The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  Saskia said, ‘No, you don’t need to—’

  Kamo lunged at her. She half turned and the sabre passed her shoulder. It scored a portrait. Their faces met. Kamo’s head was tipped back and his eyes were wide. Within this berserk trance he had tortured and raped; it was a personal storm in whose eye he could stay calm, while the world spun around him.

  Before Kamo could draw back for another strike, Saskia let her muff fall to the floor. Even now, in this moment, she had a flush of awkwardness as her amputation was exposed. Pasha stepped in to block the blow but Saskia planted one foot on his hip and pushed him clear.

  ‘I said, “Run!”’ she screamed.

  Kamo checked his attack. He twisted a full turn, keeping the sabre in motion, and brought the blade towards the boy at head height. She flashed her elbow into Pasha’s midriff. Winded, he collapsed. There was time for Saskia to drop to her knee. The sabre struck the window frame with a resonating clash of metal on brick.

  Kamo reacted as though wounded by the sound. He glanced along the corridor.

  Saskia gripped Pasha’s arm, then scissored her legs through those of Kamo. She used the boy as an anchor from which to twist her body. Kamo’s riding boots had a poor grip on the wooden floor. He slipped onto his hip and gasped. The sabre came down with him.

  ‘Run!’ she shouted once more.

  Kamo stage-whispered, ‘Do you want to bring the entire household, woman?’

  ‘You idiot,’ she spat. ‘You’ve ruined everything.’

  He stared at her for a moment. His confusion was genuine enough to shine through his madness. Then the clouds came down on his eyes. ‘It’s here, isn’t it? Our money. Take me to it!’

  Kamo lashed at Pasha with the sabre. Saskia had time to put her heel into Kamo’s forehead and spoil the strike of the blade, but the flat caught Pasha above the ear. Pasha screamed and put a hand to the wound.

  Saskia kicked Kamo in the head once more. She drew a little upon his madness. Dazed, he spilled beyond her range. She released Pasha, rolled towards Kamo, and brought her fist down on his biceps. His flexing hand released the sabre. She grabbed the handle, put it against her chest, and let the point rest on Kamo’s heart.

  They were both breathing hard. She could smell his breath. It was pure Tiflis, its milk bars, and the spiced food. She smiled. This was just like old times. Kamo, despite himself, smiled back.

  The sabre was heavy. Powerful. She could prick the heart of this man and he would unwind. Instead, she turned to the great window overlooking the palace square and drove the pommel into one of the lower panes. The sound of splintering glass echoed along the Picture Hall.

  Kamo bared his teeth.

  ‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘jump.’

  The boy, in his agony, looked up. ‘What?’ he gasped.

  ‘Lower yourself from the window. We’re only on the first floor. Keep your feet together when you land.’

  When she turned back to Kamo, he was holding the end of the blade in his clapped hands, as though in prayer. Her one hand could not prevent him twisting the blade free. He caught the handle neatly—another Caucasian flourish—and jumped to a crouch. She dropped her shoulder as he lunged, but the tip passed through the fabric of her corset and skipped across the whalebone. She cried out and fell to her knees.

  ‘Go,’ she shouted, hoping that Pasha had relinquished his notions of honourable duty, that he was capable of saving himself. As Kamo withdrew the sword for a final blow, she saw, reflected in the cabinet opposite the window, the silhouette of Pasha slipping from the palace.

  Sense at last.

  She closed her eyes.

  Arctic. Cool as.

  ~

  Pasha lay on the forecourt of the Summer Palace. Is this real, or a future imagined by a boy, tumbling? The rain hit him, cold. His fingers were curled and his mouth had opened to its fullest extent. He could not move. This was a spell, surely; he had to let it pass. And when he heard the thump of boots landing near his head, he remembered the man who ran through Mr Mülheim with his sabre. Pasha tried to move but his body was fighting something else. If only he could reach for a piece of glass.

  Pasha felt himself lifted. It reminded him of his father carrying him to his room. Pasha’s cheek rubbed against the tunic of the impostor. He felt a metal button. He knew that he was being kidnapped. He was a valuable prize. To rage against his immobility was to rage against his body, which was now his enemy.

