The Ocean of Time (32 page)

Eccentric, too
, I think. Then I recall what he said about laughing at Meister Hudner. It’s unthinkable. You might want to kill the Meister, perhaps, if you’d been ‘turned’, but not laugh at him …

I can almost hear Hecht’s voice.
A dangerous man to have in the ranks. A threat to morale
…

Schikaneder returns, offering me a plate on which is a large wedge of pie, a good three inches thick, and a fork.

‘Rabbit and mushroom,’ he says. ‘Fresh from the country.’

I take it, then look to him. ‘Don’t you miss it? Being a
Reisende
?’

‘Sometimes … but not what we did. Or tried to do, rather. War by other means, as Frederick called it. It seemed rather …
arrogant
of us. Not to speak of its futility.’

‘Ah …’ And I realise at that moment that I’ve another Burckel here.

‘But it wasn’t only that,’ he continues, perching himself on the arm of the settee. ‘I was amazed they didn’t get bored with the whole charade. I mean, year after year.’

I put the plate down beside me on the settee. ‘Why so late?’

‘For your visit?’

‘Yes. You were expecting me, so old Schnorr must have arranged it for this hour.’

Schikander smiles. ‘I’m a night owl, Otto. I like darkness and rain and … Come. Let me show you.’

He takes me through the bleak, ramshackle kitchen, up a narrow flight of stairs, and into another room at the very top of the house – a work room – finished canvases stacked against the far wall, a camp bed against the wall to my right, its ruffled, paint-spattered sheets pulled back. To the left, a half-finished canvas rests on an easel. Above it, a large, square, four-pane window is set into the sloping ceiling. The moon sits in the top right panel of the glass, boring a perfect white hole in the dark of the sky.

It’s a typical artist’s garret. Depressingly so.

The painting on the easel is of a harbour at nightfall, the faintest line of sunlight on the horizon, the sky turbulent, the sea a great restless swell, the whole thing grey-green and hazy, the two solitary figures at the harbour’s edge, their backs to us, dwarfed by the surrounding elements.

Again, it’s melancholic. If
this
is how he sees things …

I look to him. Staring at his own canvas he seems sad suddenly, as if he sees himself reflected in those tiny figures.
Not consumptive, no. Manic-depressive.

‘Has it changed, Otto? Or does the War grind on?’ His eyes meet mine briefly and he seems to shudder. ‘You don’t know how much I hated it. The Game. The “Us and Them” nature of it. Their cheap and shoddy justifications for the madness we were part of.’ He pauses, then says, ‘I think I would have killed him, if I’d stayed.’

‘The Meister?’

He nods. ‘Better that I’m a painter, eh, Otto?’

I sip at my tea, tasting the brandy, letting it warm my throat as I wait for him to continue. Because that’s why I’m here. To listen to him. To find out what he knows.

‘They’re going to pull all of this down, did you know that? Four years from now. The whole of the Josefstadt. All, that is, except for a few key buildings, the synagogues, naturally, and the Old Jewish cemetery. I’ll have to move, of course, but …’ He realises he’s rambling, and smiles an apology. ‘But you’ve not come to hear any of that, have you? You want to know about Kolya.’

‘I do,’ I say, but I feel suddenly uncomfortable, standing there in that room. The unmade bed, the unfinished canvas … it all seems far too intimate somehow, though I can’t say why. It’s like he’s on display here, his whole self. ‘Look, can we go back through?’

‘Of course.’ He senses my discomfort, and a little of his warmth for me drains away. He wanted me to see, to understand who he is and why he’s that way, and in a way I’ve rejected what he’s shown me, not overtly, by contesting it, but covertly, by not embracing it.

He wants me to say, ‘Yes, I
see
, I
understand
because
I
feel that too’. But I won’t play that game. I won’t indulge him, even if he has information that I really need. Because I don’t believe what he’s saying. I don’t believe that the ‘Game’ has no purpose. I
can’t
believe it. For if there were no ‘Game’, no ‘War’ through time, there would be no Katerina and me. And where would that leave me?

