Tatyana Ruslanovna began to laugh. Virginsky felt the shards of her laughter spike his soul, a thousand exquisite impalements. ‘I wonder, what is the correct amount of caution due when one is escorting a human bomb to an atrocity?’ she asked.
‘It is all very well for you to laugh,’ said Totsky. He looked at Tatyana Ruslanovna as if he had paid for her laughter with his blood. ‘You know that I am doing this for you.’
‘Then you are a fool. That is the worst conceivable reason to go to your death. For a woman such as me.’
‘No. Not for a woman such as you. For you.’
‘You should be doing it for the cause. For the people.’
‘Fine words. They mean nothing to me. I do this only to earn your admiration. I know I cannot hope for your love.’
It seemed to Virginsky that Totsky was speaking on his behalf, saying to Tatyana Ruslanovna precisely the words he wished to say, but was unable to.
‘What does it matter whether I admire you or not?’ said Tatyana Ruslanovna.
And Virginsky felt every bit as devastated as Totsky must have, as if her stinging words had been directed at him.
The inexplicable corpse
He began to feel as though he was trapped in an ambulatory prison. He could not say with any certainty how long he had been confined between his captors, but there were moments when it was hard for him to remember a time before this forced march, and impossible to imagine it coming to an end. He had entered eternity and it was exhausting.
Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky handled him with a combination of extreme solicitude and utter disregard. The slightest trip on his part provoked the most anxious ministrations, and a tightening of their fingers around his upper arm. And yet they steadfastly refused to address any remarks to him directly.
‘What am I wearing?’ he ventured to ask at one point. But they would not answer his question. ‘I can feel something around my torso, like a corset. Why have you put a corset on me?’
They took him along the back streets, cutting through a network of connected courtyards, the secret spaces at the hollow heart of vast buildings, the chain that linked a hidden city. His progress through this private, inner St Petersburg corresponded to his return to a functioning consciousness. The streets began to appear more familiar to him, at the same time as the nausea lifted and he felt his feet connect more solidly with the ground. He felt the strain on his arms where Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky were holding him, as the anaesthetic effect of the ether wore off. There was a return, too, of his imaginative capacity to put himself in the place of others: he wondered at the tense ache they must have been experiencing in their locked hands. His sympathy for his tormentors at that moment struck him as absurdly inappropriate, and he was all at once overwhelmed by self-disgust. But the implications of his predicament were too much for him to take in. If anything, his headache increased in intensity.
‘What did you mean by that remark? When you said something about escorting a human bomb? How can I be a human bomb? Is it something to do with the corset?’
‘Silence! Remember the baby. Do as you are told or the baby will die,’ ordered Tatyana Ruslanovna.
He felt a soft explosion of emotion in his chest. It was not anger; it was the most tender, affectionate pity. It seemed he had become severed from himself. This fate, this inescapable death, was both his and not his. The part of him that would not suffer it, that would survive it, was able to look with pity — and, yes, love — on the part that would be inevitably destroyed. This was the soul’s pity for the body, he realised. Of course, such a realisation went against the whole tenor of his professed convictions, which until this moment had been unshakeably materialistic. He had not until now believed in the soul, or, rather, he had not known that he had. He did not feel confused by this, or angry. He felt no resentment for the years that had been taken from him. He felt at peace, elated almost.
He looked up to see the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary towering over him.
And then he understood that all that he had just experienced was the last trace of ether disintegrating in his blood. His ruthless clarity returned to him. He was about to die. There was no soul. Nothing would survive the imminent incineration of his body. He was, in effect, already dead.
The elation left him. His body went into spasm. He became a flimsy marionette whose strings were being jerked by an angry puppet master. He slipped out of the grip of his escorts, and even threw one clenched hand into Tatyana Ruslanovna’s face.
‘Hold onto him!’ shouted Totsky.
It was surprise that had shaken him out of their hands, and a momentary rush of strength. His fingers pulled at the kosovorotka, lifting the bottom hem up over his head. With his free hand he felt what seemed to be rows of glass capsules sewn into the unfamiliar undergarment into which he had been bound.
‘No!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imperious tone stayed his hand, for the moment at least. He released the hem of the shirt and it fell back into place.
‘If you take that off, you know what Botkin will do,’ continued Tatyana Ruslanovna. ‘Will you condemn that baby to death?’
As Virginsky struggled to take in what she had said, Totsky’s hand came up towards his face. He expected Totsky to strike him, but his hand fell short of a blow. Then Virginsky noticed the vitreous flash of the bottle the other man was clutching, and he felt once again the wolf-like fumes devour the membranes of his nostrils. He staggered back, arms flailing the suddenly viscous air.
‘It’s alright! He’s had too much to drink!’ Tatyana Ruslanovna shouted excitedly into the godless void in front of the church. ‘Grief. He was very close to the deceased, you see.’
Their hands were on him again. ‘Deceased?’ cried Virginsky. ‘Who is deceased?’
‘Someone you killed, that’s all,’ answered Tatyana Ruslanovna.
‘Porfiry Petrovich, do you mean? But he isn’t really dead. You know that. He wouldn’t go through with this!’
Tatyana Ruslanovna tilted her head back, in an expression of high disdain. Apart from a slight spasm at the corner of the mouth, it was the only answer she volunteered.
*
He had never seen so many candles. The tiny glimmering flames seemed to form a sea of light out of which the congregation was rising. And then he realised that each member of the congregation was holding a candle in front of them. He wanted more than anything to have a candle of his own but the service had already begun. And Tatyana Ruslanovna and Totsky hurried him into the church as if there was no time for that.
In his confusion, he connected the glow of the candles with the sound of chanting, as if the burning of wicks suspended in wax produced an auditory effect, as well as a visual one. Then he realised that it was the people holding the candles who were producing the sounds, which truly were as beautiful and soothing to his ears as the candlelight was to his eyes. A slowly soaring melody ranged over the upper registers of his emotions like a high majestic bird riding eddies; beneath it, a deep bass drone persisted, its beauty sombre, powerful and enduring. There could be no arguing with that bass. It vibrated viscerally, physically, taking hold not just of his internal organs but of the frame that contained them.
The solemnity of the sound made a deep impression on him. And yet something about it struck him as inappropriate, almost ludicrous.
He glanced to either side of him and noticed that Tatyana Ruslanovna was no longer holding onto him. In fact, she was backing away towards the door. Totsky was still there by his side, gripping his upper arm tightly.
‘Where is she going?’ cried Virginsky to his one remaining captor. His shout went off like a firecracker. It drew disapproving frowns from those around him.
‘Pavel Pavlovich? Is that you?’ The voice hissed from just in front of him.