Part 2 (1/2)

4.

Winter slipped away in the night. The city woke to the jangle of cathedral bells that second Sunday in April to find the Neva flowing freely after months choked with ice. By midday its banks were lined with Petersburgers enjoying the suns.h.i.+ne and the spectacle of the governor's barge as it made its stately way upriver to the Winter Palace, a flotilla of smaller craft in its wake. In the splendour of the Great Antechamber, the tsar and court were waiting as the clergy prepared a little wooden chapel on the embankment for the traditional blessing of the river's slate-grey waters. There was still a carnival atmosphere three hours later as Frederick Hadfield's droshky began pus.h.i.+ng slowly through the crowd spilling on to the road before the Admiralty. Caught by the change in the weather, his driver was sweating profusely in a padded kaftan, exuding a vintage odour of stable s.h.i.+t, foul enough to offend even the horse. With relief they turned on to the Fontanka Embankment at last, and at the Chernyshev Bridge he jogged the smelly Ivan's elbow. The cab rattled to a halt, he paid then waited at the edge of the pavement as it pulled away.

The three- and four-storey mansions on either side of the Fontanka were not as imposing as those a little further up the river; many had been sold by the great families that once owned them and divided into apartments for army officers, lawyers, Cla.s.s 6 civil servants and below, and after years of neglect they were in desperate need of a coat of paint. Number 86 was on the opposite bank, a pink and white house in the Russian cla.s.sical style with an elegant blind colonnade of four pillars in the middle of its facade. Hadfield had found an excuse to saunter past earlier in the week to check the address, he told himself but once there, he had begun to make a mental note of the embankment, to search for men loitering in doorways or at windows, to scrutinise the faces of pa.s.sers-by. After only a short time he had given up, forced to acknowledge he had no idea what he was looking for and that an anxious imagination was capable of turning every builder and bargeman into a police informer.

Number 86 looked a brighter shade of pink in the suns.h.i.+ne but in all other respects quite as it had before. Did it matter? He was visiting it at the invitation of his friend Vera: a tight ball in the pit of his stomach told him it did matter. A scruffy dvornik was loafing at the door of a neighbouring mansion with his pipe in hand, but he eyed Hadfield with no more than mild curiosity. Beyond him four well-dressed children and their governess were throwing crusts to a flotilla of swans. A fine brougham with a coat of arms painted on its s.h.i.+ny blue door clattered past. It was Sunday quiet and Hadfield had the uncomfortable feeling that the only person behaving furtively was himself. He leaned forward to flick imaginary dust from his trousers, then, rising quickly, he walked across the road to the end of the bridge and between its great stone pavilions to the opposite bank.

After glancing up and down the street again, he stepped forward to the door of Number 86 and gave the bell a decisive tug. It was opened by a footman in a faded green velvet uniform, a gangly youth of no more than eighteen with a long pimply face. He ushered Hadfield inside at once. The entrance hall and the marble stairs that led from it were elegantly proportioned but shabby, the yellow and white painted walls stained with damp, the burgundy runner threadbare. With a graceless sweep of his hand, the footman indicated to Hadfield he should follow him to the first floor.

'Who lives in the house?'

The footman sneezed then wiped his nose on his sleeve. The iron filigree of the banister was thick with dust.

'My mistress, Yuliya Sergeyovna Volkonsky, Your Honour.'

An aristocratic name Hadfield remembered from his school books that a Volkonsky had commanded Russian forces at the battle of Austerlitz this member of the family must have fallen on hard times. A full-length portrait of a soldier in the white uniform of the Life Guards dominated the landing. A polished mahogany door to the right of the picture was ajar and voices were gusting through it. The footman walked across the landing and opened it without ceremony. The sudden movement must have startled those close to the door because faces turned to Hadfield and for a few seconds there was a wary hush. But a young man in tweed with a rakish soft blue tie and shoulder-length hair was most unlikely to have arrived with a troop of gendarmes and conversation resumed with something close to a collective sigh.

