Part 12 (2/2)

16.

. . . We are convinced that our agents and our party will not be discouraged by this failure . . . They will go forward with new faith in their strength and in the ultimate success of their cause . . .

'No comfort for the authorities there,' said Dobson with a short laugh. He was standing in front of the fire in his study, a dogeared leaflet in his hand. It was a bleak Petersburg evening, dark at five o'clock, a wind from Siberia driving all but a few from the streets, snow rattling at the window.

'These political zealots love their Bible, don't they, with their talk of ”faith” and ”sacrifice”, ”forgiveness” and ”martyrdom”. Listen to this: If Alexander were to recognise the evil he has done to Russia, if he were to hand over his power to a General a.s.sembly chosen by the free vote of the people, then we for our part would leave him in peace and forgive his past misdeeds . . .

Here . . .' Dobson leant forward to offer the pamphlet to Hadfield, who was sprawling in a leather armchair, his stockinged feet thawing at the fire.

'And you know the maddening thing is the story was broken by a Hun, one of the German correspondents in Moscow,' he added with a shake of the head. 'Of course the censor tried to suppress the news here. The Germans were able to read about the attempt on the tsar's life before his own subjects. What a country this is.'

Hadfield did not lift his eyes from the pamphlet: '. . . implacable war.'

'What?' Dobson asked. 'Yes. They want to wage ”implacable war”. Old Testament rather than New, I grant you.'

'Where did you find it?' Hadfield asked, lifting the paper from his lap.

'Oh, you can pick them up in the street, but my new friend Major Barclay gave it to me. Cost me a dozen oysters at the Europe Hotel.'

The leaflet was dated 22 November three days after the explosion, a statement by the executive committee of The People's Will.

'Impressive, don't you think? This party's shaken the empire after only a few months and it has a printing press so it can boast about it too,' said Dobson.

'Are you a zealot if you advocate one man one vote?'

'In Russia? Of course. But they don't stop there: they're in love with violence and secrecy and martyrdom . . .' Dobson paused to shake his head a little in disapproval. 'Actually, they're incurable romantics.'

'That's your diagnosis? Do you know any members of this party?'

Dobson grunted. 'Do you? You're being cussed now, old boy. Do I look like someone who wants to spend the rest of his life in Siberia?'

'Sorry I thought it was the job of a correspondent to represent both sides of an argument. Or are you content with Mr Dostoevsky's word upon the matter?'

'Stop it, stop it,' and Dobson wagged his finger at him. 'Dangerous talk, especially for a foreigner. Let's not fall out. Now, what about dinner?'

But Hadfield would not allow himself to be persuaded. He had spent the afternoon at the clinic in Peski, as he always chose to on Sundays, and he was too tired to think of anything more than the comfort of his own bed.

'I need to pace myself,' he said, rising to his feet. 'Lady Dufferin has returned to Petersburg and she's invited me to join an emba.s.sy party at the Yusupov tomorrow.'

'You're such a favourite with the ladies, old boy, especially those of shall we say maturer years . . .' replied Dobson with a mischievous smile.

'Dobson, are you jealous?'

'I haven't squeezed the hand of a pretty girl in months.'

'If it's any comfort, nor have I.'

'No comfort. You could have if you'd wanted to.'

Perhaps I could, yes, Hadfield thought as he let himself out of the building and on to the snowy street. There had been two or three pretty young ladies who had caught his eye at parties, but he had felt no inclination to be more than amiable. His aunt teased him that when the ladies retreated after dinner he was often spoken of and always in favourable terms. One of the most eligible young men in Petersburg, she said. Well, at least on the English Embankment. And it was quite true that his reputation was growing with his practice and his credit at the bank.

The wind had dropped a little but it was snowing harder than ever, large soft flakes falling thickly, an unhealthy yellow in the light of the street lamps. It was only a short walk to the Nevsky Prospekt, his boots crunching on the virgin snow, and the freezing air roused him from the torpor he had been in danger of sinking into in front of Dobson's fire. There was something magical about the city in the first hours of a heavy snowfall, before the cabs cut rough ridges of ice in the streets and the gutters and pavements were awash with filthy melt.w.a.ter. Clean and strangely peaceful, but for the Sunday chiming of old Russia. On an impulse, he decided to visit the Kotomin House for a gla.s.s of Gluhwein, and climbing to the second floor was shown to a table with a view of the frozen Moika. It had once been a favourite with the literati, and rich students, academics and cultivated professionals chose to patronise the restaurant for that very reason, but on this evening it was almost empty. He sat at the table sipping his wine and staring out of the window at the pa.s.sers-by trudging heavy-footed along the embankment. There had been talk at the clinic of the attempt on the tsar's life, and some of the students whom he had recruited to help him there were impressed and openly expressed sympathy for The People's Will rather too vociferously so. Hadfield kept his counsel. He was in no doubt that Anna, the Figners, Goldenberg and their friends were involved, but he had seen and heard nothing of them for months. He missed their camaraderie, their idealism, their sense of mission precisely those things Dobson liked to dismiss as 'romantic tosh' and sometimes he was conscious of feeling inexpressibly restless and disgusted with the bourgeois complacency of his life. But he took comfort and pride in his work, in the real and practical difference he made day after day to the lives of his patients. He had pushed Anna to the back of his mind, but when someone spoke of politics a memory of her always frowning would force its way to the front and make him smile. Sitting in the restaurant, staring out to the snow falling in a luminous carpet below, he felt a sudden, an annoying, an irrational longing to see her. After a few minutes, he ordered the bill and paid without finis.h.i.+ng his gla.s.s of wine. The cold air would bring him to his senses.

