Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

‘That’s not what keeps me awake at night.’

Robespierre turned to her. ‘What does?’

‘His boss. He is …’ Saskia stopped. She sighed.

‘Is he more dangerous?’

‘He is a poet. Another tea?’

Robespierre belched. ‘Not now.’

Saskia re-lit the spirit lamp and knelt before it. She warmed her hand. ‘Was your friend satisfied with his payment?’

‘Not quite. The role of gendarme comes naturally to him—being as he is employed as such—but the role of fish is a different matter.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. He prefers the company of men. I lent him my company for the evening. We suffered an appalling operetta at the Passage.’

Saskia smiled, watching the water. ‘You’re a good man, Robespierre.’

He sat and ruffled through his red hair. ‘I’m very good, apparently, since he didn’t want to take the money.’

‘I would prefer to have him in our debt.’

‘There are debts and there are debts. My friend the gendarme has double-crossed the establishment and the Party so many times that the enterprise has transcended mere intrigue. His case officer believes him to be a double agent. I believe him to be a double agent. What he himself believes, I cannot say.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What will your payment be?’

He flapped a hand.

‘Tea’s up,’ Saskia said.

Robespierre smiled. ‘Really, I would prefer not to.’

‘Not to what?’

‘Have tea.’

She shook her head at the slip in her concentration. ‘Of course. I forgot that I asked you.’

Robespierre embraced her from behind and kissed her neck. She laughed. The sound echoed between the cold surfaces of the apartment, touched the dust sheets, turned the ears of the mice, and sang in the crystal vessels of the closed, locked cabinets and even, she thought, entered the attention of the second most dangerous man she knew: the Georgian Ter-Petrossian, two rooms away. Her laughter faded and her senses shrank back to the reassuring pressure of Robespierre as he sighed into her hair.

‘Not now,’ she said.

‘Don’t say you prefer your wooden man to me. My heart could never stand it.’

‘Tell me your real name, Robespierre.’

He sighed. Somewhere, a child was playing the cello.

‘How real?’

The light of early morning found Saskia standing at the window to one of the balconies. She parted the panels of imperfect glass and stepped out. The apartment overlooked Nevsky Avenue, which ran almost four kilometres from the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky monastery. She looked at the sellers of the Petersburg Gazette, who congregated at dawn on the steps of the Passage Theatre, where Robespierre had entertained his informer the night before. Some blocks away, almost fogged to blankness, was the bauble that marked the top of the spire of the Singer building. Opposite, green-and-black taxis clattered into the rank beneath the arches of Gostiny Dvor, the scruffy oriental souk.

Saskia stepped inside and then shut the windows. She stepped over the sleeping Robespierre and proceeded to the room of their guest, Kamo.

The library was a small room crammed with couches, tables, low chandeliers, and books held in glass cabinets. Its fireplace was large. To its hearth had been tied Kamo, using the police-issue manacles. He did not move from his slump as Saskia entered. On her hip, she carried a bowl of hot water wrapped by a towel. She placed it on the table near the hearth and left the room. She returned with a leather pouch. This she put next to the hot water. Then she made the short walk to the curtains. She threw them open. Behind her, Kamo sighed. There was a clang as he tested his bonds.

He watched as she adjusted the fire screen and hung a mirror from it. Then moved into the fireplace, behind him. She took a long, straight razor from the leather pouch and began to slide it up and down a leather strop, which she held taut between her bare foot and her teeth.

‘I know I’m on Nevsky Avenue,’ Kamo said. ‘I heard the bell of the Armenian church.’

Saskia put the towel around his neck. Then she shook the badger-hair brush, wet it in the hot water, and worked the small cake in the shaving mug.

‘Do I get breakfast?’ he asked. ‘I want an omelette with chopped tomato, plenty of salt and pepper, and fresh bread.’

Saskia tipped his head back. Their faces were close. His breath stank. She lathered his chin.

Kamo said, ‘You think I’m afraid of him?’

She took the razor and thumbed it open using the tang. Then, holding the blade at a reflex angle between her fingers, she placed the razor across the point of his trachea.

‘I am,’ said Kamo, his voice hoarse. ‘And you should be, too.’

Saskia moved the razor. There was something like analogue static in the sound of the blade as it cut the bristles. Kamo’s breath quickened but he did not swallow. She could see that he had picked out a chandelier on which to concentrate his attention.

‘I’m sorry about the boy,’ said Kamo.

Saskia paused.

‘Really,’ he continued. ‘I just wanted to get him out of the way.’

She swept the razor upward. It scraped a note off the edge of his chin.

‘We are both agreed, my dear, that the money must be liberated?’

Saskia paddled the blade in the hot water. Bristles and lather and the smallest hint of blood spiralled out.

‘Are we agreed?’ he pressed.

She turned his head a second to the right and drew the blade over his left cheek. She saw the blemish in his rolling eye. The bomb fragment was still embedded, turning in the humours.

‘I can protect you,’ said Kamo. ‘And I won’t mention the boy.’

A clump of his beard had gathered on the blade. She rinsed it once more.

‘Let me go alone,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where it is hidden. Is it the Amber Room? The Chinese Room? A couch, a settee? A painting?’

The blade cut his cheek. He tutted.

‘Then come with me, witch. Bring your pleasure-boat friends. We can travel in convoy to Finland. Lenin will hear of our shared triumph. I will construct a story to explain your winter obrok. Why would I do this? Take it as a measure of my thanks for the rescue.’

Saskia emptied his right cheek of hair.

‘Saskia?’

Then his chin. Finally, his upper lip.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I will steal us both into the Summer Palace. Our disguises will render us invisible.’ He stopped as she towelled his face. ‘You need me, Saskia.’ With the shaving complete, a withheld anger began to harden his shoulders and twist his mouth. Saskia felt him coil. ‘If you didn’t need me, why are you still in this city? Why did you pull me from that carriage?’

‘What made you into this, Simon?’

‘Whore.’

‘I have your word?’

Kamo shrugged. ‘Yes. How about some breakfast for your prisoner?’

Using her foot, Saskia steadied the bar that held the two manacles. She unlocked both. Kamo groaned with relief and studied his hands. He turned to her. His eyes were half-closed, as though Saskia was an illusion whose defect he might discover by study. Then his hands—they were small, not thickened by work—drifted towards her throat. She let him encircle her neck and press. Throughout, Kamo’s eyes bulged as though it was him, not her, whose blood was gathering in the head, unable to drop. She maintained her look of scorn. After fifteen seconds, Kamo dropped his hands to her living, right hand and gathered it to his lips, lowering his head. He could not say sorry. Contrition was not a mode he had mastered, even as an actor.

Saskia took a long breath. She looked into the darkness of the flue.

‘See? You need me, Kamo. You always did.’