Guy Adams - The Clown Service

‘Feel it now?’ she said. ‘Remember?’

And I did. I remembered everything , the numbers station, Krishnin, Operation Black Earth… everything that had just happened and the desperate, stupid thing I had done to avoid it all.

‘There is no simple reset button in this universe,’ she continued. ‘You might think so. You might think you’ve done a good thing here today. And maybe you have. A lot of lives have been spared after all, a lot of people saved… But the cost !’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, finding it hard to catch my breath. ‘It worked. Krishnin’s gone. It’s all gone. Job done.’

‘For now. But one day… one day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you and all your friends. Time doesn’t like being pushed, boy. It pushes back. And when it does, you’re going to come crawling to me, because that’s the day that only I’ll be able to help you.’

‘Yeah? Well, leave me your card and I’ll give you a call.’

She chuckled at that, or the thing inside her did.

‘Oh, we’ll keep in touch young man, don’t worry about that. We’re going to become good friends, you and I. When the fallout descends, I’m going to be the best friend you’ve got, the only one that will be able to keep you alive. Remember that. The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg.’

She let go of my arm and wandered off. After a couple of steps she seemed to become unsteady on her feet, turned around, looked at me in confusion and then meandered on.

What girl? I wondered. What had she… it… meant?

‘Making friends?’ said Shining, having come back out of the shop.

‘Apparently.’

I looked at him with new – or perhaps that should be old eyes – remembering everything I had experienced over the last few days. ‘In the Clown Service I think you need all the friends you can get.’

‘The what?’

‘That’s what my old section head called Section 37, the Clown Service.’

He laughed. ‘I rather like that! Embrace the insults they throw at you, Ludwig – that’s my advice. Come on, let’s see what the rest of the day brings. One thing you’ll learn soon enough, life in the Clown Service is many things, but it’ll never be quiet.’

I knew that only too well.

He opened the door and began to climb the stairs to the office. I followed on behind, suddenly struck by an urge.

‘I wonder if Tamar’s in?’ I asked. I thought about her, her ferocious love for the head of my new section, the indomitable strength of her. I wanted to see her again. And April, and Derek… all of us had done this together.

‘Tamar?’ Shining asked, turning to me as he unlocked the office door. ‘Who’s Tamar? Don’t think I know anyone of that name. Armenian?’

The girl. That’s what it had said – whatever that thing was that seemed to dog me at every step, hopping from one body to another.

‘Tamar. Your…’ I shrugged, ‘…bodyguard. She lives upstairs.’

He shook his head. ‘The upstairs flat’s been empty for years; the landlord always struggles to rent it. I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m afraid.’

He stepped into the office and I just stood there, staring up at the next landing.

The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg… One day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you all …

a) Dagestan, North Caucasus, USSR, October 1931

The ground was frozen. Digging the potatoes was mining rather than farming. Olag forced his hands into his armpits, trying to squeeze some warmth back into fingers that felt like they were broken. They bled onto the thick wool of his shirt, leaving hard crusts that scraped and cracked as he moved.

‘This is no life,’ he said to his brother, Artur, four years his senior but so beaten by his years in the fields he looked much older.

‘It’s the only one you have,’ Artur replied, not looking up because he knew they were being watched by the soldiers. ‘Get on with it or you’ll cause trouble.’

‘Father says I’m good at causing trouble.’

‘He’s right. I wish he wasn’t.’

‘He says I’ll grow up to be better than this. That I’ll change the world.’

‘He says a lot of things, because he hates his life and wants the next generation to change what he cannot. One day he’ll say it too loudly and it’ll get him killed. Unless you want to beat him to it, shut up and dig.’

But Olag was angry and the idea of forcing his bleeding fingers back into the sharp rocks for the sake of a lousy potato – a potato he wouldn’t even be allowed to eat as it was deemed ‘socialist property’ – made him so angry he couldn’t bear to do it.

‘No,’ he said, walking away from the trench and towards the soldiers.

‘No more potatoes,’ he said, folding his arms and trying not to wince.

The soldiers laughed. They were men from the village, drunk on the power their position afforded them. One of them stooped down to Olag’s level and prodded him in the chest.

‘How old are you, little rebel?’

‘Nine.’

‘School age. Time for your lesson, I think.’

The soldier straightened up, still smiling and punched Olag in the face. He tumbled backwards, falling to a sitting position on the hard ground. For a moment he was in shock, his left cheek burning.

Then he was back on his feet and running at the soldiers.

‘Bastards!’ he shouted, kicking and punching at them – to hell with how much it hurt his hands.

The soldier who had hit him continued to laugh, his colleague joining him as they threw Olag back to the ground and gave him a kicking that felt endless.

Lying in the dirt, tears in his eyes, Olag looked up at the soldiers and wished he could tear them apart.

He felt someone pulling him to his feet, his brother Artur.

‘Please,’ Artur said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’ll keep him out of trouble.’ He dragged Olag back towards the trench.

‘You mind you do,’ the soldier shouted, ‘or next time he won’t be getting back up again.’

Artur wiped at the dirt and blood on his younger brother’s face. ‘I hope you learned your lesson?’

‘Yes,’ Olag said, his teeth grinding together as he fought back the hatred he felt inside himself. ‘It is better in this life to be the soldier and not the peasant.’

b) Stalingrad, Russia, 23rd August 1943

‘You dance like a peasant,’ the girl said, as Krishnin carried her around the floor. Noticing his face fall, she squeezed his hand. ‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism. The men here are stiff and unfeeling, they don’t know how to connect to the music. They are all thinking about how they look, about whether people are impressed by them. You just move. It’s nice.’

He smiled and said nothing, twirling her around as the band played on. He wondered if he was in love. The girl was beautiful and, for all her criticism of the men of Stalingrad who tried too hard to impress, he had noticed how she looked at his uniform. He had seen the look before: women loved a man of power.

‘Do you think the Germans will overrun us?’ she asked, clearly eager to move the conversation away from what she feared had been taken as an insult.

‘They will try,’ he said.