The Devil's Harmony, page 17
‘ … I’ll fill all the pages with my rhymes for you
And if I meet you in a crowd
I’ll never let you out from my life again.
I’ll steal you from all the people and you will be only mine for ever …’
It ought not to have been strange to hear someone singing inside this building. The Chopin Library was a place of music – it was alight and alive with music for most of its day – and the ‘Demon’s aria’, although seldom performed these days, was quite well known in the music world.
But the light, feminine singing was sending a tidal wave of memory tumbling through Yan’s mind, and his hands were shaking so badly that he could no longer play. He stopped, and went out to the hall. The storm was still growling overhead, and several times lightning flickered, so that the hall and the stairway came sharply into brilliance.
The stairway.
She was at the head of the stairs, and for a moment Yan was not sure if she was real, because it was like seeing an outline traced on transparent paper. The lightning crackled again, showing up the rioting hair like a copper curtain, and he saw that she was no paper cut-out – she was real and alive.
She was still singing the ‘Demon’s aria’, and she was smiling, and coming down the stairs towards him, as if she was very sure of her welcome. Everything blurred and Yan had the sensation of something wrenching his mind from the present, and sending it spinning into the past.
You can’t forget me, and you can’t shut me away, Yan … I’ve always been with you …
Always with him … That girl with autumn-leaf hair falling around her shoulders, who had sung this aria as she descended a stairway, doing so in order that the people with her would not be afraid, and doing so to hide her own fear …
The past surged forward and he was again in an old house with menace thickening in its shadows, and he was watching a girl walk down a stairway. The girl he had been powerless to help, even though he had known, and she had known, that she and her entire family were walking to their brutal deaths.
Tanwen had been annoyed when the storm came grumbling in, because her new frock might be spoiled, and also the rain would cause her hair to come loose, and it would stand out around her face like a mist, which was very unfashionable and not the look she wanted to present to Yan Orzek.
She had waited in the square outside the Library, finding a corner that gave her a view of the main doors, and watching everyone coming out. Bruno and Alicja were together, Bruno talking and waving his hands as he described something. Then came Anatol, with the two waitresses. They carried large bags, which probably meant they had liberated some of tonight’s food. Tanwen did not care if they had ransacked the entire kitchen, providing they left her way clear to get to Yan.
It looked as if everyone had gone and as if it would be safe to go back inside. She had it all planned. When she found Yan – or when he came to see who was there – she would tell him that she had got halfway to her lodgings when she realized that she had left her bag in the musicians’ room. Her latch-key and her purse and everything was inside it, she would say, and she had run all the way back, praying he would not have locked everywhere up and left. She would be apologetic and breathless.
Then, of course, it would be natural to walk with him through the silent, shadowy old building, making it easy to brush against him. She was aware of a shiver of delight at how it would feel if he took her hand. Earlier, she had looked into the smaller reception rooms that were kept for entertaining guests and for Trust meetings. Two of them had deep sofas with plump soft cushions. Very suitable. And the Ivory Salon itself had deep chaise longues set against the walls, once reserved for really eminent guests. Tanwen smiled even more at the thought of that. This was going to be a memorable night.
She turned up her coat collar, and sped across the square, skipping across the puddles, going towards the side door which Yan generally used. There was a heart-stopping moment when she thought it was locked, and that after all she had missed him, but the handle turned, and she was inside.
At first she thought he was not here, after all. The door of the Ivory Salon was closed, and the reception rooms at the back of the building were in darkness. But he might be upstairs in the rehearsal room, so Tanwen crossed the hall and went up the stairs. This was all starting to feel slightly creepy, but she walked along the landing, glancing down over the gilt railings into the big hall below. It was then that she heard the music coming from the Ivory Salon.
At first she did not recognize it, and then, quite suddenly, she did. There had been a fossilized old professor at the Academy who had had a passion for Russian composers. His lectures had been unbelievably boring, but Tanwen had gone to them all and made notes, because you never knew when things might come in useful. A couple of those lectures came in useful now, because she was able to identify this music. It was from an opera by Anton Rubinstein called The Demon, and this was the Demon’s own aria. It was called ‘Don’t cry for me, my child’, and it was the demon’s farewell to the doomed heroine. Tanwen supposed it was all very dramatic and that it made for good theatre, but to her mind a few fireworks from Mozart or Tchaikovsky were far more effective. Some lively swing or ragtime that you could dance to was even better.
It sounded as if the pianist – and of course it was Yan – was wrapped in his own world as he played. What if Tanwen were to enter that world, by way of the music? She was fairly sure she could remember most of the words of the aria. She began to descend the stair, singing as she did so. Father had always said she had the sweetest, purest voice he had ever heard. It was as well he could not see her using that sweet, pure voice in these circumstances.
The music stopped, as abruptly as if someone had slammed a lid down on it. The door of the salon opened, and Yan stood there, framed against the storm light.
Tanwen went on singing, sliding into a later verse because she could not remember the second one, but managing to blur the words without losing the melody.
