Cold Blood (9 page)

He began to rearrange his clothing. “Excuse me, Doig, it's not every night that one says farewell to the city of one's birth— to one's country. One's emotions become excessive, especially after the opera. Liselotte has certain skills—
liebchen
, what are you doing? Stop scrabbling round down there. Come and sit beside me. We have company.”

I'd sent her flying against the far door. She said the door handle had bruised her ribs. She had a final snivel and crawled over the carpet to Boltikov.

“Your pardon,
barin
...”

I was in her way. I pulled down a jump seat from the division for myself.

Boltikov was thirty-five or so. He laughed across at me. “Liselotte is the governess of my son. She teaches him German in the morning and French in the evening. This part of her job is a penance for the evil Germany has inflicted on us—to be exact, for paying Mr Lenin to come here and start his revolution. She volunteered for this evening, of course. What do you say to that, Doig?”

“To Liselotte?”

“Lenin.”

“Only an hour ago I was speaking to him.”

“You should have shot him. He'll finish our class. Tonight is for goodbyes. Tomorrow Liselotte and my secretary and I drive across the border to Finland. My wife and boy are already there. From Finland this idiot shuvver of mine goes home. If I find there's trouble in Finland, I simply drive over the border to dear old Sweden. No one will stop a man in a Rolls-Royce. Wherever I get to, I'll start again. I have good contacts.”

“The reason I didn't shoot him was that I didn't want to be killed myself.”

“Not a martyr?”

“Never.”

“You can't hide class,” he said reflectively. “Something will give you away, however much you try to conceal it. You can start speaking like a really stupid peasant, you can make the palms of your hands as rough as bark, but you'll still get nailed. Intelligence will mark you out. Breeding too—”

I laughed. “My mother pointed out your father on the train.
She told me there was no bigger snob in the world than your father.”

“But what do you expect? Out of shit he turned himself into gold. From nothing, Doig! From a handful of kopeks! And having made his fortune, he couldn't think of what to do with it. He expected to meet kings and queens every day. ‘What else is money for?' he'd say to me. Or to a cabinet minister whose family had been around as long as the Romanovs, ‘We who are at the top should confer daily as to how we're to stay there.' Things like that. He was right—but pretentious. Liselotte darling, sit closer to me, I like your smell.

“Have you been caught up in a revolution before, Doig? What about those South American countries you went to?”

By this time we'd motored to the east end of Nevsky, circled the statue of Alexander III and had started back up towards the Admiralty. It was the direction I wanted to go. I was content to be Boltikov's passenger. He was doing the right thing. A man on the point of going into exile should say a full set of goodbyes and do so in company, to ensure he doesn't become maudlin. He should be tender with his self-esteem. If he thinks poorly of himself on departure, how will he ever prosper in a foreign country?

Waving his cigar around, Boltikov continued on his previous theme.

(Liselotte had opened the window to let the smoke out. We could hear the occasional outburst of shooting quite clearly.)

“It may be the way we walk, as simple as that. Class will always show and the vermin'll spot it. That's why I'm getting out. Helsinki tomorrow. Eighty miles an hour the entire way. That's what it says on the clock so that's what we'll do. Eighty miles—that's—what's that in Russian?”

“Fifty versts.”

“Sensational! I love speed. I'll pick up my family and go to Stockholm and from there take a boat across to Wick thanks to Mr. Thomas Cook and his wartime bravado—God willing! Then we'll catch a train to London. I have business friends in London. Also money with a gentleman called Mr. Baring. Do you know this man?”

He stopped. His face crinkled with the foretaste of adventure
and corporeal pleasures. “We heard all about your travel adventures from your old uncle. You know, you could have had the pick of our Russian women when the stories got around—”

“I did.”

“You mean... that was a horrible experience. But it's what we must expect from these people... Doig, why not escape with me? You're strong. You're ruthless. You want to win... I'd pay you well.”

I said I'd think about it. It'd mean writing off my life so far— my childhood, Elizaveta, my lovely father, my descendance from the man who'd sent Napoleon packing. Did I want that—to erase the past? To deny myself?

I whistled vexedly—only a bar.

“
Stoy!
Stop! It's bad luck in the house. This car's a house for me... By the way, no one liked my father. It was a great relief to Mamasha when he died in the street. Walking along like you or me... he was so fat... You can see how fat I am, Doig. It comes from having been fed from the start on the best products sugar could make. I was in Einem's every day. He named a chocolate after me. It was called a Bombe Boltikov. Seventy-two per cent cocoa and in a compartment in the centre the strongest apricot brandy that Bols make. A little candy peel on top for ladies to pick off. Shaped
tout à fait comme un suppositoire—
it was a huge success. I expect I've eaten several tons of my Bombe... Of course Einem was German and so had to sell when this war started. His shop was never the same with the new people... The thing about the Germans is first the Kaiser, and second, sending that bastard Lenin to us. It's Germany that's brought us to our knees. Liselotte, do shut that window. It's Russia and the end of October, not June in Paris.”

He produced a flat silver flask of cognac. Liselotte took a good swig, coursing it round her mouth and smacking her lips. She passed me the flask. But I declined, saying it was a night to be sober.

