‘Eh, Bob?’
‘What? Sorry…’
‘I asked how are the boots feeling now?’
He stopped, looking down at them. ‘Actually, they’re not at all a bad fit. Quite comfortable, in fact.’
‘That’s good. Lucky again, you see… What were you so lost in thought about?’
‘Oh, nothing special. This and that… One thing – tell me about this fishing? You said they catch the sturgeon on unbaited hooks?’
‘Yes.’ Waving a hand towards the boats, the river. ‘They line their boats up from bank to bank – across whichever channel they’re fishing at that time. The hooks are slung on chains – well, rope at the top, chains below – at varying levels, say three hooks on different lengths of chain under each boat – so the whole water-space is full of hooks, if you see what I mean. The fish aren’t necessarily caught by their mouths, therefore, they’re simply hooked, there’s no question of any bait.’
‘Sounds pretty cruel, to me.’
A glint of amusement in the green eyes. ‘It becomes very cruel. I’ll show you. Mind you, you’d have to see the catch itself to really understand. It’s a sight like no other.’
The smell of rotting fish was strong as they came down closer to the big shed with its tin roof. Imagining the heat in there, under that iron… They were approaching the river at the shed’s downstream end, following a cart-track, sunbaked dirt rutted by cartwheels and cut up by horses’ hooves.
‘See the piles there?’
Beyond a shed, a small inlet was barred off from the river by timber piles and staging. ‘That’s the slaughtering pen. After the fish are hooked the boats tow them in there. It becomes – a battlefield. They’re big, you know, the Belugi, eight or ten feet long, weighing up to—’ he made the calculation, from Russian poods into pounds – ‘up to eight hundred pounds. You can imagine how such a fish can fight – and you might have a hundred or more in there, in a single hour of fishing. When they’ve got them in they bludgeon them then drag them up – there, see?’
At the other end of the shed, a slipway led up to it from the slaughtering pen.
‘They split them open to remove all the eggs, the caviar. And the visigha – for that the backbone has to be wrenched out, they smash it to extract the marrow. And the fish isn’t necessarily dead at this stage, some live another hour or so.’
Bob shook his head. ‘Can’t say I ever ate a lot of caviar, but – well, from now on…’
‘The flesh comes last, of course, and when they butcher the fish its heart has probably only just stopped beating. Most of it’s salted – as you know, salted-down in barrels, shipped all over Russia.’
‘Going by the smell, they’ve left quite a lot unsalted.’
‘Residue. Bits and scraps. And guts of course. That’ll be what they’re clearing out now.’ He stopped. ‘Wait out here, Bob, if it’s too much for you.’
‘Would I be any help to you in there?’
‘Not really. I’m going to ask does anyone know where I might find my aunt Lizaveta. After I’ve drawn blank, we’ll go and talk to those comrades.’
The fishermen. They were hauling another boat out, three men each side lugging it up the slope on wooden rollers. Bob agreed, ‘I’ll wait here for you.’
He strolled towards the river – away from the stench of rotting fish-scraps. It was about three o’clock now: so just forty-eight hours ago he’d been on board Zoroaster, taking all those creature-comforts for granted and of course without the slightest inkling of what might lay ahead. Without much idea of what might lie ahead of the Count, even, only the feeling that he was a brave man to be taking it on, and behind that a touch of sooner you than me, old chap…
Those fishermen were trooping back down to the river. Old men, all of them. The lorry-driver had mentioned that with the Bolshevik army conscripting every able-bodied man of anything like military age into its ranks, the fishing stations were staffed entirely by women and old men. He’d added, referring to himself, ‘And one cripple…’ Then asked, perhaps a trifle over-casually, ‘They haven’t caught you two for soldiers yet, eh?’
‘Oh, they caught me.’ This was when Nick had given him the Askhabad yarn. ‘I’ve been down in the south, though – on what you might call special service. This man here’s from Persia. There was a local counter-revolution – in a place you probably wouldn’t have heard of – they hanged nine of my colleagues, I was to have been the next but this good comrade cut a throat or two and got me out. Now we’ve a report to make, in Moscow.’
