The Cleansing Flames

Dyavol

It seemed he was not to be left alone from now on. The next day, Botkin sat with him in the morning. Unlike Kirill Kirillovich, he was confident enough of his own revolutionary commitment to engage Virginsky in conversation. ‘Where has she put the clock?’

‘She moved it into the bedroom. I think she was afraid I would carry out your threat to smash it.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘I am glad she’s moved it. If it were still here, I would destroy it.’

‘A rather pointless act of vandalism.’

‘There is no such thing. Vandalism is always to the point.’

‘Alyosha Afanasevich, there is no reason now why we may not be completely frank with one another. My fate is already sealed. Either I am to be afforded the revolutionist’s equivalent of canonisation, or I am to be executed. Therefore, you may tell me. . anything. . and everything. It can make no difference now.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘When we met, on Easter Sunday night, at the warehouse blaze. .’ Virginsky watched the other man closely, looking for an answer to a question he hadn’t asked in the angle of Botkin’s defiance.

‘What of it?’

‘Did you set the fire?’

A crack opened in Botkin’s face. From it emerged that sound that Virginsky remembered from the night they met, an axe hacking into soft wood, his laughter. ‘What harm can it do now? Yes, I was the petroleur that night.’

‘And the fire that destroyed Kozodavlev’s apartment?’

Botkin shrugged. ‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly. Why would I lie to you?’

‘Because of the children. The children who died.’

‘Ah, my friend, I see you do not understand me. Neither do you understand the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged.’

‘What are you saying? That you don’t care about the children?’

Botkin sighed, as if he were suddenly bored of the conversation. ‘You realise that you have just betrayed yourself?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A true assassin would never ask such a ridiculous question.’

‘But children!’

‘Many more may have to die before the revolution is accomplished.’

Virginsky nodded. Botkin clearly would have had no compunction admitting the crime if he had committed it. ‘But can we be sure these children died in the furtherance of the revolution? That is far from clear.’

‘Kozodavlev had become unreliable. Such considerations as you just voiced were distracting him from the cause. He was on the verge of betraying us. The central committee was right to instigate his termination. In this instance, they did not call upon me to execute their orders. Had they done, I would have willingly answered the call.’

‘Whom did they call upon?’

‘That doesn’t matter. In truth, I don’t know. Naturally. That is the way the central committee works.’

‘Totsky?’

‘There are others. There are many. From time to time, the central committee employs all manner of individuals to do its bidding. Not all are especially motivated by political convictions. Some carry out such deeds for money. Others simply because it is in their natures to destroy — the central committee finds a way to direct their destructive tendencies. There have been common criminals, escaped convicts, used in this way. My guess is that this was the case with Kozodavlev.’

‘And Pseldonimov?’

‘Pseldonimov was different.’

‘In what way?’

‘Pseldonimov died. . so that the group might become stronger. It was not true that he was a threat to us. At least I do not believe so. Dyavol had become tired of him — that certainly was true. We needed him to get the printing press. But once that was acquired, we no longer needed him. Of course, there was a danger that he might betray us. There is always that danger, with every one of us. But it was rather the case that Dyavol saw that he would be more useful to the group dead than alive.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He would serve to bring the group together. To bind us to one another.’

‘In what way?’

‘Because we would all have a part in killing him. No one man — or woman — could be said to be responsible for his death. We were all equally culpable. One enticed him. One put him at his ease. One held him. One tied the ropes. One tightened the gag. One kept lookout. One shot him. All conspired to dispose of the body. And now we all have this hold over one another. And it is our mutual fear and suspicion that binds us together. Rather brilliant, don’t you think?’

Virginsky thought back to Pseldonimov’s body on Dr Pervoyedov’s trestle table. ‘He was a Jew. Did that make it easier?’

Botkin shrugged, as if the question was of no importance.

‘You said woman? There was a woman involved?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tatyana Ruslanovna?’

