When Ryzhkov came back to consciousness he’d not only forgotten all about the tooth, he’d even forgotten who he was. He stared at the white ceiling until fundamental concepts began to filter through: that is a lamp, that is a ceiling. That is a nurse hovering over me. I am Pyotr Mikhalovich Ryzhkov. I am an investigator with the secret political police. Where am I?
He had to ask to find out that he was in a ward of the Military Hospital, and that he had been asleep for nearly a week. He could only dimly remember clutching the arms of his dentist’s chair, being forced to listen to a lecture from Dr Tchery on oral hygiene. Though he must have seen much worse, Tchery had claimed to be horrified at the extent of the infection: Ryzhkov should have taken better care of himself, he should have come around more often, he should have…
It all faded out with a warning about the danger of contracting blood poisoning as the dentist extracted from a drawer a long hose on to which was screwed a green rubber gas mask. The man continued to scold him as he fitted the straps over Ryzhkov’s swollen face, pinching hair, bringing tears, and then moved behind the chair out of sight.
Ryzhkov blinked the tears away and stared out of the little office window. He could just see the bell tower atop the Academy of Arts, the masts of ships moored in the Neva beyond…
‘Just take a few deep breaths,’ Tchery said from somewhere behind him.
…and across the water, the red brick façades of the New Admiralty buildings, where undoubtedly some young naval architect was drawing up plans for Russia’s latest dreadnought…where the wargamers were devising new ways of controlling straits, isthmuses, estuaries, peninsulas, archipelagos…
‘That’s good…’ the dentist had encouraged him from a long way away.
Beyond that, it was all a fog.
He got up and walked along the beds, to the high windows that fronted on to the embankment. Stood there, shakily, awed by the constant traffic on the river below him. Walked to the end of the ward, explored the corridor down to the balcony, stood there until his legs grew tired. Stared out through the windows until he was focusing on nothing, then retreated to his bed and looked out of the top of the windows at the indistinguishable white days and nights.
It seemed the world had gone on without him. Barges and schooners were busily steaming to and fro. On either side of the hospital were the great factories; names painted across their brick façades – Nobel, Lessner, Phoenix, St Petersburg Copper, St Petersburg Metals, Andrianov-Parviaine. Their names were so huge that you could even read them in the distance, where the Neva curved around the Petersburg islands. Boronovsky, Lessner II, Erikson – smoking, throbbing engines that were driving Russia’s meteoric industrial progress. Twelve per cent per annum, someone had told him – the fastest in the world.
A doctor came by and looked him over, smiled with satisfaction.
‘You’ve made progress,’ the doctor said. ‘More than satisfactory…’
After that they only let him stay one more night and then in the afternoon they sent an orderly around to help him get dressed and tell him that he was discharged. They gave him his possessions in a paper bag. The salter was still in his trouser pocket, but someone had emptied it. Once he had signed himself out the orderly walked him out to the tram stop, and left him there saying that now he could go back to being who he was supposed to be.
The way he said it, it sounded like some kind of reward.
The building at 17 Pushkinskaya was one of several supposedly anonymous havens for agents and functionaries of the Internal branch. It was a drab three-storey trapezoid, occupying an unevenly sloping site in a corner by the Moika Canal, the courtyard pierced by three entrances through which agents could enter and leave with sufficient discretion. Ostensibly the ground-floor offices, set back from the street and barred by a gate that could be opened electrically from inside, were the headquarters of the Volga Metals Assurance Company.
In reality it sheltered the fiefdom of Chief Inspector Velimir Zezulin, Ryzhkov’s superior, a tired man who could pass for a shabby tradesman, judging by his perpetually uncouth appearance and the sour smell of yesterday’s vodka that enveloped him. He was rarely in, or if he was in, he was not to be disturbed.
Ryzhkov entered the courtyard through a narrow door off the embankment. There was a stable there, sheltered by a huge linden tree, beside it a shop where Muta and the other drivers spent their free time.
The front room of 17 Pushkinskaya was divided by a counter to separate the waiting-room from the office. There were glass cases with dusty fragments of minerals, a tiny model of a coal mine that lit up when you pressed certain buttons on a panel in front of it. Faded photographs of men standing in front of huge machines.
He had to show his disc to a new kid, a pimplyfaced secretary he’d never seen before. The boy checked his number, looked at his photograph, and smiled. Something that wouldn’t last long, Ryzhkov thought.
‘Oh, you’re Inspector Ryzhkov!’ The boy nearly clicked his heels and bowed, then came around and opened the gate for him. Something about the gesture Ryzhkov found irritating, the sort of kindness one showed to an old man, someone grown feeble. And then he was climbing the narrow stairway to the first floor, moving from the secular fantasy of the Volga Metals Assurance Company to the sacred realm of the Internal branch of the Tsar’s secret political police.
The first floor was divided into a clutch of offices, open warrens really, that filled one side of a large room on the south side of the building. Tiny, stale little cubicles separated by glassed-in partitions and counters. Izachik, their secretary, jumped up from his chair when Ryzhkov entered.
While making a fuss with Ryzhkov’s coat, he explained how External agents had raided a party given by the editors of the revolutionary newspaper Pravda. In the process several Internal informants had been arrested. It was all still being sorted out.
Konstantin Hokhodiev came in, right on Ryzhkov’s heels, still sweating from the summer streets.
‘Is he in?’ Ryzhkov pointed to the stairway that led to Zezulin’s sanctum. Izachik winced.
‘Yes, but, ah…sleeping, I think.’
‘Perhaps I could just…’ Ryzhkov sidled past the two men towards the narrow stairway to Zezulin’s garret-office. They both watched him go. At the top of the stairs he rapped against the door jamb. There was no reply. From inside he thought he could hear snoring. He eased the door open a crack and peered in. Zezulin was on the couch, a pillow flung over his face, mouth open, dead to the world; snoring like a man who was being choked to death.
The room was an archive, the place documents went to die. Piled all across the carpet were mounds of files. Each might represent a terrorist cell, a conspiracy, or a suspected assassination attempt. Propped on the end of the couch was a painted gypsy guitar. When Zezulin got drunk, he forgot where he was, then he would sing. It was pathetic.
Ryzhkov sighed and went back down the stairs. ‘Well, since you’re fully recovered and couldn’t stay away from us, you may as well surround yourself with the mountains of paperwork, eh?’ Hokhodiev reached out with a huge paw and guided him down the narrow corridor towards the rear of the building.
At the back there was just enough space for one cubicle and a storeroom. The storeroom had been full since the days of Alexander II and the cubicle was Ryzhkov’s ‘office’. The room was less than ten feet square but it had a miniature desk, a cabinet for papers, a door for privacy, and – the real treasure – a single tall window that looked onto the courtyard. He stood there for a moment at the threshold and realized that he was actually glad to be facing another day in the tiny space. Inside it he could think, he could leave word that he was not to be disturbed,