The Silent Land Read online

  I opened the folded piece of cheap paper and looked down at the careful, self-taught writing. ‘I will be in the Café de Paris until noon,’ I read. ‘If you don’t come by then, you’ll never see me again.’

  The note was unsigned.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven-thirty. I started to walk briskly – almost to run – down the street.

  “Is something wrong, Madam?” my chauffeur called after me.

  “Take the parcels back to the palace,” I shouted over my shoulder. “I’ll get a cab.”

  He was sitting at an isolated corner table, dressed in an English tweed suit. It was a poor disguise. Sasha was a peasant through and through, and would never look like anything else until the day he died.

  His long, thin face bore marks of suffering which were new since our days in the mir. A scar ran across his left cheek, another cut deep into his forehead. His jaw was lopsided, as if it had been broken and not properly reset.

  Why was he sitting there, still as a statue? Why wasn’t he rushing across the room to meet me, to throw his arms around me in a loving bear hug? Closer and closer I got, until I was standing right by the table. And still he hadn’t moved.

  “Hello Sasha,” I said weakly.

  He pointed to the empty chair opposite him. Feeling a weight of disappointment which almost crushed me, I sat down.

  It’s absurd what details I can remember. The potted palm which brushed against my shoulder as I lowered myself gingerly, heavy with child, on to the chair. The clink as my wedding ring connected with a mock-Empire teacup on the table. The sound of the string quartet filling the half-empty room with – I’m nearly certain – the latest dance tune to come out of Vienna.

  Our eyes met. Mine pleaded for a sign of our old friendship. His were as cold as the deep Russian winter. Had the prison camps done that to him? Was that what it took to survive?

  To show him I cared – to show him I understood, I said, “It must have been terrible for you in Siberia.”

  “Si … Siberia was bad,” he stuttered, “but the escape was w … worse. Do you know what a Si … Siberian sandwich is?”

  I didn’t want to know! But I knew he wanted to tell me. “What is it?” I asked.

  “In a Si … Siberian sandwich, there are three men. Two strong and one weak. Th … they all escape together. Can you guess why the st … strong men take the weak man with them?”

  “No,” I said, already fearful of the answer.

  “Be … because they know he’s not going to make it. He’ll die out there in the fr … frozen waste. And when he does die, the others will eat him.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “The w … weak man always knows why the others want him to go with them – I did – but he goes anyway. Be … because there’s just a chance that he won’t die, there’s just a f … faint glimmer of hope burning inside him that he’ll survive. And there’s no hope in the camps, n … no hope at all.”

  “I’m sorry, Sasha,” I said.

  “I went back to the mir. My wife and ch … children have gone, nobody knows where they are. You’d gone, too. I c … came to Petersburg to rescue you. But you didn’t need rescuing, did you?” he asked bitterly.

  He’d come to be my knight in shining armour, only to find I’d married the dragon.

  “You’ve joined the enemy, Anna,” he continued. “You dress like them, you talk like them – you don’t even speak good Ru … Russian any more.”

  I was becoming as angry as he was. What right had he to speak to me like this? What did he know about my life? All right – I’d confirm his prejudices! What did I care? “Russian is a language I use very little these days,” I said, “except with my servants.”

  “Your s … servants! How easily you say that. As if you were born to it. Have you fo … forgotten where you come from, Anna? Where your duty lies?”

  “No, damn you! I haven’t forgotten. Why are you here Sasha? To insult me? Or to ask for my help? Because if it’s my help you want, you’d better tell me now.”

  But he didn’t want to talk about that. Not yet. “How could you ma … marry a prince?” he demanded. “How could you ma … marry a blood-sucking leech?”

  “He’s a good man,” I said hotly. “He’s built a school on his estate. And a hospital. He’s brought in a German to teach the muhziks how to farm more scientifically. Nobody who was once his father’s serf goes hungry. No widows and children are ever left to starve.”