She went towards him, her hands outstretched, but he seemed frozen to the spot and almost bewildered. She still had the story of the forgotten bag ready to produce, but it was looking as if it would not be necessary, so, because there were times when it was a good idea to take the initiative, she went up to him, wound her arms around his neck, and pressed against him. His body responded at once – there was no mistaking it.
In a soft voice, deliberately giving him the title that clothed him in such authority, Tanwen said, ‘Maestro – isn’t it about time you stopped fighting with me? And that we went to bed?’
How they reached the Ivory Salon, Tanwen was never, afterwards, sure, but somehow they were there, and he was clinging to her as if he would never let her go. And then there was the feel of the silk covers of one of the couches, and the cushions had fallen around them, and he was kissing her so fiercely she thought she might faint. Tanwen, who had certainly not expected quite this level of reaction, found her own senses leaping to respond, and she pulled him against her, taking his hands and sliding them beneath the folds of her evening frock. He gasped, and said something in a language she did not recognize, but she did not care what language he was using, because it was as if an explosion was happening between them, and she would not bear it if he drew away from her.
Through the soaring waves of passion, she had a distant memory of having intended this to be a light, one- or two-night affair – of how she could then boast that she had enslaved the maestro. But there was nothing light about this – in fact it felt as if it might be Tanwen herself who was being enslaved, and if he did not make love to her properly, this very moment, she might faint from sheer longing.
There was a moment when he drew back, as if suddenly unsure whether he dared go on, but Tanwen reached down to enclose him with her hand, and he cried out. Somehow their clothes were discarded – she thought there was even the sound of the silk of her dress tearing slightly, which could not have mattered less by this time.
When at last he entered her, the room blurred and almost seemed to recede, and she understood with dazzling clarity that all those fumblings and bouncings with other men had been as nothing. This was real – it was what the poets wrote about and the music-makers sung about and it was what the painters tried to depict on their canvases …
There was no longer any sense of their being two separate beings, nor was there any sense of time. When finally he cried out and gave a helpless thrust and Tanwen felt the passion drain from him, it might have been ten minutes or ten hours or ten years since they had fallen, entwined, on the sofa.
His head fell against her bare shoulder, his hair like silk on her skin. She managed to turn her head to look down at him, and saw the faint sheen of sweat on his eyelids, and she tightened her hold on him and wanted to stay like this for ever.
He turned his head on the satin cushions and looked at her, and faint unease brushed her skin, because his eyes were dark and unreadable, and there was something wrong – something different about him.
Then he said, ‘I’ve reached you. I’ve saved you. I knew one day I would.’ He touched her hair, and said, softly, ‘Sunset shining through autumn leaves. It’s how I always thought of you. Katya tried to help you – did you ever know that? But she couldn’t do it.’ He tried to sit up, looking about him, and with increasing concern Tanwen saw he was not recognizing his surroundings.
Who was he talking about? What was all this about sunset hair and somebody called Katya trying to save someone? Tanwen pulled him back so that he was facing her again.
‘Yan,’ she said, speaking as calmly as she could, ‘Yan, who is Katya?’
He stared at her, and she saw he did not recognize her, either.
‘Yan – it’s me – Tanwen. We’re in the Ivory Salon – in the Chopin Library.’
He looked round again, and his eyes seemed to clear a little. ‘Yes,’ he said, still in the same faraway voice. ‘We’re in the Chopin Library. I see that.’
The distant look was fading from his eyes, but he still seemed to be a long way from her.
Tanwen tried again. ‘Yan – you said Katya tried to save someone. Who is Katya?’
He turned to look at her, and for a terrible moment a picture seemed to light up, as if the lightning had flickered across it. It printed itself on Tanwen’s mind, and it was the picture of a young woman crouching in a deep, dark place, sobbing and shivering … There was a candle flame, casting wild shadows on dripping stone walls … And Yan’s face, lit from below by the candle’s light, staring down at the young woman …
A sick horror was starting to sweep over Tanwen, but she gripped his hands. ‘Tell me. Yan, tell me about Katya.’
Yan said, ‘Katya …’ And then, ‘I murdered her.’
SEVENTEEN
1918
Father Gregory had said, as he and Yan sat together in the shadowy church overlooking Ipatiev House, that there were only a few hours left for them in Katerinburg.
Yan had not dared ask where the two of them would go after all this, in case they were simply going to walk and walk until they reached somewhere safe, or until one of them dropped from exhaustion. Instead, he obediently put together things for the journey in a kind of carpetbag, and tried not to count how many hours Katya and the other girl had been in the cold darkness.
Gregory would not let him help with Vadim’s body, and Yan was guiltily grateful. He did not know how he would have borne to look again at the cold dead thing that had once been Vadim. He would never be able to forget him, though, and he knew that, despite his promise, he would keep the music – the ‘Temnaya Kadentsiya’ – that Vadim had given him in those last moments. It was like a talisman, a tiny memory of the father he should have known for longer. But Father Gregory could be trusted to do everything that should be done for Vadim’s body. Yan knew he could trust him, in the same way he had known he could trust Vadim himself.
And in the same way he had known he could trust Katya.
Katya.
