The Amber Rooms

Chapter Five

Switzerland: Spring, 1908

The time traveller had spent winter in a district of Zurich called Aussersihl. Her modest garret was crammed with books, newspapers, unwashed dishes, and a gramophone. Two books were open on music stands: a French volume on methods of cheating at blackjack, and a Russian one on the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. A chin-up bar had been hammered into the door frame of the bedroom.

The routine of these last weeks had not varied. Saskia would rise around ten or eleven and make coffee, with sugar if she had any. Then she would leave the garret and find her friends, and they would eat lunch. She would return to the garret, read, and meet other friends in the evening. She did not use the name Saskia. She was Godrun Müller, student of agronomy, runaway Bohemian princess to those who cared to ask.

One such was Yusha, a young man with red hair. He was the son of a rich Muscovite and had stopped in Zurich the previous summer on a Grand Tour. After this, he was due to assume the management of his father’s jewellery business, which was second only to Fabergé. Saskia thought him beautiful. In short, there was something of Robespierre about him. She had seen him almost killed in a pointless remonstration with two soldiers. Two of her friends had carried his unconscious body to her garret and laid him out on the bed. Saskia and Yusha had not made love that night, or any night. She had long decided that no man would have this body unless the mind perceiving those heights of sensation was that of Ute.

‘You,’ he had said, when he came around. ‘The woman from the café.’

That was a week ago. This morning, he was still sleeping.

Saskia lifted his arm from her chest and slowly rolled from the bed. Yusha smacked his lips and put his face into the pillow. She smiled at this, then checked his fob watch, which hung on the back of the chair nearest the bed. It was almost seven o’clock. The elderly apothecary downstairs, Herr Trachsel, would be making his coffee by now. The shutters were cut with daylight.

She used the toilet in her bathroom, rubbed water into her eyes, found the toothbrush, pressed this into some tooth powder, and, as she scraped it around her mouth, thought about going home.

Everything depended on her first contact in Zurich, the Count Nakhimov. His villa in Volketswil, not far from her garret, had become a second home for Saskia over the winter. She only visited during darkness and her existence was known only to one servant, Mr Jenner, whom she had never met. Count Nakhimov was a double agent playing with both the Tsarist and revolutionary elements. Saskia did not trust him. But he was straightforward, well connected, and one of the few people in Zurich who could give her background information about the Amber Room in the Great Summer Palace of the Tsars. Besides, he had been recommended.

Saskia returned to the bed and lifted away the blanket. Yusha was not disturbed by the removal. They both slept naked by habit, as the rising heat from the apothecary’s stoves made the garret comfortably warm. Yusha still snored into the pillow. His legs and arms were wide. He looked like a cross-country skier mid-stride.

With a little pressure on his hip, she rolled him onto his back. Still he did not stir. He stopped snoring, took a huge breath, and began to snore again.

Saskia smiled. Carefully, she took his penis in her hand. There was a thought that always occurred to her when she wanted to satisfy Yusha; the thought wounded her because she knew that, if revealed, she would be diminished in his eyes. On the night when Yusha was pushed down steps by the soldiers for chastising their rude treatment of a waitress, one of them had called him a ‘Kleine Hebe’. Little Jew. The term was not muttered. It was as clear as the lusty shout given at the sight of quarry. Many of the other customers had laughed. An otherwise unremarkable husband had turned to his wife and said, ‘Let’s see him buy his way out of this one.’ Saskia had straightened her back and favoured the onlookers with a reptilian stare. Within minutes, she had engineered Yusha’s escape.

She put her lips to his penis and woke him with, ‘Shhhhh.’

‘Morning,’ he whispered, stretching his arms.

‘Morning. Let’s not disturb Herr Trachsel.’

Yusha put his hands behind his head. His fingers messed with his beautiful curls. Saskia remembered the newsreel footage yet to come of bodies being driven into pits by the sweeping white blades of the bulldozers. She tried to suppress this thought by concentrating on Yusha. It almost worked.