  Sasha wasn’t listening. “Wh … what about this child you are carrying?” he demanded. “Is it his? Or does it be … belong to one of his friends. How m … many of the aristocratic bastards have you given yourself to, Anna? Ten? Twenty?”

  It could have been Countess Olga talking! I would have slapped any other man immediately, but there was a desperation in Sasha’s voice which made me hold back. He didn’t want to hurt me, he had to – he just couldn’t help himself.

  “You’re drawing attention to us,” I hissed. “You’re a fugitive – remember? Do you want to be sent back to Siberia – for good, this time?”

  He took a deep breath and I saw Sasha the man recede and Sasha the revolutionary take control once more. “We want your h … help,” he said.

  “Who is we?”

  “The Bolsheviks.”

  Of course it would be the Bolsheviks. Sasha would never have joined anyone else but the extremists. Yet in a country where the problems, too, were extreme, wasn’t that really the only sensible course of action?

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Three days ago, you vi … visited Nicholas Romanov in Tsarskoe Selo.”

  “You want me to spy on the Tsar! That’s why you stood on the bridge, watching my home!”

  “Your palace, you mean!” Sasha sneered. The revolutionary’s shell was starting to crack and the Sasha who now seemed to despise me was coming to the surface.

  “All right. My palace,” I agreed wearily.

  “Do you make love to Nicholas as well?” Sasha demanded. “Do you sp … spread your legs for your monarch?”

  “Why were you on the bridge the night of my wedding?” I asked, wanting to hurt him as he was hurting me. “Was it because I’d seen the Tsar that day, too – in the cathedral? Or were you just interested in seeing for yourself how many of my husband’s aristocratic friends I’d be willing to fuck on my marriage bed?”

  “Anna, I …”

  He looked down at the table, as if he were ashamed. Was there a third Sasha hiding beneath the revolutionary and the man who hated me, I wondered. Was my old, dear Sasha in there somewhere, waiting for me to coax him out?

  “I will not spy on the Tsar,” I told him.

  “Because he has done you the gr … great honour of entertaining you in his palace?”

  I thought back to that ‘entertainment’. The Tsar, shy and nervous except when he was listening to his children. The Empress, strained almost to breaking point until the ‘dear friend’ arrived. “No,” I said. “Not because he’s honoured me, but because he’s trusted me.”

  “And you’d ne … never betray that trust,” Sasha sneered.

  “Yes, I would, but not just to give you family gossip and tittle-tattle. There’s a price for which I’d sell my conscience – but it’s not as low as that.”

  “What fine terms you talk in now you are rich and educated. So you w … won’t help us.”

  “I didn’t say that. If you want money, I can provide it. And perhaps when my Russian is a little better,” I added sarcastically, “I can be of some use to you in organizing the workers.”

  The waiter brought me tea and I drank it the peasant way, holding the sugar between my teeth and letting the liquid wash over it. “You see,” I challenged Sasha, half joking, half serious, “I haven’t forgotten how to be a muhzik.”

  For some time he said nothing, but stared moodily down at his cup, stirring it occasionally and watching intently until the turbulence had settled. “Sp … Spying o
n the Tsar is safe. Any other work could be dangerous,” he said finally, and there was a new tone to his voice which could almost have belonged to the old Sasha.

  “I accept the danger,” I told him.

  I had no choice. I’d a duty to pay to my dear, dead Mama. I only wished I could have paid it in a way she’d have hated less.

  Sasha took a rouble of his pocket to pay the bill. “Look at this,” he said, holding it out to me.

  I did as I’d been told. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary note to me.

  “D … do you see the blood on it?”

  I shook my head. “There isn’t any blood on it, Sasha.”

  “Yes, th … there is. It’s from a bank raid one of the fi … fighting squads carried out in the Ukraine. They used bombs, Anna. Five people were ki … killed. One of them was a child. Do you w … want to be a part of that?”

  He was trying to scare me off, but it wasn’t working. “I’d be a part of it whether I worked with the underground or spied on the Tsar,” I told him. “Innocent people are bound to die before it’s over. Maybe we will, too. But if we don’t do something to change the system, there’ll be even more deaths – from disease, famine, or just from over-work.”

