The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  She looked down. The man in the hat was staring at her. He had the red eyes of an addict and his mouth was open. One hand still pressed his hat against his head. Saskia could see its brim flutter. His other hand held a gun, but she was already moving when it fired.

  The roof was arched, slick with rain and dirt, and swaying unpredictably in the gloom. Saskia stood for a moment, then dropped to one knee. She turned to face the tunnel.

  It was four seconds away.

  A gloved hand gripped the topmost maintenance rail.

  Saskia spun again, this time to face the rear of the train. She had half a carriage in which to sprint as fast as her body could take her, against the direction of travel, cutting her absolute speed by a margin that would reduce the chance of injury from her jump.

  She raised her skirt and ran.

  When she was two thirds of the way along the carriage, she knew that time had run out. She shortened her run and cut to the side. She released her skirt and leapt as a long-jumper, wheeling her arms. A shot rang out.

  Then she was in freefall.

  ~

  She had slipped through a raincloud twisting like a cat. She wore twenty-first century clothes. There was fear; fear like a shrill note, deafening her thoughts. But the reflexes told, with or without her. She settled flat as a leaf. Face down. Her fall described a helix. She arched her back, relaxed her legs, and spread her arms.

  Where did I learn that?

  Oh, God.

  She was thousands of feet above a lake whose waters were the richest blue she had ever seen. Brown-green forest pressed on all its sides.

  Where am I?

  ‘Jem, help me!’

  An automated mechanism within her mind captured a diagnostic portion of the shoreline. She heard a single, foreign thought—Siberia—and she understood that the word meant “sleeping land” in a language one thousand years dead.

  This is Lake Baikal.

  I’m going to—

  She dropped her shoulders to bring her crash zone nearer the shore.

  Forty seconds remaining.

  Baikal. Lake Baikal.

  She was screaming.

  Russia.

  Twenty seconds.

  She bit down on the scream, made it her last, and took a huge breath. This relaxed her a little.

  Ten seconds.

  Oh, God.

  She straightened her legs and her body slipped towards the vertical. Her feet were together and her knees were bent. She tried to understand how she could hit this blue-black, indifferent water and live.

  Cat.

  Remember Ego, the cat? She fell from a balcony in Berlin and lived to chase the birds another day.

  How deep?

  Seventeen-point-eight-three metres, plus or minus point-three.

  When?

  She did not know.

  Where?

  Siberia, no other.

  The sleeping land.

  Jem, I’m sorry.

  ~

  More than three years after that fall into Baikal, Saskia landed on the yielding stones of the track foundation. Her momentum gave her two backward rolls, a third during which she wheeled her legs to change direction, and then she was jogging through the wet nettles to a stop. She watched the remaining carriages enter the tunnel. Four. Three. Two. Smoke poured from the floor of the tunnel entrance. She heard the rats call as one. They chirped like sparrows.

  She flexed her shoulders and brushed away the worst of the dirt. She gathered her skirts and walked up the slope. The trees thinned. There, the domes of the Church of St Alexander Nevsky and of St Isaac’s Cathedral were visible as brighter stars in the flat constellation of St Petersburg.

  Saskia imagined its bridges rising. Then she bit the last of the gravel from her palm and set off towards the light.

  Chapter Three

  Walking the streets until morning would not do. She had to find somewhere for the night. With no sure friends in the city, and no papers, she would gamble on a safe house associated with her late employer, the revolutionary underground. St Petersburg held more than forty safe houses. They could not all be warned to expect her, not so soon, even if the man—or men—who had attacked her on the train had notified confederates upon arrival.

  Saskia walked for three hours without incident and entered the city. She presented herself at a bookshop called Pushkin & Co. The superintendent was a short man. He pencilled the name she offered, “Ms Margaret Happenstance”, into his visitors’ book and, seeing interest where there was none, told her that he would erase the letters later and re-write them in peerless copperplate. He was that kind of man. Her back straightened with annoyance. The record of her name was, he sighed, an unfortunate bureaucratic consequence of the recent troubles. He installed Saskia in a small receiving room at the rear of the bookshop, where he continued to impress upon her the signal difficulties of his professional life. The second floor was occupied by a German baron and his wife, who were wonderful. But the higher the floor, the cheaper the rent, the worse the trouble, the greater the difficulty. The exception, he added, was the basement. It was the cheapest by some margin. Could she believe a tenant would pay for such lodgings? That is to say, basement lodgings in a city such as St Petersburg, where the Baltic rammed its cold storms down the throat of the Neva each winter with a regularity that smacked of malice? He, for his part, could not.

  Saskia listened to the passers-by and the hoof falls while the superintendent spoke. When he left, she walked around the room. Its curtains were closed and buttoned. Locked concertina doors covered the books. A ginger cat slept on the cooling stove. It reminded her of another cat, Ego. Why were her memories of 2003 returning with such insistence? She might have been an old woman overwhelmed by thoughts of a childhood decades gone.

  There was the familiar odour of soot. It was so familiar as to be requisite.

  She walked to the icon and looked into its tilted, weeping eyes. She turned and faced the room. There, again in the beautiful corner, she waited.

  ~

  ‘They will stage A Life for the Tsar at the Mariinsky next week,’ said the young man, not twenty-five, straightening chairs and adjusting flowers as he crossed the room. A tallow candle burned in his lantern. He passed around the tables with the ease of a waiter. Saskia was surprised that he had not removed his ink-stained apron. The man was either audacious or forgetful. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘it is the first production of the season. Do you have a favourite ballerina?’

  Saskia looked deliberately at his apron.

  ‘I have four,’ she said. ‘Karsavina, Pavlova, Siedova and Trefilova.’

