Out of the snowy night, past the left-luggage office, there marched the Macrimmon my father had hired, bagpipes blazing, kilt swinging, glengarry and blackcock feathers at a virile rake. Our guests clapped and shouted and hollered, I mean they went berserk. Bravissimo! Maestro Pushkin! Chukov, who was in love with Mother once a week and was by then completely pickled, whisked his opera cloak over his shoulder and cavorted goatlike after the piper, twiddling and pumping, tapping out the rhythm with a patent-leathered foot, imitating the man's every move and making a noise that we could guess was perfectly execrable. The habitual station drunks and vagrants started bolt upright from their benches, rubbing their eyes, utterly bewildered. Chukov began to bait them, bending down and making his bagpipe noises right into their faces. A quarrel ensued which was solved only by the intervention of the stationmaster and, more effectively, by the arrival a few minutes later of our train.
Sixteen
But that was now a long way behind us, eleven—almost twelve—years ago. We were no longer children, or spiteful or precious or desperate to embarrass the other. We'd got Igor's smart pinnace and its blue-capped crew to take us along the coast to Sebastopol and then to Balaclava. A peasant had driven us in his cart up to the ridge overlooking the battlefield. The day was glorious. The short turf on which we sat was studded with wild yellow crocuses.
"Do you remember how fervently the old soaks crossed themselves?" I said to her.
"Of course, they feared the worse," Elizaveta said.
Her eyes, which I'd always remembered from my youth as peremptory, had widened and softened to a dark brown colour that matched her suede belt. They were examining the arrangements inside a crocus, resting quietly upon her high cheek bones, their long lashes very prominent from where I was sitting, on her right. Her black hair was cropped short (the hospital had shaved her to the skull when she started). But her voice, that was what got to me. It had changed completely and was now low and evenly spaced, a rich gliding sort of voice.
"Wouldn't you?" she continued. "You're snoring away over your disgusting dream and all of a sudden it's interrupted by this terrible screeching. What would be your first thought? You'd think, This must be tremens, it can't be death with a noise like that."
She was stretched on her side, a white-shirted elbow denting the turf, the back of her dark head just then cradled in her hand so that her arm was part of two distinct triangles. She was gazing down into the valley, which was speckled with sheep.
"Boltikov was so repulsive the way he attached himself to your party. Huge, like a mountain. All that sugar he must have eaten—"
"All that money he made—"
"Imagine inviting yourself and then doing nothing but boast. . . Anyway, he's dead. Blew up, pop, some sort of seizure." She waved a hand to where a couple of vultures were starting to dismember a live lamb. We could plainly see its frantic jerking. "Such sordid birds. You must know why we have to have them."
"As scavengers," I said.
We agreed how unpleasant they were; cumbersome and clanking, with jealous, speculative eyes, like Boltikov's. I said that the sound their wings made when they took off was like someone rapidly opening and closing his umbrella to work the rain off it.
At this she looked at me with her eyes a little wider. Perhaps she was wondering what else might be in a naturalist's mind. She said, "Igor told me the other night on the terrace—you'd gone off after a moth—that when he was a lad, old Prince Gorchakov, who commanded the army, told him that after your cavalry came to grief, he saw a team of vultures turning a wounded man over with their beaks. To get at his rectum, he said. Apparently it's tasty to a vulture."
"To all carrion," I said. "He told me that it took three years after the war for the songbirds to return to what had been the French sector. They shot everything that flew."
She picked another crocus. "This hateful war, our own— what's going to happen?"
"Soldiers will die, politicians will not. Other things too, which at the moment we cannot possibly discern. More things will happen than we expect, certainly not fewer."
"You're not going to be one of those soldiers?"
"No. Why should I attempt to be killed? Goetz and I have discussed this often. We can never settle whom either of us is to be loyal to, since we are half-castes."
"That's convenient for you," she said.
"You mean selfish?"
"Yes, but not in a critical sense. We all have to look out for ourselves. The hospital is full of soldiers who've obeyed blindly.
