Authors: Jasper Kent
‘It’s hell out there,’ said Tyeplov, coming back in. Dmitry did not look up. ‘There’s dozens dead and the whole side of the earth-work has slid into the trench. We’re virtually buried. It’ll be hours before they can get to us.’
Through the on-going barrage of gunfire, Dmitry heard footsteps walking across the floor and sensed Tyeplov sitting down beside him. His very presence was calming. Dmitry felt an arm around his shoulders and he yielded to its pull, lying with his head on Tyeplov’s chest and able to feel his heartbeat. Still the music would not play inside his head, but as Tyeplov’s arms held him tightly, he knew that he could do without it.
It was approaching midnight when Tamara returned to Degtyarny Lane. Vadim was too young to stay up into the small hours, and her parents were too old. They had chatted for quite a while after dinner, but when Valentin had dozed off she had decided it was time to leave. She had lit a cigarette as soon as the front door closed behind her, and now she was on her second.
She had not raised the subject of her parentage with them, and doubted she ever would again. As Yelena had suggested, if they hadn’t told her anything by now, then it was unlikely that they would in future. Even so, Tamara would have liked to simply talk about it. Aside from work, it had for the last few months been her main preoccupation. She had spent many hours in the archive, once Gribov had allowed her access to it, but to little avail. There had been letters and documents relating to Volkonsky, and even written by him, but they told her no more than she already knew. But she had not got far yet. She had begun with the stratum of papers that roughly corresponded to 1820, the year before her birth, and had so far reached only the autumn of 1825. Volkonsky had not even begun his payments then. She would continue looking.
She approached the door and threw her cigarette into the gutter before raising her hand to knock. It was still business hours and Saturday evening was always popular, so the place would be awake. Since Irina’s murder, they had all become a little more cautious. They’d even acquired a man, Isaak, to stand at the door – Yudin had found him somewhere. She didn’t see how he would have prevented Irina’s death, but she supposed the sight of him might have scared her killer away before he even entered the building.
She heard a sound. Her hand froze, inches from the door. Footsteps approached her from behind, accompanied by hoarse, wheezing breath. She dropped her arm to her side, ready to reach down for the knife which, since Irina’s death, she had carried hidden in her boot. Before she could turn, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘I wouldn’t go in there, my love.’
Tamara slapped at the hand, knocking it away from her, and
turned
. It was an old woman; about the age of Tamara’s mother – her adoptive mother – though she wore it less well. Her hair was long and grey, tied in a ponytail, most of which was hidden under her coat. She was stooped and had to tilt her head upwards to look into Tamara’s face. There were more and more of these beggars on the streets now, as if they sensed Tsar Aleksandr had already lost some of the control his father had exercised.
‘Piss off!’ snapped Tamara.
The woman’s eyes looked up at her calmly. Tamara detected a slight wince in reaction to her words, but she must have been used to that, and far worse.
‘It’s not a place for you,’ said the woman. She lifted her hand and rested it on Tamara’s arm, but Tamara again knocked it away.
‘That’s for me to decide.’
‘What would your mother say, knowing you worked in a place like that?’
Tamara inhaled deeply through her nose and she felt tears rush to her eyes, though she denied them access. The question was not new to her. It was Larionov who had asked it first, during their third liaison – right in the middle of it, when she had believed that she could never feel more humiliated, and when he had known better. She’d avoided asking herself ever since. The very question gave the lie to everything she was doing. She was searching for her parents, but what would she do if she found them? They’d already had reason enough to give her up to the Lavrovs – what would they think of her now if they discovered what she did for a living? She could give excuses, but she had imagined her parents time and time again, and could guess their reactions; her father’s anger, her mother’s shame.
‘Go to hell!’ she spat, and turned back to the door.
It took her only an instant to regret it. It was not in her nature to be so unnecessarily rude. She looked over her shoulder, back towards the woman, who had not taken her eyes off Tamara. Her face was very still – knowing, like Yelena Vadimovna’s used to be when she had caught Tamara out in a lie.
