Zugzwang Read Free Page B

infinitely more subtle. After a time, Anna Petrovna excused herself.
    â€˜What do you think of her?’ Kopelzon asked. ‘Worth the risk, no?’
    â€˜The husband, you mean?’
    â€˜God no!’ Kopelzon exclaimed with a dismissive wave. ‘Boris Ziatdinov is a nasty piece of work but he’s just a little lawyer with a violent temper. The risk is the father.’
    â€˜Who is the father?’
    â€˜The Mountain,’ Kopelzon said in a low voice.
    His look was serious, and with good reason. Peter Arseneyevich Zinnurov was one of St Petersburg’s richest industrialists and was suspected of secretly funding the Black Hundreds; certainly, he had no difficulty defending their violent attacks on Jews and Jewish property. He would not be amused were he to discover that his only daughter was the object of a Jewish violin player’s sexual attentions.
    â€˜Alas,’ Kopelzon sighed, ‘it does not look as though Anna Petrovna will be coming to my bed, not tonight anyway, and as I, unlike you, consider a night alone to be a night wasted …’
    He had already turned his gaze on a full-bodied woman of about forty. I clapped my roguish friend on the back and wished him luck.
    I was on my way out when I heard a voice say, ‘Are you leaving so soon, Dr Spethmann?’
    It was Anna. She introduced me to her companions, who were perfectly nice and friendly. They were rather categorical admirers of Blok.
    â€˜You’re getting restless, Dr Spethmann,’ Anna said after a while. She had by degrees turned her back on her friends so that we were in effect detached from them and their speculations on lyrical poetry.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should go home to my daughter.’
    â€˜I hope she’s not unwell?’
    â€˜Not at all, thank you, but she’s young and she recently lost her mother.’
    â€˜I am so sorry,’ Anna said, touching my arm. ‘How terrible for you both. How old is your daughter?’
    â€˜She will be eighteen in August. She does not like me to be away from her and I promised I would be back by nine.’
    â€˜Then you must go home at once,’ she said.
    Before this, I had thought her talk witty and well informedbut I also felt it had something of the salon about it, something rehearsed, reviewed and honed for the next performance. Her solicitousness now, however, seemed to come from a nearer reality.
    â€˜It has been a pleasure to meet you, Dr Spethmann,’ she said, putting out her hand. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
    â€˜From Kopelzon?’
    Anna smiled. ‘Your friend really is quite unremitting. Tell me, do his sieges ever succeed?’
    â€˜They never fail, so far as I know.’
    An amused look came into her eye. I held her hand in mine. We can usually find a way to get the information we want, and this is what I wanted to know: that Anna would not sleep with Kopelzon. I was not aware of it, at least not fully, as I stood in front of her and only later admitted to myself that I had proposed Kopelzon as the source of her information about me only so as to get her to talk about their affair, if that’s what it was. In the year since Elena died I had felt nothing, unless exhaustion can in this context be described as a feeling. Only Catherine’s contradictory need for me kept me going: she both wanted me and claimed to be suffocated by me. She would throw herself into my arms and tell me she loved me; and she would scream that I was the cruellest father since Abraham, the worst husband since Adam. I intend no melodrama, nor do I mean that even in the emptiest reaches of the night I ever had any intention of seeking out death. But had death come looking for me, I am not sure I would have put up a fight or attempted to flee.
    Now I was looking at a woman and I was thinking that I would like to know her better. I felt confused, and also ashamed, as I bade her goodnight.
    I