The driver had been visibly impressed. He’d asked – by the look of it making his own guesses – who they’d be making their report to. The Count had shaken his head. ‘I’ve said too much already, comrade. And strictly speaking we shouldn’t be breaking our journey here. So – keep it to yourself, would you?’
Knowing damn well he wouldn’t.
The sight of boats reminded Bob of the skiff lying hidden in the delta; conjured up a vision of himself and the Count rowing, one at each oar, with a huddle of three women in the stern and another two in the bow. Trying to row quietly, expecting to find a guardship round every bend in the channel…
Hopeless, though. With that load, you’d get along at about two knots. Maybe three as long as the stream was with you. A night therefore to get clear of the delta – if you had the luck to make it that far anyway – and then a whole day and another night’s rowing to get as much as fifty miles offshore, which in any case you could only contemplate in conditions approaching a glassy calm. So it amounted to hoping for a miracle. On the other hand, he didn’t want to dismiss the notion altogether – partly because extraordinary feats of endurance had been achieved in recent years, by survivors of torpedoings, and so on – and also because as of this moment he’d had no other idea that worked. Except that earlier one of trekking across the Kirghiz Steppes to Guriev on camel-back – if one could get hold of camels, and manage them, and cope with other foreseeable hazards such as distance, desert terrain, Bolshevik forces in pursuit and en route, thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and Kirghizi who’d murder you for a rouble let alone for a group of nubile young women.
Sooner chance the skiff. Take an oar each until clear of the delta, then share the rowing…
‘Hey, Robat!’
The Count was trotting down the long slope behind him. Trailing his leather coat, using the other hand to flap his shirt-front, to get air in… ‘My God – nearest I’ve ever been to Hades itself… How those women stand it…’
‘Warm inside there, is it?’
‘Under that iron roof? And the smell…’
‘Nobody heard of Aunt Liza, I suppose.’
‘One old tough does remember her – believe it or not.
I told her my aunt was here in ’14, and she agreed, that would have been the year. But she didn’t think I’d find her in Enotayevsk, her recollection is that Liza chased off to Murmansk after some sailor she’d met. My old aunt!’
‘Runs in the family, does it?’
They were on the bank, thirty feet or so above the river. Mud-flats below them, and fifty yards to their left a moored landing-stage lying aslant on the mud, its outer edge in the water where four boats tugged at their painters. A fifth was just pushing off, with two greyheads in it and a heap of gear in the stern. The Count capped his hands to his mouth, bawled ‘You comrades going to Enotayevsk, by any chance?’
His voice echoed across the water. The rowers paused; then the one near the stern waved a hand negatively and pointed upstream. But from the tilted landing-stage another old-timer bellowed, ‘Ready to go now?’
* * *
‘What luck.’ Glancing at Bob. They were together on the seat in the boat’s stern, the gaunt old fisherman’s deepset eyes on them as he rowed – seeming to exert very little effort but still sending the boat skidding along like a water-beetle. He was all bone, sinew and wrinkled hide, but in his younger days he must have been a giant of a man. The Count said again, ‘Really, amazing lu
ck.’
‘Boats’ve been pushing off all day, comrade. And some still to follow. You picked the right day, that’s all. Looking for an aunt, you said?’
The Count nodded. They’d had a half-hour’s wait on the landing-stage, and he’d been obliged to trot out a few more lies. ‘As I was telling your friends, I haven’t seen her in years, just thought I’d say hello – if she’s still around.’
‘Lives in Enotayevsk, does she?’
He hedged: ‘I suppose that’s your home?’
‘Yes. Well – off and on. All my life, off and on. Seasonal, you might say. Like the swallows or the snipe, eh?’
