23 NOVEMBER 1879 124/5 NEVSKY PROSPEKT
They spoke of it often, and always with deep sadness and a sense of injustice. To have prepared so thoroughly and to have come so close — it was a blow to the morale of all. One evening after their return to St Petersburg, Anna was preparing supper in a safe house on Nevsky. Conscious of a particularly long silence, she looked up to find Sophia Perovskaya standing at the sink, her hands in icy water, eyes fixed blankly on the wall.
‘Sonechka,’ Anna said, rising from the table, a knife still in her hand.
‘It wasn’t my fault, was it?’
‘How could it be your fault?’ Anna stepped over to the sink and put her arms about Sophia’s waist, pressing herself against her small body. ‘We only managed to get as far as we did because of you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning in Anna’s arms to face her. ‘I’m fine, really. I know I must be strong.’
Anna reached for her hands, still rough and chapped from the work at the cottage, and very cold. ‘You are the strongest among us.’
It was a little shocking. No one had seen Sophia falter. But weeks of nervous exhaustion, hard labour, the scheming, the lying and the fear of the gendarmes at the door had taken their toll on all of them. They sat side by side at the table and finished preparing supper — for the most part in silence — until they were joined by other comrades, Kviatokovsky, Morozov and Olga Liubatovich. No one spoke again of past failure that evening or of the plans for the future, but when they had eaten they laughed and joked and drank and sang together until late in the evening. Sophia Perovskaya’s apartment was a cab journey away and she left at ten o’clock with Kviatkovsky, who lived close by. Anna was to spend the night in the little flat on Nevsky with the other two and return to her schoolhouse at Alexandrovskaya in the morning. She was anxious about her safety and would have preferred the life of an ‘illegal’ with her comrades in the city, but the executive committee had decided she should resume her teaching post in the village. ‘The party needs people who can move freely, without fear of arrest,’ Alexander Mikhailov had told her. The Director had assured him the Third Section was a long way from identifying her and she was ‘clean’. Of course, there would be questions after so many months away, but Mikhailov had made her write regular bulletins on her mother’s health to the local priest and had arranged for them to be sent from Kharkov.
It was the first night Anna had spent in the Nevsky flat and she was a little shocked to discover she was to sleep on a pallet in the kitchen while her comrades shared the only bed. Morozov and Liubatovich were dedicated revolutionaries with long police histories, but they had chosen to ignore the party’s strictures against intimate relationships and had become lovers. She wondered at their audacity. It was Nikolai Morozov who had written the manifesto with its emphasis on personal sacrifice. Would he leave Olga if the executive committee required it of him? The opportunity to express deeper feelings, sexual love; she could not help but feel envious. She was alone on a hard mattress, the mice scratching at the skirting boards close to her head. It was more than two years since she had last seen her husband, Stepan — the marriage was over and she was glad of it. But after weeks of frantic activity preparing for the attack, the fear and the loneliness, the role of revolutionary ascetic seemed harder to play than it had before. Life might end tomorrow before she heard a man say, ‘I love you,’ and mean it. Shaken along endless miles of track, in daydreams and through restless nights, one man had whispered love to her and she had imagined what it would be to share a bed with him and feel his body pressed to hers. But this man was beyond her reach. Clever and different in many ways that frightened her, how could they love when he was not of the same mind? ‘No. Not one of us,’ she thought, ‘not one of us.’ Olga and Nikolai were fortunate to have found each other. But the comfort of others was no comfort to her and the longing for affection and closeness was still with her when she woke cold and stiff in the morning.
Anna had resolved to leave for the village straight after breakfast and had packed her few possessions before the others began to stir. Olga was the first to rise, a man’s padded smoking jacket over her nightgown. She was a peculiarly masculine-looking woman with a full mouth, weak chin and heavy eyebrows that met above a Roman nose. Not at all handsome but formidably clever, and her comrades admired her independence of thought and strength of purpose. She was only twenty-five but after years of prison and internal exile, she had the air of someone older and more worldly wise.
