‘Just the one, is it?’ said Lauri. ‘Just the one and that’ll do it?’
The small man threw off a smile.
‘No one man is as important as that, not even Bobrikov,’ he said, caressing the name with his tongue. ‘Let’s not deceive ourselves. There is plenty of work to be done.’
‘So there’ll be others, after Bobrikov. Is that what you’re saying?’
The man in the fox-fur hat clicked his tongue impatiently. The small Russian put out his hand calmingly. ‘Let’s not deceive ourselves,’ he repeated, fixing his gaze on Lauri. There was a tone in his voice that Lauri hadn’t noticed before. ‘To remove an individual is one thing. To use terror correctly is quite another, and requires the gift of timing as well as that of acting decisively. Terror must contain an element of the random if it is to be effective; that is, it must not be predictable. But terror must also be educational.’
‘How do you mean, educational?’
‘The successful political application of terror teaches those in power that they are not secure. It teaches those without power that the system which oppresses them is not invulnerable. Most importantly, it teaches that we are not like them. We do not apply their rules to our own behaviour. The less we apply those rules, the greater our strength becomes. So, ideally, we would choose to kill Bobrikov naked in his bath. But in his case there are operational reasons for doing otherwise.’
Naked in his bath. Lauri could not prevent himself from seeing Bobrikov sitting in the sauna, his skin glistening with sweat, his haunches spread on the slatted shelves. But the sauna was a place where a man should never be disturbed.
‘Why in his bath? Why not in the street?’
‘You’d prefer that? Maybe you’d allow him a weapon of his choice, to make it fair?’ chided the small Russian. ‘No. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not how it happens any more. The world has changed, my friend. We have moved on from all that. Listen. Imagine that our man – let’s not call him Bobrikov, let’s call him by another name, just for the sake of argument. Aleksandr, that’ll do.
‘Aleksandr’s riding along a forest path. He’s been hunting, he’s got his companions along with him, his not-very-effective bodyguard, all the usual suspects. The horses have had a long day and they’re trotting slowly, in single file because the path is narrow just here. Suddenly a young woman appears at the side of the path. She calls out to him, “Your honour! Excellency! Little Father!” and she’s holding a baby in her arms. A fine, fat future citizen. And she’s a beautiful young woman so the whole picture is enchanting and even our friend – Aleksandr – can’t resist it. He slows right down, and as he does so the beautiful young woman pulls out a pistol from the baby’s long clothes and shoots him in the head.’
‘A woman with a baby wouldn’t do that.’
‘But don’t you see, that’s exactly the point? She wouldn’t do it, but she does do it. Or maybe she throws a bomb, at close range, so that she and the baby are caught in the blast and killed. But our friend Aleksandr is killed, too, and his useless bodyguards along with him.’
Slowly, Lauri shook his head. ‘Such things don’t happen.’
As he spoke he saw the young mother as the Russian had described her. But she had Eeva’s face, and the baby locked in her arms, hidden in the folds of a shawl, was his own flesh and blood.
‘No mother would agree to such a thing.’
‘Aha! Aha! You still don’t see. That’s precisely why terror is effective, because it’s composed of things that don’t happen and can’t possibly happen. And that is why the most effective acts of terror can never be foreseen.’
There was a long silence. The small Russian leaned back in his chair again. He put his hands together in a steeple, and rested his chin on them while he looked at Lauri from under his brows. They were all looking at him now. They wanted their answer, that’s what he was here for. They wanted to know if he’d be part of it. But why did it all matter so much? He was unimportant. All they wanted him for was to create a diversion in the street. Shout and wave a stick about, that’s what Sasha had said. Or was there more? Yes, surely that was it. They wanted more of him. They would never have brought him here, and let him listen to so much, unless there was more.
Sasha leaned forward. His face at last was visible. He looked relaxed, although there was sweat on his forehead. But the room was cold, icy cold. If Lauri once let himself shiver he would shake all over and he wouldn’t be able to stop. However, he was not going to give way.
