‘And now my last gift. What time is your viva voce at the Lyceum?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘You have six hours. Plenty of time.’
‘For what?’
‘Tell me how you will impress your interviewers.’
‘Well,’ Pasha said. ‘I will demonstrate my knowledge of mathematics. Euclid, and so on. That is the basis of my proposed study.’
‘Have you heard of the St Petersburg Paradox? It might serve as an interesting case of the failure of rationality in the light of mathematics.’
‘Ms Tucholsky, before we begin, I must finish my earlier thought. A man must speak his desires if he is to, so to speak, hold them.’
‘Put it away, junior.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘There are times when a man must accept the discrepancy between his wish and his reality. This is one of those times.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Now, imagine a roulette wheel. If you put your money on red and the wheel returns black, what would happen if you doubled your bet and placed it once more on red? Eventually, you are guaranteed to win at least the amount you put on red. Understand? This is the reason casinos have a maximum bet.’
‘I’m sleepy.’
‘We call the range of winnings the possible gain. Repeat that, please.’
‘I’m going to call for help.’
Saskia gripped his foot through the blanket. ‘They would never reach you in time.’
Pasha laughed. ‘The range of winnings is called the possible gain. But what does “paradox” mean?’
‘Парадокс. An entity whose components make sense individually but not as a whole.’
Chapter Sixteen
Kamo had been installed in the public viewing room of the Police Department on the Fontanka. It was a plain wooden hall with leather-backed doors at both ends. Kamo was standing on a chair in the centre. His feet were chained and his hands cuffed behind his back. Around him, a line of building superintendents, and their assistants, and the otherwise curious, passed by in a spiralling queue. Their expressions were by turns curious or indifferent. He might have been the Tsar in state. As one of them lingered, Kamo stamped his foot, and hissed, ‘There you are! Did you get the consignment of illegal pamphlets I sent? Come, don’t be shy!’
That gawker hurried on.
Outside, the sound of church bells carried through the traffic.
This abstract present carried wearisome generalities. Even the pain was boring. Kamo longed for the particular feel of forest earth beneath his felt boots.
In his memory, it is October, 1905. The weather is unseasonably cold. Tiflis could be warm in autumn, even sultry. The cold snap is a topic of conversation second only to the revolution.
Kamo is walking past the railway station in Tiflis. A crowd of workers stand near a derailed locomotive. The huge, metal eyelid of its smokebox is open. The workers look sorry.
Kamo, not stopping, glances into the smokebox. His thoughts have turned to his greater challenge. It has been decided by Lenin, Leonid Krassin, and Soso that Kamo should form a band of expropriators to secure funds for weaponry. Many agents in this fighting unit, or Outfit, will comprise individuals selected for their revolutionary attributes, which Kamo has interpreted as “attractiveness”. They will use their feminine characteristics to infiltrate those circles in which the transfer of State monies is discussed. They will romance State Bank and Treasury employees. Kamo will gather information about the movement of these funds and then take steps to expropriate them. Thus the money for the greater revolution will be deducted from the Tsar’s ration. Nobody in the Party believes the current troubles trigger the inevitable, beautiful revolution. That must wait. These ructions are the clearing of a throat. The money must see the Bolsheviks through coming days when the State will reassert itself.
Kamo smiles. He takes a pistol from his belt and fires it into the smokebox. The sound is futuristic and dreadful. It might be the cry of a mechanical man. One of the workers makes the sign of the cross. Kamo laughs and hurries on to the north-east of the city, where he is due to interrogate the traitor Saakashvili.
A boy runs up to Kamo. He is berry-brown, almost feral, and has a purposeful look in his eye. It is not unusual for Soso to use such boys as messengers. Kamo crouches. His skirted chokha fans out on the packed earth. In the distance, glass breaks.
‘What is your name, brother?’ he asks the boy.
‘You must help her.’
Kamo cocks his head. The boy has not given him a code phrase. ‘Who?’
‘The lady from the forest. She gave me food.’
Kamo stands and walks on.
‘Dmitri!’ calls the boy, jogging alongside him. ‘I am Dmitri!’
‘How old are you, Dmitri?’ asks Kamo. The question is automatic. Kamo has no interest.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Go home to your mother.’
‘The Tsar has her! Twenty men came out of the trees.’
Kamo turns his head to the boy, but does not stop. They pass a burning police wagon.
‘Who? Your mother?’
Dmitri, who is perhaps ten years old, but looks eight, reaches for the nearest of the two pistols that Kamo wears in his belt. Kamo claps his hand over the boy’s. They stop in the street.
The two stare at one another. Kamo is impressed by the fierceness he sees.
‘And how do we know she is not yet dead?’
‘She killed four of them. I saw it. She learned boxing from a Chinaman. It’s all true.’
The boy squints towards the smoke that covers the sun. It is cold. The great snows have not yet come, but they will come soon, and they will fill the cracks in the earth, bury the broken wood, and slow the quickening of the revolution.
While he was being presented to the building superintendents, Kamo occupied himself with thoughts of Saskia. He wanted to kill her. It had been a mistake to attack the boy. Her maternal instincts had been piqued by the gesture, and doubled her strength.
He smiled at an unpleasant-looking man, and screamed, ‘Watch the birdie!’
An urchin followed the man. Kamo felt his fear as though it were an aroma. ‘Down with the Tsar!’ Kamo shouted. If his arms had not been tied, he would have twiddled his moustache. ‘Come on, boys, be wolves, not sheep. Let us murder these cowardly instruments of oppression and take flight. Let the revolution be bloody!’
There was a Security Section case officer in the corner. He was overweight. Kamo had remarked upon this. The officer was sitting at a temporary desk that reminded Kamo of those used in school. The officer had been reading a novel. At Kamo’s outburst, he closed it.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘let’s take a rest from the identification.’
One gendarme ushered away the superintendents who had viewed Kamo. Another halted the line of newcomers at the door. Soon, Kamo was alone with the officer and four gendarmes. This was a different audience entirely. Kamo was still calculating how best to annoy them when two of the gendarmes helped him down from his chair and invited him to sit. As he did so, they pulled off his socks.
The case officer looked at him. ‘Why the performance? It will come to nothing when you are recognised.’
‘My own mother wouldn’t recognise me. At least, not as well as yours would. What a night that was!’