Midnight in St. Petersburg (17 page)

By the time the ballad approached its emotional peak, with the wife imagining her little girl's grey eyes, Inna had so far forgotten her nerves that she even picked up the tune herself, and improvised a haunting, lovely cadenza of her own for a few bars, while Sasha and the rest of the room listened. Horace felt tears in his eyes. He looked around as the clapping began to see Akhmatova, opposite, sitting quite motionless, still listening inside her head. But the sombre poet beside him was smiling, with faraway eyes.

At the piano, Inna, now looking both relieved and excited, was putting down the violin while Sasha grinned up at her and said something. A knot of other people approached to congratulate them, and Horace hoped she was thinking, I've walked in and made friends; I've played in public; I did it all myself. She had, too; she hadn't really needed him there. After that one moment's panic, she'd performed without a sign of fear. But, he also thought, with the melody of that wistful ballad still in his head, she'd enjoyed his company, and perhaps had seen him, at least a little, as her guide. That was enough, for a first night.

*   *   *

‘How did
you
come to live in St. Petersburg, Horace?' she asked with her new poise, after the modestly received applause and the farewells, in the cab.

He didn't know quite where to start: the art-school years in Paris? That first commission to spend a summer here, ‘repainting' a family picture for a gentleman who'd been losing a bit too heavily at cards, and wanted to quietly sell the original?

Or … Wera?

He caught himself on that thought: Wera, with
her
zest for life, and green eyes, and dark hair. With her Russian mother; with the Fabergé trinkets, gathering dust in South Norwood, talking to seventeen-year-old Horace over the fence. That was really the answer, wasn't it?

‘Oh,' he replied, lightly. ‘The usual. A girl…' He paused.

She waited.

‘It was all very long ago,' he added, dismissing the memory with a laugh. ‘I'm not one to dwell on the past. I much prefer thinking about the future.'

The cab stopped with a jingle and the man got down to open the door. She jumped down, too, before he'd even managed to brush the back of her hand with his lips. But she looked alertly back up at him, and she was smiling.

‘Yes,' she said, as if he'd said something wiser than he had. ‘Me too.'

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Inna let herself in.

She almost went up to the attic, before remembering that Madame Leman had moved her down, that morning, to take Marcus's old room inside the flat.

For a moment, she almost went up anyway, so she could tell Yasha about the wonderful evening she'd had with Horace.

Might it be possible that, after all, she did have buried somewhere within her the desire to actually want to make people stop talking and listen to her playing? Might Horace really be kind enough to want to help?

Suddenly pleased that the change of room meant she didn't have to have this conversation with Yasha, who had, after all, been so against her risking going out, she let herself in through the flat's front door.

But Yasha was in the lobby before she'd hung up her hat. She could see he'd been waiting up.

‘You're all right then,' he said gruffly.

‘I was fine,' she said calmly, unbuttoning her beaver collar.

He engulfed her. She smelled tweed and sawdust and soap as he pulled her close.

‘I was worried,' he said.

Horace would never sound so awkward, she thought. But she knew too that this moment felt more deeply right, more natural, than anything about the enchanted evening she'd just spent in town, and that she wanted nothing more than to go on hearing Yasha's quick heartbeat through his jacket.

‘I didn't want you out running risks with that bourgeois lecher slavering all over you and plying you with champagne.'

Why, he was jealous! She did raise her face now.

‘You don't mean Horace, do you?' she whispered, looking Yasha full in the face, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly happy. ‘Because you've got it all wrong if you do. Heavens, he's just very kind – and interesting, too, a real man of the world. You should see the people he knows. And he wants me to play the violin in public.' She added, not without pride: ‘He says I could make a career of it, even. He goes to concerts, he's seen everyone, and for some reason he thinks I'd be good enough.'

Yasha looked mulish. ‘He was just softening you up. Waiting to pounce.'

She laughed, feeling more and more in control. ‘I promise there was nothing. He didn't even kiss my hand.'

She could hear the Lemans talking in the yellow room, just a few feet away. So she smiled, waved as she retreated down the corridor, and shut her door.

She was still smiling to herself as she undressed.

