Field of Mars (45 page)

‘I'll tell the grandchildren.'

‘Sure, sure you will. But I understand. You're crazy and . . . it's unfinished business, I suppose, yeah?' Dima looked at him.

‘Yes.'

‘Well.' Dima stepped over and embraced him, surprisingly strong, stepped back and gave him a little slap on the cheek. ‘Let's not grow old here, let's get to Nis, then . . . brother.'

And hurrying then, they walked down to the horses, picking their way down the stony slope like elderly men with bad joints, Ryzhkov thinking that Dima was probably right, that going to Greece was the smart thing to do, the safe thing. Going to Greece, or Italy or anywhere outside of Russia was something that he should have done long, long ago. And he found himself moving quickly now over the uneven ground, starting to panic, worried that someone, some shepherd with his dog might find the grave within the next few hours, that now his time, too, was running out.

He dropped Dima near the station, a quick wave and then the boy was gone around a corner, his coat dangling over his shoulder, a spring in his step and a last narrow smile as he headed for a new life.

Ryzhkov drove behind the station, pulled the carriage into the first lane he came to, pried loose the number tag from the back of the carriage and threw it over the railing into the brown waters of the river, walked a few streets away and pushed Hokhodiev's identity papers down a gutter.

Deeper in the city he bought a traveller's trunk, a blank journal, a box of pencils, and a pair of reading glasses. There was enough money left, so he could stop at a tailor's and have a summer suit made in the local style. By evening he had transformed himself into a facsimile of a touring poet-artist, complete with a sweet-smelling shave and haircut, and so he was ready to tell the man at the station barriers that he was en route to Belgrade where he would take the riverboat along the Danube as far as he could—a great adventure—all the way to the Black Sea and the land of the Moldavians.

The ticket-seller laughed at him. ‘There's nothing but swamps there,' he said and stamped the tickets. ‘A man could get lost and just end up going round and round for the rest of his life!' He pushed the tickets through the little window, shook his head and laughed again.

And Ryzhkov laughed with him.

FORTY-ONE

Men. Sometimes, most times, they are impossible. She cannot read him, and honestly, if she were to allow herself that luxury, that rare privilege mostly unknown to her, since she has constructed her life with Sergei out of a tissue of half-lies, shared flatteries and, well . . . dreams that they have both given voice to, but never taken the trouble to realize—if she were to somehow throw all that aside to let herself be honest, honest just for a moment, then she could only arrive at the conclusion that he has fallen . . . honestly, into insanity.

For instance, he does not sleep. Not for nearly two weeks. He reads and re-reads the newspapers obsessively. He spends all his time in the tiny room, his special room. The telegraph chatters continuously. She has Anna bring up food, tea, and she takes it to him herself, a girlish rapping at the door, the bookcases pulled aside—she has to put the tray down to do this, the hidden door is so heavy, and then without looking, lest he think she was spying on him, she passes him the sustenance. Sometimes he barely notices, other times he sits back and stares at her, not recognizing. And the room stinks now, stinks of his sweat and his cigars, is piled with papers and torn tapes from the machines that he's installed. She can't wait to get out, to tell the truth. But then he sits back and thanks her, smiling. Profusely. Smiling.

Of course it is all to do with the events in Bosnia. A prince has been killed, the archduke. She met him once. Met Rupert too. The whole damned family of block-heads. Thick unimaginative people, she thought. The one she's sad for is Sophie, with whom she can identify, after all she was a commoner, whom he married for love and thus began all his problems. Love. At least she had that at the end.

But today he is happy.

A man and his wife are shot down in the street and he is happy? She tries to understand this, puts on her aggrieved face, pouts, and even in her tone of voice, challenges him.

He just laughs, dismisses her. In his eyes she's a poor little ignorant ornament. Something bright and bubbly to trot out when he feels like getting dressed up. Too stupid to understand the affairs of great men of the world and their fancy machines that are so up-to-date that they have to be hidden away in a cupboard in their mistress's house.