‘All right, Lauri?’ Sasha asked softly, as if they were alone. Lauri made no response. How had he got here, to this room? He knew Helsinki like the back of his hand but he had taken one turning too many this time. The woman with the baby? No, it was impossible. Sasha would have to see that it was impossible. They’d kill Bobrikov, but it wouldn’t finish there. Bobrikov would only be the first step. If terror was as the small Russian had said – educational – then where did the lesson stop?
Yes, he was cold. Not only from the chill of the room but from fear. Don’t ever waste time asking yourself why you feel fear, his father had taught him long ago, act on it. Fear’s there for a purpose, except if you’re a coward, which I know you’re not.
Fear was there all right. They were watching him, all of them. They had formed a solid group, with Sasha a part of it. What chance had he of getting out of this room, if he made a break for it? What chance of walking back across those vegetable plots, unless they felt sure of him now? Just as he’d thought, the man in the fox-fur hat had risen, and was drifting towards the door, right hand in his pocket.
‘I’m willing,’ said Lauri. ‘If there’s no other way.’
‘If there’s no other way,’ repeated the small Russian. ‘If there’s no other way. What can you mean by that?’
‘Only what I say.’ Lauri held his ground. Best not to seem too pliable all of a sudden. They wouldn’t credit it.
The fox-fur hat whistled under his breath and looked at Sasha. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. But the small Russian jumped up, and slammed the table with the flat of his gloved hand. Even as he did it Lauri thought it looked wrong, somehow. Stagey, as if he didn’t believe in what he was doing.
‘This is impossible!’ he said rapidly, stammering a little. The calm had gone from his voice. He was speaking Russian now. ‘It is absolutely impossible and out of the question that we can be talking like this. Bobrikov is to be disposed of and that is already decided without further argument. We have already moved on from that. Is it not the case? Eh? Is it not the case?’
‘It is the case,’ said Sasha.
‘Then why are we wasting our time in discussion?’
Wasting our time. But was he really angry? No, thought Lauri, he’s working himself up to be angry. It’s the same thing as saying ‘terror is educational’. None of it is real.
But Lauri recognized that even if the man was not really angry, he would still do everything that an angry man would do. Lauri took a deep breath. His body tingled with the life it wanted to keep, the life that was his and no one else’s. He would get out of this dead room, out of this dying village. He would get back to Eeva. He would make them trust him, and believe he was one of them, and then he would get out.
‘I see,’ said Lauri slowly. A phrase that he’d heard at some meeting fell into his mouth. ‘It’s what history demands of us. And it’s our – our role –’ he went on, finding just the right words again, as if an angel were sitting on his tongue. ‘Yes, I recognize that we must each play our part – in providing the answers that history demands.’
The small Russian nodded eagerly, like a good teacher whose pupil had finally come up with the right answer. ‘Exactly. Ex-act-ly. But at the correct time, and under the correct conditions. We can’t afford any more amateurs.’ His voice rapped like a knuckle on wood.
‘I’m no amateur,’ said Lauri. ‘I’m the real thing. Ask Sasha,’ and he nodded and grinned towards Sasha in a way that felt as false as everything el
se that had been said and done in that room.
But the small Russian took it for real. His face relaxed, and, as if he’d given a signal, the tension in the room fell away. Sasha leaned towards Lauri, claiming him again, and clapped him on the back. Lauri smelled the used-up alcohol seeping through Sasha’s skin.
‘He’s the real thing, all right,’ said Sasha. Then he pointed his first two fingers, pulled an imaginary trigger and puffed out his lips. ‘Bang!’ said Sasha. ‘Bang, bang, they’re dead.’
The man in the fox-fur hat shook his head impatiently. ‘Really, Aleksandr Kirillovich.’
‘But that’s what it’s all about.’ Sasha’s face was brilliant with glee. He pulled off his glove, put out a finger and whipped it through the candle flame. A smudge of carbon bloomed on the skin. Sasha examined it closely, lifting his finger to his nose and sniffing the singed hairs. Then he moved his finger back into the flame, slowly, slowly, drawing it to the left and then to the right. A small noise came from deep in his throat.
‘Sasha, for God’s sake!’
