But the children’s dance continued and in fact grew faster, until they were whirling around him at an impossible speed. Their faces blurred into a streak of flesh encircling him, their laughter merging into a single scream.
The fleshy blur shrank like an elastic band contracting, tightening around his head. He felt it against his face, filmy, acrid with the taste of burning. The film was unspeakably revolting, as if it were a spider’s web, or the web woven by something more repulsive than a spider. He pulled at the web with his fingers.
‘Death,’ said Porfiry. And the web that clung to his face rushed into his mouth as soon as he opened it to speak. Once it had gained admittance to his mouth it began to expand. He knew that this did not bode well. The more it expanded, the harder it was for him to breathe. It was suffocating him.
Give up the fight, my dear! It’s time to give up the fight.
His father’s voice was suddenly overwhelmingly comforting. He knew that if he relaxed his being, as his father urged, everything would be all right.
He knew that his father would never lie to him.
He knew that he must do as his father said.
He felt the tension go from him. The first thing that happened was that he swallowed the clump of sticky webbing that had entered his mouth.
There was a sound like the wind chasing itself through a tunnel. The window shutters banged against the outside of the chalet.
Flakes of snow came in through the window, quickly building to a swirling blizzard that obliterated the interior. The blizzard became denser and darker. He had a sense of it as something infinite. The bedroom no longer existed, nor the chalet. There was only the ever-darkening snowstorm.
There was the sound of the unseen shutters slamming to. And then all was darkness.
Dyavol
It seemed he was not to be left alone from now on. The next day, Botkin sat with him in the morning. Unlike Kirill Kirillovich, he was confident enough of his own revolutionary commitment to engage Virginsky in conversation. ‘Where has she put the clock?’
‘She moved it into the bedroom. I think she was afraid I would carry out your threat to smash it.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I am glad she’s moved it. If it were still here, I would destroy it.’
‘A rather pointless act of vandalism.’
‘There is no such thing. Vandalism is always to the point.’
‘Alyosha Afanasevich, there is no reason now why we may not be completely frank with one another. My fate is already sealed. Either I am to be afforded the revolutionist’s equivalent of canonisation, or I am to be executed. Therefore, you may tell me. . anything. . and everything. It can make no difference now.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘When we met, on Easter Sunday night, at the warehouse blaze. .’ Virginsky watched the other man closely, looking for an answer to a question he hadn’t asked in the angle of Botkin’s defiance.
‘What of it?’
‘Did you set the fire?’
A crack opened in Botkin’s face. From it emerged that sound that Virginsky remembered from the night they met, an axe hacking into soft wood, his laughter. ‘What harm can it do now? Yes, I was the petroleur that night.’
‘And the fire that destroyed Kozodavlev’s apartment?’
Botkin shrugged. ‘I know nothing about that.’
‘Truly?’
‘Truly. Why would I lie to you?’
‘Because of the children. The children who died.’
‘Ah, my friend, I see you do not understand me. Neither do you understand the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged.’
‘What are you saying? That you don’t care about the children?’
Botkin sighed, as if he were suddenly bored of the conversation. ‘You realise that you have just betrayed yourself?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A true assassin would never ask such a ridiculous question.’
‘But children!’
‘Many more may have to die before the revolution is accomplished.’
Virginsky nodded. Botkin clearly would have had no compunction admitting the crime if he had committed it. ‘But can we be sure these children died in the furtherance of the revolution? That is far from clear.’
‘Kozodavlev had become unreliable. Such considerations as you just voiced were distracting him from the cause. He was on the verge of betraying us. The central committee was right to instigate his termination. In this instance, they did not call upon me to execute their orders. Had they done, I would have willingly answered the call.’
‘Whom did they call upon?’
‘That doesn’t matter. In truth, I don’t know. Naturally. That is the way the central committee works.’
‘Totsky?’
‘There are others. There are many. From time to time, the central committee employs all manner of individuals to do its bidding. Not all are especially motivated by political convictions. Some carry out such deeds for money. Others simply because it is in their natures to destroy — the central committee finds a way to direct their destructive tendencies. There have been common criminals, escaped convicts, used in this way. My guess is that this was the case with Kozodavlev.’
‘And Pseldonimov?’
‘Pseldonimov was different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Pseldonimov died. . so that the group might become stronger. It was not true that he was a threat to us. At least I do not believe so. Dyavol had become tired of him — that certainly was true. We needed him to get the printing press. But once that was acquired, we no longer needed him. Of course, there was a danger that he might betray us. There is always that danger, with every one of us. But it was rather the case that Dyavol saw that he would be more useful to the group dead than alive.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He would serve to bring the group together. To bind us to one another.’
‘In what way?’
‘Because we would all have a part in killing him. No one man — or woman — could be said to be responsible for his death. We were all equally culpable. One enticed him. One put him at his ease. One held him. One tied the ropes. One tightened the gag. One kept lookout. One shot him. All conspired to dispose of the body. And now we all have this hold over one another. And it is our mutual fear and suspicion that binds us together. Rather brilliant, don’t you think?’
Virginsky thought back to Pseldonimov’s body on Dr Pervoyedov’s trestle table. ‘He was a Jew. Did that make it easier?’
Botkin shrugged, as if the question was of no importance.
‘You said woman? There was a woman involved?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tatyana Ruslanovna?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who else?’
‘You can work it out, can’t you?’
‘You. Dolgoruky. Totsky. Kozodavlev?’
‘Correct. So far. But you are forgetting someone.’
‘Dyavol.’
‘Of course.’
‘Sometimes it seems to me that Dyavol is the central committee. That everything you do is decided by this individual. Are you sure this is wise? It certainly does not seem democratic, no more democratic than the Tsar.’
‘Men like Dyavol are necessary.’
‘Unlike Pseldonimov.’
‘Pseldonimov served his purpose.’
‘Who is Dyavol?’
‘Ah, that you shall not know. Unless Dyavol himself wishes you to.’
‘But you know his identity? You have met him?’
One side of Botkin’s mouth shot up and his eyelids fluttered closed in an expression of serene complacency. ‘I have been granted that privilege.’ He now fixed Virginsky with a look charged with contempt, which was possibly as close as Botkin was capable of approaching pity.
*
Virginsky lost all track of the days. It was not simply that the newspapers were kept from him. Ever since he had fled Porfiry’s chambers, he had felt himself severed from the ordinary flux of time that ruled his fellow men, giving direction to their lives and binding them one to another on the diurnal treadmill. He had entered another realm, where the moments were measured by the throbbing of his pulse, by the flickering processions of his snatched and anxious dreams and by the infinitely slow growth of his beard. There was a fisheye looking glass in the room. One day he looked up at it and saw a man he did not recognise staring back at him. He knew then that a considerable number of days must have passed.