The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  The gentleman turns. Offers his ear.

  ‘Mariinksy, tonight,’ says the valet.

  The gentleman has a roll of roubles in the pocket of his waistcoat. He sheds one. The money amounts to a week’s pay for the valet, who returns inside the bathhouse, somewhat grateful to have escaped further attention from this cold gentleman.

  ~

  Night, which has fallen six short hours following this payment, is the medium through which Kamo moves as a planet between stars. Saskia is his moon. She is dressed as a princess and he as a prince. They approach the Mariinsky Theatre and look at its electric waterfall of light. Kamo squints at the sign. So the performance stars the celebrated Feodor Chaliapin. He smiles at Saskia.

  They remain on the pavement until a private coach arrives. The middle class theatre-goers make way for Draganov as he steps once, twice on the pavement before entering the theatre. Kamo hates that instinctive deference to nobility; he is still seething at it when they enter Draganov’s private box unseen. It is late in the performance, as the Fool for Christ sings his lament.

  The words, ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ soar from the limelit face on stage.

  The arrangement of the boxes is such that theatre-goers in the box behind can see Draganov plainly. To block him from others in the theatre, Saskia moves to his side. She smiles down. She feels Kamo, only feet away at the rear of the box, urging her. This is the instant. This is the murder of Draganov. Through a folded handkerchief, the knife slides into him by the coward’s route: between the ribs of his back.

  Draganov has no time to react. He can only contort and grasp the air. Already, blood is spooling from his shirt. Kamo wants the knife; he wants to make a final cut across the neck, for safety and to make his mark. Saskia refuses and the seconds move and the audience applauds. Kamo, at last, looks away. He motions towards the door of the booth with his head. Saskia follows him out. She drops the knife on the carpet, along with her handkerchief and their theatre tickets.

  To kill Draganov is to possess his nobility, Kamo thinks, to take the thing that made those people step aside as he entered the theatre.

  This is the whetted edge of revolution for Kamo. This is the steady unmaking of the State. There is a calm at last in his mind. For some, the killing is a fevered action, one part panic and two parts desperation. For Kamo, the calmer the moment, the colder his blood. It is with reptilian indifference that he looks across at Saskia. He is satisfied. His suspicions of her duplicity have burned down to little more than embers.

  Kamo blinks. His left eye hurts. Ever since that accident, shrapnel floats in its humour. Can he even be sure that Draganov is dead? Perhaps he should check; perhaps he should wait for the dazzle of the limelight to fade, then check the face of the man they have killed.

  Kamo thinks of the gas jet striking the lime. There are tears—flow, flow, bitter tears. He misses Tiflis.

  When they emerge on the street, Kamo is a calmer man.

  The calmer the moment, the colder the blood.

  They are too distant to hear the screams when the body is discovered, if indeed there are screams at all in these troubled times.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Robespierre had prepared them a soup and placed it in the centre of the library to cool. He was no longer in the apartment. Saskia cut some bread with a book knife and gave it to Kamo. They were sitting on the rug between the couches. The light was minimal: two candles. Upon an alarm, they could be extinguished quickly.

  ‘Another man is dead,’ said the Georgian, scratching his bald chin. There was a sadness about him that contrasted with the gaiety Saskia associated with the aftermath of his previous crimes.

  ‘You travelled too quickly from Tiflis. Your soul has yet to catch up with you. Eat this.’

  Kamo snorted. He put his bread into the soup and, folding the dripping hunk, pushed it into his mouth.

  Saskia brushed at the dried blood on her dress.

  ‘They die so differently,’ Kamo said. ‘Each one. Don’t they?’

  ‘We needed to do it. Didn’t you say so? You must know that Draganov and I were never in league. There you have your proof.’

  ‘Understand me, Lynx. We have assassinated one of the okhranniki. The echo of this bullet—’

  ‘It was a knife,’ said Saskia, abruptly angry. ‘It was my knife and I killed him and we had to.’

