He said to his steward, "Go and find someone in charge and discover what's happening. Act humbly. Remove your gloves and don't elevate your jaw. But mind you speak with authority or these traitors will think you're of no account. Use my name."
His steward rammed his gloves untidily into his pockets. He undid the buttons of his topcoat and shambled off like a prizefighter.
Igor turned on me: "Humbly, run after him and repeat the word. Before he gets us into trouble."
The steward hadn't been gone more than five minutes when a rumour took shape that an express for Moscow would depart from platform four—the central one, with the clock on it. I witnessed its birth: a young woman rushing away from the porters' cabin gripping her hat, blonde pigtails flying, her fat thighs struggling to go as fast as her brain was urging them. I could judge its progress by the wave of noise and activity that rolled though the station as sleepers awoke and leapt from their benches, their hair like tussocks of wind-blown grass, and straightway, as if they were just continuing a dream they'd all been sharing, started shouting at each other, "The clock! Make for the clock!"
The babushkas got their charges onto their sleepy feet and hurriedly began to pack up the encampment. Sewing was stuffed into deep bags of ribbed maroon velvet. Fistfuls of knitting needles spiked their balls of coloured wool and disappeared in seconds. Husbands whacked down their hats and crouched at the ready over the suitcases, hands curled round the leather grips.
"Where to?"
"To the clock, idiot, as fast as you can."
This was a scene repeated twenty times on each platform. Igor said calmly to me, "Look how it's always the women giving orders in a crisis. I'd have more confidence in this country of ours if it was ruled by a woman."
Within minutes everyone who'd gone to Nicholas Station to travel to Moscow had gathered on platform four where, astonishingly, the clock had been restarted and was showing quarter to seven. Even some who weren't travelling anywhere near Moscow were among them. There was a feeling of desperation, that any train would do so long as it took its passengers out of Petrograd.
The steward bustled towards us, his black-stubbled face showing how pleased he was with himself. He'd discovered what we already knew, and had a policeman in tow to escort Count Igor to his first-class compartment.
To get to the right place for first class we had to process— parade—down the length of the platform.
We were as follows: Kobi and myself, Borisholov and a couple of other officers, the steward, the footmen in breeches who were guarding the porters with the luggage barrows, and in the midst of the group my great-uncle Igor, skimming along with his strange walk, his top hat towering above everybody like a periscope.
There were no curtains over these people's minds. The policeman put an additional edge on their curiosity. Their crimped unslept eyes passed over most of us without comment: we were small fry. But when they alighted upon the Count and his powdered footmen and the policeman, they grew malicious. I could see the change: the film of weariness being yanked off like sticking plaster as the narrowing eyes dissected the top hat, the silver fox, the flesh-pink breeches of the footmen, and the quantity of fine leather baggage, every piece stamped with a black "R" and the Rykov wolf in gold.
Who is he? Why should he be guarded and we not? Is he a politician, one of those arrogant, incompetent, squabbling cowards? Did he vote for the war? Is he responsible for the death of my son—or my brother, or uncle? Thus the connections were made. There were no murmurings, just these harsh and hating looks. Calculations concerning wealth. Jealousy. Alarm lest Igor's presence on the train might attract a bomber. And thus to fear.
A small printed notice on a gaslight informed us we were at the right section for first-class passengers. The train arrived. Igor's baggage was dealt with. He tipped the policeman and his footmen, dismissing them with a flap of his dangling glove as if dispersing gnats. Then he went into his compartment to lie down. The steward and I exchanged looks of relief as we heard him fumbling with the lock. We went to join the others in an open carriage, one down from Uncle Igor.
Borisholov produced a pack of cards, which he gave to the steward to shuffle. He unfastened his holster belt, took out his revolver and laid it on the table. His fellow officers did the same. The three of them were sitting with their backs to the first-class carriage and thus had a clear view of anyone approaching.
His revolver was a Luger Kriegsmarine, nine inches long from tip to toe. I picked it up, chuckled it in my hand, aimed it through the window at a porter. The barrel was graceful and deadly. One knew immediately that a bullet that went down it went straight.