Two embarrassing encounters with passers-by had been enough to convince Saskia that her habit of running for the sake of it should be indulged in isolation. Only the English gentlemen of the cafés considered it an appropriate form of exercise for a lady, and only then if the lady was a certified eccentric. The other nationalities thought it unhealthy and self-punitive. Here on the mountain, above the snow line, she felt far indeed from punishment. There was an atmospheric emptiness that seemed to draw the sweat off her scalp. Saskia wore her usual outfit of a woollen liberty corset and bloomers. She had tried plimsolls once, but they were too restrictive. Canvas slippers chaffed. Lately, she ran in leather Brogues with soles scored in a cross-hatch for grip.

She leaned into her sprint and placed the ball of each foot in the snow. The crust broke in wet squeaks. She imagined her chest empty on exhalation and full on inhalation. She took these breaths in ratio to her strides and assaulted the slope in fifty-metre pieces. Her route was steep and dangerous. She ran every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

When the wind blew, the trees shuddered and leaned. Birds made black fireworks as she passed.

By late afternoon, she had passed through the deciduous trees to reach the conifers. Her last sprint took her to a high western meadow. The snow was deeper here. It scintillated. Two weaving animal tracks—probably hares—cut across its centre. Saskia put her hands on her hips and looked at Lake Lucerne. The air was clear enough for its ducks to be visible.

She brushed some snow from a flat rock and placed her rucksack on top of it. Then she undressed and bathed in the snow. She towelled herself and considered the altitude while eating a paste of powdered beef jerky and fat from an old tobacco tin. It would take another four hours to reach her bicycle, which she had left in a shed near Unterägeri.

She changed into her everyday clothes: an ankle-length skirt, boots, a white blouse, and a fur cap given to her by Yusha.

She heard cowbells. Following them down using a frozen stream whose heart had thawed to a vein-blue line, she found a cowherd not more than fifteen years old. He could not speak without shrugging and wobbling his hands in a seesawing motion. He charmed her. Saskia bought some cheese, which she ate while he spoke about a new rifle that his father had given him for Christmas. Ultimately, his voice trailed off. She looked at him, saw the direction of his gaze, and moved her skirt so that it covered her bare calf. The moment reminded her that this period of recuperation was coming to an end. She needed to return to Russia. She needed to go home. She needed to help a friend.

The cows began to walk on. In the pattern of their bells, she discerned a quasi-repeating sequence. The reverse-entropic field of the time band was shaping events in her locality. It gave her the date of 17th May, Julian. Two weeks.

Another pattern, which never changed, spelled:

Das Bernsteinzimmer.

The Amber Room.

Saskia reached her home in the quiet minutes after midnight. The steep streets were deserted. Snow had been cleared into dirty heaps at the junctions. She was content. The routine of her life had continued without interruption for many months.

As she cycled around the last corner, whistling a piece by Bach, she happened to look at the high window of her garret. It was unlit. Despite this, she was able to perceive a thermographic impression of a face at the pane. The man standing in the darkness of her room was wearing a hat. Yusha would never wear a hat indoors. She could also see that his skin temperature was unusually high. Perhaps he had just walked up the stairs.

She completed the current bar of Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ and pedalled past the apothecary’s shop as though she had no intention of stopping. She was sad for the loss of her garret and some of her possessions. However, she carried the more important documentation on her person. She also regretted that she would never see Yusha again. He was spending time with relatives in Baden and would remain safe if she evaded capture long enough to send him a telegram warning of the danger in Zurich.

She continued up the hill. At its crest, she heard the telltale squeak of her front door. Either the stranger had left the apothecary’s shop, or an accomplice had entered it to warn him. She thought the former was more likely. An accomplice would use a signal. A torch, maybe.

At Stauffacherstrasse, where the street was wider and populated with late-night strollers, she flagged down a cab. It was a single-axle hansom and the driver sat high at the rear. A lantern swung beneath his seat.

‘Need a rest, ma’am?’ he said, gesturing to her bicycle with his whip.

Saskia hopped from the bike and left it against a lamp post.

‘Don’t tell me: I should get a horse.’ She settled inside the cab and drew the blankets across her lap. ‘We’ll go to Volketswil, if you please.’

The driver leaned through the window.

‘Long way,’ he said, companionably.

‘Quite,’ Saskia replied. ‘I’m happy to make it worth your while.’