  ‘There are many police,’ Kamo continued. His eyes were lowered. ‘They divide like worms when cut. I do wonder at my wisdom. Soso would know what to do.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  He looked at her. ‘With each utterance, you grow stupider in my eyes. We have murdered, but this is not some petty official.’

  ‘Why must I keep telling you?’ Saskia asked. She plunged her cup into the cauldron of soup. Sipping the sharp, vinegarish liquid, she lay back against a couch. It moved a little, feet groaning on the wood. ‘I read Draganov’s name in the visitor book of the Summer Palace,’ she lied. ‘He knew about us. Maybe he was following me. Do you want to enter the palace and be arrested in the act of retrieving the money? We won’t talk any longer about the necessity of it. Why are you talking like a woman? Eat.’

  Kamo tipped his head to one shoulder and sighed. The gesture was absurdly adolescent. He was thirty years old by his own claim, the same age as Saskia, and yet he carried daylight in his eyes and might have passed as a student of the seminary. ‘Where were his guards?’

  ‘He had no guards. He had a private taxi outside the theatre. There was no reason to suspect that he would be attacked during a performance.’

  Kamo pulled off his boots. ‘I am uneasy. Even the mention of his name in the visitors’ book of the Summer Palace makes my whiskers—what is left of them—twitch. Why would such an officer of the Protection Department provide his name?’

  ‘Everybody must provide their name.’ She gestured to Kamo. ‘Except those who enter in fancy dress.’

  ‘But why give his own name?’

  ‘He doesn’t need a pseudonym. His identity is unknown.’

  ‘It is known to you, Lynx.’

  She nodded. ‘Of course. But it was given to me under special circumstances. He wanted to recruit me, remember?’

  ‘There are elements of your train journey last year that I am not happy with.’

  ‘Happy? So what?’

  Kamo grinned. The soup had darkened his teeth. ‘Tell me once more the story of your journey to St Petersburg last autumn, following my fall from the train.’

  Saskia closed her eyes. Her voice, weakened with fatigue, drew her thoughts on. The quiet thumping of the antiquated rolling stock. As her voice continued, marking her first encounter with Draganov in that shuddering train corridor, a great sorrow opened within her like a relaxing fist. She wanted to leave for the future. She wanted to go home.

  ~

  The traffic on Nevsky Avenue was a slow stampede. A fog came from the Gulf of Finland and paled everything. Saskia was standing near a pie seller outside the Ministry of Justice building. The meat smelled good. She stamped her thin boots and when an automobile back-fired noisily, she pictured a runaway phaeton in a dusty town square. After that, the smell of meat was too much. She drew her finger along the wall, collecting soot, and smudged it beneath her eyes. She smacked her lips as though her mouth held no teeth. Finally, she turned her right foot inwards and walked, slowly, to a fishmonger. There she waited within the stink until a man walked past holding a bouquet of purple and lilac carnations.

  A bud dropped at her feet. The man stooped for it but the bouquet made the action too awkward to complete. Saskia, grunting, snagged the carnation with a trembling hand and replaced it in the bouquet. The man tilted his hat forward in thanks, then continued his journey down the street. He was one man among hundreds once more.

  Saskia swayed. Her eyes looked at nothing as a policeman passed with a dog. When a minute had passed, she limped into a block of shadow and read the message on the paper that had been concealed in the f
olds of the flower. Then she ate it.

  It tasted like carnation.

  Follow me, the note had read.

  She looked down the Nevsky Avenue and saw the flower man. He was almost one hundred metres away, opposite the Kazan Cathedral. Saskia watched as he entered the great, granite block of Singer House.

  With her limp, she took long minutes to reach the building. Its door reminded her of a golden clock in a glass jar. An elderly clerk was walking down its steps. Saskia passed through the door before it had closed.

  The foyer was thick with sprays of flowers, palm trees, and wicker screens, behind which she could hear the low voices of a dozen conversations. She crossed the empty floor. Black and white chequerboard. Her limp had gone. There were seven carnations in the sand of the ash tray next to the elevator. Saskia stepped into the car. The attendant was a boy of sixteen, not older. He wore his hat at a severe angle and his chin strap was frayed, but his black uniform was otherwise impeccable.

