In the event, he was denied the opportunity of giving it any further thought. Dolgoruky approached him with a jabbing finger. ‘I know this man. He is a magistrate. Did you know that, Kirill Kirillovich?’
‘Yes. Botkin brought him here.’
‘Botkin? Is this wise?’
‘He is sympathetic to the cause. He wishes to help us. A magistrate could be very useful to us.’
‘He was snooping around asking questions about Kozodavlev. Leastways his superior was. A most eccentric individual. He claimed I did not interest him!’
Virginsky sensed Botkin and Kirill Kirillovich regard him with a new and dangerous interest. ‘It’s true,’ he confessed. ‘We were investigating the death of Kozodavlev, in connection with a body found in the Winter Canal. The body of Pseldonimov. The secret information I gave to you, Alyosha Afanasevich, relates to that case. The fact of the matter is that we are no longer working on it. It has been taken from us. As I told you, Rakitin is in the hands of the Third Section. I have never hidden from you my position as a magistrate. On the contrary, I have shared with you useful information acquired through that position.’
‘The information he gave me was, in fact, of limited usefulness.’ There was a chilling finality to Botkin’s utterance. It had the ring of a sentence being pronounced.
‘You see what you have done!’ cried Kirill Kirillovich, in sudden panic. ‘What kind of a man you have brought here! You have put us all in danger.’
Virginsky felt as if the room was closing in on him. Many of the guests had risen from their seats. They were pressing forward in response to their host’s shrill cries. He noticed a vindicated smile on the face of the young man who had admitted them.
‘What do you propose we do with him?’ asked Botkin darkly.
‘That is a question for you to answer,’ bleated Kirill Kirillovich. ‘You brought him here.’
Virginsky felt that his fate was being decided, and that the decision would not go his way.
‘Wait!’ It was the voice of the woman who had entered with Dolgoruky, clear and naturally authoritative. She seemed to turn the mood of the gathering with just one word. ‘Let me ask you outright: What are you proposing? That we kill this man and dispose of his body?’
Now that she had expressed the matter with such chilling and almost gleeful directness, it seemed that the others began to back away from the idea. They were suddenly desperate for her to talk them out of it.
‘Let me tell you, if that is what you’re thinking, you are no worse than a gang of common criminals. We did not instigate the revolution in order to give men like you the licence to commit violent acts. Yes, we will be ruthless when the time comes. We will strike, and we will strike hard. If a head needs cutting off, I will be first in line with an axe. But we must choose our targets carefully. An ill-considered attack, prompted by panic, and executed without due diligence, can only serve to bring us to the attention of the authorities.’
She broke off to consider Virginsky. A wrinkle of distaste upset the balance of her face. ‘This man may be a police agent, but I doubt it. Really, would even our police be so stupid as to send a serving magistrate to infiltrate a revolutionary grouping? I have had some experience of spies and informers, you know. In Paris, during the Commune. Invariably, it turns out to be the one you would least suspect. If you want to find the agent amongst us — and yes, you may be sure that there is already an agent amongst us, and has been long before this young man’s appearance — there is no great mystery to it. You simply look for the man who most exemplifies the common stereotype of a revolutionist. Botkin is more likely to be a police spy than him. Or Totsky,’ she added, as if to lessen the implicit accusation she had made against Botkin. The afterthought caused the young ‘Bazarov’ to blush, indicating to Virginsky that he was the Totsky she had referred to. ‘The police — or the Third Section, or whoever wishes to infiltrate us — would naturally want their agent to fit in, not to stand out, as this fellow so pitiably does. Why, he did not even bother to get out of his service uniform!’
Her observation, facetiously made, provoked mocking laughter from the other guests. With it, the tension was released.
The young woman had possibly saved Virginsky’s life. He sought out her eyes gratefully. It seemed at first that she was avoiding him, but when their eyes did meet, her expression was not what he had expected, or hoped for. There was the cast of something unmistakably unpleasant there, something indistinguishable from contempt. She looked away from him quickly. Her gaze had now acquired a constantly drifting restlessness that took Virginsky more concretely back into his memory. For now he was certain that they had met before, and he remembered under what circumstances too. Now that he was able to place her, he realised that his intuition had been correct: she was very much changed.
‘I would also say,’ she continued, addressing the room at large, ‘that the way to ensure the loyalty of those we recruit to our cause is not through terror but through education. When people understand what we are fighting for, when they share not only our convictions but also the fervour with which we hold them, we need not fear that they will betray us.’
Virginsky could hardly believe this was the flippant, cynically knowing girl he had met once before, the spoilt daughter of a lecherous father, the girl with the broken laugh, whose dangerous appetite for experience had brought her close to ruin. There was no note of cynicism in her voice at all now, and in her eyes no hungry glimmer, no desperate seeking after men’s attention. ‘Let us say,’ she went on, speaking with a calm, unforced confidence, knowing that she could hold the room through her words alone, ‘that there is here amongst us one who has come with the intention of spying on us. If, after an evening in our company, he has not converted wholeheartedly to our cause and volunteered to spy on his former masters on our behalf — well, then, we are sorry revolutionists. You might even say we would deserve to be informed against! For every word we utter is a revolutionary act. Therefore, we must make our every word count and carry the fight with us wherever we go. Comrades, to kill one who has come amongst us is a sign of our failure, as much as his disloyalty. It must only ever be done as a last resort.’
‘But you do not deny that force may be used when necessary?’ It was Botkin who asked the question.
‘There! You see!’ cried the young woman exultantly. Only now did Virginsky detect a sign of the nervous excitement that had once dominated her behaviour. She laughed, and it was the same broken laugh he remembered. ‘How he seeks to entrap me! How like a spy!’
‘Not at all. I was merely seeking to. .’ Botkin shook his head angrily. ‘Oh, never mind. You know that I have the greatest respect for you, Tatyana Ruslanovna. Your experience during the Commune counts for a lot. No one doubts that you are a tireless worker for social revolution. However. . you do not know men like I do. Sometimes, a measure of healthy fear can accomplish a lot.’
‘I understand that.’
‘Tatyana Ruslanovna.’ Virginsky murmured her name wonderingly.
The young woman, serious again, gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of the head, as if she were denying any connection with the person he might have associated with that name. Or possibly the gesture was a warning. Either way, it seemed that she remembered him.
‘Enough of this,’ said Kirill Kirillovich. ‘We have kept our people waiting long enough.’
The meeting began chaotically. Kirill Kirillovich attempted to take the floor, on the grounds that it was his name day. However, he was shouted down, on the grounds that that was simply a pretext and had nothing to do with anything. Reluctantly, he gave way, although the look of sour disappointment remained on his face for the rest of the evening.