Ahead lay the Sea of Azov. This was still the familiar route of thirteen years before, but it would be over much sooner – perhaps in less than a day, according to the captain. Already, they were sailing against the outflow from the river Don, at the other end of the small, isolated stretch of water, but on this occasion, he would not be making the tiresome journey upriver into the heart of Russia. On his next visit, he would make that journey and be hailed as a king, but for now, this outpost of the great empire would suffice. Once they had dropped anchor, then all he needed to do was wait. Others would do the work for him.
A journey taking in all the bookshops of Moscow would be unlikely to yield what Aleksei was looking for. He had never heard of such a thing as a dictionary to assist with translations between English and Russian, and doubted whether anyone else had. Fortunately, he happened to be living under the same roof as one of the greatest bibliophiles in the city, the master of the house himself, Valentin Valentinovich. Not only did he possess an impressive library of his own, but his knowledge of what was in the city’s other libraries was unsurpassed.
Aleksei knocked on the door of Valentin Valentinovich’s study, and entered when called. He sat down in the chair opposite the desk. After a few cool pleasantries, he asked the most obvious question:
‘How’s your English, Valentin?’ He was ambivalent about the response. If Valentin was able to translate the text directly for him, then it might save hours, or even days, of work. But it would be a bold move to ask anyone for a translation of a text whose contents could reveal anything. On the other hand, perhaps just a summary of the first page might send Aleksei on the right track. He could always claim it was a work of fiction – apparently the principal use for the English language.
‘Not a word, I’m afraid,’ replied Valentin. ‘Why?’
‘I have a letter I need to translate.’
‘A letter? Why on earth would anyone write to you in English?’ He wasn’t stupid, and was able to answer his own question almost immediately. ‘It’s not your letter, is it?’
He stood up from his desk and slammed his hand against the bookshelves. ‘This is really too much, Aleksei.’ Other men would have shouted, but Valentin Valentinovich spoke as if he had never known true anger. He persisted in using French, even though its popularity had been in decline – certainly amongst men of his class – for a decade. ‘I look after your whore, I pretend your bastard is my own, I let you treat my home as though it were a hotel, and now you want to involve me in your… your… underhand profession.’ He spat the word ‘underhand’ as though it were the foulest profanity he could think of.
Aleksei remained calm. Valentin was speaking with complete accuracy. Tamara was a bastard – the most adorable bastard in the whole wide world. Domnikiia was, or at least had been, a whore – though Aleksei guessed that Valentin was unaware of the literal truth of his words. It was his attitude to espionage that really riled Aleksei. The man thought himself a gentleman, and thought no spy ever could be. It was an insult to so many of Aleksei’s friends.
‘Shall we go and ask Yelena Vadimovna what she thinks of my profession?’ said Aleksei, with a certain sense of pride. It was an obvious enough question for a blackmailer to ask his mark, but in reality it was a three-pronged attack in which blackmail was far from Aleksei’s intent; far, but not completely absent.
It was almost possible to see Valentin wilt step by step as each aspect washed over him. The use of Yelena’s patronymic, and with it the reminder of her father Vadim, hit him first. Vadim Fyodorovich had practised that same underhand profession. Yelena loved her father without question. To insult Aleksei for that would be to insult her father, and that would be unwise.
The second problem for Valentin was what Aleksei knew about him. It wasn’t much, but for a man as honourable as Valentin, it was monumental. It had been a minor embezzlement, and Valentin had been unaware of it, but he had trusted flattering colleagues who had promised him the rank of Actual State Counsellor in exchange for help in what they assured him was an entirely legal set of transactions. One of them had been siphoning funds to Polish activists, and that’s how Aleksei had come across the fraud. He’d looked at the books and found that Valentin was guilty of nothing more than allowing others to use his bank account. He made sure Valentin’s name was kept out of the ensuing trial, and even found a way to let him keep half the money. When he revealed what he had done, Valentin had misread him. He’d seen it as an attempt at blackmail and had capitulated in an instant, even though at the time (back in 1818), there was nothing Aleksei had wanted from him. It was that which had precipitated Valentin’s move from government into commerce, and from Petersburg to Moscow. Aleksei had stored the incident away, until Domnikiia had fallen pregnant, and then called in the marker. Valentin saw it as coercion, Aleksei as one good deed being repaid with another. It made no practical difference to the outcome.
Of course, it had not been Valentin Valentinovich’s decision alone that they should take in Domnikiia and, when she entered the world, Tamara. Yelena Vadimovna had also to be persuaded. On the one hand she would do almost anything for Aleksei, who had been her father’s most trusted comrade but, as was the nature of women, she had become somewhat close to Marfa in Petersburg, even though they only knew one another through Aleksei. Thus to support one friend in his hour of need would be to betray another. In the end, Aleksei liked to think that it was Yelena’s love for her father that had won the day, but there were other factors. Yelena herself had had a lover when she lived in Petersburg. This had been some while after Rodion’s birth, so there was no doubt as to his paternity, and Aleksei could easily understand why an intelligent and vibrant woman like Yelena might seek attention from a man other than Valentin Valentinovich.
But Aleksei had not used his knowledge to blackmail Yelena; he doubted she was even aware he knew. Even so, her guilt made her less willing to judge others. She was unprepared to go to Marfa and reveal Aleksei as unfaithful, not because she feared he would do the same for her, but because she feared God would.
And from that came the third reason why Valentin would do what Aleksei asked, and retreat from the very idea of discussing it with Yelena. Valentin suspected that Aleksei and his wife had at one time been lovers. Thus he both believed she would side with him now and feared that any disagreement between them would result in him being publicly branded a cuckold. It was all fantasy. There had never been any physical relationship between Yelena and Aleksei, just an intense friendship born out of their mutual love for Vadim. But for a man of Valentin’s limited imagination, such closeness could have only one explanation. A younger Aleksei would have despised him for ever allowing his wife’s lover into the house, but as he had grown to know him, Aleksei had seen something more and more noble in every one of Valentin’s actions. It was a desire to do the right thing which Aleksei knew he could never achieve and so did not even attempt. Nor did he attempt to avoid exploiting Valentin’s fears when it served his purpose.
It took only moments for all these concepts, or at least his perceptions of them, to mollify Valentin’s position. ‘I’m sorry, Aleksei,’ he said quietly, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t help you. As I say, I don’t speak English.’
‘Do you have a dictionary?’
‘I’m sure I could find you a copy of Johnson somewhere in the city, or even Webster, but I don’t see how that would help you.’
‘I meant a bilingual dictionary,’ said Aleksei.
‘Between English and Russian?’ There was greater passion in Valentin’s voice at this ridiculous suggestion than there had been in any other part of their conversation. ‘I don’t think anyone’s attempted such a thing.’ He paused for a moment in thought, tapping his lips with his pen. ‘Wait a minute though…’ He turned to the bookshelf behind him and brought down a sheaf of papers, clearly not a published work but some notes of his own. ‘Yes. Louis Chambaud produced a lexicon of English and French in 1805. That would do you.’