The Third Section Part 34

'And what did you see?'

'What you see,' said Raisa simply. She turned towards the old woman on the other side of the tracks, taking half a step towards Tamara as she did so. 'You!' she called out to her. 'You can be the judge. Which is the prettiest out of the two of us?'

'Toma,' said the woman, without a moment's consideration, as if she had been asked to verify that two and two made four.

'She understands, you see,' said Raisa, 'but we can soon change it. Look.'

She raised her hand to her face and pressed her nails against her cheek, drawing them down and dragging the flesh with them. She must have been applying a phenomenal force, for it was no mere scratch that she left behind. Tamara gagged at the sight of Raisa's teeth and tongue, visible through the gaping hole in the side of her face. Somehow Raisa got a grip on her cheek and tore it away, hurling it on to the ground. The edge of her lip came with it, so that when she spoke, the gap spread from the right-hand corner of her mouth almost to her left ear.

'Makes no difference, does it?' she said, her words slurred almost beyond comprehension by the inability of her lips to properly form them. Tamara presumed she was referring to the fact that she would heal, but Raisa's next words put a different interpretation on it. 'What does my face matter? It's not that which makes me ugly.'

'No,' said Tamara. 'No, it's not.'

The ground was shaking a little now as the train drew nearer. It was still out of sight, blocked by the rear end of the stationary train. Tamara heard another whistle, and that train began to move, the bridge ahead of it finally clear.

'It wouldn't be the same for you though, would it?' As she spoke, Raisa reached across and put her hand to Tamara's face. Tamara felt a searing pain as the fingernails pressed through the skin and dragged downwards, trying to do the same to Tamara's cheek as they had done moments before to their owner's. Tamara had been taken by surprise, and with Raisa so close to her, she could raise neither her pistol nor her cane to defend herself.

Then Raisa let go. Tamara's cheek screamed at her as though it were on fire, and she could feel her own blood running down it. The pause in Raisa's attack was down to the fact that the old woman had thrown herself upon her. She had little strength to fight the vampire, but it brought a momentary distraction. Raisa threw her off with a nonchalant swing of the arm, and she fell backwards on to the tracks. It was long enough for Tamara to raise her pistol and fire. She remembered Dmitry's advice and aimed for the face, but thanks to Raisa's self-mutilation there was little left to aim for. The bullet entered through the still-gaping hole of Raisa's cheek, penetrating somewhere at the back of her mouth. It did not have quite the devastating effect that Dmitry had described, but the impact threw her backwards and she had to take a few steps to remain on her feet. She almost tripped on the rail, but managed to keep her balance.

Behind Raisa, the old woman was lying on the track, moaning in pain. The ground beneath her was shaking ever more violently as the train from Petersburg approached, building up speed now that it was off the bridge. The woman sensed what was happening and rolled away to the other side.

Tamara had five shots remaining, none of which could possibly be fatal to Raisa but which together, so the plan had been, might just be sufficient to incapacitate her long enough for Tamara to use the cane. Now the plan had changed, but it would take some precise timing. Tamara fired again, still aiming for the head. The bullet hit Raisa between the eyes. Her head jerked back and again she took a few steps, but when her neck straightened, she was smiling her lips already healed enough for her to do so. Blood oozed from the neat, circular opening in her forehead. Tamara fired a third shot and again Raisa backed away. She was between the two sets of tracks now. Tamara took a few steps forward, keeping as close as she dared.

'You always were a stupid woman, Tamara Valentinovna,' Raisa said, her voice a mixture of despair and spite. 'And now, thanks to me, you're a stupid, ugly woman.'

Tamara fired again, and now Raisa was in the middle of the southbound track. Still the ground shook.

'Two bullets left, and I'm not dead,' continued Raisa. Her cheek was completely healed now, as was the wound between her eyes. She took a step forward and was again between the two tracks. 'What are you going to do when those run out?'

Tamara needed only one. She waited a moment and then fired again, aiming for the middle of Raisa's nose. She didn't see where the bullet hit, but once again Raisa took a step backwards, and the oncoming train hit her.

She flew into the air and disappeared from view, falling on to the far side of the track as the engine steamed past, its pistons pounding in and out, driving its wheels ever onwards. The impact would have broken every bone in Raisa's body, but it would not have killed her. Tamara had hoped to dive on her instantly and administer a final, fatal blow, but the train, raging onward towards Moscow, kept them apart.