Nodding to Anna, she reached for the cigarette case she had left on the kitchen table the night before and lit one with obvious pleasure. Only when she had drawn deeply upon it two or three times was she ready for conversation. Olga’s appetite was already legendary, and once the small range was lit she set about frying eggs, the cigarette hanging loosely from her mouth. She was on the point of serving them when they were surprised by a quiet but urgent rapping at the door.
‘Don’t open it!’ It was Morozov from the bedroom next door. Seconds later he joined them, blinking myopically, his long hair tousled, spindly legs beneath his greatcoat.
‘The revolver!’ he hissed at Olga.
But before she could open the table drawer the knocking began again and this time they heard Sophia Perovskaya’s high pitched voice. ‘It’s me. I need to speak to you.’
Anna opened the door at once and Sophia almost fell into the room. ‘It’s Kviatkovsky! The police are going to raid his apartment.’ She had run up the stairs and was still gasping for breath, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘How do you know?’ asked Morozov.
‘A note from Mikhailov… we must warn him! There are papers.. but it may be too late. I can’t go — Alexander can’t go…’
‘Here.’ Anna pulled her towards a chair. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘No,’ said Morozov. ‘It’s too dangerous. I will ask Maria Oshanina to go. She’s clean. The gendarmes have nothing on her.’
‘I’m clean,’ said Anna crossly. ‘There’s no time to waste.’
‘Too much of a risk. You’re a friend of Goldenberg’s. And you know too much.’
‘Anna’s right. Someone must go now.’ Olga was already moving towards the bedroom.
‘But not you or Sophia. It’s too dangerous,’ said Morozov with alarm.
‘No. It has to be Anna,’ she shouted through the half open door. ‘But I’m going to wait in the lane in case…’ She did not need to finish the sentence. They knew what she meant.
A little after eight o’clock in the morning, Nevsky was bustling with traffic — workers on the way to the Admiralty yards and the factories on Vasilievsky, civil servants to the great ministries — and it was a while before they were able to hail a droshky. There was a biting wind from the north-east carrying with it a flurry of snow, and Olga put her arm about Anna to share the warmth of her body, pressing her close.
‘If the police stop you tell them you are delivering a message from me to the dressmaker at Number 8,’ she whispered. ‘Nikolai and I have cover papers in the name of Khartsov.’
The driver dropped them at last at the corner of Zagorodny and Leshtukov Lane. It was a respectable part of town, popular with junior army officers and their families and doctors at the nearby hospital. Kviatkovsky was another of the gentleman revolutionaries and one of the most influential. The apartment he shared with Evgenia Figner was in a handsome yellow and white four-storey mansion in the middle of the lane. Anna knew the block well.
They hurried along Leshtukov in silence, arm in arm, their faces almost covered by their scarves. Mittened and muffled children were throwing snowballs at each other as they made their way to school. A dvornik was scraping snow from his yard into the street and an old lady, a black bundle in coat and shawl and hat, was inching unsteadily along the frozen pavement towards them with a shopping basket. There was no sign of gendarmes or the city police. A short distance from the mansion, Olga pulled Anna into an open yard: ‘I’ll wait here.’ She leant forward and kissed her on the lips. ‘Be careful, comrade.’
Kviatkovsky’s grand apartment was on the third floor, with a fine gallery window over the street. Nothing appeared out of place. Anna turned under the carriage arch into the yard and walked with purpose towards the back entrance and the servant’s staircase. Gazing up at the back of the block, she could see no sign of a parasol, the signal that was to be posted in a window when it was safe to visit. One foot lightly in front of the other, she began climbing the stairs, pausing after a few seconds to listen for voices or boots or the clatter of a rifle butt. At the door to the third-floor landing, she stopped and listened, but could hear only the faint trundle of a passing carriage in the street and the ferocious beating of her heart. It was no time for timidity; a deep breath, her small gloved hand firmly on the door knob, and she turned it quickly and stepped on to the landing. There was no one there. Kviatkovsky’s door was closed and there was nothing out of the ordinary — muddy footprints on the tiled floor, scratches on the varnished door, a splintered frame — nothing to suggest there had been a struggle. Perhaps there was still time. With another deep breath she stepped forward and rang the bell. At once, the door jerked open to reveal a portly middle-aged man in the black uniform coat of the city police.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, almost falling against the stair rail. ‘Goodness, you made me jump. I was told the dressmaker lives here.’
