The Jewel of St Petersburg

Four

KATYA WAS RIGHT. ABOUT THE VIKING. VALENTINA HAD tried to laugh about it but couldn’t. She was angry at him now. He didn’t remember her, it was obvious, but that didn’t matter. Why should she expect him to, after the way she’d played when she was fifteen?

No, that wasn’t what irked her. It was the way that he’d walked out yesterday. As soon as she’d finished playing, he had left with an eagerness that was insulting: he’d jumped to his feet and, after a few words with the tsar, had loped for the door as though he couldn’t get out fast enough. Was he so disappointed that he couldn’t bear to stay? But she had been so proud of her performance this time. His indifference to it was like a bee sting in her flesh.

She sat down hungrily at the piano in her parents’ music room and as always stroked its surface. It was a beautiful glossy black Erard grand, which she loved. She let her fingers touch the keys and immediately the tension swerved out of her body, like a train jumping the tracks. As instant as that. It was always the same. Her fingers caressed the ivory and started to flow steadily up and down its length, moving at different speeds, rising and falling, warming the muscles, stretching the tendons. The rich exuberant sound that rose from the body of the Erard soothed her, calmed some of her excitement. Because she was excited, but for all the wrong reasons. She wanted to see the Viking again.

Katya was right about that.

Valentina had been stunned when he’d walked into the hall just behind the tsar yesterday, tall and upright in his frock coat. She hadn’t expected him. He was the tallest man in the room by far, lean and broad shouldered with an air of invincibility about him. Two years ago at the Ekaterininsky Institute concert he had strolled in among a party of the tsar’s courtiers and dazzled her fifteen-year-old eyes with his energy and his fiery red hair. His vivid green eyes had swept the room with a look of amusement, as though the whole situation were too absurd to take seriously.

On that occasion she’d watched him, all through the singing and the dancing, wanting to catch his eye, but she’d seen that he was bored by the performances and had eyes for no one except the beautiful woman by his side, dressed in green silk and fine emeralds. When her own turn came to play, Valentina had been determined not to bore him, but his presence had made her nervous and she hadn’t played well. At the end he’d applauded politely, smiling at his companion as if at a secret joke. Valentina had been furious with herself. But you couldn’t love someone you’ve never even spoken to, someone you’ve just seen across a room. It was impossible.

Her fingers abandoned the exercises and launched into Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, a piece she always relished, but abruptly she lifted her hands from the keys. There were times, odd, uncomfortable moments when she was playing and the music was really seizing hold of her, that she would break off like this. Aware that her mother considered her passion for the piano to be excessive and therefore unbecoming in a young woman. She knew her mother could never understand why she had no interest in going shopping with her, choosing dresses, all the things young ladies were meant to do, instead of sitting at home on a piano stool hour after hour. Worse, Valentina sometimes feared that her mother felt that if she wasn’t going to behave like a proper girl, she might as well have been the longed-for boy.

She wished Katya had been there to hear her yesterday. With a sudden movement she rose, drew a chair from beside the wall, and placed it next to her piano stool. The chair was padded in a creamy brocade and had slender fluted mahogany arms. She sat again on her stool, then rested first one hand on the chair and then the other. Without using her legs at all she tried to swing herself off the stool toward the chair seat, but missed it completely. Her arms became entangled and the chair edge stabbed her shoulder blade as she tumbled like a rag doll to the floor. She glared at her legs as if the fault were theirs.

“Chyort!”

It took five awkward attempts, but finally she succeeded. Her heart was racing and her arms shook with the effort.

“Chyort!” she swore again. Then she stood up and ran up the stairs to her room.

IN FRONT OF HER AT HER DESK VALENTINA HELD A LIST, NEATLY written out on a sheet of ivory-tinted paper. It was a list she had drawn up four months ago and which she kept locked in the drawer of her table away from prying eyes. Maids peeked into everything. But the paper was already dog-eared at the edges because she liked to handle it, to remind herself. Her eyes traveled down each point methodically.

1. Contact every spine specialist in Europe.

With painstaking care she’d scoured medical journals in the library for articles on spinal damage, and she’d written to doctors as far away as Berlin, Rome, Oslo, even London. Few had bothered to reply.

2. Make Katya happy.

She smiled at that one. Such a simple aim. Four months ago, making Katya happy after her operations had seemed the easiest of all on her list: she would read to her, play cards with her, whisper secrets, and pass on the latest tittle-tattle from school or from the servants’ hall downstairs. She brought her ribbons and jigsaws, as well as the latest books from Belizard’s bookstore. From the parks or the riverbank she collected magpie feathers and the first coppery maple leaves of autumn. She smuggled in chocolate from Wolf & Beranger’s or risked the sticky confections from the bazaar at Gostiny Dvor.

But now she understood that making Katya happy meant far more than that. It meant creating a whole new future for her. Those words in the silence of her head felt huge.

So what next?

