Twelve (16 page)

'It's odd for them to fuss about who gets the credit for the plan. They don't seem like the sort to worry much about their social standing.'

'That Iuda is different,' wheezed Dmitry, '
very
different. When I was with them in Wallachia, there were only ten of them – and, like I said, only four of those are amongst these – but all of them had that same subservient quality that these have; with the exception of Iuda. That's what makes them such good killers – like cannonballs – you aim and you fire, and anything that doesn't get out of the line of the shot is ripped apart. But not Iuda; he has his own desires – even vanities. He takes his own aim. I'd have thought it would lessen his ability to kill, but it makes him better. He can choose when to care and when not to. That's the most dangerous combination of all.'

We sat quietly and considered Dmitry's words. There was little comment to be made on them.

'So are we happy with the plan?' pressed Vadim.

'Yes, of course,' I said. Dmitry nodded. There was, once again, silence for a while.

'There's another odd thing about Iuda,' I said.

'And what's that?' asked Vadim.

'Well,' I said, 'Iuda seems to take all the decisions, but I thought Pyetr was supposed to be in charge.'

'Funny,' responded Vadim. 'I thought I was.'

Vadim was always in charge – always utterly in charge – when he needed to be. As Bonaparte had taken Vilna, we – the Lifeguard Hussars under General Uvarov, along with the whole of the First Army of the West – had retreated to Drissa. As they took Drissa, we retreated to Polotsk. Two months earlier, during a hot, sticky July, I had been lying on my bed in a room at an inn in Polotsk – a room which I was sharing with four others – when I heard a familiar voice.

'On your feet, Captain Danilov!'

He stood, leaning against the doorway, his face neither smiling nor stern, but his eyes confidently expressing the affection that we both knew existed between us. I raced over to greet him.

'Vadim! How are you? It's good to see you. Where have you been?'

He smiled. 'I've been a bit south of here, with Bagration.' He spoke the great general's name as though he knew him personally, which was quite possible. Vadim was the kind of officer who seemed to know everyone. He had connections in Petersburg society that most could only dream of. But unlike many other well-connected officers, Vadim chose to use those friendships to genuinely achieve military objectives, not simply to advance his own career. The favours he would quietly ask of Bagration would be for more rations or more arms for his men, not for promotion or a safe posting, well away from the front line.

'So how did he manage to get rid of you?' I asked.

'I told him I had some work to do. Speaking of which, are you busy?'

'Busy retreating,' I said bitterly. 'What did you have in mind?'

'Saving Russia.'

'As easy as that?'

He shrugged, taking my agreement as read. 'I'll meet you here tonight at eight. Oh, and see if you can bring Maksim Sergeivich along.'

I knew where Maks was billeted. He was easy to find, but surprisingly difficult to persuade to join us.

'It's been a long time since we worked together, Aleksei; back before Austerlitz, and I didn't manage too well then, did I? I think I'd do better just to stick with regular soldiering. I'd be putting you at risk.'

I realized now exactly how he, as a traitor in our midst, could see himself as a risk, but at the time it seemed quite uncharacteristic.

'You, Maks? A regular soldier?' I laughed as I spoke. When I had first met him, he had seemed the most unlikely of warriors.

Only once he had joined up with Dmitry, Vadim and me that first time did he really begin to fit in. 'You'd be bored rigid.'

'True enough, but that doesn't make it the wrong course of action.' This was more like classic Maks.

'But we need you.'

He said nothing. He looked torn. I could tell that in his heart there was nothing he would like more than to rejoin the old team, but something in his head held him back.

'Vadim told me to bring you,' I said.

'He ordered you?' A fleeting look of pride crossed his face at the mention of Vadim's name.

I pulled a face. 'You know Vadim,' I said.

'I'll see you at eight, then,' replied Maks.

Maks arrived first that evening, soon followed by Vadim, who had brought Dmitry with him. Dmitry was also in Polotsk with the First Army, so Maks and I had seen plenty of him. The only reunion was between Maks and Vadim.

'Back to the fold then, eh, Maksim?' said the latter, shaking his hand.