She looked through the side window. The road to her garret was lit electrically. She could see two men running up it.

‘Don’t you want to lock your bicycle, ma’am? It’s a rough area.’

‘It’s nothing special.’ That was a lie. She had adapted the brakes to be operated using the right handlebar. For men pursuing a one-handed woman, it betrayed her, but there was no time to hide it. ‘If you please,’ she continued. ‘I’m late.’

The driver leaned back, clicked his tongue, and let the horse get underway. Saskia was reassured to see that it was an older, steady horse. She looked back once more and saw the two men emerge onto Stauffacherstrasse. They did not appear panicked. That disappointed her. They split up in opposite directions, then her cab turned and she lost sight of them.

Saskia concentrated on putting a name to the face of the man at her window. On her mind’s stage, she saw fire. Figures danced around it. A large fire; a campfire? Saskia concentrated. The ground was hard. Rocky.

The dance figures are the poor princes of the Outfit. This is a night from last summer. June? July? There was a wedding.

The princes had been dancing with their arms held high and their legs kicking. One man, however, had never danced. He was a quiet individual with huge hands. He wore a Fedora and smoked a pipe just like the one smoked by the Boss. Saskia remembered him crouching on that windy plain, turning to a friend.

Fire in his eyes.

She had his name: Papashvily. Back then, he was no revolutionary but he was useful to the Outfit because he murdered the people he was told to murder. Once, he had thrown an informer into an oven. They called him the Baker after that. Most of the Outfit were indifferent to these murders; a few loathed them; some hailed them. Everyone—even Saskia, at that time—had considered them part of the grand destabilisation.

She pictured Papashvily turning his good ear to his friend.

He has a bad ear, she thought.

The horse jogged beneath a streetlamp and Saskia saw a cloud of condensing breath pass down its flank, ghosting.

A quarter moon reflected on the lake. Just as only Saskia had seen the man at her garret window, now only she could see the pale, high dash of the mountain line against the sky.

She knocked on the roof and said, ‘Stop here, please.’

‘It’s another kilometre, at least.’

‘I will walk the remainder.’

She paid the driver and stood at the side of the road, near a wooden snow pole, until the sound of hooves faded. Now she could hear the delicate slosh of water. She looked at the moon again. It was occluded.

There was no barrier between the road and the lake. She stepped into the bushes. Rock slid underfoot but she reached the shore without falling. She lay against one of large rocks that protected the road from erosion. There she waited, browsing her memories of Count Nakhimov.

The masts in the full harbour tick-tocked. A breeze was growing. She felt it through the lace at her throat. The moon reappeared. Somewhere in the village, far uphill, a baby cried.

Ten minutes later, she heard a horse. Saskia angled her make-up mirror to inspect the carriage as it passed. It was identical to her own cab, but held two large men, not including the driver. One of them was Papashvily.

The hoof-clatter faded, leaving the breakers, the bumping of boats, and wind making notes in the narrow, steep alleys of Volketswil.

She dropped the mirror into her bag. She put her nose to her knuckles and thought. Her pursuers were excellent. It was a pity they were not still running around her neighbourhood.

The men would reach Volketswil proper in two or three minutes—if that was their destination. Would they find and question her driver? That would take both skill and luck; unfortunately, they appeared to possess both. How had they found her?

Once she had returned to the road, she gathered her skirt and ran the five hundred metres to the high, iron gates of the Count’s Old Confederacy villa. They were shut, which was usual, but the courtesy lantern was unlit, and that worried her. It had been lit throughout the night for as long as Saskia could remember. She looked from the pillar that supported the right-hand gate to the cherry tree—one of a pair—between the wall and the road.

She looped the strap of her shoulder bag through her teeth and, keeping the bag tight against her body, ran towards the stone pillar. She planted one foot against it and launched backwards, turning to catch the lowest branch of the cherry tree. She swung forward once. On the backswing, she growled into the leather strap and hauled herself onto the branch so that she flopped across it. She rested for a moment. Her right arm was tingling and her palm hurt. Then she worked herself into a seated position.

The villa was surrounded by squares of blank lawn, each of them studded with geometric flowerbeds and paths. The single irregularity was a cluster of trees. Saskia scanned the villa for light in any of its three storeys. None. The greenhouse, which attached to the western wing, was also dark.