  Then, with a growl of effort from the impostor, he was thrown across the withers of a sturdy horse. The animal snorted. It was unhappy with the load. Then the three of them were galloping across the palace square. Pasha could do nothing but watch the rushing surface. His puffed face bounced against the flank. The horse’s smell was nauseating.

  With a flourish, the impostor reined back on the horse. Another horse, belonging to a real guard officer, trotted by. Pasha was desperate to call out, but nothing more than a choking sound left his throat. The impostor did not stop to talk. In a strained voice, he called, ‘The boy is safe. Raise the alarm!’

  They galloped on before the guard could reply. Pasha heard the hinge of the gate to Alexander Park and they were through. The deception had worked; Pasha spat bitterly.

  The impostor wheeled the horse from the road and, in moments, they had lost themselves in the silence of the wood. Pasha saw nothing but the passing ground. There was a greater silence as the horse slowed to a stop. She was steaming with effort. Foam had caked Pasha’s cheek.

  The impostor turned to Pasha and lifted his chin. Their eyes met. Pasha watched as Ms Tucholsky tipped her head forward and removed her cap. Her packed hair fell free. His last impression of her before unconsciousness smothered him was one of rage. She kicked the tree, but not with the control that had allowed her to flick the cigarette from his mouth. She fought with the buttons on her jacket. When it was open, she took a full breath and said an English word that Pasha had never heard before.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the early evening, Saskia sat beneath an arch in the Beggars’ Market, an area in the Viasemskaya-Lavra quarter where the poor of St Petersburg gathered. She wore a boat cloak over her cape. There was ash on her cheeks. Parts of a trampled chicken, several days dead, were tucked into her boot-tops; the odour of putrefaction was sharp. Taken together, these precautions had deterred most of her tramp suitors, though one had suffered a fall and now regarded her tearfully from a newspaper nest not thirty feet away. Above the arches, it was raining, and the soot dripped blackly upon them all. She listened to the drops and parsed a structure there. The portal in the Amber Room would open once more, for the last time, at the midnight of six days hence.

  Saskia remained still as a spider while the ladies from the night-shelter toured the poor, offering blankets and food vouchers. She watched them step around the vomit and broken glass. They ignored the unholy language and the fierce copulation. They only shook their heads. Saskia was impressed by them. She was less impressed by the St Petersburg police, who never thought to search for her among the filth.

  Her thoughts moved to Kamo. Perhaps he had watched the house of the Count and followed her, that morning, to the Summer Palace. She shook her head at the thought because Kamo had been riding in the palace square at the moment Saskia and Pasha arrived. Kamo had been waiting, not following. He had arranged for a disguise and lost himself among the Horse Guards.

  If someone in the Nakhimov house had betrayed her, how had Kamo guessed that she had hidden the spoils of the Tiflis bank robbery in the Amber Room? He had waited until they were on the threshold. Then he had attacked. His plan, as far as Saskia could work out, would have been to kill Mr Mülheim and the boy, for they were witnesses, and hold Saskia captive until the money was recovered. With the roubles located, he would improvise: take Saskia with him to Finland, perhaps for sentimental reasons, risking another betrayal; or murder her at once.

  She didn’t think that Kamo could carry the money alone. Had he
intended to keep Saskia alive and engage her as a helper? Perhaps he found it as difficult to kill her as she found it difficult to kill him. One night in Baku, that stinking oil town, Kamo had said he loved her.

  There was another explanation. It was possible that Kamo was not alone in the Summer Palace. Perhaps another man had been waiting elsewhere. Watching.

  Soso.

  She could imagine him in the shadows. He would stand with one eye looking around the doorframe. He would watch Saskia and Kamo. Their fight would be no more to him than that of cocks in the pits, spurring each other to a ragged death. Yes, Saskia could imagine that shadowed man. She could even imagine his words should Saskia have killed his faithful Kamo.

  ‘Lynx! Leave him. Let’s run this loot into Finland. What do you say?’