'With you the watchful shepherd?' I asked, looking at Vadim.

'More the wolf than the shepherd,' murmured Dmitry.

'We'll all be wolves, and pity the poor little French lambs,' said Vadim.

'So it's more like back to the wolf pack?' asked Maks.

And so, seven years after we had first formed, the wolf pack had regenerated. Soon Polotsk had fallen, and we had once again retreated. It wasn't until Smolensk was taken that Barclay de Tolly had spoken to Vadim (or perhaps the other way round) and we had been set on our present course. And now in Moscow, in September, the pack of four was down to three. Maks no longer suffered any risk of being bored.

Standing beside the Moskva river in the heart of Moscow, the three of us – Vadim, Dmitry and I – made a few more detailed arrangements. During his earlier discussions with Iuda, Vadim had selected seven meeting places from our list of those within Moscow itself. The easiest arrangement was to have a different rendezvous for each day of the week. The time would always be the same; nine in the evening.

'And we meet every night?' I asked.

'Iuda said that at least one of them would try to be there every night,' replied Vadim. 'As for us; I think we should all three try to make it whenever we can. We won't be seeing each other the rest of the time.'

'Why not?'

'We all need to stay under cover – and stay separate. It's up to you what you do. You can be a French officer or an escaped Russian convict – I don't need to know. We've got to be the eyes and ears of the Oprichniki. We need to see where the French are going and what they are doing. Then we need to tell the Oprichniki where to strike.'

'Or strike for ourselves,' I put in.

'No!' said Dmitry with sudden vehemence. Vadim and I both looked at him. 'That's not their style,' he added. 'They'd rather we left it to them.' I would have pressed him, but Vadim agreed with his conclusion, if not his reasoning.

'Dmitry's right,' said Vadim, 'regardless of their "style", our style is not to get ourselves killed. To put it crudely, the Oprichniki are more expendable than we are. I'm sorry, Dmitry, I know they're your friends, but that's the way it is.'

Dmitry smirked painfully. 'Oh, you know me, Vadim.
Everyone
is more expendable than I am.'

'So do we start meeting from tonight?' I asked.

'No,' said Vadim. 'Well – not necessarily. We can wait until the French actually arrive. I don't think that will be tonight. Take these.' He handed Dmitry and me each a purse. Inside was a small fortune in gold coins. 'This is not your money or even my money – it's the tsar's money. We may encounter expenses in the course of the next few weeks. If you don't need to spend it then don't. I'll be expecting most of it back once we've kicked out Bonaparte.'

We sank into silence, realizing that we might not see each other for many days, and that when we did, it would be in a city under French occupation.

'I wrote to Maks' mother,' I announced.

'Thank you,' said Vadim. 'I trust that he died a hero.'

I nodded. 'Any news from Yelena Vadimovna?'

'Last I heard she was well, but that was almost a month ago. She's due in a few weeks.'

'So we can't call you "granddad" yet?'

'Not yet,' replied Vadim levelly, 'or ever.'

Again we lapsed into quiet contemplation, sitting on the low wall and gazing into the river, reluctant to say our goodbyes. We were like three old men who have said, over the years, everything that could possibly be said, who sit outside all day, watching the world as it passes by them, fearful of leaving lest one of them never comes back again; three men who remember that in their distant youth they had been, and had forever expected to be, four. In such times as these, we couldn't even be sure of the luxury of getting old.

'Who were you talking to on the bridge?' asked Vadim.

'When?'

'When we found you – the wounded soldier.'

'Didn't you recognize him?'

Vadim shook his head. 'I barely saw him.'

'It was Pierre.' Vadim looked blank. 'The Frenchman. You remember, he told us all about Tsarina Yekaterina and the horse.'

'Passing himself off as a Russian?' Vadim asked, mildly angry. 'Why didn't you . . .' but I think he realized that I wasn't in the mood for unmasking any more French spies just now, and left the question unasked.

'Did Vadim tell you about the camp?' I asked Dmitry. 'And about Iuda, Matfei and Foma showing up?' Dmitry nodded.