‘Of course.’

‘Who else?’

‘You can work it out, can’t you?’

‘You. Dolgoruky. Totsky. Kozodavlev?’

‘Correct. So far. But you are forgetting someone.’

‘Dyavol.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sometimes it seems to me that Dyavol is the central committee. That everything you do is decided by this individual. Are you sure this is wise? It certainly does not seem democratic, no more democratic than the Tsar.’

‘Men like Dyavol are necessary.’

‘Unlike Pseldonimov.’

‘Pseldonimov served his purpose.’

‘Who is Dyavol?’

‘Ah, that you shall not know. Unless Dyavol himself wishes you to.’

‘But you know his identity? You have met him?’

One side of Botkin’s mouth shot up and his eyelids fluttered closed in an expression of serene complacency. ‘I have been granted that privilege.’ He now fixed Virginsky with a look charged with contempt, which was possibly as close as Botkin was capable of approaching pity.

*

Virginsky lost all track of the days. It was not simply that the newspapers were kept from him. Ever since he had fled Porfiry’s chambers, he had felt himself severed from the ordinary flux of time that ruled his fellow men, giving direction to their lives and binding them one to another on the diurnal treadmill. He had entered another realm, where the moments were measured by the throbbing of his pulse, by the flickering processions of his snatched and anxious dreams and by the infinitely slow growth of his beard. There was a fisheye looking glass in the room. One day he looked up at it and saw a man he did not recognise staring back at him. He knew then that a considerable number of days must have passed.

At times he was beset by a quaking terror, convinced that Botkin would come for him at any moment, taking him to a desolate spot on the edge of the city, some blasted wasteland strewn with rubbish, overgrown with dingy weeds. And there, alone, weeping like a girl, begging shamelessly for his life, revealing himself at last to be the coward he had always known he was, he would stare down the barrel of his killer’s gun.

Some days Kirill Kirillovich sat with him, some days Totsky. He was never left alone with Botkin again, who perhaps now regretted all that he had divulged to Virginsky. There was also the possibility that others had decided that Botkin could not be trusted. Neither Totsky nor Kirill Kirillovich addressed a word to him, or responded in any way to the questions he asked.

Even when he shouted into Totsky’s face, ‘Surely this must be driving you insane!’ the young radical barely blinked. Virginsky was driven to torturing himself by making speculative remarks about Totsky’s relationship with Tatyana Ruslanovna. He felt sure that they must be lovers. He was inhibited from stating his fears so baldly by the possibility that they might prove founded. Totsky’s silence was infuriating, but in this case it was possibly better than a definite answer. At one time, Virginsky imagined he saw confirmation of one of his more daring insinuations in the curling of a lip and the flood of colour to the cheeks. He was tortured then by jealousy and despair, at which point the realisation hit him that he was in fact in love with Tatyana Ruslanovna. He reeled, as if from a physical blow. The realisation was not a happy one. If anything, he was more devastated after it struck him than before. It was more than likely that Tatyana Ruslanovna was one of those conspiring to kill him. To say that he was afraid his feelings would not be reciprocated was an understatement. On the other hand, it was perhaps equally true that he was conspiring in her arrest. At this moment, however, none of that seemed to matter anymore. All that he wanted was to live, and to be with her. He would have sworn allegiance to any cause, and meant it, to make that possible.

Now it was even harder for him to keep his bearings amid the staggering past of the hours. Varvara Alexeevna came and went; when she was not in the stagnant apartment, she was bringing new life into the teeming world. Food was prepared, and he was allowed to share in it. The curtains were kept closed at all times, to prevent him from communicating with anyone in the courtyard, even by looks and gestures.

