I began to climb the stairs. The shadows cast by my lamp through the balustrade made strange shapes on the walls of the upper hallway as I ascended. Suddenly I heard a rustling noise and something scuttled across the hall into a corner. I held up the lamp and peered in the direction it had gone. It was a rat, frozen in the corner, looking almost pitifully scared, its beadlike eyes reflecting the lamp's flame. Glancing around, I could see by similar reflections that there were dozens of rats up here, each marked out by the same two tiny points of light. This struck me as odd. I had seen no rats on the ground floor, or even in the cellar. Why should they all have chosen to congregate here on the first floor? What, I wondered, had those staring, shining eyes struck upon up here that they could not find down below?
It was then, as I continued to climb the stairs and my head rose above the level of the floor, that I noticed the smell. It was the smell of a charnelhouse. I thought instantly of the stench of Zmyeevich's breath, which I now knew to be the stink of the raw, decaying human flesh and blood that rose from his stomach. Holding back the rising need to vomit, I followed the smell into a room to the left of the stairs. I heard the scampering of the rats as they fled out of my way. As I stepped into the room, the stench was stronger and its source was immediately revealed to me. On the floor were laid out ten corpses – all in assorted French uniforms, or those of their allies. They were in various stages of decay. On some, no human features remained recognizable. On others, the telltale throat wounds that betrayed both the manner and the motivation of their deaths were still clear. In between, the wounds had begun to vanish into a formless sponge of decomposing flesh.
I didn't inspect any of the bodies very closely. The light of the lamp was faint, and bending down close was not a pleasant experience. I looked around the rest of the room. In addition to the door through which I had entered, there was another that led to an adjacent room. Before I went through, I glanced back and noticed how, in contrast to the careless way in which the bodies had been desecrated by the vampire's fangs, their actual positioning was rather orderly. The ten bodies were neatly placed across the room in two rows, as though they were in a hospital ward. It was no different from a dining table in a grand house such as the one in which I stood. The crockery and wine glasses and cutlery are laid out with punctilious consideration, but little attention is given by the diner to the messy carcass of the chicken left on his plate once he has eaten.
Here I could see why some of the downstairs rooms had been over-furnished. Space had to be made up here to store these mementos, much as a man might overcrowd one room with paintings to leave room in another for the stuffed heads of wolves and bears that he has hunted, oblivious to the protestations of his wife about having such ugly things in the house. Those stuffed beasts would always be placed in poses so much more terrifying and aggressive than the true state of the creature when it was killed. The same could not be said of the bodies laid out here in so orderly a fashion. If anything, it was their defencelessness, not their majesty, that was emphasized in the display. The Oprichniki saw no nobility in their prey, nor did they have wives to moderate their sense of décor.
The orderliness of the layout revealed something else to me. There were only ten corpses in the room because it had reached its capacity. The doorway to the next room beckoned. As I stepped through I heard behind me a rustling sound as the rats returned to the activity from which I had disturbed them.
The next room was larger and had a few vestiges of furniture left in it. In one corner was a high-backed armchair and near it a folding screen of oriental appearance. Elsewhere a table, chairs and a stool all made this room appear a little more 'lived' in, though the very word brought a grimace to my lips. A second door led back out on to the landing. The windows, like the windows in all the rooms I had been in, were hidden behind thick, heavy curtains. Again there were bodies in here, but the room was not yet full. Only two of them were in French uniforms and both were less decayed than any in the other room. The bodies next to these were very different. They were shabbily dressed in ordinary clothes. By this and simply by their faces, I could tell that these were Russian. Like an archaeologist, I had found a division between strata which I could use to mark a precise date; the date when the French had left and the Oprichniki had chosen not to follow them, but to remain and enjoy an alternative, plentiful food supply.
There were seven Russian bodies in the room. The soldiers had naturally all been men, but once the Oprichniki had switched to civilians, they demonstrated no discrimination over sex. One of the bodies was small, scarcely bigger than a child. Its head, covered in tight curls of black hair, lay on one side, facing away from me, causing the foul lacerations in the throat to gape open even more. For an agonizing moment, I believed it to be Natalia. I bounded across the room and turned her head to look at her face, the wounds on one side of her neck closing up as I did so. It was not her. It wasn't even a girl, but a boy of about Natalia's age. I stood up, relieved that the suffering of grief was not, in this case, to be felt by me but could be transferred to others elsewhere in the city who knew and loved this boy.
I went over to the oriental screen and pulled it to one side. Behind it, a figure stood upright, its awful, contorted face staring directly into mine. I smelled the reeking stench of decay stronger than ever and I threw myself back, knocking the screen to the ground.
I had been mistaken. The figure was not standing; it was hanging – hanging like a coat casually thrown on to a peg. A long nail had been hammered into the wall behind and the body had been thrust upon it so that the head of the nail could just be seen sticking out of the neck under the chin. It was in a position that would not have much hindered the Oprichniki as they ate. The body was old and almost as decayed as some of those in the other room, but it wore no French uniform, just regular clothes. The wounds in the neck had long ago begun to putrefy, to such an extent that it was surprising it still had the integrity to support the weight of the body from that single nail. Most of the flesh of the face had begun to decay, but the full beard still remained, as did the eyes.
And so, despite the darkness and the hideous putrefaction of his face, the body was not unrecognizable. His clothes and his beard and his eyes – especially his eyes – all gave him away.
It was Vadim.
So it became clear that Rodion Valentinovich would never be held in his grandfather's arms; that their lives had overlapped by only a few hours or days, if at all. Vadim could never even have known of his grandchild's existence, and neither I nor anyone else would have the pleasure of telling him. I could not weep. I had known for a long time that Vadim was dead; known since I had seen Iuda arrive at that house in Kitay Gorod without Vadim in tow. Every time I had tried and failed to meet up with Vadim since, I had felt a little fear and a little sadness and suspected that his failure to appear hinted at his utter inability so to do. And so seeing his body now was more of a confirmation than a revelation. Still I wished, as I had done and still did with Maks, for the chance then to say a proper goodbye and the opportunity now to mourn.
I turned away and my foot knocked against something hollow and wooden. Vadim's corpse had not been the only thing hidden by the screen. I had also found what I had come into the house to look for. It was a coffin, but again, like those of Matfei and Varfolomei, not purpose-built; merely a crate of the conveniently correct size and shape.
I pulled it away from the wall, towards the middle of the room, and prised open the lid. Inside was the soldier whom I had so long ago seen dead but not decaying, whom that night I had followed to the house where he now slept. His eyes were closed and his hands lay across his belly. I raised my hand, firmly grasping my wooden dagger high above my head, ready to bring it down on the sleeping monster's heart with all my strength.