‘No, miss, the dressmaker lives in the apartment opposite.’
‘Oh, how silly of me.’
‘Sergeant Kirill Korovin, at your service.’
‘I need the dressmaker,’ said Anna, turning away.
‘I am afraid my orders are to take anyone who calls at the apartment to the station and I always obey my orders. Why don’t you come in?’ He stood aside to let her into the apartment.
Every muscle in Anna’s body was taut, her heart pounding, but she sought and held eye contact with the policeman, smiling sweetly.
‘It’s a mess in here,’ he said, as she slipped past into the hall. The drawing-room door was ajar. It looked as if a bomb had gone off inside. The upholstery had been ripped out of the soft sofa and armchairs, the contents of the sideboard drawers were strewn all over the floor along with copies of a statement on the attack printed on the party’s new press. They were to have been secretly posted around the city that night. Worse still, she could see copper drums, a roll of wire and a secure box that was identical to the one they had used to store dynamite at the cottage in Preobrazhenskoe.
‘Hey you, back in the kitchen!’ the sergeant bellowed behind her, and turning, Anna saw the little face of the maid peeking round the door. The poor girl was petrified and bobbed back inside at once.
‘In here, miss,’ said the sergeant, pointing to Evgenia’s room. Anna cleared more copies of the party’s statement from the bed then perched at its edge, her hands held demurely in her lap.
‘Sergeant — I really can’t stay. I must go,’ she said in a plaintive voice.
Korovin ignored her, turning his head to shout to one of his men: ‘Haven’t you finished in there?’
‘My mistress is expecting me,’ she whined. ‘Please let me go. I promised I would only be an hour.’
But the policeman just looked at her coldly.
‘Please. I don’t want to be in trouble.’ Taking out her handkerchief she began to snivel noisily into it.
‘What a performance. Bravo,’ said Korovin, clapping. ‘You’re wasting your breath, miss.’
Although Anna tried her best with desperate looks and tears, he was not to be moved. As soon as the constables had finished searching Kviatkovsky’s bedroom, she was escorted from the apartment, the crunch of police boots at her back, echoing up and down the stairwell. She was afraid but calm and clear-sighted, absorbed in rehearsing the story she would spin at the station. Time. She needed to buy as much of it as she was able. Olga was waiting a short distance away, but would she notice?
The sergeant stepped forward at the bottom of the stairs to hold the front door open. ‘After you, miss.’
The self-satisfied sneering in his voice made Anna furious. As he led her on to the pavement, she pretended to stumble and cried out in pain. Lifting her dress a little, she reached down to her ankle. ‘I’ve twisted it.’
‘Oh?’ said Korovin, quite unconcerned. ‘It’s fortunate your carriage awaits you.’ And he waved to the police driver parked a little way along the lane.
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’ Anna burst into noisy tears.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. But by now she had worked herself into a pitiful frenzy, her body heaving with sobs, and it was all the embarrassed sergeant could do to prevent her collapsing to the snowy pavement.
Her little pantomime was beginning to attract the attention of the street.
‘What are you doing to her?’ a young man in an expensive coat called from the pavement opposite.
‘Shame!’ shouted a woman from a window above.
‘Come on with that carriage,’ bellowed Korovin. A moment later it drew up in front of the mansion. ‘All right, all right, let me help you,’ he said impatiently.
Anna limped forward, pausing at the step to glance furtively down the lane. Yes, Olga was watching. There was no mistaking that blue scarf and enormous old fur coat.
The district police station was on the second floor of a run-down building on Zagarodny. It was oppressively hot, the waiting room crowded, and Korovin was obliged to shout and shoulder his way through to the administration office. He left Anna on a chair in front of the chief clerk’s desk and went in search of the station superintendent. A few minutes later, he was back and the scowl on his heavy face suggested he was very out of sorts: ‘Name and address?’