And so we sit once more, he on the armchair, I on the settee facing him, eating rabbit pie as he begins to talk of the old days, when he too was a
Reisende
, of St Petersburg in the time of Catherine the Great, and of a chance meeting in a tavern by the Neva.

Another story. But one which is crucial to it all. To the ‘Game’, ironically, even if Schikaneder himself doesn’t realise it.

‘I didn’t know what he was at first. I thought he was time-bound, just another citizen of that age, if an exceptional one. It was only later that I began to piece things together. After I knew. After I’d found out.’

Schikaneder pauses, staring across the room. There’s a sudden intensity to him, as if he can see what he’s describing.

‘The first thing I noticed was his eyes. Extraordinary eyes. I’ve never met anyone who seemed to burn so much with life. Most people were afraid of that. They avoided him, considering him a threat, even mad. But he wasn’t. Quite the contrary, in fact. There never was a saner man – a man more addicted to reason – than Kolya. He was quite young at the time – in his early twenties, I’d guess – but even then there was something about him. A driven quality. Not quite obsession, but not far from it. And something else. An inner resentment, I guess you’d call it. A bitterness at the world. Later on I discovered that his mother had died when he was five. His father, well, he’d no idea who his father was … not at first, anyway.’

‘In what capacity did you meet him?’

‘It was that first day I was there. I’d jumped in to the Sleutelbourg, – you know, downriver, to the east of the city – and got a ferryboat up to St Petersburg. I hired a room at one of the dockside inns, and that’s where I met him. He was staying there too. That evening he sat near me at supper and engaged me in conversation. I liked him, and the next day – as I say, by “chance” – I ran into him again. He had advertised for skilled workmen, and I’d gone along, not knowing it was him, to see if I could get a job. He was building a new settlement, off in the marshes to the north of the city. The rates he was offering were good – in fact, the best you’d find anywhere in the north – and there were a lot of people interested. The place was packed. They were queuing out the doors. And there, at the centre of it all, was Kolya, seated behind a stout oak table, those eyes of his assessing each man in turn and either dismissing him with a shake or giving a terse nod of acceptance.

‘That was odd, and I should perhaps have guessed it then. The way he asked no questions – nothing at all about how skilled a man was, or even what skill he had – just a look and a shake or a nod.’

He smiles. ‘Later I understood, of course. It was a time-paradox. What he’d been doing was to jump forward and see who he’d hired and how good they were, before jumping back and hiring them in the first place. Some, of course, were never hired, but the good ones …’

‘He was definitely jumping through time, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he hired you because he knew you, right?’

‘You might call it chance or coincidence, but I don’t believe that. I met Kolya because Kolya wanted me to meet him. He knew who I was and what I would be, and he also knew that I would tell nobody about him. Until now.’

My mouth opens. ‘But—’

‘I didn’t know that. Not then. It took me some while to work it out. But that’s how it was. How it
is
, you might say. For here we are.’

‘So what precisely were you doing in St Petersburg?’

‘Establishing an identity. Doing what we
Reisende
often do, and bedding down into an age. I can’t be sure, considering what happened, exactly what Meister Hudner had planned for me – whether it was to try to assassinate the empress, or become her latest lover, or what – but it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that Kolya found me.’

‘Are you sure of that? That
he
found
you
?’

‘Quite positive. There’s no mistaking it. As for
why
, well, that’s less clear. Only that it has to do with you, Otto Behr. And with a place called Krasnogorsk.’

I go cold. ‘Who told you about that?’

‘He did. Though not until a lot later. But let me tell you this in the sequence
I
experienced it.’

Schikaneder goes through to the kitchen and returns with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. He pours, then hands me one.

‘It was like this. Kolya had bought a large plot of land to the north-east of St Petersburg, on what they called the Finnish shore. Larger craft couldn’t sail there because of the sands, which at low tide prevent any form of navigation, but at high tide some of the smaller galleys could make their way across. There, just across from Peter’s island fortress of Cronslot, Kolya was building his own small town. A town that, to all intents and purposes, was a fortress to match Peter’s. My first sight of it, from out in the bay, was also the first time I found myself questioning just who Kolya really was and what he was up to. Until then I’d thought him an exceptional man, perhaps, but not unusually so. But suddenly, seeing what he was up to, I began to ask myself whether he might not be an enemy agent.’