  Sasha nodded his head. He knew all that as well as I did. He paid for our drinks, and taking my arm, led me to the door. “I w … want you to see something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “One of the f … factories in the Narva District.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you’re g … going to risk your life, you sh … should at least see what you’re risking it for.”

  We took the No. 14 tram which ran down Sadovya Street, past the Haymarket and across the Kalinkinski Bridge. Its terminus was the Narva Triumphal Arch – a memorial to Russia’s victory over Napoleon. “We can walk from here,” Sasha said.

  It didn’t take us long to reach the Narva Cotton Mill, a long brick building with small windows and smoking chimneys. I tried to imagine what it would be like to work inside it for ten or eleven hours a day. Hellish! At least the muhziks laboured out in the open.

  “That’s where they work their guts out,” Sasha said. “Now let’s go and s … see how they live.”

  The barrack block looked more like a factory than the mill itself, the thick walls more forbidding, the windows even tinier. There was a guard on the door, an old Cossack. He winked at Sasha, and stepped aside and let us pass.

  “A Party member?” I asked.

  “A sympathizer. We have fr … friends everywhere.”

  Except perhaps in the Alexander Palace – which was why he’d been sent to me.

  The dormitories were long, narrow and dark. The rows of beds were so tightly packed that there was not a vershók of space between them. The air was thick with the smell of cabbage and sweat.

  “The worst izbá is better than this,” I said.

  “Much better,” Sasha agreed. “This d … dormitory was built for migrant workers who had only to stick it for a few months and then could go back to their mirs. Now all the workers are p … p … permanent – and they have their families with them.”

  “Whole families live in here?” I gasped.

  “Whole families. One b … bed per family. There’s rats everywhere. S … sometimes they attack the babies. When there’s sickness, they all g … get it. They’re b … burying children nearly every week.”

  “But how can they – how could any man allowed his children to live in a place like this?”

  “There’s no ch … choice for them. Their land in the mir has either been sold or is t … too little to live off.”

  “In the mir, they’d at least have their own vegetable plots,” I mused. “What do they eat here?”

  “Black bread and cabbage. Meat you wouldn’t feed your la … lap-dog is an unheard of luxury to them.”

  “You’ve shown me the worst,” I said accusingly.

  For the first time since we’d met again, Sasha smiled. “Of course I’ve sh … shown you the worst. There wouldn’t have been much point in sh … showing you the best.”

  “I want to help those people,” I said, when we were once more outside where the air, if not clean, was at least breathable.

  Sasha glanced nervously over his shoulder. “The Okhrana have sp … spies everywhere,” he told me. “We c … could be arrested at any moment. It would be much safer for you to do what I asked and r … report on the Tsar and his—”

  “No,” I said angrily. “I’ll be a proper revolutionary, or I’ll be nothing.”

  “Then perhaps it’s b … better that you’re nothing.”

  “If you won’t put my name forward, I’ll find someone else who will,” I threatened.

  Sasha bowed his head. “I’ll put your name f … forward,” he mumbled. “And you’ll be accepted. The P … Party can make good use of you.”

  “When should I be able to start work?”

  “Not yet. Not until a … after your baby’s born. The fa … father is a class enemy, but it’s still your child, and I wou … wouldn’t want to see it come to any harm.”

  It was the kindest thing he’d said all day. And it made sense. I had so many duties – to the workers, my husband, my dead mother – but my first obligation was to my baby.

  “If you’re going to w … work with us, it’s best we’re not seen together more than is absolutely necessary,” Sasha said. “You take the f … first tram back to the Central District and I’ll wait the se … second.”

  “You take the first,” I said. “I want to stay and look at the dormitory block a little longer.”

  “I don’t think you sh … should.”

  “Well I’m going to, whether you like it or not. First get me into the Party, and then you can start ordering me around.”

