The Master of Petersburg

'Hypothetically? Because if you do not kill you are not taken seriously. It is the only proof of seriousness that counts.'

'But why be taken seriously? Why not be young and carefree as long as you can? There is time enough afterwards to be serious. And spare a thought for those weaker fellows of yours who made the mistake of taking you seriously. Think of your Finnish friend and of what she is going through at this very moment as a consequence.'

'Stop harping on my so-called Finnish friend! She has been looked after, she isn't suffering any more! And don't tell me to wait to be old before I am taken seriously. I have seen what happens when you grow old. When I am old I won't be myself any longer.'

It is an insight he could have imagined coming from Pavel, never from Nechaev. What a waste! 'I wish,' he says, 'I could have heard you and Pavel together.' What he does not say is: Like two swords, two naked swords.

But how clever of Nechaev to have forewarned him against pity! For that is just what he is on the point of feeling: pity for a child alone in the sea, fighting and drowning. So is he wrong to detect something a little too studied in Nechaev's sombre look (for he has, surprisingly, fallen silent), in his ruminative gaze – more than studied, in fact: sly? But when was it last that words could be trusted to travel from heart to heart? An age of acting, this, an age of disguise. Pavel too much of a child, and too old-fashioned, to prosper in it. Pavel's hero and heroine conversing in the funny, stammering, old-fashioned language of the heart. 'I wish… I wish…' – 'You may… You may…' Yet Pavel at least tried to project himself into another breast. Impossible to imagine Sergei Nechaev as a writer. An egoist and worse. A poor lover too, for sure. Without feeling, without sympathy. Immature in his feelings, stalled, like a midget. A man of the future, of the next century, with a monstrous head and monstrous appetites but nothing else. Lonely, lone. His proper place a throne in a bare room. The throne of ideas. A pope of ideas, dull ideas. God save the faithful then, God save the ruled!

His thoughts are interrupted by a clatter on the stairs. Nechaev darts to the door, listens, then goes out. There is a furious whispering, the sound of a key in a lock, silence.

Still wearing her little white hat, the woman has sat down on the edge of the bed with the youngest child at her breast. Meeting his eye, she colours, then lifts her chin defiantly. 'Mr Ishutin says you may be able to help us,' she says.

'Mr Ishutin?'

'Mr Ishutin. Your friend.'

'Why should he have said that? He knows my situation.'

'We're being put out because of the rent. I've paid this month's rent, but I can't pay the back rent too, it's too much.'

The child stops sucking and begins to wriggle. She lets him go; he slithers off her lap and leaves the room. They hear him relieving himself under the stairs, moaning softly as he does so.

'He's been sick for weeks,' she complains. 'Show me your breasts.'

She slips a second button and exposes both breasts. The nipples stand out in the cold. Lifting them up between her fingers, she softly manipulates them. A bead of milk appears.

He has five roubles that he has borrowed from Anna Sergeyevna. He gives her two. She takes the coins without a word and wraps them in a handkerchief.

Nechaev comes back. 'So Sonya has been telling you of her troubles,' he says. 'I thought your landlady might do something for them. She's a generous woman, isn't she? That was what Isaev said.'

'It's out of the question. How can I bring -?'

The girl – can her name really be Sonya? – looks away in embarrassment. Her dress, which is of a cheap floral material quite inappropriate to winter, buttons all the way down the front. She has begun to shiver.

'We'll talk about that later,' says Nechaev. 'I want to show you the press.'

'I am not interested in your press.'

But Nechaev has him by the arm and is half-steering, half-dragging him to the door. Again he is surprised by his own passivity. It is as though he is in a moral trance. What would Pavel think, to see him being used thus by his murderer? Or is it in fact Pavel who is leading him?

He recognizes the press at once, the same old-fashioned Albion-of-Birmingham model that his brother kept for running off handbills and advertisements. No question of thousands of copies – two hundred an hour at most.

'The source of every writer's power,' says Nechaev, giving the machine a slap. 'Your statement will be distributed to the cells tonight and on the streets tomorrow. Or, if you prefer, we can hold it up till you are across the border. If ever you are taxed with it, you can say it was a forgery. It won't matter by then – it will have had its effect.'

There is another man in the room, older than Nechaev – a spare, dark-haired man with a sallow complexion and rather lustreless dark eyes, stooped over the composing table with his chin on his hands. He pays no attention to them, nor does Nechaev introduce him.

'My statement?' he says.

'Yes, your statement. Whatever statement you choose to make. You can write it here and now, it will save time.'

'And what if I choose to tell the truth?'

'Whatever you write we will distribute, I promise.'

'The truth may be more than a hand-press can cope with.'

'Leave him alone.' The voice comes from the other man, still poring over the text in front of him. 'He's a writer, he doesn't work like that.'

'How does he work then?'

'Writers have their own rules. They can't work with people looking over their shoulders.'

'Then they should learn new rules. Privacy is a luxury we can do without. People don't need privacy.'

Now that he has an audience, Nechaev has gone back to his old manner. As for him, he is sick and tired of these callow provocations. 'I must go,' he says again.

'If you don't write, we'll have to write for you.'

'What do you say? Write for me?'

'Yes.'

'And sign my name?'

'Sign your name too – we'll have no alternative.'

'No one will accept that. No one will believe you.'

'Students will believe – you have quite a following among the students, as I told you. Particularly if they don't have to read a fat book to get the message. Students will believe anything.'

'Come on, Sergei Gennadevich!' says the other man. His tone is not amused at all. There are rings under his eyes; he has lit a cigarette and is smoking nervously. 'What have you got against books? What have you got against students?'

'What can't be said in one page isn't worth saying. Besides, why should some people sit around in luxury reading books when other people can't read at all? Do you think Sonya next door has time to read books? And students chatter too much. They sit around arguing and dissipating their energy. A university is a place where they teach you to argue so that you'll never actually do anything. It's like the Jews cutting off Samson's hair. Arguing is just a trap. They think that by talking they will make the world better. They don't understand that things have to get worse before they can get better.'

His comrade yawns; his indifference seems to goad Nechaev. 'It's true! That is why they have to be provoked! If you leave them to themselves they will always slide back into chattering and debating, and everything will run down. Your stepson was like that, Fyodor Mikhail-ovich: always talking. People who are suffering don't need to talk, they need to act. Our task is to make them act. If we can provoke them to act, the battle is half won. They may be smashed, there may be new repression, but that will just create more suffering and more outrage and more desire for action. That's how things work. Besides, if some are suffering, what justice is there till all are suffering? And things will accelerate too. You will be surprised at how fast history can move once we get it moving. The cycles will grow shorter and shorter. If we act today, the future will be upon us before we know it.'