Tamara dropped down and lay parallel with the track to look under the train at what was happening. With luck Raisa's injuries would be severe enough that she would still be unable to fight back when Tamara finally got across the track. Wagon after wagon rolled by, causing Tamara's view to flicker as it was obscured by the train's wheels and then became clear in the gaps between them. Luck was not on her side; Raisa was already on her feet, though not steady on them. She was upright now; Tamara could not see her face, but only the lower part of her body, broken by the impact, her legs skewed like a cripple. Tamara could not even tell which direction she was facing.

Then Tamara saw another skirt and another pair of legs, running towards Raisa. It could only be the old woman, Natalia. Raisa must have been facing away from her, since she made no attempt to react to the woman's approach. Natalia's legs disappeared from view as she hurled herself through the air, and then both of them were visible, on the ground, close to the track, as still the wheels rolled by, alternately blocking and revealing what was happening.

Natalia was on top. Her hand was upon Raisa's face and her eyes were filled with hatred, enough to give her the strength that no woman of her age should possess. Even so, Raisa must still have been weak from the impact of the train or from the strange melancholy that afflicted her otherwise she would have easily thrown the old woman off. Tamara glanced down the line; there were only a few coaches left to pa.s.s now. The train hadn't slowed and clearly the driver had noticed nothing of the collision. Through the wheels she saw that Natalia had managed to raise herself up a little higher above Raisa and now had both hands over the younger woman's face. Summoning the last ounces of her strength she pushed forward, and Raisa's head hit the rail.

There was a clunk as some part of the train connected with one or both of them. Natalia was thrown back and vanished from view, but Raisa lay still, just where the old woman had left her. Within seconds the train had pa.s.sed and Tamara rushed across the shaking tracks.

Raisa's body did not move, apart from a gradual collapse as her remains decayed within her gown. The only visible part of her flesh was her hands, and already they protruded from her sleeves like the arms of skeletons. The collar of her dress lay neatly level with the rail and had already closed up, with no neck to keep it open. Raisa's head, which the train's wheel had so neatly severed, was gone.

Tamara glanced along the track and saw it, rolling along with the momentum it had picked up from the train, like a ball casually kicked away when the child was called in for tea by his mother. It bounced a little as it hit each sleeper, becoming smaller as dust flew off it. By the time it came to a stop it was no bigger than a walnut, and even that soon withered to nothing.

The dress lay beside the track, flat against the ground now that the body had decayed, like some sick warning against the dangers of the railway. But as for its owner, Raisa Styepanovna was no more.

CHAPTER XXV.

TAMARA DASHED ACROSS the tracks and looked around. The old woman had been wearing a dark dress and with the moon gone and the trains departed, there was little light to see by. Thankfully, she was not far from the rails, lying face down in the gra.s.s. Tamara ran over to her. Her arms were laid out on either side of her, level with her head. Her hands were covered with blood and it looked as though both forearms were broken, smashed by the train's wheel as she had held Raisa's head down under it. It was a miracle they had not been severed. On her right wrist was a heavy ring of dark, roughly forged iron somewhere between a bracelet and a manacle. Tamara turned her over. There was blood on her face too, her grey hair matted against it, and her nose was broken. But she was alive. She was breathing, albeit with shallow, halting rasps. Only one side of her chest seemed to rise and fall. The other lay still a physical reminder that the woman was half dead already.

Tamara knelt down and wiped the hair away from the old woman's face. Her eyes were closed and there seemed little trace of consciousness. Tamara pulled her head up a little and rested it on her lap, stroking her cheek. She still felt the pain where Raisa's nails had gouged at her own face, but she did not dare touch it and discover the damage.

'Toma.' The woman's voice was weak, but perfectly clear.

Tamara looked down and tried to smile. She felt tears begin to form in her eyes. 'How do you know me?' she asked.

'You think I'd forget you?'

'It seems I've forgotten you.' It was a simple statement of fact, but it was loathsome for Tamara to say it to this woman who had sacrificed her own life to save hers.

'You don't recognize me?'

