White Blood

by James Fleming

  He was a short, patient man: an administrator, he made no bones about it. He knew nothing whatsoever about natural history. The only aspect of my work that he understood was my energy. It was a point he admired in all his collectors. To march across a desert, to go unclean for months, to work twenty hours a day during the high season, to do all the things Goetz and I had taken for granted—even to consider them from his armchair gave him a migraine, he said with a wrinkle of a smile.

  As for the money, even when it was paid to them by Government it was too little. And when it wasn't paid ... he proffered his hands, turned them palm up and delicately parted his fingers to allow some imaginary essence to go to waste. "I can only apologise, Doig. For as long as I could I paid the staff here with my own money, the private money of my wife and myself. But there came a time—one must draw the line somewhere. Collectors were far away and my family needs pressed ..."

  I could have pushed him for my money on the spot, but I liked his cut and I wanted employment.

  "Of course," he continued, "what interests you most are the specimens you sent back. Alas! I must tell you that they are still in our storeroom, still unpacked. The tragedy of my position is that I'd be wasting my time going through them. I wouldn't know where to begin. People do that for me—when I heat the building." Again we had his modest smile. "So we are behind with our programmes."

  Music was his first love. He'd only trained for museum work to get the salary. Seeing my chance I moved the conversation to birdsong, giving him examples. He quickly offered us the job of unpacking and cataloguing our cases.

  May I make myself a compliment here? It is that while we were at the Academy we improved its economy by a factor many times greater than our pay. Where a problem is concrete there is little that two men of determination and versatility cannot effect. All desire for purification of the slashed humours of my heart was fulfilled by these weeks of cold, hard work, which commenced with killing 104 rats in the basement.

  I found one sauntering down the stairs as I came out of the storeroom, so fat that he was hopping down them like an old man, step by step. They have thin skulls, rats. One tap was enough. Then I called Kobi and we made Tarasov and the kaza-chok or odd-job man and the porters help us, for the rats were eating everything in the basement. I thought of my poor father and laid about me with a vengeance. We tied our trousers above our boots. Rats'll run up your leg, even your bare leg, when they're hard-pressed.

  It was a good start. Tarasov came out of his shell. Thinking about my white swift, I asked him if the Academy was still buying. It was what the three- and ten-rouble notes in his desk were for, he said.

  "Small notes, that's all I need. I can pick and choose from the collections I'm offered. You'd be surprised—they're decent, well-connected families that are selling."

  "What if they've got a rarity and insist on gold roubles?"

  "Then it's, Good morning, sir. No one else will buy these goods. You can be sure they've already been round the dealers. They always accept my offer in the end. You see, Doig, they're leaving the city for good. Getting out, they say to me. Getting out in time."

  He cocked his head on one side to gauge my reaction to his emphasis, in time. He wanted my opinion without actually having to ask me outright for it, which might have appeared treasonable coming from a man in his position. He wanted to hear me say "What, you mean in time to save their lives?" and then to answer my own question.

  I felt a burst of sympathy for this would-be musician who'd paid the staff from his own savings. I was honest. "You're asking the impossible. How can I know what would be right for your family, for your wife and children, for instance?"

  "Isn't that the truth! There's more to it than Yevgeny Tarasov! There's a daughter as well as a wife. We're the happiest household in my street. Everyone is envious of us. I leave at the same hour in the morning and return at the same hour in the evening. If I don't they worry their heads off. I open the door—they're waiting! They rush to embrace me! A meal's on the table, my slippers by my chair! And now . . . Doig, you must tell us what to do, you've been in tight spots. People are terrifying them with stories about strikes and gangsters and these anarchists who say openly that they'll take everything from the likes of us. And the stories about the monk . . . We're both men, I don't need to say any more . . . they also say she's a spy, that she's being paid by the Germans—all sort of stupidities that have to be false when you analyse them carefully. But the effect is pernicious. No smoke without fire, my womenfolk say meaningfully.

