Yes. If the handing-over was done in stages it would never be done at all.
Why not? How does that follow?
What’s the next question?
Do I care about the English? Enough to risk my life for them?
No. I joined the revolution because I wanted to fight for what I believed in.
What do I believe in?
Is it’? Whatever my motives I was at any rate working for what I believed in.
What do I believe in?
I’ve mentioned justice and freedom. Then there’s truth and art and perseverance and power and happiness and loyalty. All the things that matter.
What does ‘matter’ mean’?
At this point Theodore broke off his internal colloquy. His cell was the first in the row, which meant that anybody arriving from upstairs was visible from it. And somebody was visible now, standing in a stooped attitude not five metres away while one guard showed another a piece of paper. It was Nina. She had a dirty bandage round her head and looked ill, listless and confused. He was going to call to her, then did not. He said to himself that it would have done no good, though he was far from clear about what he meant by that. In another moment she had gone. He let his head hang. It occurred to him that he ought to be feeling sadness, or remorse, or even a consoling awareness of duty done. But for a variety of reasons nothing of the sort was possible. All he could feel was some apprehension and a great indifference.
22
The little churchyard was crowded. A guard of honour from the regiment lined the paths and stood in a double line at the graveside. Across the road, 8 Troop were paraded under Sergeant Ulmanis, who at a signal from Colonel Tabidze ordered a party to dismount. Six men did so, went to the nearby waggon and, with Lyubimov in charge, lifted the coffin on to their shoulders. They moved carefully but not very smartly into the churchyard while a contingent from the regimental band played a slow march.
Lomov was not one of the six; he had not volunteered for the duty and was in any case too small. He sat his horse in a soldierly way, holding the reins of Lyubimov’s. The last time he came this way he had wept a great deal, genuine tears produced by very genuine relief. He had broken military regulations, disobeyed an officer’s order, had a hard ride, seen (or rather not seen) two strange things and come within a second of being a party to murder. Always a quick thinker, he had instantly and rightly guessed that to have saved Controller Petrovsky from death would square his account with the army; Lyubimov’s too. Now Lomov congratulated himself on the native curiosity that had taken him up to the house just in time, and held back a smile of complacency at knowing what all but a very few besides himself would have given a month’s pay to know. He was on the whole sorry that the ensign was dead, but he had been too changeable for a good officer, exciting to ride with, dangerous to cross, in fact dangerous at all times.
Some members of the regiment had attended the burial as private persons and stood here and there inside the churchyard: Victor, Boris, Dmitri among others. Major Yakir was there too, but in his capacity as the deceased’s squadron commander. Victor had picked his station with some care, in a corner of the walls where everyone within reach would have his back to him and he would be able to wield his vodka-flask without being noticed. As the place filled up, other mourners moved quite close to him. The closest was a woman wearing a curious black dress and hat, evidently on her own. She was in her thirties and had a remarkable bosom which he glimpsed when she half turned and gave him a brief stare. After that, she took another step or two backwards until she was standing really very close to him. He had started to take a quick swig from his flask, thinking this an ideal opportunity, when he suddenly choked. His feelings of grief for the dead, never profound, vanished altogether.
The coffin was lowered into the grave. Colonel Tabidze rested at the salute for a minute afterwards and there was comparative silence everywhere. Then he lowered his hand to his side, took a pace forward and began to speak.
‘We bury here today a gallant young officer who gave his life for his country and also, by an inspiring chance, for his father. In the midst of our grief we can only rejoice that the ruthless assassins responsible for this atrocity have been caught and punished. May their names perish in infamy. In their victim, Alexander Petrovsky, Russia and England have lost a good soldier and a good friend. His parents, to whom our hearts go out in sympathy and love, have lost the best of sons. Everybody who knows the family knows how Alexander revered his father and mother. As one who knew him all his life and was his commanding officer for the whole length of his brief career, I am perhaps specially qualified…’
By now, almost everyone had stopped listening. All but a few had paid close attention at first in the hope of picking up some clue to the truth about Alexander’s death, which by common consent could not have happened as officially described. The general disbelief arose not from any inherent improbability in the story of the two masked gunmen who escaped after their assassination attempt but were captured later at some distant place; elsewhere there had been plenty of successful attempts of that kind within an hour or two. It was just that the notion of Alexander giving half an hour of his free time, let alone his life, for his country or his father (or any other entity) could not be a true one. Such persons were none the wiser, and likely to remain so. The others, the few like Lomov who knew what had happened, had listened with less curiosity to Tabidze’s opening remarks, looking for nothing more than some inner amusement at the skill and extravagance of his evasions. Another of this party, Brevda, felt none of that. After the first shock he had settled down to a state of low-intensity panic that might run wild at any moment. He had not yet been brought to account for nearly letting the Controller get killed under his nose, but it could not be long delayed. No doubt the boss was waiting for the funeral to be over and things to get back to normal; then would come the summons to the Directorate. Of Alexander, except remotely, as the cause of the trouble, there was no thought in Brevda’s head at all.
Tabidze was nearly at the end of his address. He had worked on it with characteristic conscientiousness, mentioning everybody who should have been mentioned, avoiding flat lies wherever possible in speaking of the deceased, enumerating his virtues without gross exaggeration, or at any rate without downright invention. And, because these things had to be done properly, and fiddling with pieces of paper at the graveside was not doing things properly, he had learned his speech by heart and had practised it. Naturally he kept to himself his own opinion of Alexander. This started with the observation that the young idiot had tried to be too many things. To take only his soldiering: from one moment to the next one never knew whether he was going to turn out to be a liberal or a martinet, a technician or a cavalryman, a rule-book pedant or an improviser, a dandy or a professional. Add to that his sex-life, his social life… And then this final, fatal piece of lunacy. On the whole he had been a liability to the regiment, showy rather than brilliant, and too easily bored to be trusted. Life would be more comfortable with him gone, and not appreciably duller.