She was poised to jump into the grounds when a pale glow filled the greenhouse. A man had entered it from the villa. He carried a lamp, which he held high, as though searching. Saskia leaned forward, but it was impossible to identify the man at a distance of two hundred metres. She saw him stop, then turn. The light dimmed. Had he turned away from her?

Meanwhile, a huge dog emerged from the rear of the villa and ambled into the miniature deer-park of trees and remained there.

Saskia let her bag slip from the branch and then dropped after it. The fall was almost three metres. She kept her feet together and rolled to a standing position. Then she continued into the grounds with the pomp of a lady visitor in full daylight.

A stone porch ran along the front of the villa. She mounted the steps, looked left and right—nobody—and pulled the bell.

Two minutes passed.

Three.

Saskia glanced back at the gate. The shadows beneath the wall were deep. She slipped into the infra-red.

Nothing. Only one reddish stain where she had placed her palm after dropping from the tree.

The door opened. The butler was a young, bald man. He carried that same lamp: a storm lantern, swinging as he lifted it to her face. His uniform was complete, with none of the compromises one might expect given the hour. Saskia and the butler—if this was indeed the Count’s Mr Jenner—had never met. That had been one of the Count’s rules.

‘Good morning,’ she said, relishing the flat sounds of English. ‘I apologise for arriving so early, but it is vital that I meet with the Count.’

‘I’m afraid the Count is not available.’

Saskia said, ‘I’m sure he will make himself available. Will you please tell him that Ms Tucholsky is here?’

‘You misunderstand me.’

‘Add that I need to leave for Russia sooner than we thought. Today, in fact. This minute. It is important.’

The butler seemed genuinely apologetic. ‘Ms Tucholsky, the Count is not at home. He left the country only last night.’

‘Oh,’ said Saskia. She told herself that this was not the disaster it seemed. True, the Count had been her best hope for a safe return to Russia. He had the documentation, the route, and the people. She would find another way. She had to. This was not a disaster.

But she had to blink back her tears. In their months of conversation, she had come to rely on his steady voice, that focus in his thoughts.

Saskia tried to smile. ‘That is unexpected.’

‘“Unexpected” is the word that the Count used, Ms Tucholsky.’ The butler lowered the lantern.

‘Did he leave anything for me?’

The butler gave way.

‘Please come in.’

The Count’s library was a windowless room in the east wing of the villa. The walls were white and the floor dark. Its books were set in gated alcoves. An English partners’ desk occupied the centre of the room. Saskia noted the fountain pen missing from its holder; an ebony cradle telephone; two atlases open at north-west Russia; and a larger map of Finland, held flat by brass paperweights. The Count might have left minutes before. He wore a popular cologne called Mouchoir de Monsieur, and its fragrance lingered.

The butler indicated the desk chair. It smelled of varnish and pipe smoke. She sat down and assumed her habitual posture: back straight, hand and wrist inside her warmer, head tilted at an angle to indicate interest.

She raised her eyebrows at the butler. He reached for the green-hooded lamp on the desk and flicked its switch. The bulb crackled like a gramophone and gave little light. The butler tapped the bulb to improve its connection, and the room became dark and bright haphazardly, putting Saskia in mind of clouds crossing the sky on a sunny day. She was glad this room had no windows.

When the electric light had established itself, Saskia said, ‘You’re Mr Jenner, I recall.’ She had learned to remain formal with servants. Twenty-first century familiarity was too often construed as rudeness.

‘That’s correct, madam,’ said Mr Jenner. He lowered the wick on his lantern and placed it on a sooty-looking ceramic dish near the atlas.

‘Like the doctor who developed the science of vaccination?’

‘I’m proud to say he was a direct ancestor.’

‘You should be,’ she said. It was a patronising remark, and it embarrassed her, but the remark was not so unusual given the clear boundaries of their relationship. ‘Now, may I see the things that the Count left for me?’

‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘However, the Count indicated that these materials are quite sensitive, and requested that I confirm the identity of the person who calls for them.’

‘It’s a pity you never saw me during my visits to the villa. I’ve been coming here since the autumn.’