Tamara looked hard into the woman's face, desperate to see what it seemed she was meant to see. The woman had been beautiful once, that was obvious, and in a way still was. And yes much as Tamara wanted to believe it, it was true there was something that she recognized in that face. Then she realized. There was a resemblance, slight and foolish though it might be, to the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma, once, long ago, wife of the Emperor Napoleon. Tamara had seen a portrait of her, painted not long before she died. Ten years on, this might have been her. She wished the memory had been more personal.

'Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo, 'Zheevyet myelneek na krayoo.'

There was a growl to the old woman's singing voice, brought on by her age and her injuries, but the tune and the words in an instant brought back memories far stronger than any Tamara had found in her face. It all came back to her. She was in her bedroom in the Lavrovs' house not the main room but the tiny room off it, with the little child's bed. She could hear that same voice the voice of her long-forgotten nanny so much younger then, singing the same lullaby, a silly story about a miller and his children at carnival time. She picked up the next two lines.

'On nye byedyen, nye bogat, 'Polna gorneetsa rebyat.'

The old woman smiled perhaps the broadest smile that Tamara had ever seen. Except that she was not 'the old woman' any more. Neither was she 'Natalia Borisovna'. At last Tamara knew her.

'Domnikiia Semyonovna,' she whispered.

Domnikiia could not smile any more widely, so instead she nodded. 'You do remember!' she said.

'I do now. I didn't when I saw you before.'

'Neither did I,' said Domnikiia, 'not right away. We chose not to know. But when I came to Moscow ... I only went there to remember.'

'Went where?'

'To Degtyarny Lane. I was on my way back.'

'Back?'

'To Irkutsk. I had to deliver a letter for Lyosha to Tsarskoye Selo. Everything we sent was censored, so he said I should come. It was safer for me than him. I hated to leave him, but I knew it was a chance to see you just to look at you.'

'A letter?' asked Tamara.

'When we heard about the tsar's death. Lyosha knew that Iuda would go after Tarasov. We had to warn him.' Her voice became urgent. 'Is he all right? Did Iuda get him?'

Tamara had no idea how to provide an answer to the question, but Domnikiia clearly needed one. 'He's fine,' she said soothingly. 'He's fine.'

'And then I set off back to Irkutsk, but I stopped in Moscow on the way. I heard about the murder went to Degtyarny Lane. And then I saw you. I didn't know it was you, but the hair reminded me. And then when you said it was your birthday, I knew it must be you.' She coughed and Tamara saw blood on her lips. Domnikiia tried to raise her hand to wipe them, but it was impossible. She didn't seem to understand that her arms were useless. Tamara cleaned the blood away for her.

'Why didn't you say?'

'I wanted to, Toma. How I wanted to! But I was as much an exile as Lyosha. If I'd been recognized, I'd have been arrested. And then what could I have done?'

'But now you've come back.'

'We both have. He's free again and we've both come home, to see Dmitry and to see you.'

'Aleksei's in Moscow?' Tamara felt a thrill deep inside her. The news was not striking in any rational way, but it was the event that she had been antic.i.p.ating for months. It seemed too good to be true. So many questions would be answered.

'We arrived today. I came straight to find you, but he wanted to see Dmitry. You understand?'

Tamara felt the urge to squeeze her former nanny's hand, but she knew it would only cause pain. Instead, she stroked her face. 'Of course I understand,' she said. 'Dmitry's not your son. They deserve some time together.' Tamara quietly contemplated the horror of Aleksei's potential encounter with his son. She could only pray that it would never happen. 'But you saved my life by coming to find me.'

'I didn't understand why you ran. Then I realized you were following that woman. I guessed what she was, and when you shot her I knew for sure.'

'You've met them before?'

Domnikiia smiled again. 'Not like that,' she said. 'That was always Lyosha. Do you think he'll be proud of me?'

'Of course he will,' said Tamara, her enthusiasm only a little forced. 'He'll be so, so proud.'

'You'll tell him?'

'You'll tell him,' insisted Tamara.

Domnikiia chuckled, as best she could, and shook her head. 'You're a good liar, Toma, just like Lyosha. You always took after him more than me, but neither of you could ever fool me. I'm not going to be seeing him again; not here. At least I've seen you.' She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side, but Tamara was scarcely listening to her any more.

