Belshazzar's Daughter

by Barbara Nadel

  Misha was still at the window when he got there, trembling. He and Robert looked at each other, but nothing passed between them. The young man was almost totally blank, Natalia’s cunning face rendered passionless and insensible. It was an obscene travesty. It taunted Robert. On the one hand he wanted to kiss her thick red lips one more time but on the other …

  A noise like the creaking of a large boat groaned agonizingly from the center of the room. The two men at the window looked round. But there was nothing to see. All that had been in the room: the great bed, the golden ikons, the sad mock-empire furniture, the people—all were covered in red and yellow and the eerie green that signifies the presence of gas. Evil green, Natalia’s favorite type of gold.

  A gulp of air, big, like a wind, funnelled in through the open window. Sucked up by the house. The flames rejoiced and lengthened their bodies in celebration. It was like watching some sort of joyous tribal dance. Joyous because the fire loved it so, because the bigger it got the more beautiful it became. Natalia had been a flame.

  Illusions live in fire. In cold countries like Britain people gather round their fires in the winter and look for pictures among the liquid, shifting fingers of brightly pulsating and impermanent color. Robert’s grandmother, Millie, had seen the Devil once, or so she had claimed. He’d had a thin blue chin like a stiletto. Robert had always been good at seeing pictures too. His family had commented on it. But as he saw the side walls of the house puff outward like old, dry cheeks he wondered, as he had done when he’d seen Misha in Balat that day, whether it was not just his mind deceiving his eyes. What sounded like a clap of thunder from beneath his feet punched its way into the body of the room. The sound hit what remained of the ceiling and for just a fraction of a second everything was still. As the flames subsided he saw three burning heads. Features, if that is what they once were, slid down their faces and gave their static forms the appearance of waxworks. Sad, defunct waxworks.

  Misha saw it too and with a scream climbed out of the window and on to the roof. But Robert didn’t follow him. What the boy was doing was without point. There was nothing left to do now but wait.

  The floor gave way beneath the weight of her bed and all the other accumulated gewgaws of self-delusion. Robert gripped tightly on to the burning window-frame and felt the sickening sensation of fat and blood boiling in his hands. The three waxworks plunged down into the white-hot pit and were replaced by a massive, muscular tongue of thick red fire. It seemed to turn and look at him and Robert knew that it had both sense and intent. His feet scrabbled backward as he tried to maintain some sort of hold on the thin ledge of floor that remained. The huge flame breathed in sensuously and let its swollen belly billow toward him. It kissed him, open mouthed, about the cheek and on the tip of his nose.

  One of Robert’s wrecked hands moved up to push the flame away. But as it wheeled forward it overbalanced and plunged into the pit with the waxworks taking the rest of his silent body with it. Other, smaller flames took him and consumed him.

  Chapter 25

  The whole crowd as one body saw the man pull himself through the open window and stagger out on to the roof. Everything around him was burning and if the fire brigade didn’t get someone up to him soon he was going to die very horribly and publicly. The men holding the hoses shouted at those operating the pump to switch the water off. They’d only just started spraying the building but it was too risky to continue with someone stuck precariously on the roof. One glancing touch of just the spray from such powerful jets could have him overbalancing and tumbling into the street.

  One particularly nimble fireman jumped up on to the hydraulic ladder and signaled to others to winch him up. He pointed toward the man and the rest of the crew started to ease the ladder round, positioning it ready for extension.

  Ikmen placed his hand very heavily and obviously on Suleyman’s shoulder. It wouldn’t be long. The man was already up on the roof and very soon it would occur to him that his safest course of action was to jump. That was natural enough given Homo sapiens’s innate fear of fire. All Ikmen wondered was how long it would take him to fall. He thought about ordering Suleyman to the back of the crowd, but by that time it was too late.

  “He’s going to jump!”

  They all shouted it, the stupid bastards! It was almost as if they were encouraging him. The fireman on the end of the ladder urged his comrades to get him in position now. There was a flurry of frenzied activity around the tender. Ikmen only moved his eyes for a millisecond to look at this action, but it broke his concentration.

