Zugzwang (6 page)

‘If there was someone in authority to whom you could explain this error, I would be very grateful.'

Zinnurov clasped his hands together and leaned back in his chair. ‘My daughter says you are an honourable man, Spethmann, and I have no reason to doubt her estimation of you. But my difficulty is that I do not know you. You understand my position? I cannot go to, say, Maklakov, who is the minister of the interior, on behalf of someone for whom I am unable personally to vouch. You could be, for all I know, a Bolshevik or' – Did I detect a sly look here? – ‘a Bundist. I am sorry, Spethmann,' he said with a helpless gesture, ‘I never like to disappoint my daughter, but on this occasion I am afraid I simply cannot assist you.'

I got to my feet. ‘Thank you for finding the time to see me,' I said formally. I did not feel disappointment, rather distaste – for the man in front of me but also for myself. What had I been thinking in coming here? To this man?

His smile was equally formal, a slight, quick tightening of the corners of his mouth. We walked to the door.

‘How do you know my daughter?' he asked conversationally.

‘I am her doctor.'

He threw his head back and squinted long-sightedly at me. ‘I thought Dautov was her doctor.'

‘I am a neurologist,' I said, ‘and a psychoanalyst.'

‘I see,' he said uncertainly. His features took on a thoughtful cast. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I may have been hasty.' He indicated the sofa. ‘Please …'

Pride and principle dictated I refuse his invitation; my fears for Catherine directed otherwise. I settled in my seat again while he refilled my glass.

‘Spethmann?' he mused aloud. ‘I do not know the name. How long have you lived in St Petersburg?'

‘I was born here.'

‘Really?'

The Mountain's own origins were obscure. It was rumoured his grandfather had been a serf and his father a conscript in the war in the Crimea. What was certain was that all that he possessed, which was a very great deal, he had created for himself. His spectacular rise in the world was the work of an especially powerful personality. Everyone knew how, in the chaotic days following the Revolution of 1905, he made a speech in the first Duma declaring that those who sought to bring down tsarism might just as well try to demolish Mount Narodnaya with wooden spoons and subsequently earned himself his nickname – the Mountain.

‘A psychoanalyst, you say? Is something wrong with Anna? Is there some doubt as to her … sanity?'

‘Not at all,' I hastened to assure him. ‘Anna is perfectly sane.'

‘It's the nightmares, isn't it,' Zinnurov said, a shrew look coming over him. When I did not answer, he said, ‘Has the numbness also returned?'

‘I am not at liberty to discuss my patients' condition,' I said.

‘Even with a father?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘I hope you understand that Anna is, sadly, a confused and unstable young woman.'

I said nothing. He stared past me to his own reverie. ‘She was such a beautiful child,' he said, making his voice nostalgic. ‘Everyone loved her. When a child is happy, completely untroubled by anything in the world, or indeed anything in herself, she is surrounded by a glow. You're a father, Spethmann. You know what I mean. A real, physical glow that adults can actually see with their eyes. If you could have seen her face then, Spethmann. When you were with Anna you felt as though you were being touched by magic.'

He paused to draw in a deep breath. ‘Her mother died,' he said. ‘That was it – the beginning of her troubles.'

‘I understood the nightmares began before her mother's death?' I ventured.

‘Is that what she says?'

‘It is the impression I have received,' I said.

‘No,' he answered firmly. ‘She is either deliberately deceiving you – why, I have not the least idea – or she is genuinely confused and cannot remember. She was sixteen when her mother died and she changed overnight from a carefree child to a troubled young woman with a rather disturbed imagination.'

‘I have to say I have never seen evidence of a “disturbed imagination”. '

‘Haven't you?' he said. ‘I have.' He sipped his wine before continuing. ‘And then of course came the marriage. You know her husband?'

‘I have met Boris Vasilevich once or twice.'

Zinnurov shook his head dismissively. ‘An odious little man – vain, pompous, ambitious. A violent temper, too. I could never understand what she saw in him. He's not exactly handsome either. And there are no children, which says a great deal about a marriage, wouldn't you say?'

‘Who really knows what goes on between a husband and wife?' I said blandly.