She had been blind, but now her mother her mother had explained it all. 'You always took after him more than me.' More like Aleksei than Domnikiia more like her father than her mother. Aleksei was an old friend of Vadim Fyodorovich his closest comrade. Who else but Vadim's daughter, Yelena, would he choose to care for his b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter? And little wonder she could not distinguish the hazy memories of her nanny and her mother they were one and the same: Domnikiia Semyonovna. What better way to ensure that the mother could keep watch over the child, and yet never have the truth discovered?

It was only the Decembrist Uprising and Aleksei's exile that had spoiled things. Tamara recalled how she had once scorned the idea that her father might be a Decembrist, but the more she had learned about Aleksei, the more she had grown to see him as a great man, of whom any child would be proud. 'A brother and an unhailed hero of the nation,' that was how Prince Volkonsky had described Tamara's father in one of his letters. Tamara was still to discover precisely what he'd meant by that, but soon she would know. Soon she would speak to Aleksei himself.

A mother and a father and one other; a brother too Dmitry. A brother no more he had died before she had even known him for what he was. Now he was nothing to her. She pushed the thought from her mind. She already had too much joy and too much sorrow to bear. She threw herself down and hugged her mother, squeezing as tightly as she dared, scarcely caring about the pain she inflicted, knowing that she would gladly suffer the same and more to feel the warm body of one so long separated from her. She felt her mother attempt to return the embrace, despite her broken arms, but then she fell back. Tamara raised herself up and looked at the ancient, wrinkled, beloved face beneath her.

'I had to go with him, Toma.' Domnikiia's eyes flicked frantically across Tamara's face. 'You must understand.'

'I do. Of course I do,' said Tamara. She had not stayed with her husband in Petersburg, and had never seen him again. Domnikiia's was the wiser choice. 'You left me in good hands.'

'We knew they'd look after you. Because of Vadim.'

'I've heard all about Vadim,' said Tamara, feeling the sting of tears on her cheek as they infiltrated the wounds that Raisa had given her. 'And Maks and Dmitry.'

Domnikiia closed her eyes again, but her voice was still clear, if quiet. 'I don't think I ever spoke to Vadim, but I know that to Lyosha he was the greatest man in the whole world. I knew Maks, and Dmitry. Maks was lovely. Marry a man like Maks, Toma, not one like Lyosha.'

'I married a doctor he's called Vitaliy.' There was no need to go into details.

Again Domnikiia's smile spread, and then descended into a cough. Now the blood that came with it seemed not to bother her, and there was too much for Tamara to wipe away. When she had recovered, Domnikiia spoke again, quieter than ever. 'Children?'

Tamara managed to produce the standard answer. 'Three,' she replied. Domnikiia said nothing, but nodded slightly, her eyes still closed. 'Milenochka is fifteen now,' continued Tamara. 'Almost a woman. She's so beautiful.' It was so easy, and so wonderful, to lie about it. Domnikiia would never know of the deceit, and Tamara could experience the pleasure of pretending to someone else; something that usually she could only enjoy alone. 'Stasik is thirteen. He wants to be a doctor, like his papa.' Would he have wanted that? Would she have been disappointed if not? Would she and Vitya have tried to force him down that path? It did not matter; she was liberated from all such worries. She looked down at Domnikiia, but there was no response.

'Luka's only ten,' she went on. 'The other two tease him, but I think they love him even more than we do. I took him down Nevsky Prospekt a few weeks ago.' The memory was blatantly stolen. 'He stopped at every toyshop, and pressed his nose against the window. We spoil him me more than Vitya, though I think Vitya buys him things and makes him promise not to tell me.'

It was pointless now. Domnikiia was dead. Tamara wasn't quite sure when it had happened, but she was certain she had died happily with thoughts of her phantom grandchildren filling her mind.

Tamara continued to talk, telling stories about her children, Domnikiia's head resting in her lap. Some of them were true taken from their infancy but most were just elaborations on the imaginings that had run through Tamara's mind ever since. It was bliss to be reunited mother with children. Domnikiia with Tamara, Tamara with Stasik, Milenochka and Luka.

At last she could speak no more. She hoisted the old woman up in her arms, surprised by how little she weighed. Then she began to trudge with her alongside the railway track, heading north-west towards the green lanterns, and the bridge, and the river far below.