3. Find employment.

She ran a finger over the word employment and her stomach lurched. For years she’d had a dream. Ever since she was a gawky gap-toothed child she had planned it, while others giggled in corners and played with toys. To be a concert pianist. That was her aim. To tour the greatest concert halls and palaces of Europe, performing before heads of state in Rome and Paris, London and Vienna. But it was gone. Blown apart by the bomb. It couldn’t happen now. It would mean years of dedicated work at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, and she no longer had that luxury. She had to care for Katya. She stared at her fingers, at their strong tendons and well-rounded pads, and she felt disloyal to them. Disloyal to herself. She had to forget the dream.

But how? How could she tear it out of her head when she could still see herself at the keys, pouring her heart into the music, then rising from the piano, her audience on their feet? She would wear a scarlet Parisian gown, a single strand of pearls in her hair, and she would play the finest concerts in Europe. She could actually see herself. Feel her heart thudding.

“Forget the dream.” She said it aloud.

The paper in her hand shook. Find employment. Yes, she had made her decision about that.

She must talk to Papa. She knew that wives and daughters of distinguished families didn’t go out to work and that Papa would be ashamed if she did so. He would regard it as demeaning to the Ivanov name. But she would explain to him, persuade him to agree.

4. Make Papa forgive me.

One day, Papa. One day.

What saddened her most was that she and her father had always had a quiet understanding, and now that was gone. He had never been an attentive parent and constantly put his work before everything, but he and she had always had a special bond between them. Katya was the one he petted, indulged, and smiled at most, and Valentina understood why: she was the image of her mother when she was young-blond, blue-eyed, and with a gentle smile. Whereas Valentina was like her father: dark-haired, brown-eyed, and possessed of a single-mindedness that matched his own.

Over the years he had made no secret of the fact that he often found his elder daughter maddening, but even when he was reprimanding her for some misdeed, there was a gleam of pride in his eye, a hint of respect in his voice. The way he might feel about the son he never had. But since the bomb he had withdrawn from her, and she felt the loss keenly. He needs someone to blame, her mother had said, but it didn’t seem right that it was her.

One day, Papa, one day, you will forgive me.

5. Obey Mama.

She was still working on that one.

6. Play the piano better every day.

What was the point now?

7. Play for the tsar.

She laughed at herself and drew a line through it.

8. Marry the Viking.

The words were already crossed out with fierce black strokes of ink. A silly girl’s fancy. She shrugged it off, ignoring the heat that rose up her neck.

9. Buy a gun.

She stared at that one and felt her pulse quicken. She’d not yet worked out a way to do it. The revolutionaries had come once. They could come again, the way bad dreams came back when you thought they were gone. But next time she would be ready for them. Number 9. She underlined it in black ink. Buy a gun. She sat with her eyes fastened on the list and thought out each point in detail. Finally she picked up her fountain pen and wrote one more:

10. Find a Bolshevik.

Find the Bolshevik. That was what she really meant. The promises of the police and of her father to make the bombers pay for their crime had proved as meaningless as the lies of the tsar himself. The men in hoods had vanished into thin air. Oh yes, pockets of known Bolsheviks had been rounded up and questioned, but no one knew anything of the ghosts who walked in the forest.

Find a Bolshevik.

DOBROYE UTRO, GOOD MORNING, MINISTER.”

“Dobriy den, good afternoon, Minister.”

“Dobriy vecher, good evening, Minister.”

Those were words that Viktor Arkin liked least. Instead of “Good morning, comrade.”

“Yes, master. Da, barin.”

“No, master. Nyet, barin.”

Those were words that grated in his gut.

Every day Arkin drove Minister General Nicholai Ivanov in the Turicum along the Embankment in St. Petersburg to the Ministry of Finance, and each day he listened to the words that were spilled in the back of the car. The minister had a loose tongue. Often he would talk too openly with colleagues as Arkin drove them across the city to meetings. Once Minister Ivanov had even been fool enough to leave his attaché case lying on the seat in the car after too many brandies at the Donon. Arkin had read its contents meticulously and made notes for an hour before he returned it to the minister.

Worst were the evenings. Waiting outside restaurants like a dog in the cold. Outside nightclubs. Outside brothels. Outside the mistress’s apartment on Izmailovsky Prospekt. But some days Madam Ivanova requested the car instead of the carriage, and on those days Arkin smiled.

ARKIN WATCHED ELIZAVETA IVANOVA WALK DOWN THE front steps of the house and considered how women of this class moved differently, held themselves differently. You could wrap them in rags and still you would know who they were, what they were. Beautiful, elegant, fragrant parasites.

She approached across the gravel, picking her way with delicate care over the thin layer of snow that had fallen since the drive was last brushed an hour ago. He stood beside the car in his maroon uniform and peaked cap with its gold band and waited for her instructions.

“Arkin, I want you to drive both my daughters into town today. To Gordino’s restaurant on Morskaya.” Her blue eyes studied him assessingly, and he knew she was wondering whether she could trust him.

Both daughters. That was rare. The crippled one didn’t go out much even though he had removed the front passenger seat of the car to allow for her wheelchair to be stored there. It must be the influence of her dark-haired sister. The one who looked at him with eyes that were not easily fooled by a chauffeur’s uniform and a submissive lowering of his gaze.

