‘Ego,’ she whispered, as though noting an important directive on doily configuration, ‘I have become acquainted with Ute. She told me everything.’
Ego vibrated to say, I doubt that.
‘It’s true. I know all about the meta.’
For a moment, Ego did not move. Then he said, And yet you’re not aware that Meta never takes a determiner.
Saskia turned a page and looked at a diagram of a dinner table. Its arrows indicated the preferred distribution of conversation between guests.
‘You helped me when I needed to tell Berezovsky Ludmilla’s middle name.’
It was difficult to do nothing as you risked arrest.
‘I was doing fine,’ Saskia said, raising her voice. She settled herself and whispered, ‘Ego, I will need your help soon.’
You will receive it only in exceptionally disastrous situations.
Saskia looked out the window at a wood. ‘I enjoy our conversations.’
Really? That surprises me.
Saskia remained in the lounge carriage for another hour. Then she went to join Pasha in their private compartment. Two large windows gave the room plenty of light. There was a sofa, two chairs and a table. Pasha was reading a month-old Swiss newspaper on the sofa. He wore a charcoal suit with a bow-tie and a winged collar. His frock coat hung near the door to the washroom.
‘I’ve just thought of an English expression,’ said Pasha, standing up. His smile was undermined by his tired, vacant eyes. The absence of his moustache made him look too young for the task in hand. ‘“The die is cast.”’
‘Indeed,’ said Saskia. She was about to sit down when there was a knock at the door. She exchanged a glance with Pasha.
‘Come,’ he said.
The door opened and a steward entered. He was a young Swiss of about fifteen years. He looked at the ceiling when he introduced himself and gave them a quite unnecessary tour of the compartment. He seemed particularly proud of the electrical lights. His gloved hands flicked every switch. When he had explained the schedule of the journey to Switzerland, including stops, he left with their lunch order.
They planned to take meals in the compartment. Despite having shaved his moustache, Pasha did not want to risk identification in a chance encounter with a friend or family acquaintance, the circles of St Petersburg society being so small. The acquaintance might know about the death of his father and ask how he came to be travelling abroad when, as first son, his duty was to his household. At the least, those who knew him as an Imperial Guard would be perplexed by his civilian clothes.
‘Can we trust our new Swiss friend, Beat?’ asked Pasha.
‘I think so,’ said Saskia. She reached for one of the lilies on the table and brought it to her nose. ‘Still, it couldn’t hurt to imply that we are willing to pay him well for a certain privacy. Hints about an illicit affair should do it.’ She looked at Pasha over the flower. ‘Perhaps he should discover us in an embrace.’
‘It is a curious thing,’ he said, somewhat loudly. ‘That …’
‘What?’
‘Please excuse me.’
‘No, go on.’
‘It is a curious thing that my sister’s dress suits you so well.’
Saskia looked at the darkening forest beyond the window. ‘It’s too short,’ she said.
‘The colours are fine.’
‘That they are.’
He swallowed. ‘What do you see in the forest?’
‘Little of note. But it reminds me of a book.’
‘Which book?’
Saskia had been recalling the scene, word by perfect word, in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina where Count Vronsky’s racehorse dies beneath him. But because this did not seem appropriate, she said, ‘It is A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway. Have you heard of it?’
‘I have not.’
‘The story is set some years from now.’
‘Ah, a scientific romance, like the books of Jules Verne.’
Saskia smiled and sat down on one of the chairs before the window. Pasha returned to the sofa.
‘Scientific romance,’ she said, pondering the phrase.
One hour of silence followed.
Then Pasha said, ‘Our lunch will soon arrive.’
‘Very well.’
‘Ms Tucholsky?’
‘Yes, Pasha?’
‘Do you think that the two men who killed my father are on this train?’
‘No. Their priority was to leave the city.’
‘Do you really intend to kill these men?’
‘Yes. I mean to erase them utterly. To make up for my past wrongs, and theirs.’ She looked down at the hem of her skirt, which ebbed and receded across her shoes as the carriage rocked. ‘Does this worry you?’
A curtain of rain crossed the window. Saskia stood up in the murky compartment. Pasha turned on his reading light. Saskia’s dress, some inches too short, scintillated like fool’s gold. An Allegory of the Future indeed. She looked at Pasha. His upper lip was reddish. His eyes were unfocused, staring through the rain. If he heard stories in his head, she could not tell which.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am a soldier.’
Pasha left the compartment.
Saskia considered searching his belongings for the diary. Instead, she turned to the window and watched the weeping diagonals of rain.
She could still see the hatted shadow of Papashvily in the window of her attic apartment. She thought once more of her flight in the taxi and her arrival at the Count’s villa, empty but for the butler, Mr Jenner. How had that moment played for Saskia Beta? Without the i-Core, she must have defeated the Georgian hitmen without recourse to the strange infection that had allowed Saskia to control the actions of the dogs. That experience still sickened her. In one moment, the dog had locked its teeth around her forearm; in the next, she was seeing herself through its eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Before dawn on the fifth and last day of their journey, when the train was quiet and still rolling at its slower night speed, Saskia Maria Brandt wrote her message to Pasha on the reverse of the previous day’s weather report, placed it on the table beneath the window, and weighted it with a silver spoon. Two hours remained until the train reached Geneva. Soon, the steward would enter with breakfast. Saskia stood in the darkness, fully clothed, one shadow among many. She wanted to kiss Pasha goodbye, but the touch might wake him. She wanted to wake him as she had once woken Yusha, her lover, those months ago in Zurich. No doubt a version of her, and a version of him, were somewhere one. Saskia Omega and Pasha Omega. Her mind coasted. In the event, she watched him for ten, final minutes, then opened the door to the corridor, stepped out, and closed it behind her. She put the bridge of her nose to the door and sighed. She had no tears left.
The note had read:
Return to your sister. Be a good man among bad. I will finish it. Thanks for the dress & everything.
Saskia reached the end of the first class corridor and checked the open vestibule. It was empty. She stepped out into the cold. The air carried steam and smoke. Saskia looked to windward. As the train rounded a bend, she saw the furious coupling rods of the locomotive. Then the train straightened. She closed the button of her collar, tightened the straps on her canvas rucksack, and jumped.
When she had been walking uphill for six hours, and as she was passing a berry into her mouth, Saskia looked down at the plate of Lake Geneva. She turned to follow the sound that she had been tracking for the last two kilometres. She walked higher, through the pines and towards the quiet, steady peal of cowbells. The animals were seven in number. She smiled at their incurious eyes. Beyond them, there was a boy in a black blazer and canvas trousers. Twelve years old, no more. He was leaning against his hookless staff and reading a leather-bound book. Saskia was twenty metres away and approaching when a flash of sky reflected on its embossed cover: Imago. Clever boy.