‘Or the sturgeon…’
Bob’s attention drifted away from their conversation. Making a mental note of having started from the fishing-station at a few minutes to four. He wished he still had his own watch and didn’t have to keep asking the Count… But say four o’clock, easier to remember. And this leg downstream must be about a mile and a half, two miles…
Habit and training, all that emphasis on using one’s powers of observation – underlined by the experience once or twice of having wished one had taken detailed notice, when one had failed to do so… The old fisherman was telling Nick, ‘There’s roadwork too. On that side the road’s built up on a great bank. A levee, they call it – above the flood level, see. And that needs upkeep – year in, year out… What’s your aunt’s name?’
The hesitation lasted long enough for Bob to wonder whether he was going to answer at all. Then: ‘Her married name’s Kamentseva. Husband’s—’
‘Chyort…’
‘Know her, do you?’
He’d stopped rowing. Bolt upright, his great arms folded over the oars’ looms, the blades slanting, dripping… ‘Maroussia Kamentseva is your aunt?’
The current was carrying the boat on downstream. They were crossing this wide channel diagonally; there was an island of dried-out riverbed to starboard, half a mile away; they’d be rounding its lower end and then pulling upstream to a junction with the main deepwater channel. In spring, one might guess, there’d be no island, just the great river at this point ten or twelve miles wide.
Rate of flow about two knots, he guessed. On the next stretch the old man would be rowing into it.
‘You actually do know her?’
A grunt… ‘Told you – lived here all my life. And that goes back a bit. I knew Maroussia when she was – God, this high. Maroussia Biibochkina, she was… How does it happen she’s your aunt?’
‘Well – did you know her sister?’
‘As I recall it, there were three girls in that family. One other I remember… Avdotya?’
‘Elizaveta.’
He’d started rowing again. Getting the boat back on course. ‘The family split up, didn’t it, when the parents died. Typhus, wasn’t it. Maroussia never left us, but – well, one of the other girls – I’ll swear her name was Avdotya—’
‘Maroussia was the only aunt I ever knew. Elizaveta was my mother’s name. My father was a railwayman, we lived up near Saratov. Pokrovsk, to be exact. My parents are both dead now.’
‘May they rest in peace.’
‘Please God.’
‘I’ll tell you who else is dead.’ Glancing over his shoulder, checking on his course, and adjusting slightly. Turning back. ‘Ivan. Maroussia’s husband. Died about a year ago – heart-failure, they said.’
‘They?’
A shrug of the immensely broad shoulders. ‘That’s what was said. We don’t see much of Maroussia these days. She’s been into the village a few times but straight in, straight out. As if the devil’s driving – so I’ve heard it said.’ The deep eyes were sombre, in a face that might have been carved out of mahogany – if mahogany sprouted silver-grey stubble. The Count leaning towards him, listening avidly… ‘There’s a house she works at – lives at – well, it must be all of fifty years she’s been there. Outside the village…’
‘Riibachnaya Dacha.’
He’d stopped rowing again. Eyes on his passenger, and thoughtful… Then: ‘They call it Krasnaya Dacha now. Renamed since the revolution, of course – well, since they took it over. Belonged to the Solovyev family before that – as far back as anyone’s grandparents could remember, even. Solovyevs spent all their summers here. They’d be mostly dead by now – shame, really, they were good to her, nobody around here had anything against them… But of course, if Maroussia’s your aunt you’d know about them.’
‘She’s mentioned them. Of course.’ Hunched forward, hugging his knees, his eyes fixed on the gaunt, seamed face. Thinking about being one of a family who were mostly dead, Bob guessed. And whose former house was now called Red Cottage… ‘But this house – where you say Maroussia still works…’
‘Three versts outside the village. Krasnaya Dacha. That’s where you’d find her.’
‘You say it’s been – requisitioned?’
‘Has it!’ Rowing again. Hands so big they made the oars look thin enough to snap like twigs. ‘Headquarters of the Military Revolutionary Committee.’
Bob saw the Count’s reaction: a small start, a tightening of muscles… The green eyes slid his way, then returned to the old man. ‘Are you sure she still works there?’