She doesn't know anything about the world, he says. He says it outright! ‘You don't know anything about the world,' with that condescending laugh he uses when he wants to change the subject. As if she had never been anywhere, as if she was a peasant instead of someone who had performed all over Europe, even toured to the United States and Brazil. That's not knowing about the world, though. That's not crafty enough for him. ‘Forget trying to learn . . .' And then a furious clatter, suddenly there are more telegrams that interrupt them, and he pulls the bookcase closed.

He's made a killing, recently.

She knows that much. She knows he's sold shares, lots of shares in advance of the assassination, and he's just waiting now, waiting to pounce . . . waiting to buy. Waiting to plunge back in when the market reaches the bottom. She knows all that, she can hear all that. He talks on the telephone and she can hear, can't she? She knows he's into something with Nestor Evdaev and that it all hinges on ‘making a show' somewhere over something. She knows about making a show.

Angry at him, bored with him too, she goes out for a walk, an excursion to look for a little peace but it turns out to be a mistake. Suddenly Petersburg is ugly. It comes in the form of a demonstration that interrupts her tram across town. A strike she thinks, metalworkers or newly organized peasants from one of the textile mills who want more money, better food, improved lodging in the company dormitories. Well, who can blame them? But then she sees that the crowd is massing directly in front of the German embassy, screaming repeated choruses of rhymed insults at the building. High in the façade she can glimpse embassy personnel alternately clustering near the windows and then retreating back into the shadows for safety.

As the disturbance is filling the street and preventing the tram from progressing, she decides to get out and make her way around the edge of the demonstration. Of course, men help her, a woman in distress. They can howl and shake their fists at the windows as much as they want, but a pretty face will still bring their eyes down to earth. She wonders if it will turn violent. No one is throwing anything at the façade, although it is an ugly enough building. The embassy is brand-new, with a headstone-like façade, long rectangular windows with shockingly muscled statues of naked men holding up the cornice. The whole thing is heavy and imposing, an edifice meant to inspire fear, and obviously designed to deliberately clash with its surroundings. Perhaps it was the design they are disputing, perhaps it is a mob of insulted young architects and their parents and friends who have come out to protest. Now that would be civilization.

Swaying in the street above her are banners calling for an E
nd to Teutonic Provocation!
and
Save Our Slav Brothers!
Many of the banners are painted on red cloth, the mark of various union organizations or radical political groups, she knows that much! She moves through the crowd, who are chanting with arms linked as they move in a wide circle around the front of the hideous building. On the steps of the embassy a long double-line of St Petersburg gendarmes wait for the bravest of the firebrands to make a dash up the steps where they will be arrested and taken directly to the police wagons. In a way it's beautiful, invigorating. Passionate.

By the time she walks through the demonstration she has learned what it is all about. Everything can be read on the front of the
Berliner Tageblatt
—a long rant by the Kaiser, accusing Russia of deliberately fomenting a general European war. Of course, peace-loving Germany has no aggressive intentions or even any ill-will towards the quaint Muscovites, but should the Tsar succumb to his base instincts and unleash his dark hordes of cossacks, Germany would naturally be forced to defend herself.

She almost laughs in disbelief. The tone of the article is nasty, insulting, the kind of thing men say in bars when they want to goad each other into a fight. Full of obvious incitements and taunts, and pitched to inflame Russia's old inferiority complex about her Tartar past. On top of it is the smug assurance that should the irrational Muscovites succumb to their animalistic impulses and plunge the two nations into war, the efficient German General Staff will easily sweep the Tsar's forces from the field. The Kaiser . . . what an ego-maniac, she thinks.

Now she hears the clash of hooves against the cobbles and sees a troop of cossacks assembling at the end of the street. The crowd, if they knew what was good for them, would surely begin to disperse before the troops ride over them wielding their leaded knouts, it doesn't do to infuriate those fellows, and so she pushes her way through the masses, hurrying away, angry and wondering all the time what he's had to do with all this chaos.

And then she finally gets back, and he's still upstairs in his little snake-pit. Now all the laughter is gone and he is screaming into the telephone.

‘What do you mean, you can't find him?' And then waiting for a reply. A curse. He runs one of his beautiful hands through his beautiful hair. He needs a bath. He needs someone to make love to him.

