I set off immediately. Domnikiia may not have been in any state to appreciate her hellish existence, but out of any love that remained in me for her, it was my duty to end that existence without a moment of undue delay. I scooped up a handful of snow to rub into my face, then noticed that it was stained red. All around me the snow was bloodstained. It was my own blood. The wound to my arm had reopened at some point during the night and had marked the snow beside me. I moved away to find some cleaner snow and bathed my face in it. I was cold enough already, but the icy contact refreshed and awakened me. I took a mouthful of the snow and let it melt on my tongue. Then I set out to do what I had to do.
I was scarcely out of the churchyard when my conviction failed me once again. I set off not towards Degtyarny Lane, nor away from it, but instead I followed a path that seemed simply to circle it, as if I were trying to trick myself into arriving there. My orbit was neither circular nor, like a comet, elliptical, but spiral like a meteor. Each turn I made took me closer to Domnikiia, but I never headed directly towards her. Just as when I had first arrived back in Moscow, after Smolensk, I was tricking myself into falling upon the brothel as if unintentionally. Then it was so that the thief of my desire could slip past the sentry of what I knew was right and wrong. Now my morality had to follow a path that was unnoticed by my sentiment.
Before too long, I was standing beneath her window once again. The ground-floor window below hers opened directly into the salon. It was easy enough to slip the catch and climb into a room in which but a few hours later I would have been welcomed through the front door as an honoured guest. The open window lay in front of me and beyond it the stairs that led to Domnikiia's room and hence to Domnikiia herself and so to Domnikiia's death, and now was my chance to leave.
I went in.
The silence and darkness inside were unfamiliar and unsuitable. This room above all in the brothel was where the sales pitch was made. Always before, it had been a happy, bright and noisy place. I had rarely wanted to linger here in the past, having in my mind a specific and singular objective in the room upstairs, and so the shopfront of the salon had scarcely been a distraction for me, never holding any allure. This time I almost burst into tears at the memory of it. I recalled the anticipation I had always felt on entering; the timid flick of my eyes from one girl to another until they fell upon Domnikiia; sometimes not seeing her there and having to wait until she floated down the stairs to greet me. Even in its darkness the room held those associations. I could hear the light chatter of the girls and the quiet, unnecessarily seductive murmurings of their suitors that had once filled the room. This would be the last time I entered. In its darkened, silent state I would, I feared, remember it always as the anteroom to a very different occasion. In holding back, I was attempting not only to relive happier times, but also to delay my journey upstairs to do what I had to do.
Though it was light outside, the heavy curtains over all the windows kept the inside in a state of muffled dimness. On a table was a candle, which I lit. The looming shadows cast by the flickering flame did little to rekindle in the room the vitality with which I had always associated it. I began to ascend the stairs. The third and the fifth step both squeaked loudly as my foot fell upon them. It was after half past eight, but I knew that no one in the building would yet be preparing to rise. Business hours extended long into the night and so almost the entire morning was spent in sleepy recuperation. The sound of my approach awoke no one.
I crossed the landing and put my hand on the knob of Domnikiia's door. I listened before turning it. Inside I could hear nothing. What I had expected, I did not know. Somewhere in me there had been the urge to knock. This slight pause of apparent politeness served as some form of substitute for that. I turned the knob and entered.
Inside, all was familiar. Across from the door, Domnikiia's dressing table was filled with her cosmetic paraphernalia. To one side was her window; the bright light of day barely glowed through the shutters and thick curtains. Opposite was her bed. I could hear her light breath and saw the blankets rise and fall in time with it. It was a cold night and she was heavily wrapped in bedclothes. Only her beautiful face peeped out. Her long, dark hair, plaited into a ponytail, adorned the pillow beside her.
It would have been easy to just fling open the curtains and shutters, and let the day outside cascade through the window and on to her bed, destroying her bodily remains as I had seen it destroy both Iakov Zevedayinich and Pyetr, but I remembered the look of terror in Pyetr's eyes as the sun had first caught him and the fearful scream that Iakov Zevedayinich had expelled as he had swung out into the light. This, it seemed to me, was the death that they found most terrible and most painful. It was not what I wanted to inflict upon Domnikiia. With those two, and with all the Oprichniki, I had wanted them to be aware of their own deaths – wanted them to understand that I was the cause of their demise. That was why I had gone to the barn before dawn, to be sure that they would still be awake. With Domnikiia, it was just the opposite. There was no need for her to be aware of the brevity of her life as a vampire, or that it was I who had terminated it. Her real life had been ended by Iuda the previous evening. I was simply tidying up the mess he had left.
I placed the candle on the table next to the bed and sat gently beside her. The candlelight illuminated an apple nearby on the table, with two, perhaps three bites taken from it. The flesh had already begun to brown in the time since Domnikiia had eaten. It was surely the last meal she had eaten – the last palatable flesh that she would ever eat. I tried to look at her, but could not. I turned away from her and cradled my head in my hands, silently sobbing. Once again, I attempted to summon up my hatred. It was not a hatred for her, even though it was she who had willingly become this monster. It was a hatred for vampires and specifically a hatred for Iuda. The creature which now lay on the bed behind me was not Domnikiia; it was a creation of Iuda's – a body that he had consumed and then corrupted by making it a continuation of himself. It was as if Moscow had been under the French occupation. The streets and the buildings were beautiful and familiar, but they were nothing without the people who had built them and who lived in them. If destroying the French meant destroying the physical city of Moscow along with them, then amen to it. If destroying the monstrous spirit that lay on the bed beside me meant destroying the beautiful, familiar body that it had stolen, then amen to that too. The body was only a memento of the soul that had once occupied it. Governor Rostopchin (if in fact it had been Rostopchin) had proved himself a true patriot in instigating those fires which, though they destroyed so much of the city, made it uninhabitable for the marauding French. He had understood that the essence of the city was not in its structure but in its people. No true Russian would disagree with him.
But now I had to display the single-minded righteousness of Rostopchin. I had to destroy the physical for the sake of a greater good. The greater good was not Domnikiia's soul – that was lost for ever. It was her memory. If I could limit her existence in this altered state to a mere few hours, then at least the creature she had become could do nothing to debase the years of goodness of her life.
I pulled back the bedclothes to reveal her body, clothed in a simple nightgown. The silver crucifix which, despite all superstition, would have done nothing to protect her still hung around her neck. She murmured softly and raised her hand to her face to brush aside a straying hair, but she did not awake. Her hand fell back across her chest and lay as if cradling her heart. I gently nudged it and it fell lazily to the side of her body, leaving no obstacle that would distract my aim. I took out my wooden dagger and held it in both hands. I remembered our conversation when I had first been making it – in fact, making its predecessor. I remembered the look of fear in her eyes when I had waved it at her and shouted at her. Had she decided even then that she would choose this path and become a vampire? Or was that a decision that had come to her more recently?