Cold Blood (15 page)

“Glebov first,” I said again, laughing.

“Very well. The show's yours. But afterwards . . .” He opened his eyes wide and raised his eyebrows as far as they'd go. “There's good money to be made somewhere.”

Then he waddled off to see if his father's jeweller was still in the city. Something valuable had once been left in his safe... His homely thighs brushed against each other as he walked. He had leather facings on the inside of his trousers as if he were a cavalryman. His head moved incessantly to alert him to the dangers from which he could never hope to escape by running.

In the corridor he halted. His footsteps came padding back. He stuck his head inside the door. “First proposition: there is only one God. Right? Second proposition: there is only one big chance in life. Right? Which do you believe in more, Charlie?”

Thinking of Xenia, I told him that some people would believe that his two propositions were in fact one, that God was the only big chance.

He wasn't prepared to debate that, saying he preferred to think about the Tsar's reddish gold. I said we'd be moving out in thirty-six hours—at dusk the following day. If he wasn't at the palace then, we'd go without him.

G
OING BACK
to the question of extinction, there were Rykov relics that I very much wanted to take on my train. One day the tide would turn for me and I wished to have mementos of these good-bad times for my children.

For instance: silver banqueting sconces, a stuffed bear with eyes of red glass, two French kettledrums from Napoleon's war, banners captured during the Caucasian campaign against Shamil, Uncle Igor's chrome chair and a life-size wooden jockey in the Rykov racing colours (black with pink sleeves) holding out a tray in which visitors to the palace could leave their cards. They weren't valuable, but to each a story was attached.

However, the SR lodgers, whose revolutionary bile was increasing daily, were incensed by the sight of Joseph trundling the jockey out of the palace. It was demeaning to the nobility of man, averred the twats. Having confiscated the figure, they posted an armed guard outside the storeroom, which they also sealed.

I was not to be defeated. Did they expect me to slice myself down the middle and throw away the Rykov half, to abandon my Russianness?

My last afternoon in St. Petersburg arrived. It was getting dark. Boltikov—God knows where he'd got to. Joseph, Valenty and I were loading the cart to take to the station. I'd put Kobi on guard duty. He'd taken up position behind the plinth holding up the bust of the Emperor Tiberius. From it he could cover the whole of the front of the palace.

“Take care of the old Roman. I'll be back one day. Me or my kids.” The SR leader to whom I'd spoken looked down from the palace steps, at the three of us beside the cart.

I went on, “Bet you never thought you'd be standing where you are.”

He had a famished, black-stubbled face—said: “All layers of society should be shaken up once every century. In that way no one bears a grudge for too long. None of this would have happened if more aristocrats had been killed.”

“Thanks, pal,” I said, thinking of Elizaveta.

Relenting, he said, “Take the Emperor with you. It's nice work. It'll only get smashed if it stays here.”

Extraordinarily, he then helped Kobi carry the bust of Tiberius down to the cart. The only suitable place for it was behind and above the driver's bench, so that he became our figurehead, gleaming palely in the dusk.

Kobi climbed aboard. Valenty took up the reins. Joseph, who'd gone to the gates, lifted the centre pin and glanced out, up and down Nevsky. He raised his hand. All clear—then he darted over to the flagpole.

I stood and faced the palace. I saluted it. In the corner of my eye I saw the Rykov flag set out up the pole. In a second— yes, there it was, the searchlight we'd rigged up with a stolen battery. Joseph trained it upon the slinking wolf of the Rykovs. The animal writhed and snapped in the breeze—bared its fangs at the common man. Having saluted the palace again, I saluted the wolf.

I looked across at my little Joseph. He too was at the salute, crying unashamedly.

It was far too precious to leave behind. “Take it down,” I said, “and make sure you keep it somewhere dry.”

“Lupus has had his day,” said the SR man, not having heard what I said.

“Don't you believe it,” I said.

He sighed, the sort of noise one expects from a half-hearted anarchist. “You and I, for instance, our levels of society could have enjoyed a true meeting of minds had circumstances turned out otherwise. It's the Bolsheviks—and Lenin, they're the problem. They're so unbending.”

To hell with Lenin! Maybe we'd go and the palace gates'd close behind us and a new breed of historians would write kaput to all nobles. But they'd be wrong.

I climbed on to the cart. “Good luck,” I shouted up to the palace, to all the Rykov spirits that still inhabited it. “You'll need it with these bastards on the throne. Let's go.”

The horses took the strain, leaning into their collars. The big wooden wheels rumbled over the cobbles. A kettle fell off. “Kobi,” I said, “nip down and—”

With a howl of its klaxon the armoured car bowled in from Nevsky and made Joseph jump for his life. It rounded my uncle's collection of marble catamites—boyfriends of Tiberius—and halted face to face with our terrified horses, its single roof headlight shining over us.