But the same puzzling ache was with him through the evening: as he watched the maid light the fire and sipped the broth she had brought him from the kitchen below, and he was conscious of it still as he read a letter from his mother and sat at his bureau with his medical journal. It was as if the doubts he felt about his life and his purpose were crystallising about Anna like ice on metal. Too much introspection was unhealthy. Since childhood he had struggled to prevent his thoughts taking him to dark places.

The following morning, he walked to his surgery with a lighter heart. It was a cold clear day, the snow blinding in the yellow winter sunlight. Workers were clearing the pavements on either side of Line 7, shovelling the snow into dirty heaps in the gutter. The traders at the market hall had set out their stalls and were hawking their wares to women bundled in coats and scarves and valenki boots, shapeless and ageless but for their eyes. Hadfield had rented rooms for his practice from the German pharmacy at the corner of Line 7, opposite the pretty pink and white Cathedral of St Andrew. He was on excellent terms with the cathedral priests because he visited the parish orphanage free of charge, and they more than repaid this small service by praising his skill as a physician and his Christian generosity to their wealthier paris.h.i.+oners. He spent the morning dispensing advice and rea.s.surance, pills and potions to a procession of women in furs who were for the most part in rude health, and to an elderly lawyer suffering from severe and persistent overindulgence. At a little before one o'clock, a messenger delivered a note from Lady Dufferin asking him to call at the emba.s.sy to examine one of her children and inviting him to stay for afternoon tea. The Dufferins had just returned from a long visit to England and their estates in the north of Ireland. The amba.s.sador had left almost at once for Berlin, where he was representing the government's case on the Ottoman question to Prince Bismarck. But the Countess of Dufferin was busy placing the new furniture she had brought from home and preparing for the first official reception to be held at the emba.s.sy since her husband's appointment to the imperial court.

Little Freddie Blackwood was suffering from nothing more than a head cold and a severe attack of boredom. A precocious four year old, he was bubbling over with curiosity to see the tsar and his Cossack guards and ride in a troika, but his anxious mother was refusing to release him from the emba.s.sy. Hadfield had taken his part: 'Perhaps a little air and a little excitement would do him no harm.' Since his visit to her bedside six months before a journey Her Ladys.h.i.+p now recalled as an heroic life-saving dash across the city his word as a physician went unquestioned at the emba.s.sy. The same could not be said for his judgement of pictures.

'Do you like this one?' she asked, as they were taking tea in the small drawing room. Two of the servants one rather short, the other a little too doddery for the task were holding a large landscape to the wall.

'French?' he asked uncertainly.

'After Poussin,' she replied, waving her hand at the servants. 'A little to the right please. Yes, that's perfect there.'

The picture hangers looked unsure what was expected of them.

'Oh, would you, Doctor?' said Lady Dufferin, exasperated.

Hadfield explained in Russian that Her Ladys.h.i.+p would like them to hang the picture precisely where they were holding it now.

'The Countess von Plehve and Madame von Pahlen were very taken with the painting. Quite as good as some of the pictures in the Hermitage, they said. And I showed them the French furniture we have brought here for the dining room,' she continued. 'Madame Pahlen says it is finer than the furniture at the French emba.s.sy and that the Grand Duke Vladimir has just purchased something very like it.'

Hadfield smiled and nodded politely. He had no particular views on Louis Quinze cabinets and chairs or on the French Rococo style in general. But to an accompaniment of banging step ladders and hammering, Lady Dufferin slipped seamlessly from furniture to politics. Hadfield wondered if that was why conversation was commonly described as a drawing-room art rather than a science.

'. . . and the Countess von Plehve said the imperial family was still shaken by the attack on the train. The police have been ordered to round up anyone suspected of sheltering or supporting these nihilists.'

'I thought they had already done that, Your Ladys.h.i.+p,' Hadfield replied.

'No, not there, to the right!' she shouted, rising from the sofa. 'Oh, will you tell them, Doctor?'

The picture hangers climbed down their ladders and rea.s.sembled them closer to the mantelpiece.

'. . . yes, well, it appears not,' Lady Dufferin said, picking up the thread of their conversation. 'But the ladies say one of the plotters is in custody, a Jew from Kiev called Silver. The most extraordinary thing: he was dragging a bag of dynamite along a station platform. Anyway, the police hope he will give them the names of the other conspirators.'

She paused again. 'That's it, that's it. There.' Then, settling her dress around her on to the sofa, the conversation moved just as seamlessly from politics to the sledging hills at the yacht club and the evening's expedition to the Yusupov.

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