The Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee
She inclines her head as if to say: Thank you for the thought; I will not hold you to your promise.
So early: what does he mean?
He has known for some time that when the words that come next come, he will not try to stop them. ‘I have a hunger to talk about my son,’ he says, ‘but even more of a hunger to hear others talk about him.’
‘He was a fine young man,’ she offers. ‘I am sorry we knew him for a short time only.’ And then, as if realizing this is not enough: ‘He used to read to Matryona at bedtime. She looked forward to it all day. There was a real fondness between them.’
‘What did they read?’
‘I call to mind The Golden Cockerel and Krylov. He taught her some French poems too. She can still recite one or two.’
‘It’s good that you have books in the house.’ He gestures toward a shelf on which there must be twenty or thirty volumes. ‘Good for a growing child, I mean.’
‘My husband was a printer. He worked in a printer’s shop. He read a lot, it was his recreation. These are only a few of his books. Sometimes the apartment would be overflowing, while he was alive. There was no space for all of them.’ She hesitates. ‘We have a book of yours. Poor Folk. It was one of my husband’s favourites.’
There is a silence. The lamp begins to flicker. She turns it down and lays aside her sewing. The farther corners of the room sink into shadow.
‘I had to ask Pavel Alexandrovich not to invite friends to his room in the evenings,’ she says. ‘I regret that now. It was after they kept us awake, talking and drinking late into the night. He had some quite rough friends.’
‘Yes, he was democratic in his friendships. He could speak to ordinary people about things close to their hearts. Ordinary people have a hunger for ideas. He never spoke down to them.’
‘He didn’t speak down to Matryosha either.’
The light grows dimmer, the wick begins to smoke. A salve of words, he thinks, rubbed over the sore places. But do I want to be healed?
‘He was a serious person, despite his youth,’ he presses on. ‘He thought about Russia, about the conditions of our existence here. He was concerned about things that matter to ordinary folk.’
There is a long pause. Tribute, he thinks: I am paying tribute, however lamely, however belatedly, and trying to extort tribute from her too. And why not!
‘I have been wondering about something you said the other day,’ she says ruminatively. ‘Why did you tell me that story about Pavel oversleeping?’
‘Why? Because, unimportant as it may seem now, it marred his life. Because of his late sleeping I had to remove him from school, from one school after another. That was why he did not matriculate. So in the end he found himself here in Petersburg on the fringes of student society, where he had no real business, where he did not properly belong. It was not just sluggishness. Nothing would wake him – shouting, shaking, threats, pleas. It was like trying to wake a bear, a hibernating bear!’
‘I understand that. Some children never settle down at school. But I meant something else. Forgive me for saying so, but what struck me when you told the story was how angry with him you still seemed to be.’
‘Of course I was angry! His mother died, you must remember, when he was fifteen. It was not easy to bring him up alone. I had better things to do than to coax a boy of that age out of bed. If Pavel had finished his schooling like everyone else, none of this would have happened.’
‘This?’
He waves an arm impatiently, as if to dismiss the apartment, the city of Petersburg, even the great dark canopy of the night above them.
She gives him a quiet, steady look; and under that look it begins to come home to him what he has said. A trembling overtakes him, starting in his right hand. He gets up and paces across the room, clasping his hands behind him. Something is on its way, something whose name he is trying to avoid. He tries to speak, but his voice emerges strangled. I am behaving like a character in a book, he thinks. But even jeering at himself does not help. His shoulders heave. Soundlessly he begins to cry.
In a book, the woman would respond to his grief with a surge of pity. This woman does not. She sits at the table in the flickering light, her head averted, her sewing in her lap. It is late, there is no one to see them, the child is sleeping.
Damn the heart, he tells himself! Damn this emotionalism! The touchstone is not the heart and how the heart feels, but death and how the dead boy feels!
At this moment the clearest of visions comes to him, a vision of Pavel smiling at him, at his peevishness, his tears, his histrionics, at what lies behind the histrionics too. The smile is not of derision but on the contrary of friendliness and forgiveness. He knows! he thinks: He knows and does not mind! A wave of gratitude and joy and love passes over him. Now there is sure to be a fit! he thinks too, but does not care. No longer holding back the tears, he feels his way back to the table, buries his head in his arms, and lets loose howl after howl of grief.
No one strokes his hair, no one murmurs a consoling word in his ear. But when at last, fumbling for his handkerchief, he raises his head, the girl Matryona is standing before him observing him intently. She wears a white nightdress; her hair, brushed out, lies over her shoulders. He cannot fail to notice the budding breasts. He tries to give her a smile, but her expression does not change. She knows too, he thinks. She knows what is false, what is true; or else by staring deep enough means to know.
He collects himself. Through the last of the tears his gaze locks on to hers. In that instant something passes between them from which he flinches as though pierced by a red-hot wire. Then her mother’s arm enfolds her; a whispered word passes; she withdraws to her bed.
5
Maximov
‘Good morning. I have come to claim’ (he is surprised at how steady his voice is) ‘some belongings of my son’s. My son was involved in an accident last month, and the police took charge of certain items.’
