Field of Mars (27 page)

‘Hey, Ryzhkov . . . here . . . Come on . . .' Someone was holding him by the shoulder. He turned to look at the man, someone young, rancid tobacco breath, wearing spectacles. Oh, yes. Sinazyorksy, yes . . .

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘What's the matter?'

‘It's all right. Just sit for a bit and relax for Christ's sake. We're all under a strain,' Tomlinovich was saying, and Sinazyorksy's grip tightened on his shoulder.

‘It's simple, Ryzhkov. You just go back through your notes, find the whores and track them down. We bring them in and put it gently, eh? Help us, girls, or there'll be hell to pay. It's a good enough plan. You can get started right away, yes? What's wrong?'

He sat there looking up at Tomlinovich's pouchy face, trying to come up with some excuse. His mind was a fog, the photographs danced through his imagination. A gust of wind rattled the high factory windows.

‘There's nothing wrong, what's wrong? Is there anything wrong?' he heard himself saying, as the younger man held him down in the chair. But everything was wrong. Now they knew about Vera.

‘For Christ's sake, get him a drink,' Tomlinovich said, a smile creasing his face like a long bloodless gash.

TWENTY-FOUR

Flakes of snow following a week of boredom. The holiday stopping everything in its tracks, even the pursuit of justice. For Ryzhkov there was no summons from Tomlinovich; he moved through a slow charade at 17 Pushkinskaya for the benefit of Zezulin who hadn't noticed a thing. If he'd believed the newspapers, Russia was heading into the abyss; the society pages were the proof of the coming apocalypse—the ornate parties, the benefactions, the orations, the acceptance of awards for philanthropy, the carefully stated opinions of the rich and high-born.

And there was the bad, dark weather, the freezing air off the river and canals that penetrated the thickest cloak, the snow and icy rain that swept along the prospekts, the grimy fog that froze to every surface, the multiplying barges of firewood crowding the canals. The putrid smell of smoke in the air, and the desperate cries of men selling warmth.

Ryzhkov wandered through the bitterly cold streets of Petersburg, hands thrust into pockets, chin jammed down into his collar, running from doorway to doorway to get out of the icy rain. Would he ever get used to the strange configuration of numbers? The calligraphy of a brave new age, a year that sounded so modern that he could have never imagined writing it:
1914
.

‘Let me get this straight,' Vera said after she had let all the smoke out. ‘You say that all through the holidays, people have been walking along watching us, tracking our movements, reading our mail . . .'

He had taken a long pull himself from the little hookah she had brought along, and he held the hashish smoke in as long as his lungs would allow, then let it out in a great long stream towards the ceiling, coughed experimentally, and was careful to remember to put his thumb over his end of pipe so that she could take her turn.

‘Yes, or almost two weeks now. I haven't done anything about it. I don't know who they are.' He hoped it was someone from Tomlinovich's gang, someone who might protect them.

She held the smoke in and put the top over the bowl, took the pipe out of his grasp as he nodded that yes, it was enough. She got to her feet and vanished in the darkness toward the kitchen. Ryzhkov let his eyes slip towards the grate, pulled the quilt up to his chin. All in all, considering the chill of the room he was very comfortable.

He had never taken hashish before. But among Vera's crowd it was all the rage, sometimes mixed with opium as a way to enhance the effect, she had told him. He didn't notice any change at all apart from the rawness in his throat, the curious sweet smell that permeated everything in his apartment, perhaps a feeling of lethargy if anything.

She returned with a little bowl-shaped glass tumbler of hot Georgian plum brandy and passed it to him so that he'd stop coughing. Now a whole different family of smells filled his head, and the brandy warmed a long column down his centre as he sipped.

‘That's better, isn't it.'

‘Mmmm . . .'

‘So, these people that you think you see—'

‘I don't
think
I see them. They're there.'

‘Fine, fine. These people who are there, they just follow you around, they don't do anything else? They don't try and knock you on the head, steal your wallet?'

‘Not yet, no.'

‘You don't think this is a little fanciful, perhaps a way of making your own trials and tribulations greater than they really are so that you can feel pity for yourself? You're sure you're not just imagining—'

‘Vera,' he said firmly. ‘I work in this business, they're out there, I assure you.'