He was frantic to get to her, but when he climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked down over the walls of Ipatiev House, the guards were still around. He would never get past them, and even if he did, he would never get Katya past them without being seen. But he could not leave her …
‘The guards won’t be there much longer,’ said Father Gregory. ‘There’s no reason for them to keep patrolling the grounds – Ipatiev House is no longer a prison.’ Almost to himself, he said, ‘The Bolsheviks’ goal has been achieved.’
Yan understood that he meant the Romanovs had all been executed. All of them, including his copper-haired girl who had sung so bravely as they were dragged to their deaths. You would have been brave to the last, he said silently to her memory. And I will never forget you.
‘Once we see the guards have stopped marching around,’ said Father Gregory, ‘we’ll go back in the house.’
‘How? We can’t just walk up to the door and ask to be let in.’
‘We’ll use the tunnel Vadim made under the corner of the wall. It should still be there.’
‘He scooped it out of the earth,’ said Yan. ‘And he covered it with branches and leaves to hide where the ground was disturbed.’
‘Then, please God, it’s still covered,’ said Gregory. ‘Stay at the top of the bell tower, and when you see the guards have gone, come and tell me.’
A thin light was streaking the sky when finally the guards stopped their ceaseless patrolling. Yan watched for a little longer to be sure, then sped down the stairs to where Gregory was kneeling before the altar. He waited for Gregory to look up, then said, quietly, that he thought it was safe to get into the house now. He tried not to sound too urgent about it, because of this being a church, but it was something they had to do quickly.
Father Gregory understood at once. He made a kind of semi-bow to the altar, as if politely ending a conversation, then took Yan’s hand to lead him out of the church. As they reached the door, he paused. ‘We’ll need a light of some kind, Yan. It would be very dark in that place?’
‘Yes, but there’ll be candles just inside.’
‘Take my tinder box in case you need it,’ said Gregory, going quickly into a small room near the church’s main doors. ‘And for the love of all the angels, don’t drop it, for it’ll clang like the sounding of the Last Trump. And now,’ he said, as they went outside, ‘we must walk across the street openly and without seeming furtive, because that would attract attention. You are one of my pupils and we are taking an early morning walk after our devotions, and we are a little curious about Ipatiev House. All that is natural.’
Yan had been worried that he would not be able to find the tunnel that Vadim had made – or that it would have been discovered and filled in by the guards – but as they walked around the high walls he saw it.
‘Just there.’ He dared not point in case anyone was watching. ‘You stay here, Father, while I go in.’
‘Of course you aren’t going in there on your own—’
Yan said, very politely, ‘Father, two of us might be noticed. But I’ve lived here, and Zena and the others might not know that I ran away. They’d think it was normal to see me.’ He could not believe he was talking like this to a priest, but he knew he was right. The moment lengthened, then he said, ‘Also, Father …’ He broke off and glanced down at the narrow indented section of ground.
‘Also,’ said Father Gregory, smiling, ‘you’re doubtful as to whether I could squeeze under there and be sufficiently agile to sprint through the gardens. You’re right. I might be more of a danger than a help. But if you aren’t back here within an hour, I’ll find a way to come in and get you.’ A hand came out and rested lightly on Yan’s head for a moment. ‘God be with you,’ he said. ‘Your father called you an exceptional child, and he was right. I’ll be waiting here when you come out, and I’ll be praying it will be with your mother.’
My mother. Katya.
Yan did not trust himself to speak, so he just nodded, and dropped flat on the ground to squeeze through the narrow space.
The dawn light was starting to touch the trees and the stones of Ipatiev House, but there was still a strange, other-world quality everywhere.
There did not seem to be anyone about, but as Yan went through the gardens, he stayed in the shelter of the trees. It was very quiet. There was the occasional chirrup of birdsong, but that was all. He came out of the trees, and saw the garden door ahead. He could be there within a minute if he ran. But would the door be locked? He had left it unlocked when he fled into the night with the guards giving chase, but would anyone have locked it since? Yan was trusting that there had been so much turmoil within the house, it would not have occurred to anyone to see if a small back door was locked. If it was locked, he would see if he could break a window and climb through, because he was not going to have got this far to turn back.
He took a deep breath and began to run forward. His feet made hardly any sound, but with every step he expected to hear shouts and to see guards spring out and seize him. But nothing moved, and he reached the door, and, his heart pounding in his chest, grasped the handle. Please let it turn, please …
It was all right. The handle turned and the door opened when he pushed it, and he was inside the familiar scullery with its scents of food and the shapes of the tables and chairs – there was Zena’s chair, where the guard had sat last night – and there was the door to his own little room, still partly open, as he had left it. No one was here, but soon people would be coming downstairs – at any moment someone might come in.
He crossed the room and opened the larder door, and the blackness reared up almost as if it was a solid wall. He had been prepared for that, though, and he left the door slightly open behind him so that he could see to get a candle. Here they were, exactly where they always were; a box of thick tallow candles. He thrust two in his pocket and, trying not to let his hands shake, he managed to strike a light from the tinderbox to fire a third. The small flame came up from the candle, and Yan wrapped a bit of rag around it so it would not scorch his fingers. In his mind he was calling to Katya that he was almost with her, that she would be soon out and they would get away. Just another few minutes …
