Twelve (4 page)

It had been well into the afternoon before we at last received orders to retreat. The land behind us was a mass of bogs and lakes, but at least the cold had caused them to freeze over. I had long become separated from Vadim and Dmitry and had abandoned my horse and was, with hundreds of others, halfway across the frozen Lake Satschan when the first of the French 'hot shot' landed – cannonballs heated before they were fired so that they would melt the ice when they hit. All around me, men were falling off the ice into the freezing water. Beneath my feet, through the ice, I saw bodies floating past; even living men, their numb hands searching the glassy sheets above them for a way to the surface. I tried to pull those that I could back on to the broken ice sheets, but it was not easy. Eventually, I myself fell in and only just managed to grab hold of a chunk of the floating icepack and then haul myself back on to it. Then I had possessed all of my fingers. Today, I do not know whether I would be able to achieve a similar feat.

Fear took me. I gave up any attempt to help my fellow troops out of the water and concentrated on the sole task of getting myself to the other side of the lake. I sprang from one block of floating ice to another, the constant motion being somehow more steady than my earlier slow caution. If there were other men precariously balanced on those same ice blocks, I did not notice them; my one intent was to get myself across the lake and on to solid ground. I succeeded, but looked back to see the scene of horror from which I had so recently escaped: men tottering off the unsteady ice into the water, and then attempting to swim to shore, past the drowned, freezing corpses of their comrades. It was a winter scene that was to make me abhor winter ever after.

It was two days after the battle when I discovered that Vadim and Dmitry had both safely escaped Telnitz, just as I had. On the same day, the Austrians sued Bonaparte for peace. It was one and a half years later that Russia made her peace with France – albeit a temporary and entirely strategic peace. The two emperors met on a raft on the river Niemen at Tilsit, close to the Russian border, and Tsar Aleksandr managed to fool Bonaparte into thinking that Russia would lie down for good and let France rule the entire continent.

After the peace, the final rounds of formal prisoner exchanges took place and Maks returned with a smile on his face. He had been unlucky not to be released months earlier, but the French were within the bounds of custom to hold a few prisoners until a final peace was reached. Maks did not appear to hold it against them. The wound on Dmitry's cheek healed to a heavy scar, which he hid by growing a beard. Soon after Austerlitz, I had returned to Petersburg and married my sweetheart, Marfa.

I had known her almost as long as I could remember. Her father and mine were both
chinovniks
, government officials, at the Collegium of Manufacturing. Hers had attained the rank of Titular Counsellor, whilst mine was a Collegiate Secretary, one rung lower on the bureaucratic ladder. Both had passed the grade that endowed them with personal nobility and they happily styled one another 'Your Nobleness', as did anyone else who encountered them. But neither had achieved that greater honour of hereditary nobility, and so their children would have to attain their own nobility by dint of their own achievement; I through endeavour, Marfa through marriage.

And yet the idea that it would be Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov that she married did not seem to have occurred to anyone, least of all to me. It was very suddenly, only a few days before my mobilization to Austria, that it occurred to me how beautiful she was. This was not the commonly accepted view, but as we stood there, at a party in her parents' house, talking, I suddenly saw her in a different light. I couldn't say what the cause of it was, but I asked her to marry me there and then. Later she told me that she had loved me for years and that on that day, she and her mother had spent hours styling her hair and putting on her make-up, hoping to catch me. I never resented it – I was flattered – and never regretted it. When our only son was born less than ten months after we married, it was Marfa who suggested we name him Dmitry, after the man who had saved my life.

Over the next few years the four of us met up often, but we hadn't fought together for a long time. Dmitry and I both battled the Turk on the Danube (where it was warm), though not side by side. Vadim was in Finland (where it was cold). I was never sure exactly what Maks did.

By 1812, we had all been preparing to fight Bonaparte once again. I'd earned the hereditary right to be titled 'Your High Nobleness', but I much preferred the military address of 'Captain'. I'd been stationed in the west of Russia as part of the First Army, under General Barclay de Tolly, along the border of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. To my delight, both Dmitry and Maks were there too. Bonaparte chose to interpret our presence as a threat of attack, and so poured troops into the Duchy. Aleksandr had demanded that Bonaparte withdraw his troops to behind the Rhine. He had little expectation of French compliance and none materialized.