'The interesting thing is, of course,' I continued slowly, watching Dmitry to gauge his reaction, to see if he would reveal anything, 'that he escaped – Pierre, I mean.'

'So the Oprichniki are not quite so infallible as we thought,' said Vadim.

'No indeed,' I went on. 'Not like them to leave a survivor who can go on and tell everything that happened to him.'

Dmitry turned to me with a look of searching horror in his eyes, straining to turn his battered body. There was something that Pierre might have told me – something terrible – and Dmitry was scrutinizing my very soul to see if Pierre
had
told me; to see what I knew. Of course, all I'd heard from Pierre were his confused, delirious ramblings, but now I knew from Dmitry that there was something I might have known – something that I now planned to find out.

Soon after, we took our leave of one another. This time there was little expression of emotion. We were all too intent on our personal plans for the next few days. Vadim had one final thing to say.

'We may not do this, you know. It's not something I want to face, but that's a big army out there. I just want to say that if any of us gets wounded, or if things get too hot for us in the city, then we shouldn't be afraid to leave. If we can let each other know, then all the better, but survival is just as important as heroism. All right?'

Dmitry and I both nodded in sombre agreement, and then we parted. Vadim had told us that it was our own affair where and how we hid ourselves, but by some instinct that we had established over years of working together, we headed off immediately in different directions. Vadim went west along the riverbank. Dmitry and I walked the opposite way in silence, but it was less than a minute before Dmitry turned north, back over the bridge.

I continued east. My plan of action had been, somewhat obliquely, inspired by the sight of the French footman being flogged. I soon turned south and headed over the canal into the region of Zamoskvorechye. It was easy enough to find an abandoned house, with planks nailed hastily over the windows and doors, and even easier to break through these naive defences. Whoever had quitted the house had been generous enough to take their servants with them, but not, fortunately for me, generous enough to take all their servants' possessions. It was no trouble for me to find a butler's uniform that fitted. I reckoned that, once the French arrived, a Russian servant would be able to move around the city relatively unmolested. If not, it would be the work of an instant to transform myself to a French émigré servant, welcoming with open arms the liberating army that had freed him from his cruel masters.

The empty house would also make a good place for me to stay, at least for the time being, although I would have to be wary, since the invading masses would also be looking for abandoned buildings where they could be billeted. There were plenty of alternative exits if I needed to leave in a hurry.

And so I waited. Moscow became quieter and emptier as those who had lingered finally left, but still the French did not come. I wandered the streets of my beloved city for the next few days, astounded by the horror of its tranquillity. A few people remained, perhaps one fiftieth of the population, and all were sapped by the distance that separated them from the next person they might see. A week earlier, Muscovites would have had to push and jostle to make it through the busy streets – and would have complained about the overcrowding too – but now it was almost like living in the countryside, but without knowing the rules for such a life. In the country, one can go for hours without seeing another human soul, but when one does, they are always a friend, always someone to converse with. In this deserted Moscow, other people were just such a rarity, but those who were left were used to ignoring the thousands of individuals that they might pass within the space of a single hour, and so they ignored the few that they saw now. Thus even those who remained, that fiftieth of the population, were weakened by their isolation to a further fiftieth of their usual vitality.

It was as if the entire city had ceased to breathe. The physical entity that was Moscow still existed, but the spirit that had made it live was gone. As yet the body that was left showed no sign of decay, but even the most imperceptive of observers would soon be able to see that it was dead. Soon the maggots of the French army would arrive to feast on the remains.

Strangely though, it was a full three days before they arrived. From what I could gather later on, Bonaparte had expected Kutuzov to make a further, final stand at the gates of the city and so had hesitated. Kutuzov made no such defence – it would have been futile – and by the evening of 1 September, it was clear that French troops would be entering the city the following day.

That night, I had a dream.

I
WAS IN MY BEDROOM – THE BEDROOM I HAD SLEPT IN AS A CHILD
.