A month ago we had a man whose stomach was slit from side to side. We could see his intestines. We could even see the tapeworms moving around. As I ground up the phenacetin for him— it's for headaches: so cruel to give him hope—I thought, Why don't the other men run away when they see this sort of thing? So I'm not blaming you ... What about afterwards, when there's no more blood to be spilled. What'll it be like then?"
"When we're as white as veal?"
"Well?" she said. She always hunted a bold line conversationally.
"The principal change is that I shall become as rich as Boltikov. It wouldn't embarrass me at all. I'm completely Russian in that respect. Having a thousand serfs to do what I want would be paradise."
"How are you going to make this fortune?"
I explained about breeding the plague flea and milking it for serum. From thinking about how ruthless I'd have to be to succeed in such a business, I must have used the word, for she interrupted me: "A ruthless man—I like that." Her eyes challenged me. "What ruthless men have we had in the family since the Founder? My father—grandfather—Igor—pfff! And now . . . Nicholas is the worst, wasting all his time trying to get the peasants to farm more efficiently. They take his money and do nothing. It's they who are the ruthless ones. It's not as if his money is all his, in any case. Some's mine, for my marriage portion. Father said so in his will. Why should he be able to throw it at those people? But I'm a woman. It's not for me to go against my brother."
"Don't be silly. Tell him it's your money, that you need it."
"You do it for me."
"You're his sister."
"It doesn't matter. You're the ruthless one. He'll pay attention to you . . . It's high time there was a ruthless Rykov. Someone must plunge the daggers."
Seventeen
Why do you think Igor told me about the vultures?" she asked, frowning, her thin filleted eyebrows curving like millipedes. "It's not a nice image."
"Because you're a nurse and might be interested? I don't know. I've always thought of him as a strange man."
She rose, smoothing her long blue cotton skirt. She was wearing lawn tennis shoes. "Is this all we've come to see, a battlefield? I don't call it anything very special. Let's go down and get the boat to take us home. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. I promised the hospital I'd be back by the last day of March. And Igor's giving a dinner for me, or have you forgotten?"
"Why's he doing that?"
"For agreeing with him that he was desperately ill and behaving with remarkable courage . . . Eight courses, many wines and all of them French, a footman behind every chair—"
"Scratching himself."
"Probably—and the Rykov silver on the table. Not often we've seen that, is it, Charlie! The original pieces . . . think of it, the sparkle and the wealth!"
"I'd rather not. It could have been yours—or mine. It's wasted on him."
"I agree. So let's consider it ruthlessly. How heavy is the whole service? How would we get it to the station? The car's too small. How many men to bribe to transport it for us? How many to guard the carriers? What's its actual silver content? See, I can think like a man. Are you really ruthless, Charlie Doig?"
That voice, so pure and low—so why do I mention it again. Dark questing eyes, teeth as white as my Bokharan horseman's, her fine-boned fingers always busy at something, perhaps now a habit after hospital work, winding bandages and spongeing shit off the distressed. Looking to be a countess and likely to
be very good at it if the money were correct. That's what I thought when she said "ruthless" for the third time. We began to walk towards our cart on which the peasant was slumped sideways, dozing. She moved well, on firm slender ankles. Her scuffed canvas tennis shoes kept obtruding into my vision. I reduced her from countess to a lower rank.
A few yards from the cart she stopped me. Her face was illuminated by mischief and amusement. Her smile gave it an impression of circularity and made her ears stand out from her head. She didn't laugh—she really wasn't an overtly merry sort of person: she explained things through her expressions. She said, "You're such a professor, so serious about your work, I had to make a little fun for myself . . . the vultures, do you want to know why Igor told me about them turning the wounded man over?"
"Why?"
"Because there's no one in his house prepared to listen to his stories any more. They've heard them so often. They walk away, even his steward, and there's nothing he can do as he's not agile enough to corner them. Even his doctor won't listen to him— it was he who told me all this. And Igor's frantic to talk about the old days."
"And?"
"But I listen because I'm in his debt."
"How, what's he been doing for his god-daughter?"
