In the gardens of the Smolny, they settled on a bench close to the School for Noble Girls and he asked her of her family and her home. Her father had been an army officer and a gentleman with an estate near Kharkov, her mother one of his servants. As a small child she had lived with an old babushka in the village, and on winter nights had sat at the stove and listened to folk tales in the Ukrainian language and stories of Cossack heroes. With the emancipation of the serfs, Colonel Kovalenko had used his influence to register Anna as a member of the meschanstvo — the lower middle class — and sent her to the local gymnasium. She was never close to her father, she said, even as a young girl the thought that her mother was no more than a chattel who could be sold to another member of the gentry was intolerable. At school she had been teased and bullied because she was illegitimate, and even her father’s servants spoke of her as ‘the bastard’ behind his back. One summer her father had hired a student who had been exiled for his part in the Polish Revolt to tutor her, and he had spoken of his own country’s struggle for freedom. ‘Then someone gave me a copy of Kondraty Ryleev’s poem “Nalivaiko”. Do you know it?’ she asked. ‘It had a great effect on me. It’s the story of a Ukrainian uprising, of the struggle for justice and freedom: “There is no reconciliation, there are no conditions / Between the tyrant and the slave; / It is not ink which is needed, but blood, We must act with the sword.” There — what do you think of that?’ Anna’s eyes were shining and she was twisting her small hands in her lap.
‘Yes, I…’ He was groping for something that might do justice to her feelings.
‘And you know Ryleev gave his own life for freedom!’ Her voice was shaking with emotion. ‘He was executed by Tsar Nicholas. Freedom and revolt always walk arm in arm with suffering and death. That is what history teaches us.’
She turned away, but not before he saw her brush a tear from her cheek. They sat there in silence for a minute or more as well-dressed, comfortable Petersburg ambled past, promenading couples, children in straw hats and lace with ruby and plum coloured bows and sashes, merchants in light summer suits, a nanny with the latest English perambulator, a peaceful, ordered, somnolent scene as remote from the revolution and sacrifice that filled Anna’s thoughts as it was possible to be. Before he could speak to her again, the bells of the Smolny Cathedral began to chime for the evening service and roused by their restless rhythm, she rose quickly to her feet. ‘I must go.’
It was apparent from her face that there was little point in attempting to persuade her to change her mind. As they strolled slowly through the garden towards the road, he asked her about the children she taught at the school in Alexandrovskaya and the life she lived in the village.
‘Do you think I’m a sentimental revolutionary?’ she asked. ‘It’s different for you. I’m used to a simpler life than you and Vera.’
‘And the gentleman I saw you with at Madame Volkonsky’s?’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘The man sitting on the couch.’
‘Alexander? He’s a friend.’
The wariness in her voice and the colour that rose to her cheeks suggested more.
Hadfield hesitated, trying to find a propitious way to say what he wanted to say. ‘
Anna stared at him for a moment. ‘Are you trying to humiliate me, Doctor?’ she asked in Russian.
‘Of course not,’ he said, taken aback. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘You are making fun of me,’ she said coldly. And she turned her back on him and began walking briskly towards the cab stand in front of the cathedral.
‘Miss Kovalenko, I don’t understand…’
Her step did not falter for an instant. She had clearly made up her mind to have nothing more to do with him that day.
‘Wait…’ He began to hurry after her.
Their little pantomime was attracting smiles and the comment of cabbies on the opposite side of the square, and a smartly dressed elderly gentleman in a top hat shook his head in disapproval as Hadfield hurried past. As he fell into step with her, Anna quickened her pace.
He reached for her arm: ‘Please. Look, I’m sorry but…’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, shaking herself free. ‘I didn’t have the privilege of an education like yours but I understand our people!’ She turned away from him with a disdainful toss of the head.
‘So you don’t speak French,’ he shouted after her. ‘Is that it?’ She had turned away from the cab stand, conscious of the glances they were attracting from the drivers. ‘This is ridiculous. Please stop.’
And she did stop, turning angrily to him. ‘You are drawing attention to us.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you couldn’t speak French,’ he said in exasperation. ‘It means nothing. I just thought perhaps that Alexander was your fiance.’
‘What business is it of yours anyway?’ she snapped at him. ‘Now let me go.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no right to ask. And I’m sorry this afternoon has ended so badly.’ He was confused, a tangle of feelings, aching with regret and anger. ‘Let me see you to a cab.’
Her face softened a little with the suggestion of a smile. ‘No, I’m quite all right, thank you. And you should know he is not my fiance. He’s a good comrade. He will never be my fiance…’ For a few seconds she stood there avoiding his gaze, biting her bottom lip uncertainly, and then she continued. ‘I am not interested in such relationships…’ Something in his expression must have suggested he did not take this remark as seriously as she would have liked because she took an urgent step closer, fixing him with an intense blue stare. ‘Believe me, Doctor. Revolutionaries should not marry or have families.’
Hadfield pulled a sceptical face: ‘Aren’t socialists just like everybody else?’
‘No. I’ve given my life to the struggle — like Kondraty Ryleev and many others…’
‘And what of love?’
‘I will not change my mind, and…’ she hesitated and looked away again, the colour rising to her cheeks, ‘and you should know…’ She did not finish the sentence but stood there avoiding his gaze. The seconds passed, a minute, and worshippers began to trickle from the west door of the cathedral onto the pavement, old ladies hobbling home with their black shawls pulled tightly about them even on a summer evening.
‘What should I know?’
Anna turned to look at him and he was taken aback by the intense expression on her face — not of anger this time, or defiance or resentment, but a deep trembling sadness close to pain.
‘You should know I’m married.’
10
The cause of such confusion and not a little heartache was lurking in a doorway a short distance from the Church of the Assumption. Alexander Mikhailov’s gaze was fixed on the shadows beneath the splintered awning of a modest two-storey building. A low drinking den, like so many others in the Haymarket district, it was doing steady trade even on the Lord’s Day. Patrons were obliged to step over the prostrate form of an elderly peasant who had staggered no further than the door before collapsing in a stupor. No one seemed in the least concerned and Mikhailov wondered if the landlord was leaving the drunk on the step as barely living proof of the purity of his vodka. A couple of young women in gaudy rags were accosting all who came and went. That the broad fellow in workman’s clothes who had been following him for almost an hour should try to conceal himself close to frumps plying their trade was nothing short of pitiful. Still, it was a simple enough task to lose one police spy, the sort of challenge he enjoyed, but perhaps there were others.
Without looking left or right Mikhailov began picking his way round the empty market stalls and piles of rubbish, putrid and thick with flies, to the opposite side of the square. On most days of the week the market was bustling with peasants and merchants; this was the ‘belly’ of St Petersburg, with every manner of object and animal for sale, women and children too. Respectable folk only chose to visit the district on business, although Mikhailov had heard stories of literary pilgrims in search of Raskolnikov’s attic. And only the day before he had seen Dostoevsky in the street with a posse of admirers.
From the square, he walked at a steady pace to the Ekaterininsky Canal then along its embankment into the