  Suleyman darted forward. “Stay where you are! Don’t move!”

  Ikmen reacted immediately, but however fast he ran he couldn’t match the young man’s long athletic strides. I’ve fucked it up! he thought to himself. I’ve come all this way and I’ve fucked it up! He felt himself start to cry and brushed the tears roughly away from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “He’s going to jump!” They shouted it again! The poor fireman on the end of the ladder screamed at them to stop, but his voice got lost in the general sound of mayhem and panic that roared up from the crowd. Everyone was so afraid and yet no one could stop looking.

  The man on the roof bent his knees and flung his arms out to the sides as if preparing to launch himself like a bird. Suleyman had stopped now and was waving and shouting up at him. If only Ikmen’s winded body could get there in time to pull him back. He urged himself forward through the pain and put one arm out in front of him. Suleyman was directly below the man now.

  * * *

  Oh, it was a long way down! The people looked like some toys he’d once had, little wooden people whose heads and arms moved when twisted sharply. They’d always ended up in odd, jerky poses, those figures, even when he had wanted them to be relaxed and calm.

  One of the figures below was closer than the others and seemed to be shouting at him, but he couldn’t make out any words. Perhaps he was trying to tell him that he was forgiven and that everything would now be all right. But it wouldn’t. If you killed someone, even someone as wicked as Uncle Leonid, nothing could ever make that better ever again. Uncle Nicky had said so and therefore it had to be true.

  The roof was very hot now. Under his feet things that were usually solid bubbled like liquid. Nobody else had come out on to the roof after him. He liked to think that somehow they’d managed to make it back down the stairs, but he knew that wasn’t so. They were all dead, which was perhaps where they should always have been. If Grandmama had died in Ekaterinburg none of it would have happened. He wouldn’t have happened—the dynasty would have just died when it was supposed to. Perhaps there really were proper times for things. Maybe by keeping the Romanovs alive Grandmama had committed some kind of sin. That Uncle Nicky was his father had sounded odd, but whether that was wrong or not was beyond him.

  Another man was running toward the one who continued to shout at him. This looked peculiar because surely if the second man wanted the first to stop shouting all he had to do was say so. Turks were different like that, he’d watched them. They weren’t a logical people, which explained why he didn’t like them very much. Russians were better, Grandmama had always said so. He felt a little sad when he thought about Russia. He’d always wanted to go “home,” but now it was too late.

  Somebody on the end of a ladder was coming toward him but he remained calm. He wouldn’t reach him and even if he did it wouldn’t matter. He had his own plans. He looked down at the ground again. It was a very long way and he had no doubt that it would hurt. The family would never have credited him with such perception, but he’d always known that he possessed that quality. He could reason and think like the rest of them. Perhaps at a different rate and along, to them, different lines, but he had always been able to do it. Duty, that was what it had been about. And he fully understood duty—that was very important. Grandmama had often said that people had criticized the Tsar for being too rigid in his sense of duty to the dynasty, he’d died because of i
t. So it had to be a good thing, didn’t it?

  But then not even that mattered anymore. His feet felt boiling hot and even without looking he knew that his shoes were burning. He hurt all over. Strangely, though, he wasn’t hot. The feeling was one of being stabbed many times. Not that that sensation would last for long. He was out in the open, the smoke couldn’t possibly overcome him as it had done Uncle Serge. But that wasn’t important now. The important thing was to get off the roof away from the flames. If that could be done then at least he could retain some dignity. The others hadn’t, which meant that it was now up to him. Was it the right thing to do? He thought he’d done the right thing before …

  Best to do it before too much thought got in the way! Misha spread his arms out wide and closed his eyes. Until he hit the ground it would be quite pleasurable, like flying. He let his knees go limp and toppled forward.

  * * *

  Ikmen thought his lungs would burst as he lurched forward and grabbed Suleyman with both hands and pulled him backward.