"The pearls, Charlie, the pearls . . . Igor's in love with me. He's going to hand them over at dinner. The Tsar's own pearls, which the Founder probably slipped into his pocket without a glance because it was all he could do to keep up with the flow of gifts. They're vast, cousin, vast. Each one is as big as La Peregrina. The largest must be almost three ounces."
She put on a swanky walk, waggling her hips, twirling her sun-umbrella; pouting, coquetting me. She extended her hand, dibbled her ring finger at me and threw out her lips. "It's the diamonds next, darlinka."
"You whore, you little whore," I yelled.
She laughed, thumbed her nose at me with both hands and ran towards the cart, turning halfway to see if I was coming after her. Her small tufted breasts pressed at her shirt pleats. I could make out just enough of them to imagine their pull and slap. I caught her by the wrists. The roof of my life slid back and she entered. Her lean dark face was framed against the bluest of skies and a ziggurat of soft white clouds, a face so powerful in its musculature, so capable. It was the most wonderful experience I'd ever had.
So that was where it all started, in the spring of 1915, and there was no remedy.
Eighteen
Change your woman and you change everything. The rules of behaviour and attitude are instantly altered. Unencumbered men deal freely with each other. A woman shows up and soon there's a falling-out.
Of course Elizaveta was a thousand miles from Samarkand, and she wasn't yet mine. But Goetz knew. There was something different in my manner. He could smell a rival.
Other things were changing around us as well. The war had caused self-doubt. Young able-bodied Russians, the sons and grandsons of the original settlers in Turkestan, had been conscripted, railed out to Europe and not heard from since. The price of goods imported from metropolitan Russia had more than doubled. The everyday soft, dirty brown sugar had virtually disappeared. A lump of refined sugar had become a luxury. Officials had been through the villages handing out blue rationing cards. People were saying, "What, can't we eat as much as we can afford? What sort of century is this?"
There were tensions, mutterings, and a new restlessness in the bazaar tea-houses. Ideas were now widespread that at the beginning of the war only students had dared promote. The fact of Muslims being exempted from conscription meant there were more of them around to grumble. I'm not saying that Samarkand was seething, only that people no longer joked to strangers about the Third Section.
It was to the Civilians Club, in the Russian section of the city, that Goetz and I always went when we got too stinky and needed the company of others. Because of the anti-German sentiments around I introduced him as Fellowes, a Londoner. It was quite safe as he spoke so rarely to people who weren't scientists or naturalists. An Englishman might have spotted him for a fake but there were none around.
The Club had tall European windows with sun-bleached maroon curtains trimmed with some sort of industrial lace; carpets and armchairs of the same colour; many flies, and a troop of elderly Russian waiters, perhaps convicts who'd served their time in Siberia, whose strength was so clearly waning that any decent person wanted to jump up and do the job for them.
Outside, on one side of the entrance, a verandah enclosed in fine copper gauze had been tacked onto the building. On the other was a hitching rail.
It was here, at a table on the verandah, on a warm, shimmering morning full of birdsong, that Goetz and I sat down to breakfast. He'd brought his old canvas grip, which he placed beside his chair.
One of the antique waiters hobbled after us. He unfolded our napkins. The linen, which was none too clean, trembled as it was fumbled across the table by his long yellow fingers. Goetz moved his grip to the other side of his chair. I stared at him. His heavy face seemed to be unnaturally buoyant. The dullness in his eyes had gone. They were sea-water green and sparkling.
What was it? I said, "You found something new during the night. Let me guess. Not a moth, that'd be too easy—"
"Your powers of observation have improved, Doig. "Well done. What's happening is that in an hour I'm getting on the troop train to Krasnovodsk. Then Baku, the Black Sea and Constantinople. Berlin within a fortnight, if I'm lucky with the steamers. A month at the outside. I'm leaving you."
He paused to see my reaction. I had nothing to say. There were no words handy.