I said to Valenty, “Lenin's fuckers. Leave them to me.”

Kobi shouted, “I'll shoot the first head that appears,” which was a waste of words since we couldn't see a thing on account of the blinding roof light.

But it was Boltikov. His muscular voice came booming through the semi-darkness.

“One gold rouble it's cost me, this escort party. They'll see us to the station and then see our train out of the yard and onto the main line. Not bad, eh!”

“Who's they?”

“Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, what do we care? They've got the armour, that's what counts. I said to them, Boys, come to Odessa with us, there'll be rich pickings down there in the sun. They said, Enough excitement here, comrade. Joseph, put a rug over the Emperor. We don't want the wrong sort of excitement going down Nevsky.”

Kobi: “He's dead. Leave him behind's what I say.”

But I wasn't going to have that. Tiberius was another memento. Joseph agreed with me. Uncle Igor had told him that Tiberius had been a lucky mascot for the Founder and should never be sold or abandoned.

“Every adventure needs an emperor,” he declared loudly.

A hollow voice from inside the armoured car said, “Shoot them both. Down with all emperor swine.”

Boltikov smiled over to me and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together like an imitation Jew. “We needn't listen to him. Money speaks loudest,” he said in thick English. “It's the sort of thing they're taught to repeat by people like Glebov.”

Then to Joseph, who had opened up an abusive exchange with the voice behind the metal slit that was demanding his death, “Stop all that. Just cover the statue.”

We rolled out into Nevsky led by Boltikov in the armoured car, its klaxon blasting at the curious group gathered at the palace gates.

Joseph was sitting sideways, his legs dangling over the edge of the cart. I leaned over to him. “Actually, better a woman as a mascot than a dead emperor. More useful.”

“Best of all would be a live emperor, our little father,” sighed Valenty.

“No chance of that,” I said. “Lenin's got him and Lenin'll keep him. One day we'll be told he's died of a fever.”

Joseph said, “Every army should have its woman to act as mascot, cook, whore, sweeper, seamstress and disciplinarian. That's what a man needs to make him fight at his best.”

“See one around?” said Kobi sarcastically.

“You want a woman, Mongolian prick?” Joseph said. He always spoke with his face closed, giving nothing away, perhaps from working with my uncle. Whenever he said something unexpected, it came as a double surprise.

“Don't be stupid,” said Kobi.

“Well, she's here,” said Joseph.

It was Boltikov's headlight that picked her up. She was walking out into Nevsky to intercept us. Quite calmly, a canvas suitcase in each hand. Boltikov shouted to me, “Something to do with you?”

Her face was as pale as a moth's. She stared up at me, a triangle of white topped by the same dark felt hat she'd been wearing when I left her. It clung to her springy hair by a miracle.

We'd come only a couple of hundred yards from the palace. Had she been waiting for me? How had she known? Was it chance? Was it love? Was it an ambush?

“You got her just like that?” Kobi said suspiciously.

Boltikov was jutting out of his armoured turret like a submarine commander. He looked Xenia over. He was like Kobi, rough and disbelieving. “Did she fall from the sky? Charlie, have nothing to do with her. She's dangerous.”

But she was resolute. She shoved her suitcases aboard—giving
them a final push with her shoulder—and clambered up beside Valenty. It was the point at which she should have been refused if that was what I wanted. But I said nothing and Valenty—he neither helped her nor shoved her off. So she got to be there with us, one of the party, which she did neatly, in a quietly determined way, no squawking.

She folded her skirt beneath her and sat down in one continuous movement. She crossed her hands in her lap, tipped her chin and said firmly, “I have an invitation.”

Boltikov, turning right round in his turret, said, “What's all this about?”

She said to him, “I'm no Bolshevik. A week ago this man was in my bed,”—with a glance in my direction. “That was when he invited me to join his train. But he said as a ‘mascot,' which I didn't like, so I turned him down. Since then, I've changed my mind.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Why at the precise moment we're leaving?”

She removed her hat and tossed her head.

No man can resist a woman doing that. A bell rings. If not in his heart, then somewhere.

“There's no food here any more. I don't want to leave but I don't want to starve. Which would you choose? If you think the same as I do, you have my full answer to all your questions.”

She was a goer all right was my girl.

Boltikov looked across at me with narrowed eyes. People were beginning to gather.

I waved at him to get on with it. He suddenly grinned. “Hope she's as obedient as Liselotte.” He shouted down to his driver who noisily engaged gear. The engine coughed and a cloud of choking oily black smoke enveloped us. The horses snorted and blubbered their lips. We were on the move again. We had a mascot.