‘1812,’ said Iuda. ‘You were just a little boy. And a good boy, too – though it was hateful of me to ask you to deceive your father, and for so long.’
‘I think I’ve deceived him no more than he’s deceived me,’ said Dmitry. ‘I saw her, Vasiliy, in Moscow, just like you said.’
‘So it wasn’t only Marfa you introduced yourself to,’ said Aleksei. He couldn’t take his eyes from Iuda, much as he wanted to gauge his son’s reactions.
‘Mama’s told you already?’ asked Dmitry. ‘Vasiliy’s been a great friend to both of us – particularly when you’ve been away.’
Aleksei perceived the slightest shake of Iuda’s head, as if to tell him, no, Dmitry did not know just how close a friend Iuda had been to his mother. That certainly fitted the boy’s tone. No son could speak so lightly of the man who had turned his mother into an adulteress. And what would be the benefit of revealing the truth, even if it were to be believed? Dmitry had clearly been robbed of much of his respect for his father. Would it be fair to take away his opinion of his mother too? But on the other hand, it might be worth it if it would also strip away any regard in which he held Iuda.
‘Almost like a father,’ Dmitry continued. There was no suggestion of any artifice in his voice, but that did not change the fact that he believed what he was saying. Now Iuda’s eyes smiled in victory. Aleksei felt weak.
‘I’m a soldier,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t always be at home.’
‘God no, Papa,’ said Dmitry, stumbling over his words as he realized what he had said. ‘I didn’t mean anything of that kind.’ But it was too late for him to take it back.
Iuda was characteristically two-faced. ‘Nor did your father think it, Mitka. I couldn’t begin to take Lyosha’s place in your heart, any more than I could in your mother’s. I’m just someone who’s kept a benign eye on you when he’s been away. I’m sure you’ll have much less need of me now you’ve grown up and flown the nest.’
Iuda had played it so simply – Dmitry was forced to disagree. ‘No, Vasiliy,’ he said, gripping Iuda’s shoulder, ‘you’ve been far more to us both than that. And always will be.’
Iuda patted Dmitry’s hand and smiled kindly. ‘Thank you for that, Mitka,’ he said. ‘I will try to live up to your expectations. But we have chatted long enough. We must turn to the reason I am here.’
‘Go on.’
‘Your mother has sent me. I’ve told her what you’ve been planning for today.’ Iuda raised a hand as he spoke, as though to stop any objection from Dmitry. ‘I’m sorry, but I hold you both in too much regard to keep it from her.’ With the clear implication that Aleksei did not. ‘She begs you to leave, before you are killed.’
Dmitry did not even need to think about his answer. ‘As does the mother of every man here,’ he explained. ‘No freedom would ever be won if women ruled the world; they all love their sons too much.’
Iuda nodded. ‘That is much what I told her you would say, but at least I have done what she asked of me.’ He paused, lifting Dmitry’s hand and holding it in both his own. ‘This appeal, however, comes from me. Leave the field. You can do nothing here. Nikolai is tsar; you cannot change that.’
‘I can die trying,’ insisted Dmitry.
‘You will die failing,’ said Iuda.
Iuda held the pose for several seconds, looking up into Dmitry’s eyes. Neither spoke. It was Aleksei who broke the silence.
‘Listen to him, Mitka,’ he said. It revolted him to urge anyone to take Iuda’s advice, and to be deferring to him, rather than to take the lead in imploring Dmitry to go, but none of that mattered if it succeeded in saving the boy’s life. Aleksei loved Dmitry as a person more even than he loved him as a son. He was prepared to lose the relationship in order to save the man.
Finally, Dmitry was resolved. ‘Very well,’ he nodded, ‘but you’ll both come too.’
‘Of course,’ said Aleksei. ‘But Vasiliy and I have an important matter to discuss first.’
Iuda raised a questioning eyebrow at Aleksei. There was a hint of admiration in the smile that crossed his lips.