  The most sickening sound that either of them had ever heard followed as the living body of the man smashed into the pavement before them and expired. It was a damp, dark, purple noise like the sound a fishmonger makes when he slaps squid down on his wooden chopping board. For a moment both men stayed absolutely still. Ikmen’s ear, pressed hard against Suleyman’s back, rejoiced in the sound of his strong, heavy breathing. Whatever horror lay on the ground before them, at least he was alive and for that Ikmen thanked the God in which he did not believe. There was no other being he could thank, certainly not himself. It had been too close for that.

  Ikmen pulled himself out from underneath Suleyman’s body and looked around. Two firemen were running toward them, their faces darkened by what looked like terror. Suleyman sank backward on to the ground and Ikmen bent across him. Suleyman was covered with blood. He lay on his back trembling, looking at his gore-stained hands, trying not to touch them to his body.

  Ikmen took him gently by the shoulders and tried to pull him into a sitting position. The blood was unpleasant to the touch as it was still warm, but Ikmen had to try. Suleyman was starting to cry and if he stayed on his back he’d choke on his own tears. But it wasn’t easy. Suleyman didn’t want to move. He turned his head to one side and pressed his shoulders hard into the ground in order to keep his body where it was. Ikmen looked down toward Suleyman’s feet and saw why. The body of the man had landed on its stomach, which had burst on impact. Blood and offal were spattered in pools all around, although it was Suleyman himself who had taken the brunt of the mess. It had splashed and slopped up at him; the blood into his face and eyes, more unpleasant and happily unidentifiable things clung like bloody leeches to his legs and feet. The face of the dead man was familiar to Ikmen and not for the first time he felt sorry for the boy. What his place had been in the peculiar drama that had surrounded the Gulcus, Ikmen realized he would probably never know. In fact everything that had passed since the death of Leonid Meyer was suddenly feeling very alien to him. The Gulcu house was burning, there was still no sign of Cornelius and now this boy, this dead boy.

  “Are you all right?”

  Ikmen looked round and saw the two firemen bending over Suleyman’s weeping body. He knew he should have answered the firefighters, it was always important to ascertain who was injured and who was not. But he couldn’t speak. That Suleyman was alive was enough for the moment because he knew that it could all have been so different. Ikmen touched his sergeant’s face and felt his mouth move beneath his hand. It was a miracle.

  A pair of strong arms pulled him away from Suleyman and set him unsteadily on his feet. Ikmen became aware of the crowd again. The noise of their crying and screaming filtered through the temporary stop his mind had put inside his ears. They’d come to see a drama and had found themselves inside a horror. They were seeing just the edge of the blackness that had tortured his soul since the beginning of the Meyer affair: the past crashing bloodily into the present.

  The second of the two firemen lifted Suleyman to his feet and led him away from the scene in front of Ikmen. Behind them the house burned on in spite of the hoses pouring thousands of liters of water at its white-hot heart. All sorts of substances were playing their part: wood, gas, oil, the complicated biochemistry of the human body.

  Around the back of the largest fire tender an ambulance was waiting. At its open back door, beside the paramedics, was a very shaken Constable Cohen. The paramedics took Suleyman from the arms of the fireman and loaded him silently into the vehicle. He didn’t look at Cohen, or even appear to be aware that he existed. Shock. At least if Suleyman was in shock it meant that he would be blank and therefore without anguish for a few hours, Ikmen thought grimly.

  As for himself? Even though Ikmen knew that he should go to hospital himself and let a doctor just check him out, he had already decided that he wouldn’t. When the fire was out there would be time enough for that. That he was just as helpless as all the other spectators was not sufficient excuse. He’d found the Gulcus, he couldn’t leave them now.

  Ikmen disengaged himself from his fireman escort and walked across to Cohen. He opened his mouth to speak, but only found one word. “What…?”

  Cohen clasped one hand across his eyes and sighed. He replied in kind. “What?”

