4. The white suit

November has arrived, and the first snow. The sky is filled with marsh-birds migrating south.

He has moved into Pavel's room and within days has become part of the life of the building. The children no longer stop their games to stare when he passes, though they still lower their voices. They know who he is. Who is he? He is misfortune, he is the father of misfortune.

Every day he tells himself he must go back to Yelagin Island, to the grave. But he does not go.

He writes to his wife in Dresden. His letters are reassuring but empty of feeling.

He spends his mornings in the room, mornings of utter blankness which come to have their own insidious and deathly pleasure. In the afternoons he walks the streets, avoiding the area around Meshchanskaya Street and the Voznesensky Prospekt where he might be recognized, stopping for an hour at a tea-house, always the same one.

In Dresden he used to read the Russian newspapers. But he has lost interest in the world outside. His world has contracted; his world is within his breast.

Out of consideration for Anna Sergeyevna he returns to the apartment only after dusk. Till called to supper he stays quietly in the room that is and is not his.

He is sitting on the bed with the white suit on his lap. There is no one to see him. Nothing has changed. He feels the cord of love that goes from his heart to his son's as physically as if it were a rope. He feels the rope twist and wring his heart. He groans aloud. 'Yes!' he whispers, welcoming the pain; he reaches out and gives the rope another twist.

The door behind him opens. Startled, he turns, bent and ugly, tears in his eyes, the suit bunched in his hands.

'Would you like to eat now?' asks the child.

'Thank you, but I would prefer to be by myself this evening.'

Later she is back. 'Would you like some tea? I can bring it to you.'

She brings a teapot and sugar-bowl and cup, bearing them solemnly on a tray.

'Is that Pavel Alexandrovich's suit?'

He puts the suit aside, nods.

She stands at arm's length watching while he drinks. Again he is struck by the fine line of her temple and cheekbone, the dark, liquid eyes, the dark brows, the hair blonde as corn. There is a rush of feeling in him, contradictory, like two waves slapping against each other: an urge to protect her, an urge to lash out at her because she is alive.

Good that I am shut away, he thinks. As I am now, I am not fit for humankind.

He waits for her to say something. He wants her to speak. It is an outrageous demand to make on a child, but he makes the demand nevertheless. He raises his eyes to her. Nothing is veiled. He stares at her with what can only be nakedness.

For a moment she meets his gaze. Then she averts her eyes, steps back uncertainly, makes a strange, awkward kind of curtsy, and flees the room.

He is aware, even as it unfolds, that this is a passage he will not forget and may even one day rework into his writing. A certain shame passes over him, but it is superficial and transitory. First in his writing and now in his life, shame seems to have lost its power, its place taken by a blank and amoral passivity that shrinks from no extreme. It is as if, out of the corner of an eye, he can see clouds advancing on him with terrific speed, stormclouds. Whatever stands in their path will be swept away. With dread, but with excitement too, he waits for the storm to break.

At eleven o'clock by his watch, without announcing himself, he emerges from his room. The curtain is drawn across the alcove where Matryona and her mother sleep, but Anna Sergeyevna is still up, seated at the table, sewing by lamplight. He crosses the room, sits down opposite her.

Her fingers are deft, her movements decisive. In Siberia he learnt to sew, out of necessity, but he cannot sew with this fluid grace. In his fingers a needle is a curiosity, an arrow from Lilliput.

'Surely the light is too poor for such fine work,' he murmurs.

She inclines her head as if to say: I hear you, but also: What do you expect me to do about it?

'Has Matryona been your only child?'

She gives him a direct look. He likes the directness. He likes her eyes, which are not soft at all.

'She had a brother, but he died when he was very young.'

'So you know.'

'No, I don't know.'

What does she mean? That an infant's death is easier to bear? She does not explain.

'If you will allow me, I will buy you a better lamp. It is a pity to ruin your eyesight so early.'

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.'