The Third Section (54 page)

Raisa was alone. She was standing by the window, looking out at the moon that hung over Degtyarny Lane. She turned as he closed the door behind him. In her eyes he saw only terror.

‘Hello, my little Mityenka,’ she said softly.

Dmitry said nothing. He gazed at her, trying to take in what she was, and what she had been. The silence seemed almost painful to her. Tears began to form in her eyes and she took a step towards him.

‘I know why you’re here, Mitka,’ she said. ‘But I beg you, on everything we’ve ever meant to each other, give me a chance to explain first.’

‘First?’

She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Don’t tease me. I’ve seen what you can do with that.’ Her eyes flicked towards his right hand.

In horror he took in what she meant, and what she was looking at; the cane that he carried with him everywhere. He’d used it in front of her to kill Ignatyev – in this very room. He threw it aside on to the bed.

‘I would never …’ he began to say, but he knew it was untrue. It was still – just conceivably – where the evening might end. But there was another reason that the words would not come to him; a simple, visceral reason. He had not seen her – apart from the sight of her body in a churchyard in Klin – for many weeks; had not seen her, or put his arms around her, or smelt her, or kissed her.

He charged across the room and clutched her in his embrace, pushing his lips down on to hers and feeling them open to receive him. He felt her hands on his back, his shoulders and his head. There was nothing different here, nothing changed from what she had been before. It might be that she could no longer exist in daylight, that she would live for ever, that any wound to her body would heal, but to everything he cared about, that seemed to make not a jot of difference. Her kiss was still Raisa’s kiss; her caress still Raisa’s caress. What else was unchanged about her, he would discover as time went by, but for now, this was enough.

They separated and stared silently into each other’s face. It was Dmitry who spoke first.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She looked away from him, embarrassed. ‘There’s so much I haven’t told you.’

Only then did it dawn on him that she could have no idea
what
he’d discovered. He persisted with the point of his original question. ‘About the consumption.’

‘How would that have helped? Could you have cured it?’

‘I deserved to know.’

‘So you could cry over me and tell me how you loved me and how you would miss me?’

‘Yes,’ he said earnestly.

‘And remind me every minute of my last days that I was going to die.’

He couldn’t deny it. ‘I saw you with him,’ he said bitterly. ‘With Tyeplov – in the cemetery in Klin.’

‘What?’ She couldn’t conceal her surprise.

‘I chased him there. We found his letter to you.’

‘And you came to … to save me?’

Dmitry nodded.

‘You fool!’ she said. ‘He might have killed you.’

‘No,’ said Dmitry. ‘He let me live. And now I understand why.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘I read your letters, the ones you sent to him. Not until afterwards.’ She looked at him, trying to fathom what precisely he might have gleaned from them. He explained. ‘I know why you did it – so that you could live.’

‘That was selfish of me.’

‘So that I could join you,’ he added.

She flushed. ‘That was even worse.’

‘No. No,’ said Dmitry. ‘It was wonderful – the most selfless gesture that anyone could imagine.’

‘Selfless?’

‘You did it for love.’

She turned away from him. ‘I did it for
me
, Mitka. Not for love, not even for you. I did it because
I
couldn’t bear the thought of living without you, or even of sharing you with your wife, and so I decided that
I
was going to have you – all of you and for ever.’

‘So why haven’t you come to me? Why haven’t you asked me?’

She walked back to him and laid her cheek against his breast. ‘I’ve tried. I’ve come close to you; I’ve watched you, but it’s the same terror that strikes me every time.’

‘What terror?’

‘That you’ll say no.’

‘What would you do if I did?’

‘I would pray for death.’

‘Only pray for it?’ asked Dmitry.

‘I could not bring it about myself.’

‘What if I were to?’ he asked.

She turned and walked to the bed, then picked up the cane he had thrown there. She plucked off the protective cap and flung it aside, before handing him the now lethal weapon. She sat down and began to unfasten her bodice and then unbutton the blouse beneath. She lay back on the bed, the garments hanging on either side of her, revealing her belly and her breasts.

‘If that’s your choice, then I won’t stop you,’ she said. ‘This isn’t how I’d have chosen my life to finish, but from where I am now, I can conceive of no better ending than by your hand.’

She raised her arm to cover her face, either so that she would not see him or, more likely, so that he would not look into her eyes and be diverted from what he must do. He gazed at her body, as he had done so many times before, but now with very different thoughts. He had the weapon in his hand. He need only press it down against her skin, just below her breast. It would be doing her will, and the will of God. Afterwards, he still had the pistol for himself, but he need not tell her about that.

And yet what he saw before him was not the prone body of a
voordalak
, easier to be rid of than any he had before encountered. It was Raisa. Beneath that point on her chest where he would stab, her heart still beat. He could almost see it. Her kiss and her touch had been the same as before – why then should so much else be different? He fixed his eyes on her chest, watching its slight movement as she breathed. He felt the solid, firm shaft of the cane in his hand and imagined it penetrating her flesh, imagined her momentarily writhing as her skin ruptured and then … that was too much. He had seen two vampires die – both by his own hand – and though he had no idea what they suffered, the mere image of Raisa’s beauty decaying so utterly and so suddenly persuaded him that he could not go ahead with this. Even when he had entered the room he had known he would not. He had
been
teasing himself, which was indulgent, and teasing Raisa, which was cruel.

He leaned forward and placed his lips on precisely the point where, in another life, he might have thrust with the blade.

‘One final kiss,’ he heard her say, ‘to prove it as an act of love.’

But Dmitry chose to express his love quite differently. Quickly, and with the passion of weeks of separation, he began to remove the remainder of her clothes.