‘You've telephoned, have you sent someone around? What do the servants say?' A pause, another curse. ‘Just do what you're supposed to do, you know what's expected of you,' he says. His tone more controlled now, like talking to a stupid child. ‘No, I am troubled too. No one wants trouble. Yes. It's very troublesome,' trying to calm someone. It must be Nestor. He only talks to princes with that tone of voice. ‘I don't know. They'll have to replace him, probably, wouldn't you think?' he says, the sarcasm plain in his voice. Disgusted, she moves away into the bedroom. He hasn't even noticed. Probably didn't even know she'd gone out for a walk. Now something has gone wrong, someone is missing, someone isn't where he should be, and all the conniving in the world can't supply him with any answers. Happiness has taken flight and whatever he's been up to, it's all coming unglued.

She knows that much.

FORTY-TWO

Princip
was the name of the assassin. Gavrilo Princip. A student. An anarchist. A Serb terrorist. And now he was famous, now the name Princip was on the tip of everyone's tongue all over the world. The details of the conspiracy were vague but there had been no fewer than a dozen anarchists, the newspaper claimed. Ryzhkov read the reports in a week-old version of
Wiener Zeitung
as he was steaming along the coast of the Black Sea from Rumania to Odessa. The decks were baking and the air was fetid. The fumes of coal smoke hung in the air and made a brown haze across the still waters. It was as if they were sailing across an infinite lake, on a voyage to nowhere.

In Odessa he found what he wanted, a cheap hotel where he could wait while he changed identities again. A safe-house where he stored his single bag, hiding Kostya's pistol beneath layers of his underwear.

He prowled the city until he discovered a suitable bar, the kind of place where travellers came to drink and be relieved of their money by con-men and prostitutes. On the first night there was no one suitable so he went back to the hotel. Waited, bought more newspapers.

The truth penetrated in scraps. Austria was bellicose, Serbia was looking for a way out. Rumours had it that war had already begun, that the British were on the march through Afghanistan.

The city was too hot. Empty of tourists and the sane. No one would visit Odessa in the summer unless they had some compelling reason. Because of the heat he changed his schedule. Now he slept during the day and went out at night until he found the one he was looking for.

He was about the same height, the same size. A happy fellow, a laugher and a storyteller. He was attempting to purchase land for the construction of a new hotel on the beachfront. But now, with international tensions, his investors were becoming hesitant. It was a waiting game, he explained sadly. The whole world was waiting. Ryzhkov agreed, stood him round after round of drinks. After a while they developed a plan, to visit the bordello that Ryzhkov said he had found. The best. The man smiled.

It was dawn when they escaped the bar, the light made them squint and hold their hands over their eyes like outcasts from a doomed Old Testament city. He pushed the man down in the mouth of the first alley they came too, the empty bottle spinning its frantic glassy song on the paving stones. It only took a few moments for Ryzhkov to riffle through his pockets, dig out his papers and money and get away.

He stopped at the end of the street and inspected the documents. An identity card, with a description that was close enough. A district permit to reside in Moscow. All of it looked genuine enough. He read the name over and over, memorized his new birthdate. It turned out he was from the city of Saratov. He had never been there, he would have to look it up.

He tucked the papers into his pocket and looked around the street. The morning sun was behind him. It made his shadow long, made his legs look huge and strong. A giant, a super-man. A man ready to take on the world.

Go then
Pravdin, Pavel Vasilyevich
. Go into the bloody new world.

By nine o'clock he'd settled his bill at the hotel and was on the first train north.

A light snapped on and the bottom tier of corridors at 40 Furshtatskaya Street was illuminated. The custodian straightened his jacket and tried to wipe the sleep out of his eyes, fumbled for his pen and keys and waited until his junior was in place behind the desk. The boy was tall and gangly with a faint smear of dark hairs across his lip that had ambitions to one day become a moustache. He looked up at the fox-like man who had arrived and his eyes were unblinking with fear and awe at being in the presence of someone so lofty. Everyone had heard that the commander was missing, everyone knew that changes were in the offing. And now Baron Rudolph Nikolsky was here!