The Amber Rooms

Chapter Twelve

The following night, Saskia lay in her bed. Her eyes were fixed on her ceiling. A hunting scene had been rendered in grey plaster. Hints of light moved through the antlers of the stag. Saskia listened. Two floors down, a watchman continued his round. She could hear the hinge on his lantern handle and the respiration-like sound of his slippers. Inhalations shorter than exhalations. A limp, then. She thought about Papashvily’s bad ear, the dog that killed him, and the strong jaw of the English alpinist. She thought about Pavel Eduardovitch. He had been too ill to attend the ball and had spent the rest of the following day in bed. Saskia had given him no thought until now, when a sorrowful note had carried down the corridor. Its youthful tenor was unmistakable.

A second note. Then a third. By the fourth, Saskia had drawn her blankets aside and lit her bedside lamp. Her bare feet passed without sound across the cold floorboards. She took a perfume bottle from her dresser. At the door to her room—locked by habit—she stopped to listen. The singing had stopped.

She unlocked the door and passed into the empty corridor. It was even colder than her room. She considered returning for a gown to cover her night-dress, but the notes were too important. She tucked the stump of her wrist into her armpit and stepped onto the rug that ran the length of the corridor. The flame of her lamp guttered, but held.

Ahead, behind double doors, were the rooms of the Count and Countess. Pavel Eduardovitch slept next door to them. She approached his door, extinguished her lantern, and pushed it ajar by the smallest measure. There was nothing to see in his room but an empty fireplace. She put the nozzle of the perfume bottle against the upper hinge and pumped vegetable oil out. She repeated the treatment on the lower hinge. Then she opened the door fully and entered, closing it behind her.

The night was moonless, but Saskia could see from the scintillas of light around the window. She put her cooling lamp on the untidy bureau and approached the bed. Pasha lay twisted in his bedclothes. His mouth gaped. Saskia was reminded of the image that had filled her mind upon waking those minutes before, of a moustachioed nightmare creature sitting on the chest of the boy, trolling a lullaby as Pavel Eduardovitch suffocated. Now, fully awake, she had not expected to find that creature; but neither had she expected to hear a song of revolution coming from his lips: there, another note, making it certain that this was the song she recognised.

She remained at the foot of the bed. She waited, eyes closed, for the rest of the song. When it came, the notes carried her back to the days after she had first fallen to Russia. Those days had been so bright and alive that the memories of her previous life—of 2003, of 2023—had been reduced to a dream, or a story that faded in the telling. She had forgotten herself.

It had been raining on the day she met him.

Soso.

The singing stopped.

‘Is somebody there?’

Saskia opened her eyes. The boy was sitting upright in his bed. His eyes roamed unseeing. He reached his bedside lamp and Saskia, remembering that she wore only the night shirt, said, ‘Wait, Pavel Eduardovitch. Don’t be afraid.’

‘What?’

‘The word you are looking for is “pardon”.’

‘Ms Tucholsky?’

He reached for the lamp again. ‘No,’ Saskia said. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not? I can’t see you.’

Saskia could see everything. She felt his electricities. The heat on his forehead was unusually distributed. Was it a function of his epilepsy? No: sweat droplets, cooling.

‘Pavel Eduardovitch, you were singing in your sleep.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Tell me about your dream.’

‘No.’

Saskia sighed. She held her stump and thumbed the scar tissue. ‘You were singing in your sleep.’

‘I can’t sing,’ he said. His voice was louder. ‘Ask Mother.’

‘Be quiet. That song could get you into trouble.’

‘What song?’

Saskia rocked on her feet. She was cold and wanted to return to her bed. ‘Turn on your light.’

At first, Pasha did nothing. He frowned. There was an infantile petulance about him. The potential for manhood was clear in his lanky frame, but the adult qualities had not yet germinated. He was still a boy.

‘Do it,’ she said.

The electric light flickered. Pasha put a hand across his face, then slowly let it fall. Saskia was aware of his awkwardness. She waited while the boy looked at her. Then she raised her stump. The switch in his attention was palpable. His eyes fixated on the wrist.

Saskia walked around the bed. She crouched and held out the stump. ‘Touch it,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

As he felt the scar, Saskia watched his fascination.