  ~

  At eight o’clock, Saskia saw a man hurry parallel to the railings that enclosed one side of the market. She tilted her head. Cartilage cracked. She held her breath and tugged out the rotting chicken. By the time the man had reached the entrance, Saskia was on her feet. She walked towards him. He backed away from her.

  Robespierre had covered his mouth with a handkerchief. She pulled it away. His expression changed from disgust to hope. She kissed him once on the lips.

  ‘They’re the only part of me that’s clean,’ she said. ‘You could call the rest a disguise.’

  His face contorted with wonder.

  ‘But you were bound for your far home and leaving our strange lands.’

  Tears ran through the ash on her cheeks. Here she was, having failed to enter the Amber Room, covered in muck, and Robespierre was quoting Pushkin.

  ‘I’m not there yet. Will you still help me?’

  ‘With all my powers. I promised, after all.’

  ‘I was afraid my message got lost,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d given the urchin too much, or too little.’

  ‘We are both lucky. I am seldom in Petersburg these days.’

  Robespierre took her arm and led her from the market. One woman called, ‘It’s buy one, get one free, your honour!’ and there was hearty laughter. Robespierre pressed the handkerchief to his face once more and moved Saskia along.

  ‘My carriage is outside. Are you in trouble?’

  She nodded. She was thinking that a return to the Summer Palace, and its Amber Room, would be difficult indeed.

  Kamo, she thought, where are you?

  ‘Listen,’ Robespierre said. ‘I have some identity papers on loan from a friend of a friend. I was saving them for a special occasion. A princess.’ He looked at her. As always, he was embarrassed, and a little upset with his embarrassment. ‘The friend, I mean. You may have them. There is a hotel near the Bouffes Theatre.’ He sneezed. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Actually, I just need a boat.’

  ~

  Two hours before the dawn, Saskia was crouched in a rowboat on the Moika. She wore her liberty corset, bloomers and canvas slippers. All were dyed black. Rain crackled on the leaves and drummed in the boat. The sounds seemed to emphasise her impatience as she waited for the top of the hour. Then she ascended the quayside stairs to a padlocked door halfway up. She pulled at the slipknots that held her ten-piece picking set to her left forearm. She defeated the lock easily.

  The passage led to a stone basement. It was dark, but images came to her nonetheless: it was stacked with wine, empty fruit crates, and luggage cases. Everything smelled damp. There was a wooden door. Its pin-tumbler took her six minutes to unlock using her picking set. When the door was unlocked, she found a staircase leading to a second door.

  The door opened onto Count Nakhimov’s pied-à-terre. She was standing in an octagonal dining room with a simple table and high-backed chairs. The quality of the air suggested that the room had not been opened for several days. Through a frosted window, she could see streetlight. She closed the door behind her. It was designed to close flush with the wall and, once closed, seemed to disappear. Saskia walked around the perimeter with her fingers brushing the plaster. She felt a trace of moving air on the wall opposite the door she had entered through. Sure enough, there was another door. She pressed and it swung open.

  It revealed a drawing room, not quite dark, separated into two unequal parts by pillars and a half-drawn curtain. Saskia concentrated hard on processing the image that fell on her retinas. In the smaller, raised part was a bed. The room was furnished in mahogany. Holland linen hangings covered the walls. Otherwise, the room was empty.

  Saskia hurried through the house. She passed the Countess’s reception room. The paintings were dark, colourless smudges. The piano lid was closed and silent. As Saskia regained her breath, she listened for footsteps in the interstices between the steady click of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Other clocks, other clicks, rattled the house. Within her, a mechanism sampled those clicks, noted their regularity, and subtracted them from her perception. Now the silence deepened. She heard a servant blackleading a stove in the basement; mice; a cat; wood contracting; water lapping; a cough; a sigh.