I was well aware that this room was nothing like the room I had as a child but, as is often the case in dreams, I knew as an indisputable fact that this
was
the bedroom of my childhood. Two beds lay, quite incorrectly, along opposite walls of the room, with space between to walk. In the far wall, which the heads of both beds abutted, was a window. The curtains were drawn shut, but one could perceive that outside it was a bright, sunny winter's day.

On the left-hand bed lay a boy, sleeping on his side with his face to the wall so that only his back was in view. It was – and again I knew this for a fact without seeing his face – myself at the age of five or six. On the same bed, with her back to the boy, sat my wife, Marfa, showing polite interest in what she saw on the other side of the room.

Standing at the foot of the other bed was the Emperor Napoleon. He faced the woman who sat on the bed, his wife – the Empress Marie-Louise. In her lap she held a large bowl, and in the bowl there were figs. She held up a fig to the emperor, who took it in his hand. He raised it to his mouth and bit into it and, as the green skin ruptured, the red flesh and seeds oozed out around his lips. He licked his lips clean and then took four more bites from the fig until only the stalk was left. He popped this into his mouth and swallowed it, as if that had been the tastiest part of the whole fruit, and then he licked his fingers.

He held out his hand – his left hand this time – towards his empress for another fig and I noticed for the first time that his hand was missing its last two fingers, just like mine. I looked at my own left hand, cradling it in my right as I considered my disfigurement, and wondered how it was that I had never before remarked on the coincidence of Bonaparte having the same injury I did. I looked up again and found the emperor had gone, or at least he had gone from my view, for I was now looking through his eyes, although I did not know whether the others in the room were seeing Bonaparte or Aleksei Ivanovich standing before them.

I looked towards my empress to find that she too had transformed – though little transformation was needed – from Marie-Louise into my own Domnikiia. I sat down on the bed close beside her, glancing over to Marfa, who still displayed the same inquisitive equanimity at what was going on. Domnikiia still held the bowl on her lap, but now, rather than figs, it contained grapes. The fruit, I suddenly knew, and knew also that I had always known, was poisoned. Domnikiia proffered the bowl across the room to Marfa, silently inviting her to take one of those delicious grapes. Marfa presented the palm of her hand in polite refusal.

Looking once again at the boy behind her on the bed, it occurred to me that I had been mistaken in thinking that he was my younger self. Just as any father would know his son from a single hair of his head, I recognized the boy as my son, Dmitry Alekseevich. At the same moment, I understood that he was dead; poisoned by Domnikiia's grapes. The knowledge saddened me, but I would express the emotion no more deeply than that. At his belt he wore the little wooden sword that I had made for him the last time I had seen him.

The door, next to the foot of the bed on which the boy's body lay, opened and my mother walked into the room. She had died when I was twenty-two, and although, even in my dream, I was well aware of this, it seemed perfectly reasonable to now see my dead mother entering my childhood bedroom. Almost as soon as she had come into the room, she went across to Domnikiia, who once again held out the bowl to offer her a grape.

My mother declined with the polite warmth with which I felt distantly familiar. 'No thank you, my dear,' she said, smiling at Domnikiia. 'I'm already dead.' These were the only words that anyone spoke throughout the entire dream.

Then she went and sat on the other bed, next to my wife. They greeted one another with courtesy, but with no curiosity.

Domnikiia held the bowl out to my mother again. As she did so, I saw on her hand a ring. It was the figure of a dragon, with a body of gold, emerald eyes and red, forked tongue; the same ring that Zmyeevich had been wearing that night when we met. Around the ring, Domnikiia's hand looked old and pale. Decaying skin was flaking away from her shrivelled fingers. I looked up to her face and saw that it was not her hand that wore the ring, but the hand of Zmyeevich himself. He was leaning over her from behind, holding and covering her hand, and guiding her as she offered the bowl of grapes. He looked older than when I had seen him. His grey hair had become white and his skin was decrepit and terribly wrinkled. His eyes were the eyes of an old man, begging to be remembered as he was in his youth.