‘Does she tell you what goes on in her marriage?' When I did not answer, he asked with brutal and surprising directness, ‘Has the marriage been consummated, do you think?'

He peered at me. Again I said nothing. In our early sessions I had asked Anna, as I would any patient, about the state of her relations with her husband. Her answers had given me no reason to suspect the marriage was white.

I said, ‘How would you describe your relationship with Anna?'

Zinnurov gave me a sad, wise smile. ‘I have not seen or heard from my daughter since last September. It is not my choice. I've tried to get in touch with her. I've tried to get to the bottom of it. When she telephoned this evening I thought it might be because she had forgiven whatever it is I have done wrong. I thought she wanted to see me.'

He searched my face for sympathetic understanding. I did not have to struggle to convey it. The Mountain I detested, the father was myself.

‘Have you any idea why she severed relations with you?' I asked.

‘There's never a reason. She never accuses me of anything, she doesn't shout at me or blame me for something. She simply … withdraws. When a daughter rejects her father, the pain is insupportable. I think about Anna every day.'

‘You imply there have been previous estrangements.'

‘Many,' he said. ‘Then after a time, she comes to see me and she is suddenly once again the loving daughter I used to have. It's as if nothing has happened.' He refreshed our glasses and lit a cigar. ‘Does she talk about me?'

‘Psychoanalysis is a deep investigation of one's past and present. A patient's father will obviously be discussed in that process.'

He smiled but his eyes were hard. ‘
Deep
investigation? What does that mean?'

‘When the body is sick, the physician will make a thorough physical examination.'

‘And you do the same, mentally speaking?'

‘Yes.'

Few of us like the idea of being discussed as systematically as my formulation suggested to Zinnurov. ‘How does she speak of me?' he asked slowly, doing his best not to appear too interested.

He seemed for a moment quite helpless so that even had I not been bound by a professional code I would have struggled to answer.

‘Your expression gives everything away, Spethmann,' he said. He straightened in the chair and cleared his throat, getting himself back under control. ‘Give me the name of this police inspector again,' he said, taking a pen and notebook from his pocket.

‘Lychev,' I said.

Zinnurov scribbled the name in his notebook. ‘And he is investigating the murders of Gulko and …?'

‘Yastrebov.'

‘Who is Yastrebov?'

‘Lychev claimed to know nothing about him other than his name.'

‘And your daughter is Catherine, yes?'

‘Yes.'

Zinnurov closed the notebook and screwed the top back on the pen. He got up. ‘I shall call Maklakov first thing in the morning,' he said. ‘I can't promise anything but when I explain things I'm sure the minister will understand.'

‘Thank you,' I said.

We were in the vestibule and the servants were helping me on with my galoshes and overcoat when a tall, thin old man
in the dress uniform of the Household Cavalry entered. With his fine white hair and dull blue eyes he looked grandfatherly and wise, an impression not in the least contradicted by the pale scar that ran from eye to jawbone on the left side of his face, or by the fact that he was head of the secret police. I recognised him at once, for Colonel Maximilian Gan, the famous director of the Okhrana, was as well known to Petersburgers as the tsar himself. The atmosphere chilled perceptibly, as if the door through which Gan had entered could not now shut out the biting cold. The servants, all meekness and uncertainty, kept their heads lowered and their eyes down. Gan nodded tersely to Zinnurov before proceeding directly to the smoking room.

Zinnurov gave me a tight smile. ‘I would be grateful, Spethmann, if you would convey to Anna my deepest desire to see her again. Tell her I will see her wherever she wants, under whatever conditions she sees fit to impose.'

A small, bald man in a frock coat approached, a barely subdued urgency about his manner. He whispered in Zinnurov's ear. The Mountain's features darkened. He dismissed the man, turned to me and said, ‘The terrorists have struck again. Two dynamite bombs. One they threw into the restaurant at the Angleterre, the other into Irinovka Station.'

‘I heard an explosion as I arrived,' I said, ‘but I had no idea. Are there many hurt?'

‘Four dead, apparently. All at the Angleterre. We live in dangerous times, Spethmann.'