‘One small bang and it’s all done,’ said Sasha. ‘Everybody happy?’ He put the glove back on his hand, and stood up. The stench of burned skin hit Lauri’s nostrils. Sasha swayed a little, because of the burn or because of the drink still working in him. He steadied himself, holding the chair back. ‘Goodnight, gentlemen,’ he went on, ‘until we meet again. Come on, Lauri, time to go.’
‘I’ll find my own way,’ Lauri said. He didn’t want to say Eeva’s name in this company. ‘I’ve got to meet someone.’
‘I brought you here, remember. You’d never have found it otherwise.’
‘Try me,’ said Lauri.
‘All right, then. Do without me. See where it gets you,’ and without waiting for Lauri he flung out of the room. The Russians looked at one another, weighing what had happened. Their shadow heads nodded on the walls. How small they looked, hunkering under their shadows, Lauri thought. But in spite of its coldness the room was oppressive, full of dead air and sweat and fear. He had got to get out, before he took another breath.
28
She thought it was Magda come back, but it was him at last. She sprang to the door and opened it. Lauri shambled into the room, head down, blank, exhausted.
‘What happened? Where’ve you been? What’s wrong?’
‘’Mall right. Cold, that’s all.’
His face was sallow purple. She touched his cheek. ‘Give me your hands. But Lauri, you’re freezing! No, don’t sit by the stove, that’s not good when you’re so cold. Come over here, onto the bed.’
He sat down heavily on the side of her bed. She knelt and began to undo his boots.
‘I thought you’d be here hours ago.’
‘I couldn’t find my way.’
‘You couldn’t find your way,’ she repeated, trying to make sense of it. It wasn’t possible that Lauri could lose himself in his own city, on a clear night. He wasn’t even drunk. But he looked starved with cold, as if he’d been wandering the streets for hours.
She eased off his boots and woollen socks, and began to rub his bare feet. He had holes in his socks, too. ‘You’ll be lucky if you’ve not got frostbite. What were you thinking of?’
‘I was at a meeting,’ he said heavily. ‘One of those meetings, you know, when you don’t know where it’s to be held until they take you there.’
She nodded. She knew about those meetings, all right, and she was beginning to have a feeling towards them which wasn’t distrust or dislike but more like an immense weariness, as if she’d been waiting all her life for something that never quite happened. She held Lauri’s right foot between her hands. He had big feet, and was always having trouble with his boots. She remembered how Mika had despaired as Lauri’s toes burst through yet another pair of boots, when they were children. But it had been good for her. She’d had a line-up of Lauri’s old boots, waiting for her.
More gently now, she rubbed his toes.
‘Then after I left the meeting I seemed to go off walking into nowhere,’ Lauri went on. She couldn’t see his face. ‘Like I’d never seen the streets before. By the time I came to myself I was miles away.’
‘Were you with him? Sasha?’
‘He was at the meeting.’
His voice sounded thick, as if his tongue was too big for his mouth.
‘I knew it. That Sasha,’ she said, under her breath. She rubbed his feet more vigorously. ‘So he was the one who took you there.’
‘So cold,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s got right into me.’
‘Open your coat and let the warmth in.’
But he fumbled with the buttons and she had to help him undo them and then pull the heavy coat open.
‘That’s better. How do your feet feel now?’ she asked, chafing them again. ‘I could go down and get some snow to rub them with.’
‘It’s not that bad. They’re not frostbitten.’ His hands were on his thighs, his weight pushed down on them. ‘I’m starting to feel something now.’
Burning and prickling, sensation crawled back into his flesh. He shifted one foot, then the other.
‘How are they now?’
‘On fire.’
‘That’s good. That’s the blood coming back into them. What about your hands?’
‘They’re all right. Give me a minute, Eevi, don’t rub any more.’
The warmth of the room pulsed over him in waves. It felt good, like getting drunk, but his feet fizzed and burned until he had to get up and stamp the pain out of them. There, that was better. He sank back on the bed. She hadn’t moved. She was still kneeling there, her head bowed as if she was mourning. He saw the pale line of the parting in her hair. She looked up at him and smiled.
‘Better?’ she asked.
‘Yes, better.’
Her smile was so young and warm and full of life. It was crazy that a few moments ago he’d thought she might be crying.