‘I had the amputation reset by a butcher,’ she said. ‘He was no medic, but he knew how to tidy meat.’

‘You’re unusual.’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch,’ she said, ‘I will be honest with you. Then you will be honest with me. Do you agree?’

‘I don’t know. What do you wish to honest about?’

Smiling, she said, ‘I have a particular nightmare. Once, sometimes twice, each week, I open my dream eyes in a metal carriage. It is like a train, but it flies through the sky. I know this is the future. Decades from now. I’m sitting at the rear of this machine. Next to me is a little girl. She is dead, but I reach across and take her hand. I know that the flying machine is about to crash. It will crash in a forest. I’m sad because I love the forest, but this is a forest I will never see. When the flying machine does crash, I see its metals and plastics wash towards me like a great wave. Something fires down the aisle. It is a piece of an engine. There’s a bright pain in my wrist.’ She lifted her stump. ‘And I know that the girl has gone, and I have returned to the forest.’

‘It sounds horrible.’

‘It is.’

‘Do you think of it during the day?’

‘Sometimes. But, in daylight, it seems powerless. It does not scare me. At those times, I can hear the nightmare whisper in my ear: “tonight, then you will be scared”.’ Saskia put her elbow on the bed. ‘Do you know the English word for koshmar?’

‘Nightmare.’

‘Good. The word derives from mære, which was a supernatural beast thought to sit on one’s chest at night. Its pressure caused sickness and death.’

‘Is that why the English say, “Get it off your chest”?’

‘Perhaps. Tell me about your nightmare, Pavel Eduardovitch. Quid pro quo. What happens when you open your dream eyes?’

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll tell Mother. I don’t want her to … apply her theory.’

Saskia smiled. ‘I won’t tell her.’

He looked at the ceiling through the open square of his four-poster. ‘I’m in a leafy place. It might be Alexander Park in the Tsar’s Village. It’s summer, but a rain is falling. I walk through undergrowth but my footsteps make no sound. I might be a ghost. I …’

‘What?’

‘This sounds strange, but I feel like this is not my dream. Someone real is dreaming me.’

‘I see.’

‘I feel lost,’ he said. ‘There are no memories of what I was doing just before I came to the forest. I struggle to hear birdsong. There is none. Then, just as I am about to call for help, I hear a beautiful song.’

‘Hum it for me.’

Pasha turned away. ‘I know that I should ignore the sound, but I can’t. I walk towards it. As the singing grows louder, and more distinct, I can make out the words.’

‘Which words?’

‘I can’t remember. But in the nightmare, I recognise them.’ Pasha turned to her. His eyes were wide. ‘Finally, I reach a clearing. There is a beaten track leading to a circle of stones. The stones are uneven. An iron mesh covers the top. The singing is clear. It’s too clear. It feels like the notes are needles that reach deep inside my ears.’

‘Think. Is the voice male or female?’

‘It has the qualities of both. A woman’s pitch; a man’s anger. Just as I am looking down, I see a flash of sky reflected in the pool at the bottom. It seems far away. Then I realise that the iron mesh no longer covers the well. It has been pulled away. Two dots flash in the darkness. They might be eyes. The singing stops.’

‘What happens next?’

‘It varies. Sometimes I slip into the well. Other times, I get pushed.’

‘But you fall in?’

‘I start to fall. Then I wake up.’ He looked into her eyes, judging her reaction. ‘What do you think?’

‘I have no theory, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Why are you worried about the song?’

‘I heard it a long time ago, when I was walking the Caucasus.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’ Pavel Eduardovitch touched her forearm. She had not expected it. The hairs rose and she tried to pull away, but he held on to her. ‘You’re not a mathematics tutor, are you?’

‘Let go of my arm.’

But he did not. He frowned at something he could feel above her elbow. He pushed back the sleeve to reveal a dark band. Saskia saw it through his eyes: unaccountably black, unreflective, and restless. It seemed to creep. And yet it was still.

There was a moment when Saskia thought the world had stopped, crashed, as his finger came within an inch of the device.

Then he grasped it.

Her mouth opened a little.

‘One,’ he said, closing his eyes.

‘One what?’