‘Cooks, washes and scrubs for ’em. Same as she’s done all her life. But then, you see, the Solovyevs turned that place into a war hospital, back in ’14. Place where badly wounded officers went to rest while they recovered. Well, would be for officers, a house like that one.’
‘And now it’s occupied by the Military Revolutionary Committee, you say?’
‘And a bit more besides.’
‘A bit more?’
The old man turned to face downwind, and spat heavily. A grunt, as he turned back then. ‘As you say…’
Silence. The Count waiting for more, Bob realized, and not getting it. Only the regular thump and slither of the oars between the thole-pins, the small splash and suction of their blades… The Count cleared his throat, asked, ‘How would I best get in touch with her, in present circumstances?’
More silence… Bob counted the strokes, while the old man thought about it. Four – five – six… Eyes hooded, in those deep hollows in his skull, but his gaze still resting on the Count. A brain at work in there, Bob guessed, while arms and oars moved like parts of a machine. But Nick might have made a bloomer, he thought. Having given his aunt’s name as Lizaveta Vetrova to the people at the fishing-station, and now as Maroussia Kamentseva. One could see his reasoning, but if there was any social contact now between that side and this…
‘I suppose you’d go out to the house, comrade. Go out there and ask for her.’
‘Just walk up and knock on the door?’
‘Well – there’s a guard-post at the entrance. On both entrances, I should say. Would be, wouldn’t there. You’d be required to identify yourself and state your business, I imagine.’
‘Simple. Visiting my aunt Maroussia.’
‘Papers in order, I suppose?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I should have asked to see them, I suppose, before—’
‘They’re in order. You have my word for it.’
‘If they aren’t – I’m not calling you a liar, I’m just saying if they aren’t – I’d ask you not to tell them it was me brought you across.’
‘I’ve no intention of talking to them, batushka.’
‘But they’ll talk to you, lad.’ A chuckle. ‘And by and by you’d be talking back to ’em!’
‘I don’t follow…’
‘Put it this way. If your papers are not in order, comrade – don’t go near that house.’
‘But why—’
‘The Cheka, comrade. The Cheka. That’s why.’
* * *
It had taken forty-five minutes for the boat to crab across that channel on the downstream leg. The boatman – he’d told them his name now, Leonid Mesyats – had spent his whole life at this, on this river, had made precisely the right amount of allowa
nce for the current, so as to finish at the central island’s downstream coastline without a yard or a pound of effort wasted. Then of course having rounded the bottom of the island he had the hard work ahead of him – a four-and-a-half- or five-mile struggle north-westward, butting upstream, needing all his weight and muscle and concentration against the Volga’s power.
Low-water power, even though it was. What sort of a monster this must be in April when the ice and snow melted, throughout the two thousand miles of its journey across Russia.
There’d been a long silence after that bombshell-like reference to the Cheka. The Count had sat like a dummy – speechless, motionless. Bob watching him, guessing at the panic in his thoughts: having his own anyway, the core of them being that if the place now known as Krasnaya Dacha housed Cheka agents – as well as the Astrakhan district’s military command – it couldn’t possibly also contain those women. Girls… Although obviously they must have been there at some time – when the Count’s mother had sent off her message.
Before the Cheka had moved in, he guessed.
One way or another, they couldn’t be there now.
A conclusion might be that he and the Count would end up rowing that skiff out into the Caspian on their own.
‘You said—’ the Count had broken out of his reverie – ‘that Maroussia does come into the village sometimes?’
‘Yes. She’s been known to. She brings a cart in for supplies sometimes. To fetch coal and logs in winter, for instance. Ivan used to do it, now she does. God knows why they don’t, they have automobiles.’
‘Probably got other uses for them.’
‘I expect they have, but she’s an old woman now, you know.’
‘She’d be getting on a bit, that’s a fact.’ He nodded, with his eyes on the old man’s. Then, after a pause: ‘Is there any way that I could get a message to her, d’you think?’
‘Message?’
‘To let her know I’m here. I don’t want to go – I mean, to get involved with – well, Cheka, for God’s sake…’
Bloody Sunset Page 15
