Cold Blood (22 page)

W
E WERE
approaching the Urals, which are the frontier between Europe and Asia, between Russia proper and a lower degree of civilisation. Beside us, bumping up against the railway from time to time, was the dusty old track used by exiles since God knows when—the Road of Sorrows.

Romantically for a change, her nose pressed to the window, Xenia exclaimed, “Look! I can see their footprints of blood. Their tears were so salty they made holes in the ice! You can even see the scuff marks of their chains in the dust. In the ditches are their bones. But their dreams—I don't know where you'd look for those. Exile, forever and ever: it's a horrible idea. How their women must have suffered.”

“Often they went with their men.”

“As I'm going with you? Is that it? To Siberia? To a free sort of exile?”

I buried her questions in silence. Exile—the fatal question, the one that had killed Elizaveta, Nicholas, Misha, all of whom I loved. I had difficulty speaking about it. The truth was too deep, even if I could recognise it when I got there. And Xenia was a stickler for the truth.

She was perfect for me, my corsetière. I'd had enough of beauty. What I wanted was a solid, faithful woman: quiet, neither imposing nor annoying. You can find women who are not attractive in a popular sense yet who radiate an inner beauty and a potential for loving a man until the world comes to an end. That was the sort of woman I wanted. I deserved her. I had a lot to give in return.

Xenia was all of those things. I was growing fonder of her
every day. Yet there was a piece of grit in our relationship that I couldn't put my finger on. It never reached the surface. But I was aware of it. Something behind those huge green-grey eyes, something undisclosed. I didn't think it was to do with our disagreement about God. But there again it could have been. That subject is so vast and delicate that I could easily have dropped a clanger without knowing it.

The matter of exile wasn't the only reason I got dispirited travelling next to the Road of Sorrows. Lenin had walked it and probably Glebov too, the creature who haunted me. Its existence bore too closely upon the Revolution. It stood as the symbol for our war, for the reason we were tearing each other apart, Russian versus Russian. Moreover, every time we rounded a bend and found it appearing before us, the sight of it would provoke those ardent Tsarists among us—Mrs. Davidova, Joseph and Shmuleyvich—into the most pessimistic discussion imaginable concerning the fate that awaited the Tsar and his family and what the repercussions would be for all the ordinary, God-fearing people of Russia.

It got me down. Where was the end to it all? Life after Glebov—what would it look like? Where would I fit in? How should I prepare myself?

In this way I started to think more closely about the Tsar's gold. And I was still thinking about it when we steamed into Strabinsk, the headquarters of General K. I. Muraviev and the 6th Siberian Army. The date: the evening of 26 July 1918.

Strabinsk was very much a frontier town. Colonel Zak, though wounded and obliged to lead his Czech legionnaires from a hired droshky, had captured Ekaterinburg the day before. A rumour was now spreading that he'd found evidence that the Tsar had been murdered. Drunken White soldiers were roaming the streets on the lookout for women, a fight, tobacco—mischief. Their officers were shooting anyone they didn't like the look of. Gunfire echoed through the dusk, and women's screams.

Boltikov and I kept to ourselves as we made our reconnaissance. In the end we found a man sober enough to guide us to the house of Muraviev's aide-de-camp, whose name was Blahos. By then it was late. Blahos, who was not over thirty and had a weak mouth and waves of auburn pomaded hair, was down to
a vest and cavalry breeches, scarlet braces hanging below his waist. He had a female companion. I told him who I was and requested an appointment with Muraviev the following morning.

“Busy, busy—can't you see?” He must have been from our borderlands, maybe from Galicia with a name like that.

We were to return in the morning. He already knew about me—said I was a troublemaker. He'd obviously heard about the Fokker's attack on the train.

We looked vaguely for somewhere for Xenia to start a corset shop, that being a constant desire with her, had a beer in Strabinsk's big hotel, the Moderne, and returned to the station.

I kept guards posted throughout the night. Soon after dawn, Boltikov came and woke me. The night had been so hot he'd had difficulty sleeping. He said, “Muraviev won't want us here. The reason he'll give is that you're too dangerous to have around. Because the Reds are obviously after you and that'd make trouble for him, that's what he'll say. But the real reason is the gold. He'll be in on it. Same as Glebov. Doesn't want the competition.”

I muttered, “Christ, are we going to have to stand in a queue?” Then I nuzzled up to Xenia, both of us naked in the heat, and went back to sleep.

B
LAHOS WAS
waiting for us outside the Moderne, a creamy, three-storeyed building that took up the whole of one side of the main square. The sun by then was brilliant, almost white in colour. The shadows in the folds of the Tsarist flag above the hotel were so harsh that it appeared to be made entirely of black cloth. The morning breeze had died. By mid-afternoon it'd be stifling. It was a typical Siberian summer's day.