A smartly dressed woman in her fifties glided across the carpet to greet him. 'Have we met before?' Her voice was high pitched and imperious.

'Doctor Frederick Hadfield, madame.'

'Vera Nikolaevna's English friend?'

'Yes.'

Yuliya Sergeyovna offered him her hand but not her name, presuming with the a.s.surance of her cla.s.s that he would know it already. She was short and gamine, her face startlingly thin her sallow skin hung in folds from her cheekbones a high forehead, bottle-black hair pinned and parted in the centre and small restless hands. She was wearing a fine emerald green skirt with fas.h.i.+onable pleated frills and ruching and a matching jacket: clothes she might choose for a tea salon at the imperial court.

The drawing room was large and rectangular in shape, dimly lit by gas sconces, and the blinds were pulled down conspiratorially over the windows at the far end. There were perhaps forty people chatting in small groups, drinking tea and smoking, some standing, some perched uncomfortably on gilded French sofas and fauteuils. Most were men in their twenties, dressed informally in short jackets, some with open-necked s.h.i.+rts. Lounging at the large marble fireplace, a group of students in the high collared uniforms the authorities required all who studied at the university to wear. From infancy to dotage, it seemed to Hadfield, there was a uniform for every age, every occupation in the empire. He had mentioned it to one of his colleagues at the hospital who told him with a resigned shrug that the country hung from a thread of braid because a Russian only knew his place if he was in uniform. Doctors were the exception to this rule and Hadfield considered it fortunate the only uniform he was obliged to wear was a hospital coat.

Madame Volkonsky led him through the gathering to the opposite end of the room where three young women were bent together in close conversation, their faces in silhouette against the dim light of a window: 'Vera, dear . . . your English friend . . .'

Instinctively they stepped away from each other like children caught sharing a guilty secret.

'You're late, Frederick,' Vera said, holding out her hand to him, small and cold to the touch, 'I'd almost given up on you.'

It was four years since they had met last but her manner was as cool and matter-of-fact as if she had seen him only that morning and had been waiting a little impatiently to go to one of the lectures they used to attend in Zurich.

'How are you, Verochka?'

'Quite well. As you can see,' and her hands fluttered gracefully down her black dress. More than well, he thought, she was even more beautiful than he remembered her: chestnut-brown hair tied in a bun, finely cut features, almond-shaped eyes and full lips that turned down a little disdainfully at the corners. A small intimidating frown played constantly between her dark eyebrows. It was a severe beauty. Poor Alexei Filippov: Vera's husband was a provincial lawyer with decidedly conservative views. It was the most unlikely of marriages. Hadfield had watched Filippov trailing around Zurich in Vera's wake, pink with embarra.s.sment and irritation as the eyes of a hundred adoring students followed her hungrily about the medical faculty.

'And Alexei?' Hadfield asked. 'Is your husband with you?'

'We're no longer together,' she said coolly.

'Oh. I'm sorry.' 'Don't be. It was the right thing to do. I'm Vera Figner again.'

Madame Volkonsky began to twitter nervously about freedom from domestic drudgery and the importance of educating young women. Her views were muddled and it seemed to Hadfield she was paying no more than lip service to the rights of women out of polite deference to Vera. After a few uncomfortable minutes she made an excuse and slipped away.

'Yuliya Sergeyovna is a sentimental supporter,' said Vera in a low voice. 'One of her uncles took part in the Decembrist revolt and was executed by Nicholas. She's really a liberal.' She pursed her lips in a show of disapproval that made her look even more beautiful.

'Frederick used to join our discussion group in Zurich,' she said, turning to her companions. 'He spoke to us about his time at Cambridge University and of his friend Professor Maurice's ideas about Christianity and socialism. But he's read Marx too.'

'Are you a believer, Dr Hadfield?'

'This is my younger sister, Evgenia,' said Vera, introducing the questioner.