  Ikmen breathed rapidly and shallowly as if panicking. “What … what … were you doing here?”

  Cohen looked at Ikmen somewhat askance. He didn’t tend to trust people in shock. “We came to find you, sir. And to look for this Englishman who might have done for—”

  “But I told Suleyman to take the day off! I told him because I…” His head hurt and he put his hand up to it gently. He must have banged it on the ground when he fell, not that he could remember.

  Cohen took him by the arm and led him away from the ambulance. He too knew Ikmen should go to hospital, but he also knew that the Old Man would resist if forced. “Hasn’t anyone told you yet then, sir?”

  “Told me what?” There was smoke everywhere and it made him cough, but he lit a cigarette anyway.

  Cohen sat him down on a bollard. “Your wife went into labor this morning.”

  “Oh.” It was a very flat and uninterested response from a man just about to become a father. But then both of them were in the middle of a scene that looked like something from Dante’s Inferno. The smoke was so thick that even the faces of some of the spectators were smudged and smutted with soot. There was also a smell of burning meat on the air now. Cohen knew what that was, but he didn’t point it out to Ikmen. Ikmen sighed. “Fatma will kill me.”

  “Well, I can drive you there now, sir, if—”

  “Where’s Avcı?”

  “Oh, er, I don’t know.” Cohen looked about him but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

  “Well, look for him, will you, Cohen?” It was a panicky request. Ikmen needed to know that everyone was safe now. It was important.

  “All right, yes, um…”

  “Tell him to go to my apartment and inquire after my wife.”

  “You don’t want to go yourself?”

  Ikmen scowled. “Just do it.”

  With some reluctance Cohen left his boss and went to look for Avcı. Considering the gruesomeness of the occasion he fully expected to find him hiding somewhere.

  The ambulance carrying Suleyman sped off down the narrow street and was almost immediately replaced by another, empty vehicle. There were three paramedics attached to this one and they all looked very grim. One of their number, a short, stocky, Armenian-looking man, opened the back of the ambulance and took out a folded blue bag. Ikmen looked inside the vehicle and noticed that none of the patient stretchers had either pillows or mattresses. The Armenian unfolded the thick blue body bag. This wasn’t transport for the living.

  Ikmen stared straight ahead of him at the back of one of the fire tenders. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that at last the men of the fire brigade were getting the flames under control. Stra
nge really that wood should give them so many problems. If Ikmen hadn’t known better he might have said that the building actually wanted to burn. He laughed grimly to himself. Prophecy was one thing, but ascribing intelligence to fire? Sometimes he felt like the old fool Fatma always said he was. All he could do now was live in hope that at least some of them had survived the inferno—not that there was much chance of that. And with them had gone all the answers to those questions he had come to ask. Questions about Cornelius and the letter he had typed to the police, questions about who the Gulcus were and why they had killed Leonid Meyer, because now he knew that they had. They had killed him for that old crime, the one in Ekaterinburg all those lifetimes ago, the one the premise for which lay between those two old photographs that had belonged to Smits—the ones that rested in his pocket now. He knew all that. But what he had really wanted to know was now irrevocably lost. Who was Maria Gulcu really, because despite everything he still wouldn’t believe those photographs. He just couldn’t. And why had she waited seventy-four years before taking her revenge?

  The realization that he would now never know suddenly made him want to cry.

  * * *

  “Are you Inspector Ikmen?”

  He looked up and saw a tall thin man of about his own age wearing a fireman’s uniform. He was covered with soot and filth and looked exhausted.

  Ikmen knew how he felt. It had been hours since they had put the fire out, even the crowd had dispersed now, but he was still there. “Yes, I’m Ikmen. What is it?”

  The fireman took his helmet off and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “One of your men told me I should let you know when we start bringing the bodies out.”

  So here it was. Ikmen sighed and lit yet another cigarette. “Yes, thanks. How many bodies have you found?” Maria Gulcu’s last “Goodbye” flashed into his mind. That had sounded very final. Had she known?