Night Watch 05 - The New Watch (23 page)

‘It’s kind of hard to believe,’ I remarked.

‘It was a prophecy, Anton. It ought to have come true, people had heard it. But I intervened.’

‘You cured the tsarevich?’

‘Well, I didn’t cure him . . . let’s just say I prolonged his life. Nicholas dawdled and lost his nerve, the Bolsheviks took power. Blood was spilt, of course . . . but it could have been worse.’

‘So we could call you the salvatrix of Russia,’ I said acidly. ‘And a Hero of the Soviet Union into the bargain, since you helped the revolution to happen.’

‘Well, yes, pretty much,’ Arina said modestly.

The children’s playground that we had unashamedly occupied was luxurious. Standing at the centre was a wooden ship that looked as if it had sailed here from Never-Never Land and been abandoned by Peter Pan. During the day there was no space to draw breath on the ship, with squalling hordes of children clambering up the masts and the rope ladders, but now the two of us were sitting there, a Magician and a Witch, each clutching a bottle of beer that we hadn’t touched in ages.

‘Let’s suppose I believe you,’ I said. ‘Let’s even suppose that you’re not wrong and it was a prophecy and you managed to change it. Then what?’

‘The Watches have been messing about with petty nonsense for ages,’ said Arina. ‘Stewing in their own juice. Even their conflicts are basically make-believe.’

‘Would you like a war?’ I taunted her. ‘Which team are you playing for this season, the Light Ones? And what about the Treaty – do we honour it?’

‘I don’t want war,’ Arina replied seriously. ‘We Witches are a peaceful crowd. And Light Witches especially . . . Remind me of the Great Treaty, will you, Anton?’

I shrugged and recited what everyone is taught in their first lesson as an Other – no matter if it’s in the Night Watch or the Day Watch.

‘Excellent,’ said Arina. ‘The Treaty, you will observe, does not prohibit intervention in human life. It only limits the struggle between Light Ones and Dark Ones.’

‘So what?’ I was beginning to get fed up. ‘The Dark Ones have intervened, the Light Ones have intervened . . . who should know better than you? And what came of it? How many wars have been unleashed by experiments to create the ideal society? Communism, fascism, democracy, autocracy, glasnost, globalisation, nationalism, multiculturalism – how much of all this is human, and how much is ours? We prod people in one direction, then in the other. We observe how things have turned out. Then we cross out the result and start all over again. Ah, it doesn’t work . . . well, let’s try it in a different country, in a different culture, with different social attitudes . . . What, communism was hopeless? I don’t think so. But we got tired of that toy. What, democracy is false through and through? Hardly. But we’ve given up playing with that, too. But you know, it’s all the same to people what they die of – the building of communism or the introduction of democracy or the struggle for rights and freedoms. And I reckon the best thing we could do for human beings is leave them in peace! Let them live their own lives, think up their own rules, learn from their own mistakes!’

‘Do you think I shouldn’t have intervened in the fate of Russia?’ Arina asked.

‘Yes! No! I don’t know . . .’ I said, and shrugged. ‘But what if after all those upheavals the outcome had been better? If there hadn’t been any World War Two, for instance?’

‘I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,’ said Arina. ‘And I couldn’t ask anyone for advice. Not Gesar, not Zabulon – they would both have tried to turn the situation to their own advantage. But you’re different, I can talk things over with you. You’re normal. You’re still human.’

‘I’m not so sure any more . . .’ I said, glancing at the black-skinned security guard walking along the edge of the children’s playground. He looked attentively at the roundabouts and the swings, then his glance slid over us without seeing and he walked away.

‘We are all human, Anton. Some more so, some less so. Yes, there are situations that aren’t clear, when you don’t know if you ought to intervene. But there others that are absolutely clear, unequivocal!’

‘What do you want from me?’ I asked.

‘Anton, Prophets only appear rarely. Eight instances in the whole of the twentieth century. And it’s even rarer for their first prophecy to be documented before it becomes known to people and comes into force. If you know the boy’s prophecy . . .’

‘No, I don’t know it. I swear.’