And so he could not say with any certainty when it was, or how long after that momentous day when he had levelled a gun at Porfiry Petrovich, that Tatyana Ruslanovna came into the apartment and relieved Kirill Kirillovich from the unrewarding task of watching him. He noticed that she was wearing coarse peasant clothes that did not seem to fit her properly, as if they belonged to someone else. In all likelihood, she wore them to look more like one of the people. However, the ill-fitting clothes only emphasised her individuality, at the same time distancing her from the class she sought to assimilate. To Virginsky, she looked like a child dressing up. He found the effect of her clothes inexpressibly touching.

‘They will not speak to me,’ he said, as soon as they were alone.

But she did not speak to him either. She pulled him to her and closed her lips around his, just as he was forming the first of the questions floating into his consciousness. The breath went from him, so completely that it seemed she must have sucked it out of him. His heart was in spasm; he felt it thrashing like a fish stranded on the bank.

He gasped for air as she released him. Her gaze shone with admiration and — dare he say it? — love. His own gaze back was questioning.

‘He’s dead!’ she explained. ‘Your magistrate died. They published an obituary in the paper. And a date has been announced for his funeral. It seems you really killed him.’

‘Dead? Really? Let me see!’

‘There will be time for that later. Now.’ Her hands were on him again, exploring, guiding, compelling. Pulling away at the fastenings of his clothes. His hands were quick to reciprocate. It seemed an immense privilege to touch those coarse peasant clothes, as if he was being allowed to share in something deeply personal to her, as if his fingers were alighting on her mind. If he had been moved at the sight of the clothes, his feelings now, as he probed and peeled away their layers, were almost too much for him to bear.

And then the fact of her beauty — her complete beauty, revealed to him without shame or affectation, simple, absolute — was overwhelming. Most affecting of all was the trust that it implied. When he had been denied so much, to be granted this — the tears rose to his eyes. He dared not touch her naked beauty. She had to take his hands and guide him.

She pulled him down onto her, onto the sofa, into her, and the release from all his suffering came immediately, and he was shaking with tears of gratitude and fear, sobbing himself into her, a sobbing that came from the deepest part of him. And she held him and soothed him and stroked his hair.

She was more experienced than him, and her experience frightened him. But she put him at his ease and her hands resumed their exploration of his body, and he felt himself want her again, but without the desperate urgency of before: more calmly, more completely, knowing somehow that they had all the time in the world, and that she wouldn’t be taken from him, and that they were not just lovers but also equals in their love.

Once more, time meant nothing to him. A lifetime was lived, and everything that could be said or done in a lifetime was said and done.

At the end of that lifetime, she began to get dressed. He watched her in silence, and a strange, appalling grief gripped his heart, as if every item of clothing that she put on removed a part of her from him for ever. At the end of her dressing, she turned to him with a tender smile. ‘Come. You must get dressed too. Dyavol will see you now!’

‘Dyavol?’

‘Yes, of course! You have proven yourself. You killed Porfiry Petrovich.’

It was as if the words she spoke were true. The grief took him over completely now. He wept.

‘My God, you’re crying like a baby! If this is how you are when you get what you desire! Don’t worry, my darling, everything has worked out perfectly. I always had absolute faith in you. Dyavol is very eager to meet you. The central committee. .’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘Oh, please don’t look at me like that!’

‘Hold me, Tanya.’

‘There is no time. We must not keep Dyavol waiting.’

‘You and Totsky — did you? What we have just done — have you done it with him?’

A pinch of displeasure constricted Tatyana Ruslanovna’s face. ‘I will not lie to you. Therefore, I beg you, do not ask me such questions.’

Virginsky began to dress with quick stabbing movements, his face an angry, raw pink above his full beard.

*

Even so, despite his unhappiness, he could not resist going with her, silent and resentful at her side. To his surprise, he discovered that she had hired a closed carriage, which was waiting outside. It was an undemocratic luxury perhaps, but she considered it warranted, given that the death of Porfiry Petrovich would rekindle the authorities’ efforts to capture him. Naturally, Virginsky did not believe in that death. But even if he had felt like talking, he could say nothing to disabuse her.

