The Jewel of St Petersburg (32 page)

“Viktor,” Sergeyev said at his side, “don’t blame yourself. For the danger to union leaders in retaliation for the attack on Stolypin.”

“How can I not?”

“We always knew we would have blood on our hands. Trotsky warned us of that.”

“Did he warn us of—” He stopped his tongue. His companion had enough problems of his own. “Tell me, my friend, how is your wife? Has she given birth yet?”

“Any day now.”

Arkin could hear the pride in Sergeyev’s voice and felt again that unexpected spike of envy. Like a nail hammered under a rib.
One day,
he told himself,
one day you’ll have your own woman. And your own child.

“Give her my best wishes,” he laughed, “and tell her—”

A hand seized his shoulder. He was slammed against a brick wall, knocking the breath from his lungs. His own fist shot out, his knee rammed into a groin. He heard his attacker grunt, felt the hand on his shoulder grow slack, and a body slid to the ground. Another figure loomed out of the darkness.

“Stand still or I’ll put a fucking bullet between your eyes.”

Arkin stood still. He glanced quickly to his right to check on Sergeyev, but his friend was already motionless, his shoulders gathering snow. He was bent over, hugging his arm in its sling as if it had taken a beating.

“What do you bastards want?” Arkin demanded.

“We want some answers from you.”

The man with the Mauser in his hand was broad chested with a beer belly and rolls of flesh instead of muscle. The other, shorter one was sprawled on the icy ground clutching his groin and cursing. They wore black leather coats, shiny as snakeskin, and possessed the cold focused eyes of hunters. They were the Okhrana. No one else.

“It depends,” Arkin said politely, “what the questions are.”

The one on the ground did not take kindly to Arkin’s response, so he stumbled to his feet and slammed an elbow into Arkin’s gut.

“Keep this bastard off me,” Arkin growled, “or I’ll tear his balls off.”

“Vroshchin, back ofl!”

“What questions?” Arkin repeated.

“What are you doing roaming the streets at this hour of the morning?”

Arkin shrugged. “A card game. Nothing sinister. The only trouble is that my stupid friend here lost his rent money and is bleating like a lamb at the thought of telling his wife. Isn’t that so, Mikhail?”

Sergeyev grunted. Arkin laughed and had the satisfaction of seeing the hard mouths of the secret police pull into a sneering smile. The trigger finger relaxed.

“He’s in enough trouble already,” Arkin added, and slapped Sergeyev on the back, straightening him up. “Let me take the poor idiot home.” He tucked his arm under his friend’s good elbow and started to swing him away a few paces. “Good night.
Spokoinoi nochi,
my friends. It’s too cold to hang around here.” The snow fluttered down thickly, and he was thankful for it.

“Wait.”

A few more steps and the snow would swallow them. “Yes?”

“Stand against the wall, hands behind your head.”

“But why—”

“Against the wall.”

Arkin backed against the wall, drawing Sergeyev with him, but he noticed his friend was shaking. The Okhrana officers proceeded to search them with rough hands, turning out their pockets, opening their coats, and Sergeyev kept a protective hand curled over his sling. Arkin’s mind was racing. Something wasn’t right.

“Where have you come from?” demanded the fleshy one with the gun.

“I told you, a card game.”

“Or one of the meetings of revolutionary scum?”

“No,
nyet
, of course not. I work for one of Tsar Nicholas’s government ministers.”

That made them blink, and the fierce grip on his sleeve loosened a fraction. Sweat trickled down his back despite the cold. In the thin ridge of light that fell from an upstairs window, cutting a yellow slice out of the darkness, he could see the misery on Sergeyev’s face.

“Here! What’s this?” The shorter policeman was yanking at Sergeyev’s injured arm, dragging off the sling. “This fucker has something hidden in here.” The man pushed his fingers under the top layer of bandage and drew out a small pistol that fitted in the palm of his hand. It gleamed pearl white in the falling snow.

Damn you, Sergeyev. Damn you.

The men in black coats showed their teeth. The one with the pistol slammed its butt against Sergeyev’s arm, and he buckled with no sound, but Arkin seized him before he fell and swung him back like a battering ram against the two men. Their eyes opened in surprise as Arkin threw his weight behind the push, and they skidded backward on their heels, arms flailing. The ice underfoot won. Both crashed to the ground. Arkin heard a skull hit concrete, but he didn’t stop to ask whose brains had been rearranged. He snatched the small gun from where it lay on the ground and seized Sergeyev’s good arm.

“Run.”

They ran. Skittering in and out of alleys, pounding down slippery banks, throwing themselves over railings and under archways, hearts straining in the freezing night air. Always they kept to unlit streets. Arkin was slowed by his wounded friend but refused to release his grip on him while behind them they could hear their pursuers’ shrill shouts and foul-mouthed curses. Only once did Arkin risk a glance over his shoulder, and he saw that the shorter one was in the lead, face sharp as a hound on the scent. The fatter one was struggling to keep up but failing. Four shots rang out, but it was too dark and each time the bullet whistled wide.

They kept running and dodging, twisting and turning.

With Sergeyev in tow he scrambled down to a spot beneath a canal bridge and they crouched under its arch, lungs dragging in freezing air. Underfoot the ice crackled if they moved so much as a knee.

“Where are we?” Sergeyev whispered in his ear.

“No idea, but stay quiet.”