‘Well, as long as they're not hurting you?' She shrugged. ‘So what?'

‘Have you noticed anybody, anybody strange or different hanging around the club?'

She laughed. ‘We're the centre of strangeness, if you were going to buy a cartload of strangeness, the Komet is where you'd begin your shopping.'

‘Mmmm . . .'

In the lead-up to Christmas there had been a spate of men dressed as women, and vice-versa, all lured in by Khulchaev's extravagant
Song of the Sandwich
, which cleverly managed to combine traditional Russian folk melodies with the rhythms of the South Seas. Vera had played the High Princess of Tahoo, a rather naive young thing who ended up being cannibalized by the other temple virgins for the sin of being seduced by a young Russian merchant seaman. She had dyed her hair jet-black and caked herself in dusky body make-up for the part. Pyotr had stared at her the whole time, hypnotized, unable to take his eyes off her. She liked it, liked having him there. It was flattering.

‘I don't know,' she said, frowning. ‘Two people like us. I think that's the real strangeness,' she said looking up at him now. Serious. ‘You know? Maybe we've made a mistake. Or two. Or lots of mistakes.'

He looked at her. Wanted to say something, but all he did was shrug.

‘I know what I did, Pyotr. I know my mistakes and my crimes,' she said, straightening up, looking at him levelly. ‘And if I hurt someone . . . I'll pay, I don't mind paying. I'll make it up to them if I can.'

‘Yes.'

‘But maybe it's not me that has to make the penance, maybe it's you. Maybe you're the guilty one, the one that's going to have to die for everybody else's sinning? Did you ever think of that?'

‘No. I'm not that important. And I only want to save a very small number of people,' he said, reached up and touched her cheek. ‘But everything I do is dangerous. Everywhere I go has bad consequences and I don't think it's fair for you to follow me around—'

‘Oh! I'm following you, now, is that it? I'm suddenly a clinging vine?'

‘I didn't say that—'

‘I wonder,' she said, her head tilted over and assessing him.

‘What?'

‘We might not have a future, you and I.'

‘That's what I'm talking about.'

‘All right then . . .' She left and went into the kitchen. He heard her fiddling with things, a kettle being filled, drawers being opened. A moment later she was back.

‘We're going forward in time.' Beside them she'd placed a little table for the hookah and the brandy. Close enough to be handy from the little bed they had made there in front of the furnace. She did things like this, he thought. She would jump the rails and avoid talking about whatever subject you were on. Slippery. Maybe she was the kind that thought that if only she kept moving nothing could hurt her.

‘Relax, let your body slumber . . .' She reached over and with her fingertips massaged his face, closing his eyes, her touch somehow eerily blending with the bones in his skull.

‘Are you warm enough?'

‘Mmm . . .' He was warm enough, he was hot even.

‘Good.' She had climbed astride him so that she could massage him better, her fingers dipped in a fragrant oil that filled his nose with the scent of flowers and mint. She was wearing the jade pendant he had given her, a simple hoop carved to represent a snake biting its own tail. It hung on a thin satin ribbon she'd found, nestled precisely between her breasts, sending off a series of hypnotic green glints in the candlelight.

‘Just let yourself be open, and leave the physical plane, and be open to the influences, to the Sun and the Moon and Water and Fire . . . and you are free of all earthly desires . . .' she intoned.

‘Mmm . . .'

‘Concentrate.' She rose slightly and he heard her reaching for things. His eyes opened and the room was full of halos. She had brought around a bucket of melted snow she had taken from the window ledge and a little ladle of melted wax.

‘Are you ready to learn your future?'

‘Um . . . I think so, yes.'

‘Say the magic word,
Abara-Kadabra
!'

‘Abara-Kadabra!' he said importantly, trying to copy her theatrical inflections.

‘Good. Now take my hand; careful, the ladle is hot— and pour in
half
the wax—' He reached out and together they poured a stream of wax into the centre of the bucket of freezing water.

‘Now . . . for me, too. Since you're seeing threats everywhere, and so concerned about my welfare, and worried because I'm such a burden . . .
Abara-Kadabra
!' she said and poured in the last portion of wax. Together they peered in the bucket.

