The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  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:

  ‘Sunny expanses are open to us.

  The flames of victory light our country

  For our happiness lives Comrade Stalin

  Our wise leader—here comes my favourite bit—

  and dear teacher.’

  Her life had almost left her. It took an effort even to blink.

  She shook her head. ‘What could anybody, ever, learn from you, comrade? Listen: My name is Saskia Maria Brandt.’

  Soso stared at her. She saw in his face something quite foreign to its lively muscles: the slackness of despair. She raised her hand to his cheek and slapped it softly.

  ‘Remember me,’ she said.

  Soso turned from her. He opened the lamp and poured its oil over the roof of the dollhouse. He dropped the smouldering wick down the chimney and closed the door. Then the dollhouse was burning and he was gone, and she knew that Krupskaya, Lenin and girl were gone, too. She was more alone than ever.

  ~

  The floorboards might have been a wall of rock. She placed her hands with care, hauled, and hauled again. Each drag of her half-dead body seemed a year coming. She crossed into a dark passageway and turned towards the front door. She looked back. A smear of blood led towards the glow of fire. She could not see the fire itself, but the dollhouse was loud with clicks and pops as it burned. There was a greyness to the air and her throat felt dry. Fortunately, she was low to the ground, and the bleeding had reduced. Either her blood volume was so low that her blood pressure had dropped, or lying on her front helped to compress the wound.

  The front door was open. Saskia thought this a mistake until a cool slice of night air chilled the sweat on her forehead and she heard a doubling of the fire-sound behind her. The house was going to burn fast and hot.

  Something vibrated against her chest. Saskia groaned.

  ‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

  Keep moving, said Ego. I am attempting to augment your body’s physiological response to the wound.

  ‘If it’s help you want to give, you’re too late.’

  She reached the jamb of the front door and, from the concealment of this darkness, looked into the street. Soso and a coachman were loading an automobile with a trunk. Its weight made the suspension drop. Saskia thought of the encyclopaedias inside. She tried to shout, but her airway had narrowed to a dot. Krupskaya and the girl, Nina, were looking back at the house from the rear of the carriage. They wore hooded travelling cloaks. Lenin, smart in his bowler hat, appeared from the far side of the car and helped the driver and Soso fasten the bindings for the trunk. Then Soso and Lenin entered the automobile and the driver climbed to his high seat. The automobile was away with a clatter of cylinders.

  Saskia made fists in despair. Failure in the reality she had come from, and failure in this.

  The first neighbours began to arrive before the vehicle had turned the corner of the street. A man on a bicycle slowed, shouted, ‘Fire!’ and rode on. A family of six, dressed for dinner and still wearing napkins, appeared at the front gate. The father opened it and approached the house. His face was more curious than apprehensive, but he gagged on the smoke and put his napkin to his face.

  Saskia reached out with her fingers. She became aware that she had stopped breathing.

  A second man ran through the gate, passed the father, and continued up the steps. It was Pavel Eduardovitch. Saskia gasped as he rolled her onto her back and pulled her across the threshold by the straps of her rucksack. On the steps, he put an arm around her back and another beneath knees, and shouted at the onlookers—now a dozen—to make way. He carried Saskia into a waiting automobile. It was Count Nakhimov’s Peugeot Bébé and the man in the driving seat was Mr Jenner, the butler with the famous ancestor.

  Pavel laid her on the back seat. He pushed himself underneath her head and shoulders and let her head rest on his lap. His finger pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘My God.’ Then, ‘Jenner, drive on.’

  The car lurched forward. Saskia tried to reach for Pasha’s cheek, but her arm would not move. A darkness, truer than the night, passed over her eyes and she saw nothing. She could not speak or move. There was a weariness in her mind as though she had travelled a thousand years, been many people.

  The last senses that remained were hearing and touch. She still heard the car and still felt the fingertips of Pasha as he tidied her hair.

  ‘Pavel Eduardovitch?’ asked Mr Jenner. His voice was urgent. ‘Count? How is she? I know a doctor two streets away. We’ll be there directly.’

  ‘There’s—’ Pasha began, but his voice cracked. He swallowed. ‘“Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”’

  Saskia wondered if her expression was peaceful. In truth, the expression was no longer hers. It belonged to Ute. Those connections between Ute’s musculature and Saskia’s mind—as it lived, dead, on a chip—were failing.

  ‘“Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; In You I take shelter.”’

  The pitch of the engine, which had lowered, and the stuttering sobs of the man holding her head, began to fade. Saskia felt as though she were floating.

  Ego vibrated against her chest.