  Without another word, he turned and walked away. I watched his retreating back. He seemed so thin and vulnerable. But he was much tougher than he looked, I reminded myself. When the Dragoons had taken him away, I’d thought it would be the last time I’d ever see him. The men he’d escaped with from Siberia had chosen him because they’d expected him to die on the way back. Yet here he was in Petersburg.

  It didn’t occur to me to ask myself why Sasha didn’t want me to stay in front of the dormitory block. Even if it had, I’d never have guessed the reason. He was afraid I’d be seen by the owner.

  I imagined at the time that the mill belonged to one of the Old Believers, a white-haired, white-bearded gentleman in a frock coat and top hat. Or else it was the property of foreign investors, who employed bully-boy local managers. I imagined wrongly.

  If the mill owner had walked past at that very moment, I would have recognized him, and he me. The man who kept his workers in such desperate conditions was the same one who was directly responsible for Sasha’s exile to Siberia.

  The mill was owned by Peter.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I hear the pregnant women talking about it in the Vulcan. I sit in the corner, a silent old lady, and don’t miss a thing.

  I can usually tell when it’s happened from the way they walk. They still waddle, of course, but somehow there’s extra care to it now that the lumps in their stomachs have become more – so much more – than just a discomfort.

  I love watching them, these women who are as graceful as hippos, as touching as a teardrop.

  Aching backs resting against the bar, they scan the room for a friend – or at least a sympathetic listener. Sometimes, if no one else is available, that listener is me.

  The mother-to-be eases her swollen body down on the seat next to mine. “Nice day again,” she’ll say.

  The remark is only a conversational gambit. She doesn’t care about the weather. It could be pouring down outside, and it would still me a nice day for her.

  “Ask me about the baby!” she screams silently. “Ask me! Ask me!”

  I could tease her – “The man on the radio this morning said we can expect rain soon” – but I don’t. �
�How’s the baby?” I say.

  “He kicked me today.”

  “Was it the first time, dear?” I ask, knowing full well that it was.

  “Yes, the first time.”

  “You must be very happy.”

  “I am. I really am.”

  And proud. Oh, so proud. They act as if they alone, in the whole world, were doing something unique and wonderful – which, of course, they are.

  It wasn’t happiness which swept over me when I first felt my baby move on the tram back from Peter’s mill – it was fear. A tidal wave of fear. An ocean of fear. Though I’d never been pregnant before, I was sure, with the instinct inherited from a thousand generations of child-bearers, that something was very wrong.

  I looked out of the tram window. Life on the street was proceeding as normal. Shoppers were shopping, traders were trading. It wasn’t right! There should have been fire and brimstone, earthquakes, plagues of locusts. The whole world should have been turned upside down – because my baby wasn’t perfect.

  The Count had advised me to have an abortion, and I’d rejected the idea out of hand. I didn’t mind if my baby was crippled, I’d told him. If it was, it would need me more than ever. Ah, but that was back then, when the baby was little larger than a pin head, as abstract and far away as Australia. Now it was real. Now I had to face the prospect of bringing into the world a small life which was, in some way, incomplete.

  Abortion was illegal at the time, but for the rich anything is possible. I’d have more children after this one, Konstantin had said. And I would. I knew I would. So why run the risk of giving birth to a child for whom life would be nothing but misery?

  The tram turned onto Nevsky Prospect. It suddenly became very important to me that I should reach a decision about the baby before we reached Palace Square. I’d decide by the time we reached Kazan Cathedral, I told myself, but we rattled past it, and I still didn’t know what to do. I’d make up my mind before we reached the Singer Building, I promised, but we were there and I was still at a loss.

  And then, like a sudden summer rainstorm, certainty poured down on me, soaking me through. Other women, before and since, have terminated pregnancies, and who am I to say whether they were right or wrong? I can only say that as I sat in that tram, rocked by its motions and my own tears, I knew that I could never have my baby aborted, that all practical, spiritual and moral considerations were as nothing. I was in the power of the life force, and I was helpless to resist it.