The Jewel of St Petersburg (35 page)

“You bloodsucking parasites.”

Jens shrugged and moved away, keeping himself between Valentina and Ivan. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, tossing another to the man, who caught it and pushed it between his lips.

“Do you work?” Jens asked.

“Yes.
Da.
I work fucking hard every bloody day.”

“Where?”

“In the Raspov foundry.”

“Foundry work is tough,” Jens commented.

“So am I.”

“Ivan,” the woman called. “They’ve helped. Look at the fire.”

For the first time the man’s bloodshot eyes shifted around the room, and his gaze took in the food package on the table and the new candle on the shelf. Finally it settled on the flames in the stove, and the sight of them seemed to sober him. He shuffled over to the candle flame and stuck his cigarette in it, drew on it with satisfaction, and held his callused palms out to the warmth of the fire.

“You’ve come from one of the meetings, haven’t you?” Jens gestured at the pamphlet sticking out of the man’s coat pocket.

“Da,
I have. What’s it to you?”

“What are they saying now?”

“They’re saying we’ll soon be rid of the lot of you. Justice for the proletariat is so fucking close we can taste it. We stand shoulder to shoulder, comrades in arms. We are organized.”

“More strikes?”

“Da.”

“I hear the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are at each other’s throats.”

“You hear wrong.”

Valentina sensed Jens being drawn in. He’d said,
You are of no interest to me,
but it wasn’t true; she could see it in his eyes.

“Jens?”

He nodded but didn’t shift his gaze from this Ivan, this man of committees and strikes whose wife lay sick. This man whose house she had just scrubbed, whose excrement bucket she had helped empty, whose children lay dead and unheeded on his bed while he drank himself stupid.

“Time to leave,” she said.

Still Jens didn’t move.

“It needn’t be like this, Ivan,” he said. “There are people working for change within the government, men like Garyatan and Kornov. The Committee of Industrial Development is meeting with factory owners, forcing changes that improve the conditions for the workers.”

“Lies.”

“No, it’s true.”

“They tell you lies. The factory owners pay off the bastards on your committees with fat bribes. Nothing is changing.” The man’s face sank into folds of despair. “Nothing. You are fools, people like you, if you believe this can be settled with talk.”

“The alternative,
comrade
, is rivers of blood on Nevsky.”

“So be it.”

Valentina strode over to the door and yanked it open.

“Who are you?” Ivan asked her. “A dainty little rich girl. I bet your father is someone important. Corrupt and worthless, but important.”

“How dare you?” She wanted to slap the loose smile from his face. “My father is Minister Ivanov, and he is an honest and upright man.”

Suddenly Jens took a grip on her shoulder and hurried her into the street. The freezing rain sank like ice picks into her cheek.

“Valentina,” he muttered as he marched her away from the house, “you should not have said that.”

“But it’s true. My father is an upright man.”

“You should not have said your name.”

A
RKIN WATCHED THEM DISAPPEAR UP THE RAIN-SODDEN street, the engineer’s arm clasped around the girl’s waist, her head on his shoulder. As if they owned each other. He watched them until they were out of sight, and then he strolled across the road to the front door they had just left.

It didn’t take much. A quick nudge of his shoulder and it sprang open. No lights. A filter of night sky through the cracks of the door. So he stood for a moment, listening, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Why this hovel? What made her come here? What the hell was she doing? He wondered what her mother would say when her daughter came home laden with lice and fleas.

From the doorway of the house opposite he had watched the pair of them go in and out with buckets of stinking shit and of water; he had seen the girl lean over and vomit against the wall in the pouring rain. She had marched right back into the hall and turned to the door on her left. It opened at the touch of his knuckles, and he stepped inside.

“Get out!”

A big man with a shaven head was slumped at a table, glaring at him with bloodshot eyes. A woman lay on the bed, and her lifeless gaze sent a shudder through him.

“I’m here to talk to you, comrade,” he said to the man, “nothing more.”

It was the use of the word
comrade
that did it.

“Talk about what?” the man asked suspiciously.

“Your visitors.”

“Them!” Dirty fingers tore a chunk off the loaf of black bread and pushed it into his mouth. “What about them?”

“Why were they here?”

“Bringing bread and blankets to my wife. When what we really need is a decent wage so that we can buy our own bloody bread.” He sank his head on his arms on the table.

Arkin took a few paces nearer the bed. It smelled bad. “Did they say anything?” he asked the sick woman.

“Nyet.”

“They just brought you gifts?”

“Da.
”

“Why?”

“She is my friend,” she whispered.

He almost laughed out loud. This woman and Valentina. But he recalled again how she’d stood in the rain. And then, still, she’d returned to this place. As if she cared.

“Who are you?” the woman croaked.

“I work for her father.”

“The minister?”

So she’d told them that much.

“She came once before,” the woman mumbled. “With her sister.”

Now he understood. This must be where Popkov tracked them to the day of the march on Morskaya, and Valentina had not forgotten the kindness.

“Where does your husband work?” he enquired.

“Raspov.”