  "Is something big happening, that's what I must know. We could sit it out at our dacha, grow our own vegetables and pretend it's Yasnaya Polyana. But I don't want to lose my life. I'm not a brave man. I'm not ready. So what we should be doing? Tell me, Doig. I beg of you, be candid."

  "But I don't know any better than you what'll have happened in a year's time. Perhaps I too should be getting out. But for the moment I want to make some money. Are you any different?"

  Then I turned the subject back to Goetz. There was still a lump in my throat. I had to speak about him until I'd exhausted my sense of loss. "His sort of honesty and scientific scrupulousness may turn out to have disappeared entirely when the dust settles," I said.

  "Dust! Ha!" exclaimed Tarasov with his little smile. "I fear you'll be proved right. At bottom all war is a form of theft. The lawlessness moves out of the trenches and becomes generalised. Everyone turns their hand to crookery of one sort or another. The Goetzes become rarer and rarer. How will it end for the Academy? I don't know. Science cannot exist without honesty. Ah, Goetz, are you blushing up there? I hope I'm talked about like this when I'm dead. What was his forename?"

  "Hartwig."

  "Hartwig—not a name one meets in Russia at all."

  A porter brought us a tray of tea glasses. He and his mate had sold the rats, instantly, for five roubles—as they came, in the hessian sack with its trail of dripping blood.

  "More like twenty-five," Tarasov said when he'd gone. "His sort are always afraid of being caught by some unknown impost. They were plump, too. A family of four would last a week on them. There are other basements in these old buildings, Doig. We should draw up a schedule for our hunting dates."

  Then he wanted me to tell him more about Goetz. I gave him the whole story, starting with Agg and the British Museum. His eyes were fixed on my face throughout. At the end I said, "But, Yevgeny Alexandrovich, this is what is extraordinary: we actually spoke very little—as you and I are speaking now. We were always Goetz and Doig to each other. Therefore the depth of my feelings for him are a surprise to me."

  "Something else is going on inside you," Tarasov said. "There are certain pieces of music that can be guaranteed to make an audience tearful, even army veterans. Tchaikovsky was adept at producing this sort of effect. With you it's the reverse. Your emotions were alive this morning. Fluttering around looking for somewhere to alight—and what should come along but the death of Hartwig Goetz."

  Thirty-four

  We killed more rats, Kobi and Tarasov himself being the leaders of the team. Our little administrator was vicious at it, the terrier we didn't have. Word spread. We could have set up as a butcher. One morning there were six housewives waiting when I arrived for work: large, scarved women with waterproof bags so that no telltale trail of blood should follow them home.

  Of course Tarasov said nothing of this activity to his ladies. When he locked the double doors at night his hands were clean and often contained a small gift, which he would have wrapped himself.

  Our trade in rats was Petrograd writ small in those last months of 1916. The tension was so thick you couldn't have sliced it with an axe. The wildest stories raced from street to street. Single shots were common at night. Policemen were seen less frequently. Burghers hurried fearfully to their homes and their most telling conversations concerned which regiments could be accounted "safe."

  At the same time the chic and frivolous became more so and packed the nightclubs un
til dawn.

  Somewhere the Tsar was reigning. At a long table in a portrait-lined chamber he was sitting alone, in a brown leather chair, signing above his title single-sheet orders that still retained the curl of the typewriter barrel. In a nearby anteroom a dozen of his ministers were quarrelling furiously. In a third sat the Empress of All the Russias writing birthday greetings to her husband's foe, her own first cousin. In a fourth were courtiers plotting the death of Rasputin, the Empress's favourite.

  This, or something similar, was what we all imagined about he unknowable process of government. We knew how difficult he situation had become. We longed for a firm, sensible hand. We fabricated a story that contained all the necessary elements. The question of the greatest interest was whether Nicholas was signing the orders fast enough or whether speed had become irrelevant.