‘Here?’ exclaimed Dmitry. ‘Surely it can wait.’
‘No,’ said Iuda, ‘your father is quite right. Besides, if we all three leave together it’s more likely we’ll be stopped. We’ll see you soon. We both will. And don’t worry, I’ll be quite safe.’ He tapped his chest again in the same way Aleksei had noticed two days before. If Dmitry observed it, he made no comment.
Instead he gave Aleksei a brief hug, then did the same with Iuda. He headed off to the east, pushing his way through crowds of rebellious soldiers who did nothing to stop him.
‘What is it that we have to discuss?’ Iuda’s voice spoke in Aleksei’s ear as they watched Dmitry depart.
The truth was there was only one thing Aleksei wanted to talk to Iuda about, and that was to tell him that he had been taken for a fool and that Aleksandr was not dead. But he had already decided that he would do that only in the moments before Iuda’s death. Now he had the perfect opportunity to kill Iuda, or at least to see him die.
Iuda – Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov – Richard L. Cain – all would die by a single bullet, fired from the gun of a soldier loyal to Tsar Nikolai I. There were plenty of them about, the square was almost surrounded by now, and if none of them managed to fire a fatal shot, then Aleksei had a loaded pistol in his pocket, and was as loyal to Nikolai as any. Neither Marfa nor Dmitry could lay any blame at Aleksei’s door for the death. There would be hundreds killed here today, it was inescapable. No one would be suspicious if one of them was Iuda. Dmitry had heard for himself that Iuda was prepared to stay a while longer. Perhaps there would even be witnesses who could attest to seeing Aleksei desperately attempting to save his old – and so recently reconciled – friend’s life. He felt sure he could stomach a little play-acting for that.
‘You play a long game, Iuda,’ he said.
‘You’re too generous, Lyosha. You see structure in the present and assume that my every action in the past was working towards it. In reality, the reverse is true. I do things that seem interesting at the time and then decide later what I can make of them.’
Aleksei was only half listening. His eyes were scanning the square. Dmitry was not yet out of sight. To the south, he could see a definite, organized movement of the troops.
‘Do you really think,’ Iuda continued, ‘that in 1812 I ingratiated myself with your wife and son with the intention of revealing the fact to you in 1825?’
‘You planned to reveal it some time.’
‘How could I even know how they would react to me? I couldn’t have guessed that your wife would be so eagerly accommodating; nor how much your son would search for someone to fill the gap left by his absent father.’
Aleksei glanced at him. It wasn’t so surprising that barbs concerning Dmitry stung more than those about Marfa, and it wasn’t just that one was a fresher wound. ‘I don’t think Dmitry would be too fond of you if he knew what you and his mother had been doing.’
‘Her thoughts exactly,’ said Iuda. ‘To him I’m just an old family friend – a sort of uncle, whom he has known longer than he can remember.’
‘You had to make sure he never mentioned you to me.’
‘Again, you see patterns after they have emerged and assume they are part of some grand design. Do you play chess, Lyosha?’
Aleksei’s mind jumped back to a frozen army camp where – as now – he had believed he had Iuda at his mercy. ‘You know I do,’ he said. ‘Last time we spoke of it, you described how disappointed you got whenever I fell for one of your little traps, because it meant you wouldn’t get to spring the bigger trap you’d been planning all along.’
‘I did say that, didn’t I? Well, I lied – it’s a vile habit and I apologize for it. But the big trap is not the one that was designed to be big; it’s the one that grows that way. I never told Marfa or Mitka to avoid telling you about me. The boy was only five at the time – how could he have understood? And what would it have meant to you to hear of Vasiliy Denisovich? But then, when I learned later that you knew nothing of me, that’s when I decided to encourage the idea. I was already fucking your wife as often as she could take it, so she wasn’t going to tell. And Dmitry wasn’t too pleased with you at the time, thanks to your failure to take his piano playing seriously – it was I who first taught him to play, incidentally.’