He pauses, comes closer, peers. 'Do I go too far, Fyodor Mikhailovich?' he continues more softly. 'Am I overstepping the bounds of decency, uncovering what should not be uncovered – that we have seen through you, all of us, your stepson too? Why so silent? Has the knife come too close to the bone?' He brings the scarf out of his pocket. 'Shall we put on the blindfold again?'

Close to the bone? Yes, perhaps. Not the accusation itself but the voice he hears behind it: Pavel's. Pavel complaining to his friend, and his friend storing up the words like poison.

Dispiritedly he pushes the scarf aside. 'Why are you trying to provoke me?' he says. 'You didn't bring me here to show me your press, or to show me starving children. Those are just pretexts. What do you really want from me? Do you want to put me in such a rage that I will stamp off and betray you to the police? Why haven't you quit Petersburg? Instead of making your escape like a sensible person, you behave like Jesus outside Jerusalem, waiting for the arrival of an ass to carry you into the hands of your persecutors. Are you hoping I will play the part of the ass? You fancy yourself the prince in hiding, the prince and the martyr, waiting to be called. You want to steal Easter from Jesus. This is the second time you tempt me, and I am not tempted.'

'Stop changing the subject! We are talking about Russia, not about Jesus. And stop trying to put the blame on me. If you betray me it will only be because you hate me.'

'I don't hate you. I have no cause.'

'Yes you do! You want to strike back at me because I open people's eyes to what you are really like, you and your generation.'

'And what are we really like, I and my generation?'

'I will tell you. Your day is over. Only, instead of passing quietly from the scene, you want to drag the whole world down with you. You resent it that the reins are passing into the hands of younger and stronger men who are going to make a better world. That is what you are really like. And don't tell me the story that you were a revolutionary who went to Siberia for your beliefs. I know for a fact that even in Siberia you were treated like one of the gentry. You didn't share the sufferings of the people at all, it was just a sham. You old men make me sick! The day I get to be thirty-five, I'll put a bullet through my brains, I swear!'

These last words come out with such petulant force that he cannot hide a smile; Nechaev himself colours in confusion.

'I hope you have a chance to be a father before then, so that you will know what it is like to drink from this cup.'

'I will never be a father,' mutters Nechaev.

'How do you know? You can't be sure. All a man can do is sow the seed; after that it has a life of its own.'

Nechaev shakes his head decisively. What does he mean? That he does not sow his seed? That he is vowed to be a virgin like Jesus?

'You can't be sure,' he repeats softly. 'Seed becomes son, prince becomes king. When one day you sit on the throne (if you haven't blown out your brains by then), and the land is full of princelings, hiding in cellars and attics, plotting against you, what will you do? Send out soldiers to chop off their heads?'

Nechaev glowers. 'You are trying to make me angry with your silly parables. I know about your own father, Pavel Isaev told me – what a petty tyrant he was, how everyone hated him, till his own peasants killed him. You think that because you and your father hated each other, the history of the world has to consist of nothing but fathers and sons at war with each other. You don't understand the meaning of revolution. Revolution is the end of everything old, including fathers and sons. It is the end of successions and dynasties. And it keeps renewing itself, if it is true revolution. With each generation the old revolution is overturned and history starts again. That is the new idea, the truly new idea. Year One. Carte blanche. When everything is reinvented, everything erased and reborn: law, morality, the family, everything. When all prisoners are set free, all crimes forgiven. The idea is so tremendous that you cannot understand it, you and your generation. Or rather, you understand it only too well, and want to stifle it in the cradle.'

'And money? When you forgive the crimes, will you redistribute the money?'

'We will do more than that. Every so often, when people least expect it, we will declare the existing money worthless and print fresh money. That was the mistake the French made – to allow the old money to go on circulating. The French did not have a true revolution because they did not have the courage to push it all the way through. They got rid of the aristocrats but they didn't eliminate the old way of thinking. In our schools we will teach the people's way of thinking, that has been repressed all this time. Everyone will go to school again, even the professors. The peasants will be the teachers and the professors will be the students. In our schools we will make new men and new women. Everyone will be reborn with a new heart.'

'And God? What will God think of that?'

The young man gives a laugh of the purest exhilaration. 'God? God will be envious.'

'So you believe?'

'Of course we believe! What would be the point otherwise? – one might as well set a torch to everything, turn the world to ash. No; we will go to God and stand before his throne and call him off. And he will come! He will have no choice, he will have to listen. Then we will all be together on the same footing at last.'

'And the angels?'

'The angels will stand around us in circles singing their hosannas. The angels will be in transports. They will be freed as well, to walk on the earth like common men.'

'And the souls of the dead?'

'You ask so many questions! The souls of the dead too, Fyodor Mikhailovich, if you like. We shall have the souls of the dead walking the earth again – Pavel Isaev too, if you like. There are no bounds to what can be done.'

What a charlatan! Yet he no longer knows where the mastery lies – whether he is playing with Nechaev or Nechaev with him. All barriers seem to be crumbling at once: the barrier on tears, the barrier on laughter. If Anna Sergeyevna were here – the thought comes unbidden – he would be able to speak the words to her that have been lacking all this time.

He takes a step forward and with what seems to him the strength of a giant folds Nechaev to his breast. Embracing the boy, trapping his arms at his sides, breathing in the sour smell of his carbuncular flesh, sobbing, laughing, he kisses him on the left cheek and on the right. Hip to hip, breast to breast, he stands locked against him.

There is a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Nechaev struggles free. 'So they are here!' he exclaims. His eyes gleam with triumph.

He turns. In the doorway stands a woman dressed in black, with an incongruous little white hat. In the dim light, through his tears, it is hard to tell her age.

Nechaev seems disappointed. 'Ah!' he says. 'Excuse us! Come in!'

But the woman stays where she is. Under her arm she bears something wrapped in a white cloth. The children's noses are keener than his. All together, without a word, they slither down from the bed and slip past the two men. The girl tugs the cloth loose and the smell of fresh bread fills the room. Without a word she breaks off lumps and gives them into her brothers' hands. Pressed against their mother's skirts, their eyes blank and vacant, they stand chewing. Like animals, he thinks: they know where it comes from and do not care.