'No,' she whispered, with a smile I could not see. 'It's obvious.'
The following morning, I walked her back to Degtyarny Lane. It was almost midday. We had lain in bed for a long time – neither of us having occupations in which early rising was a requirement – talking about very little.
Then I was free until my appointment – and how I wished that I could really use a word that gave it such certainty – with Vadim. I found myself some lunch and then wandered around the streets, judging the degree to which Moscow was recuperating from its occupation.
It would, I believed, recover. Petersburg had become our capital only a hundred years ago. Nine years before that, it had been a swamp. It had taken the determination of a great man, the greatest in our history, Tsar Pyetr the First, to build the earliest structures on that swamp and then to make it his capital within so short a space of time. Today, there was no man alive that was his equal, not just in Russia but in the whole world. Bonaparte had aspired to inherit those laurels, but long ago he had proved himself unworthy of them. His retreat from Moscow was the final evidence of his failure to attain such status.
So today, we had no Pyetr to rebuild our city for us, but we had thousands – hundreds of thousands – of Petrushkas; little Pyetrs, who by themselves could no more raise Moscow from the ashes than I could raise the dead from their graves, but who together could restore it to its former greatness, so recently lost. And they did not even have to build it from nothing. They had their memories and, despite what had been lost to the fires, they still had the essential shape of the city. You can burn buildings, but it is harder to burn streets. Thus the plan of a city may survive.
And, of course, a third of the city had survived intact. I was walking down one of these undamaged streets when I noticed three cobbler's shops, huddled next to each other as one often sees with rivals in the same trade, sharing each other's warmth, but envying each other's custom. I peered through the window of each one. Not seeing what I was looking for, I went into the third and spoke to the shopkeeper.
'Have you ever come across a shoemaker by the name of Boris Mihailovich?'
'Boris?' replied the man. 'Yes, I know him.'
'Is his shop around here?'
'No. No, it's not.'
'Do you know where it is?' I asked.
'It's not anywhere. It was burnt down on the first night of the fires.'
'But he survived, I know that. Have you seen him recently, or his daughter?'
'Ah, so it's Natalia you're interested in, is it? Well, I saw them both about a week ago – after the French had gone – but not since.'
'Maybe they've disappeared,' suggested his assistant, who had been sweeping up around us, 'like the rest of them.' He emphasized the word 'disappeared' as though it were new to him, or had taken on a new, more specific meaning.
'"Disappeared"?' I asked.
'People have been coming into the city, but not staying,' explained the shopkeeper without much concern. 'I think they've just decided that there's no business to be had here and have gone off somewhere else. Oleg Stepanovich, the baker from up the street, is the only one I've known personally. Came back to Moscow, opened up his shop, closed it in the evening and didn't open it the next day. I reckon he's gone chasing after the army because they'll pay more for his bread, but he didn't tell his wife, so it may be more than just the army he's chasing.'
'I reckon Bonaparte's left some of his men here, hidden, to pick us off one by one as we come back,' suggested the assistant, leaning on his broom.
'Well, if they pick you off, Vitya,' said the cobbler, 'it'll be a long time before anyone notices much difference round here.' The sweeping was quickly resumed.
I thanked the men and went on my way, knowing from what they had said that the Oprichniki were still in town. What had been said was vague, but it was also chillingly similar to the stories that had emanated from wherever the Oprichniki happened to be. It was, of course, an assumption to suggest that that was what had happened to Boris and his daughter, but I knew then that, for them and for anyone else, the city was not safe.
That evening's rendezvous was at the Church of Saint Clement. As I waited outside, I recalled the last time I had been there, exactly six weeks before, and my encounter with Ioann and Foma. Ioann was now dead, I knew – deader even than he had been when we had met – but I still felt the dread that Foma might return that night to take his revenge. By now they must have been aware that four of their fellows had died within the space of a few nights. It would take little genius – and they didn't have much, particularly now there was no Iuda to do their thinking – for them to deduce that I might in some way be responsible. But whatever they had deduced, none of them showed up. Neither did Vadim.
To make matters worse, Domnikiia did not visit me that night. It is remarkable how quickly one can become accustomed to not sleeping alone.
In one way, Domnikiia staying away had been a good thing. The next morning I received a letter from Marfa. It was dated over three weeks earlier, but in the confusion of the French occupation and retreat, it was a miracle that it had made it through to me at all.
While in Yuryev-Polsky, I had sent her several letters, but they had evidently crossed with this one. Her concern for my safety showed between every line she wrote. She told of the news that they were hearing in Petersburg and of the fear there that Bonaparte would soon be marching towards them. Marfa felt reassured that as long as the tsar stayed in Petersburg, they would be safe. Ostensibly, the implication was that Aleksandr would protect them, but her real meaning was that, as soon as he scarpered, then they'd know they were in trouble. Her understanding of politics was, as ever, remarkably clear-sighted, certainly for a woman.
Dmitry Alekseevich had been a little unwell, but was better now. He had been asking when I would be coming home. I resented being told that. I felt that Marfa was using our son to voice her own desires. Not that it was untrue that Dmitry wanted me home, nor was it unreasonable that Marfa did as well. I just resented the way that she impinged on my desire to have it all. Strange that I resented only Marfa, not Dmitry, but then I did not have a rival son here in Moscow.
She did not write very much on the matter of Maksim's death, but the little that she did put managed in its own way to express much the same feelings as I had. Marfa's approach was simply to ignore the reasons that had led to Maks' execution. She could describe her sorrow without ever facing the unpleasant fact that Maks had been a traitor. She would have written the same words if he had died by a French sword at Borodino. It was of unspeakable comfort to read her words about Maks, as if he had died a decent soldier's death. She was spared, in her mind, the embarrassing subtext of his treason, and I was momentarily spared my own condemnation for my abandonment of him.
The final piece of news was that Vadim's daughter, Yelena, had given birth to a baby boy on 6 September. He had been born a little earlier than expected, but was completely healthy, and was named Rodion Valentinovich. Marfa anticipated that I knew all this already, since I would have heard it directly from Vadim, but I could tell she was hoping that that would not be the case and that not only would she have the pleasure of being the first to tell me, but I in turn would have the pleasure of being the first to tell Vadim.
It would have been a delight to be the two hundredth to tell Vadim, just to have had the pleasure of seeing him at all.
I wrote a quick response to Marfa, saying very little except that I was safe and back in Moscow. I said nothing of Dmitry or Vadim, since to say only that Dmitry was safe would imply that Vadim was not, and I saw no sense in raising undue alarm. For all I knew, he could have headed straight back to Petersburg and be doting over his beloved grandson, cradling him in his arms at that very moment.