‘You’re a fool, my little Mityenka,’ she said. It was a harsh word that she had chosen –
prostak
– as was her tone. She might almost have been crowing, like an adversary at Preferans who had tricked him into playing the wrong card and was now in a position to take everything he had. He knew it was not true, but he doubted he would have changed his course of action, even if it had been.

If there was anywhere in Moscow that wasn’t celebrating, Tamara had been unable to find it. It was almost as light as day now, the sky illuminated by the most magnificent display of fireworks she had ever seen. She’d headed north-east, in the direction of the station, and was now caught up in the huge crowds that thronged the largely open spaces around the Red Gate, through which earlier that very day Aleksandr had made his ceremonial entrance into the old capital.

All through the city, stalls had been set up to provide free food and cheap drink for the people, paid for by the tsar. Vodka, beer and wine had flowed freely, and more than once a tankard had been thrust into Tamara’s hand by a complete stranger. At first she had felt a little detached from these people, but as the evening had worn on it had become impossible not to be sucked up into the atmosphere of ecstatic joy. On top of that, she had to admit, she was a little drunk.

Not for the first time, she felt a man’s hand grab her around the waist and attempt to squeeze her close to him. On any other day, he would have been walking away from her in agony, but today she extricated herself with a fairly gentle push. He was in no condition to hang on.

The air was filled with the sound of people’s cheering, of the
church
bells still pealing and above all of fireworks exploding. Smoke blew across the square ahead of her, causing some to cough, but Tamara revelled in the smell of it – the taste of it. Bright rockets exploded across the sky, white and green. Three huge fountains of red sparks spewed into the air like volcanoes. An old man on a cart tried to drive his way through the crowd, but his horse took fright at the noise and reared into the air. Three men managed to grab it and calm it, but still the driver seemed intent on continuing, despite the terror of the beast. The men led them away – horse, wagon and driver – into a nearby courtyard, and soon four men emerged, all drinking, the driver abandoning his journey for now.

An arm draped itself around her shoulder, but it felt like someone who sought physical support rather than anything else from her body. He must have been sixty or more, and had hung himself from her and another woman.

‘Just like in ’12,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘We saw them off then – and we will next time.’

‘What?’ asked Tamara. Despite his drunkenness, the man seemed joyous, and Tamara could not help being infected by it.

‘The French!’ he shouted, freeing his other hand to wave it in the direction of the imagined enemy. ‘Rostopchin burned the city to stop them. They never even made it this time.’ He released her and staggered down the hill towards the flames, only to be caught by the crowd before he ever got near them.

Tamara walked on. Through the sounds of the fireworks and the crowd and the church bells, there came something else that she couldn’t make out – an artificial sound that sometimes cut through the noise, sometimes was masked by it. She followed it, away from the fireworks. The crowd thinned a little and then grew more dense and the sound became clearer. It was music – two men played balalaikas, one a guitar. In front of them people were dancing, some very well – particularly the men – others less so.

Tamara began to push her way through to the front of the circle of people who stood and watched. Just as she reached it, the music came to its climax and the onlookers cheered. Some of the dancers, exhausted, fell back among their friends in the
crowd
, but others stayed, ready for the next dance. Two of the men had tambourines and started the music by striking them in time. The band struck up and then the crowd began to clap in rhythm. Tamara joined them. It was a slow song at first, but she knew it would speed up.

The two tambourinists were expert dancers. They threw themselves to the ground at strange angles, sometimes supported by both feet, sometimes by a hand and a foot, constantly swapping the hand in which they held the instrument, and beating it against their foot or knee or head. There were times when Tamara would have sworn they were standing on both hands, but she could not see how they could manage that and still keep striking the tambourines. Their movement was rapid, fluid and instinctive.

Tamara raised her hands above her head as she clapped, swinging her hips and shoulders in time with the accelerating rhythm. Soon she realized that she was no longer watching, but part of the dance itself. She did not know from where inside her it came. She had seen dances like this before, but never partaken. Her dancing had always been far more formal; western, French, the way she had been taught. This dancing was Russian. It was about feeling, not understanding. At another time, the thought of the crowd watching her as she gyrated before them would have embarrassed her, but now she was thrilled by it; she felt at one with them.

The two men with the tambourines had soon caught sight of her, and now they danced on either side, facing one another and with her in between. They continued the same strange motions, as though for them legs and arms were of equal function, and without even having to think, Tamara found her movements fitting in with theirs. As one did a cartwheel, his feet almost hitting her nose, she fell back instinctively and found herself caught by the other. Now off balance, she was under their control and they threw her back and forth between them, while her feet remained fixed to the ground at a single point. She could have stepped away at any time, but she enjoyed the loss of control; it was like being caught in a great storm that would lead her where it willed.

Then she found that she was upright again and the two men were on the ground, both on their backs, supported by their arms.
They
seemed to be kicking at her legs, but never made contact. Once she had cottoned on she began to jump in time with them, and they now aimed their feet much closer to her, so that if she didn’t keep her skips and leaps in exact time with the music, they would surely kick her. Tamara lifted up her skirts, revealing her boots and ankles, and was amazed to watch as the men’s legs swung beneath her, as if gravity applied to none of them.

As the music sped up still further, she became a little giddy, and feared she would lose her balance. With one final leap she was away from the two men, but turned to see her place had already been taken by another woman, who continued the game of musical hopscotch with no less enthusiasm than Tamara herself had displayed. Tamara joined another group of dancers who held hands and circled around the central trio, occasionally letting go to clap at a slower beat than that with which the guitar and balalaikas and tambourines rushed on. But as the tempo increased, so they were forced to as well, and Tamara found herself circling round and round with ever-increasing pace. The sound of the music filled her ears, along with the explosions of fireworks that still lit the sky, their colourful sparks blurring before her eyes as she moved faster and faster, her hands sore from clapping, her breath short.