‘But can you find out what it is?’ Arina asked specifically.

‘Yes, probably. What’s more, it’s possible that I can find out what Erasmus’s first prophecy was. Although, after all these years, it has probably been realised already.’

‘That’s not certain,’ said Arina. ‘Gagarin’s flight into space was prophesied in the seventeenth century . . . Anton, you really astound me, in the best sense of the word.’

‘Since you changed colour, you’re simply itching to do good,’ I said.

‘Maybe so. But aren’t you? Anton, no one in the Watch would dare to do anything like this. I’m prepared to try. And I swear to you that if the prophecy turns out to be good, or unclear – then we won’t do anything. Let it come true. But what if we’ve suddenly been given a chance to steer people’s lives in a better direction?’

‘“We”,’ I snorted. ‘The last time you said “we” was when you were with Edgar and Saushkin. They came to a bad end.’

‘You don’t trust me, and that’s right,’ Arina said, nodding. ‘But with you I’ll have the chance to do something genuinely important, not just drudge away aimlessly in a Watch.’

‘I’m almost certain you told Edgar the same thing,’ I replied sombrely.

‘Think, Anton,’ said Arina, opening her handbag and taking out a little sphere. ‘For the time being, I’ll go back to . . . my place. Pardon me for not inviting you – the Minoan sphere only transports one.’

‘I thought it was a single-use item,’ I said.

‘No, it’s a single-charge unit,’ Arina said, with a smile. ‘And I know how to recharge it. I’ll come to visit you in the morning, if you don’t mind?’

I shrugged. Arina smiled, grasped the sphere tightly in her fist – and disappeared.

I sighed, picked up the empty beer bottles and started climbing down off the little wooden ship. Unlike the witch, I would have to make my way to the hotel on foot.

On the way into the playground Arina had opened the gate with some method of her own, by crumbling dry grass in her fingers and sprinkling it on the lock, but I’d never liked fiddling about with the spell ‘Bilbo’ and I decided to bypass the fence in the Twilight. To my surprise the playground was locked on the first level of the Twilight too, and on the second it was surrounded by something like a line of wizened trees, with prickly branches protruding out towards the park. I examined this apparently dead hedge curiously. Dry tree trunks like that were more often encountered on the third level, but there they were scattered about chaotically, while these looked as if they had been planted deliberately. Or perhaps fixed into the ground. Fortunately, there was no need to go any deeper – this barrier was only a hindrance if you were trying to get into the playground, not get out of it. Whoever the Other was who had worked on the playground, he had certainly done a thorough job. I squeezed through the branches, walked away a bit and returned to the real world. After the cold and silence of the Twilight, the London park seemed warm and full of sounds. Somewhere in the distance I heard the subtle song of a reed pipe. I set off through the park, intending to leave it at some point closer to my hotel. On the way I came across a rubbish bin that had considerately been emptied before the park’s evening closing, and I lowered the two empty beer bottles into it.

What could be more delightful than an evening stroll through a deserted park?

The artless melody sounded closer and closer. And suddenly I saw the musician. Sitting there on the crooked trunk of an immense tree that had been bent over by the wind a long time ago and had carried on growing like that, almost parallel to the ground, was a little boy dressed in some kind of fanciful rags. The boy was playing his reed pipe, completely absorbed. Huge fireflies circled round him, as if they were dancing.

‘Hey!’ I called out to the young musician. I was so disconcerted that I asked in Russian: ‘Isn’t it late for you to be out here?’

The boy turned sharply in my direction. His milk teeth glinted snow-white, either in the glimmer of the fireflies or in the distant glow of street lamps on the Bayswater Road. The boy jumped down off the tree – and disappeared. The fireflies fluttered after him, with a jingling sound.

‘Hell’s fucking bells!’ I swore. ‘This is bullshit! I don’t believe in . . .’

But I didn’t actually finish the phrase.

Of course I don’t believe in fairies. It’s ages now since I even believed in Santa Claus.

But even so, I preferred not to say it.

