Cold Blood (4 page)

T
HERE WAS
no reason why I should go and see Lenin arrive. There'd be a great crowd of his supporters to whom I had no wish to expose myself. I was too tall, had too fine a carriage, looked too much like a Romanov. And there was always the chance they'd pick up on my accent.

My mother had spoken good aristocratic Russian, which has a soft smooth tone and is coloured by French words and phrases. But Papa, the Scotsman in Moscow, had ended up with an accent that everyone said sounded like the worst sort of Estonian. Of course I'd copied him and by the time I understood the importance of accents, it was too late to change. Just as dangerous were the odd Russian-Scottish manglings that I'd inherited from him. Try as I might, they had a habit of popping up. As a result of all this, Russians looked twice at me when I spoke. I wouldn't have wanted that at the Finland Station, not with Bolsheviks all around me.

But I wanted to have an idea of Lenin, to know how he looked in the flesh and how he behaved. I wanted to know what sort of numbers turned out for him. “You go,” I said to Joseph, since Kobi had gone off to find Muraviev.

He demurred, saying all the bridges between the city and the Finland Station would be raised to keep people away from Lenin. He pleaded with me, said, Did I want to get him lynched? Why didn't he stay and prepare some onion piroshkas and a herring for my supper?

But I had another reason for wanting Joseph out of the palace for a while. I took him firmly by the elbow and steering him
into the lane that ran into Nevsky Prospekt from behind the palace, bundled him into a horse cab.

Then I returned and went quickly to my uncle's library where I took possession of his funk money, which all Russian aristocrats kept handy in case of disaster. His hiding place was in the supplements to the eleventh edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, all of them dummies in the same tan binding. I was afraid the Socialist Revolutionaries might have got to them first. But in this Uncle Igor was a genius: for instead of trying to conceal them he'd put the fake volumes on an open shelf above his lectern, alongside his Russian reference books, in the belief that no robber would search in so obvious a place.

No one should ever treat money lightly, that goes without saying, but you know, when times are uncertain, you need a different view of its purpose. A good pair of boots can get you through all sorts of quagmires that money can't. Horses, carts and weapons are also primary, being the wherewithal for flight and defence. Anything fragile or heavy—leave it for an idiot. Children are useful—the best thieves in the business. Women can be bargained with.

Don't be rigid about money, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't have to be notes and coins. Igor knew that too.

What I had from my uncle's hoard: twenty-five thousand Tsarist roubles in the scarlet one thousand series and thirty-one gold strips carrying the stamp of the Imperial Bank of Russia. These were the size of a lady's dance card and had obviously been minted with an eye to portability. Worth about ten thousand roubles apiece in normal times. The colour of that reddish mustard from Angoulême, but shiny.

Straightway I took them to Shansky, Igor's old jeweller at 228 Nevsky. It was late. He was reluctant even to admit that he was there. But I knew he was because a light had been showing until he heard my footsteps.

I said my name. He shuffled to the door—pressed his ear against it.

I said, “Shansky, now put your eye to the keyhole.”

Allowing him five seconds, I said, “Tell me what you see.”

“Black, nothing but black,” he said hoarsely.

“That's a very special black. That's the muzzle of my Luger Kriegsmarine. Now let me in.”

I laid out the gold strips on his workbench, seven rows of four plus three underneath. The pressure lamp was wheezing on its hook. His anxious face peered at me over his half-moon spectacles. His wife, who'd always been stupid, still had her hand to her mouth. The Luger lay between us, beside the gold. Pointing at them.

Shansky said, “I made thirty-two altogether for the Count. Where is the other one?”

“He's dead, you know.”

“Yes. Was it Joseph who stole it? Go to Paris when you leave. You'll get the best price there. The French love gold. But don't accept paper in return. Paper money's the curse of civilisation. Look at what Kerensky's done with it. The man who's meant to be governing the country. It's an insult.”

I was asking him what he would propose in its place, when suddenly his wife blurted out, “But if not Kerensky, who?”

We paid her no attention, the answer was so obvious. Shansky didn't take his eyes off me for a moment.

I said, “The wealthy are leaving.”

“Indeed, Excellency.”

“You'll have been buying their jewellery.”

He licked his lips cautiously, glanced at his wife. “Yes, the widow Skobolov was here...”

“Did she have good taste?”

He gave me a wan smile. “Ah, I begin to see... You wish to exchange your uncle's gold for something easier to carry? Something like jewels, maybe, Excellency?”

His wife butted in hysterically, “But will times ever get better? That's the question you should be asking yourselves. When did we last have a full meal, with all the courses possible, in Russia? When will bread appear in the shops of its own free will?... And for that monster to come back on Easter Monday... It can never be the same. We're finished. I shall hang myself before they get me.”

“Quiet now,
matushka.
Nothing is ever as bad as it seems or as good. We both know that.” Going over, he kissed her head and ruffled her tired grey hair.

He said to me, “Your gold for my jewellery, is that to be the bargain?”

“But only the best.”

He went to his safe and unlocked it. He took out a tray and laid it between us on the work table—beside the Luger and the gold. He checked that the key in the door was fully turned. Then he rolled back the napkin of dark blue velvet and gave the tray a little shove mixed with a little shake, which I construed as disdain. “The Skobolov woman's.”

I said, “These things must have belonged to her maid. Please, the best.”

