The Jewel of St Petersburg

Fifteen

VALENTINA HURRIED THROUGH ALEXANDER SQUARE, shadows rolling across her face as a fitful wind herded the clouds across the sky.

Nothing was ever easy.

She’d traipsed around three other hospitals and the response was the same. You’re too wealthy. You’re too well educated. You’re not right. Yet she could roll bandages with her eyes closed and already knew all the bones in the body, as well as the pressure points and arterial system.

You need to be tough. She took Jens’s visiting card from her pocket and looked again at the address. She would walk. She asked the way twice but even so, at one point she found she’d taken a wrong turn and wandered into a quiet side street with a white-faced church up ahead. A golden cross on its dome cast a long shadow on the road. A group of men huddled over a brazier at the far end as though waiting for something. As she was passing the church, a young man came out of it in a hurry and hoisted up two sacks from a handcart parked outside.

“Arkin. What on earth are you doing here?”

She might as well have stuck a knife in the chauffeur’s ribs. He jerked back and stumbled under the weight he was carrying, dropping one of the sacks. As it hit the ground, the side of it split and two potatoes rolled out.

She stared at the sack. Arkin stared at her.

“Why are you here?” he asked quickly.

“I have taken a wrong turn.”

“It seems to me you have no idea where you’re going.”

He said it not with his chauffeur’s face. This one had hard lines and arrogant edges. His words froze in the icy air between them, and she wanted to push them back into his mouth. She crouched suddenly, picked up the two potatoes, and held them out to him.

“Yours, I believe.”

“Spasibo.”

She waved a hand at the sacks. “What are you doing with these?”

“I’m helping Father Morozov.”

She glanced at the church. “Is he the priest here?”

“Yes. He distributes food among the poor.”

She could feel his eyes on her, curious. “I’m trying to find my way to the main road. Would I do better to retrace my steps?” she asked.

“That’s up to you. You can go on, or you can go back to what is familiar.” It seemed that he wasn’t talking about the road. Still, he pointed over her shoulder. “The main road is back that way.”

“Thank you.”

As she started to leave, he lifted up the sacks, one under each arm, and strode back inside the church, unaware that he was leaving a trail of potatoes behind him. She watched him disappear, then picked up each potato and marched into the church. The air was colder, the entrance hall cramped. In front of her stood a set of ancient wooden doors leading into the body of the church, but to her left lay a short passageway that ended in stone stairs going down. A potato lay on the top step.

She descended soundlessly. The stairs wound down into an underground room, dim and cavernous with a vaulted ceiling and the smell of damp stonework so strong it slapped her in the face. Men’s voices rose from rows of seats lined up in front of an unoccupied table. The men had their backs to her.

“All they want to do is talk. Talk and more talk. I’m sick of it,” someone said.

“I’m with you on that, Oleg. We’ve had enough of words. It’s time for more action.”

“Stop complaining.” Arkin’s voice. “We all want to see more action. He’s coming to address us today and then we’ll be able to find out what plans he’s-” He stopped.

He’d seen her. All eyes followed his gaze, and she heard the rumble of annoyance as they became aware of her presence.

“You forgot the rest of your potatoes.” She held out her handful to him.

The men’s eyes crawled over her. Scarves were pulled tighter, obscuring faces. She noted that the sacks had been dumped on the table, the split one spilling its lumpy contents like a gutted pig, but under the potatoes lay something that bore no resemblance to a vegetable, something angular swaddled in black cloth. Arkin was approaching her fast.

“My dear girl, let me relieve you of those.”

The voice came from behind her. She spun around and found a black figure standing over her on the bottom stair.

“Thank you,” she muttered and thrust the potatoes at him.

“This is Father Morozov.” Arkin had reached her side. “What on earth are you doing down here? I thought you’d left.”

“Brother,” the priest said in a warm voice intended to smooth the edges off Arkin’s rudeness, “that is no way to welcome our visitor.” He inspected her face with thoughtful eyes and fingered his beard as if it were an aid to decision. He was clothed in a rough black cassock and a tall battered black hat, a brass crucifix pinned to his chest just below the straggling ends of his beard. “You are welcome to join us, whoever you are, my dear. We are gathered here to join in prayer for our country in these troubled days and to ask our dear Holy Father for guidance and wisdom.”

