Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

Lenin smiled. It was the smile of a lawyer about to cross-examine a witness. ‘The money is here, of course. We packed it inside encyclopaedias. I can show you. There would be no dishonour in leaving this house with some volumes. Shall we say A to D?’

‘I don’t want the money.’

Taking the hand of the girl, Saskia pulled her towards the window, then pushed her behind her skirt.

Lenin snorted. ‘You should not underestimate my will on the matter of our coming socialist revolution, Penelope. Kamo told me that you are a sentimentalist. What do you intend? To burn the money, no doubt, and kill me. So what of the girl? How do you think she will live with the memories of my murder, and those murders to come?’

Saskia withdrew one of the revolvers and pointed it at Lenin. He frowned at her, as though astounded by her failure to understand. ‘You wish to aid a regime that lies, kills, and robs those who are born within the cage of slavery. Think on it. If you are not convinced by this scientific explanation of the ills of the world, then your imagination fails you. You don’t see every possibility. You are condemned by your own stupidity.’

Saskia thought about the girl. Saskia could never show her the millions dead who might live by this bullet. Given the freedom of escape from a universe in which she was destined to perform an action many years hence, the decision to kill this man felt like the first choice she had ever made.

‘To change the future,’ she said, smiling, ‘all it takes is one good man. Since he’s not here, I’ll have to do.’

Before she could squeeze the trigger, Saskia felt the girl hug her leg. Saskia looked down and smiled. It had never occurred to her, walking towards the house, that Lenin would have a pupil. Was the girl the daughter of a friend? Was Lenin funding his exile through private tuition, just as Saskia had done in St Petersburg?

Saskia watched her return the smile. The little mouth opened to reveal a missing tooth.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Saskia said. ‘Just stay …’

There was something on the floor. Saskia blinked at it.

She tried again. ‘Just stay behind me and everything will be …’

Her eyes seemed to lose their focus. She concentrated on the shape on the floor. It was not her shadow. It was a deep, red pool whose edge moved like fire on the steppe, and it had almost reached the doll’s house.

Lenin was speaking, and Saskia needed all her concentration to catch the meaning of his words. Unimportant, peripheral trivia occupied her mind: he could not pronounce his ‘R’s correctly, and she lost the sense of whether or not it would be rude to correct him, just as she had corrected Pasha those weeks ago upon their first meeting in St Petersburg.

‘Plissed to meet you.’

‘I warned you, Penelope, that you should not underestimate my will on the matter of our revolution.’

A fog of euphoria seemed to settle about her. She looked at the man.

‘What,’ she said, ‘did you …?’

The girl released her leg and Saskia, losing that little support, stumbled backwards. She stood on the hem of her dress and tripped, falling heavily on her bottom among the toy soldiers. The pain brought a spell of clarity. She looked once more at the shadow and saw her death in the deepness of its red.

‘I will quote Prime Minister Stolypin: “The punishment of a few prevents a sea of blood”.’ Lenin then called behind him, ‘Krupskaya, it’s done!’

The girl was still smiling. She held a long knife, one edge of which was bloody. She wiped the blade on the face of a teddy bear and ran towards the door. There, she was gathered up by a tall lady. The lady wore an elegant dress with rolled sleeves. Attached to her lapel was an upside-down nurse’s watch.

‘Oh,’ said the woman, looking at Saskia with bulging eyes. ‘Nina, find your best coat and wait for us in the parlour.’

The woman stepped over the growing blood pool and pulled the revolver from Saskia’s hand.

‘I am Krupskaya,’ said the woman. She had the manner of a physician. ‘Are you English?’

For moment, Saskia’s chin fell to her chest.

‘Help me.’

‘Let me see.’

The woman took the knife, which the girl had dropped, and cut a line in the span of skirt on Saskia’s lap. Krupskaya pulled back the cloth and slit the underlying bloomers to reveal a curved, deep cut near the groin. It ejected a mouthful of blood with each tick of Saskia’s heart.

‘Apply …’ Saskia gasped. ‘Pressure.’

She tried to put her hand across the wound but Krupskaya gripped her wrist.

‘Shh,’ said the woman. She studied the wound and seemed satisfied by it. Turning, she called, ‘It will do for her. I’m sure.’

‘Then come along,’ Lenin called back. ‘Where on Earth is Gorky?’

Saskia hissed and gathered all her strength, but Krupskaya held her knees apart and steered the weakening hands away and, still watching the wound, made appreciative noises, as though comforting a child.

‘I’ve heard stories about you, Penelope,’ she said. ‘When you’re gone, I’ll have one to tell about you.’

Saskia tried to give her a defiant look.

‘They’re here,’ said Lenin, returning to the toy room. He looked around, as though for the last time, and then crouched alongside Krupskaya. He too inspected Saskia’s wound. ‘Nina is our little saviour, I find.’

‘She is,’ agreed Krupskaya, standing. She lifted her nurse’s watch with two fingers, as though taking its pulse. ‘Has Joseph returned with our carriage?’

For Saskia, the pain had come and gone. Now even her anxiety faded to a ghost. She let her head rest against the doll’s house. A sleep settled upon her. Her thoughts transformed from one thing to another in an unbroken chain of associations. She remembered the feel of Jem’s blue hair between her fingers. Sclumpfchen . These thoughts became soundless images of Pasha. She had loved him from the moment he blushed at her correction of his English.

Pliss.

She remembered Kamo performing tricks with his horse, Rooster, on Golovinsky Avenue. He had wheeled it in the dust. The horse had kicked out and stepped high. The two had danced. Kamo had winked for the children and laughed at the blushing ladies before departing with the shout, ‘Die, but save your brother!’

She remembered Soso in the Adamia milk bar. One time, he had held court not long after an escapade that left his Fedora with a bullet hole. Gun cartridges had lined the chest of his long, chokha coat as he related the story to the penniless princes. His amber-coloured eyes had burned. What had been the escapade? That memory had faded.

Her mind returned to the dark band that had punctured the skin of time. Saskia had screamed when she tumbled into the frozen air of 12th April, 1904, but the impact with Lake Baikal, or reaching its surface, had silenced a part of her. She was immortal. Even the vertical crash of an aeroplane had failed to kill its chosen passenger.

Her eyes opened once more. There, among the toys, she could die. There was no sanctity of time paradox in this universe. Here she was, dying, proving it.

Saskia considered the blood that soaked the boards and her skirt.

‘There,’ said a voice. ‘So you were undone after all.’

Saskia squinted. The handsome face of Soso came into focus as he lowered himself. She envied him his lithe movements and the quickness of his smile. He held an oil lamp in his hand.

Saskia fumbled for her revolvers. They were gone.

‘Lynx,’ he said. ‘Your fangs have been removed. Now, where is he? Where did you leave Kamo?’

Saskia smiled. She felt as though she had run beyond her endurance, where even the muscle of her heart was burning. She took a long breath and sang in a whisper: