Zugzwang (31 page)

Spethmann–Kopelzon
After 50 a4. Zugzwang. Black is running out of moves.

He stared at the board, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. He had no choice but to move the king away from the defence of the f-pawn. His hand trembled as he moved the king to d8. I played at once, moving my queen to f8.

‘Check,' I said quietly.

He played his queen to e8, a forlorn blocking of the check; it would change nothing. I played my king to g7. The f-pawn would fall after the exchange on f8. The game was mine.

Spethmann–Kopelzon
After 52 Kg7. Black is in zugzwang. Whatever Kopelzon does,
he will lose the f7-pawn, and with it the game.

It was not in Kopelzon's nature to be a good loser. He did not formally resign. He did not turn his king over. He did not offer to shake hands. He got to his feet.

‘You look very pleased with yourself,' he said.

‘You can have no idea how unhappy I am,' I said.

I got up. I said, ‘Don't go to the recital, Reuven. You've already ruined Rozental. Don't destroy still more lives.'

‘Are you pleading for the tsar?' he said with a sneer. ‘After all he has done?' He picked up the gun from the table. ‘Just this afternoon he set the Cossacks on a demonstration of workers. They're saying more than thirty people were killed – and that's just today, here in St Petersburg!'

‘I beg you, Reuven, for pity's sake.'

‘Pity? Pity?' he spat back. ‘And where is your pity, Otto? Where are your tears? You are Dr Otto Spethmann' – he made the name sound utterly distasteful – ‘you have made your own way in the world. Good for you. You have left the shtetl and the Pale behind. Why not? It's nicer to live in a big house on Furshtatskaya Street than in a stinking wooden shack next to a cattle market. But, Otto, the men and women and children you left behind cannot follow you to a better life. In Dvinsk, your father's brothers are still alive. You have cousins and aunts and nieces and nephews. They have lice in their hair and holes in their teeth, and they live entirely without hope that tomorrow will be better than today. If you're so overflowing with pity, go to your uncles. Go to your nephews. Lavish your pity on them. And then, when you've looked in the faces of the children who will never know anything but squalor and violence, ask yourself this question: now that I have seen what I have seen, am I going to turn my eyes away?'

He stared at me with contempt. He had always held me in contempt. This was the truth of it. It was not incompatible
with his love for me, which I believed even at that moment was genuine.

‘Get out, Otto! Go and bury your head in the sand,' he said, marching to the door. ‘That way you won't have to see the suffering all around you.'

‘By killing the tsar you will end the suffering?' I asked.

He transferred the gun to his left hand so as to unlock the door. ‘I know that if we do nothing, nothing will change.'

I started to laugh.

‘What's so funny?' he said suspiciously.

‘You play the part so convincingly.'

‘What part?'

‘Spare me the lines you used on the poor souls you duped when you were in Paris and London. Spare me the tears, Reuven.'

He did not move as I withdrew the Mauser. He had not expected this.

‘How long have you been in the pay of Colonel Gan?' I said.

He blanched. I did not wait for an answer. I am not sure that he had one. Even as the bullet struck him he did not believe it.

‘Oh,' he gasped, staring into my eyes.

I heard movement coming from the bedroom and swivelled round, ready to shoot again.

A woman, flushed and still sweaty, ran into the room and let out a cry. Her silk robe came open. She was naked underneath, her body as shiny as an egg yolk.

Minna did not even glance at me. She went forward to Kopelzon. Blood was blooming over his white dress shirt. His face had drained of colour. She helped him into a chair.

I picked up the telephone and asked to be put through to the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre. I told him that Reuven Moiseyevich Kopelzon was sadly indisposed and would not be able to play that night.

I put the phone down.

‘I'm sorry, Minna,' I said.

Minna buried her head in Kopelzon's lap and started to weep. I waited with her until Kopelzon took his final breath. She did not believe me. But I was sorry.

I crossed Krukov's Canal and made my way to the Mariinsky Theatre. I saw a troop of Cossack guards with long hair and in scarlet tunics trot out of the square, their sabres flashing and their horses glistening with health and sweat. They were escorting a four-horse calèche away from the theatre. In it I glimpsed the tsar in an admiral's uniform and the tsarina in a brocade dress and diamond tiara. Other carriages were following the tsar's. Forty or fifty curious onlookers, held back by white-coated gendarmes on either side of the main entrance, watched as the guests departed from the recital that would never take place.

It was 9.10 p.m. I had less than an hour to get to the Finland Station. Gendarmes, soldiers and Cossacks were still roaming the near-empty streets, swinging their clubs and rifle butts at anyone who ventured out. None of the taxi drivers in the square was prepared to take me across the Neva, saying it was still too dangerous after the riot in the afternoon. Eventually I found a droshky. The driver agreed to take me as far as the Alexandrovski Bridge. From there I walked to the station. Catherine and Anna were standing together at the ticket barrier, looking anxiously about. Catherine was the first to see me and she ran into my arms.

It was the first time we had spent the night together and not made love. This is the real world. This is what love in the real world is like. I tried to recall the last time Elena and I had made love but could not. What a thing to forget. The real world.

The attendant had insisted on lighting the stove in the sleeping car even though the night was mild. I had a terrible headache. I slipped out of the bunk and dressed as quietly as I could. My right hip had all but seized up.

‘What's the matter?' Anna said sleepily.

‘Nothing,' I said, stroking her hair and kissing her. ‘Go back to sleep.'

‘I don't want to stay in Paris.'

‘Let's see how we feel when we get there,' I said. ‘We can rest for a day or two and then decide where to go.'

‘I would like to see London.'

‘Sleep,' I whispered, ‘sleep.'