  ‘Don’t worry, madam,’ he said. His accent placed him somewhere in the northern peninsula, perhaps Murmansk. ‘It’s as safe as a fine old horse.’

  Saskia smiled. The boy had detected discomfort as she stepped into the elevator. She did not like them. The technology was still experimental. This car was new, like the building, and like the boy.

  ‘The top floor, please. I’m expected.’

  ‘Right away, madam.’

  As he closed the door and turned the winch handle clockwise, Saskia sat on the velvet couch and inspected herself in the mirror. She licked a thumb and removed the dirt beneath her eyes. Again, she wondered who she was. She undid her neckerchief. She scratched her hair and shook her head. When she looked away from the mirror, she noticed that the boy was studying her with the attitude of a man who has cracked the simple code of a prostitute’s apparel.

  ‘Chocolate?’ he asked, offering a brown paper bag.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She felt the moment die within him.

  The floors passed. Their doors were dull, frosted glass, and each pane read “Singer”.

  The car stopped. The boy opened the door on a large room. Saskia stepped out.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  She heard the doors close behind her, and the slow descent of the car. Her senses keened for the smallest warning note: man whispering to man; a cork leaving the end of a knife; a light switch twisted.

  The floor was an immaculate rink of red, white and black tiles. Potted palms softened the corners and arched windows looked onto the Nevsky Avenue. Electric chandeliers buzzed with the intensity of twilight. Elegant tables and chairs were arranged throughout the room. A silver service had been placed on the table in the centre. Saskia’s bloodstained handkerchief was on one of the plates. At the table, lounging over a chair in adolescent, bored repose was the man Saskia had recently murdered before the eyes of Kamo.

  Alexei Draganov saw her and stood up. He wore a long fur coat, which opened as he moved. Saskia noticed the details: the bouncing chain of his watch; the blue-gold tie beneath his red beard; a comma of ash on his lapel from a recent cigar. Her eyes lifted to his as he gripped her cheeks, hard, and kissed her three times. And he hugged her like a big brother. Her heels rose in her felt boots.

  ‘I got your message,’ he said.

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘Did it work? Was it worth it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. We can go ahead.’

  Draganov released her from the hug but held her elbows. His eyes were Baltic blue.

  ‘We can talk of current matters here, but not about the name I first used for you in Sukham. Do you follow?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘You understand too, I hope, that being dead puts me in a difficult position. Silences must be purchased. The simple-minded people need to be told stories. But they talk. They always do. And there are good relations with the theatre management that our organisation must maintain. That was put in jeopardy.’

  Saskia said, teasingly, ‘If you won’t help me get into the Summer Place, I need someone who will. That man is Kamo.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I take it that you do not wish to publicise your death?’

  ‘No more than I wish to publicise Kamo’s daring escape yesterday. With colleagues, I have taken the decision to erase these incidents from the troubled public mind. Kamo is convinced? You will go ahead with the retrieval?’

  ‘He is. We will.’

  Draganov strode towards the table. ‘I demand that you eat something. I have ice-cold roe and bread and butter. And vodka, for your health. Come.’

  He settled her into a padded chair. ‘Eat this.’ He placed a cracker filled with roe on her tongue. She shuddered as the eggs burst. ‘And for goodness’ sake, put this on.’ He removed his coat and threw it across her like a sleigh fur. ‘Then tell me why you look like a panda, and why you wear your hair down. Are you sad? It means sadness where I come from.’

  ‘Let me look at your back. Did I hurt you?’

  ‘As for my health, there was a tickle. Nothing at all to worry about.’

  Saskia replaced her half-eaten bread on its plate.

  ‘I don’t consider it attended to unless the person doing the attending is me.’

