Twelve

At last, having done her duty by each of the twenty men in the ward, she arrived at the door. She looked up at me with her beautiful slanting eyes and smiled her professional smile – as useful to her in her current profession as in her former.

'Good afternoon, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she said, giving away no hint of emotion. I merely smiled in reply. 'Step outside with me for a moment,' she continued.

She led the way out to a quiet courtyard. I felt my heart beating in my chest, begging to be set free. She turned and put her hands to my head, pulling me down on to her lips. We kissed so ardently, but also so briefly, before she pulled away and put her lips first to my forehead, then to my eyebrows, then to my eyes, then my cheeks, then my ears, then my chin, my neck, my hands, my palms and my fingers. I was for the moment a passive, compliant body as her lips marked out every piece of me as her territory. Finally, she raised my left hand to her lips and kissed the tiny webbing of skin between my middle finger and what remained of my ring finger. Then she leaned into my chest, her arms not embracing me but held up in front of her, crushed between us. Now she was offering passivity, and I held her tight to me with all my strength.

'I feared you were dead, Lyosha.'

'Why would you think that?'

'I didn't think it, I just feared it.'

'I watched you leave Moscow,' I told her. 'Early that morning.'

'Good,' she smiled up at me. 'I didn't see you.'

'I'm a professional,' I replied.

We began to walk, hand in hand; finger woven with finger.

'Why have you left Moscow so soon?' she asked.

'Dmitry was badly burnt in the fires. I brought him here.'

'You should have let him burn.' She changed her mind, almost without pausing. 'I'm sorry, he's your friend – important enough for you to bring here.'

'He wasn't for a little while, but I think we're over that now.'

'Why weren't you? Because of Maks?'

'And you.'

'So why did you come here to Yuryev-Polsky?'

'Dmitry suggested it. I wasn't too keen,' I said with a smirk. She made a tight little fist and jabbed me in the ribs.

'And your other friend, Vadim; is he here too?'

'No. As far as we know, he's still in Moscow. I'm hoping he'll join us.' It sounded hollow, even to me.

For the next couple of weeks, our relationship was the least physical it had ever been. I had found accommodation in a barracks near to where Dmitry was recovering, and Domnikiia was living in nurses' quarters. In the time that we had together we were forced to behave much like any other courting soldier and nurse thrown together by the forces of war. We spent our time talking and holding hands and walking round the town, and though it would be nice to say that through these conversations we learned to understand one another better than we ever had before, it simply wouldn't be true. Our conversations were no more and no less intimate or stimulating than those we had had naked and entwined in her bed in Moscow. For me, at least they had the benefit of being cheaper.

I told her much of what had happened since we had parted in Moscow; of the state of the city under French occupation and of the destruction brought by the fires. I told her of Boris and Natalia and how they had cared for us before we left, but I told her nothing of the Oprichniki and what I had discovered about them. I knew that I would have to tell her, but whenever an opportunity arose, I shied from it. My silence assisted the cosy delusion of safety which I had deliberately built for myself, but underneath, the terror was never far from my mind.

'You never ask about me,' she said one day from nowhere as we walked through a late summer's evening.

'I ask you every day what you've been up to,' I replied, mildly offended.

'I mean about who I am – about my life before you knew me.'

'Oh, that,' I said, and after a moment's pause, 'So tell me.'

'What would you like to know?'

'Everything' would have been the true answer, but specifics would be easier. I started with, 'Where were you born?'

'Moscow,' she replied. 'I've always lived in Moscow.'

'Never been outside?'

'I don't think I'd ever been three versts from where I was born, until I came here.'

'You must find Yuryev-Polsky very exotic,' I said.

'It's small and boring,' she said. It was an accurate summary.

'So where are your family?'

'I don't know,' she replied. 'My father owned a shop – a milliner's. We lived above it – him and my mother and my brother and me. We weren't rich, but he had ambition. He believed the best route to success was to make friends of his customers, if they were rich enough or important enough. But the rich get rich by not paying their bills until they have to, and he didn't feel he could ask people so much above him for something so grubby as payment of a bill.'

'So you've learned from his mistakes?' I said lightly.

'Too right. But my customers tend to pay pretty quickly anyway. No one wants his wife to come across an unpaid bill from me at the end of the month.'

'So what went wrong?'

'Who says anything went wrong?' she said, surprised. 'I'm here, now, with you, aren't I?'

'You could have got here by an easier route.'

'Could I? The only other route into your trousers would be to become some stuck-up society girl in Petersburg, and that was never an option.'

I stiffened. It wasn't an accurate description of Marfa in any way, but from the deliberate little I had told Domnikiia about her, it was to be expected.

'I'm sorry,' continued Domnikiia. 'That wasn't fair.'

'That's all right. So what did happen?'

'I was swept off my feet by a customer. One of my father's customers, I mean – at least at first. He used to come into the shop and buy his wife the most lovely hats. Then he bought me a lovely hat. And then he got what he'd expected in return. Soon he would just give me money. But then his wife found out, and she told her friends, and suddenly husbands weren't allowed to come to us for their wives' hats.

'My father knew what had caused it. We had an argument and he hit me, so I left. I rented a room and got by the only way I knew how. Only now the men I saw weren't the sort who tended to buy hats for their wives, even if they could have afforded them. Before long, one of them hit me, so I went back home.'

'I see,' I said.

'Except that there was no home. The shop had closed down and my family had gone. I guess I'd spoiled his reputation. And so I went back to work, and more men hit me, but most men paid, so I survived. Then I met Pyetr Pyetrovich. And he knew how to get the men to pay more, even though I was paid less. But I have a roof and a bed and a… home.'

'Didn't you ever look for your family?' I asked.

'I will do,' she replied, 'but not just yet. It's not been long enough yet.'

The way she told the story made it sound as if it had all happened a long, long time ago, but she was still too young for anything to have happened to her so very long ago.

'How long has it been?' I asked.

'Three years – since I left home.'

'You've been lucky, I suppose.'

'Luckier than most,' she said. 'I'm pretty. Men like that.'

'And you're smart. Men like that too.'

'No, Lyosha,' she said condescendingly, 'that's just you.' We walked in silence for a little. 'So, are you going to tell me all the secrets of your past?' she asked eventually.

'Best not, I think. Besides, it shouldn't make any difference.'

'How do you mean?'

'It's the same as the reason I never asked you about yours; I know you,' I said. 'You don't need explaining.' I might once have said the same thing about Maks.