‘She’s not the first to die, you know,’ the woman said.
Tamara turned slowly, still angry, but her curiosity now piqued. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The girl who was killed on Monday – it’s happened before.’
‘When?’
The woman nodded her head in the direction of the bench on the other side of the street. It seemed a natural enough place to sit and talk. They went over, Tamara walking slower than usual so that the woman’s aged steps could keep up with her.
‘When?’ repeated Tamara once they had sat down.
‘What’s your name?’ the woman countered.
Tamara pressed her lips together and tried to remain calm. The old thing probably just wanted conversation, or perhaps there would be an appeal for money at the end of it. But she just might have some information on Irina’s death. Tamara couldn’t ignore the chance. ‘Tamara Valentinovna Komarova,’ she said.
‘Tamara? It’ll be your name day soon.’
It was true enough – 1 May would be the feast of Saint Tamara, Georgia’s first queen. They’d celebrated it when she was young, but not to any great extent now. ‘It’s my birthday today,’ she volunteered, surprising herself with her desire to reveal the fact to a stranger.
The old woman paused, studying her before speaking. ‘You’d have been called George if you’d been a boy – after the saint.’
‘I suppose I would,’ she said. It had never occurred to Tamara to ask – not that there would be any point. How could Valentin and Yelena answer a question as to what her parents might or might not have done? Even to raise the issue would only cause another argument. She reverted to the topic at hand. ‘What do you know about the murder …?’ Her voice tailed off, unable to address the woman by name.
‘Natalia.’
‘Natalia.’
‘Natalia Borisovna Papanova,’ she clarified. ‘Lived in Moscow all my life. Are you married? Children?’
Tamara failed to hide her irritation at the question. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘The murder.’
Natalia continued to stare at her, her eyes scanning Tamara’s face as if looking to discover the secrets that Tamara would not reveal in answer to her questions. She quickly gave up. ‘I lived
here
all my life,’ she repeated. ‘And in all that time, that place’ – she pointed – ‘has been a bawdy house.’
‘And there’ve been other murders there?’
‘Just one. One here. One I know – knew.’ She gazed into the distance, towards Tverskaya Street, and perhaps into the past. ‘Margarita Kirillovna – that was her name.’ She craned her head up at one of the windows. ‘Had her throat cut; ripped out, they said.’
Images of Irina, reflected again and again in the mirrors, flashed into Tamara’s mind, and she felt the strange hope that Natalia had never had to witness such a thing. ‘It was the same on Monday,’ she whispered.
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘When was this?’ Tamara was surprised she had heard nothing of the first murder.
‘Just after the French left.’
‘What?’
‘We stayed right through the occupation, me and my dad. He was a cobbler – made shoes for the French, or for the Russians; whoever paid.’
‘Occupation?’ Tamara could guess what she meant, but the idea was absurd.
‘The French. Bonaparte.’
Tamara was on her feet. ‘You mean 1812? What the hell could that have to do with this?’
‘It’s the same. Just the same – then and now.’
Clearly the woman was mad – desperate to relive her past. Perhaps there had been a murder all those years ago – more than forty – perhaps not. It had nothing to do with Irina’s death.
‘You stupid old cow,’ she shouted, angrier with herself for having been taken in than with Natalia. ‘Who do you think cares about that?’
‘They’ll get you next,’ said Natalia. ‘Please, Toma, listen to me.’
It was obvious the woman was lonely, but Tamara had no time for her. She reached into her bag and pulled out a silver rouble. Handing it to Natalia, ‘I can’t talk to you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Take this.’
The old woman put out her hand and took the money, almost
as
if it were a reflex action rather than a matter of conscious thought. Tamara turned and went back to the house. She hammered on the door and Isaak’s flat, broad, impassive face peeked at her through the grille before allowing her in. Just as the door closed behind her, Tamara heard a single word shouted across the street.
‘Toma!’
