Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

‘Quiet,’ said Grisha. His smile had gone. ‘Our guest is eating.’

Saskia swallowed her mouthful and looked from one to the other. She wanted to leave. She appreciated once more that she was in the basement of a revolutionary safe house. The knowledge no longer brought a sense of relief. She was, by deed, an enemy of the revolution.

‘I’m going. Thanks for the food.’

‘Where will you go?’ said Grisha, gesturing to the beef with inky fingers. His grin was wide. His breath smelled of vodka. ‘Eat.’

Saskia looked at Robespierre, whose eyes did not lift to hers.

‘If you want to help me,’ she said, ‘I need to send a telegram.’

‘Where will we find a post office open at this hour?’ said Grisha. He winked at Robespierre, but something had soured between them. Grisha covered the moment by putting more joviality into his voice. ‘Robespierre, where is your charm? This is a pretty lady, after all. Talk to her. Make her feel at home.’

Saskia stood up. Her legs were weak. Was it because of the fall? She moved towards Robespierre, then crouched at the fire. If only something burned there. She looked at the vegetable crate crammed with fresh, illegal literature. How such a cell would worship its printing press. Grisha would be lucky if one in ten of these gazettes was used for a purpose less pragmatic than the wiping of a worker’s arse. The futility of the enterprise was as characteristic of revolutionary fomentation as faith was to the religious: the greater, the grander. Saskia could only guess what stories of water leaks and animal infestations they had used to explain the noise to the superintendent. Perhaps they were bribing him. Yes; Saskia decided they were. Peerless copperplate indeed.

Robespierre put his hand on his hip. In so doing, he exposed the scuffed handle of a revolver. Saskia was not alarmed. Like his name, it was a gesture. Nonetheless, her heart rate was increasing. She drew attention to the bookcase.

‘I see you have some German novels.’

‘We’re supposed to be teachers,’ Robespierre replied. His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what we do. As a cover, I mean.’

Saskia blinked. Sweat was itching over her scalp. Her mouth watered, as though she was about to be sick. She reached out at Robespierre. He stepped away, embarrassed by her again, and she fell unconscious onto her chest.

In a deeper realm than the basement, in a place where her thoughts began, the sparrows came. They poured from an overcast sky. Their keening chirrups were like a thousand windows shattering. When she saw them, she remembered that they had come to her before. Like fear, they were constant in their companionship. Unlike fear, their memory dissolved with the opening of her eyes. They flew in her dreams alone.

Odin had ravens: the first called Huginn, or thought, and the second, Muninn, or memory.

Again, she wondered what these sparrows wanted, and she knew that she had thought this before, back and back, dream after dream.

‘What are you?’

The sparrows reminded her of something. Years before, on the long walk west from Baikal, Saskia had been followed by a feral dog. It accompanied her for a week over the endless steppe. It neither approached nor stalked her. It tracked her day and night. It slept when she slept and moved on when she did. When she threw it bread, the dog ate.

She never knew what happened to the dog. One day, it was gone.

The sparrows wheeled now in the dream sky. A great thickening, visible as a contour, passed through the flock. Beyond them, the overcast sky brightened. She could see shapes in the clouds. Russian letters.

No, Greek symbols.

No: equations.

‘Can you take me home?’ she called.

Saskia awoke on a mesh bed in the smaller of the two anterooms. She was certain that only minutes had passed. Her eyes focused on broken ambrotype plates between a chamber pot and the wall. As the shapes became more distinct, a pain grew behind her eyes. She shut them.

The sparrows faded from her mind, forgotten.

I … I got rid of Kamo. I’m in St Petersburg. They poisoned me.

Saskia could not move from the bed. She twisted with another pain, which began in her lower back. She tugged her knees to her chest, put her teeth into a knee. She rode it. Her hand twisted into a claw. When the pain lessened, she tried to relax the hand. She could not.

The room became bright and she saw that Grisha was standing by the bed, tightening the overhead bulb.

‘The Georgians told us to be careful,’ he said. His tone was no longer playful. It was clear that he was speaking to another person. ‘They told us to be careful.’

Saskia lost her sense of where and when she was. She struggled to reorient.

Eighteenth century? Revolution. Beheading. Ah, Robespierre. He speaks to a man called Robespierre.

Saskia gritted her teeth as a cramp rolled through her bowels.

‘What did you give me?’ she whispered.

Grisha leaned close. ‘The real Judjuna Mikhailovna was found dead on the early afternoon train,’ he said. ‘They told us minutes before you arrived.’

Before Saskia could reply, her view exchanged Grisha for Robespierre. He was holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘look what you did. She’s soiled herself. What if she dies?’

‘They warned me what she can do,’ said Grisha. ‘This is better—you can trust me on that—and don’t forget that with the money we can pay off the punchcutter.’

‘You mean to kill her? Say it, if that’s what you mean.’

Saskia tried to roll out of her spastic posture, but fell onto the floor. The pain was a wave that crashed upon her every nerve.

‘Robespierre,’ she croaked.

‘No,’ said Grisha. ‘It’s too late. Our friends will arrive within an hour. Maybe you’ll be alive then, so they can work on you.’

Saskia closed bleeding eyes and said, ‘Robespierre, shoot him. He betrayed me for money. If your principles mean anything, let them lead you now.’ But the effort to speak was too much. She counted her breaths. A few minutes later, she heard the press start up. It would be business as usual while the traitor died.

Sleep released her from the tortures of her body. She dreamed that she had fallen upwards into the sky, only to land on its grey membrane and become affixed like an insect stuck to water. The sensation was not unpleasant. She could not see her body, or even be sure that she had a body, but she felt naked.

The sparrows descended.

Yes , she thought. How could I forget about them? This time, when I awake, I will remember them all.

She looked into the uncountable mass of wings, quick eyes, and sharp mouths. She screamed. The birds struck her body like a black waterfall. They pecked at her eyes and the soft flesh between her toes. Their feet scratched. Their wings were unbearable in their fluttering, touching, and though she tried to spit and shake her head, they found her mouth and wriggled inside.

There was no pain.

She remembered the dog that had followed her across the steppe. It had been neither friend nor foe, but a constant companion.

She opened her eyes. The birds poured in. She saw equations and beautiful schematics spelled in fire against her eyelids.

She shouted, ‘I don’t understand,’ and the words were clear, though she knew her mouth to be jammed with struggling sparrows.

The fire became a cloud. It was the distinctive shape of an atomic explosion.

‘You are trying to say something,’ she said. ‘What?’