As we shook hands, he fixed me with a look and said, ‘I sense that a word from you would carry great weight with Anna. I know you will not let me down.'

He intended me to understand in no uncertain terms that we had made a deal: he would talk to the minister of the interior on my behalf as long as I talked to Anna on his.

‘I will do what I can,' I said.

A driver from the club brought me home. The small, dark-blue car followed us all the way. This time I recognised the passenger; Lychev looked pinched and cold. I almost felt sorry for him.

Catherine kissed me on the forehead and sat down at the table. Lidiya asked what she would like to eat and, as usual, Catherine said she was not hungry. Tea would be sufficient. Lidiya clucked disapprovingly.

‘You should eat, child,' Lidiya said.

‘I eat when I'm hungry,' Catherine said. ‘And when I'm not hungry I don't eat.'

‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,' Lidiya persisted.

I signalled her to stop: she would get nowhere. Though she had been with us for eleven years, Lidiya still could not accept Catherine's eating habits, and much else besides. Elena had been the same, always trying to get Catherine to eat, or dress, or do this or that, and becoming upset when Catherine refused. From the very start, from the moment she could first say yes or no, Catherine knew her own mind. She was a force of nature and once she said no, nothing in the world could make her change her mind. The trick was never to get into a situation in which the only options were yes and no. It was a trick almost entirely impossible to pull off.

Lidiya accepted my direction with a despairing look – despairing of Catherine, the wilful young woman in sore need of taming, despairing of the father who would never curb her. She poured tea and left us.

‘You were out late,' Catherine said.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘Did I wake you?'

‘I wasn't asleep. I was worried about you.'

‘Since when do daughters worry about their fathers?'

‘When their fathers become old.'

I smiled the weary wise smile of the parent whose offspring still think themselves immune to the passage of time.

‘Where were you?'

‘I was doing some filing at the office,' I said.

‘Really? I telephoned the office three times last night.'

‘Then I went to dinner with Kopelzon.'

She threw me a sceptical look. ‘Are you sure it was with Kopelzon?'

‘Are we in court?' I asked mildly. ‘Is this a cross-examination?'

‘Were you with that woman?'

‘What woman?'

‘You know the one.'

‘Why have you taken against Anna Petrovna so violently?'

‘I know her kind,' she said.

‘Really?'

‘Shallow society women. All they talk about are shoes and dresses, and who's having an affair with who, and who's had an invitation to tea with the tsarina at the Peterhof. Do you know who her father is? The Mountain. Did you read his article this morning?' She tossed the newspaper across the table, reciting, ‘ “First shoot the socialists, behead them and make them harmless, if need be through a bloodbath.” That's your charming lady friend's father.'

It occurred to me to explain to Catherine that because of the Mountain's good offices she would be spared the trial of presenting herself at police headquarters today.

‘I was not at dinner with Anna Petrovna last night,' I said.

‘Do you swear it?'

‘I have told you where I was and with whom,' I said.

‘You swore you would never see her again.'

‘I know what I swore,' I said.

I could see she was debating whether to press the matter. She took a sip of her tea. By the time she put the glass down, she had decided to be bored with this.

‘I can't eat another thing,' she said.

She had, not unnaturally, a slender figure – unlike her mother, a gorgeous voluptuary. Her face was small and oval-shaped, framed by white-blonde hair which she wore quite short. Her eyes were huge, frank and careless, and vividly blue. Long, dark lashes fell over them. Her teeth were small and white. Altogether the impression was of a doll, except that in her delicate features were obvious traces of a fiercely self-contained and independent temperament: the single, dark unbroken line of eyebrow, the strong jaw-line, the mobile mouth equally capable of expressing burning compassion and withering contempt. She had grown up a great deal since Elena's death. I was proud of her, and would have changed nothing about her even if I could, even if it meant that sometimes she would be more loving of me, or allow me into her life a little more. She lived to herself and most of the time I had no idea what she was doing, whether at the university or in the company of her friends. I did not know who these friends were or anything about their families. I did not know if she had a sweetheart. To ask would be pointless. Just as she used to tell me everything, now she told me only what she wanted me to know, which was very little.