She went to her office, but did not light a candle. She stood in the darkness beside the window, looking out at the bench. Natalia sat there in stillness, except for the movement of her head, which looked at each of the windows of the brothel in turn. After a few moments, a blue-uniformed gendarme ambled past. Despite Yudin’s prohibition on their investigating, they did at least send the occasional patrol to keep an eye on the area. He scarcely glanced at the old woman, but she noticed him. She stood and walked away as briskly as her aged legs could manage, throwing something into the gutter as she left the street – something that glinted silver in the lamplight.
Dmitry stared at the casemate ceiling, lit now only by the flickering pink light of the vigil lamp, which had, by the grace of the Virgin whose duty it was to illuminate, managed to remain upright despite the bombardment. Tyeplov was fast asleep, an arm draped over Dmitry’s stomach and the side of his face resting against Dmitry’s bare chest. Dmitry could feel Tyeplov’s dry lips lightly touching his skin. The guns outside were quiet now, and the music had returned, a strange music that Dmitry had never heard before, not inside his head. Joyful – that was the word for it.
He looked down, but the position in which they were lying meant that he couldn’t see much of the other man. He dared not move, for fear of waking him. Dmitry’s hand rested on the outside of Tyeplov’s thigh, which in turn was stretched across Dmitry’s midriff, his lower leg curling back underneath Dmitry’s bottom. His body was as chiselled as Dmitry had imagined. Even as he slept, the tension in the muscle of his thigh could be felt through his skin. And yet with Dmitry he had been very gentle, coaxing and cajoling him and rarely taking his eyes from Dmitry’s. This
was
clearly something he had done before – and understood well. It was an agreeable reversal of roles. In their discussion on music, Dmitry had had the pleasure of introducing Tyeplov to experiences with which he himself was long familiar, and to enjoy them anew for experiencing another’s initiation. Now, Dmitry hoped, Tyeplov took the same pleasure in helping Dmitry to enjoy sensations which for him were entirely familiar.
Dmitry smiled to himself at the comparison – music and sex. For most people, the latter was easily understood, and it would be music that needed explanation and analogy. Dmitry understood sex well enough too, or thought he had, and by now had become bored with it, until today when it had been, it seemed, reinvented. He remembered the first occasion: 16 December 1825 – two days after his father had been arrested and Yudin had gone missing, believed drowned; two days after Dmitry himself had fled across the frozen river and gone into hiding for fear of meeting the same fate as one or the other of them. It had been in Petersburg, with a whore in a brothel overlooking the Kriukov Canal. She had been expensive, but at that time Dmitry had had little hope for the future – little need to save his pennies. He expected arrest at any moment and even if he remained free, he felt that the shame of what he’d allowed to happen, of what he had run away from, made his life valueless. But she had been worth the money. It had been the first and the best. The irony was that it had given Dmitry a touchstone against which all other encounters could be compared, against which all had come up wanting – until now.
The only other occasion that had come close had been the first time he had slept with his wife, Svetlana. It had been only two weeks before their marriage, but for both of them the illicit nature of it – even if illicit by only fourteen days – had been an added thrill. Then he had been the tutor, she a virgin, she who had been eager to learn everything, anything. She had been like Tyeplov discovering Chopin, like Dmitry just minutes before. But as their marriage had gone on, sex had become increasingly mundane, increasingly, for both of them, a matter merely of satisfaction. As for other men, Tyeplov was not the first fellow officer towards whom Dmitry had felt some degree of attraction, but he had never felt compelled to act upon it, or thought of it as something that
required
action. Even today, it was Tyeplov who had acted, not Dmitry.
The sound of creaking hinges cut through the silence. Dmitry had never moved so fast in his life. He was out of the bed and across the other side of the casemate before the door even opened. He had no idea how long he and Tyeplov had been together, but was surprised it was long enough for anyone to have dug their way through the collapsed trench. Dmitry couldn’t guess precisely the consequences if they were found together, but they wouldn’t be good. Even now, it wouldn’t help to stand there, casually leaning against the far wall trying to look innocuous with Tyeplov lying asleep in bed and their clothes strewn across the floor. But there was little he could do.