THE MUSIC ROARED.
Harsh, unfamiliar and, to my ear, totally discordant. But the people around me seemed to like it. The discotheque was packed solid – the young people weren’t dancing so much as swaying, twitching on the spot and brushing against each other, periodically grabbing each other by the hands and starting to move in a strange, grotesque, tangled roundelay. The ceiling glowed, and it wasn’t just beams of light from projectors or disco lamps, it was as if the panels of the ceiling were themselves radiating light. Streaks of different colours were replaced by an even orange light, then the ceiling started glowing cerulean blue – and then it became a single, continuous screen. Above us was the sky, with white, feathery clouds drifting across it.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, dodging away from a chain of teenagers that had just meshed together.

‘A discotheque,’ they told me.

I turned my head. Standing beside me was a youth of about eighteen, short and chubby. He looked familiar somehow.

‘Kesha?’ I asked, suddenly recognising him.

‘What, Anton Sergeevich?’

What?

I didn’t know ‘what’. I didn’t understand where I was and how I’d got here. But I had to ask something.

‘Where’s Nadya?’ I said, suddenly realising that was the right question.

‘Here,’ Innokentii Tolkov replied with a shrug. ‘Somewhere here . . .’

I tried to spot her in the crowed. Then I realised I was involuntarily looking too low, at the level where a ten-year-old girl’s head would be. I should be looking higher . . .

And I saw Nadiushka almost immediately. I wasn’t sure how I recognised her . . . she had grown, just like Kesha. But she had changed far more – her head was completely shaved, with just two clumps of white-bleached hair left above her ears. A long narrow skirt, with slits that reached almost right up to her waist, boots that reached halfway up her calves . . . and an absolutely plain white blouse. Nadya looked grotesque and pitiful, even hideous, dressed like that, but this was my Nadya. And I felt my heart contract painfully in my chest.

I took a step forward, elbowing my way through the jostling youngsters, grabbed my daughter by the arm and dragged her out of the chain of ‘dancers’. The bright-coloured metal bracelets that covered her entire wrist jangled.

‘Dad?’ Nadya asked in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked at the same time.

Nadya shrugged.

‘Relaxing.’

The boy and girl between whom Nadya had been swaying in the chain pushed their way through to us. They looked . . . well, appropriate. The boy was wearing a glittering thong and a fluffy shirt (yes, it was a shirt, and it was fluffy), the girl had the same kind of plain blouse and long skirt with slits that Nadya was wearing.

Clearly, that was fashionable.

It was a long time since I’d attended any teenage gatherings.

‘Nadya, what does this ersatz want?’ the boy asked. Not actually threateningly, but defiantly.

‘Pull on back,’ Nadya replied incomprehensibly. ‘This is my abu.’

The boy gave me a look that was unfriendly, but a bit softer. And he asked: ‘Any problems, honourable sir?’

‘No problems,’ I said. ‘And if you disappear straight away, none will arise.’

The boy grinned crookedly. Apparently I hadn’t scared him. The little fool. I could soon have him on his way home to do his homework and wash the floors . . .

‘Everything’s smooth, Vovik,’ said Nadya. ‘Lighten a bit.’

‘Tap me if anything comes up,’ Vovik answered, and flashed another glance at me. Then he disappeared into the crowd with his girlfriend.

‘What idiot kind of slang’s that?’ I asked.

‘The usual,’ Nadya replied and sniffed. Her eyes were red. ‘What did you come here for, dad?’

‘Nadya, let’s go home,’ I said.

‘What for?’

‘Nadya, your mum will be worried,’ I said, appealing to the argument that had worked unfailingly when she was ten.

‘What have you and mum got to do with anything?’ asked Nadya.

I got a terrible cold feeling in my chest.

‘Nadya, I don’t understand what’s happening,’ I said. The music was hammering in my ears, dark storm clouds were covering over the sky on the ceiling screen. ‘Let’s talk somewhere else.’

‘What’s wrong with here?’

‘This is no place for a Higher Other!’ I exclaimed in exasperation.

Nadya laughed. And if at first it was simply quiet laughter, as if she’d heard a good joke, an instant later it had become loud, hysterical giggling.