Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [522]
It was only when Peter was out of the room for a moment that Vladimir confessed to him: ‘I must beg you to come, Dimitri, because I promised your mother that I would.’ He paused. ‘It was really her last request, you know.’
‘But why?’ Dimitri asked. ‘Why should she be so anxious for me to leave?’
Vladimir sighed. ‘She had dreams.’
‘Of what?’
‘That something would happen to you if you stayed.’ He paused. ‘The dreams became very terrible to her, very vivid, just before the end.’
‘Before the accident?’
Vladimir looked at him sadly. ‘Quite.’
But the boy was shaking his head. ‘I couldn’t leave my father – I don’t want to go anyway.’ He looked down. ‘My mother always told me I’d be safe as long as I was a musician, you know.’ Then he looked up again and grinned. ‘As you see, I am.’
And so, reluctantly, Vladimir gave up. Only one person in the professor’s apartment agreed to go. And this was Karpenko who, after hearing the debate, said quietly: ‘I will come with you to Kiev. I want to get home.’
It was the following day that Dimitri asked his father a favour. The Symphony to the Revolution was going well, but in the slow movement he wanted to incorporate some material he had written out, fully orchestrated, when he had been down in the country two years before.
‘And the devil of it is,’ he explained, ‘I must have left it down at Russka, in Uncle Vladimir’s house. As I hear the place was hardly touched, it’s probably still sitting there; but I haven’t really time to go down there.’
And Peter had smiled. ‘I’ll gladly go for you,’ he promised.
Nadezhda had got used to her new life. She liked the simple workers she took round the house. She was even used to having them watch her sweep the floor. For sheer convenience now, she often dressed like a simple peasant woman herself, with a scarf over her head. And above all, she was glad to feel that in this, the great crisis of his life, she was there beside her father. I at least, she thought bitterly of her mother, remain always at his side.
Only one thing made her angry and caused her to fall silent for an hour or more. And this was the presence of Yevgeny Popov.
‘Why does he come here?’ she would moan aloud. ‘Does he come to taunt me? To gloat?’ Two, sometimes three, times a week Popov would come by, curiously inspect the house, look in at their apartment, and then with a brief nod, depart. ‘I’d like to slam the door in his face,’ she once said bitterly to her father, but he only warned her quietly: ‘Never annoy a man like that. He’s dangerous these days.’
Did her father know about Popov and her mother? She had always supposed he did, but never asked. How dare the man come around like this to look at her poor father now?
It was understandable therefore if, as their departure approached, she should dream happily of being rid of the intruder.
Vladimir’s plan of escape was very simple.
He had noticed that the Bemsky railway station was, at certain times, a scene of general chaos. And it was from there that trains left for the Ukrainian frontier. It was still not too difficult to get forged papers. The main thing, in his position, was not to be recognized. The plan was kept secret. Once the date was decided, not even Dimitri or Peter were to be told.
Everything seemed quite normal, therefore, on the afternoon before their departure, when Popov came by the house.
He