He unfolds the receipt and passes it across the counter. Depending on whether Pavel gave up the ghost before or after midnight, it is dated the day after or the day of Pavel’s death; it names simply ‘letters and other papers.’
The sergeant inspects the receipt dubiously. ‘October 12th. That’s less than a month ago. The case won’t be settled yet.’
‘How long will it take to settle?’
‘Could be two months, could be three months, could be a year. It depends on the circumstances.’
‘There are no circumstances. There is no crime involved.’
Holding the paper at arm’s length, the sergeant leaves the room. When he returns, his air is markedly more surly. ‘You are, sir, –?’
‘Isaev. The father.’
‘Yes, Mr Isaev. If you will take a seat, you will be attended to in a short while.’
His heart sinks. He had hoped simply to be handed Pavel’s belongings and walk out of this place. What he can least afford is that the police should turn their attention on him.
‘I can wait only a short while,’ he says briskly.
‘Yes, sir, I’m sure the investigator in charge will see you soon. Just take a seat and make yourself comfortable.’
He consults his watch, sits down on the bench, looks around with pretended impatience. It is early; there is only one other person in the ante-room, a young man in stained housepainter’s overalls. Sitting bolt upright, he seems to be asleep. His eyes are closed, his jaw hangs, a soft rattle comes from the back of his throat.
Isaev. Inside him the confusion has not settled. Should he not drop the Isaev story at once, before getting mired in it? But how can he explain? ‘Sergeant, there has been a slight mistake. Things are not entirely as they appear to be. In a sense I am not Isaev. The Isaev whose name I have for reasons of my own been using, reasons I won’t go into here and now, but perfectly good reasons, has been dead for some years. Nevertheless, I brought up Pavel Isaev as my son and love him as my own flesh and blood. In that sense we bear the same name, or ought
As he sits vacillating between confessing and pressing on with the imposture, as he takes out his watch and glances at it crossly, trying to seem like an impatient homme d’affaires in this stuffy room with a stove burning in a corner, he has a premonition of an attack, and in the same movement recognizes that an attack would be a device, and the most childish of devices at that, for extricating himself from a fix, while somewhere to the side falls the nagging shadow of a memory: surely he has been here before, in this very ante-room or one like it, and had an attack or a fainting fit! But why is it that he recollects the episode only so dimly? And what has the recollection to do with the smell of fresh paint?
‘This is too much!’
His cry echoes around the room. The dozing housepainter gives a start; the desk-sergeant looks up in surprise. He tries to cover his confusion. ‘I mean,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘I can’t wait any longer, I have an appointment. As I said.’
He has already stood up and put on his coat when the sergeant calls him back. ‘Councillor Maximov will see you now, sir.’
In the office into which he is conducted there is no high bench. Save for a huge sofa in imitation leather, it is furnished in nondescript government issue. Councillor Maximov, the judicial investigator in Pavel’s case, is a bald man with the tubby figure of a peasant woman, who fusses till he is comfortably seated, then opens the bulky folder before him on the desk and reads at length, murmuring to himself, shaking his head from time to time. ‘Sad business . . . Sad business . . .’
At last he looks up. ‘My sincerest condolences, Mr Isaev.’
Isaev. Time to make up his mind!
‘Thank you. I have come to ask for my son’s papers to be returned. I am aware that the case has not been closed, but I do not see how private papers can be of any interest to your office or of any relevance to – to your proceedings.’
‘Yes, of course, of course! As you say, private papers. But tell me: when you talk of papers, what exactly do you mean? What do the papers consist in?’
The man’s eyes have a watery gleam; his lashes are pale, like a cat’s.
‘How can I say? They were removed from my son’s room, I haven’t seen them yet. Letters, papers . . .’
‘You have not seen them but you believe they can be of no interest to us. I can understand that. I can understand that a father should believe his son’s papers are a personal matter, or at least a family matter. Yes, indeed. Nevertheless, there is an investigation in progress – a mere formality, perhaps, but called for by the law, therefore not to be dismissed with a snap of the fingers or a flourish of the hand, and the papers are part of that investigation. So . . .’
He puts his fingertips together, lowers his head, appears to sink into deep thought. When he looks up again he is no longer smiling, but wears an expression of the utmost determination. ‘I believe,’ he says, ‘yes, I do believe I have a solution that will satisfy both parties. Since the case is not closed – indeed, it has barely been opened – I cannot return the papers themselves to you. But I am going to let you see them. Because I agree, it is unfair, most unfair, to whisk them off at such a tragic time and keep them from the family.’
With a sudden, startling gesture, like a card-player playing an all-conquering card, he sweeps a single leaf out of the folder and places it before him.
It is a list of names, Russian names written in Roman script, all beginning with the letter A.
‘There is some mistake. This is not my son’s handwriting.’
‘Not your son’s handwriting? Hmm.’ Maximov takes back the page and studies it. ‘Then have you any idea whose handwriting this might be, Mr Isaev?’
‘I don’t recognize the handwriting, but it is not my son’s.’