Still my mother and Marfa maintained their polite rejection of the grapes. Zmyeevich left Domnikiia and went over to the door through which my mother had entered. He opened the door and, with a gesture of his hand, ushered in the Oprichnik Pyetr. Pyetr crossed the room to stand behind Domnikiia. At his entrance, Domnikiia had glanced towards the door to see who it was, but having seen, indicated no further interest and returned her gaze to me. Pyetr bent forward. As he did so, his hand slipped under her arm and around her, coming to rest upon her breast. His head hovered above her shoulder for a moment as he paused to lick his lips, then he bent down further, gently kissing her neck, and at the same time, noticed by no one else in the room but me, he squeezed her breast in his hand.

Domnikiia maintained her gaze on mine. As Pyetr kissed her and caressed her, her eyes widened very slightly, like a woman who has just seen her lover across a room of friends and tries to hide her reaction from those around her. Pyetr stood up and removed his hand and, as he did so, Domnikiia reached into the bowl and took out a grape, which she held out towards me. I opened my mouth, in full knowledge that the grapes were poisoned, and let her slip it inside, closing my lips quickly so as to briefly feel her fingers between them as she took her hand away.

Pyetr left, although I have no idea how, and at the door, Zmyeevich let in the next Oprichnik, Andrei. His behaviour was identical to Pyetr's; the kiss on Domnikiia's neck and the hand on Domnikiia's breast. Her response was once again the same and I once again greedily consumed the grape as she gave it to me, aware that I would be poisoned in the same way that my son, lying lifeless on the bed across the room, had been poisoned, but still eager to eat the grapes because of the slightest of touches of Domnikiia's fingers that accompanied them.

And so the story retold itself over and over for each of the Oprichniki. Zmyeevich showed into the room next Iakov Zevedayinich, then Ioann, then Filipp, Varfolomei, Foma, Matfei, Iakov Alfeyinich, Faddei and Simon. Each one kissed and fondled Domnikiia, and each time she responded by feeding me another poisoned grape. I swallowed each grape gladly, with an increasing sense of sorrow that they would cause my death, but with no desire to do anything to prevent it.

After Simon had come and gone, I knew that there was just one more Oprichnik left to arrive. I glanced over to the other bed, where my wife and my mother still both sat with the same look of docile curiosity on their faces, knowing in their hearts the danger of what they were witnessing, but too indulgent of my eccentric whims to criticize these people, whom they took to be my friends. Behind them, I noticed that the little wooden sword at my son's side was broken in two. And my son was bigger, much bigger – but still dead. It was now Maks, and I understood then that it always had been, although I could still not see his face.

Zmyeevich had one final guest to invite into the room. It was Iuda. He walked up to Domnikiia, but did nothing more than bow slightly and tip his hat. Then he went over to the window and flung the curtains wide open, filling the room with light. Through the window I saw the winter scene outside. A small pond sat in the middle of a snow-covered garden. A wide, jagged crack split the sheet of ice that lay on top of it. Iuda turned away from the window and towards me with a triumphant smile on his face, his arms still raised in the air from where they had clutched the curtains, accepting the cheers of a crowd that I could not hear or see, but that I knew was there.

He stood behind Domnikiia and bent over her, not to kiss her or caress her as the others had done, but simply to take a grape from the bowl in front of her. He walked over to me and casually offered me the grape, which I took in my hand, but did not eat. I held it between my thumb and fingers and offered it back to Domnikiia, but she refused, shaking her head and backing away from the death that she was well aware the grapes would bring and which I had so calmly accepted. Iuda again stepped behind her and held her head still, allowing me to hold the grape up to her lips, but still she kept them tight shut, squeezing her eyes shut as well, as if to add to her impregnability.

I crushed the grape against her lips and, though she tried to turn her head away, she could not. Iuda's grip held her firm. I saw my two remaining fingers rubbing the skin and crushed flesh of the grape against Domnikiia's lips, trying to force her to accept even the slightest morsel of the poison. I looked at the stumps of my two missing fingers and thought how much easier it would have been, had my hand been complete, to force her lips open and make her taste the fruit.

And then I noticed, curled around my middle finger, a ring shaped like a dragon, with a body of gold, emerald eyes and red, forked tongue.

