Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

‘ Goda del nostro carnevale, signora, ’ said the footman, opening an arm towards the façade of the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. It was lit with theatrical lime-jets and oil fires and the last of the spring sunshine. Its northern square, through which Saskia had galloped not four days before, throbbed with activity.

Saskia took a breath to correct his Italian, but held it. Instead, she looked upon the crowd and let Kamo take her arm and move her into its swirl. Most guests were costumed in the Venetian style. Others were dressed as courtiers from the reign of Catherine the Great. One short man was dressed as a Roman centurion, though his cloak was golden. Another as a pirate. There was a highwayman. And the clowns. Clown after clown.

‘We will go immediately to the Amber Room,’ said Kamo, pulling her.

‘We will not.’ She scanned the crowd. ‘Midnight is our time, not before.’

‘Is it clockwork? Do we meet someone there, is that it?’

Kamo’s face was obscured by his mask: a skull missing its jaw. She could, however, see him biting the inside of his cheek.

‘You could say that,’ she replied. ‘We will wait until dinner is called, eat, and recover the money. Smile.’

Kamo squeezed her arm. ‘How will we move it? Money is heavy, worse than books.’

‘It has been arranged. Relax. Enjoy yourself.’

‘What is my role in this, Lynx?’ he asked.

Saskia turned to him. His tone was so soft, the question placed so wearily, that she wondered whether he had guessed her true plan.

‘You are the finest infiltrator in St Petersburg,’ she said. ‘How else would we have made it to this ball?’

‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my presence is a bulwark against further interference as you proceed to betray the Party.’

Saskia looked at him.

‘You overestimate my cunning.’

‘I remember a comment the Pockmarked One made after I told him the story of our first meeting on Turtle Lake. “Perhaps,” he said, “she is a witch who seeks the wisdom of the dead.” He found that funny.’

To this, Saskia did not reply.

Polished, black masks complemented the bone white. The latter were commonly gilded, their beauty spots gold in the touches of sunlight. The black masks were seldom without precious stones. Below those masks that covered only half the face, lips were licked. Many half-masks sported probosces that recalled that perfect English expression—Nosey Parker. The full masks were still as skulls and their fixed smiles defiant: lips red and full. The men liked to wear these masks with a headband below their three-pointed Venetian hats. The women tended to carry them on stalks. Their skirts were shorter than usual and their necklines lower. Many wore long, thin gloves with a hook at the elbow in which to hang the hem of the skirt, and they expanded as they spun.

All about fluttered the whispers of fans, laughter, and conversation. Only the palace servants, who wore no masks, were silent as they carried trays and lit cigarettes and delivered small notes, precise as jewels in clockwork. The occasional flutter of a juggled torch led to an appreciative gasp. Young ladies giggled. It was no difficult task to locate the courtesans. They were slower and employed the conspicuous posture of the huntress, not the prey.

The evening already smelled of sweat, perfume, cooking meat, and fireworks. The air itself might have been a cocktail mixed to the perfection of collective anticipation: that this night to come, this Petersburg cliché turned authentic, would be somehow unforgettable and unique. This evening might represent the apogee of the season. The Tsar, sadly, was not present. But in his absence there was release. These aristocrats were set for an occasion during which their good names, hidden by a temporary Venetian pall, could not be impaired by mistakes romantic or otherwise. It limited the damage to a level below that of disaster. There might be mishaps and distant shakes of the head. That was the attraction of the masked ball.

Saskia had a sense of smell beyond that of her fellow guests. She knew that the women were wet and the men hard. She put a finger to her nose and frowned.

She turned to Kamo.

‘Get me a drink,’ she said.

Saskia stood there, incognito, in a dress of blackcurrant velvet and furlined pelisse and a half-mask that fringed her eyes in gold. Her hat was a sloping disc. Her shoulders carried silver epaulettes and threaded telephone cords that trailed down her arms to her wrists, which disappeared inside her hand warmer. Her choker was black and at its centre was a lobe of amber. She could feel it when she swallowed. The pitch of the merriment was reaching a height, as though the connections between the revellers—their hands, their lips—were tightening to the perfection of gut on a stringed instrument.

‘Here,’ said Kamo, putting a glass of white wine in her hand. ‘To courage.’

‘To courage.’

As she lifted the glass to her lips, Kamo stopped her. He linked his arm in hers. Eye to eye, they drank. It was the Bruderschaft , the rite of brotherhood that had become popular among the Outfit since the introduction of its German-born member, Saskia, who never liked the gesture and considered it a poor Caucasian joke at her expense.

They emptied the glasses.

‘Brotherhood,’ said Kamo. In his mask, his eyes were as unreadable as the marbles of a doll. ‘Does the word offend you, sister?’

‘Your manner offends me. As for sexist language, we all pick our battles.’

A blazing arch of fireworks left the roof of the Summer Palace. Saskia had never seen fireworks in twilight. The magnesium light took away colour for an instant. She turned to Kamo, who seemed puzzled by the sudden light.

‘The first house has been called to dinner,’ Saskia told him, walking backwards and away. ‘We should eat something.’ In Phrygian, a dialect that the Armenian speaker Kamo would understand, but which would be difficult for eavesdroppers, she added, ‘You’ll need your strength for the money. Think of it.’

Kamo stared at her. The lower half of his face provided no clue to his mood. ‘I am,’ he said in Russian, and that was an end to their conversation. The spaces within the crowd had compressed as the guests moved towards the many formal doors that permitted entrance to the Summer Palace. A dozen conversations repeated the same thought: that the evening proper was about to begin. That is, it was set to transform once more. Then the talk stopped. Saskia was pushed left and right. The crowd compressed still further until Saskia and Kamo drifted apart at the foot of the Summer Palace. The bass register of an orchestra groaned from its doors. Flames burned with a honeyed intensity from the tall windows. Above, the Tsar’s flag moved in a weak wind.

At once, they were inside the palace, as if on a tide into a sea cave. The main stairwell rose the full height and depth of the palace. Two flights led to a central landing. From this, four more flights sprouted to the first floor. The risers were marble and the banisters finessed with vases.

Behind the sound of a polonaise, played by musicians on the landing, she could hear the beating of the candles in the chandeliers. There was a principle, this evening, of natural light. Conversation recovered. Saskia stretched out for Kamo until his fingers—unmistakably the fingers of Simon Ter-Petrossian—locked with hers. The sounds reflected and thundered in her diaphragm. Even the giggles seemed basso. Kamo moved to her shoulder. He might see this as a battle, she thought, and their entry a charge. They exchanged inscrutable looks.

They passed the chamber orchestra. Each musician was dressed in evening wear, and lacked a mask. Not one musician returned the stares of the guests. The air was perfumed. The porphyry pillars sparkled wetly. Beyond them, at the top of the stairs, an emerald flash captured her attention. The intensity of its light was such that she tripped on the next riser. She allowed Kamo to steer her upwards. The emerald light was gone; but Saskia thought about Pavel Eduardovitch and his successful entry to the Lyceum as they passed through a room with mirrored walls, walked around the edge of the Great Hall and entered an anteroom whose fireplaces were covered with green glass. Apropos this light, she thought, Colourless green ideas sleep furiously , but could not source the phrase, despite its familiarity. Saskia tried to think of this as her farewell party. It was difficult. A persistent worry ebbed at her. She glanced at a passing clock. It was nearly nine.