  I know you are not Saskia, he Morsed. Once, you thanked me. Your mission to kill Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is not sanctioned by Meta. However, I am permitted some operational independence. I will complete a modified form of your mission using the help of Mr Jenner and the Count. I overheard Lenin make a telephone call to a man called Gorky. The money will be held overnight in a disused section of the Jungfrau railway, inside a mountain called the Eiger. Tonight, it will be destroyed, though Stalin will live. This is how I thank you, whoever you are.

  Saskia felt angry at this dilution of her plan. She had focused on killing Soso. True,
she had understood that another monster, greater than him, could turn the energy and luck of the Party to a still more murderous direction, but it had always been him, his face, the grin of Stalin and avuncular, amber eyes that represented that monologue deadening greater part of the twentieth century, and the Russias, and her future. Perhaps there was wisdom in Ego’s decision. With this money gone forever, the intrigues and weapons and bribes that the Party needed would be gone, too. Might this embarrassment, traced to Lenin and the Georgian Highlander, be the true end of the Party? What might take its place?

  She would never know. Her body had died, and she was condemned to limbo until her chip was destroyed in a crematorium, or trickled out of power in a grave.

  Quite distantly, she felt Pasha unbutton her collar.

  ‘Something is here,’ he said. ‘It buzzes like a bulb.’

  ‘Be careful, sir.’

  ‘It’s a business card for a Ms Tucholsky. Silly girl must have kept it from her time in St Petersburg. On the back it says, ‘P—If something happens, the money is going to the Eiger, JF Railway. Talk to BRYULLOV @ Embassy in Berne. Yrs, M T.’’

  Saskia felt as though she smiled.

  ‘Clever,’ said Mr Jenner. ‘I wish I’d known her.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Pavel Eduardovitch.

  The silence came like cold water closing above her head. She opened her eyes in the airless gloom to see scintillas of light on the sea floor: amber, the resin of antiquity.

  The last words of Pavel Eduardovitch reached her as thought, not sound.

  O Lord, revive me, for Your name’s sake. For Your righteousness, deliver my soul from danger.

  She might have felt lips in the centre of her forehead.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Saskia knew she was in the Amber Room—her room, on the night of 23rd May, 1908—before even she felt the absence of her left hand, or the scent of room perfume and gun smoke, or the approaching crackle of fireworks. She did not wake slowly. Her consciousness returned in full bloom and she snapped upright, gorging on her surroundings in a sweep that rekindled the sense of despair and failure she had felt only heartbeats ago in a parallel Geneva, in the flames of a burning house. She understood, without knowing why, that her return here was final. If the malfunctioning time band had caused a crack in reality—wide as a doorway in an enfilade—that crack had been sealed. But the meaning of those other Amber Rooms was inscrutable. Had another person, perhaps a time traveller, deliberately interfered with the band to trigger a malfunction? If so, Saskia could not think why her transmigration might advantage that third party. Her struggle with this produced another question: Had this person been working against her, or for her? To answer that, she needed to know what the outcome of the transmigration had been. The outcome remained elusive. Perhaps it was better to think of her journey as a meaningless trip little different from being swept down a street by a flash flood. She might feel lucky that there was solid ground beneath her once again.

  The room was lit by its chandeliers once more. The air remained dry, but the floor was wet with dew. There were piles of broken glass beneath the dark rectangles where the mirrors had been. The band, which Saskia remembered being in the centre of the room, was gone. Only a scorch mark remained. Soso and Kamo had gone, too. The door behind them, which led deeper into the enfilade, was open. Masked guests were standing there. Where mouths were exposed, they were agape. The doors to the balcony opened and guests entered. They began to talk in a mixture of English and French. Behind her, Saskia could hear a furious thumping on the door that led away from the enfilade. Men were shouting.

  Pasha lay with his head against the base of the statue. He might have been the younger, sickly brother of the Pasha who had been cradling Saskia’s dead head, rather than his twin. This Pasha had his doublet torn open. The wound to his abdomen was worse than Saskia remembered. Blood had soaked his trousers and much of the floor beneath him. Saskia knew he was dead, but she put her hand to his cheek and looked for something in his half-open eyes.

  There had been a moment when she had died, too. Not in that parallel Geneva, but in this reality, in a hut somewhere in the Bavarian National Forest. Her saviour had been a transfusion of i-Core. She considered giving Pasha such a transfusion. There was a risk that the i-Core would destroy his identity and rebuild it in a form closer to itself and further from Pasha. What would it do to him? Her thoughts stopped on the unsettling experience of becoming the dog that had killed one of her attackers the night she left the Count’s villa in Zurich. She had smelled using its nose; tasted the blood with its tongue. She feared the dehumanising force of the i-Core. Could she make that choice for Pasha? Would he prefer to be dead? His orthodox faith might be troubled.