Mr Jenner paused. She guessed that he did not wish to say that it was not his business to notice the comings and goings of women if they entered through the greenhouse rather than the front door, and came only at night.

‘I see the Count was right to trust you,’ Saskia said. ‘However, there is a small chance that I was followed here, and I’d like us to proceed directly.’

‘Of course,’ Mr Jenner replied. He indicated her left hand. ‘May I?’

‘Be my guest.’

Saskia removed her left wrist from the warmer. She unfastened the watch strap that held the sock. As she tugged this away, revealing the scarred stump—skin folded as neatly as gift wrapping—Mr Jenner did not wince. She liked that.

‘The Count asked me to tell you,’ he said, ‘that he has been recalled to St Petersburg as a matter of urgency, and that the plans you discussed still hold. He left these for you.’

Mr Jenner produced a set of keys from his waistcoat and unlocked a drawer. This he slid out completely and placed on the desk. Then he reached into the gap, pressed something, and drew out a second box from deeper within the desk. It opened to reveal a leather document wallet.

‘Thank you,’ said Saskia. ‘Will you leave me alone for a moment?’

Mr Jenner took his lantern and left without another word. She waited for his footsteps to recede. Then, fastening the sock around her stump once more, she spread the contents of the wallet on the desk. It contained six drawings, in the Count’s hand, of a stately room. Saskia knew that he had published botanical monographs, and the drawings evidenced his fine eye. She turned the pages clockwise and anticlockwise, noting the entrances and exits to the chamber. The last page was an overhead view of the stately room. The Count had placed question marks next to some objects.

At the top, the Count had written: The Amber Room.

The envelope also contained high-quality pamphlets on the history of the Tsar’s Village. Last, there were two Russian passports, one foreign and one internal. Both were forgeries of the first order. Their owner was an aristocrat named Yelena Alekseeva Korovin. Age: twenty-eight years. Height: medium. Distinguishing marks: none. That would do. She closed the wallet and pushed it into her bag.

She turned to leave, but was surprised by the presence of the butler in the doorway. He stood quite still and appeared uncomfortable.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid that there are two men outside.’

Saskia frowned. She struggled to suppress the thoughts that followed: How had they traced her here? Had they known about the Count all along? Had others kept the villa under surveillance?

‘Did they see you?’

‘I don’t know.’ The butler cleared his throat. He was trying to pull himself together. ‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure.’

‘Where are they?’

‘To the north, in the higher garden. One is carrying a night lantern. He tried to hide it, but I saw. They haven’t approached the house.’

‘And you came straight back?’

‘Yes.’

The butler looked down at the pistol he was carrying. As he flexed his grip, Saskia noticed an oddity in the tiny movements made by the weapon. The movements did not correspond well to its centre of gravity. Its mass was off by several per cent.

‘It’s not loaded, is it?’

The butler nodded. ‘I came in here to fetch bullets. The Count keeps them in a drawer.’

Saskia tried to concentrate. Was Papashvily one of the men outside? Was he the type to storm the villa? Burn it? Wait for her to emerge?

‘You’d be safer leaving the gun here.’

‘Safer?’ The butler leaned on the desk. ‘Ms Tucholsky, the Count told me to protect you. I’m late of the British Army.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, help me find the bullets.’

‘You’ve already protected me,’ Saskia replied. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘The Count suggested that a quick escape might be effected if we were to use his boat. There is a passage that connects to it via the cellar. It is damp but useable. I am a formidable rower.’

Saskia looked at this man as she had looked at Yusha when he had stepped into the breach to protect the honour of those women, all those weeks before. Mr Jenner was too preoccupied with his pistol to react when she put her hand to his cheek. He stiffened, then relaxed. He smiled.

‘Thank you, Mr Jenner. That will be all.’

As he turned away, she struck him behind the head with her elbow. He staggered but did not fall. Saskia frowned. Perhaps he boxed regularly or had some form of congenital thickness of the occipital bone. She struck him once more and guided his weight to the floor. There, she placed him in a position where he could breathe freely.

There was no time to look for bullets, but she took the gun anyway. Then she pulled the slipknots on her boots and kicked them off and hurried from the room. Her stockinged feet were silent.