No sound came from behind but she could sense them watching her. The priest’s face was as lined as the skin of an old apple, but she didn’t think he was any older than her own father. She smiled at him. Her cheeks felt stiff.

“Thank you, but I must leave now. I just wanted to bring you the potatoes that were dropped outside.”

It sounded stupid even to her own ears. So when he stood aside, she scampered up the stairs quickly. The men from the brazier parted to let her through, and she walked at a brisk pace to the end of the road. Aware of their eyes on her, she wondered who was coming to address them today. And what plans he had.

THE FRONT DOOR BANGED SHUT, ALERTING VALENTINA. A wave of chill air from outside ruffled the calm on the upstairs landing, and she ceased pacing. Instead she peered over the balustrade and inspected the floor below. Unaware of her above him, Jens was taking the stairs two at a time, the light from the gas lamp spiraling down onto his fiery hair. His hand flew up the banister rail, quick and purposeful. Did he always arrive home from work like this? So possessed by life?

“Hello, Jens.”

He stopped and darted a look upward. The moment he saw her, something shifted in his eyes. His mouth opened as if he were about to say something, but he didn’t. He bounded up the last stair and came forward until he was almost close enough for her to touch. His eyes scanned her face.

“Is something wrong?” he asked quickly.

“No. I just need to talk to you.”

Still, that gaze on her face.

“How did you get in here? Like a magic fairy you materialize outside my apartment door.”

She laughed. Saw his eyes watch her mouth.

“Your concierge let me in. I told him I was your cousin.”

He smiled. “Did he believe you?”

“I think so. He said I could wait up here on the landing in the warm instead of out on the sidewalk.”

“Then the dolt is more stupid than I thought.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re far too beautiful to be any cousin of mine.”

The words caught her off guard. He didn’t laugh when he said them, just tossed them out into the quiet dusty air and walked past her to unlock the door of his apartment. The building was an old one with ornate plaster moldings and a baroque extravagance of carvings and cornices, but it was tired now, its glory days behind it. Even the air tasted old and velvety, as though it had been breathed in by too many people over too many years. Valentina found it appealing that a man with such modern ideas chose to live in such an old-fashioned apartment house.

He opened the door with a flourish. “Would you care to step inside?”

She shook her head. “I think I’d better not.”

“Of course.” He inclined his head courteously. “We wouldn’t want to compromise your reputation, would we?”

He was laughing at her beneath that polite manner of his.

“Maybe,” she said with a flick of her dark hair, “it would be permissible… as your cousin, you understand.”

The green eyes grew greener. “As my cousin,” he echoed.

She walked past him into the apartment.

IT WAS LIKE NO OTHER ROOM SHE’D BEEN IN. THE FURNITURE was all pale honey-blond with such plain straight lines that for a moment she thought it was unfinished. The floor, made of sanded pine boards, was strewn with colorful rugs, and in front of the fire lay a large long-haired fur rug, as creamy as a dish of milk. On the walls were hung framed pictures of reindeer in snowy landscapes. It was hard not to stare.

“So, cousin, may I offer you tea?”

“No, Jens, thank you. I mustn’t stay long.”

He took both her gloved hands in his and studied them. “Such small hands.” His finger touched her palm. “Yet so much talent in them.”

She shook her head. Her lungs felt as if they were overheating.

“So,” he said, “what is it you need to talk to me about?” He didn’t release her.

“You said you have a friend who is a doctor.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I need his help.”

His grip on her hands tightened. “Are you ill?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“What kind of help then?”

So she told him. About the hospitals. It all came rushing out, the scornful eyes across the desks, the rejections. She told him that all of them regarded her as unsuited to nursing. Despite needing nurses, none of them trusted her.

“Not even my own family doctor will help.”

She told Jens how angry it had made her and how she’d wanted to put her head down on the table and shout with frustration, but instead she’d walked all the way across town to this tree-lined avenue and waited for him. He listened without interruption, and when she’d finished he didn’t tell her to give it up. That was what she’d feared, that his voice would join all the others, would try to wrest her future out of her fingers without realizing how important it was to her. But he didn’t.