On 12 June Bonaparte crossed the Niemen. In his doing so, the Rubicon was crossed also – French troops were now on Russian soil and Aleksandr vowed not even to communicate with Bonaparte until they departed. But departure was not part of Bonaparte's strategy; not then, at least. Four days later he was in Vilna, and in the days and weeks that followed, town after town on the long road to Moscow fell under his power.

After he had taken Vilna, there was a general fear that he might prove unstoppable, and so all sorts of irregular plans were formed for ways to defeat him. Vadim volunteered himself and the rest of us, and so the old team was re-formed, though we didn't do much until after our defeat at Smolensk. Then Barclay de Tolly called us, and a number of similar small groups, to him. He knew that he was soon to be replaced as commander-in-chief by General Kutuzov and that Kutuzov would make a stand somewhere before the French reached Moscow. Barclay explained what his plan had been – very different from Kutuzov's, but one which time would demonstrate to have been appropriate. The men's physical appearance was as distinct as their tactics. Barclay was sixteen years younger than Kutuzov, but that alone could not justify the difference in their physical shape. His body was lean and his eyes and smile revealed his wisdom but hid his cunning. His bald head gave an impression of maturity. Normally, his manner of speech was clear and direct, but today, the way he described his plan seemed almost to mock Kutuzov's own euphuistic style.

'Have you ever seen children playing on a beach?' Barclay had asked us. His accent betrayed nothing of his Scottish ancestry, but hinted at his German-speaking upbringing. 'They can face the tallest wave without fear; even a wave ten times their height. How? They just walk up the beach. They retreat at the same rate that the wave advances. With every step they take, the wave follows them and becomes weaker. If they stand their ground they will find the wave is far too powerful for them and will drown them. But as they calmly walk up the beach the wave gets weaker and smaller until it can barely tickle their toes. France is a great wave, gentlemen, but Russia is a very big beach.

'The plan then has been that we do nothing. The French will find that they have enough troubles simply feeding themselves, without us sacrificing Russian lives in an attempt to see them off. But General Kutuzov tells me that if doing nothing is a good plan then doing
something
must be a better one. He intends to face Bonaparte head on, somewhere before Moscow – as yet, we don't know where. Your part is to ensure that whenever and wherever that encounter occurs, the French are already weakened. Get behind their lines. Disrupt their supplies. Force them to watch their backs. Make that beach seem even bigger than it really is.'

His words had made sense, and fitted perfectly with the sort of work that we knew was our speciality. Straight away, the four of us had ridden back to Moscow. It occurred to me that Dmitry must have sent for these friends of his even before that meeting with General Barclay. He seemed confident that they would arrive.

I folded Marfa's letter and put it into a drawer. I looked once more at the icon she had sent me. The Saviour's kind eyes showed no condemnation for the time I had spent with Domnikiia. Before leaving, I looked at myself in the mirror. My own eyes were not so kind.

Over that week, I spent much of my time chatting with Maks, as well as the others. Nowadays, Maks reminded me of Dmitry when I had first known him; full of ideas, full of humour. Dmitry still had humour, but it was mostly directed at other people's ideas. Dmitry was only a little older than me, but he gave the impression of having examined every idea that had ever been; and concluded that they were all rubbish.

For some reason, the subject of Bonaparte's baby son, the so-called 'King of Rome', had come up.

'I don't see why he needs a son. Politically, I mean,' Vadim was expounding. 'He had a wife that he loved, but he puts her aside for this Marie-Louise, whom they say he doesn't, just so he can have a son and heir.'

I couldn't help hearing in Vadim's words some parallel with my own life. I had a child whom I loved and a wife whom I should, and off I went with a whore who, as it happened, looked like Marie-Louise. I was sure that the idea was far from Vadim's mind but, as one does in such situations, I entered the conversation with gusto before anyone could discern my guilt.

