He opens a door onto a courtyard. There stands a nondescript gentleman dressed for an afternoon walk. The valet leans towards the gentleman, though he does not wish to get too close. There is something of the thug about this man.
The gentleman turns. Offers his ear.
‘Mariinksy, tonight,’ says the valet.
The gentleman has a roll of roubles in the pocket of his waistcoat. He sheds one. The money amounts to a week’s pay for the valet, who returns inside the bathhouse, somewhat grateful to have escaped further attention from this cold gentleman.
Night, which has fallen six short hours following this payment, is the medium through which Kamo moves as a planet between stars. Saskia is his moon. She is dressed as a princess and he as a prince. They approach the Mariinsky Theatre and look at its electric waterfall of light. Kamo squints at the sign. So the performance stars the celebrated Feodor Chaliapin. He smiles at Saskia.
They remain on the pavement until a private coach arrives. The middle class theatre-goers make way for Draganov as he steps once, twice on the pavement before entering the theatre. Kamo hates that instinctive deference to nobility; he is still seething at it when they enter Draganov’s private box unseen. It is late in the performance, as the Fool for Christ sings his lament.
The words, ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ soar from the limelit face on stage.
The arrangement of the boxes is such that theatre-goers in the box behind can see Draganov plainly. To block him from others in the theatre, Saskia moves to his side. She smiles down. She feels Kamo, only feet away at the rear of the box, urging her. This is the instant. This is the murder of Draganov. Through a folded handkerchief, the knife slides into him by the coward’s route: between the ribs of his back.
Draganov has no time to react. He can only contort and grasp the air. Already, blood is spooling from his shirt. Kamo wants the knife; he wants to make a final cut across the neck, for safety and to make his mark. Saskia refuses and the seconds move and the audience applauds. Kamo, at last, looks away. He motions towards the door of the booth with his head. Saskia follows him out. She drops the knife on the carpet, along with her handkerchief and their theatre tickets.
To kill Draganov is to possess his nobility, Kamo thinks, to take the thing that made those people step aside as he entered the theatre.
This is the whetted edge of revolution for Kamo. This is the steady unmaking of the State. There is a calm at last in his mind. For some, the killing is a fevered action, one part panic and two parts desperation. For Kamo, the calmer the moment, the colder his blood. It is with reptilian indifference that he looks across at Saskia. He is satisfied. His suspicions of her duplicity have burned down to little more than embers.
Kamo blinks. His left eye hurts. Ever since that accident, shrapnel floats in its humour. Can he even be sure that Draganov is dead? Perhaps he should check; perhaps he should wait for the dazzle of the limelight to fade, then check the face of the man they have killed.
Kamo thinks of the gas jet striking the lime. There are tears—flow, flow, bitter tears. He misses Tiflis.
When they emerge on the street, Kamo is a calmer man.
The calmer the moment, the colder the blood.
They are too distant to hear the screams when the body is discovered, if indeed there are screams at all in these troubled times.
Chapter Nineteen
Robespierre had prepared them a soup and placed it in the centre of the library to cool. He was no longer in the apartment. Saskia cut some bread with a book knife and gave it to Kamo. They were sitting on the rug between the couches. The light was minimaclass="underline" two candles. Upon an alarm, they could be extinguished quickly.
‘Another man is dead,’ said the Georgian, scratching his bald chin. There was a sadness about him that contrasted with the gaiety Saskia associated with the aftermath of his previous crimes.
‘You travelled too quickly from Tiflis. Your soul has yet to catch up with you. Eat this.’
Kamo snorted. He put his bread into the soup and, folding the dripping hunk, pushed it into his mouth.
Saskia brushed at the dried blood on her dress.
‘They die so differently,’ Kamo said. ‘Each one. Don’t they?’
‘We needed to do it. Didn’t you say so? You must know that Draganov and I were never in league. There you have your proof.’
‘Understand me, Lynx. We have assassinated one of the okhranniki. The echo of this bullet—’
‘It was a knife,’ said Saskia, abruptly angry. ‘It was my knife and I killed him and we had to.’
‘There are many police,’ Kamo continued. His eyes were lowered. ‘They divide like worms when cut. I do wonder at my wisdom. Soso would know what to do.’
‘Don’t be afraid.’
He looked at her. ‘With each utterance, you grow stupider in my eyes. We have murdered, but this is not some petty official.’
‘Why must I keep telling you?’ Saskia asked. She plunged her cup into the cauldron of soup. Sipping the sharp, vinegarish liquid, she lay back against a couch. It moved a little, feet groaning on the wood. ‘I read Draganov’s name in the visitor book of the Summer Palace,’ she lied. ‘He knew about us. Maybe he was following me. Do you want to enter the palace and be arrested in the act of retrieving the money? We won’t talk any longer about the necessity of it. Why are you talking like a woman? Eat.’
Kamo tipped his head to one shoulder and sighed. The gesture was absurdly adolescent. He was thirty years old by his own claim, the same age as Saskia, and yet he carried daylight in his eyes and might have passed as a student of the seminary. ‘Where were his guards?’
‘He had no guards. He had a private taxi outside the theatre. There was no reason to suspect that he would be attacked during a performance.’
Kamo pulled off his boots. ‘I am uneasy. Even the mention of his name in the visitors’ book of the Summer Palace makes my whiskers—what is left of them—twitch. Why would such an officer of the Protection Department provide his name?’
‘Everybody must provide their name.’ She gestured to Kamo. ‘Except those who enter in fancy dress.’
‘But why give his own name?’
‘He doesn’t need a pseudonym. His identity is unknown.’
‘It is known to you, Lynx.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. But it was given to me under special circumstances. He wanted to recruit me, remember?’
‘There are elements of your train journey last year that I am not happy with.’
‘Happy? So what?’
Kamo grinned. The soup had darkened his teeth. ‘Tell me once more the story of your journey to St Petersburg last autumn, following my fall from the train.’
Saskia closed her eyes. Her voice, weakened with fatigue, drew her thoughts on. The quiet thumping of the antiquated rolling stock. As her voice continued, marking her first encounter with Draganov in that shuddering train corridor, a great sorrow opened within her like a relaxing fist. She wanted to leave for the future. She wanted to go home.
The traffic on Nevsky Avenue was a slow stampede. A fog came from the Gulf of Finland and paled everything. Saskia was standing near a pie seller outside the Ministry of Justice building. The meat smelled good. She stamped her thin boots and when an automobile back-fired noisily, she pictured a runaway phaeton in a dusty town square. After that, the smell of meat was too much. She drew her finger along the wall, collecting soot, and smudged it beneath her eyes. She smacked her lips as though her mouth held no teeth. Finally, she turned her right foot inwards and walked, slowly, to a fishmonger. There she waited within the stink until a man walked past holding a bouquet of purple and lilac carnations.