Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

The cows began to walk on. In the pattern of their bells, she discerned a quasi-repeating sequence. The reverse-entropic field of the time band was shaping events in her locality. It gave her the date of 17th May, Julian. Two weeks.

Another pattern, which never changed, spelled:

Das Bernsteinzimmer .

The Amber Room.

Saskia reached her home in the quiet minutes after midnight. The steep streets were deserted. Snow had been cleared into dirty heaps at the junctions. She was content. The routine of her life had continued without interruption for many months.

As she cycled around the last corner, whistling a piece by Bach, she happened to look at the high window of her garret. It was unlit. Despite this, she was able to perceive a thermographic impression of a face at the pane. The man standing in the darkness of her room was wearing a hat. Yusha would never wear a hat indoors. She could also see that his skin temperature was unusually high. Perhaps he had just walked up the stairs.

She completed the current bar of Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ and pedalled past the apothecary’s shop as though she had no intention of stopping. She was sad for the loss of her garret and some of her possessions. However, she carried the more important documentation on her person. She also regretted that she would never see Yusha again. He was spending time with relatives in Baden and would remain safe if she evaded capture long enough to send him a telegram warning of the danger in Zurich.

She continued up the hill. At its crest, she heard the telltale squeak of her front door. Either the stranger had left the apothecary’s shop, or an accomplice had entered it to warn him. She thought the former was more likely. An accomplice would use a signal. A torch, maybe.

At Stauffacherstrasse, where the street was wider and populated with late-night strollers, she flagged down a cab. It was a single-axle hansom and the driver sat high at the rear. A lantern swung beneath his seat.

‘Need a rest, ma’am?’ he said, gesturing to her bicycle with his whip.

Saskia hopped from the bike and left it against a lamp post.

‘Don’t tell me: I should get a horse.’ She settled inside the cab and drew the blankets across her lap. ‘We’ll go to Volketswil, if you please.’

The driver leaned through the window.

‘Long way,’ he said, companionably.

‘Quite,’ Saskia replied. ‘I’m happy to make it worth your while.’

She looked through the side window. The road to her garret was lit electrically. She could see two men running up it.

‘Don’t you want to lock your bicycle, ma’am? It’s a rough area.’

‘It’s nothing special.’ That was a lie. She had adapted the brakes to be operated using the right handlebar. For men pursuing a one-handed woman, it betrayed her, but there was no time to hide it. ‘If you please,’ she continued. ‘I’m late.’

The driver leaned back, clicked his tongue, and let the horse get underway. Saskia was reassured to see that it was an older, steady horse. She looked back once more and saw the two men emerge onto Stauffacherstrasse. They did not appear panicked. That disappointed her. They split up in opposite directions, then her cab turned and she lost sight of them.

Saskia concentrated on putting a name to the face of the man at her window. On her mind’s stage, she saw fire. Figures danced around it. A large fire; a campfire? Saskia concentrated. The ground was hard. Rocky.

The dance figures are the poor princes of the Outfit. This is a night from last summer. June? July? There was a wedding.

The princes had been dancing with their arms held high and their legs kicking. One man, however, had never danced. He was a quiet individual with huge hands. He wore a Fedora and smoked a pipe just like the one smoked by the Boss. Saskia remembered him crouching on that windy plain, turning to a friend.

Fire in his eyes.

She had his name: Papashvily. Back then, he was no revolutionary but he was useful to the Outfit because he murdered the people he was told to murder. Once, he had thrown an informer into an oven. They called him the Baker after that. Most of the Outfit were indifferent to these murders; a few loathed them; some hailed them. Everyone—even Saskia, at that time—had considered them part of the grand destabilisation.

She pictured Papashvily turning his good ear to his friend.

He has a bad ear , she thought.

The horse jogged beneath a streetlamp and Saskia saw a cloud of condensing breath pass down its flank, ghosting.

A quarter moon reflected on the lake. Just as only Saskia had seen the man at her garret window, now only she could see the pale, high dash of the mountain line against the sky.

She knocked on the roof and said, ‘Stop here, please.’

‘It’s another kilometre, at least.’

‘I will walk the remainder.’

She paid the driver and stood at the side of the road, near a wooden snow pole, until the sound of hooves faded. Now she could hear the delicate slosh of water. She looked at the moon again. It was occluded.

There was no barrier between the road and the lake. She stepped into the bushes. Rock slid underfoot but she reached the shore without falling. She lay against one of large rocks that protected the road from erosion. There she waited, browsing her memories of Count Nakhimov.

The masts in the full harbour tick-tocked. A breeze was growing. She felt it through the lace at her throat. The moon reappeared. Somewhere in the village, far uphill, a baby cried.

Ten minutes later, she heard a horse. Saskia angled her make-up mirror to inspect the carriage as it passed. It was identical to her own cab, but held two large men, not including the driver. One of them was Papashvily.

The hoof-clatter faded, leaving the breakers, the bumping of boats, and wind making notes in the narrow, steep alleys of Volketswil.

She dropped the mirror into her bag. She put her nose to her knuckles and thought. Her pursuers were excellent. It was a pity they were not still running around her neighbourhood.

The men would reach Volketswil proper in two or three minutes—if that was their destination. Would they find and question her driver? That would take both skill and luck; unfortunately, they appeared to possess both. How had they found her?

Once she had returned to the road, she gathered her skirt and ran the five hundred metres to the high, iron gates of the Count’s Old Confederacy villa. They were shut, which was usual, but the courtesy lantern was unlit, and that worried her. It had been lit throughout the night for as long as Saskia could remember. She looked from the pillar that supported the right-hand gate to the cherry tree—one of a pair—between the wall and the road.

She looped the strap of her shoulder bag through her teeth and, keeping the bag tight against her body, ran towards the stone pillar. She planted one foot against it and launched backwards, turning to catch the lowest branch of the cherry tree. She swung forward once. On the backswing, she growled into the leather strap and hauled herself onto the branch so that she flopped across it. She rested for a moment. Her right arm was tingling and her palm hurt. Then she worked herself into a seated position.

The villa was surrounded by squares of blank lawn, each of them studded with geometric flowerbeds and paths. The single irregularity was a cluster of trees. Saskia scanned the villa for light in any of its three storeys. None. The greenhouse, which attached to the western wing, was also dark.

She was poised to jump into the grounds when a pale glow filled the greenhouse. A man had entered it from the villa. He carried a lamp, which he held high, as though searching. Saskia leaned forward, but it was impossible to identify the man at a distance of two hundred metres. She saw him stop, then turn. The light dimmed. Had he turned away from her?