He smiles. ‘I thought that for some while. But even then I ought to have known. The signs were there from the start.’

Schikaneder leans closer. ‘It seemed such a strange place to set up his own little kingdom, right there within sight of the tsarina’s palace. It was just as if he was inviting someone to come along and ask him what the hell he was doing. Only no one ever did. Perhaps his tactics were perfect. Perhaps the one place you
don’t
expect to find such a place is right there, directly alongside the very centre of power.’

‘Such a place?’

‘Let me explain. It wasn’t just that the place
looked
like a fortress, with its high stone walls, its guard towers and its massive, heavily defended gate, it was the feel of the place. There were barracks for the workers just north of the site, and armed guards supervising the work. And Kolya wasn’t just building outward to the north of the river frontage, he was building
down
. Some of the men he’d hired were miners by profession, and they were busy day and night excavating deep shafts and long, broad tunnels directly underneath the fortress.’

‘And no one knew this was going on?’

‘No one. Not the Russians, nor us … and certainly no one from Catherine’s administration. At least, if they did, they were keeping very quiet about it.’

‘But it must have been seen from ships passing along the central channel.’

‘Certainly. Seen and noted. But it was on all the maps. Kolya made sure of that. Only it was marked as a government cannery.’

‘So what was it for?’

‘First things first. When I arrived – when I stepped off the boat and on to the dockside, that is – Kolya himself was there to greet me. He showed me round. He was rather proud of what he’d built, but he was, he said, taking it further.’

Schikaneder pauses to sip at his wine. ‘That was one of the things that surprised me, that threw me off my guard, I guess. The fact that he was so open at the start. I think I understand now why he did it, because he knew he didn’t have anything to fear from me. Because, of all the German agents in the field, I alone wouldn’t tell Meister Hudner. And because—’

‘Because he knew you would end up here?’

Schikaneder nods, and I can see that even now, even after spending years brooding on this, that that fact still sobers him. That Kolya knew, right from the start. But then this is Time, and someone who can master Time and use it flexibly can find out many things denied to the time-bound.

‘He showed me it all, that first day I was there. Made me his assistant. Told me the plan.’

‘The plan?’

‘As I said, let me tell you it as it happened. It was that evening. We were sharing a bottle of wine, as now, in Kolya’s rooms at the top of the central tower. It was like a great keep, an ancient baron’s tower, only Kolya had had huge windows built, modern windows of thick glass that gave him a view across the water, to west and south and east. An enormous fire was burning behind us in the massive fireplace, and the servants had been dismissed. That’s when he told me.’

‘About the plan?’

Schikaneder leans across and fills his glass again, then offers to top mine up. I nod my thanks and hold the glass out to him.

‘It was to be an academy, he said. His job was to find recruits, mine to train them.’

‘And you
agreed
to that?’

‘Not at once. I wanted to hear more. So I asked him in what way he meant me to train them.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That he knew who I was and what I did, and that he wanted to use what I knew to make changes.’

‘Changes?’

‘He said he knew how I felt. Knew I was dissatisfied. Oh, and other things. The most personal insights. It was like he’d studied me, but from the inside. Now I know how he did it, but back then …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I kept a journal. When I first came here, to Prague. I wrote it all down. Everything. Not just what I did, but how I felt and what I thought about things. Then one day the journal went missing. I’d kept it in the drawer in my room, but he must have come here when I was out. It’s the only way he could have known those things.’

‘And Meister Hudner and the others … what did they think was going on?’

‘As far as they were aware, I was working at a cannery. Keeping a low profile and waiting for instructions.’

‘And Kolya’s offer?’

‘I thought about it for a few days, then went back to him.’

‘He knew, of course, what your answer was.’

‘Of course. Kolya always knew everything before he did it. He didn’t like surprises. If something came out wrong, he’d jump back and change it, get the right result.’