So we looked at the Kuzminsky tray and the Morozov tray and we picked through an unsorted bag from Prince Gorevsky that Shansky had purchased only that morning. All I took from these was one emerald ring of Gorevsky's because of the magnificent vulgarity of its setting. Revolutions have winners as much as they have losers. Some day I might have to appease a Bolshevik warlord. It could be touch and go, a pistol to my head and the brute counting down to zero. Then I'd say, “Wait a moment, comrade, I've got just the thing for your woman. She'll flash like gunpowder with this on her finger.”

Well, it took time but eventually my gold was translated into 180 brilliant cut diamonds, medium to small. Those are the sizes that are best for day-to-day use, for turning into the where-withal for bribes, information, wages—the necessary costs of life. I didn't worry about finding buyers for them: there are always greedy people around.

For bigger purchases such as artillery or an aeroplane, I took three of the gaudiest Gorevsky necklaces, things designed for the huge pink flabby women in his family. Shansky offered me pearls, good ones, but I declined: too fragile for what might lie ahead.

Helping me wrap the diamonds in individual tissues and fiddle them into the woollen lining of my boots, he said, “The moment I saw the posters this morning I said to myself the magic word— America. Have you read what Lenin's written, Excellency? This won't be the place for anyone who owns anything. My wife and I have often talked about this happening. She has reservations about America. The hard journey—our age—how to survive
when we get there. She says, ‘Who will buy our jewellery? What do we know of American taste?' And then you entered and now we have an international currency bearing the stamp of the Imperial Bank. So we can get to America in comfort and when we arrive we can afford to take our time. I thank you, Excellency, I thank you from my heart.”

He carefully inserted the last of the necklaces deep into the wool. “Why do you remain, Excellency, if I may ask? You are young. Your future is surely not here.”

“Glebov is his name. Prokhor Fedorovich Glebov.”

He sewed up the slits in the top of my boots and finished the thread with a roving knot so that I could get at the diamonds without messing up the whole arrangement. I watched his neat, lean fingers. He said, “Glebov—no, I don't know that name.” Then ruminatively, “The Tsar's gold is the purest in the world. Believe me, I know about such things. The same reddish colour as your uncle's, from the copper particles in the rock. When times are dangerous—well, Excellency, we understand each other about the value of paper money.”

Then he waxed the strip of leather to disguise his handiwork and to stop the stitching from icing over, humming to himself and smiling.

It was well after midnight that Joseph returned to the palace. I awoke—I'd been dozing in the chrome chair—to find his dark, sardonic face peering at me through the haze rising from the table lamp.

Without any preamble, he said, “Vladimir Ilyich's sisters were brought to the station in a black car. On getting out, the fattest one missed her footing on the running board and fell over, as if unaccustomed to cars. They both wore black— waddling black dumplings, that's what they were. And his wife, the Krupskaya woman—one would not say that they are often intimate—”

“You want them to breed, for God's sake?”

“Permit me to reply like this, that he looked the sort of man who hangs his testicles up behind the door when he goes to bed. There is no danger of young Lenins. He has a big head. His mother must have had a bad time at his birth. He was smirking the whole time, not genuinely pleased and grateful as
I'd have been... As he was being carried along, someone noticed that his boots were new. Walking boots they were, Doig, not our
valenki.
This man called up to him, ‘Comrade Lenin, why did you not buy our Russian boots?' He laughed: ‘Krupskaya made me get these when the train halted in Stockholm. She said my old ones were a disgrace to the cause.' Another man shouted to the first one, ‘Why do you say that? Proper boots they are, with iron heel and toe plates. Hurrah for Comrade Lenin's boots!' And a schoolmaster next to me said to all who could hear, ‘Comrades, how these boots will ring in history!'

“The sound of Lenin's words, many of which were long and completely unknown to me, was disgusting, like an enormous cud being chewed. But the fools, they all shouted, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!' Then he climbed onto an armoured car and a searchlight shone its beam on him. The schoolmaster at my side called out loudly, ‘Look at him, like Jesus clad in the glowing armour of truth.' I thought they weren't supposed to mention Jesus but of course I didn't say anything.

“To sum up, it was like a holiday to honour a great victory. Everyone was in high spirits. They'd have torn Kerensky to bits if they'd got hold of him. Several thousand people were there, men, women and children, even though it was late. I was shaking with relief when I got away.”

I
NEVER DOUBTED
that Lenin's arrival would spell the end for Kerensky. Nothing is ever gained by quibbling with history. It contains a whole bunch of questions to which the only possible answer is the answer obtained. The smoke of victory already clung to him. It was that, not a halo, that Joseph had seen at the Finland Station.

Perversely, it cheered me to know Lenin was in the country. Somewhere Glebov was resting up, but now the cheese had got to the stinking stage, he was sure to pop out of his hole. Then I'd have him.

But there were others who believed in Kerensky and were betting on him. Here let me mention the name of Countess Cynthia Zipf, a child in Newark, New Jersey, a beauty in Paris, a bride in Berlin, and now the mistress of one of the most prominent members of Kerensky's cabinet. She had this man's ear, his money and the run of his houses in St. Petersburg and Moscow and of his country estate at Kaluga. An outsider would have said she depended on him for everything. Such a person would have been wrong. She had investments of her own and above all she had her nerves, which she was fond of boasting were descended from the best Jewish nerves in America.