believer.’
‘Don’t tease me. Go to sleep. I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned abruptly from him.
But he could not sleep. Curled about her, her skin warm to his, his mind restless, he felt sad. If it was foolish for a revolutionary to have a family, was it foolish to risk love and tenderness too? What were her feelings for him? He pressed closer, trying to empty his mind of all but the happiness he felt lying at her side.
A few days later his surgery assistant brought him another note from ‘a friend of Anna’s’.
‘The messenger says it’s urgent and that he’ll wait for a reply,’ his assistant said apologetically.
The note was in a scruffy hand and badly spelt: an emergency, a ‘comrade’ badly hurt, ‘come at once’. A friend of Anna’s? He cursed quietly under his breath: what on earth was she thinking? He would not become the party’s physician of choice. The messenger was standing, cap in hand, at the waiting-room door. It was evident from his manner and dress that he was a worker at one of the factories or shipyards on the island.
‘Your Honour, it’s only a short walk. We must hurry.’
Instructing his assistant to rearrange appointments, Hadfield grabbed his coat and medical bag and followed the man from the surgery. At the end of Line 7, they turned on to one of the island’s arteries, bustling with horse trams and cabs and traders at their stalls, stamping their feet, blowing into frozen hands. Hadfield did his best to make conversation but his guide was tongue-tied, incapable of more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to simple questions. They slithered along the icy pavement for five minutes, turning left at Line 11 and walking on until they reached the door of a run-down three-storey house at the far end of the street. His guide gave two sharp knocks, paused for a few seconds then gave two more. The door was opened with an impatient jerk by a dishevelled man in his twenties who was plainly suffering from shock, for his face was drained of colour, his pupils abnormally dilated.
‘Thank goodness — come… come in… come in,’ he stammered. ‘It’s poor Valentin — this way, please.’
Hadfield followed him along a short corridor and into a ground-floor apartment.
‘We wouldn’t have brought you here but Anna…’
‘Is she here?’
‘No, no.’
‘Where’s the patient?’ Hadfield snapped.
‘In here, please.’ He held the door open.
The injured man was sitting on a damp mattress with his back to the wall, a bundle of bloody rags round his right hand. There was a deathly pallor to his face and he had clearly lost a lot of blood because his shirt was stained red, and there were dark patches on his woollen waistcoat and trousers.
‘Valentin, I’ve brought a doctor.’
The injured man nodded weakly but did not open his eyes. The room was furnished with nothing more than the mattress and a simple wooden chair.
‘You, what’s your name?’ Hadfield turned to the first man.
‘Kibalchich, Nikolai Ivanovich, at your service.’
‘Well, Nikolai Ivanovich, I need water, towels, soap, and quickly.’
While he was away, Hadfield began gently peeling the rags from the injured man’s hand. It was a severe trauma injury, ragged tissue, ragged bone, three fingers gone, forefinger and thumb reduced to bloody stumps.
‘How did you do this?’
‘A piece of machinery, Doctor,’ said Kibalchich from the door. He was holding an enamel bowl, a towel draped over his shoulder.
The loose skin round the wound was blackened and in places red raw. Hadfield could smell burnt flesh and the injured man’s hair and eyebrows were singed, his shirt sleeve too. ‘A piece of machinery that burns?’
Kibalchich licked his lips uncertainly and looked away.
‘I’ll do what I can, but you know he should be in hospital?’
‘Is there anything else you need?’ Kibalchich asked, kneeling beside him with the bowl.
‘You must help me, I need to give him an anaesthetic.’ Hadfield took out a bottle and sprinkled some drops on to a gauze pad: ‘That should be enough.’ It was hard to judge the correct dose.
‘Ether?’
‘Yes. I can see you’re interested in chemistry,’ said Hadfield, giving a nod to the injured man’s hand. The irony in his voice was not lost on Kibalchich.
It took almost an hour to clean the wound, to cut away the dead flesh, tidy, stitch and dress.
‘He’s in pain still,’ said Kibalchich, as the patient groaned long and loud.
‘He’ll be in pain when he comes round. I’ll give you some morphine, but you must take him to a hospital.’
‘Your hospital?’
Hadfield frowned: ‘It would be better to take him somewhere else. The Nikolaevsky’s a military hospital.’
‘I’ll speak to Alexander Mikhailov.’
‘If you can’t find somewhere, contact me — but discreetly. The wound needs to be checked and dressed regularly. Now I must wash.’
Kibalchich left the room to fetch clean water. Getting to his feet, Hadfield stretched on tiptoes to the ceiling, blood flowing back into his stiff limbs. There were patients waiting to see him, he was to be at the hospital in two hours and he had no intention of lingering in the apartment. The less he knew of their chemistry experiments the better.
He stepped out of the room into the gloomy corridor. ‘Hey, Nikolai?’ Where was his water? He walked down the corridor and opened the first door he came to.
He stood with his hand on the knob, staring in amazement at the workbenches with their flasks and clamps and Bunsen burners. There was a confusion of broken glass and laboratory instruments on the bench furthest from the door and a large black smoke shadow on the wall. Valentin had lost his fingers in an explosion. If he took the trouble to look he would find them on or below the bench.
‘As you can see — the party’s laboratory.’
Alexander Mikhailov was standing in the hall at the end of the corridor, with Kibalchich at his shoulder. His voice was calm, even relaxed, but Hadfield felt a prickle of perspiration creep over his skin as he turned to face him.
‘The scene of Valentin’s unfortunate accident?’
‘Yes. A mercury fulminate. Nikolai,’ Mikhailov addressed his companion, ‘the doctor is still waiting to wash his hands.’
Kibalchich stepped forward too quickly, sloshing water along the corridor.
‘Put it in the laboratory,’ said Mikhailov, slipping out of his black coat. ‘We have nothing to hide now, the doctor knows our business.’
As he stood at the workbench soaping his hands and forearms, Hadfield was conscious of Mikhailov’s lazy- lidded eyes watching him intently.
‘You’re the only person to set foot in this room who isn’t a party member,’ he said, leaning forward to offer a towel. ‘Quite an honour.’
‘An honour I could do without,’ replied Hadfield shortly.
‘Important work is done here.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘And now you’ve played your part.’
Hadfield frowned, dropping the towel on the bench: ‘I’ve done no more than I would for any man.’
‘Ah, yes, your obligation as a doctor. But I’m sure we can count on your discretion too,’ Mikhailov paused for a second, his lips twitching with amusement, ‘comrade.’
Hadfield looked at him impassively, refusing to be drawn. Kibalchich stepped forward with his jacket and coat:
‘Thank you, Doctor, thank you.’
‘Remember, Nikolai — take your friend to a hospital.’
They followed him to the door of the apartment. Kibalchich was drawing the bolts back when Mikhailov
