Dmitry turned and looked me in the eye, considering what he was about to say. Then he shook his head dismissively, as if waking from a dream.
'As far as I can remember, at least,' he said. 'It was a long time ago.'
'How long did you stay with them?' I asked.
'Not long. Eventually, after about a fortnight, we caught sight of a Russian battalion and I decided to return to the familiar. I waited until Zmyeevich met up with us that night to say goodbye. He understood why I'd made my decision, and told me with all sincerity that if I ever needed help I should not be afraid to ask.'
'And he was as good as his word,' I said. Dmitry didn't catch the bitterness of my tone.
'Exactly, Aleksei. Exactly. You may not like what they are – God knows, I don't either – but they can be trusted. They've proved that.'
And in my own mind, I couldn't fault him. The Oprichniki had answered our call for help; they had done what we had asked them to do. Dmitry and I both knew it, and yet we appeared to have come to very different conclusions. I searched for the distinction between us, and soon found it. God might know that Dmitry did not like what these creatures were, but I remained to be convinced. My visceral, instinctive hatred of them, simply for what they were, seemed missing – or at least hidden – in Dmitry. His view of them as being like cannon that simply had to be pointed towards the enemy was quite, quite logical. It would have surprised Maks, as it did me, to find Dmitry the more rational of the two of us.
Yet, if that was rationality, it could go to hell. Love was irrational, yet it was both right and beautiful. Couldn't hatred be just the same? My experience of the Oprichniki had convinced me that it could.
I had further questions for him, but no stomach to ask them. I changed the subject. 'When are you leaving?' I asked.
'I'm ready now.' He smiled sheepishly. 'I'd already made plans. I'll leave today.' Then he added, 'Look out for Natalia and Boris for me.'
We embraced. There were no words with which to say goodbye, and yet as I walked away I knew in my heart that there was still a more honest conversation to be had between us. Dmitry, I was certain, was lying – or at least not telling the full story. His account of his first meeting with Zmyeevich was too tidy; too much designed to make Dmitry himself happy. There was more that he had wanted to tell me, but had not.
And why not? Because I was a liar too. Dmitry might not have the insight to guess what exactly I was holding back, but he had known me long enough to see that there was something. That something was that I had made it my quest – a quest that I would continue now that I had no more excuses for not returning to Moscow – to destroy every one of these abominable creatures. And why did I not in turn tell him my secret? Because I did not trust him. I deceived him because I knew he was deceiving me. His behaviour was identical. Neither of us could break the deadlock with a leap, or even a small step, of faith.
How much easier it had been when Maks was the only deceiver amongst us. His presence had sown no seeds of doubt into our midst. Perhaps he had just been a better liar than either Dmitry or I, so much so that, even now, even after he had been exposed, even now he was dead, I still felt a greater degree of trust in him than in the living comrade with whom I had just parted.
Two days later a great convoy of coaches, trucks and wagons left Yuryev-Polsky. It was the fourteenth of October – over a month since we had said goodbye to Natalia and departed the city. It turned out to be the last day before winter truly fell upon us. On the second day of our journey, the temperature dropped suddenly. Our ride to Moscow would be colder than anyone had planned for, but it would only last three or four days and then I would be back. Bonaparte's retreat through the Russian winter would take much longer.
Looking behind me along the great train of vehicles, I caught sight of the three covered wagons that Pyetr Pyetrovich had used to evacuate his 'assets' from Moscow. He sat at the front of the first coach, next to the driver. Behind him, in the shade of the canopy, I could just make out a face that I knew to be Domnikiia's. I spent most of the long journey simply staring towards her.
My own carriage contained quite a mixture of people – old and young, some families – none that I felt much urge to converse with. I remember on the afternoon of our fourth day of travel, as I caught my first glimpse of the towers and domes of my beloved city, a mother sitting next to me was just finishing off telling a folk story to her two young children, bringing back memories of my own childhood. I looked at the approaching city for only a few minutes before turning back to gaze once again at Domnikiia.
The story that the mother was vividly telling her children had been one of my grandmother's favourites, and one of her strangest and, despite its simplicity, most frightening. It was about a town in the south called Uryupin, and I listened idly, comforted in the memory of my fears as a child which now seemed so utterly insignificant.
'After the traveller and his creatures had gone, everyone rejoiced,' she recounted, her voice rising to match the rejoicing, 'but soon people began to notice that something was wrong.' She bent towards her children conspiratorially, and her voice lowered.
'The town was quiet – so quiet that you could have heard the sound of a farmer sowing poppy seed.' The children smiled up at her, anticipating the ending of a story they had heard many times before.
'In the end, it was a little boy, just about your age, Grisha,' she said to her son, 'who understood what was wrong. It was so quiet because there was no birdsong. The traveller's pets had eaten not only the rats, but all of the birds in the village too.
'And to this day, you know, not one of them has come back.'
PART TWO
CHAPTER XVIII
IT WAS A SUNDAY WHEN I ARRIVED BACK IN MOSCOW. I WAS GLAD to have seen the city at its worst, for now, although it was still in a sorry state, I could at least see that there was some improvement. For those like Domnikiia and most of the populace, who had left before the French had even arrived, the contrast with now must have been heartbreaking. They had last seen a city still at the height of its physical splendour, still with the lifeblood of its people flowing through its streets, even though at that time they were flowing out of the city. When I had last seen Moscow, two-thirds of it had been razed by fire, a fraction of the population remained and the streets were filled only with occupying French soldiers.
Today, two-thirds of the city was still destroyed by fire. No surprise for me, but a horror to many others who returned, particularly if they returned to find it was their home that had been destroyed. Today, there were no French in the city, neutral for those who had never seen the French, but an improvement for me, who had. Today, the population was still small, but larger than at its worst and increasing all the time. For those who had seen it full, the city was still empty. For me, it was not yet full, but at least it was filling.
Thus I must have cut an eccentric figure that day. While most of the returning Muscovites wore faces of haggard shock and shuffled around contemplating the enormity of the task of rebuilding – both personally and civically – that lay before them, I strode about with the evident pleasure of a voyager revisiting a beautiful town that he has not seen for many years.