“Come,” he said briskly. “We’ll go and speak to Dr. Fedorin.”

“Spasibo. Thank you.”

“He will help. Even if it means I have to promise to let him beat me at cards for the next month. But”-he leaned closer and studied her face intently-“are you sure this is what you want?”

She nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Very well. Let’s go and talk to the old quack.”

“May I have my hands back?”

He glanced down at them, surprised. As if they were somehow his now.

“If you must.” He raised one to his lips and gave her a formal bow over it. “To the future of Sanitarka Ivanova.”

Nurse Ivanova.

She was finding it hard not to love this man.

DR. FEDORIN WAS SEATED ON THE FLOOR OF HIS DRAWING room playing cards with his five-year-old daughter when they arrived, scratching at his whiskers in an effort to concentrate.

“Excuse me if I don’t get up. My little Anna is thrashing me.”

The child grinned up at them, holding her cards pressed against her small chin. “I let Papa win one game.” But she crowed with delight when he played his last card and she promptly trumped it. Her eager little hands scooped up the pile of sugared almonds with which they had been betting and Jens laughed, ruffling her feathery blond hair.

“Anna, your father is the worst card player in Petersburg and you are going to be one of the best.”

She popped an almond in her father’s mouth, patted his cheek consolingly, and scampered off to the window seat with her winnings. The doctor ordered wine to be served.

“Now what can I do for you?” He inspected his guests with interest.

“This is Valentina Ivanova,” Jens introduced her. “She needs your help, my friend. She wishes to train as a nurse but the hospitals have turned her down as unsuited.”

“Are you?” the doctor addressed Valentina.

“Am I what?”

“Unsuited to the task.”

“No.”

“Maybe that judgment is not yours to make.”

The words sounded harsh, but she didn’t object. How could she object to anything said by this man who, in his olive green trousers, sat sprawled like a long-legged grasshopper on the floor with his daughter and let her beat him at cards? She didn’t know fathers did that.

“Let me tell you why I believe I am suited to nursing. I have helped nurse my paralyzed sister for the past six months. I have learned the anatomy of the human body, and”-she cast about for something else that would decide it for him-“I play the piano.”

He blinked. She smiled. “I’ll teach your daughter to play ‘Für Elise’ right now.”

Against the far wall of the room stood an upright piano with books piled on top of its lid, obviously never opened. The child abandoned her sugared almonds and stood stiff as a soldier, holding her breath.

“My wife used to play,” the doctor said softly. “The piano hasn’t been touched since.”

“I am sorry about your wife, Doktor. I would be proud to play her piano and to teach her daughter. Is it a deal?”

His gaze lingered longingly on the mahogany piano stool where his wife used to sit. He nodded.

Anna skipped across the room to remove the books.

THANK YOU, JENS.”

He had driven her home in his carriage, but they had spoken little as the skies darkened and the lights on the bridges sprang into life. Winter afternoons were short-lived in St. Petersburg. Jens and Valentina stood on the gravel drive outside her house, their shadows shuffling awkwardly side by side. The words for good-bye wouldn’t come.

“I am looking forward to the visit to your tunnels on Friday,” she said brightly. The darkness stole parts of his face from her. “It will be exciting to see what you have engineered.”

“Good.”

The way he said it. It wasn’t right.

“Is there a problem?”

“Nothing I can’t deal with.”

She caught a glimpse of the weight he had to carry on his broad shoulders, the expectations he had to fulfill.

“It’s a responsibility, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Each day.”

“You will find the same when you’re nursing.”

“I look forward to it.”

That brought a smile at last. “I can’t wait to see you in your uniform.”

She laughed, but she could feel something wrong, like a knot in a smooth-running thread. “Thank you anyway for saving me from a fate too awful to contemplate. I would have died of tedium if I’d had to spend an afternoon watching grown men play with swords.”

“Epées. Not swords.”

She shrugged. “Both are boring.”

“And tunnels aren’t?”