Into town today, she’d said. For one fraction of a second he almost let the wrong words slip out. Today is not the day for your daughters to be in town. Keep your daughters at home. But instead he nodded politely and opened the car door.

ARKIN LISTENED TO EVERY WORD. HE ALWAYS DID. THAT was his job.

The Turicum was a magnificent monster of a vehicle. Imported from Geneva, all deep blue leather and fearsome brass fittings that he polished each day within an inch of their life. He sat up front in the driver’s seat, swathed in his maroon coat, and today the air had the bite of a tiger. To keep it at bay the daughters were bundled up with a weighty bearskin rug over their knees and fur hoods over their ears.

It will be cold for the marchers today. No bearskins. No fur hoods. Just the heat of anger in their bellies.

As he drove through the city, the streets of St. Petersburg slid past with their tall pastel buildings and people scurrying about their business, unwilling to linger in the freezing wind. It gave him satisfaction to see the cars and carriages jostling axles, the horse-drawn drozhky lumbering along, heedless of the klaxons that demanded room to pass. The more traffic, the better. The more chaos there would be.

He listened to their girlish chatter. Worthless words. An expression of delight as Madame Duclet’s fashionable dress shop came into view on Morskaya, a murmur of approval as they passed the renowned Zhirov establishment with its windows full of exotic china from the Orient and silverware from England. When he glanced around he saw Katya’s hands nestled in the warmth of the rug, but her eyes watched the outside world the way he would watch a circus.

“Today,” Valentina announced, “we shall do exactly as we please.”

“Yes,” Katya laughed, “we shall.”

Seldom had Arkin seen the younger one allowed out without her mother or Nurse Sonya as chaperone. Today she seemed to smell freedom. But suddenly he had to brake hard. The road was blocked by a line of policemen, dark and menacing. He brought the car to a halt, but the carriage in front swayed dangerously as the horse slammed against its shafts, unnerved by a noise from up ahead. It sounded like distant thunder. Except it wasn’t. He sensed his passengers listening to the sound carefully. It was more like the drag of waves on a pebble beach, harsh and grating. Coming closer.

All movement down Morskaya had ceased and pedestrians were backtracking along the pavement, casting nervous glances over their shoulders. Drivers found no room to maneuver around the police cordon but were wedged within the stationary traffic as tempers were roused and arguments flared.

“What is it, Arkin?” Valentina asked. She leaned forward, close to his shoulder, in an attempt to see what lay ahead. “What is causing the delay?”

“It’s the strikers,” he answered, careful not to alarm her. “They’re marching up Morskaya.”

“Strikers? They’re the ones causing such trouble in the factories, aren’t they? I’ve read about them in the papers.”

He made no comment.

“Prime Minister Stolypin has denounced them,” she added. “For trying to destroy Russia’s economy. They’ve managed to shut down our mines and stop our trains running.”

He still made no comment.

“I can’t see them,” Katya complained. “The police are in the way.”

“Look, there are the tops of their placards,” Valentina pointed out. He could hear the unease in her voice.

Wait. Just wait. You will see more than you want.

Ahead lay the backs of policemen, a solid wall of them from one side of the street to the other.

“Do you think there will be trouble?” Valentina was so close behind him he could feel her breath warm on his collar. He pictured her hands, white and nervous, and the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “Why are these men on strike, Arkin?”

Didnt she know? How could she not know?

“They are demanding a fair wage, Miss Valentina. The police are advancing on them now.”

Slowly, relentlessly. Advancing on them. He could make out batons in their hands. Or were they guns? The chanting of the marchers drew closer, and instantly a sense of real danger sparked in the street. It crackled in the air and people started to run, slipping on ice, skidding on snow. Arkin felt his pulse kick into life.

“Arkin.” It was Miss Valentina’s voice. “Get us out of here. Do whatever you have to, but get us away from here.”

“I can’t. We’re trapped in traffic.”

“Arkin,” Valentina ordered, “please drive us out. Now.”

He felt the muscle tighten at the corner of his jaw, and his maroon gloves curled around the rim of the steering wheel. “I cannot drive the car anywhere at the moment,” he said evenly, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “We are stuck.”

“Arkin, listen to me. I have seen what Bolsheviks can do. I’m not going to sit here with my sister like a helpless calf and wait for them to do it again.”

He heard it then, the whisper of fear. He swiveled around in his seat and looked her full in the face. For a moment their gaze held, until at last he looked down. “I understand, Miss Valentina.”

“Please do something.”

“There’s no need to be afraid of them,” he lied. “The marchers only want better pay and working conditions. No one is going to harm you. Or Miss Katya.”

She lifted her hands as if she would shake him. “Then take out the wheelchair,” she ordered. “I’ll push it up the street myself.”

“No need for that.”

Abruptly he swung down hard right on the steering. He shouldered the back of the carriage in front with the Turicum’s fender, forcing it out at an angle. Ahead of them a horse whinnied, but now the heavy car’s wheels were free and Arkin could maneuver it up onto the curb of the pavement and into the open.

“I’ll get you out of here.”