From the bottom of the file Maximov selects another page and advances it across the desk. ‘And this?’
He does not need to read it. How stupid! he thinks. A flush of dizziness overtakes him. His voice seems to come from far away. ‘It is a letter from myself. I am not Isaev. I simply took the name –’
Maximov is waving a hand as if to chase away a fly, waving his words away, waving for silence; but he masters the dizziness and completes his declaration.
‘I took the name so as not to complicate matters – for no other reason. Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev is my stepson, my late wife’s only child. But to me he is my own son. He has no one but me in the world.’
Maximov takes the letter from his slack grasp and peruses it again. It is the last letter he wrote from Dresden, a letter in which he chides Pavel for spending too much money. Mortifying to sit here while a stranger reads it! Mortifying ever to have written it! But how is one to know, how is one to know, which day will be the last?
‘“Your loving father, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,”’ murmurs the magistrate, and looks up. ‘So let me be clear, you are not Isaev at all, you are Dostoevsky.’
‘Yes. It has been a deception, a mistake, stupid but harmless, which I regret.’
‘I understand. Nevertheless, you have come here purporting – but need we use that ugly word? Let us use it gingerly, so to speak, for the time being, for lack of a better – purporting to be the deceased Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev’s father and applying to have his property released to you, while in fact you are not that person at all. It does not look well, does it?’
‘It was a mistake, as I say, which I now bitterly regret. But the deceased is my son, and I am his guardian in law, properly appointed.’
‘Hm. I see here he was twenty-one, getting on for twenty-two, at the time of decease. So, strictly speaking, the writ of guardianship had expired. A man of twenty-one is his own master, is he not? A free person, in law.’
It is this mockery that finally rouses him. He stands up. ‘I did not come here to discuss my son with strangers,’ he says, his voice rising. ‘If you insist on keeping his papers, say so directly, and I will take other steps.’
‘Insist on keeping the papers? Of course not! My dear sir, please be seated! Of course not! On the contrary, I would very much like you to examine the papers, for your own sake and for ours too. The guidance you could give us would be appreciated, deeply appreciated. To begin with, let us take this item.’ He lays before him a set of half a dozen leaves written on both sides, the complete list of names of which he has already seen the first page, the As. ‘Not your son’s handwriting, is it?’
‘No.’
‘No, we know that. Any idea whose handwriting it is?’
‘I do not recognize it.’
‘It belongs to a young woman at present resident abroad. Her name is not relevant, though if I mentioned it I think you would be surprised. She is a friend and associate of a man named Nechaev, Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev. Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘I do not know Nechaev personally, and I doubt very much that my son knew him. Nechaev is a conspirator and an insurrectionist whose designs I repudiate with the utmost force.’
‘You do not know him personally, as you say. But you have had contact with him.’
‘No, I have not had contact with him. I attended a public meeting in Switzerland, in Geneva, at which numerous people spoke, Nechaev among them. He and I have been together in the same room – that is the sum of my acquaintance with him.’
‘And when was that?’
‘It was in the autumn of 1867. The meeting was organized by the League for Peace and Freedom, as the body calls itself. I attended openly, as a patriotic Russian, to hear what might be said about Russia from all sides. The fact that I heard this young man Nechaev speak does not mean that I stand behind him. On the contrary, I repeat, I reject everything he stands for, and have said so many times, in public
‘Including the welfare of the people? Doesn’t Nechaev stand for the welfare of the people? Isn’t that what he is striving for?’
‘I fail to understand the force of these questions. Nechaev stands first and foremost for the violent overthrow of all the institutions of society, in the name of a principle of equality – equal happiness for all or, if not that, then equal misery for all. It is not a principle that he attempts to justify. In fact he seems to despise justification in general as a waste of time, as useless intellection. Please don’t try to associate me with Nechaev.’
‘Very well, I accept the reproof. Though I am surprised, I might add – I would not have thought of you as a martinet for principles. But to business. The list of names you see in front of you – do you recognize any of them?’
‘I recognize some of them. A handful.’
‘It is a list of people who are to be assassinated, as soon as the signal is given, in the name of the People’s Vengeance, which as you know is the clandestine organization that Nechaev has brought into being. The assassinations are meant to precipitate a general uprising and to lead to the overthrow of the state. If you turn to the end, you will come to an appendix which names entire classes of people who are thereupon, in the wake of the overthrow, to suffer summary execution. They include the entire higher judiciary and all officers of the police and officials of the Third Section of the rank of captain and higher. The list was found among your son’s papers.’
Having delivered this information, Maximov tilts his chair back and smiles amicably.
‘And does that mean that my son is an assassin?’
‘Of course not! How could he be when no one has been assassinated? What you have there is, so to speak, a draft, a speculative draft. In fact, my opinion – my opinion as a private individual – is that it is a list such as a young man with a grudge against society might concoct in the space of an afternoon, perhaps as a way of showing off to the very young woman to whom he is dictating – showing off his power of life and death, his completely illusory power. Nevertheless, assassination, the plotting of assassination, threats against officialdom – these are serious matters, don’t you agree?’