‘You could get into the bed,’ she said, ‘only Magda’ll be back any minute now.’
He sighed deeply. There was nothing he wanted more. To lie beside Eeva, both of them warm with each other’s warmth. Drowsing – sleeping – waking – touching… He hadn’t the energy even to touch her now, but in the middle of the night he would wake and be strong again and full of hunger for her.
‘I wish we had somewhere to be,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘A room where nobody else comes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where we can lock the door,’ he went on, thinking so intently that he could almost see his own key, and how it would fit into the lock of the room he shared with Eeva alone. How powerfully he did not want to go back to the room he shared with Sasha. He did not want to smell Sasha beside him in the bed. He did not want to feel Sasha’s weight pressing down into the hollow of the shared mattress.
‘I need to get a place of my own,’ he said.
‘Can you afford it?’
He smiled faintly, and shook his head. But together we could. Together it would be possible, with both our wages, he thought. But it was too early to say anything like that. Eeva believed he was tied to Sasha, and maybe that was true. And Magda was her friend… Magda had done a lot for Eeva. But why did that thought make him feel a pang of resentment, rather than gratitude? It was all too much to think of now. All he wanted was to lie down, to sleep…
‘I made a meal for us,’ she said, getting up. ‘I can heat the stew now, and cook the dumplings. It won’t have spoiled.’
‘No, wait.’ He took her hand and drew her down to sit beside him. ‘Stay here. This is nice.’
Nice. She smelled clean. She had washed her hair, and little tendrils were slipping out of the knot, tickling his neck. A shiver ran down his body. Maybe he was not so exhausted after all.
‘You haven’t even taken your coat off properly,’ she pointed out.
‘I told you before, I’m not very cultured,’ he said.
Take it off, though. It smells funny. As if y
ou’ve been sitting in a graveyard.’
He stood up, and let his coat fall on the floor. ‘This meeting was in an empty building,’ he said. There wasn’t any heating, and it smelled as if something was rotting somewhere, but very slowly, because of the cold. Maybe a cat had got trapped in one of the rooms.’
‘Who was there?’
‘They were mostly from Petersburg. There was a Swede as well, but he didn’t stay. I’m not sure what he was there for. What a face. He could have chopped wood with his nose.’
She listened to the trouble in his voice. ‘Was the meeting about what you were telling me before?’
He saw that she didn’t want to name Bobrikov directly. He sat down on the bed again, and put his arm around her shoulders.
‘That’s right.’
‘You didn’t agree?’
‘I said what I had to say, because there were five of them and one of me.’
‘So you told them you were going to take part?’
‘Not in so many words.’ He shifted his feet again, stamping them gently on the floor, first the right and then the left.
She had tensed in the circle of his arm. ‘They won’t let you pull out now. If you try they’ll find a way of stopping you.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that. I’ve seen them. I know how they operate,’ he added, putting one of Sasha’s favourite words into his own mouth.
‘But what’ll they do?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got to think. But the truth is, Eevi, I didn’t agree. Not when it came to it.’
‘You don’t know what they might do,’ she said quietly.
He had a sudden, vivid picture of a hole in the Baltic ice. Two men dragging a body, bumping it over the rough surface. A third chipping away at the film of fresh ice that had grown over the hole. So far out from shore that they’d be dots to anyone who could be bothered to look seawards. They’d look like a group of men going ice-fishing. Slide a man under the ice and he won’t be seen until spring.
‘Anyway it’s all my own fault,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘All of it. I got myself into it. But I still don’t understand how we got here, to this point. I mean, I agreed with everything we were doing. You’ve got to educate, you’ve got to organize, you won’t get anywhere without solidarity. And you’ve got to take risks. It’s not a picnic on a summer day,’ he said, and then remembered that was one of Sasha’s expressions. He wouldn’t use any more of Sasha’s expressions. Even if his own words weren’t as good, they were better, somehow. ‘Yes, you do have to take risks,’ he went on. ‘Lose your job, be blacklisted, maybe imprisoned, get beaten up by the police… That’s all part of it. We know all that. It’s what we grew up with.
House of Orphans Page 29
