‘Prove it. Run and find us a taxi.’ Pasha took a cigarette from his waistcoat and gave her a sardonic smile. ‘Imperative.’
As he placed the cigarette in his mouth and patted himself for a matchbook, he noticed that Saskia was no longer beside him. He looked back. She had stopped under the awning of a jeweller’s shop. She was not, however, looking at the window. She was looking at him. He sighed and walked back to her.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Tucholsky. I didn’t mean to be rude.’
Without taking her eyes from his, Saskia drew her leg to the level of his face and swatted the cigarette from his mouth with the tip of her boot. She held her leg at this startling angle for a moment longer. Then she dropped it and, once more, she was just another window shopping lady. Her umbrella had never left the crook of her elbow. She adjusted her hat.
‘Imperative is mood,’ she said, ‘not tense. Now pick up your feet or we’ll miss the train.’
Pasha’s mouth still pouted around the missing cigarette. ‘What?’
‘The train.’
‘No, not the train. How did you do that?’
‘Yes, the train. Pasha?’
‘What?’
‘The word you’re looking for is “pardon”. Look, you dropped your cigarette. Pick it up and place it in a bin, please.’
By the time Pasha had found the cigarette and given it to a drunkard, Saskia had vanished. He looked up and down the street until her voice called from far away. She was riding the rear of a trolleycar. Pasha rushed into the traffic. He swerved around a coach and horses and intercepted the trolleycar on the corner, as it slowed. Saskia helped him onto the deck.
‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Athletic, even.’
‘I can’t breathe.’
‘Lean forward, if you must. Let your lungs inflate.’
Pasha’s bloated face stared up at her. ‘I think I deserve that lollipop now.’
On the train to the Tsar’s Village, once a grand Swedish estate, Saskia and Pasha ate blini sandwiches and a cold meat salad. They occupied a small but comfortable private booth. It seemed that Pasha had been told by his father to demonstrate his knowledge of local history, so Saskia had listened to a collection of facts and anecdotes about the Village.
‘Will the Tsar be at home?’ Saskia asked.
‘The Imperial family are resident in the Alexander Palace only over winter. Today, they are in Peterhof. My father has been making arrangements for their cruise on the royal yacht, Standart. If the family keep to their routine, they will visit Poland over the summer. Then they’ll return to their estate in the Crimea, and finally back to the Alexander Palace.’
‘Is the Tsar a good man?’
Pasha looked at her as though the question was unanswerable. It was, Saskia reflected, possibly treasonous. ‘Ms Tucholsky, he is the Tsar.’
‘I suppose his life must be a little dull.’
‘He is a private man. He wishes to keep a distinction between his public and private lives. Fatherhood is important to him.’
‘As Freud tells us, fatherhood can be a cryptic condition.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Cryptic; скрытый. Mysterious. Don’t you find your own father mysterious?’
Pasha took a bite of his sandwich and shrugged. ‘My father doesn’t speak to me about his business. But he’s brave. He fought in the Russo-Turkish War. When Kars fell, he was entrusted with bearing the news of victory to His Majesty, Alexander II. The Emperor made him an Aide-de-Camp. My father has been attached to the Imperial household ever since. One day, he might be Grand Marshall of the Court. Think of it!’
Grand Marshall, thought Saskia, of the Court of Nicholas the Last.
‘I will. Meanwhile, tell me about the Tsar’s children.’
‘I seldom see them. The Tsarina prefers to keep them away.’ He waved his hand seriously. ‘They are, so to speak, cryptic.’
Saskia smiled inwardly. ‘Sensible,’ she said.
At the Tsar’s Village, they alighted as rain began to fall. Pasha took Saskia’s umbrella and held it above her while they walked to the taxi rank. The face of the foremost driver was no more than a nose between hat and collar. He nodded at Pasha, who opened the carriage door, kicked down the steps, and waited for Saskia to ascend. He followed her inside. They sat opposite one another in the luxuriant gloom. Rain crackled against the roof. The carriage started off with a jolt. They rode in silence. Half way to the Summer Palace, Saskia felt Pasha’s ankle resting against hers. She moved her leg.
The cab stopped on Dvortzovaya Street. Outside, Saskia could see the gate to the palace square.
‘Do you agree,’ asked Pasha, ‘that it should be acknowledged as a wonder of the world?’
Saskia gave him a wry look.
‘Your question has an overworked quality, Pavel Eduardovitch. Much like the palace.’
Chapter Fourteen
A man descended the marble stairway of the atrium. He was bow-legged, middle-aged and wore polished shoes. He was dressed like a clerk, not a member of a grand household. When he spoke over his clasped hands, his Russian was slow and he had difficulty with the rolling ‘r’. Saskia knew he was German before he introduced himself.
‘Mr Mülheim.’
Saskia accepted his bow with a nod. ‘Tucholsky,’ she said. ‘I am the tutor of Count Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’
Mülheim looked at her handwarmer, and the two hands she appeared to conceal. The weather was wet, after all—not especially cold. Saskia wondered if he had checked the visitors’ book. She had not permitted Pasha to sign it. As for her own name, she had jotted something unreadable. But Mülheim wore only an expression of studied servility. If he had suspicions, he withheld them.
‘Good morning, your honour,’ he said to Pasha. ‘We’ll begin at the First Suite of Apartments.’
‘I hope we will have time to see the Grand Ballroom,’ said Saskia, ‘and its enfilade.’
Mr Mülheim nodded graciously as though its introduction would take a particular skill that he was happy to exercise. Then, he led them up the staircase.
Over the next few minutes, a peculiar tinnitus began to distract Saskia. Her first thought was that an insect, perhaps a fly, was trapped behind a hanging. But the buzz persisted as they passed from room to room. When they were standing in a small bed chamber that overlooked the park on the south side of the Summer Palace, Saskia noticed a growing clearness in the sound. The snowy component of noise was fading. It was replaced by an irregularity. It might have been a radio transmission.
Then it stopped.
Mr Mülheim led them through an illuminated door. This opened onto a church hall. Its walls were pale. Through one of the watery windows, Saskia could see the palace square. The horse guards were returning from their patrol to the main gate. She watched the second rider wheel his horse in a Caucasian flourish that returned her, with an ache, to the unchanging and endless days of her last horse-rides overlooking the Black Sea.
Saskia and Pasha exchanged a smile. The memory of the tinnitus faded.
At length, accompanied by Mülheim’s narrative, which was heavy with architectural terms, they passed through the apartment of the Empress Elizabeth Alekseyevna and came upon the choir gallery. The church of the Great Palace was, thought Saskia, a marvel, and outshone the somnolent words of Mülheim. She turned her head to the painted ceiling as Mülheim described the Te Deum sung on November 1st, 1768, in thanksgiving for the recovery of Empress Catherine II.
‘In the Sacristy,’ he said, speaking now to himself, ‘we find the Holy Cross, the chalice, and the Holy Gospel, which is made of pure gold. We also find a nine kilogram chalice of gold.’ Saskia sighed through her nose. Why did he prefer “We find” over “There is”, suggesting a doctor at an autopsy?