"Magazine takes eight," said Borisholov. "Parabellums. Ejects the empty and reloads itself. Pretty ... I had it off a German officer whom I took prisoner—in the days when we took Germans prisoner."
"Ammunition?"
"Universal." He exchanged seats with one of the other officers, so as to be on the outside, next to the aisle. "There are some thugs on this train that I wouldn't want in my regiment," was what he said, and he checked that his Luger was loaded.
We started to play cards.
Kobi went to sleep. He had no instinct for card games. And I thought he was still asleep when I completed the trade with Borisholov of my white swift for his Luger Kriegsmarine plus all the ammunition. With one hand I slid through the wreckage of the cards the light wooden box that Kobi had made for the bird. Borisholov took the swift out, showed it to his brother officers and kissed the top of its head.
"For my father's cabinet. His knees will go soggy when he sees it. We are both of us optimists—here, where it matters." He slipped his hand inside his blouse and patted his heart. His face grew light and his soft brown moustaches began to twitch. They seemed to radiate a special bloom, like a woman's newly washed hair, as he contemplated the pleasure his father would receive.
"First viewed coming head-high down the marketplace in Samarkand? Oh, I have the scene so clearly." He curved and darted his hand in imitation. "I'll give it him tonight. We'll get drunk. This bird is too noble for someone like you to own. Think, it can fly three times as fast as this train goes . . . My father will have a beautiful object to admire and you, who are at odds with the world, will have a weapon to defend yourself with."
"And you, my friend, will have to find another German who wants to surrender, which may not be so easy," said one of Borisholov's fellow officers to him.
I protested but Borisholov would have none of it. "You're in a hopeless situation with a woman. You're on the way to her wedding to another man. What are you going to do? Gallop away from the church with her kicking in your arms? Of course you've lost hope."
I drew Luger and ammunition towards me; three square buff boxes holding twenty rounds each. I stacked them on top of each other. Despite the waxed paper between each layer, the bullets chimed lightly. Something made me glance over at Kobi— it had been he who'd captured the swift. His diamond eyes were fixed on me; hard, unblinking, stripping me down to the gristle.
Thirty-eight
When we reached Moscow Igor went to the Club de la Noblesse for the night. Kobi and I billeted at a hotel beside Brest Station, so as to be handy. A little after dawn a train was flagged for ten o'clock. I telegraphed to Nicholas to have two coaches and the luggage wagon wait for us at Smolensk station from three o'clock onwards.
I need to be precise about this day.
When I pulled back the curtains I saw in the room opposite, across a narrow brick courtyard, a man whose stomach was ribbed with dark hair pulling up the shoulder straps of his long woollens.
I went out into the street and angling my head took the measure of the unattractive Moscow sky, which seemed to contain an extra dose of smoke particles that morning. I said to it, "No thank you, day, go and dump your stuff on another man. Pick on someone who can take it."
For breakfast I had two herrings, pickles and thin tea. After this I used the hotel's blue-tiled squats. They were built on a platfor
m about nine inches off the floor. The dividing stalls reached only as high as a man's waist. My neighbour, also buttoning his trousers, said to me across the partition, "The shit-holes here are more poisonous than anywhere I know. The whole of Moscow must run down a slope into them."
I tried to buy a newspaper at the station. The ink was smudged. Every copy in the pile was the same. I thought: someone is concealing information from me, and that information will be—Potocki is dead. I ran out into the street shouting Dead! Dead!" like Tarasov when he heard the news about Rasputin. A hundred yards away I found clean newspapers. Of course there was nothing about Potocki being dead. His filthy Polish tool would be up her after all.
Then our train arrived and on the dot of ten it departed, its punctuality striking every passenger as extraordinary and even ominous.
