‘Jews! Vampires! You killed the Emperor!’ A high-pitched voice shrilled from what I guessed was the parlour.
Brodmann and I crept up the stairs. The doctor did not emerge. I think he was frightened of us. A mouse content to squeak from the safety of his hole.
The room was fairly clean. The beds were unmade, the linen was somewhat grubby. But it was better than Yermeloff had offered me before Grishenko had evicted us. Grishenko would soon regret that action. He was probably already dead. There was little furniture, save an old screen, an ordinary military lamp for light, a pile of pamphlets and hand-bills evidently not the property of our landlord, a couple of cane-seated chairs and two wooden-framed beds of the sort peasants or servants slept in before the Revolution. Brodmann drew down the blind. He went behind the screen and undressed to his red vest and his long underpants before putting on a thick flannel nightgown. ‘He’s sold or given away everything. He’s afraid of looters. He probably has a few bits and pieces hidden in the garden. I don’t think he made much from his doctoring. Not in this village. He knew Hrihorieff when the Ataman was a child. Nobody in Alexandriya seems to dislike the Ataman much. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with him, that he’s protecting the interests of the Tsar. He might as well believe that, eh?’ Brodmann continued in this vein. He was one of those politicians who loves to sound ‘realistic’. His cheap cynicism no longer bothered me as I went behind the screen, undressed, and got into bed. I wore only my blood-stained shirt, from which I had removed the collar and cuffs. It was very cold. I was restless from the cocaine, but Brodmann’s drone helped me sleep peacefully and well.
I became alert early in the morning. Noises from below had awakened me. There were heavy boots on the stairs. I was terrified. The doctor’s squeaks came along the landing. I cleared my throat, but could not speak. I peered through the half-light as the door opened slowly. I at once recognised the silhouette of Grishenko the Cossack. He had escaped death. Anger poured from him like heat from fresh-cast metal. I knew that this was not a nightmare. I could see the whip at his belt.
I remember only his outline; my sense of his brutality. None of his features are clear to me. I remember his powerful hands. I knew, of course, that he had come to kill me. He held two guns. I was shivering as I sat up.
I waited for the pain of the shots.
But the guns were reversed. He was giving them to me. Like an accusing ghost. Did he want me to kill him? I put my two trembling hands towards the offerings: Yermeloff’s pistols with their rounded pommels. I clasped them awkwardly. There was bile in my throat. I did not put my fingers on the trigger-buttons. The guns weighted my wrists. They were too heavy. Grishenko was challenging me, I thought. I did not speak.
His voice was a throbbing, furious whisper. ‘They’re from Yermeloff. A gift.’
Brodmann moaned in his bed. Grishenko glared at him absently. Then he appeared to dismiss him as he returned his attention to me. ‘He said to bring them. Now they are yours.’
I did not understand.
Grishenko had a tear in his left eye. He pulled one of his long daggers from its red velvet sheath. He leaned over me. ‘We are free. We have our own laws.’ He put the knife under my chin. ‘Up.’
‘Why?’ I began to cough and then stopped, fearing that I would impale myself on the sharp tip. The knife-point touched my jugular. I felt the vein pulsing against steel.
‘Up, yid.’
I recalled Yermeloff’s warning. Grishenko was a savage dog who would only attack if you showed fear. I pulled at the triggers. The guns were not cocked. They would not fire. Grishenko put his face closer to mine. His breath burned me. ‘Up.’
I had no choice. I dropped the pistols to the bed. I stood in my shirt. My legs and genitals froze. I was dizzy. He placed his free hand on my chest and pushed me against the wall.
Brodmann began to whine slogans from where he sat in his nightshirt. He babbled about ‘rights’ and my ‘importance’. The Cossack said absently to him, ‘I’ll kill you. Be quiet.’
I think my neck had begun to bleed.
Grishenko gripped my shoulder. It felt as if it was going to break. The knife slid slowly down my stained shirt and the shirt parted. The blade touched my groin. ‘He said you would know what the guns meant to him. He was a holy one. I loved him. I protected him. I thought you would cheer him up. He was not a happy man.’ The point was drawn down one leg and then another. I hardly felt it, yet blood trickled. I did not beg. My honour was in me. I did not beg as the others begged. When he told me to face the wall, I obeyed. ‘He wanted you to live. To survive, he said. I did not understand. But Yermeloff was closer to God than I am. Do you accept his gift?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I think I thanked him.
‘Yermeloff was shot last night. Because he let you go. Not because your Bolsheviks ordered it. He told me to give you the guns. So I have brought them.’
I could not see what he was doing. The knife was at my heart but he was removing something else from his belt. ‘He made me promise not to kill you.’
‘You...’
‘Shut up. I promised. But I said I must make sure you would remember him. I don’t think you’ll keep his guns.’
I heard Grishenko’s awful whip whistling through the dull, grey air. We screamed together. I can feel the pain. It was the worst pain I have known. It was the most unexpected. It was inflicted with such skill, such controlled passion, that no bone was broken. But I still bear the marks of the little lead weights in my buttocks.
‘Now you’ll remember Yermeloff, yid.’
He pushed me onto the bed so that my face struck the pommels of the guns. I was weeping. He was still in the room, staring at me, slowly putting his whip back in his belt, his knife back in its sheath. Then he turned and went out. He closed the door quietly behind him. The monster had gone. That monster, who had killed his friend to save his own skin.
I still have the pistols. I have been offered a thousand pounds for them.
FIFTEEN
HISTORY IS NEVER THE SAME; but events repeat themselves. Gradually, through this repetition, you learn that people are very similar everywhere you go. They have always been inclined to leap to conclusions about me. I have rarely been guilty of anything. Is it my fault they transfer their own hopes and fears onto me? I am a scientist with a scientist’s mind. Few understand this. I have been humiliated. Grishenko humiliated me. Brodmann spoke of ‘outrages’ and ‘lack of discipline’ and used his Marxist rubbish to condemn Grishenko’s attack, but I could not bring myself to take the matter further. I am a forgiving soul. I had been fond of Yermeloff. To some extent I could understand Grishenko’s grief. Nonetheless, it was all but impossible for me to sit on anything hard for many weeks to come. Later, I would give the pistols into the safekeeping of Mrs Cornelius and would not see them again until 1940. Now, they had become a comfort.