The House of Special Purpose (54 page)

When it was dark I slipped downstairs. I could hear the guards talking together in one of the parlours on the ground floor. It seemed curious to me that they were gathered together like that, as one of them was nearly always stationed by the door. The grounds were empty, but I walked slowly. I was frightened that the sound of my shoes on the gravel would alert someone to my absence. It’s strange to think of it, Georgy, but my concern was not the guards discovering where I was going, but Father or Mother learning who I was going towards
.

I crouched down as I passed the window of the parlour and something made me hesitate for a moment. They sounded as if they were arguing. I tried to listen and one voice was raised above the others and they all stopped to listen to what it had to say. I thought nothing more of it and walked quickly towards the gates with only you on my mind. I longed to be in your arms. I even imagined, I dreamed that you would take me away from Yekaterinburg, that you would reveal our love to my father and that he would embrace us both and call you his son, and that everything we had been, we would be again. Perhaps Marie was right. She said I was foolish to think that we could ever be together
.

By the time I reached the gate, I realized how cold I was. My heart told me to run on, to find you, that your arms would warm me soon enough, but my head said to go back to the house and bring a coat. There was one hanging in the hallway by the door – Tatiana’s, I think, she would not miss it. I walked back and noticed that the room where the guards had been talking was empty now. I thought this strange and hesitated, wondering whether my desire for the coat would lead to my discovery. I expected that some of the soldiers would emerge from the door at any moment and stand outside as they smoked. But no one appeared. I didn’t want them to, Georgy, and yet it disturbed me that they did not
.

A moment later, I heard the heavy thud of boots on the stairs, many boots, and I ran quickly through the front door and around to the side of the house, crouching low beneath a window. A light went on above my head and a crowd of people entered the room. I could hear my
father’s voice asking what was happening and one of them replied that it was no longer safe in Yekaterinburg, that in order to protect our family it was imperative that we be transported somewhere else immediately
.

‘But where?’ asked my mother. ‘Can it not wait until the morning?’

‘Please wait here,’ he replied, and then all those heavy boots left the room once again and only my family remained within
.

By now, I was torn between duty and love. If they were to be transported to a different city, then surely I should be with them. But you, Georgy, you were waiting for me. You were so close. Perhaps I could see you once more and tell you where we were going, and then you would follow us and find a way to save me. I was trying to think what to do for the best when I heard a soldier enter the room again and ask a question I could not hear, and my father replied, ‘I do not know. I have not seen her this evening.’ I guessed that they were talking about me, that the soldiers were looking for me, but I stayed where I was and after a few moments the room went silent again
.

Finally, I stood up. The window was high, so only that part of my face above my mouth would have been visible to anyone on the inside. I looked at the room that I had seen on so many occasions in the past. It had always been bare, but now there were two chairs by the wall. Father was sitting in one of them, with Alexei on his knee. My brother was half asleep and dozing in his arms. Mother was seated beside them, looking anxious, her fingers twirling the long row of pearls around her neck. Olga, Tatiana and Marie were standing behind them and I felt guilty that I was not there too. A moment later, perhaps sensing the intensity of my gaze, Marie glanced towards the window, saw me, and said my name
.

‘Anastasia.’

Father and Mother turned to look in my direction and my eyes met theirs for only a moment. Mother looked shocked, as if she could not believe that I was outside, but Father … he shot me a look of fierce intensity, his eyes strong and determined. He lifted his hand, Georgy. He held the palm out flat, telling me to stay exactly where I was. It felt like an order, a Tsar’s command. I opened my mouth to try to say something
,
but before any words could come the door of the room was flung open and my family turned quickly to look at their captors
.

The soldiers were standing together in a row and no one spoke for a moment. Then their leader removed a piece of paper from his pocket. He said that he was sorry but our family could not be saved, and before I could even comprehend the meaning of his words, he pulled a gun from his pocket and shot my father in the head. He shot the Tsar, Georgy. My mother blessed herself, my sisters screamed and turned to hug each other, but they had no time to speak or to panic, for every soldier drew a gun at that moment and slaughtered them. They shot them like animals. They killed them. And I watched. I watched as they fell. I watched as they bled and as they died
.

