'So where's Maks?' asked Vadim.
'Why don't you ask him?' I replied, nodding towards Dmitry.
'No, Aleksei,' said Vadim sternly, sensing that order needed to be maintained, 'I'm asking you.'
'I went to Desna – that's where Maks had gone – and found him there.' I was looking at Dmitry throughout, trying to gauge his reaction to each thing that I said, searching for something that would help me to hate him. 'We talked for a while.'
'Did he confess?' asked Vadim.
And that of course was the reality of it. However much I might bemoan the injustice of what had happened, there was no doubt as to his guilt. 'Yes, he confessed. You know Maksim. He wouldn't waste time lying about what we already knew.'
'Was he ashamed? Repentant?' Vadim could tell that my story was not going to be completely straightforward.
'No.' I would have smiled at the memory of Maks' consistency, but I knew that I could allow myself no such self-indulgence that would soften me in my resolve against Dmitry. 'For him, it was just the logical conclusion of a long chain of reason. To dissuade him from his path, you'd have to dissuade two and two from being four.'
'So where is he, Aleksei?' Vadim was now overtly suspicious. 'I appreciate it wouldn't be wise to bring him here to Moscow. Did you manage to find some gaol that would take him?'
'No, Vadim. He's still in Desna. He always will be.'
'Still in Desna?' Then he cottoned on. 'Aleksei, you didn't…?'
'No, Vadim, I didn't.' My voice became harsh and I paced around them until I was behind Dmitry. 'But Maks and I weren't alone for long, were we, Dmitry Fetyukovich? Soon your friends the Oprichniki showed up, didn't they? And they wanted to exact vengeance for themselves. And how did they know where we were?' I was shouting in Dmitry's ear by now. 'Because Dmitry Fetyukovich told them. And how did he know? Because he beat up a mere girl to make her tell him. And so the Oprichniki made it very clear that either I left Maks with them, or I wouldn't leave at all. And so I left – not to save my own skin, but to give me a chance to get hold of Dmitry Fetyukovich and do this!'
I punched him sharply in the kidney. He bent forward, clutching his side. I placed my hands on his back, pushing him down on to my knee as I raised it sharply into his chest. He gasped, but still offered no retaliation. He was a bigger man than I and, from what I knew, a better fighter. I guessed that he had decided to take what was coming to him like a stoic. If he expected compassion from me at this reaction, he was to be surprised – as indeed was I. I had soaked myself in the anger generated by what he'd done to Domnikiia and Maks and, now, for one of the few times in my life, I was beyond my own control. I kicked his legs from under him and he collapsed to the ground, leaving himself prone for my repeated sharp kicks to his chest and stomach. As each blow connected, I thought to myself alternately 'Maks!' and 'Domnikiia!' and felt the same joy each time, as if I had been with them instead of here. I felt an energy throbbing through my leg as I kicked at him; an energy desperate to get out of me and into him. My entire mind and body abandoned themselves to the sensation. I no longer saw anything and no longer sensed anything except the feeling of exhilaration each time my foot pounded into his torso. It flooded my entire being, not as a pleasant sensation, but an all-consuming one. It was like the spasm that rips through one's body whilst vomiting, as I regurgitated on to Dmitry the hatred for him that I had nurtured within my belly.
'Aleksei! Aleksei! Captain Danilov!' I must have heard my name shouted half a dozen times before it penetrated my consciousness. Vadim had dragged me away from Dmitry, though I still tried to kick towards him. Something of a crowd of passersby had gathered round. Some were bent down over Dmitry, seeing if he was all right.
I breathed deeply. I felt satisfied – physically satisfied. Every extremity of my body felt that it had done its job and now, as a whole, I – almost as if it were 'we' – began to calm. I looked over to Dmitry's aching body and felt a pulse of guilt pass through me. Not guilt – pity. I pitied Dmitry's pain without feeling guilt at causing it. The glance from Dmitry's anguished eyes, as well as my own rational mind, told me that what I had done was allowable. Vadim himself confirmed it.
'That's enough, Aleksei Ivanovich. You were owed that – Dmitry knows it too – but we still have a war to fight. The next time you do that, do it to a Frenchman.'
Dmitry was rising to his feet. He lifted his hand for me to take and help him up, but I couldn't. I'd been in the army long enough to see many savage brawls that might have terminated with the death of either man, and yet seen those same men laughing and drinking together hours later. In this and many other things, I could not be as trivial as that. I couldn't belittle my own loss of control with something as easy as a handshake. It had frightened me and it should frighten Dmitry, and anyone else who saw it, to deter them from raising that wrath in me again. At the same time, I realized that the possibility that I hadn't lost control frightened me even more than the belief that I had. If the unrestrained violence that had just ejected from my body had been under my conscious control, guided by my intelligence and yet untrammelled by my conscience, then I was a dangerous creature indeed. But if it had been an uncontrollable frenzy, why had I only kicked his torso, where I could hurt him, and not his head, where I might kill? Perhaps there is some visceral, primeval instinct that tells a man how to hurt another man, without causing his death. Perhaps I'd learned it in that Turkish gaol in Silistria.
Dmitry had stood himself up without my helping hand. 'Are we all right, Lyosha?' It was almost an entreaty. He hadn't called me Lyosha since we had first met and I'd told him it made me feel like a kid. I looked through his beard to the scar on his cheek – the memento of where he had saved my life – and good memories of him came washing through my mind, rinsing away the rancid taste of the thoughts of Maks and Domnikiia that had come before.
'No,' I replied, 'but we will be, Mitka. We will be.' I never guessed how long it would take.
The three of us walked off the bridge and on to the river's southern bank, where we could talk freely, away from the hubbub of the fleeing soldiers, citizens and socialites.
'So what's the plan now?' I asked.
'Didn't Iuda speak to you?' asked Vadim. 'He said he would.'
Dmitry did not seem keen to make any comment. He hugged his bruised ribs and did his best to keep his breathing steady. My sense of pity now was increasing to complement my lack of mercy earlier. The real source of my rage against Dmitry was that he had forced me to allow myself no vestige of forgiveness when I had confronted Maks. Who would be next in turn to suffer at my hand for what I had done to Maks? Vadim? I caught Dmitry's eye and responded likewise to the smile in it. It had only been minutes, and yet despite myself I began to understand how those young soldiers could be drinking together, so soon after being at each other's throats.