By now my sentiments for Igor, Nicholas, the Baklushins, Kobi, for everyone except Liza, had deteriorated to the point that I didn't mind if I never saw one of them again. As the train trundled to Smolensk at its pathetic moribund speed, things became steadily worse. I didn't sulk or get bad-tempered. I spoke civilly to everyone. But all along it felt as if my heart was being slowly hauled out and snipped to pieces in front of me. By the time I stepped down onto the platform at Smolensk I had determined to forget the rest of the day before it happened.
That day was January 29th, 1917.
The wind was small and bitter from the north-east. Towards the horizon the sky was layered in different tones, some ash white, others approaching the black of thunder. But above my head and around me, which was where it counted, it was as grey as a corpse.
The ground was hard and the ruts frozen solid.
A steam piledriver was at work in the goods yard. Its regular thumping was blocked by the armour plating of the sky and compelled to return to earth, at which point it released a faint sigh, or echo. The noise disturbed me, being difficult to define. I was so burdened by my dejection that I was ready to be unsettled by anything. Leaning over I shook my head violently, as if this echo were an insect that could be shaken out of my ear.
I knew I'd acted odiously by bartering away the white swift. Geographically it had been the last link with my father. I doubted I would ever return to Turkestan. The bird was part of that era so intimately connected to the Darwin Club, to Goetz, to Wiz, to museum work—to all that I'd accomplished in my life.
Betrayal, loss, desperation—I needed a miracle to rescue me. But it wasn't at Smolensk where Nicholas, pale and constrained, was waiting. After greeting Uncle Igor he took me aside.
My mother had died a month ago, at her home in Fulham, from influenza.
I felt nothing. Fate had already got me by the scruff of the neck, like a newborn kitten. I was so certain of being drowned anyway that another piece of bad news was without significance. The piledriver was battering away at my ears. It was not in my power to think for myself. I couldn't even swear that I'd heard him correctly. I asked him to repeat what he'd said.
He began to weep. On my behalf, because of my failure to do so through these other circumstances. I watched him do this with curiosity. "Your dear, dear mother . . ."
This made me angry. Just because his mother had been a nonentity who'd been forgotten half an hour after being buried didn't mean he could claim mine. He hadn't seen her for twenty years. All he was interested in was getting Liza declared Potocki's countess. My poor destitute mother was just a blob in his mind.
I said to him, "Keep your dishonest tears for yourself." I slipped his fumbling embrace and went blindly through the station rooms towards the cab rank—speaking to Nicholas like that had set me off, had opened the floodgate of my self-pity. I walked quickly so that he couldn't catch me up. There was another man between the double doors—a shadow in my blurring vision. Mechanically I stepped to one side—as did he. We tried again—a dance. Tears pouring down my face, I looked up. It was Andrej Potocki.
And now I want you to know what this man said to me, this cavalry officer and God alone knows what sort of bigwig who'd stolen my woman, who'd been lit up by the heavens in a golden sheen of glory and riches, whom I hated.
In his precise and militarily pompous voice he said: "Last month I was taken by an English destroyer from Arkhangelsk to Wick, in Scotland, where I caught a train to London. There were four of us. I was the junior. The purpose was to discuss the development of the war with certain British officials. I also went to see your mother, who always used to have sweets for me in her pocket, as if I were a pony. She was weak. It was turning to pneumonia. I think she knew she hadn't long. She'd been clearing up and had found a box of your father's most personal relics—their marriage certificate, a fob watch inscribed to his father, that sort of thing. I've brought the box with me. I'll give it to you when we get to Popovka."
He grabbed my arm urgently and his soft blue-grey eyes grew wide and intense in a manner that made me understand why his men had followed him after the defeat at Tannenberg.
"Your mother—when I saw her in London I said to myself, This woman is the essence of Russia. All that Russia signifies to our class is present in this one person. Sometimes one must leave something and return to it in order to see it plainly and without varnish. Your kindly, generous mother, who'd brewed a samovar for me and made a cake and bought some Russian wine and cried Russian tears when I left, she was everything to me. Everything! When I tell soldiers what we're fighting for, I think of your mother. Bless her. May the Lord Christ take her unto Him."
We spoke, my rival and I. Through my tears I thanked him. I hated him less.