For thirty minutes they remained immobile, no more than shadows, disturbing only a cat on its nocturnal run across the thick ice of the canal. When eventually they climbed up the frozen bank, everywhere was silent. The snowfall was heavier, stinging their eyes and gathering in mounds on the toes of their boots. They hurried through the streets, heads ducked down, keeping to the darkest areas of the city, and when they finally reached the Liteiny district they stopped.

Through the lace curtain of snow Arkin peered at his friend’s strained face. “How’s your arm?”

“It’s still attached.”

“Did those bastards do much damage?”

Sergeyev shrugged. “Wherever the Okhrana go, they do damage.”

“You shouldn’t have been carrying the gun. Why did you have it?”

“I swapped a good spade for it in a bar. I thought I’d be safer.” He shrugged again. “I was wrong.”

Arkin thrust the dainty pistol into Sergeyev’s pocket. “Sell it,” he suggested. “It will only get you killed. Buy some food for your wife instead.”

“No.” Sergeyev returned it to him with an apologetic grimace. “You keep it.”

Arkin didn’t argue. Sergeyev was less likely to get into trouble without it. “Take care, my friend.” He rested a hand on his shoulder. “Tell your wife from me, good luck with the baby.”

“It’s what I’m fighting for. To build my son a better future. Thank you, comrade.” He said it awkwardly. “For helping me. My wife will starve if I’m thrown in prison.”

Arkin nodded, an image of her swollen belly vivid in his mind as he drifted away into the night, the snow so thick now that the air was almost solid. In his pocket his hand curled around the pearl-handled gun. Sergeyev was right. It did make him feel safer.

Twenty

W
ELL, HOW DO I LOOK?”

“Like a nun.” Katya inspected her sister with a critical eye. “It’s the headdress.”

Valentina twirled on the spot to show off her nurse’s uniform from all angles. It was white and stiff and made her feel like someone else. In the mirror she stared at the tight wimple crossing her forehead in a straight line and at the neat linen folds hanging down to her shoulders, hiding every trace of her hair. It was her first day, and nerves scuttled like ants in her stomach. She patted the starched apron over the plain white frock and smiled at Katya.

“Take a good look.”

“Why?”

“Because when I return from the hospital, I will be different.”

Katya laughed. “Dirty and smelly and dead on your feet, you mean.”

“Exactly!”

But the look that passed between the sisters lasted a long moment because both knew that wasn’t what she meant at all.

S
T. ISABELLA’S HOSPITAL WAS A RABBIT WARREN OF CORRIDORS. Its drafty wards seemed to suck all sound into its granite walls, leaving the place muted and blank. The murmur of voices remained subdued, the groans and coughs halfhearted, as though life within these thick walls existed at a minimal level. The first day altered Valentina’s sense of perspective. It seemed that as
Sanitarka
Ivanova she was no longer an individual, but an insignificant part of an indifferent machine, and this realization took time to get used to. She had expected other things but not that. The day started with an inspection. A row of nurses lined up and
Medsestra
Gordanskaya’s small eyes narrowed with pleasure as she pointed out faults. She picked on shoes, apron straps, frayed cuffs, fingernails. Valentina displayed her hands and heard the irritated puff of displeasure when no fault could be found.

Bedpan fodder.
Gordanskaya was right. She stopped even noticing the stench of them. She was taught how to make envelope corners on blankets and sheets, folding them around the thin mattresses, told to make and remake them until she did it right. She practiced turning patients in bed and maneuvering soiled sheets from under them.

She was put on a female ward with rows of sad fearful eyes and untidy hair. But Valentina learned not to walk quickly. She learned to look, swiveling her head from side to side, seeing the patients occupying themselves with small empty tasks. Playing cards, sewing, picking their feet, thinking about their next meal. Stiff bodies and closed eyes made her nervous. She witnessed one young frizzy-haired patient suddenly sit up, screaming that there was a worm slithering in her heart and tearing the dressing off her chest so that her breasts hung naked and bloody. Valentina ran to fetch help, calling out for assistance. For that lapse she was reprimanded and had to face Gordanskaya in full flow.

“You don’t run.”

“You don’t shout.”

“You don’t panic.”

“You don’t scare the patients.”

“You don’t make yourself look like the fool you are.”

“You don’t disgrace St. Isabella’s.”

“You don’t.”

Valentina stared straight ahead, unblinking in the face of Gordanskaya’s wrath, her hands behind her back, toes clenched in her shoes. “I’ll do better,” she vowed.

“You’ll bloody well have to.”

She would bloody well have to.

By the end of the day her hands were raw and her feet felt as if dogs had chewed them up and spat them out. But she had gotten through it without killing any of the patients. That was an achievement. She threw her navy cloak over her uniform, pulled on her valenki boots, and stumbled out into a dark and snowy world.

It seemed impossible that the city of St. Petersburg had continued its usual life, gone through the motions of a normal day when hers had been so completely abnormal. But the carriages rattled past, footmen shouting to each other as they held on at the back. Trams clanked. Boys trundled laden sleds and lights glimmered through the snowfall. Nothing had changed. Except her.

She pulled up her hood and hurried down the steps.

J
ENS WAS THERE. WAITING FOR HER AT THE CORNER UNDER the streetlamp, just the way he had promised. She walked into the circle of his arms and felt her fatigue and the dull shame of her mistake vanish. Her forehead rested on the damp wool of his coat and she could smell his sweat and exhaustion, a thousand times worse than her own.

“A good day?” he asked.

“Good, yes. The way having a painful tooth removed is good.”

He laughed and pulled her tighter.