  The door behind her gave way with a loud crack. She had time to hear the stamp of booted footfalls before she was lifted bodily by tall men, each holding an upper arm. They were Hussars of the Imperial Guard. Like the doors to the Amber Room, their dolman jackets were white but ribbed with gold. Sable fur hung across their shoulders. They wore flat-top bearskin hats that seemed to connect with their waxed moustaches and curled side-whiskers.

  Another four hurried into the room and took station at the door to the Picture Hall, the door to the Apartments, and each of the balcony doors. The two at the balcony lifted their rifles and tracked through the crowd in the square. Saskia watched them with some anxiety, as did many of the guests. The Fourth Squadron of the Hussars of the Guard, based in the Tsar’s Village, had mutinied the previous summer, not long before the heist in Tiflis. The rebellion had been a reaction to the strict discipline imposed on them since the military reorganisations.

  Alexei Sergeyevich Draganov stepped into the room and turned to Saskia. Even taller than the Hussars, he was conspicuous in the long, scarlet cherkesska coat and white beshmet vest worn by the Imperial Convoy. Draganov nodded to the Hussars, and they ushered the remaining guests from the room and closed the doors, until only Draganov, the Hussars, Saskia and Pasha, remained. The air in the room seemed to thicken. The smell of perfume and polish grew stronger and the chandeliers flared with an electrical spike.

  It would not do to show any recognition of Draganov. Saskia could not know whether his Hussars understood the complexities of this situation. With that came the wry thought that Saskia might not have fully grasped those complexities either. Draganov’s expression was a study in ambiguity.

  ‘He tried to stop them,’ said Saskia. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘My beloved, there, against the statue. Why don’t you chase after the murderers!’

  She felt the grip of the Hussars lessen. That was good.

  ‘Unless they can become the night itself, the two won’t reach the end of the square,’ said Draganov. ‘Well?’ he called to the two Hussars at the balcony doors. ‘Do you see anything?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied both men.

  ‘Keep looking,’ said Draganov.

  ‘Let me go to my betrothed,’ Saskia said. She wriggled weakly at the men holding her. ‘For what he has done, he is a hero of the Empire now.’

  Draganov gave the body of Pasha a look of disgust.

  ‘That is as maybe. But we are here on the matter of a gross insult to the Treasury, and there will be no delay in justice.’

  Even as he spoke, Saskia winced at the jingoistic tone. She wondered whether the Hussars knew, or cared, about the act he was putting on. But his order was obeyed. Saskia was released by the two Hussars. She fell to one knee and crawled to Pasha. His face was cyanotic and no air moved through his lips.

  Saskia pulled away her silver mask and dropped it by his body. Then put her hand around the nape of his neck and lifted his head. His eyes opened like a doll. Before she kissed him, Saskia bit away a wedge of flesh from the inside of her cheek. The pain was lesser than she expected but the volume of blood greater. She had to swallow a mouthful before she could put her lips onto his. When she did, his skin was cold and dry. Gently, so as not to break the seal, she angled her head and
took a small bite from his lower lip.

  She knew that the i-Core communicated with her using a base form of language comprising metaphor alone. She did not know if the channel worked both ways, but she invested every effort in imagining a scene.

  It is the fifth season, those few days between autumn and winter, and the Russian evening wanes. A widow stands above an open grave. It contains a simple coffin whose plaque is dull and unreadable in the darkness. The clouds gather to form rain, but sparrows, not water, pour from the sky, swirling towards the grave as though it were the base of a dark tornado. As the grave brims over, their wings buzz like black flames. The birds thrash against each other, crunch, fall, until they breach the coffin and gather beneath its body. Slowly, the body lifts. Though the sparrows have cast a gloom over everything, the widow sees two flashes of whiteness as the eyes of the corpse open.

  Saskia fell away from the body and sobbed hard. She held her hand against her cheek. Blood flowed from the wound. She did not know whether she had passed enough into Pasha. Neither did she know how the i-Core would be able to infuse his tissues, particularly his brain, without vascular action in his body.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Draganov. ‘You are the only witness to the crime, and you will now come with us.’

  Saskia allowed herself to be brought upright. The Hussars were gentler this time. She kept her mouth shut and her tearful eyes open. Draganov did not give her a secret look, or anything of the kind. He regarded her with the same disgust he had shown Pasha’s body. He sneered, and was about to give an order to the Hussars when the door to the Portrait Hall was shouldered open by a gendarme. A second gendarme entered. He was followed by a young clerk in a brown suit.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ shouted the clerk.

  ‘I have taken control of the situation,’ said Draganov. ‘Calm yourself.’

  ‘You have done no such thing.’ The clerk looked with dejection around the damaged room. From the corner of her eye, Saskia saw a small, but clear change in the body language of the Hussar near the door to the Apartments. He had turned to look at the two Hussars on the balcony. It took little effort to imagine that they had become uneasy and were communicating this to one another with a glance.