It was the first woman he had consumed; Katyusha, if names mattered. Dmitry had followed her closely up the stairs to Milan's rooms, eager to sense her reaction when she found what was up there, wondering whether she would perceive first the blood, or would see her lover on the couch and presume him asleep. Or would she instantly see the wounds to his neck, and understand what had befallen him? And after that, what would her reaction be with regard to Dmitry? Would she cower from him in fear, and soon discover her fear quite justified, or would she throw herself upon him for protection, only to find her trust in him betrayed?

What in fact resulted was merely irritating. She screamed; a loud, repeated scream that, whether by chance or design, was most likely to save her life by attracting the attention of neighbours. Perhaps he should have let them come, but instinct took him over and he hit her, his knuckles striking the line of her jaw and knocking it upwards into her skull. She fell to the floor like a pile of wet rags, and he saw blood trickling from her mouth. He knelt down. She was unconscious, but not dead. That at least would preserve the blood, but there would be little to enjoy in a victim whose awareness of her fate had lasted for so inconveniently brief a duration.

He dragged her over to the couch and hauled her up on to it, sitting her beside Milan. She didn't groan or offer any resistance, as he had hoped. She made no movement at all. He slipped his hand inside her blouse and rested it below her breast, feeling her heartbeat. It was slow, very slow, as though she were supremely relaxed, but there was still life. Her jaw was broken and dislocated, twisted at a bizarre angle. She was no longer pretty. He would tell her that when she came round. Perhaps there was a mirror he could use to show her.

He went into Milan's bedroom and soon found one a simple hand-held gla.s.s in a wooden frame. He came back and sat next to Katyusha. He looked at her through the mirror, but she appeared much the same as in real life. Then he held it close to her face, so that her own reflection would be the first thing she would see when she came to. She remained oblivious to the world, but Dmitry noticed the gla.s.s become fogged by her breath. He waited, perhaps for an hour, in the hope that she would revive naturally. Perhaps she would awake only to scream again, but the pain of her broken jaw might persuade her to keep silent, at least until she realized what was about to befall her.

Eventually he became impatient. He took hold of her shoulders and began to shake her, hoping to force her back to consciousness. A strange sc.r.a.ping sound emanated from her broken jaw. Then at last he got some reaction; her body jerked from somewhere around her stomach, then again. A sound that he could not make out emerged from her throat, and then she convulsed again and retched. Unconscious as she was, and seated almost upright, there was small chance for anything to escape her body. A little of the vomit reached her mouth and dribbled down her chin. Dmitry could smell it, but he did not find the scent objectionable as he once might have done. In fact, there was much to be learned from it. He could tell that she had been eating potatoes, and cabbage, and a little chocolate.

Another spasm ripped her body, this time a cough. The reflex cleared her mouth, spattering flecks of half-digested food across the room. Afterwards she was still again. Dmitry had hit her too hard he had been forced to act without thinking. She was, for most purposes, as good as dead. She would never come round and if he waited too long she might escape him for ever. In her current state, there was still some enjoyment to be gained from her.

He knelt beside her on the couch and pulled her hair to one side, away from her neck. Her face was now a parody of what it had once been, even Dmitry could tell that. Her jaw still hung loose and bent, but the rest of her face was limp, as if paralysed. Strands of bile still dripped from her lips. Dmitry pressed his face into her neck and bit, at first tasting the vomit that coated her skin, but then feeling his mouth fill with the warm, rich blood that spurted from her pierced vein. He drank deeply, and forgot his disappointments over the manner of his feeding.

Then, suddenly, nausea hit him. He thrust himself away from the woman's body, for fear that what he was consuming had poisoned him, but he felt no lessening of the pain. Her blood had not grown stale, as it would have done if she had died, though death was not far from her now. This was something far more horrible, more fundamental, more all-consuming than mere tainted blood. It was as though he had received the most terrible news and awoken the following morning to have forgotten the details of it, yet still to remember the horror.

He searched his mind, and it took only moments to understand what had happened: Raisa was dead. Her presence, sometimes close, sometimes distant, had been there since the moment he had first awoken as a voordalak. Tonight it had been hard to discern, obscured by confusion, but it had existed; even when she slept. Now it was gone, and although as a vampire Dmitry was young and naive, somehow he knew that she was dead. There was much he had hoped to learn from her, but the opportunity was lost. There was only one that he could learn from now, with whom there was no such bond as there had been with Raisa, but whose understanding of Dmitry's new condition would be far greater.