For her part, Tatyana Ruslanovna seemed determined to make it up to Virginsky. She repeatedly referred to him as a hero of the cause, saying that he, more than anyone, deserved to ride in such a carriage. She clung onto his arm as if she believed it was in danger of being snatched away by thieves. Virginsky tried half-heartedly to wrest himself from her, his body tense with the contortions of his misery. But she pulled him back to her, with confident ease, nestling her head on his shoulder.

The carriage drew up on the Admiralty Quay. The Bolshaya Neva was freely flowing now, a vein of glistening darkness glutted with boats of every size. Across the water, the narrow end of the long university building was visible. He knew from his days as a student that a ferry left from where they had pulled up, and crossed directly to the University Quay on the other side, before heading onwards downstream past the Strelka.

Virginsky looked questioningly into Tatyana Ruslanovna’s eyes. Her gaze offered no answer and so he made to get out. She pulled him back. ‘No. You are to stay here. I will get out. But before I leave you, there is something I am obliged to do.’ There was a mischievous, almost cruel quality to her smile now. Virginsky felt a sudden pounding dread. She produced from her reticule a strip of black cloth. ‘You are to meet Dyavol,’ she explained. ‘But you are not to see him.’ The mischief in her smile softened, and he was no longer afraid. The renewed tenderness of her smile was the last thing he saw before the blindfold went on.

He heard the creak of the door and felt the bounce in the carriage’s springs as she got out. A moment later, the bounce was repeated, though this time it was deeper and more prolonged. The presence in the carriage beside him settled back. The door clicked to as the carriage was sealed.

‘Good day, Pavel Pavlovich.’ The greeting was whispered, a breath away from inaudibility, rendering impossible any attempt to identify the speaker. Even so, Virginsky had the impression he had heard that voice before.

‘Dyavol?’

Virginsky felt the jolt of the carriage pulling away.

‘You are to be congratulated,’ continued the whisper. At least that was what Virginsky thought he heard; with the steady cascade of hooves in the background, it was even harder to make out what was being said.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Virginsky. ‘I can barely hear you! Why must I wear this blindfold?’ His hands went up to loosen the cloth, but were restrained.

‘We must still take precautions. For your benefit, as much as mine.’ The man spoke more clearly now, though it seemed he was disguising his natural voice. ‘If you are caught, the less you know, the less you can give away. Still and all, we must do all we can to ensure that you are not caught. We will get you out of the country. Switzerland. Our people there will look after you.’

‘Still and all? Is it you, Botkin?’

Dyavol laughed. His laughter was the ordinary laughter of an ordinary man, unexpectedly amused. ‘Please, don’t insult me!’

‘You said “still and all”. That is one of Botkin’s characteristic phrases.’

‘I believe it is a common enough phrase. Besides, all our people have come under my influence, sometimes unconsciously.’

‘Yes, I heard Varvara Alexeevna use it once.’

‘There! I hope you will not accuse me of being Varvara Alexeevna!’

‘No. You are not Varvara Alexeevna.’ Virginsky waited a moment before committing himself: ‘You are Alexander Glebovich Tatiscev.’

‘Ah, my friend. I do wish you hadn’t said that.’ There was a note of sadness in the voice, but it was undisguised now, and clearly recognisable as that of Virginsky’s old professor.

‘May I not remove the blindfold?’

‘No. There are others here whom it would be better you did not see.’

‘Others?’

‘One other, let us say. A witness to our conversation, who will remain silent and report back to the central committee. I do not act on my own, you know. I am accountable.’

‘I thought you were the central committee,’ said Virginsky. More wistfully, he added, ‘At least now we may talk to one another naturally.’

‘Yes.’

‘But are you really Dyavol?’

‘Would it be so terrible to you if I were?’

‘Terrible, no. It’s just that I don’t understand. Dolgoruky told me that it was Dyavol’s idea for Kozodavlev to write the articles against you. In which case, you yourself urged Kozodavlev to attack you! Why would you do that?’