Tomorrow I'll start to practise more seriously, she told herself. She wanted to believe this golden, carefree happiness was because of that applause in the Stray Dog.

But it was Yasha who was in her mind as she turned out the light.

*   *   *

Daylight the next morning – grey, with a threat of snow – dissipated Inna's excitement.

There was no one to tell about last night; at least, not at much length. Most of the family was going out.

Leman took himself off after breakfast on his weekly trip to the ministry, weighed down with forms and a bottle of cognac (‘My little sacrifice to the bureaucrat-gods,' he said wryly as he left). Marcus was taking the children, who had a day off school, out to the Field of Mars to watch a parade. And Yasha wasn't there at all. Between squeals at Barbarian and Agrippina, Madame Leman said briefly, in a way that suggested this was no business of Inna's, that he'd had letters to deal with, and had come down early to ask for a few hours off.

Her ask-no-questions look reminded Inna, uncomfortably, that she didn't think Madame Leman would be at all happy to find out that Yasha and she—

‘And when is Horace coming next?' Madame Leman added, with a friendlier smile.

‘Oh,' faltered Inna, realizing she hadn't asked. ‘He didn't say.'

Trying not to feel downcast, or lonely, or claustrophobic at the thought that even her stolen passport had expired and, unlike everyone else, she couldn't go out, Inna finished her tea and made her way down to the quiet workshop.

She cheered up, though, when she got to her bench. She already had a recognizable violin form under her hands. The rough wooden mould she'd chosen had the outline of a 1715 Stradivarius: delicate and narrow-waisted. She'd planed slim strips of maple down till they were scarcely thicker than paper, and bent them, over a hot iron, to the exact shape of the mould's side-curves. Then she'd glued the strips to six stout corner blocks of spruce. These would be the sides of her violin, one day – or, in luthier's talk, the ribs, because violins were little human bodies in the making.

She'd cut the back and the front of her instrument, next, from slim wooden wedges: hard, fierce, tiger-striped maple for the back, and soft, splintery, vibrating spruce for the front. Her baby: with outward curves for its shoulders and belly, and inward waist curves in the middle, and, at the top, the beginning of a rudimentary neck. These two violin shapes were still just a matching pair of silhouettes. The three-dimensional contouring they would acquire – the gentle lines, like the subtle swell of stomach and back, that would one day make these dumb pieces of wood sing – had yet to emerge. She didn't know how, yet. She didn't have to. She just had to trust.

A banging on the shop door stopped Inna moving – the front door, the one that opened on to the street. It wasn't just a single knock, but a volley of loud blows, then a great jangling at the bell. She looked up fearfully.

Because she was alone, the door was bolted, behind the lace curtain obscuring its glass panes. You couldn't see in through the display cases in the windows, either, any more than she could see anyone in the grey murk outside.

For a moment, she crouched, just listening, and then she clamped her fingers over her scarred palms. Why be frightened? she admonished herself. Defiantly, she went to the door, ignoring her racing heart, and turned the locks.

It was Yasha: red-cheeked, bright-eyed and excited. There were sleet flecks on his shoulders and scarf.

Relief filled her, but only briefly. He cried, far too loudly, ‘Come quick!' He stared wildly past her, as if hoping for one of the men; then, seeing no one, he pulled her – just as she was, no coat or anything – out on to Moscow Prospekt.

Shivering, she resisted. ‘What…?' she exclaimed. Icy water was seeping into her flimsy slippers. Had he lost his mind? ‘It's freezing!'

‘Just here,' he shouted, oblivious, and dragged her – out of the slanting wet wind, at least – into the alleyway at the side of the building. There, he stopped, at her side and a little behind, protecting her against the weather. She was aware of her resistance melting away as his arm came across her shoulder, and she leaned into him.

There was a man slumped in the alley. He was not a tramp, not in that great mass of snowy fur. There was no smell of drink or filth either. Just an expensive silver fox from neck to toes, and a tall tube of an astrakhan hat, above. He was clutching at a puffy, half-closed blue eye socket, with a deep cut below, and muttering ‘Lord God in Heaven' as he rocked back and forth, oblivious to everything but his pain.

