Eye of the Red Tsar (2 page)

Pekkala could make out a red star sewn onto each forearm of the man’s
gymnastyrka
tunic, which draped in peasant fashion like an untucked shirt halfway down the man’s thighs. From those red stars, Pekkala knew the man had reached the rank of Commissar, a political officer of the Red Army.

All day, the Commissar waited in that clearing, tormented by insects, until the last faint light of day was gone. In the twilight, the man brought out a long-stemmed pipe and stuffed it with tobacco from a pouch which he kept around his neck. He lit it with a brass lighter and puffed away contentedly, keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

Slowly, Pekkala breathed in. The musky odor of tobacco flooded his senses. He observed how the young man often removed the pipe from his mouth and studied it, and the way he clamped the stem between his teeth—which made a tiny clicking sound, like a key turned in a lock.

He has not owned the pipe for long, Pekkala told himself. He has chosen a pipe over cigarettes because he thinks it makes him look older.

Now and then, the Commissar glanced at the red stars on his forearms, as if their presence caught him by surprise, and Pekkala knew this young man had only just received his commission.

But the more he learned about the man, the less he could fathom what the Commissar was doing here in the forest. He could not help a grudging admiration for this man, who did not trespass inside the cabin, choosing instead to remain on that hard seat of the tree stump.

When night fell, Pekkala brought his hands to his mouth and breathed warm air into the hollows of his palms. He drifted off, leaning against a tree, then woke with a start to find that the mist was all around him, smelling of dead leaves and earth, circling like a curious and predatory animal.

Glancing towards the cabin, he saw the Commissar had not moved. He sat with his arms folded, chin resting on his chest. The quiet snuffle of his snoring echoed around the clearing.

He’ll be gone in the morning, thought Pekkala. Pulling up the frayed collar of his coat, he closed his eyes again.

But when morning came, Pekkala was amazed to find the Commissar still there. He had fallen off his tree stump seat and lay on his back, one leg still resting on the stump, like some statue set in a victorious pose which had toppled from its pedestal.

Eventually, the Commissar snorted and sat up, looking around as if he could not remember where he was.

Now, thought Pekkala, this man will come to his senses and leave me alone.

The Commissar stood, set his hands on the small of his back, and winced. A groan escaped his lips. Then suddenly he turned and looked straight at the place where Pekkala was hiding. “Are you ever going to come out from there?” he demanded.

The words stung Pekkala like sand thrown in his face. Now, reluctantly, he stepped out from the shelter of the tree, leaning on the nail-topped stick. “What do you want?” He spoke so rarely that his own voice sounded strange to him.

The Commissar’s face showed red welts where the mosquitoes had feasted on him. “You are to come with me,” he said.

“Why?” asked Pekkala.

“Because, when you have listened to what I have to say, you will want to.”

“You are optimistic, Commissar.”

“The people who sent me to fetch you—”

“Who sent you?”

“You will know them soon enough.”

“And did they tell you who I am, these people?”

The young Commissar shrugged. “All I know is that your name is Pekkala and that your skills, whatever they might be, are now required elsewhere.” He looked around the gloomy clearing. “I would have thought you’d jump at a chance to leave this godforsaken place.”

“You are the ones who have forsaken God.”

The Commissar smiled. “They said you were a difficult man.”

“They seem to know me,” replied Pekkala, “whoever they are.”

“They also told me,” continued the Commissar, “that if I came into these woods armed with a gun, you would probably kill me before I even set eyes on you.” The Commissar raised his empty hands. “As you see, I took their advice.”

Pekkala stepped into the clearing. In the patched rags of his clothes, he loomed like a prehistoric giant above the tidy Commissar. He became aware, for the first time in years, of the rank smell of his own unwashed body. “What is your name?” asked Pekkala.

“Kirov.” The young man straightened his back. “Lieutenant Kirov.”

“And how long have you been a Lieutenant?”

“One month and two days.” Then he added in a quieter voice, “Including today.”

“And how old are you?” asked Pekkala.