‘I’m going to be in so much trouble. Please let me go.’ She buried her head in her hands.
‘You’re in trouble now,’ the policeman barked. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Anna Petrovna Kovalenko,’ she muttered between her hands.
‘And where are your papers?’
But Anna refused to say more. Threats, imprecations, promises, even a reassuring arm, nothing he tried would elicit another word from her. And the more he tried the more hysterical she seemed to become until he began to wonder at her sanity.
‘You can cool down for an hour.’ He grabbed her arm and dragged her roughly to her feet. ‘Here, you, Rostislov,’ he said, addressing a constable bent in conversation with the chief clerk. ‘Take this one to Room 6.’ And turning to Anna again, he said, ‘An hour. If you don’t give me your address and answer for yourself after that I can promise you now, you’ll be spending the night in the Peter and Paul Fortress.’
It was a box room with a tiny barred window, furnished with only a wooden bench and a bucket. Anna pressed herself into a corner, her knees up to her chest, exhausted by the nervous tension of the last two hours. She knew she should rehearse her story, but she had neither the will nor the energy. Mikhailov had assured her she was clean but it was only a matter of time before they found a witness — perhaps the servant girl — who could tie her to Goldenberg or Soloviev or one of the others. She closed her eyes and groaned quietly into the crook of her arm: that it had come to this already. Her head was still buried there a few minutes later when she heard the rattle of the key in the lock. It was Constable Rostislov.
‘It seems you don’t have to remember where you live after all,’ he said dryly. ‘Follow me.’
He led her down a windowless corridor and into what looked like a secretariat, with clerks sitting at a block of desks in the centre of the room. At the opposite end, the sergeant was standing beside the only polished doors in the station.
‘Still limping, then?’
Before she could reply, the door was opened by the superintendent’s gatekeeper who announced His Honour Ivan Andreievich Kuznetzov was now ready to see the prisoner.
The superintendent’s office was like those occupied by middle-ranking policemen all over the empire, with its oppressively dark wallpaper, cheap burgundy drapes, filing cabinet, desk and undistinguished print of His Imperial Majesty. Kuznetzov was sitting beneath it, his grey head bent over his papers. Almost lost in a high-backed chair in front of his desk sat a woman, her dark hair drawn tightly into a bun. Anna could see no more than the top of her head but there was something in the shape of it and the way she held it that was familiar. The woman raised a hand to sweep a loose strand of hair behind her ear and Anna let out an involuntary gasp of pain.
‘Go on — what’s the matter with you?’ It was Sergeant Korovin at her shoulder.
‘Ah, it’s you!’ Olga Liubatovich twisted in the chair to look at her. Her eyes were almost lost beneath a heavy frown, her voice full of resentment. ‘Did you deliver the note? What am I going to tell my husband, you foolish girl? Look at the trouble you’ve got us into.’
Clever, clever Olga. Burying her face in her hands, Anna began to sob pathetically, her small frame shaking with the effort.
‘All right, all right,’ said the superintendent irritably. ‘Sit down.’ He waved his hand to Korovin to indicate he should guide her to a chair.
‘Now, can you tell me who this woman is?’ he asked when she had settled in front of his desk.
‘My mistress, Elizaveta Dmitrievna.’
‘Look at me.’
Anna raised her eyes for just a second then looked away. He had a thin face and severe mouth, as if years in the police had ground him to a sharp point.
‘Now tell me what business you had at a terrorist’s apartment?’
‘A message to the seamstress,’ she snivelled.
‘For goodness sake, stop behaving like a child!’ the superintendant roared and he thumped his fist on the desk so hard some of his papers floated to the floor. ‘Do you know who lives in that flat?’
‘No.’
‘And you,’ he said turning to Olga, ‘where do you live?’
Olga ignored him and turned to Anna again. ‘My husband will be so cross! This is your fault,’ she said. ‘I’ve a mind to turn you out!’
Anna resumed her noisy sobbing. It was a more than respectable performance, but the superintendent had been in the service many years and was a difficult man to deflect. For an hour, he kept returning to the same questions: why had she visited the apartment? What was the message for the dressmaker? Where did she come from? He worried away at both of them, coaxing and bullying in turn.