  Count Igor, with whom we were staying, had just turned eighty. He had a butler, Joseph, who was in his fifties; a steward— a swarthy bullying fellow; a coachman, four gardeners and a motley of house servants. He may have been infirm but he was neither gaga nor had he surrendered the wish to enjoy his life. Though he seldom went out of his palace, he'd become restless if one of his servants didn't give him an up-to-date report on the stroke of every ormolu hour.

  "What news? What news now? What are they saying today, is it to be guns or butter, quickly now, boy."

  There was a day on which a pranking footman took it into his head to tell Igor a tale of the tanks he'd seen rolling down Nevsky Prospekt with factory workers marching behind them wielding scythes and flails. I returned from the Academy to find Igor balanced on the edge of a curule chair in his hall, robed and wigged, his cheeks plastered with an especially bright strain of rouge. Between his knees was his walking stick—hands clasped on top of it—chin resting on his hands. With two powdered footmen in the shadows behind him—an extraordinary sight.

  He handed me the speech he intended to deliver to the mob. "There has to be a change. It's been too good for us. All my life I've been saying, I cannot continue forever to be so lucky. But how will it happen? The difficulty for an old man is to distinguish the trivial from the important. I don't want to be thought windy. I don't want my neighbours to be still laughing at me in a year's time. On the other hand it may be that today I shall perish. If this is so I desire to die with dignity. Here, tell me if you think I've judged my speech right."

  I wasn't going to poke fun at my uncle or tell him what the mob would do if it had a mind to. I had Joseph mix him his martini, got out the cards and we settled down to an evening of piquet, at which he excelled.

  How does one know for certain that history is lurching off in a different direction, that it's making a right angle as opposed to a slow bend? Are there infallible signals it always emits? In what quarter does one look for them? In short, how can a citizen actually know? This is what I was debating that night as I lay in bed in my uncle's palace.

  And late the next morning, which was December 17th, I discovered the answer.

  It was a heating day at the Academy. At about noon there was a commotion—doors slamming, quickened footsteps, shouting. Down the main staircase, two at a time, sprang Tarasov, across the hallway and down the iron stairs to our office below.

  "The monk, the monk! Have you heard, Doig—at last! The Lord has listened to us—we're saved!" His voice rang down the passage. He burst in, our little administrator, and flung his arms upwards. The waistband of his trousers rose. I could see his white hairless shanks and his maroon sock suspenders. "May he rot! May he pay for his crimes for all eternity!"

  Thus did I learn of the previous night when Prince Yusopov had dined Rasputin on poisoned Madeira and cyanide-filled gateaux; shot at him when he showed no sign of succumbing, missing him twice as he crawled away from the wrecked meal with the tablecloth draped round his shoulders; shot at him again, this time winging him in the buttocks, and having thus disabled him had had him trussed with the iron ringlets of an anchor chain and stuffed through the ice into the famished Neva.

  Tarasov read out the news three times to reassure himself. He scampered around like a clown, leaping to and fro over the suit of wagtail skins that we'd laid out on the floor.

  We had a stenographer with us that morning so that I could dictate entries for the Academy's catalogue—a woman of formidable size and mien. But Tarasov was not to be denied. He had her put away her pencil and notepad and grasping her by both hands hugged and danced her round the storeroom floor, throwing off toots and ripples of the national anthem as he went.

  He dumped her heavily on her chair. "The shipwreck's over.

  We're saved, the monk's had it"—he yanked open the door and ran back up the stairs.

  Igor in his palace was the same. "It's the only change that was needed. It'll be back to business as usual after Epiphany. We Russians have seen these things before, a hundred times. Think of Pugachev and the panic everyone was in."

  Straightway he began to make plans for moving his household down to the Crimea. It was where he preferred to spend the winter. It was only because of the present crisis that he was in Petrograd at all. And now the monk was dead ... He wouldn't come to Smolensk for Epiphany but he'd come for Liza's wedding—his god-daughter. He'd always enjoyed the drive through the woods when the snowdrops were in petal. What was the date? Had it been fixed for certain? We must be certain to tell him when we got back after the Christmas festivals.