The foundry on the edge of the city. Immediately he went back to the table, lit a cigarette for himself and one for the husband, then prodded him awake.

“Here.” He offered the smoke.

The man took it with ill grace and sat up bleary-eyed. “You still here?”

“You work at the Raspov foundry.”

“So what?”

“You have many apprentices there.”

“What of it?”

Abruptly the woman started to retch, and Arkin rose quickly to put a zinc bowl in front of her. He reached over to pull up the blanket but jumped back in shock. Three faces, tiny and gray as stone.

“Leave them.” Her voice was a faint whisper.

Sorrow for her lay like lead in his chest. “I know a priest,” he said softly. “May I bring him here?”

Her wretched eyes clung to his as she nodded. He headed quickly for the door, stopping only to shake the man by the shoulder. “Sleep it off, comrade. I will be back and I shall want to talk to you about your Raspov apprentices.”

The man looked bemused. “Why?”

“Because I have a job for them.”

Twenty-two

V
ALENTINA DIDN’T GO STRAIGHT HOME. SHE SAID SHE couldn’t, not yet. Jens bundled her into a
drozhky
and took her to his own apartment, but he was acutely conscious of the impropriety of doing so. A young woman after dark without a chaperone, but neither of them could bear to face a public place right now, with strangers’ eyes inspecting her disheveled and stained appearance.

“Valentina,” he said, “let me dry your hair.”

She was seated in a deep armchair, and its high sides swallowed her small frame. Her hands lay white as bone in her lap. He approached her with a towel, and she looked up at him for the first time, a quick flash of her dark eyes. He let her hold on to her silence while he unpinned her hair and stroked its damp strands with the towel, slow rhythmic sweeps that ran from the crown of her head where the hair was wettest. It fell in a dense mass of waves that clung to her scalp, outlining the elegant shape of her skull. He dried them right down to the tips where they danced and curled, teasing his fingers.

The intimacy of the task was immense, more intimate than a kiss. He perched on the arm of her chair and she sat with her head slightly bowed as he dried it, so that time and again the strands would fall forward, revealing the pale slender stem of her neck. At one point he cupped her chin in his hands to hold it steady while he rubbed gently at the top of her head, but still she said nothing. Just let her chin sit in his palm, as if it belonged there.

He continued to stroke the dark mane long after it was dry, first with the towel and then with his hand. It sparked within its shimmering depths as he lifted it and entranced him with the way the light rippled within it like moonlight in a restless night sky. He relished the silky sensation of it on his skin and the way it slid smooth as ink between his fingers.

He leaned his head down and kissed the nape of her neck.

H
OW DO THEY LIVE LIKE THAT?”

She was talking now. He had fed her
pirozhki
and a glass of hot chocolate, tempting her out of the dark place she was hiding in. He was seated on the sofa opposite her, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, enjoying a glass of red wine. He was trying to distract her.

“Do you know,” he asked, “that over half of the wine produced in France is freighted to Russia. Can you believe that? We drink more wine than any other nation on earth.”

He often caught himself using
we. We Russians. Our country
. As though he were one of them, someone from Perm or from Tver.

“I couldn’t live like that,” she said staring into the fire. “Not like that.”

He knew she was not going to let it go.

“We all live,” he responded quietly, “the best way we can.”

“I would rather be dead.”

“I doubt that. And anyway,” he added, “I would come each day and light your fire for you. And dry your hair whenever it rained and brush out the tangles when the wind caught it.”

She lifted her head.

“Then when the summer came,” he continued, “instead of attending glittering balls at Anichkov Palace or lavish meals at Donon’s or nights at the ballet in diamond-studded evening gowns, I’d walk you in your rags down to a quiet spot on the banks of the Neva and we’d eat boiled eggs and dangle our feet in the river.”

Her head turned. Her eyes met his. “And music?” she asked in a solemn voice. “In this new world of yours, would there be music? Or no piano for me, no opera, no ballet?”

“Of course there’d be music,” he smiled at her. “You would sing for me to the music of water lapping around our ankles, and I would accompany you on my violin.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You play the violin?”

“Not play exactly. More like scraping out a few squawky notes that make a tomcat sound musically accomplished by comparison. But,” he hurried on, “I would improve, I promise.”

She laughed. “You warned me before to beware of the Neva River,” she pointed out. “You told me it was polluted.”

“Well, that’s the advantage of having a sewage tunnel engineer to steer you to the right spots. I know all the secret nooks where the fouled currents don’t reach.”

“Is it really so polluted?”

He didn’t want to have this conversation. He shrugged. “It could be cleaner.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’d rather play my violin for you.”

Her eyes grew round as coins, and he was embarrassed. Only a visiting mouse had ever listened to his playing. She scooped up her knees to her chest and balanced her small chin on them with a stubborn tilt. He was tempted to pick her up and pop her in his pocket.

“Play,” she commanded.

He stood, gave her a deep bow with an elaborate flourish as though doffing his cap to one of the Romanov grand duchesses, and said, “I am totally at your service, mademoiselle.”

He meant it. But he wasn’t sure she knew that yet.