But it changed nothing.
I went out into the stinging wind and submitted to the death-coloured sky that was pressing down on my spirit and forcing it into the soil. I passed the ranks of horse cabs and the women in under-chin scarves selling cigarettes. I walked with head bent against the wind over the Dniepr bridge and followed the new tramlines up Suborny Hill. The golden globes of the cathedral where they were to be married were on my left. I was looking for drink, and found it.
I was at this for an hour. Then Kobi sidled up alongside and informed me from the corner of his mouth that Potocki and Count Igor had gone off in the best carriage. Nicholas and the steward had supervised the loading of the luggage wagon and then followed in the other carriage. We were to make our way to Popovka as we wished.
"I suppose that means back to the station for a cab," I said, as we stood on that icy street.
"No, he's immediately behind us," Kobi said. "The same man who brought you home when you were ill was at the station. He recognised me . . . Doig, the Count told me about your mother. Was she very lovely? Did you have good feelings to her or did you insult her like some sons do? I would like to have had a mother."
My foot was on the cab step when he said this. My weight had gone most of the way through my body and was moving down my leg. The cab was tilting towards me. I was about to put all my weight on the step.
I looked back at Kobi, the orphan I'd picked up in Samarkand, who'd got me to the Pink House and saved my life, who'd never known his ancestors, who they were, how they swore and spoke and smelled. I looked into his face. I took my foot off the step and put my hand on his shoulder—
The explosion was terrific. The very sky tottered.
The cabby reacted instantly, while we were still gaping. "The dynamite store in the yard, sure to be. Quickly there, jump in before the police put up roadblocks."
He kept to the backstreets, normally teeming but now suddenly devoid of activity. In an instant windows had been shuttered and barred. Mastiffs slid their snouts sideways beneath padlocked yard gates and snarled at us with teeth of pitiless white. A boy in flannel shorts, rumpled stockings and a workman's cap pelted helter-skelter out of a lane, across the street in front of us without looking and straight into the house opposite.
The cabby turned to Kobi and said, "That lad'll have been taking his auntie a message about the explosion. I know her. She's mainly deaf, though one can never be sure.
"
He was looking over his shoulder to see how Kobi would respond when a file of Cossack cavalry trotted smartly out of a side street. They halted, facing us.
Savagely the cabby hauled the horse's head round.
It was bad timing. A stack of dynamite had just exploded and there we were about to run away from a dozen Cossacks in long grey-brown coats, rifles slung across their backs, each with a coiled knout in his fist—tough, dark, whippety men aching to lash someone's bones to the marrow.
"Stop!" I shouted at the cabby. I grabbed him by his ear and pulled on it as if I was pulling at a stuck doorknob. He gibbered at me. But he got the horse to stop, broadside to the Cossacks. They were about twenty yards away. The soldier in charge— three stripes of braid on his cape-—summoned me imperiously, with a wave of his knout.
Kobi stayed with the cab so the fellow didn't get any ideas about bolting. I walked up to the soldier. Cossacks have their own system of ranks. I called him sergeant. He didn't object. I said we were travelling to Popovka, where we were guests of Count Rykov. I showed him my papers.
His horse was as eager for trouble as the sergeant. It set up a terrific grinding with its teeth and shook its head, rattling its bit and spattering me with flecks of whitey-green foam.
He leaned down from the saddle. His yellow eyes devoured me as if I were a mouse. He twirled his knout and caught the thong expertly.
"I don't know your count or countess or any such bitch round here," he whistled through his ragged teeth, "and if I did know your count I'd call him a coward for not fighting our enemies. Same as yourself, a coward. Same as your Chinky friend over there, a coward. Know what we're doing? Blocking off this bit of the city while the police do a drag. Like bolting rabbits out of corn. Bang bang."
His smoking eyes were shrivelled by hardship. Holes had been drilled in his head for them. The flesh all round was puckered where they'd been forced in. His face was as small and wrinkled as a monkey's, topped with a ridiculously large regimental cap that stuck out over his ears like the eaves of a roof.
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