‘One. Zero. Zero. Zero. One—’

Saskia looked from his slack, empty face to the band. She was certain that the band was pulling something out of him. It was an illusion, however. The reverse entropic field was affecting his speech.

‘Stop, Pavel Eduardovitch.’

‘One. Zero. Zero.’

She tried to remove his hand from the band, but his grip tightened. Was the band doing this, too?

‘Zero,’ he said, emphatically. There was bubbling throat in his throat. He swallowed. ‘One, zero, one, one.’

Now she squeezed his hand to reassure him, even as his fingers dug into her elbow, throttling the blood.

‘Zero,’ he said. ‘Zero, zero, zero.’

His hand slipped from hers. Saskia felt the blood return to her forearm. She leaned towards Pasha and demanded of herself that she know his condition. With that imperative thought came pieces of a reply: Pasha’s brainwaves featured a pronounced alpha wave component, which suggested he was calm and alert. His breathing was normal for his age and weight. Odours consistent with the decomposition of stress hormones spilled from his pores and his breath. His head lolled to one side, and the electrical activity of his head and neck muscles briefly made his brain waves difficult to interpret.

‘Pasha?’

He opened his eyes. ‘I heard myself saying numbers.’

‘Do you remember them?’

‘It hurt to speak.’

Saskia rolled her sleeve down. ‘You hurt yourself. Don’t touch things you shouldn’t.’

‘There were twenty five in total.’

Coldly, she said, ‘Forget them.’

‘Ms Tucholsky…’

‘I said, “Forget them”.’

Pasha reached out to her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s your arm. Something is happening to it.’

Saskia looked at the band. It was glowing beneath her night shirt. A new coldness bit into her skin and she gasped, clapping a hand over it. The room seemed to brighten for a moment. In alarm, Pavel Eduardovitch sat upright. His eyes were fixed on the light coming from the band. Then the filaments in Pasha’s bedside light flared and died. The band darkened, too.

The room was utterly dark once more.

‘I can’t see.’

‘It’s all right.’

Saskia stepped back from the reaching hands of the boy. Silently, she walked to the foot of his bed. ‘Good night,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Tell me what the number represents.’

‘I don’t know what it represents.’

‘That’s a lie. Remember I was honest with you.’

Saskia sighed. She admired his curiosity and felt a duty to cultivate it.

‘It is a secret. Do you agree to tell no-one?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said brightly.

‘The zeros and ones make a sequence of twenty-five, as you guessed. They describe, I believe, a base-two number system known as binary notation.’

‘Precisely,’ said Pasha. His voice was hurried. ‘It’s of the form invented by Leibniz, yes?’

‘No. The system is the invention of Pingala, an Indian scholar who died several centuries before Christ.’ She paused. ‘If the binary notation is standard, then the number represented is large. I received the first number in the autumn of last year; the second I received slightly afterwards. Those two occasions gave me reason to understand what the large number represents.’

Saskia backed away.

‘What does it represent?’ Pasha stage-whispered.

‘Simply the time, in seconds, until a particular date.’

‘When?’ Pasha asked in Russian. Then, noting Saskia’s silence, he said in English, ‘What will happen?’

‘I have to leave.’

Saskia opened the door.

‘Who sent the message? Where do you need to go?’

‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’ Pasha lay flat and put his hands against the back of his head. ‘Please, don’t tell Mother about my dream.’

‘Of course, Pavel Eduardovitch. Likewise, don’t tell her about my band, please.’

‘You may call me Pasha.’

She held her arm as she left his room. The band felt cool. She had no idea why it had reacted to the boy. Its influence typically told on systems with chaotic properties. What was different about his brain? Was it linked to his epilepsy? Perhaps it would have reacted in such a way to anybody, had Saskia permitted another person to touch it. But why had she allowed Pasha? As if in answer, she heard, once more, the song. This time it was the idling of her memory.

As she closed Pasha’s door, she heard a squeaking hinge at the end of the corridor. She turned. The door to the master bedroom closed with a gentle click.

She returned to her room and took a heavy blanket from a chest. She threw this across the bed and climbed inside.

Immediately, she knew that there was something in the bed with her. She rolled out, pulled back the bed clothes and pawed once at the switch for the electrified chandelier. The room exploded with light.

She released her breath. There was crumpled note at the base of her pillow.