He sits back, flushed.

'You are a very clever man, Fyodor Mikhailovich. But you speak of reading as though it were demon-possession. Measured by that standard I fear I am a very poor reader indeed, dull and earthbound. Yet I wonder whether, at this moment, you are not in a fever. If you could see yourself in a mirror I am sure you would understand what I mean. Also, we have had a long conversation, interesting but long, and I have numerous duties to attend to.'

'And I say, the papers you are holding on to so jealously may as well be written in Aramaic for all the good they will do you. Give them back to me!'

Maximov chuckles. 'You supply me with the strongest, most benevolent of reasons not to give in to your request, Fyodor Mikhailovich, namely that in your present mood the spirit of Nechaev might leap from the page and take complete possession of you. But seriously: you say you know how to read. Will you at some future date read these papers for me, all of them, the Nechaev papers, of which this is only a single file among many?'

'Read them for you?'

'Yes. Give me a reading of them.'

'Why?'

'Because you say I cannot read. Give me a demonstration of how to read. Teach me. Explain to me these ideas that are not ideas.'

For the first time since the telegram arrived in Dresden, he laughs: he can feel the stiff lines of his cheeks breaking. The laugh is harsh and without joy. 'I have always been told,' he says, 'that the police constitute the eyes and ears of society. And now you call on me for help! No, I will not do your reading for you.'

Folding his hands in his lap, closing his eyes, looking more like the Buddha than ever, ageless, sexless, Maxi-mov nods. 'Thank you,' he murmurs. 'Now you must go.'

He emerges into a crowded ante-room. How long has he been closeted with Maximov? An hour? Longer? The bench is full, there are people lounging against the walls, people in the corridors too, where the smell of fresh paint is stifling. All talk ceases; eyes turn on him without sympathy. So many seeking justice, each with a story to tell!

It is nearly noon. He cannot bear the thought of returning to his room. He walks eastward along Sadovaya Street. The sky is low and grey, a cold wind blows; there is ice on the ground and the footing is slippery. A gloomy day, a day for trudging with the head lowered. Yet he cannot stop himself, his eyes move restlessly from one passing figure to the next, searching for the set of the shoulders, the lilt to the walk, that belong to his lost son. By his walk he will recognize him: first the walk, then the form.

He tries to summon up Pavel's face. But the face that appears to him instead, and appears with surprising vividness, is that of a young man with heavy brows and a sparse beard and a thin, tight mouth, the face of the young man who sat behind Bakunin on the stage at the Peace Congress two years ago. His skin is cratered with scars that stand out livid in the cold. 'Go away!' he says, trying to dismiss the image. But it will not go. 'Pavel!' he whispers, conjuring his son in vain.

6. Anna Sergeyevna

He has not been to the shop before. It is smaller than he had imagined, dark and low, half beneath street level. yakovlev grocer and merchant reads the sign. A bell tinkles when he opens the door. His eyes take a while to adjust to the gloom.

He is the only customer. Behind the counter stands an old man in a dirty white apron. He pretends to examine the wares: open sacks of buckwheat, flour, dried beans, horsefeed. Then he approaches the counter. 'Some sugar, please,' he says.

'Eh?' says the old man, clearing his throat. His spectacles make his eyes seem tiny as buttons.

'I'd like some sugar.'

She emerges through a curtained doorway at the back of the shop. If she is surprised to see him, she does not show it. 'I will attend to the customer, Avram David-ovich,' she says quietly, and the old man stands aside.

'I came for some sugar,' he repeats.

'Sugar?' There is the faintest smile on her lips.

'Five kopeks' worth.'

Deftly she folds a cone of paper, pinches the bottom shut, scoops in white sugar, weighs it, folds the cone. Capable hands.

'I have just been to the police. I was trying to get Pavel's papers returned to me.'

'Yes?'

'There are complications I didn't foresee.'

'You will get them back. It takes time. Everything takes time.'

Though there is no cause to do so, he reads into this remark a double meaning. If the old man were not hovering behind her, he would reach across the counter and take her hand.

'That is -?' he says.

'That is five kopeks.'

Taking the cone, he allows his fingers to brush hers. 'You have lightened my day,' he whispers, so softly that perhaps not even she hears. He bows, bows to Avram Davidovich.

Does he imagine it, or has he somewhere before seen the man in the sheepskin coat and cap who, having dawdled on the other side of the road watching workmen unload bricks, now turns, like him, in the direction of Svechnoi Street?

And sugar. Why of all things did he ask for sugar?

He writes a note to Apollon Maykov. 'I am in Petersburg and have visited the grave,' he writes. 'Thank you for taking care of everything. Thank you too for your many kindnesses to P. over the years. I am eternally in your debt.' He signs the note D.

It would be easy to arrange a discreet meeting. But he does not want to compromise his old friend. Maykov, ever generous, will understand, he tells himself: I am in mourning, and people in mourning shun company.

It is a good enough excuse, but it is a lie. He is not in mourning. He has not said farewell to his son, he has not given his son up. On the contrary, he wants his son returned to life.

He writes to his wife: 'He is still here in his room. He is frightened. He has lost his right to stay in this world, but the next world is cold, as cold as the spaces between the stars, and without welcome.' As soon as he has finished the letter he tears it up. It is nonsense; it is also a betrayal of what remains between himself and his son.

His son is inside him, a dead baby in an iron box in the frozen earth. He does not know how to resurrect the baby or – what comes to the same thing – lacks the will to do so. He is paralysed. Even while he is walking down the street, he thinks of himself as paralysed. Every gesture of his hands is made with the slowness of a frozen man. He has no will; or rather, his will has turned into a solid block, a stone that exerts all its dumb weight to draw him down into stillness and silence.

He knows what grief is. This is not grief. This is death, death coming before its time, come not to overwhelm him and devour him but simply to be with him. It is like a dog that has taken up residence with him, a big grey dog, blind and deaf and stupid and immovable. When he sleeps, the dog sleeps; when he wakes, the dog wakes; when he leaves the house, the dog shambles behind him.

His mind dwells sluggishly but insistently on Anna Sergeyevna. When he thinks of her, he thinks of nimble fingers counting coins. Coins, stitches – what do they stand for?

He remembers a peasant girl he saw once at the gate of the convent of St Anne in Tver. She sat with a dead baby at her breast, shrugging off the people who tried to remove the little corpse, smiling beatifically – smiling like St Anne, in fact.

Memories like wisps of smoke. A reed fence in the middle of nowhere, grey and brittle, and a wisp of a figure slipping between the reeds, flat, without weight, the figure of a boy in white. A hamlet on the steppes with a stream and two or three trees and a cow with a bell around its neck and smoke trailing into the sky. The back of beyond, the end of the world. A boy weaving through the reeds, back and forth, in arrested metamorphosis, in purgatorial form.