And then I turned
.

And I ran
.

I remember nothing other than wanting to reach the trees, to leave the house behind, and I focussed on the copse, where I knew you would be waiting for me. And as I ran I tripped over something and fell. I fell and I landed in your arms
.

I found you. You were waiting for me
.

And the rest … the rest, Georgy, you know
.

It was almost two days before we arrived, exhausted, in Minsk. We stood in the train station, staring at the timetable and the list of destinations, dreading having to spend more time in a railway carriage but knowing that we had no alternative. We could not stay in Russia. It would never be safe for us there.

‘Where shall we go?’ Anastasia asked me as we looked at the list of cities to which we could make connections. Rome, Madrid, Vienna, Geneva. Copenhagen, perhaps, where her grandfather was king.

‘Anywhere you like, Anastasia,’ I replied. ‘Anywhere you feel safe.’

She pointed at one city and I nodded, liking the romance of it. ‘To Paris, then,’ I announced.

‘Georgy,’ she said, taking my arm urgently. ‘There is just one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘My name. You must not call me by it any more. We cannot risk detection. They won’t be looking for you, no one knew of our relationship except Marie and she …’ She hesitated, composed herself and continued. ‘You cannot call me Anastasia from this day.’

‘Of course,’ I said, nodding my head in agreement. ‘But what shall I call you, then? I cannot think of any better name than your own.’

She bowed her head for a moment and considered it. When she looked up, it was as if she had become a different person entirely, a young woman embarking on a new life for which she had no expectations.

‘Call me Zoya,’ she said quietly. ‘It means
life
.’

1981

I
T’S ALMOST ELEVEN
o’clock at night when the phone rings. I’m seated in an armchair before our small gas fire, an unopened novel in my hands, my eyes closed, but not asleep. The telephone is close to me but I don’t pick it up immediately, allowing myself a final moment of optimism before I must answer it and face the news. It rings six, seven, eight times. Finally I reach out a hand and lift the receiver.

‘Hello,’ I say.

‘Mr Jachmenev?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Good evening, Mr Jachmenev,’ says the voice on the other end, a woman’s. ‘I’m sorry to phone you so late.’

‘It’s all right, Dr Crawford,’ I say, for I recognize her immediately; who else could it be, after all, at this time of night?

‘I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Jachmenev,’ she tells me. ‘Zoya doesn’t have very long left.’

‘You said there might be weeks yet,’ I reply, for this is what she told me earlier in the day, shortly before I left the hospital to return home for the evening. ‘You said that there was no cause for immediate concern.’ I’m not angry with Dr Crawford, just confused. A doctor tells you something, you listen and you believe it. And you go home.

‘I know,’ she says, sounding a little contrite. ‘And that is what I thought at the time. Unfortunately, your wife took a turn for the worse this evening. Mr Jachmenev, it’s entirely up to you, of course, but I think you should come in now.’

‘I’ll be there shortly,’ I say, hanging up.

Fortunately I haven’t yet changed for bed, so it takes me only a moment to retrieve my wallet, keys and overcoat and head for the door. A thought occurs to me and I hesitate, wondering whether it can wait, deciding that it can’t; I return to the living room and the telephone, where I call my son-in-law, Ralph, to let him know what’s happening.

‘Michael’s upstairs,’ he tells me, and I’m glad to hear it, for I have no other way of contacting my grandson. ‘We’ll see you shortly.’

Outside on the street it takes a few minutes to locate a taxi, but finally one approaches, I raise my hand and he pulls in to the kerb next to me. I open the back door and before I can even close it again I have given him the name of the hospital and he’s pulling out on to the road. I feel a quick breeze in my face and pull the door firmly shut.