‘My mother had a half-sister – Ivana,' she said. ‘She was quite a bit older. She married a lovely man when she was twenty-six. She and her husband never spent a single night apart in all the time they were married. They died within three months of each other.' She smiled sadly. ‘I don't know why I told you that.'

I kissed her. ‘Don't worry,' I said. ‘I won't be long.'

I walked the length of the corridor, limping as I went, and passed through the door at the end of the carriage. An
attendant in a black blouse and belt, with wide trousers tucked into his polished boots and a round fur cap, asked if he could be of assistance.

‘Is the restaurant car still open?' I asked.

‘If his honour continues for two more carriages he will find it.'

The car was empty. I took a seat and ordered a brandy.

‘Where are we?' I asked the attendant.

‘We'll soon be in Wirballen,' he said. ‘His honour has his passport ready? The guards will check his papers and baggage there. Is there anything else his honour needs?'

‘Do you think you could find me a pen and some writing paper?'

He returned a minute or two later with pen and paper. I wrote the date, 27 April 1914, ‘near Wirballen' and ‘My darling daughter …' Everything at the station had been so fraught. I had a thousand things to say to her yet I could not find a way to say any of them.

I squinted through the window out into the darkness. I turned back to my letter but I wrote no words.

The train's brakes ground and squealed and we started to slow. We were coming into Wirballen. I finished my brandy and made to go back to Anna. The attendant stooped to look out of the window.

‘Strange,' he said as the train came to a halt. ‘We're not due in Wirballen for another twenty minutes.'

The engine huffed. Steam billowed back, clouding the view.

‘Very strange,' the attendant said, going off in search of someone who would tell him what was going on.

I settled back into my seat. Ten minutes later the attendant returned. He had no explanation for the delay. I ordered another brandy.

After an hour the train started up again. The lights of the town came into view. Was it possible Gan had discovered my
escape route? Would Lychev have confessed? I debated with myself whether I should rouse Anna. Should we get off the train and try to find another way out of the country?

‘This is getting very odd,' the attendant said.

‘What's going on?'

‘We're not pulling into the station.' He scratched his head. ‘They're putting us in a siding.'

I looked out the window. Instead of the station platform I saw the silhouettes of sheds and cranes and industrial buildings.

A passenger entered and asked why he couldn't get off the train. Others behind him started to mutter and complain. After some moments the chief attendant came and explained the delay would be a short one and they would soon be at the station.

‘Why can't we just get out here and walk the rest of the way?' one of the aggrieved passengers said.

‘No one is allowed on or off the train,' the chief attendant said firmly. ‘Those are our orders.'

‘What do you mean your orders?' a passenger shouted back.

I got up and went quickly to the sleeping car. Policemen were patrolling the track outside.

Anna was profoundly asleep. I shook her once. She moaned but did not wake. Why bother her with this? I thought. There was nothing to be done, except to wait. I returned to the restaurant car, by now filled with bored and frustrated passengers.

At 3.15 in the morning the train suddenly lurched backwards. Dozing passengers with the clammy sheen of sweat on their brows looked up hopefully. At once the attendant became the recipient of a score of shouted enquiries.

‘I don't know,' he kept protesting, ‘I don't know anything.'

We were being shunted back onto the main line. A cheer went up when we pulled forward again and the station came into view in the thin, early-morning light. I hurried for the sleeping car.
Anna lay in exactly the same position as I had left her, as deeply asleep as the child the parent carries from carriage to bed after a long journey late at night. I ran through the possibilities: Had Lychev confessed? Had he revealed the details of our escape? Or was our delay simply a matter of the track's integrity, the engine's health, the timetable's soundness? Trains in Russia were frequently late. I did not want to worry her. I returned again to the restaurant car.

The train pulled into the station. Within a couple of minutes the car had emptied as passengers went to gather their luggage. I was again alone with the attendant.

A man entered at the far end. He wore no hat but I did not recognise him at first because he was the last person I was expecting to see.

Gregory Petrov slid into the seat opposite and offered me a cigarette.

‘What are you doing here, Gregory?' I asked.

‘I'm here to offer you a deal on behalf of a third party.'

‘That's interesting,' I said. ‘Who is this third party?'

He licked his lips. ‘Peter Zinnurov.'

‘I didn't know you were friends.'

Petrov's eyes were tired and sad. ‘I loathe everything about Zinnurov. Everything.'

‘But you have come on his behalf,' I said. ‘At his bidding.'

‘Let me tell you about my brother,' he said, putting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it. He inhaled deeply. ‘The one who was arrested with me when I was a kid.'

‘You told me you made that story up.'

He blew out a jet of smoke and sniffed. ‘Sadly, no – it's a true story.' The facile grin he had fixed to his face gave way to a truer, melancholy expression. ‘The officer in charge of our case was as good as his word. Ivan and I were both sent to prison as subversives. We were children. I was sixteen – Ivan a
year younger – but I knew, in my bones I knew, I would survive. Ivan was made differently. He was frightened. The guards were vicious, the cell was dark and cold. Sometimes when he cried I got angry and told him to pull himself together. He would just go silent. He was so skinny. Tiny, thin little arms, hollow cheeks and big eyes. He was so small.'

The attendant brought us brandy. Petrov threw his down in one gulp and ordered another. On the platform the first bell sounded: fifteen minutes to departure.

‘In the end I couldn't stand being in the same cell, just couldn't bear it any longer. Guilt, I suppose.' His eyes were moist. He chewed his lower lip. ‘I bribed a guard with a few cigarettes to move me to another cell. It was a Saturday, in the afternoon. The next morning the guard came into my new cell. “Your brother's dead,” he said. “He hanged himself during the night.” He was fifteen. Another month and he would have been sixteen.'