  Draganov glared at her. Then he sighed and leaned forward. Saskia took the vodka and, with a practiced action, tipped some over her palm. Draganov groaned between his knees. ‘It’s not worth spilling vodka, as my father used to say.’

  ‘Come closer. Put your waistcoat up further. I can’t see.’

  She tugged up the waistcoat, the shirt and the vest. For a large man, Draganov had little fat. Saskia located the puncture wound and let the vodka dribble across it. Draganov hissed.

  ‘You are unusually trim,’ she said.

  ‘I run. It is the English habit. Have you finished filling my trousers with vodka? I remind you that, only hours ago, you poured sheep’s blood down my back.’

  She touched the skin around the wound. There was no redness or swelling.

  ‘I’ve finished. The wound is clean for now.’

  Draganov sat up. His stomach, though muscled, expanded as he tried to pull down the waistcoat, and Saskia, reaching for her cracker, noticed more puncture wounds on his abdomen. ‘You’ve been living dangerously.’

  ‘I am living. It amounts to the same. The important things for us is that Kamo believes I am dead.’

  ‘That he does. And he is prepared to make a second attempt on the money.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘With me.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘How much does he know?’

  ‘Less than me. Not as much as you.’

  ‘Has he made contact with his boss, Ulyanov?’

  ‘Ah.’

  Saskia remembered Lenin as a short man with an unusually feminine voice. He was, perhaps, the most gifted orator she had ever heard. Lenin held men in thrall. It was difficult to find a worker who had not read Lenin’s pamphlets. And he was the only man to whom Soso considered himself inferior.

  ‘My dear,’ said Draganov, ‘it is important that we allow Kamo to contact whomsoever he wishes. There is a golden thread that runs all the way to our friend in Finland. I want the money to flow. Then we will follow the river. Krasin, Lenin, wherever.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest Ulyanov?’

  ‘That depends. We will do whatever it takes to damage the Party. Bolshevik or Menshevik, I’m not fussy. But these organisations are best cut at the neck, not the ankle. Even the old anarchists knew that principle.’

  ‘Revolution,’ said Saskia, tonelessly. ‘There’s no mistaking their ambition.’

  ‘Or mine.’

  ‘What would you give to see the future, Draganov?’

  For the first time during their meeting, the secret policeman seemed uncomfortable. He rubbed his red beard.

  ‘A wit will answer: “I would give nothing, because I intend to make it”
. However, more honestly, I would give everything. Who wouldn’t?’ His expression shifted from challenge to hope. ‘Do you trust me? Wait. I should not ask that question. Let me say this. You may not understand my motivations at this moment. But they are true. They connote the best of my actions. I do what must be done.’

  Saskia stared at him. This cryptic admission compelled her to ask a question that had been building, rising within her, since the moment she stepped into the Summer Palace.

  ‘Why did you go to the palace, Draganov?’

  ‘I was looking for the money.’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘No. Would you care to solve the mystery and tell me where it is?’

  She frowned. ‘It should not matter to you where it is, if you are only interested in tracing its route back to Lenin.’

  ‘Not true,’ said Draganov, smiling. ‘If I were to snatch it, mid-flow, its loss would be as damaging to the party as the arrest of Lenin himself. The sum is greater than any ever stolen, my dear. It would keep the Party solvent for years.’

  Saskia turned to her view of the stars in the windows.

  ‘What do you see?’ he asked. ‘There are no stars. The lights of the city are too bright here.’

  ‘There are always stars. Even in the daylight there are stars.’

  ‘You should have been a poet.’

  ‘Lo que será. Nothing can change, not really.’

  ‘My man will take you home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said Draganov, removing his coat from Saskia so that the chill stole across her. ‘Kamo, if his sources are good, will discover that a favourite of the Empress will be permitted to hold his annual masked ball at the Summer Palace tomorrow evening. There will be an army presence. We live in troubled times when the army is called in to do police work. Do you know how many mutinies our reliable old army has enjoyed in the past three years? Almost eight hundred.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. But it makes no difference. Can you get us tickets?’