And then I saw his hand.
It was still moving, but the movement was not a desperate signal for assistance – the last plea of a dying man clinging to life – it was simply the wriggling of a hundred maggots. They had eaten most of his hand away, but their gluttonous writhing had, to the eyes of a man who had wanted to see life where there was none, seemed like a coherent motion; a twitching of the fingers that the maggots had long since assimilated.
In just such a way might the casual viewer conceive that life had in fact returned to Moscow. The streets were once again filled with vitality, with bustle, with commotion. But looking closely they would see that those figures that filled the streets, though they might on the surface look like the city's former inhabitants, were living on the city, not in it. Their purpose was to consume what they found (notwithstanding that trade rather than pillage might be a more efficient approach to the task of consumption), not to nurture for the benefit of their successors or for the benefit of the city itself.
Moscow was as full of life as a cadaver on the embalmer's table. The fluids and chemicals that had been introduced into its veins can engorge it sufficiently to give it some vague semblance of the living creature that it once was, but they would never have the ability to provide the vital essence that once made that body a man. The image brought to my mind the Oprichniki. They passed themselves off physically as men, but I had never seen in any one of them a hint of the desires and loves and anguishes of living beings.
Did the French occupiers, I wondered, perceive themselves as parasites feasting on the corpse of a once-great city, or did they believe that they were the vanguard of a new wave of life that had revitalized all the rest of Europe and was now supplying the physical reality of the Enlightenment to Russia? I think that Bonaparte himself probably believed that, but I also think he was deluding himself. Maks had shared Bonaparte's delusion.
It had been almost four hours since I had thought of Maks.
It was in the mid-afternoon of that day, the third of September, that I heard the first stories of fires raging in Moscow. I had invested in a substantial quantity of tobacco and was furtively offering it at an entirely unreasonable price to any French officer or soldier that I came across. The most unanticipated thing that I learned from this was that I had missed my calling. By the time I had sold scarcely a third of my stock, I had more than made back what I had paid for it. I understood how those few thousand who had remained in Moscow, however much they feared for their lives, must have been tempted by the profit that was to be had.
The profit which I was seeking was in the currency not of gold, but of knowledge. I still maintained the simplistic façade of a man who spoke no French, and so I was able to pick up all the news of plans and deployments that the French were discussing, as well as the gossip and tittle-tattle.
Fires were springing up all over Moscow. The French stories were that former convicts in the prisons of Moscow had been released and instructed by the departed governor, Rostopchin, to burn down the city, rather than let the French occupy it. The Muscovites I spoke to told, predictably, a different story: it was the French who were starting the fires, intent not just on occupying the city, not just on raping it, but ultimately on destroying it. This made little sense to me; no maggot could ever be pleased to see the corpse on which it fed cremated. Another point of view was that the fires were simply accidents. The French cared less for the city than did its inhabitants, so they would be less concerned about a toppled candle or a leaping cinder. In addition, with no civil authorities in place, there was no organization – nor any impetus – to put out any fire caused in such a way. Formerly, Moscow had been well stocked with hoses and pumps and men who knew how to operate them, but all had vanished with the evacuation. The Russians and the French stared at one another over the blazing city, each blaming the other, and neither was prepared to blink.
Among the stories about the fires, there were other rumours that I picked up; rumours that were frighteningly familiar; rumours that there was a plague in Moscow. And as I heard more of these rumours, the idea of a plague began to transform. The French were beginning to talk of strangulations, of disappearances, of a pack of wild animals.
The Oprichniki were doing their work. And yet I wondered if the two phenomena might not be related. The Oprichniki had no preconceptions of war, found no barriers of convention or custom that they would not cross. Perhaps the fires too were part of their unconventional solution to the goal of ejecting the French. I doubted whether I could have sacrificed the city itself to that goal, but the Oprichniki, as outsiders, had no such scruples. And so I might have failed where they would succeed. With the Oprichniki it was very easy (and very pleasing) to mortgage one's scruples, knowing that after the battle those scruples would be returned to one untouched – neither diminished nor consulted.
Tuesday's rendezvous was the church of Saint Clement, in the suburb of Zamoskvorechye, not so far from my new residence. Its priest had, it seemed, abandoned it and left Moscow, convinced that it was beyond his abilities to convert these invaders from their atheism to godliness, let alone to Christianity, let even more alone to the Orthodox religion.
I felt a chill as I gazed up at the church's red walls, feeling a sensation of menace that I imagine is not uncommon in even the most pious of men when encountering the overawing physical presence of such a building. A church, we all know from our earliest years, is the house of the Lord; a place of love and sanctuary. And yet the presentiment of horror and menace that I felt, huddled in the darkness of the gateway, lit only by the setting half-moon, must surely be one that is shared by all. I suppose it is because a church, however much we associate it with the love of Christ, is a place that we also associate with the dead. It cuts to the very heart of our belief. The bliss of paradise is the ultimate reward towards which the life of every Christian is directed, and yet how much do we all fear death? We fear death so greatly that we even fear those most incapacitated of creatures: the dead themselves.
I glanced around, but still saw no sign of Vadim or Dmitry, or indeed of any of the Oprichniki.
It seemed like only moments later when I looked around again, to find I had been joined by Ioann and Foma.
CHAPTER XII
I FELT A SENSATION OF SELF-LOATHING AS I DISCOVERED HOW pleasant – I'm afraid that is the correct word – it was to see these familiar faces. Without doubt, I wanted to meet with Vadim, or even Dmitry, but to be able to speak freely with people that I knew, be it for only a few weeks, was a relief. The constant pressure of pretence as a covert patriot amongst a swarm of invaders is debilitating. Despite the fact that somewhere in my mind I had been hoping that if it had to be an Oprichnik it would be Iuda who came along, I think that my smile was genuine as I shook both Foma and Ioann by the hand.
'I'm glad to see you,' I told them. They smiled and nodded as if they hadn't quite followed the detail of the French I had spoken to them, but appreciated the sentiment.
'Where have you been staying?' I slowed the pace of my speech and, I fear, introduced the tone of condescension which one uses when speaking to people who understand neither French nor Russian.