They finished the flask between themselves. He said, wiping his lips, “I'm disappointed in you, Doig. That was Reserve Royal 1825, from the Tsar's Summer Palace in the Crimea.”

He turned on the reading light on his side. It made him no thinner or more handsome. And Liselotte looked a hard nut,
even though the light was coming from behind a scalloped shade of the most feminine hue.

He said, “When you crashed in here waving your pistol, I thought I was certain to be shot. Then you told me your name and I thought, Here's a man worth saving. Strong, brisk, cruel, those were the adjectives I chose, going by your reputation. But someone who doesn't have the sense to drink the best cognac ever made—well, it speaks for itself. I'll take you to the cemetery and then you can walk.”

I said, “Mama was right. Snobbery can be inherited, just the same as blue eyes. That's a poor reason, to turn against me because I wouldn't drink your brandy.”

“You think I made the decision because I'm a snob?”

I shrugged.

“I was only testing you, that's all. To see if you'd speak up for yourself. Tell you what, come with me as far as Stockholm. A week, a month, as long as you wish. We'll share Liselotte.”

The car stopped. We were at the cemetery—the Nobles' Entrance, as I'd told the shuvver.

He came round and opened the door for me. I stepped into the pool of light from the lantern hanging outside the night porter's lodge. From the city below came the slap of small-arms fire.

To speak to me Boltikov had to lean right over Liselotte. He sprawled on her, like a bear—I saw her wince. He called out of the door, “You mean, you're getting out and leaving, just like that? Well, I'll tell you what you are—a simpleton. One way or another they'll get you. I've owned factories, I know how the Bolsheviks work. Your height, even the words you use— yes, a decent vocabulary will be an automatic sentence of death. Doig, you're a
sitting duck—
see, I know a little English, I can look after myself without you. What do you say to that? Eh, Charlie? What do you say to me not wanting you any more? What's your next move?”

He was determined to see the effect on me and getting hold of the passenger strap began to haul himself over Liselotte. “Look out, woman,” he said. She tucked in her chin and flattened herself against the back of the seat. He got to the point where he was sitting sideways, feet out of the door.

“That's me, Alexander Alexandrovich Boltikov. If I want to do something, I do it the shortest possible way. I'm not one for preening and prancing and saying one thing and doing another. You all right,
liebchen
?”

He took a cigar from his case. Red spores grew beneath his lighter and burst briefly into flame. He puffed from the corner of his mouth and spat. “Don't be obstinate, Charlie. Make a journey, come with the boy Boltikov. He knows his way around. Permits, passports, train tickets, he can get them—snap, just like that. Light espionage? Name your need.”

He beamed on me, this short fat fellow. The yellow lantern light was on his face at an angle. “There must be something you want.”

I said, “Yes. I want to know what job Lenin gives Glebov.”

“Why?”

“So I can find him and kill him.”

He sighed. “You're a brave man. All right, I'll do it. For you. Because I like you . . .” He drew on his cigar and fixed me with a puffy blue optic. “Tomorrow I want to get all of Russia with me in this car—the air, the soil, even the stinking breath of our people. Their oaths, their bedtime prayers, the flowers in their little gardens—God, how I love this horrible country of ours.”

I knew the score from my efforts to get Elizaveta to leave. Boltikov would be the same. There'd be tears as big as summer raindrops, howling, tantrums and such emotional self-mutilation that the situation could be rectified only by the 1825 cognac and the slippery lips of
liebchen
.

“You'll never leave,” I said.

He took out a huge English handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.

I could see Liselotte watching us suspiciously, afraid that her employer was getting into some typically Russian entanglement that would prevent their departure.

He and I embraced. She made room for him and he climbed back in. The shuvver closed the door on him. The car rolled away on its fat tyres. After twenty yards it halted. The back door flew open. Hanging on to the strap with one hand, he called out, “I'll get what you want and cable you. At the Rykov Palace? Think it'll get through?”

I waved him my thanks. The huge car vanished, exhaust pipe fluttering.

Turning, I found the entire episode had been witnessed by the night porter standing in the shadow of his own door. It shocked me that he should have remained silent throughout. He said, No, he wasn't a Bolshevik spy: he was more interested in the dead than the living.

I
FOLLOWED
him into his lodge to sign the register.

“Pychkin—Razumsky—Rykov—here we are,
barin.
” He inked the pen and passed it to me. But the nib being new and still in its anti-rust dressing would leave only a watery trail. He handed me a newspaper on which I scribbled until the nib worked. It was farewell: it was important that everything was right.

All our family visits were recorded, nearly a century of them. From December 1821, a month after the Founder's death, to last December when my cousin Nicholas had signed in with his two spoilt brats.

I filled in the columns: 3.45 a.m., Friday October 26th, 1917. Number in party—“one.” In the section for Comments, I wrote: “The night of the Bolshevik uprising (Lenin). The evening started damp and foggy. Shortly after midnight the sky cleared. A bad sign.”

On reading this over my shoulder, the porter said, “Our soldiers'll soon chase him out. I'd be joining them if it wasn't for my leg.” He took the key to the Rykov mausoleum off the hook and dusted it in a pannikin of graphite; clipped on a long metal tag so that I wouldn't forget to bring it back.