He glanced at the clock. It was too late for it tonight soon Dmitry would have to head back to his adopted tomb, but he knew he could no longer put it off. When night fell again, Dmitry would not waste time on feeding. He would visit Yudin.

It had taken Tamara all night and most of the morning to get home. She had carried her mother's body north-west along the railway track. It hadn't taken long for them to reach the bridge and beneath it the ravine stretching down to the river Skhodnya below; a little longer before Tamara had been able to find a path down to the water's edge. If anyone had seen her she would have cut a strange image, carefully clambering down through the clumps of gra.s.s, tenderly clutching the frail corpse as though it were the most precious thing in the whole world.

Then she had stood there, gazing at the flowing water, wondering exactly what she should do. She could think of no other way to lay her mother to rest. She would happily have carried the body barefoot across a thousand versts, but to what end? Tamara had no room in her life for further complications; not now. She scoured the riverbank until she found some wood a couple of planks that she guessed were left over from the construction of the bridge that towered above her. Then she cut strips of material from the hem of her skirt and used them to bind the planks together. She laid her mother on the makeshift funeral raft. Finally she gathered leaves and foliage and covered the body. Before covering her face, Tamara had given her mother one final kiss on the lips, and then gazed at her, trying to remember any detail that she could of their life together when she was a child. The memories of the last few hours proved too strong, overpowering, for now, those that were more distant and more subtle. But even they were enough.

She pushed the boat out into the water and let the current take it, murmuring a prayer that she remembered from her husband's funeral. She did not know how long she stood there by the river's edge before turning away it was more than an hour. Domnikiia's body had long since vanished into the distance.

After that she had walked back to Khimki. Day had broken by the time she arrived, but she still had a long wait. A freight train came through, but with no pa.s.senger cars. At last the daily express train came in, two hours later than it should have done, but once she was on board, the journey back to Moscow was rapid and direct. She couldn't have looked at her best, sitting there in the second-cla.s.s carriage, after the night's exertions, but after twenty hours on the train neither did many of the pa.s.sengers.

Moscow seemed unquantifiably different. Tamara knew that it was she, not the city, who had changed, but still she felt that everyone she pa.s.sed was examining her. It was only later, when she saw herself in the mirror, that she understood the grotesque nature of the wound to her left cheek. At the time she had felt that every uneasy gaze was asking her why she had let Domnikiia Semyonovna die like that, why she had disposed of her body with so little propriety. They could all go hang, and yet Tamara knew that there was one man who could fairly ask those questions of her: her father. He, who had survived so much, who had covered the thousands of versts from Siberia back to the west in just a few months, would not expect that the woman who had stood by his side throughout his exile would be dead within hours of their arriving home. He would not expect that, on hugging his beloved son after three decades apart, he would find that Dmitry had been transformed into the creature that Aleksei had spent his whole life learning to despise.

But first she must find him. She could not begin to guess where he would go. It surprised her that he had come to Moscow, not Petersburg, but then she remembered what Domnikiia had said. Aleksei had been eager to see Dmitry, and evidently they believed Dmitry to be in Moscow. They had not heard the news of his death, and before that, Moscow had been his last address. She would go and find out if Aleksei had called at his lodgings sooner or later he would. But first she needed to clean herself up and, above all, to rest.

The door was bolted from the inside when she arrived at Degtyarny Lane, just as it should be. It took two or three minutes before Isaak opened it, but when she entered, what shocked her most was the ordinariness of everything. Nadia was crossing the salon, carrying jugs of hot water to take upstairs to the girls' rooms. Few of the girls themselves were out of bed yet. Sofia was coming downstairs and wished Tamara a bleary 'Good morning.'

None of them seemed concerned that Tamara had been away all night; none had noticed that Raisa was not there at all; no one had even discovered the broken-down wall in the gap between Raisa and Sofia's rooms, nor the grim item that lay at the foot of the steps beyond it. They'd certainly never suppose what had become of Raisa that her head had been severed from her body by the wheels of the Moscow train, and that her remains had in an instant wasted to nothing. It was hard for Tamara to believe it herself.