Shivering harder than ever, Inna looked more closely at the man. He seemed quite small under all those skins. And his chin was covered by the wrong kind of facial hair for the smart coat: the straggling beard of a peasant or a priest.

As if only just becoming aware of onlookers, the man looked up, held out bleeding, ungloved hands to them, and mumbled, ‘Help me…'

But, instead of helping, Yasha was hissing something into her ear.

Impatiently she shook her head. The man had been mugged. They should be getting him inside. Then she stared. Why, she could swear … wasn't that…? It was the one eye that was, more or less, open, that did it: the pale-blue gaze that went right to your soul.

‘Father Grigory,' she said, with sudden tenderness. She'd remembered him bigger and simpler. She took his freezing fingers in her hands. ‘Is it you?'

‘It's Rasputin,' she heard Yasha say in triumphant counterpoint. ‘The Empress's—'

They turned towards each other, startled.

‘The Empress's—?' she asked.

‘You
know—
?' she heard, again at the same moment, like the other part in a mocking duet. There was no time for argument. Whoever he was, he needed help.

‘Let's just get him into the warm,' Inna said.

As they heaved him through the door, the peasant kept tight hold of her hand. ‘You're a good girl,' he muttered pitifully.

They sat him by the blessed warmth of the stove, in a chair. He slumped down, looking stunned, and shut his eyes. Yasha, looking almost as stunned, went at a run for Madame Leman and the medicine chest. Inna, meanwhile, got out of her soaked slippers, grabbed one of the dry coats hanging up and shrugged it on, rubbing life back into her own sleet-lashed hands. She could see she'd need all her strength for what was to come.

Trying to quell the quiet dread inside, she bent over Father Grigory, saying, ‘Let's get you out of this coat.' She began unbuttoning it. He muttered something inaudible back, but to her private relief kept his eyes closed.

She could hear the whispers as the feet rushed downstairs – ‘What do you mean, she
knows
him?' – or if she couldn't, she could imagine them.

But when Yasha and Madame Leman did join them, it wasn't in the recriminatory spirit she'd feared.

Yasha went straight to the peasant and dropped on one knee to survey the damage visible now his coat was open. Yasha took in the red-and-blue hands, the damaged face, the blood on the collar. ‘Yes, you're in a bad way, brother, and no mistake,' he said straightforwardly. ‘Let's see what we can do for you.'

His voice was rough but warm. He put an arm round the peasant's back and heaved the trembling older man up. With Madame Leman at the peasant's other side, and Inna hanging back, they struggled up the stairs and into the kitchen.

There Madame Leman told Inna to bring hot water, and briskly bathed his cuts, put liniment on his eye and bound his knuckles. Her hands were gentle, and when he tried to speak, Madame Leman cut him off, saying practically, ‘Let's just get these dressings on, shall we?'

When he was all cleaned up, Madame Leman eased off his coat – it was far too hot for furs in the kitchen – and settled him in the wooden armchair by the stove with a blanket over his knees. She got down the bottle from the shelf, and poured him a big glass of vodka.

‘Medicinal,' she said briskly, sitting on a stool and holding it out.

But he only held up a bandaged hand, and shook his head.

Madame Leman looked surprised at that. Impressed, too. Inna thought he might take food, so she cut a few pieces of bread, and some cheese and pickled cucumber, and knelt down before him with the plate. But again, he didn't touch it.

Yasha was the only one left standing. Inna was surprised, and impressed, by the softness of his voice as he said, ‘That's better. Now, what happened?'

They found it hard to understand Father Grigory's story (Rasputin's story, Inna told herself as he spoke; but she couldn't altogether believe it). He stammered. He broke off and started over. He'd come to town for the Holy Synod meeting next week, they understood that much. And this morning his friend Iliodor had called by to take him to visit the bishop – a good man, Iliodor, an old friend, his dearest friend. (Inna noticed Yasha flinch at that, though she didn't know why.) And Bishop Hermogen, he was a good man too, Father Grigory muttered, with difficulty, a benefactor. He and Iliodor had taken a cab to the bishop's rooms at the Yaroslav Monastery. Father Grigory had been happy at the idea of a reunion in that lovely place. He'd spent some time at the monastery, once.