He saluted, to put us at a loss, and bowed insolently to Xenia. He said to me, “I am instructed to tell you that the General does not wish you to remain in Strabinsk. He has given your train priority and immediate clearance to Uralsk, which is as far as his jurisdiction reaches. You are to leave by midnight.”

“Why's that?” said I.

“The man you're seeking is operating in the area to the west of Uralsk. So the reason you have come here is no longer valid. Another reason is the murder of the Tsar. We only await word from the Supreme Commander for our foremost regiments to march forward and afflict the Bolsheviks with such a wall of flame, bomb and bayonet that they will be wiped from the earth. In the circumstances, your presence will be a distraction. Those are the reasons, Doig.”

“Sure there's nothing else?” Boltikov asked.

“Nothing.” He bowed, showed us his pink scalp beneath his crinkly hair. “Come to my office, please. Your exit papers need to be dated and stamped. They must also carry your signature as well as mine to be in accordance with the General's regulations.”

We fell in behind him, trudging across the hot square with the hotel behind us.

A troop of round-shouldered cavalrymen appeared, kicking their nags along. Many of them had strips of linen tied over their mouths against the dust, which was hanging in the air like a tattered brown curtain. The horses moved wearily, not picking their hoofs up properly, behaving like slippered old men. Their heads drooped: they were not even interested in the jangle of their own harness. Everyone was listless, everyone was expecting the worst.

“These foremost regiments of yours are quite something,” I said to Blahos.

Only the small, shoeless boys who were running behind the horses to scoop up the dung had any energy. They were going to dry it and sell it in cakes for fuel.

A few minutes later and another troop went past—then a third. There were about twenty men in each, some with rifles and some without. None were carrying lances. One could never have said what regiment they were part of.

When the dust collapsed in the intervals between them, one could see on the wooden sidewalks men curled up asleep, or begging or praying or smoking or arguing or just watching all the things that will happen in a revolution when everyone is helpless except the sponsors, in whose interests this helplessness is. Homeless mothers were giving the tit, at the same time flapping at the flies that swarmed over the milk dribbling from the infants' mouths—

I want to say more about these flies, which were making everyone's life a misery. They were small, about the size of a spring raindrop and extraordinarily quick. I think they were
Sarcophaga carnaria,
or flesh flies. It was impossible to say for certain without a microscope. To attempt to kill them was pointless. I only ever saw White officers trying to do that and took it as proof of their stupidity. The sole solution was to ignore them. But this was difficult for men, and here's the reason. Whenever a man pissed they gathered round his cock, even settling on it—for the usual reason, that the ammoniacal smell reminded them of rotting flesh, from which they draw their protein. No blame can attach to them for this: it's what
nature taught them to do. But let me say that the tickling sensation of their feet is extraordinarily disagreeable. I've often thought of the diseases they carry and even woken in the night convinced that what I was feeling was an egg being hatched in one of my passages. Once this has entered your mind at two in the morning nothing can come between you and the ravages of syphilis. Boltikov also suffered the same discomfort.

My girl, however, was untroubled by them.

Blahos turned and said to me, “I'm sure that Jones, the American cipher expert, will confirm that People's Commissar Glebov is not in the province. Nothing gets past him. You'll find him in the Moderne.”

We walked on. Blahos said in an aggrieved tone, “He has a room to himself. So does the other one. They always have clean clothes.”

“Where's he keep his wireless stuff?” said Boltikov.

“At the station. It's in a wagon, heavily guarded at all times... Down there, that's my office.”

Nothing could have been more dismal than the centre of Strabinsk on that day, when people were still digesting the news of the Tsar's murder.

Over there: a mongrel licking the face of a child sleeping on a mat—guiltily, glancing up every few seconds.

Beside it: a man sitting on a stool and begging—holding out a tin. One temple had a terrific dent in it, like a dew pond, and his eyes were completely skewed. His tongue was hanging out in a great pink strip—or what would have been pink had it not been covered with flies. I don't know how he took food. Maybe it was only liquids. But managed he must have, for he was a fleshy fellow.

Xenia wanted to give him money but we wouldn't let her, saying that the man was faking it, how else could he be so fat.

Still on dogs: on the sidewalk leading to Blahos's office the ugliest mastiff in Siberia was humping a gasping pop-eyed King Charles spaniel which had a blue ribbon round its neck. We had to step round them. The mastiff had an identically guilty expression to the mongrel licking the child's face. It was going at the spaniel with the desperation of a dog experienced in the ways of man and fearful of being booted off before he
could spill his seed. Its tongue was hanging out of the side of its mouth, which gave it an additional expression, one of conceit. Its hot yellow eyes darted left and right as it worked its loins.

As we drew level, the dog spent itself, arching its head upwards and giving off an eerie howl. “Wolf in it,” Blahos said.