Free Midnight in St. Petersburg by Vanora Bennett Page A

said, concerned. As he spoke, her hand shifted on the shawl. He could see spots of blood, from her palm, coming through the hanky. ‘Are you all right?’
    He couldn’t stop himself stepping forward. He so wanted to take her hand; to see for himself. He only just managed to stop himself.
    â€˜I’m fine.’ She bit off the word.
    â€˜But what’s wrong with your hand?’
    She didn’t answer at once, though she did at least look at him. She took the other hand out of her pocket and held it out, as if daring him to be shocked. There was a knife lying in the palm, the kind you take on train journeys to cut up your bread and sausage with. There was blood on the blade, and a mess of blood, some fresh, some congealing, in the line of small cuts across the palm it lay on.
    Yasha recoiled. Shutting his eyes, he fumbled in his pockets for the clean hanky he knew was there.
    â€˜I’ve got a hanky, thank you,’ he heard, still in that bitten-off, brazening-it-out tone.
    â€˜But what…’ he muttered, still not able to look at her or that accusing gash, ‘… what the Hell are you doing to yourself?’
    She stepped forward, using the same trick as before, and he retreated. It was only when she was closing the door that she answered. But the door had clicked shut, leaving him in the dark outside with a fuzzy, glowing image of her on his retina – this time uplit by the little lamp, with her fragile dignity and her wounded, defiant green eyes – before the words sank in.
    â€˜I was cutting myself a better lifeline,’ she’d said.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The next morning, Inna went straight out, without breakfast. She was pale. She had her hands in a muff.
    Why had she been such a fool? she now wondered, mortified by the spots of rusty blood staining the sheets that she’d woken up to this morning. It wasn’t as if she actually believed that gypsy’s prophecy. She wasn’t superstitious.
    It was clear now that, after last night, Yasha would have nothing more to do with her. She’d seen that from the bewildered, shocked distaste with which he’d shrunk back, the look that signified: But that’s not how things are done here. She’d been acting like someone from down there, someone so desperate she’d stopped being able to think. Someone alone.
    But she wasn’t helpless. She wouldn’t just give in. And she wasn’t alone, either, or at least not quite alone. There might not be anything she could do, by herself, to get papers, but there was at least one person she knew whom she could ask to help her get what she wanted.
    The idea she woke up with was to go and see her friend the peasant. She’d ask for an introduction to his friend Simanovich, the one who could get residence papers for Jews. She’d ask him what it would cost to get her a permit. She still had some money. It would be well spent, on that.
    If Monsieur Leman wanted to keep her, and would train her (which he’d sounded genuine enough about), but just didn’t know how to get documents (which she could imagine he didn’t), well, there was nothing for it but to organize it herself.
    *   *   *
    Half an hour later, she was in the dark stairwell of Nikolayevskaya 70, feet clattering on worn tiles.
    A gaggle of rumpled youngish men were lounging on the doorstep outside, standing on discarded cigarette ends. They didn’t frighten her. They weren’t in uniform. They barely looked at her, either, as she slid among them.
    Inside, the doorman looked wearily up at her from behind a dusty arrangement of dried flowers. ‘I’m looking for…’ she hesitated. She didn’t like just to say, ‘the peasant’.
    â€˜The peasant,’ the man said, scratching his ear. ‘First floor, door on the left.’ Gratefully, she flew upstairs.
    The door opened a crack. Eyes looked out: eyes half hidden in deeply