together.'

Horace wasn't sure whether Yasha had even heard him, because he didn't take his eyes off Inna. But the young man nodded, at least, and then he moved his hands down from Inna's forearms, took her hands, and squeezed them quite hard. ‘Come on,' he said bracingly. ‘We can do this. Strauss.'

*   *   *

Yasha Kagan would never be a violinist, Horace thought, a few minutes later, but he was definitely having a good effect on Inna. They were playing a Strauss waltz together. Young Kagan had taken the lead part, which he was massacring cheerfully while capering about the big bright room, grinning at his shy fellow-player. Inna, meanwhile, was playing the simple ‘dee-dee' accompanying line. She was all fingers and thumbs, still: wild-eyed, biting her lip, looking pale. But she was calming down.

At the end of that first attempt, when they'd scraped right through the whole piece once, somehow, wrong notes, wildly missed slides, jumpy bows and all, Horace saw Inna grin, impishly, as, after young Kagan crashed disgracefully through the final chords, monstrously out of tune, she suddenly played a final, jokey, ‘dee-dee-DUM!'

Looking up at each other, both players burst out laughing.

‘Again!' Yasha cried, quickly, still smiling at her, but turning the manuscript over on the stand before she'd had time to think. ‘With you on top this time!'

Horace could only admire the boy's aplomb. Why, she'd lost her fear entirely, he thought, astounded at how little time it had taken to shake off that pinched, hunched look she'd had before. Now, as she picked up the top line of the waltz with all the panache he'd known her to be capable of, he saw that her lips were parting into the beginning of a smile, her cheeks were flushing pink with the exertion, and a bit of black hair had escaped her severe bun to twine along her long neck, over the high collar and crisp pin-tucks of Madame Leman's borrowed best blouse. She looked utterly beautiful again, Horace thought. She looked happy, too, he thought, a moment later. This second thought was strangely disconcerting. He watched more attentively. Her green eyes were dancing as they followed Yasha, who was still jumping around her like a court jester, making her laugh as he plonked out the rhythms of the accompaniment. Her long frame was half dancing too, swaying to the tune as she played, rotating on her toes to follow her partner's perambulations, lifting an eyebrow above her smile to indicate when she was about to playfully draw out a phrase for what would feel, to real dancers, an agonizing eternity longer than nature intended, then leaning forward to speed up again to the breathless drama of those last chords.

Well, of course they'd be like that, Horace told himself. They were two musicians, playing together, following each other's leads, a lifted eyebrow here, a lifted bow there. It was natural enough. But, however much he tried to explain it away, the fact remained: she was lost in Yasha's eyes, and he was lost in hers.