“No, tunnels definitely aren’t. They have a purpose.”

He took a small step back. Away from her.

“Valentina.”

Her pulse slowed. She waited.

“Valentina, what did that Hussar want to speak to your father about?”

“Captain Chernov?”

“Yes, Captain Chernov.”

“He’s nothing to me. Forget him.” She trailed her fingers through the crisp air as though to flick any trace of him from their tips. No stars to gaze at. No moon.

“It’s not hard to guess what he wanted to speak to your father about. You.”

“He’s nothing to me,” she said again, more deliberately this time, and she stepped forward. “I will have nothing to do with Captain Chernov. Nothing.”

His fingers cradled her chin, tilting it directly into the beam of lamplight from above the door. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

She wanted to say, Hold me. Just Hold me.

The sound of a car’s engine rumbled its way into the silence, and the crunch of wheels dug into the gravel. Her father had arrived home.

“Valentina,” Jens said in a low voice, releasing her chin, “don’t let others decide your life for you.”

The car door banged and her father came striding toward them. Valentina’s eyes caught those of the chauffeur sitting in the driver’s seat in his uniform, observing her sharply, but she turned her head away as though he were invisible.

“Good evening to you, sir.” Jens gave a courteous bow to her father and received a curt nod in response. Wrapped in his thick fur coat, General Ivanov resembled a bear lumbering into its den as he threw open the front door with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Inside, Valentina. Now, please. I wish to have a word with you.”

He walked into the house without waiting for a reply. She stood where she was until the car moved away toward the garage at the back of the house, and for a brief moment they were alone again.

“Jens,” she said, “don’t forget what I have promised you.”

“No,” he said in that low voice that burrowed under her skin, “I won’t forget. Have nothing to do with him.”

She nodded, and in the slash of light from the doorway she saw his mouth curve into what might have been a smile. But now he was out of reach. She watched him move with long easy strides toward his carriage, and the horse whinnied a soft welcome. Valentina knew she couldn’t stop the words that had to come next.

“Jens.”

He halted. The lamplight caught the edge of his jaw and a twist of his hair.

“Jens, will you do the same?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about the woman who wears green gowns and who sinks hooks into you with her eyes? The one who walks as if she owns the world.”

He frowned. “Countess Serova?”

“Ah yes, she looks like a countess. That one.”

“What about her?”

“Will you have nothing more to do with her?”

She heard his intake of breath.

“Will you?” she insisted.

He started to return to her, one hand extended, palm up, the way he would hold out an apple to a horse. “It’s complicated,” he explained, “not so easy to…”

“I see.” She clamped her teeth together.

“No, you don’t see at all. I do promise that I will have nothing to do with her in the way that you mean, but I still have to visit her because… Valentina, don’t…”

It was too late. She had vanished into the house.

IT’S COMPLICATED. WHAT DID HE MEAN BY THAT? How could he still be intending to visit Countess Serova? Surely he realized that…

“Valentina,” her father was saying, “I want to start by stating that I have good news for you.”

He was going to agree to the nursing. She relaxed and gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Papa.”

“You’ve met Captain Stepan Chernov?”

“Da.”

“A handsome man, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Valentina nodded. She was trying to be agreeable. She had not forgotten Number 4 on her list. Make Papa forgive me.

“His father is Count Chernov,” he expanded, “head of one of the most distinguished families in Petersburg. The captain is an extremely wealthy young man. Are you aware of this?”

“Mama mentioned it to me.”

“I want you to marry him.”

The words cut her. Razor sharp.

“Papa.” She didn’t shout. Didn’t beg. Instead she spoke quietly. “I don’t intend to marry anyone. I intend to take care of Katya.”

For a moment he wouldn’t look at her. “Captain Chernov has asked my permission to pay his attentions to you. It is a great honor.” His cheekbones were working, as if he were chewing on something hard. “I don’t want any more of this foolishness from you, Valentina. Your mother and I are in agreement about this. As your father, believe me, I know what is best for you. You will thank me when you are older.”