‘All right, we’ll see,’ he said at last, getting to his feet stiffly. ‘Take them home, Sergeant. Examine their papers. Search the apartment from top to bottom and speak to the husband.’
As the two of them were bundled into a police barouche, Anna managed to lean across and whisper ‘Thank you’. It was below freezing, the light was fading and the sky threatened more snow, but her spirits were lifting in the cold air after the stuffiness and anxiety of the station. A policeman sat on the box beside the driver, another two travelled on the footboard at the back, and behind them a dozen more in cabs. But once they were beneath the canopy, Olga reached across to give her hand a little squeeze: ‘We have a chance.’
It was only a short drive to the building on Nevsky. Glancing up furtively, Anna could see the parasol was no longer posted in the window: the flat must have been cleared of incriminating papers and Morozov would have left too. A posse of policemen huffed and puffed up the stairs after them and gathered on the narrow landing at the top. For appearance’s sake, Olga rang the bell, confident no one would answer. After a few seconds, she began rummaging in her bag for the keys, but before she could find them they heard footsteps in the hall and the sound of a heavy bolt drawn back. To Anna’s dismay, the door opened to reveal a very startled-looking Nikolai Morozov: ‘What on earth-’
Olga threw herself upon him, clutching him tightly. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry. Please don’t be angry. The police have arrested Anna. I had to go to the station, and now they won’t let us go. Please don’t be angry.’
‘What?’ Morozov had regained his composure at once. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Sergeant Korovin was ready with his own explanation: ‘Your maid was arrested at the apartment of two people we suspect of blowing up the tsar’s train in Moscow. We’re going to have to search your flat.’
‘Please do,’ said Morozov, stepping back from the door.
‘No. No. You first and your wife — and you,’ Korovin said, pulling Anna roughly by the arm.
They sat on the edge of the bed in silence as the police turned the place upside down, ferreting through cupboards and drawers, moving the few small pieces of furniture, lifting rugs and loose boards, examining their clothes, stirring the ashes in the stove. After an hour they had turned up nothing in the least incriminating and Korovin had no choice but to call a halt to the search. Until their personal papers had been checked against police records they were under house arrest, he told them, and to be sure this order was obeyed he left two constables at the door.
‘It will take them a while to check our identities,’ said Morozov when it was safe to talk. ‘But my papers were stolen from a merchant in Tula. He’s bound to have reported the theft to the local police.’
‘Why did you stay, Nikolai?’ Olga asked him, leaning forward to stroke his hair. ‘You should have gone.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He reached up to grab and hold her hand. ‘Sophia helped me clear the flat. She’s gone to warn the others. What’s important now is getting out of here.’
There was a shimmering halo around the street lamps in the prospekt. Snow was falling again. It was after seven o’clock and a steady stream of workers was trudging home along the slush-covered pavements. To Anna’s exhausted mind, they appeared blurred and dark at the edges like a badly taken daguerreotype. Gazing from the sitting-room window, she felt unaccountably empty, as if the stuffing had been ripped from her by one of the constables. Her companions were still at the table, whispering to each other, holding hands, drawing strength from their intimacy.
‘All right, I think it’s time.’
The two young policemen looked thoroughly miserable. It was only a few degrees above freezing on the stairs and for an hour they had been shifting stiffly from foot to foot, stamping and slapping their sides like awkward marionettes.
‘My husband wants me to order some tea,’ Olga said, as they turned to look at the two women. ‘Maria Alexandrovna,’ she shouted in a stentorian voice. ‘Maria Alexandrovna!’
The landlady’s name echoed down the stairs and a few seconds later a door opened on the landing below. A large woman in her fifties in a black scarf and ankle-length coat peered up at them. ‘What’s this racket?’
‘Maria Alexandrovna, we would like some tea.’
Tea, she huffed. Tea — when the police had taken over her house! She kept a respectable house… Olga cut her short: ‘Maria Alexandrovna — the samovar. Some tea, as soon as possible, please.’