‘Politically, Kozodavlev and I were close allies. And yet, in our personal lives, enemies. The enmity was not on my side, you understand. I had nothing against him. Indeed, I only ever wished him well, for so long as he was loyal to the cause. But Kozodavlev nurtured a deep and bitter resentment. It was all very well for him to declare himself a new man and to say that he would not stand in the way of his wife’s happiness. However, in reality, he could not get past the fact of his hatred for me. I knew that deep in his heart Kozodavlev wished to kill me, and certainly would have betrayed me at the first opportunity. No matter how much we talked things over as new men, and vowed allegiance to the cause, always rankling deep inside him was his hatred for me. I suggested that he write the articles as a way of exorcising his negative feelings, so that we could go on together in the work that really mattered. I urged him to make the attacks as vitriolic and personal as he could.’

‘But. . what did you have to gain by his attacking you?’

‘My reasons were psychological rather than political.’

‘What about Lebezyatnikov? Why did you have Kozodavlev lampoon him?’

‘Oh, that was not my idea. It was Dolgoruky who suggested that.’

‘Dolgoruky? He wanted his old tutor to be publicly ridiculed?’

‘That is the kind of man Dolgoruky was. The central committee were happy to go along with it as it drew attention away from our people. Lebezyatnikov really was a straw man. I was something a little more subtle. I was. . well, I was a leader of the revolution pretending to be a straw man!’

‘But did it not make life difficult for you?’

‘You forget. I am a respected professor of jurisprudence, with friends in the Ministry of Justice. Some of whom were my former students. Besides, there was nothing of substance in the attacks. The authorities were quick to see that. And I was very careful.’

‘Careful? What about Pseldonimov? Was that careful?’

‘That was necessary. Necessity always drives us harder than caution.’

‘According to Botkin, Pseldonimov was killed to bind the group together.’

‘That is correct. In particular, we wished to secure Kozodavlev’s loyalty. My earlier. . stratagem had not worked. He had poured out his vitriol — without inhibition — but still he hated me. I rather think it was the fact that I approved of what he was doing that undermined the exercise. He needed to hurt me — really hurt me. The problem was, if he hurt me, he hurt the cause. We could not allow that. And so, we needed to secure his loyalty another way. By binding him to the group in mutual guilt.’

‘But that didn’t work either, did it?’

‘Kozodavlev was not cut out for such deeds. When Pseldonimov’s body came to light, he panicked. He revealed to Dolgoruky that he was intending to inform. Of course, Dolgoruky passed on that information to me.’

‘Therefore Kozodavlev had to die?’

‘He had been warned. They had all been warned.’

‘Ah yes! You’re talking about Swine! Dolgoruky told me you wrote it as a warning. Most people took it as a warning to society. But in fact it was written for a very select group of men. A pity that Kozodavlev chose to ignore it.’

‘What you must understand is that up until that moment I had nothing but the highest esteem for Demyan Antonovich.’

‘That didn’t prevent you from seducing his wife, or ordering his death.’

‘Come, come. As for the former, what makes you so certain it was a question of my seducing her? We were both adults, and she was in a relationship which, in theory at least, allowed her absolute freedom as far as the dictates of her heart were concerned. Neither of us did what we did in order to hurt Demyan Antonovich. We did it rather to please ourselves than to hurt another. And as for the latter point, his death was approved by the central committee. It was not a question of my ordering it.’

Blindfolded as he was, Virginsky had the sense that all that Tatiscev’s words contained was being trampled and churned in the ceaseless rotation of hooves. ‘What happened to her?’

Tatiscev hesitated a moment before answering: ‘She died. Her death seemed to unhinge Kozodavlev. He became unreliable. I felt — the central committee felt — that he was becoming a liability. His hatred towards me was getting out of hand. It seemed he held me responsible for her death, and for all manner of other evils. He had come to believe the propaganda he had written.’