She stood immobile on the Persian rug. “Papa, I don’t wish to cross you, honestly I don’t, but neither do I wish to marry Captain Chernov. I’ve explained that…”

Color rose to his cheeks in a dark flush, and his heavy brows bunched together over disappointed eyes. She knew he felt she was letting him down.

“Please don’t disobey me, Valentina.”

“Or what, Papa? What will you do?” She tried to smile. “Horse-whip me?”

He walked over to her, put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the side of her head. “Thank you for saving Katya. Now I need you to do this for me. It’s as simple as that.”

HER ROOM WAS COLD BUT VALENTINA DIDN’T NOTICE. She slipped out of her clothes, dropping them on the floor, but she couldn’t slip out of her skin. She crawled into bed and pulled the quilt over her head. Shivers came.

As simple as that.

Nothing about this was simple. Not with her father and not with Jens.

“Jens, I made a promise to you. Nothing to do with him. I swore it to you.”

Outside the wind tapped at the window.

“So why, Jens,” she whispered, “why wouldn’t you make the same promise to me?”

She stilled her pulse, waiting for that low voice of his to murmur in her mind. Minutes ticked past but no voice came, so she threw off the quilt.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?” Valentina jumped. “Nothing.”

She could just make out the looming bulk of Liev Popkov in the darkness. He was ten paces away, leaning against a wall of the house, and her eyes would not have picked him out of the dense layers of black if he hadn’t spoken.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Long enough.”

“Spying on me? For my father?”

He grunted. She heard him spit.

They were outside on the gravel at the back of the house, where by day the sun barely reached at this time of year and by night it froze hard. Ice and snow bunched in treacherous ruts. Valentina was scraping them with a stick, prodding at them, sliding her gloved fingers over them. With great care she examined them inch by inch in the light that fell from the music room window. She wanted to ask Liev to help her but the words stuck in her throat, so she continued her search alone and in silence. For a full five minutes neither spoke.

“Looking for something?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s cold out here.”

She said nothing but continued to scrape at the ice. Another five minutes of silence.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Her head snapped up. He hadn’t moved from the spot but he was holding out his hand. She walked over, wary of the ice, and stared at his big paw. In the center of it lay something that gleamed, something metal. She snatched it from him, closed her fingers tight on it. It was the key to the piano.

“You bastard!”

He laughed, loud and boisterous.

She slapped his knee with her stick, then tossed it aside and started laughing with him. A strange isolated sound, their laughter echoed in the freezing folds of the night air.

“You bastard,” she said again.

And stalked back into the house.

VIKTOR ARKIN WATCHED POPKOV AMBLE BACK TO THE stables. He’d seen the big man skulking in the shadows for hours, indifferent to the snow and the raking wind, waiting to see if the girl would come in search of whatever it was she’d lost. He’d observed the way Popkov baited her, teased her till she lost her temper with him, and he envied the careless ease of it. As if Popkov didn’t give a damn. She’d called him a bastard but they had laughed. Together they had laughed. Arkin couldn’t work out why.

He felt awkward with women, tongue-tied and mystified by what it was they wanted to talk about. The women at his political meetings and on the committees were all vociferous and aggressive. Wanting to be men, it seemed to him. He sometimes felt the urge to talk to Valentina and her mother, to stop the car and really talk to them, to find out what was in their minds. There was something about Valentina that didn’t quite fit in. That was why she had startled him so much when she caught him unloading the ammunition in the church, because he had no idea how she would react. It was obvious she was suspicious, but would she voice her suspicions to her father? Would she ask him to call for the Okhrana?

He would have to be more careful, more than ever now. He walked silently back to the garage, let himself in, and closed the door behind him. His nerves tightened, but hardly anyone else came in here. It was safe. Always it was the same, this fire that was consuming him, this need to march forward into the new tomorrow. Impatience plucked and pulled at him, and he tried to quiet it by moving to the back of the garage behind the car. Against the wall he had arranged a tidy stack of cardboard boxes containing engine parts, oil cans, polishing cloths, spare tools, machine bits and pieces, all things that belonged in a garage. No one would suspect, no one would delve deeper.

Only he knew of the crate that lay at the bottom of the boxes. Only he knew what it contained.