A few minutes later Anna was allowed to visit the landlady’s kitchen with one of the constables and returned with a large pot and glasses. They tidied the sitting room, clearing the floor, replacing the drawers, making it as homely as possible, and Morozov fed the little stove and placed some chairs before it.
‘All right,’ he whispered to the two women. ‘This is our chance. Quick — in the kitchen and remember to take your boots off.’
A moment later, they heard the front door open and Morozov’s silvery voice inviting the policemen to step inside for a glass of hot tea. ‘It’s so cold out here. Please join us. My wife is preparing a little food.’
The seconds ticked by, Anna’s ear pressed to the kitchen door. Surely they were not going to refuse. She felt dizzy with the strain, bent double, and both of them in their heavy winter coats.
‘Talk, we must talk normally,’ Olga whispered at her shoulder.
But before Anna could think of something to say there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor.
‘Sit by the stove,’ they heard Morozov say. The sitting-room door clicked shut.
‘Now!’ Olga hissed.
‘No. Wait until they’ve settled.’
Ten, twenty, thirty seconds, then Anna began to gently lift the latch on the door. One of the policemen was talking, there were footsteps — Morozov would be serving the tea — and now some laughter. Slowly, lightly, they shuffled along the corridor in their stockinged feet. Morozov had left the apartment door ajar. On the landing, they put on their boots then stood anxiously by, Olga gripping Anna’s arm, the keys ready in her hand: she would have to be quick. After a tense few minutes they heard Morozov’s voice. ‘They’re in the kitchen. I’ll fetch them.’ Perhaps one of the policemen said something or he heard them get to their feet, for a second later Morozov was thumping down the short corridor towards them. He almost fell through the door, grabbing the handle as he did so. It slammed shut behind him, but not before Anna heard the policemen cursing and stumbling after him. Olga was fumbling with the lock.
‘For God’s sake…’ Morozov shouted. ‘Have you done it?’
‘Yes, yes! It’s locked.’
Bang. A shoulder hit the door: ‘Open it now! Open it!’ Then another crash as the heel of a heavy boot struck the frame. ‘Open it!’
Morozov gave Anna a shove: ‘Come on. Let’s go.’ The shouting and the banging chased up and down the stairs, and on the landing below the landlady was at her door. ‘What are you doing, you can’t leave them…’
‘In the name of the executive committee of The People’s Will,’ said Morozov, cutting across her, ‘I warn you, Maria Alexandrovna, if you value your life you will leave them there. Do you understand me?’
He did not wait for an answer.
They thundered down the stairs and burst through the door at the back of the building into the snowy yard. Olga took Anna by the arm and they walked beneath the carriage arch and on to Nevsky.
‘We’ll go to the flat in the Izmailovsky district,’ said Morozov. He stepped off the pavement to hail a passing cab. Seconds later its sleigh blades slithered to a stop. ‘We’ll all squeeze in somehow,’ and he reached for Anna’s hand to help her to a seat.
‘No. I’ll join you later,’ she said.
Olga grabbed Anna by the shoulders and turned her quickly to look her in the eye. ‘You must come with us!’
‘There’s something I have — I want to do,’ she said, correcting herself.
‘What?’
‘It’s my concern.’
‘Everything we do is the party’s concern.’
‘You don’t believe that, Olga. You and Nikolai…’
‘I do,’ she said, sharply.
‘There isn’t time to argue now. The police could be here any moment. You go. Go now. I’ll see you later.’
‘We must go,’ said Morozov, pulling at Olga’s elbow. ‘Be careful, Anna. You’re an “illegal” now.’
She did not wait to see the cab pull away but walked on quickly, turning off the prospekt into a side street. No money, no clothes but the ones she was wearing, no home, no papers and wanted by the police, and yet she still felt the exhilaration of freedom won at great risk. And a thought, a hope had planted itself almost unnoticed in the tense hours of that day. It had flashed through her mind at the police station and again when she was cowering in the kitchen, and as the cab pulled alongside them on the prospekt it had been quite impossible to ignore.