Evgenia had her sister's fine features and chestnut hair but her face was a little fuller, and, if not as cla.s.sically beautiful, it was less severe. Hadfield had enjoyed the company of another of the Figner sisters in Zurich: Lydia had studied medicine too and rented rooms with Vera and her unfortunate husband. He had been closer to Lydia than her older, more formidable sibling. She was not as pretty, but warmer, with a bold sense of fun, quite careless of society's good opinion. They had been lovers for a time. The memory of it made him feel uncomfortable.

'A believer? Only in Christ's teachings.'

'Frederick does not accept the need for revolutionary methods,' said Vera acerbically.

'Terror? No. That sort of talk was fas.h.i.+onable in Switzerland. Some of our comrades were intoxicated with the idea that a revolutionary should be free to murder and steal on our behalf to bring about a more civilised society. Dangerous romantics, and very naive too.'

'You've spent too long away from Russia, Doctor,' said Evgenia sharply. 'Our experience has taught us to view things differently.'

'A lot has changed since I saw you last,' said Vera. 'Things are worse here.' And she told Hadfield of the months she and Evgenia had spent 'among the people', working in the villages and hamlets of Samara.

'You know, I was twenty-five years old and I'd never spoken to a common person before, not properly. We travelled the countryside visiting what the peasants call their ”stopping huts”. Within minutes there would be thirty or forty patients sores, wounds, skin diseases, incurable catarrhs of the intestines and syphilis. Filthy, unhygienic in some places the pigs lived better.'

The Figners had held political cla.s.ses to persuade the peasants the tsar was not their champion but their oppressor. Only a revolution could bring a more equal society, better health and education to Russia.

'But what is the point in trying to convince people whose only concern is survival that they should protest, resist they were completely crushed, Frederick.'

In the end, Vera and Evgenia were forced to flee. All over the country young radicals were being rounded up and charged with political crimes. Most were guilty of no more than calling for an end to despotism.

'It was hopeless. We were going to change nothing, it was the same story everywhere protests broken up, arrests, persecutions . . . but it was at this time . . .' Vera's voice tailed off as if she were in two minds about saying more. Then, after looking carefully about: 'Alexander Soloviev came to visit us to talk to us about his plans . . .'

A frisson of anxiety tingled down Hadfield's spine. Vera leaned closer: 'Are you afraid?'

'Only for you and your sisters.'

She gave a short humourless laugh: 'Don't be.' Then, lowering her voice until it was barely more than a whisper: 'We'd already agreed there should be a direct campaign of violence against landlords and the police but it was impossible to recruit people to carry it out. Alexander Soloviev felt the death of the tsar one man would purify the atmosphere, that it would help persuade the intelligentsia of the need for a campaign among the ma.s.ses.'

'Purify? Oh, please,' said Hadfield. 'Tell me you weren't foolish enough to be part of it.'

'Alexander is a martyr.' Evgenia's voice was shaking with barely repressed fury and she made no effort to lower it. 'He is the kindest man I know. He knew he would be taken.'

The murmur of voices seemed to die away and heads turned towards them.

'He has given his life for the people.' Reaching for her lace handkerchief, Evgenia pressed it in a trembling hand to her mouth. The drawing room was quiet enough to hear the c.h.i.n.k of cups being married to saucers.

'The tragedy is that he missed.' An unusually high-pitched voice broke the silence. 'I wouldn't have.'

There was a gasp of surprise. The steely determination in the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin's voice left no one in doubt he spoke in deadly earnest. Hadfield turned to find him standing in front of the fire only a few feet away. He was a singular-looking man: Jewish Hadfield was sure of that in his early twenties, short and slight, with a thin face, wispy red hair and a small goatee beard. He was wearing a belted chemise of red cotton.

'I applaud his courage, of course.' The would-be a.s.sa.s.sin stared at Hadfield defiantly as if daring him to make some sort of riposte. After a few awkward seconds, one of the students at the chimney piece came to his rescue.