  The man smiled with relief. ‘You are Judjuna Mikhailovna?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, though she had never heard the name. ‘I need to wash and pick up some new clothes. Then I must go to the Tsar’s Village. Can you arrange that?’

  ‘Everyone calls me Grisha. Costumes? We have costumes to spare. I can arrange everything. Please, come with me.’

  He put his arm through Saskia’s and drew her across the room to a battered door, which opened onto a descending staircase.

  ~

  The basement was a pit of three rooms: one for the printing press, a bedroom, and a living room-cum-kitchen. Their walls shone like a cold sweat. Grisha asked Saskia to remain in the living room while he attended the press. She was welcome to eat some beef and unleavened bread. Saskia thanked him and helped herself to the food. As she swallowed, ignoring the gristle, she walked the short perimeter. The bookcase was sloping and damp to the touch. The light bulbs were sooty yet harsh. The air smelled of cabbage, body odour and coffee. Wind piped in the hearth, where flames bowed and curtseyed. Saskia watched them until a lanky, red-haired man appeared at the foot of the stairs. This one was no older than twenty years. He was carrying a newspaper, and his first act was to give it to her.

  ‘Dry your hair. It must be wet, what with the rain,’ he said, flicking a glance at the ceiling. Then he bowed. ‘You may call me Robespierre.’<
br />
  Saskia took the newspaper. ‘Thank you. Will you have some of this beef?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly, he was embarrassed. ‘It’s for you.’

  Saskia smiled. She had found the cell and been accepted. Arrangements would soon be in place for her journey to the Amber Room. She tipped her head to one side and drew a handful of her damp hair through the newspaper. She smiled at Robespierre in a manner that made him touch his fist to his lips and frown.

  ‘Robespierre?’ she asked. ‘That’s an interesting name.’

  The man shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his suit as he leaned against the mantel. Saskia heard the crinkle of more newspaper and she thought of the hidden doves of magicians. His collar was winged, student style. The bones of his cheeks were high but their flesh was dappled with smallpox scars. He stared at her sideways.

  ‘I chose it with some care,’ he said.

  ‘How many of you work here?’

  Oddly, he switched from Russian to French, as though he wished to keep his name in focus. ‘Two, since they took Lera. Will you have some vodka?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Robespierre pursed his lips as though this was an unexpected behaviour. Saskia thought he was right. She continued to watch him while she dried her hair using the newspaper.

  ‘What’s wrong with your left hand?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should there be anything wrong with it?’

  ‘You haven’t taken it out of your warmer. Did you hurt it?’ He stepped to the opposite side of the hearth. ‘Can I get you some medicine?’

  Saskia had an idea that there was no medicine to be had.

  ‘No, thank you. To answer your question, I hurt it on the train.’

  Loudly, Robespierre said, ‘Did you fight with her, the traitor?’

  Saskia paused in her drying. Whom did he mean? Which traitor, of the endless parade, did he mean? Or was it a question designed to test her?

  ‘You are surprised that the traitor is a woman, Robespierre?’

  ‘That would offend my sense of equality, sister,’ he countered. Something in his expression changed. He added, ‘It is well known that the woman from the Caucasus has supernatural powers.’

  Saskia laughed to cover her unease. It was possible, though unlikely, that news of her escape from the train had reached this cell. She hoped that Robespierre was cold-reading her. She dropped the newspaper near the bench and resumed her sandwich.

  ‘Like what?’ she asked, tearing at the beef.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing like … My comrade on the Moika claims that this traitor knows when people lie. She can see in the dark.’ Robespierre looked at his shoes. He shrugged. ‘There is also the matter of her left hand. It is missing.’

  Saskia stopped eating. She looked at him. ‘What do you study?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  In Russian, Saskia said, ‘You’re a student, or dress like one. Let me guess—you study political economy.’

  Robespierre pushed a hand through his thick hair. ‘Why do you look at me as if you were better? I studied agronomy until I discharged myself. The decision was mine.’ He looked at the hearth. ‘I am a comrade.’

  ‘Then you should choose your words with greater care,’ Saskia said. She looked at the door to the staircase. It was closed but not locked. ‘This is not the time for differences of opinion.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Robespierre. He scratched his eyebrow with a thumb. Pinched off a louse. ‘That is not what I meant.’

  ‘Robespierre,’ she said, swallowing. Why did she pity him, so suddenly and so fiercely? ‘Imagine your namesake here, right now. Think of an eighteenth century French revolutionary manifest in Russia, in troubled times, in the body of a man who stuffs his suit with newspaper to keep warm, named for half-baked notions of romance? And, my dear Robespierre, when the Party calls, you will go to the people. And the peasantry will laugh at you. A zemstvo might have you peeling potatoes for a week before they turn you in.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ he said. His shoulders were raised like hackles. ‘Didn’t Pisarev call for society and state to be turned over, like soil, for a new moral code to grow? We must assume the role of gardener, so to speak?’

  ‘And what costumes have you worn, Judjuna Mikhailovna?’ asked Grisha, entering from the press room. He removed his ink-stained gloves and touched Robespierre once, tenderly, on his pockmarked cheek. Saskia’s loneliness amplified her perception of the exchange. These pressurised environments encouraged the closest friendships. Even love. The embattled press crews lived minute to minute. A nosey superintendent or a chance street-meeting with an informer would end it. More likely, one of the crew would turn informer when the hunger and stupidity of the situation really bit. Loose teeth loosened the mouth.

  ‘Call me plain old Judjuna,’ said Saskia. ‘I don’t walk a stage.’

  ‘Oh, we all walk a stage,’ he said, smiling. ‘Do we not, Robespierre?’

  ‘You look at us as if you are better,’ Robespierre repeated. ‘And yet you boast about violence.’

  ‘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 a
fter 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.’