  Thirty-five

  She'd returned. I smelled her Soir de Paris the instant I stepped into the Pink House. It lingered on the stairs and in the doorways, maddening me. The quarrel with Nicholas was still festering. She'd returned only to get married, as she'd said. She took her meals in her rooms, outside which Sonja sat like a babushka, knitting and guarding. Even when Liza went for a walk, Sonja was at her side, blotchy and scowling. I grew to detest the sight of her.

  I made it my business to bump into Liza. "My future is with another man. So adieu." I saw it in her every expression.

  Nicholas had invited Helene to come from Moscow for the holiday, bringing their two sons. He was having difficulty borrowing the money she was after and wanted to talk some common sense into her. But when she arrived it was without Leo and young Nicholas because of the risk of the train being blown up. For her own poor body, she didn't give a straw. She'd borne the children, done her duty, was scrap. Her boys were the future . . . But this selflessness was shown to be utterly bogus by the fact that she'd brought her own soap and could speak of nothing except her health. I'd forgotten how miserable she was. She went around with glittering eyes, hunched, searching for dirt in every corner and under every valence. When she did offer an opinion, it was always on how badly the war was going. She had praise for none of our generals, not even Brusilov. Armageddon was only a question of when. After three days she announced she was leaving. Nicholas had not dared even to broach the money question with her.

  It was in the morning that Timofei took Helene to the station. In the afternoon, when Nicholas and I were slumped with relief in the drawing room, we suddenly heard a terrific hullabaloo circling the gravel.

  Louis went out to do the honours. He didn't close the front door properly behind him. The wind came whistling through the house, on it the noise of a cockerel baying with all its might, as if seeing the moon for the first time in its life. It clattered its wings. It was the bird called Stumpy—and Misha—and . . .

  ". . . his mother, Madame Lydia," said Louis in the doorway. "They have come to stay."

  Misha entered first, dressed in a shaggy brown raccoon overcoat. Underneath he was wearing cream flannel trousers and tan and white brogues. "It's so mild that I couldn't decide if it was summer or winter. So I came prepared for both . . . Doesn't Mamasha make herself look beautiful? She got bored of me, you know. She says my piano is out of tune. So she can't practise and . . . well, thus we are here." He sighed good-naturedly, his stomach heaving. "It's true. Thus are we here, out of her boredom."

  Misha's mother was
the same shape and about half the size of Misha; a sloping amphora with a well-powdered face and a little black tit of a hat tied beneath her chin. I had to bend at the knees to kiss her cheek.

  "Who wouldn't get bored with my son?" Then Lydia Baklushin embraced us both with full, confident kisses and plumped herself down, looking to be entertained.

  Nicholas called to Louis to bring us a tray of afternoon tea, English style.

  "Where's the bride, then?" asked Lydia.

  None of us knew. I thought she'd be in her room.

  Misha threw himself into a deep chair and crossed his cream-coloured legs. "Thank God that repulsive monk was dealt with. Someone should have done it a year ago. I say that to everyone I meet, whether I know him or not, to show how strongly I feel. He could have brought the house down round our ears. Now we can have some sensible policies."

  "No politics, Puffsy! You agreed."

  "But that was hours ago. What are men to talk about? Be reasonable, Mama, or I'll take you back to Zhukovo and leave you there alone."

  I supposed he was thinking about the travelling arrangements in the pause that followed. His rolling eye went up and down his mother. But what he said, very mildly, was, "Of course we must talk about politics. These wretches in Petrograd are the difference to us between life and death. If they fail us in the great affair of the war-—"

  "If they fail us, yes . . . ?" It was Nicholas, wanting to be worried.

  "Terrorism also is a part of politics, whether one likes it or not. Men are influenced by bombs. The question is simply this: who has the power? If the war goes poorly—well, use your loaf, Nikolai Borisovich."