“Almost twenty.”

“You must have annoyed someone very much, Lieutenant Kirov, to have been given the job of coming to find me.”

The Commissar scratched at his bug bites. “I imagine you’ve annoyed a few yourself to have ended up in Siberia.”

“All right, Lieutenant Kirov,” said Pekkala. “You have delivered your message. Now you can go back where you came from and leave me alone.”

“I was told to give you this.” Kirov lifted up the briefcase from beside the tree stump.

“What’s in it?”

“I have no idea.”

Pekkala took hold of the leather-wrapped handle. It was heavier than he expected. Holding the briefcase, he resembled a cross between a scarecrow and a businessman waiting for a train.

The young Commissar turned to leave. “You have until the sun goes down tomorrow. A car will be waiting for you at the trailhead.”

Pekkala watched as Kirov went back the way he had come. For a long time, the snapping of small branches marked his passage through the forest. At last the sound faded away and Pekkala found himself alone again.

Carrying the briefcase, he walked into his cabin. He sat down on the pine-needle-filled sacks which served as his bed and placed the briefcase on his knees. The contents slumped heavily inside. With the edges of his thumbs, Pekkala released the brass latches at each end.

When he lifted the lid, a musty smell wafted up into his face.

Inside the case lay a thick leather belt, wrapped around a dark brown holster which contained a revolver. Unwrapping the belt from around the holster, he lifted out the gun—an English-made Webley revolver. It was a standard military issue except for the fact that its handle was made of brass instead of wood.

Pekkala held the gun at arm’s length, staring down the sights. Its blued metal glowed in the dim light of the cabin.

In one corner of the case lay a cardboard box of bullets with English writing on it. He tore open the frayed paper packaging and loaded the Webley, breaking the gun so that its barrel folded forward on a hinge, exposing the six bullet chambers. The bullets were old, like the gun itself, and Pekkala wiped off the ammunition before he placed it in the cylinders.

He also found a tattered book. On its crumpled spine was a single word—
Kalevala
.

Setting these items aside, Pekkala spotted one more thing inside the briefcase. It was a small cotton bag held shut by a leather drawstring. He loosened the top and emptied out the bag.

He breathed out sharply when he saw what was inside.

Lying before him was a heavy gold disk, as wide across as the length of his little finger. Across the center was a stripe of white enamel inlay, which began at a point, widened until it took up half the disk, and narrowed again to a point on the other side. Embedded in the middle of the white enamel was a large round emerald. Together, the white enamel, the gold, and the emerald formed the unmistakable shape of an eye. Pekkala traced a fingertip over the disk, feeling the smooth bump of the jewel, like a blind man reading braille.

Now Pekkala knew who had sent for him and that it was a summons he could not refuse. He had never expected to see these things again. Until that moment, he had thought they belonged to a world which no longer existed.

He was born in Finland, in a time when that country was still a colony of Russia. He grew up surrounded by deep woods and countless lakes near the town of Lappeenranta
.

His father was an undertaker, the only one in that region. From miles
around, people brought their dead to him. They jostled down forest paths, carrying the bodies in rickety carts, or hauling them in sleds across the frozen lakes in winter, so that the corpses were as hard as stone when they arrived
.

In his father’s closet hung three identical black coats, and three pairs of black trousers to match. Even his handkerchiefs were black. He would allow no glint of metal on his person. The brass buttons which came with the coats had been replaced by buttons of ebony. He seldom smiled, and when he did, he covered his mouth like a person ashamed of his teeth. Somberness was a thing he cultivated with the utmost care, knowing his job demanded it
.

His mother was a Laplander from Rovaniemi. She carried with her a restlessness that never went away. She seemed to be haunted by some strange vibration of the earth which she had left behind in the arctic where she spent her childhood
.

He had one older brother, named Anton. On the wishes of their father, when Anton turned eighteen he departed for St. Petersburg to enlist in the Tsar’s Finnish Regiment. For Pekkala’s father, no greater honor could be won than to serve in that elite company, which formed the personal cadre of the Tsar
.