The streets are less quiet at this time of night than I expect them to be. Groups of young men are emerging from the public houses, their arms around each other, fingers pointing in each other’s faces in their determination to be heard. Further along, a couple are fighting and a young woman is trying to separate them by placing herself between the blows; I only see them for a moment as we pass, but their expressions of hatred are disturbing to observe.

The taxi takes a sharp left turn, then a right, and before I know it we are passing by the British Museum. I glance at the two lions standing on either side of the doors, and can see myself hesitating there for a moment before I step inside to meet Mr Trevors for the first time on the morning that he interviewed me, the same morning that Zoya began her position as a machinist at Newsom’s sewing factory. It was so long ago and I was so young and life was difficult, and I would give everything I have to be back there once again and to understand how lucky I was. To have my youth and my wife, and our love and our lives before us.

I close my eyes and swallow. I will not cry. There will be time for tears tonight. But not yet.

‘Here OK for you, sir?’ says my driver, pulling up next to the visitors’ entrance, and I tell him yes, this is fine, and hand him the first note that comes to hand; it’s too much, I know it is, but I don’t care. I step outside into the cold night air and hesitate before the hospital doors for only a moment, only walking forwards when I hear the taxi drive away.

Zoya is no longer in the oncology ward, I am told by a tired, pale young woman at reception. She has been moved to a private room on the third floor.

‘Your accent,’ I say. ‘You’re not English, are you?’

‘No,’ she says, looking up at me for only a moment and then returning to her paperwork. She’s chosen not to tell me where she comes from, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in Eastern Europe. Not Russia, I know that much. Yugoslavia, perhaps. Romania. One of those countries.

I step into the lift and press the button for ‘3’; even if the phone call had not been explicit enough, I know what it means to be moved into a private room at this stage in an illness. I’m glad the lift is empty. It allows me to think, to compose myself. But not for long, as I soon emerge on to a long, white corridor with a nurses’ station at the end. As I walk slowly towards it I can hear two voices engaged in conversation, a young man and an older woman. He’s talking about an interview he is soon to undertake, presumably for promotion at the hospital. He stops when he sees me standing before him and an irritated expression crosses his face at my interruption, even though I have yet to speak. I wonder whether he mistakes me for one of the elderly patients from the many wards which spread out like the arms of an octopus all along this corridor. Perhaps he thinks I’m lost, or cannot sleep, or have soiled myself in my bed. It’s ridiculous, of course. I’m fully dressed. Just old.

‘Mr Jachmenev,’ says a voice from behind him, Dr Crawford’s, as she reaches for a clipboard heavy with documentation. ‘You made it here quickly.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Where is Zoya? Where is my wife?’

‘She’s just through here,’ she replies softly, taking my arm. I shrug her off, perhaps more violently than necessary. I am not an invalid and I won’t be treated like one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, leading me past several closed doors behind which are … what? The dead and the dying and the grieving, three conditions I will know myself before very much more time has passed.

‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Tonight, I mean. After I left. How did she become worse?’

‘It was unexpected,’ she says. ‘But not unusual, if I’m honest. I’m afraid the last stages of the disease can be unpredictable. A patient can be no better or worse for weeks, even months on end, and then one day she can suddenly become very ill. We moved her out of the ward and into this room so you would have some privacy.’

‘But she might …’ I hesitate; I want neither to fool myself nor to be treated like a fool. Still, I need to know. ‘She might improve yet, do you think? As quickly as she became worse, she could become better?’

Dr Crawford stops outside a closed door and offers me a half-smile as she touches my arm. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Jachmenev,’ she says. ‘I think you should just focus on spending whatever time you have left together. You’ll see that Zoya is still attached to a heart monitor and a feeding tube, but other than that, there are no more machines. We feel it’s more peaceful this way. It offers the patient more dignity.’

I smile now, I almost laugh. As if she or anyone else could possibly know how much dignity Zoya has. ‘My wife was raised with dignity. She is the daughter of the last martyred Tsar of Russia, the great-granddaughter of Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator who freed the serfs. The mother of Arina Georgievna Jachmenev. There is nothing you can do to diminish her.’