On the surface of the water two twisted, yellow shapes spun like twin galaxies. Carefully she took one of the sculptures out of the cold water, held it between them.

‘It looks like . . .' He studied it as she turned it over on her palm, peered at it, frowning. It looked like a fungus or a yellowish root.

‘This is a lion . . . a
puma
. This is your animal nature coming to the fore,' she said quietly.

‘I'm going to be a lion in the future?'

She gave him a look that could put out a candle. ‘You may become meat for the lion, you may become the hunter of a lion. Let's see, it may even be a lioness.' She turned the wax over and looked on the other side. ‘No, it's a boy lion, see? It has a prick. Do you think that's funny?'

He shrugged and tried not to smile.

‘Maybe you're being followed by the lion, have you thought of that? You may have to kill the lion, you may have to climb a tree to escape the lion. Maybe you won't escape, maybe that's your future. Since you're a scoffer you probably won't take the necessary precautions.'

‘What precautions?'

Now it was her turn to shrug. ‘Stay off the savannah, maybe. How should I know? It's your future, after all.'

‘Fine, then, what's this one all about?' He had pulled her wax future out of the cold water. When it had hit the water, it had flattened and spread suddenly like a spiny sea creature. ‘It looks like a starfish,' he said.

‘No, that cannot be, Gloriana told me I am not a water creature. I am of the air, I am ether.'

‘What does ether look like?'

‘Ether has no
appearance
. Ether has a quality, ether has an effect. It makes you see visions, makes your consciousness evaporate. It kills your pain. But this . . .' She took the odd little figure from his hand, turned it over and over and inspected it from all angles.

‘I know,' she said, finally. ‘It is the Sun. It is the gift of life.' She turned and fastened her eyes on his. Her royal look.

‘So, are you pregnant?'

‘I may be. What's it to you?'

He could not keep looking at her, let his eyes fall to the little sun in her hand. She was right, he thought; it even had a closed-up little face on one side, like a sleeping newborn. ‘I don't know . . . maybe you are going to create life . . . at some point in your future.'

‘Perhaps I am.' She looked down at her belly, put one hand across her navel as if to comfort something that might be growing inside. ‘But I don't see any children in my future,' she finally said. Her voice was grave.

‘No?' She still hadn't looked up at him but had begun rubbing her belly in little slow circles.

‘Do you think it would be a good thing for me to have a child?' She finally raised her eyes.

‘If you wished, yes.' And when she didn't answer, he went on with a little more certainty. ‘I think so, yes. I think you would be a good mother, Vera.' Her eyebrows arched at that.

‘Oh, really? Why is that? Am I especially qualified?'

‘I think you are a good person,' he said to her, meaning it. Meaning every word of it.

‘There would be no father.' She turned her head away, maybe she was laughing at him.

‘There has to be a father.'

‘No. I may be the new Virgin Mary. After all, this is still Christmas. It may have just happened, just now.'

‘About an hour ago, maybe.'

‘Oh, so you are God the Father?'

‘You have to admit—'

‘You're growing impertinent.' She had put down the little wax sun, and bent over him, her breasts were just brushing his chest. He was starting to be full of earthly concerns again.

‘You do not own me. You cannot go where I go,' she said, very seriously.

‘Fine.'

‘Say it.'

‘I do not own you, Vera.'

‘Good, go on.'

‘I cannot go where you go.'

‘You can never go there.'

‘Never?'

‘Never, ever.' She had taken his lower lip between her teeth, bit him slowly at first and somehow changed it into a kiss. Outside in the stairwell he heard old Mrs Panych's son beating a carpet over the banister. In the street there was the bell ringing as a tram pulled up to the stop, in the courtyard he could hear echoing voices of the porter and his friends singing a bawdy song. Outside were the watchers, outside were conspiracies, outside was death and mayhem. A string of fireworks exploding. The cries of monsters and cascading horror. Church bells were ringing, hymns were being sung to the new year. People were giving alms to the poor, ignoring the news, drinking too much, laughing too loudly. Going to sleep in anticipation. Would the snows cover it all?