I woke up.

Whether a dream is a nightmare is a question not of content, but of mood. Nothing in my dream had been conspicuously horrifying, but I awoke with the feeling – as certain as any knowledge I have ever had – that something irredeemably awful had taken place, something that had destroyed my whole world. Had I been asked what that thing was, I would have been unable to say, and in the time it would have taken me to recall what it was, I would have woken up enough to realize it was nothing. But for a few seconds after waking, I had no doubt as to either its existence or its enormity.

At the moment of waking I leapt out of bed, instinctively feeling that my fear would require a remedy of physical action. My surroundings were strange. I had to do something to fight off the terror that confronted me. But I couldn't remember what I had to do – or even what that terror was.

Within seconds, wakefulness returned to me fully. I was in a bedroom in the abandoned house in Zamoskvorechye. This was the fourth night I'd been there. I recalled my dream, and could have recited every detail of it. Rationality took control of me as I understood that the fears were in my own mind – that they had no other reality. The sense of relief permeated both mind and body like a warming glass of vodka. But still it had been a nightmare. Still I was haunted by the childlike fear of going back to sleep and possibly returning to that horrifying place from which, by waking, I had just escaped.

I lay back down on the bed. I had no idea what time it was – outside, it was still dark as pitch and I felt no urge to light a candle. I wondered whether I would be able to return to sleep. As a young child, when I'd had a nightmare, my mother had sometimes let me sleep in her bed until morning. My father would not hear of such mollycoddling, so it was only when he was away that it was allowed. After he died, I grew up very quickly and so the need no longer arose. Even then I would fail to go back to sleep, but I would lie awake in terror in my own bed, like a man.

And now I
was
a man, and still I lay awake. I went over the dream again and again in my mind, trying to determine which specific element it was that had turned it into a nightmare, or to fall back to sleep in the attempt. It was something about the grapes that seemed most resonant with the sense of fearfulness that still lingered in me; something in the act of Domnikiia's offering them, of my taking them, although the prospect of my death from the poison held little apprehension for me.

I may have dozed as I lay there, yet I would swear that I was wide awake throughout; just as curled up in the safety of my mother's bed I had still never felt safe enough to slip back into the world of unconsciousness. The horror would always be ended by the sound of birds. As dawn broke, birdsong would hail the resurrection of the sun and the beginning of the new day. Time – which had stopped in the continual, unchanging darkness of the early hours, when there was no way of telling whether one's last thought had occurred a second ago or an hour ago – would begin again.

And so there in Moscow, the dawn chorus, which I still, as I had since childhood, associated both with being terrified and with the termination of that terror, eventually heralded the new day. Time began again and the night, and the nightmare, could be forgotten.

As rationality at last became fully resurgent in me I realized that a rational man should find much more to fear in that particular day than there had been in the night before it. That was the day that the French would enter Moscow.

It was well into the afternoon when the French finally arrived from the west, even as the last brigades of what remained of the Russian army scuttled away antipodally to the east. Amongst the last to leave, so the rumour-mongers would have it, had been Count Rostopchin, the city's governor. Fearful that the Russian mob would not let him depart, he had delivered to them a restaurateur by the name of Vereshchagin who was accused of being a French spy. The mob had torn Vereshchagin to pieces, while Rostopchin slipped away to freedom, unmolested. It was not the only time that I would find parallels between myself and Moscow's governor.

When they did arrive, the invaders were led not by Bonaparte, but by his brother-in-law, Marshal Murat, whom Bonaparte (ashamed, as any republican would be, of having a common soldier marry his sister) had elevated to the rank of King of Naples. Bonaparte himself was to follow Murat into the city the following day. I secreted myself among a small crowd of inquisitive Muscovites who witnessed Murat's arrival with more curiosity than fear or respect. Many thought that they were seeing Bonaparte himself, but I had seen enough pictures of the Little Corporal to know that this was not he. The flamboyant uniform and loose, curly, almost feminine hair were styles that Bonaparte would have abhorred, and left me in no doubt as to which one of France's marshals this was.