  As she moved to leave the room, a small glow scored a line on her vision. It came from a shelf near the chimney. She took the object, a pocket watch, and touched her thumb to the Imperial Eagle on the front of the case. The reverse indicated that it was produced by Pavel Buhre, Imperial Watchmaker, for the occasion of the Countess’s birthday. Saskia opened it. The dials and hands exhibited a fierce glow. Saskia frowned at the contraption and closed it. Radioactive luminescent paint. She slipped it into her waistband.

  Saskia ascended the floors, keeping to an uncarpeted third of the marble staircase. Her footsteps were soundless. She passed a descending cat. It did not stop but slowed to give her a polite blink before moving on.

  ~

  In the corridor on the second floor, Saskia paused as a clock reached the hour: something spun inside it as a prelude to a chime, but the chime did not come. It was as though a breath had been taken and held. Slowly, Saskia turned her head. She noted a line of brass samovars; a Bible with a metal clasp; a framed map based on the Draft Of Moscovia. The shadows rolled back under her regard.

  Nobody there.

  She opened the door of Pasha’s room and stepped inside, closing it behind her. This room was completely dark, too. For a moment, she had difficulty seeing. Then she moved to the edge of his bed and sat on the corner.

  ‘Hello, Pavel Eduardovitch,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hello, Ms Tucholsky,’ he replied. The words were precise, even rehearsed. In Saskia’s heightened vision, his eyes were black crescents in a milky face. He was sitting up against pillows and his fingers were laced. The thread of his initials, PAB, sparkled on the breast pocket of his pyjamas. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘For an hour or so after one of my spells, I need to sleep. But then I’m fine.’ He paused. There was a measured aspect to his tone. Saskia guessed that he was unsure how to play their conversation. ‘Mother likes me to stay in bed, though, so I do.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re better.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now return to me what you have stolen.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked. The surprise was almost genuine.

  ‘Don’t apologise, Pasha. Just hand it over.’

  Pasha reached under his pillow and withdrew a folded handkerchief. He held it out for Saskia to take. When she unfolded the handkerchief, she saw the band. In the darkness, its finish was marbled. She passed it over her stump and pushed it into the crook of her left elbow.

  ‘Why did you take it?’

  His head tilted back. The pride of a nobleman was there, nascent.

  ‘Because I wanted to see you again.’

  ‘And yet the darkness here is complete, Pavel Eduardovitch. Bad luck.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She yawned.

  ‘Turn on your bedside light, if it pleases you.’

  ‘The filaments are broken ever since Monday, when I had the bad dream.’


  ‘I see.’

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘Do I sound angry?’

  Pavel swallowed.

  Don’t tell me you want to marry me, she thought.

  ‘I stole the band as you carried me to the taxi in the Tsar’s Village.’

  ‘I thought you were unconscious.’

  ‘It comes and goes.’

  Saskia said nothing for a long minute. Then she said, ‘Your English is excellent.’

  Pasha sighed and said, exasperated, ‘It didn’t do anything, you know. It didn’t glow or buzz.’

  Saskia removed the pocket watch from her waistband and opened the lid. Its green light reached her face.

  ‘Now you have your wish,’ she said. ‘You see me again.’

  ‘Hardly. What is that?’

  Saskia passed him the watch. He closed it, then opened it.

  ‘But this is my mother’s watch. Did you steal it?’

  ‘English idiom: “Two can play at that game.” Yes, I stole it a moment ago. I advise you to dig a hole and bury it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The luminescence is caused by the gradual decay of the material, a metal called radium. Each particle of radium comprises smaller particles. Some of these particles are called electrons. We derive the word electron from the Greek for amber, ήλεκτρον. The electrons, as well as some other particles, emanate away from the material. Some of this energy takes the form of visible light. This emanation is dangerous. It can cause sores and other, more serious diseases.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said Pasha. ‘If what you say is true, she can decide what to do about it.’

  ‘She won’t think it’s true.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell her to listen to the scientists.’

  ‘They don’t know about the dangerous emanation.’ She paused for effect. ‘Nobody does.’

  ‘How do you know these things?’

  ‘I’m your tutor,’ said Saskia. The shape of the words betrayed her smile, and Pasha smiled, too. ‘It is my job to know things that will give you an advantage.’