"I had counted myself ninety-nine parts English. But last night I had a dream in which someone whisked back a curtain and there, painted in miniature, I saw on display the whole of central Berlin. Each of the street names had been painted on a scroll that unfurled at the place you were thinking of the moment that you looked at it. The city was perfect, the most complete application of science, method and public welfare that a fair-minded person could wish for. My home, Doig, my home! I sat up. I'd gone to sleep with the lamp on. The flame was as steady as a rock. That showed me my decision was correct . . . And here I am. I can't stand reading about the war and doing nothing any longer. I must help my nation, not specifically against you English or our friends here but in a general way, to protect her against her enemies. I can drive an ambulance or be a bicycle messenger. I'm in good condition, despite my age. The medical board will be sceptical. It's their duty. There's no point having old men like walruses in the line. But they're bound to see the sense in what I say ... I don't mind what I do so long as I can help my country."
"Why do you want to be killed for no reason? If it was climbing a rock face to get a bird wholly new to science, that's one thing. But signing up to fight . . . that's pointless, that's like volunteering to go insane. And where does it leave me?"
He looked at me with his new joyfulness. "Call it my sense of patriotism being too active. I refuse to quarrel . . . We're done, you and I, Doig. Maybe our entire profession is done. When the war's over people may say, What do we want bird skins for? Let's spend our money on guns ... So there it is. Berlin's where I'm going."
At this moment we were joined by a dealer in animal hides who also used the Club for a wash and brush-up. He was a powerful, virile man, always dressed in a sheepskin, with a leather belt from which hung all the accoutrements of manhood: horse-pick, sheath knife, a small branding iron and a fleam for bleeding his pack animals at high altitudes.
He was halfway to sitting down, his hands on the arms of his chair, when he took in what Goetz was talking about. He stared aghast at him. "What? Fight? Doig, cut his tendons. He'll be grateful to you in five years . . . Listen, my friend, I love the Tsar and his German woman and the grand dukes, the whole stupid pack of them. Who else is there? But God preserve me from wanting to die for them. I mean, die . . . What's a man of my vigour to do when he's dead? It's a waste, that's what death is. And Berlin—Berl ... NO!"
He
kicked back his chair and rose angrily. "So you're not Fellowes, the nice English naturalist, you're someone else. You're a bloody German. Then go and die. Tomorrow isn't soon enough. I can't bear a man without a sense of independence."
Goetz rose neatly. Overnight he seemed to have become leaner. He bowed to us both, still with that look of contentment in his eyes. The Club had done his laundry. There was a crease in his white shirt and his shorts had been pressed.
He told the outside porter he was going to the station. The porter signalled a phaeton from the rank. Turning to me, Goetz said gaily, "I bequeath you all my togs. The right word at last, ja? Everything I've left behind is yours, Doig. Get that woman. Godspeed, my friend!"
His backside and black-stockinged calves ascended the step. The phaeton sank. He took his seat, lay back and crossed his legs at the ankle. He raised an arm to us—I can't say that he waved. Then he was gone.
"I'm not alone, no one likes Germans any more," the skin-dealer said. "Especially the Tsarina. The people call her nemka, the German woman ... So you haven't been in Moscow recently? No, I didn't think so from your outfit. Things are looking bad there. Prices just go up and up. You could get to the moon on them. Good second-hand boots complete with laces are impossible to find. People will kill for a bite at an apple. Same for butter and eggs. The farmers won't sell. They say, What do I want money for if I can't buy vodka? I've said I love the Tsar and I do but why does he want to prohibit drinking—in Russia! When I first heard of it I said, Vodka forbidden in Russia? Here, pinch me, kick me . . . It's the end, Doig. The people won't stand for it. There are riots everywhere. You stay in Samarkand with your birds and beetles."
He ate, snapping his jaws voraciously. "You're lucky, you've another country to go to. Sew your luck into your pants and keep sitting down. Someone may try to steal it."
Nineteen
But when speaking of my luck, he failed to touch wood or invoke the usual deities. Luck was affronted. My life, which since I'd started out with Goetz had been buttered with it, began to fall to pieces—onto the ground, buttered side down.
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