‘And were you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Responsible for her death?’

‘Not at all,’ Tatiscev answered calmly, as though it were a perfectly reasonable question, and perfectly reasonable that he might have been. ‘She died of consumption. We were no longer in contact. I had not seen her for many years. It was Kozodavlev who informed me of her death. I had moved on from my relationship with her; Demyan Antonovich had been unable to do so, it seemed.’

‘A sad story.’

‘Yes.’

‘But his death was in no way connected to your affair with his wife,’ stated Virginsky, as if to reassure himself on that point. He continued: ‘In this case, your reasons were political rather than psychological.’

Tatiscev seemed to take offence at Virginsky’s need to clarify this. ‘Of course. How could it be otherwise?’ A note of icy restraint entered his voice.

‘Well, it’s just that he must have embarrassed you, as cuckolds embarrass us all. And his enduring love for the woman you had taken from him and then callously abandoned. . Perhaps you saw it as a reproach? One that you could not bear.’

‘You’re a young man. Stupidly romantic. The fact of the matter is more prosaic. He had become unreliable. The central committee makes these decisions. Not I.’

‘Tell me, who set the fire? It was not Botkin. Or you?’

‘Of course not. We used an escaped convict called Rodya, a semi-literate and easily manipulated fellow. He had got hold of certain of our manifestos and believed that he was helping to initiate the revolution every time he shat inside a church. He was not averse to committing murder on our behalf, and did not need a very compelling reason to do so. A few roubles usually did the trick. Surprisingly few.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘We have had neither sight nor sound of him since the fire. Perhaps, considering the deaths of the children, he considered it wise to go to ground.’

Virginsky felt that the supposed death of Porfiry Petrovich gave him licence to ask anything. ‘What is your attitude to their deaths?’

‘Regrettable. But unavoidable.’

‘I wonder, is there any point in regretting that which is unavoidable?’ Virginsky was perhaps a little carried away by the idea of Porfiry’s death.

‘You sound like Botkin! I can see how you were able to shoot your colleague. Didn’t that cause you some regret?’

‘I take no particular pleasure from Porfiry Petrovich’s death.’ It was a statement Virginsky could only make believing Porfiry Petrovich to be still alive. ‘However, an act such as this was necessary to initiate the next stage of our great task.’

‘Ah yes, the next stage. Rest assured that everything is in place to capitalise on your singular deed.’

‘You intend to perpetrate an atrocity?’

‘I am not in a position to share details with you. In the meantime, the central committee has decided that it would be best if you were moved.’

‘I see.’

‘Now that the magistrate has died, there will be a renewed effort to track you down. Your presence in a married couple’s apartment can only attract suspicion. We have found a new apartment for you. You will live there with Tatyana Ruslanovna as man and wife. You will be provided with forged papers. I trust that will be agreeable to you?’

‘It will be a satisfactory arrangement.’

‘You are to have no further communication with the other grouping. Do you understand? You are ours now. We are claiming you as one of our people.’

‘You will not talk to them at all?’ Virginsky’s heart pounded. It was a dangerous gambit, considering the grouping did not in fact exist.

‘There is only one central committee. Ours. These people you were mixed up in, it is best that you forget them.’

‘Very well.’

The carriage slowed and stopped. Virginsky heard the door open and felt the bounce of the springs as Tatiscev got out. The door slammed shut once more. But he sensed that he was not alone. ‘May I take off my blindfold now?’

There was no answer. He raised his hands to the blindfold. No other hands restrained him. When he slipped the blindfold off, he saw Tatyana Ruslanovna sitting opposite him, her smile sealed with secret irony. ‘A satisfactory arrangement?’ Her words were charged with mock outrage.

‘You were there?’

‘All the time.’

‘You lied to me.’

Her eyebrows bobbed upwards. Better get used to it, the gesture seemed to indicate.