‘Oh, yes…Smart, educated.’
‘Oh, the boy’s a genius. A fucking genius, with his little earphones and things that he can screw into your telephone set. Without ones like him they’d be shitting Bolshevik bombs in Peterhof, but does he get any credit, will it do him any good?’ He looked up at Ryzhkov and winked.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Nothing. There’s no loyalty any more. The three of us here in this room are loyal, the only loyal ones left. Protect the Tsar, protect the Tsarina, protect the grand dukes, the grand duchesses…on and on…’ Hokhodiev closed his eyes for a few moments as if he were falling asleep, then his lids flickered. ‘No one ever asks the question, if these people are so fucking holy why do they need so much protection in the first place, eh?’
‘There’s always someone trying to get to the top,’ Ryzhkov muttered.
‘Blue Shirt…’ Hokhodiev said, coming out of his dream, then looked over at Ryzhkov as if he were surprised to be awake.
‘Yes, I know, I know,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘We have to protect him, too.’
‘And all of it is just to keep the rich ones getting richer and the powerful ones getting more powerful. But Russia…poor Russia, she’s just a fucking house of cards and she’s just going to cave in on herself. It’s all sick, a goddamned pestilence.’
‘It’s Rasputin.’
‘All of them, they’re all sick. Rotten. Like a fish rots, from the head down. Dima…’ Hokhodiev looked over at Dudenko and started laughing quietly. ‘Poor fellow, to be coming along in a world like this.’
‘He should do well, he seems to know a lot about the telephone system –’ Ryzhkov had started laughing, too.
They talked about women. Ryzhkov’s bad luck, about Filippa and her mother, how the disease of irrational femininity seemed to somehow get passed along from mother to daughter.
After a few moments of silence Hokhodiev leaned forward, elbows propped on thick knees, one hand stroking the wispy hair on the crown of his head, and told Ryzhkov that his wife was dying. His voice sounded thick. They had drunk too much. Far, far too much. ‘…and you know, Pyotr, it’s not a moment too soon, if you ask me.’
‘Is she in pain?’ Ryzhkov finally said, his words coming slowly, one at a time; is – she – in – pain.
‘Pain…’ Hokhodiev said, thinking it over. ‘Well, who isn’t?’
‘I mean…’
‘In the mornings, yes. Pain.’
‘Mmm.’ Ryzhkov closed his eyes.
‘Listen, Pyotr. You’re not like me. You’re different, you’re smart. You still have, you still have…’
‘Be quiet.’
‘You look around us? You see these bastards, these fucking cabinet ministers and their grandiose…fiefdoms? It doesn’t matter about the Tsar. We have no Tsar. It’s not Nicholas, it’s fucking Alexandra that’s running everything.’
‘Kostya, Kostya –’
‘And you see that poor little boy in his uniform…and they get Blue Shirt to pray for him and think that’s going to make the difference? Where are the damn patriots, that’s what I mean.’
‘They’re all patriots, just ask them.’
‘Oh, I know…patriots are the worst, it’s so cheap. The patriots and the fucking Church. You poke around the Narva district for a while. Are there any blessings, any blessings at all?’ He trailed off for a moment. ‘That’s what’s killing Lena. It’s all this shit around us, the impossibility of ever, of ever…getting out, or growing, or anything.’ They had no children, Ryzhkov remembered. No, that was wrong. They had had one child. Died from typhoid fever before Ryzhkov had met Hokhodiev. ‘And when they do finally look up, when they see how these fools, fucking Blue Shirt, and the fucking Tsarina who will give him any damn thing if he just lets her suck his cock –’
‘Hey, hey…’ Ryzhkov said gently to quieten him down. They had their own room, but the walls were thin.
‘…And then there’s your day of reckoning, right there, your Armageddon, and your fucking Sodom and Gomorrah turning into salt. You free all the damn serfs and they don’t know any better. They pile into the city, heading for the bright lights, work themselves to death in some factory and they think that’s heaven on earth. They just want money like anyone else. And when they wake up, you know who they’ll blame? Who they’ll be stoning to death in the damn square, when the whole pile of shit goes down the shitter? It won’t be the damn Tsar, he’ll be on his yacht, safe and sound, heading for some spa –’
‘Hey, Kostya –’
‘No, brother, it’ll be us that’ll be dragged through the streets. Us, that’s who.’
Ryzhkov reached out and poured out the last inch of vodka on to the floor.
‘You think I’m drunk,’ Hokhodiev said, an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace.
‘Well…maybe just a little –’ The bottle suddenly slipped from his fingers and he reflexively swiped at it and, only by chance, managed to knock it up on to the bench where it spun around harmlessly. Dudenko woke up with a jerk and looked around with a horrified expression. They both found the spasm funny, laughed and leaned back against the wall.
‘You two are drunk,’ Dudenko said dully.
‘I am drunk,’ Hokhodiev said quietly. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t know whereof I speak, eh? Remember the words of your friend, the prophet.’
‘All right, I will.’
‘They’re coming to get…us…’
‘If we don’t get them first,’ Ryzhkov said.
‘Yes. That’s right. So, yes, brother. Them first. I will help you,’ Kostya said and put a hand on his shoulder. The weight of his arm felt like a log. ‘I’ll help you right now. And you will too, won’t you, Dima?’
Dudenko looked up from the floor and blinked his eyes. Without his glasses he was blind. ‘What?’ he asked, not having been listening. ‘What? Whatever it is, yes,’ he said. And then he laughed.
Exhausted, drained, and dizzy from the heat of the baths, they dressed, paid their bill, and climbed out into the yellow dawn. Stood like dimwitted beasts on the embankment, blinking and looking around for a cab. ‘I think it’s time to go home,’ Hokhodiev said.
‘Yes…’ Ryzhkov muttered, suddenly bone-tired, staggering out on to the cobbles in the direction of the Obvodni.
‘Goodnight,’ he said to his friends, to the shining waters in the canal, to the impassive façades with their metalled roofs. Goodnight to the gleaming spire of the Admiralty, goodnight to the morning sun.
Only a few groggy hours later, supposedly the start of a new week, Izachik slipped another thin envelope across his desk. ‘Here are more of the papers you requested, sir…’
Inside Ryzhkov found a one-page carbon-copied list of the owners of the Apollo Bindery at 34 Peplovskaya. According to the police, the Apollo Bindery had long since gone out of business; the building itself was owned by a private property trust, and on the date of the girl’s defenestration the lessee had been a Monsieur T.N. Hynninen, a Finnish speculator who lived in Helsingfors. Nothing new.
Ryzhkov turned over the single page but there was nothing else. He looked more closely at the list –