When Anton boarded the train, his father wept with pride, dabbing his eyes with his black handkerchief. His mother just looked stunned, unable to comprehend that her child was being sent away
.

Anton leaned out of the window of his railway carriage, hair neatly combed. On his face was the confusion of wanting to stay but knowing that he had to go
.

Pekkala, then only sixteen years old and standing by his parents on the platform, felt his brother’s absence as if the train had long since departed
.

When the train had passed out of sight, Pekkala’s father put his arms around his wife and son. “This is a great day,” he said, his eyes red with tears. “A great day for our family.” In the time that followed, as the father ran his errands around town, he never forgot to mention that Anton would soon be a member of the regiment
.

As the younger son, Pekkala had always known he would remain at home, serving as an apprentice to his father. Eventually, he would be expected to take over the family business. His father’s quiet reserve became a part of Pekkala as he assisted in the work. The draining of fluids from the bodies and replacing them with preservatives, the dressing and the managing of hair, the insertion of pins in the face to achieve a relaxed and peaceful expression—all this became natural to Pekkala as he learned his father’s occupation
.

It was with their expressions that his father took the greatest care. An air of calm needed to surround the dead, as if they welcomed this next stage of their existence. The expression of a poorly prepared body might appear anxious or afraid, or—worse—might not look like the same person at all
.

It fascinated him to read, in the hands and faces of the departed, the way they’d spent their lives. Their bodies, like a set of clothes, betrayed their secrets of care or neglect. As Pekkala held the hand of a teacher, he could feel the bump on the second finger where a fountain pen had rested, wearing a groove into the bone. The hands of a fisherman were stacked with calluses and old knife cuts which creased the skin like a crumpled piece of paper. Grooves around eyes and mouths told whether a person’s days had been governed by optimism or pessimism. There was no horror for Pekkala in the dead, only a great and unsolvable mystery
.

The task of undertaking was not pleasant, not the kind of job a man could say he loved. But he could love the fact that it mattered. Not everyone could do this, and yet it needed to be done. It was necessary, not for the dead but for the memories of the living
.

His mother thought otherwise. She would not go down to the basement, where the dead were prepared. Instead, she stopped halfway down the basement stairs, to deliver a message or to summon her husband and son for dinner. Pekkala grew used to the sight of her legs on those steps, the round softness of her knees, the rest of her body remaining out of view. He memorized the sound of her voice, muffled beneath a lavender-oil-scented cloth she held against her face whenever she stood on the stairs
.
She seemed to fear the presence of formaldehyde, as if it might seep into her lungs and snatch away her soul
.

His mother believed in things like that. Her childhood on the barren tundra had taught her to find meaning even in the smoke rising from a fire. Pekkala never forgot her descriptions of the camouflage of a ptarmigan hiding among lichen-spattered rocks, or the blackened stones of a fire whose embers had burned out a thousand years before, or the faint depression in the ground, visible only when evening shadows fell across it, which marked the location of a grave
.

From his mother, Pekkala learned to spot the tiniest details—even those he could not see but which registered beyond the boundary of his senses—and to remember them. From his father, he learned patience and the ability to feel at ease among the dead
.

This was the world Pekkala believed he would always inhabit, its boundaries marked by the names of familiar streets, by tea-brown lakes reflecting pale blue sky and a sawtoothed horizon of pine trees rising from the forest beyond
.

But things did not turn out that way
.

THE MORNING AFTER the Commissar’s visit, Pekkala set fire to his cabin.

He stood in the clearing while the black smoke uncoiled into the sky. The snap and wheeze of burning filled his ears. The heat leaned into him. Sparks settled on his clothes and, with a flick of his fingers, he brushed them away. Paint buckets stacked by the side of the cabin sprouted dirty yellow tongues of fire as the chemicals inside them ignited. He watched the roof collapse onto the carefully made bed and chair and table which had been his companions for so long now that the outside world seemed more dreamlike than real.