'It's a two-edged sword,' I said. 'He may have established a dynasty, but what's good for the dynasty isn't the same as what's good for the dynast. France's future is now assured even if Bonaparte dies, so France has less need to protect Bonaparte. Look what happened to our own tsar's father.'

'But he was mad,' put in Vadim.

'When the English have a mad king,' said Maks, 'they appoint a regent. When we have a mad king, we throttle him in his own bedroom.'

'Maks!' cautioned Vadim with a growl. No one knew quite what had happened to Tsar Pavel, but it was still best not to repeat even the most widespread of rumours.

'It just shows how useless the king of England is,' said Dmitry.

'But that's their strength,' continued Maks. 'Who have been the great Englishmen that have stood against Napoleon? Pitt?

Nelson? Both dead. And yet England marches on. But if Napoleon died, would France march on? That's why Napoleon has to found a dynasty, until France is strong enough for the emperor to be as insignificant as an English king.'

'Or a Russian tsar?' I asked, before anyone else could. From Vadim it would have sounded like an accusation of treason; from Dmitry, an incitement to it.

'By the by, have you heard about these deaths in the south?' asked Maks, changing the subject abruptly. 'All along the Don, as far north as Voronezh. They thought it was plague, but now the stories are changing.'

There was little in Maks' account that I hadn't heard before, but I wondered where he might have picked up the rumours. It didn't take me long to find out.

Later that same day, I went to visit Domnikiia. As I was entering the establishment, I bumped into Maks, just leaving. He was embarrassed.

'Maksim Sergeivich!' I said. 'I am surprised. I thought this sort of thing didn't interest you.'

'It doesn't,' he replied discreetly, 'any more than eating or breathing interests me. But these things still have to be done.'

He smiled as we both realized that I, as a married man, should be more embarrassed than he. There wasn't any mockery in his expression, just an understanding of the irony. 'I can see why you like Dominique so much. Please don't tell Vadim and Dmitry.'

He walked away. If anyone else had said that about Dominique, their words would have been full of double meaning – of challenge and rivalry – but from Maks, they had only their face value. He said them just as he might have said, 'I can see why you like vodka so much.' There's enough vodka to go round, so who could be jealous about having to share? But for me, the words were devastating. My only consolation, and it was a desperate one, was that he called her Dominique, not Domnikiia.

I had to wait for Domnikiia, arriving as I did so soon after her previous client. I could have gone with one of the other girls, to show how little I cared. The problem was that I did care.

I must have been very cold. We lay side by side, not in the usual quiet embrace that followed our love-making.

'Are you all right, Lyosha?' she asked.

'Please don't sleep with Maks.'

It was a simple enough request, but her reaction was livid. She leapt out of bed and stormed across the room. Her anger was incomprehensible to me. 'Who the hell are you to ask me that, Aleksei? I'm not a serf. You don't own me – you rent me. You pay me for an hour, you get me for an hour. I'm yours. Whatever you want – I do it. You pay me for twenty-three hours, I do it for twenty-three – but that one hour a day is still mine and I'll sleep with Bonaparte himself, if he pays.'

She paused for a moment, lost in her anger. 'I don't say to you it's OK to kill Frenchmen, but please, Aleksei, don't kill this particular Frenchman or that particular Frenchman, or kill the French, but leave the Turks alone. It's a job. If you choose to do the job then you don't get to pick out the bits you like most.' She sat down and became a little calmer. 'You'd better go now; I've got clients to see.'

'Can I see you tomorrow?'

'It's my job; I can't stop you,' she said curtly. Then she smiled at the irony. 'Weren't you listening just now?'

I left the building elated. I'd made her angry. In every conversation we'd ever had, she had kept her composure – what she said could be genuine, or it could be merely what I wanted to hear.

We'd both known it, and that was part of the fun. But now, somehow, I'd got to her. She'd revealed some small, real part of herself, and what a powerful, eloquent self she had revealed.

Having said that, there was still one small matter to attend to.

'Please don't sleep with Dominique,' I asked that evening when Maks and I were walking alone. 'There are plenty of other girls there to choose from.'