Cold Blood Read online

  The more educated a person is the less he understands about survival. He thinks that because the learning of it is arduous, the fact of it must therefore be sophisticated. There is nothing sophisticated about survival. The next breath, that little puff, that colourless, weightless, invisible essence, that’s what counts. What comes after it? Not known by any soul—and in fact unknowable. But at least one is alive: at least one can hope that the next instalment will bring an improvement. The pye-dogs knew that. The aristos and musicians in the shot-up train— they did not.

  What about Stupichkin, how much did he know about survival? Beyond caring, if he was the age that Jones said. I looked over at his carriage. Some of the yellow foam was still on the spokes of its wheels. A panel in the side was open. He was staring at me, his face a glimmer of white in the back.

  The soldier sitting beside the driver beckoned to me, making it clear that I and no one else was intended. I walked over.

  Stupichkin’s sallow face peered at me from beneath secret eyelids. He laid his hand on the sill: nothing but bone to his wrist, then a ruffle and a sleeve of pink-striped seersucker. He said in a soft, careful voice, “I know who you are. Misha Baklushin was your godfather. You buried him.”

  “I wish that it weren’t true, Excellency, but it is.”

  “His mother, Lydia, the pianist—I was married to her once. Your father—Pushkin, as we called him. I knew him too. Come to my quarters when this business is over. I have some information for you.”

  Thirty-five

  THE COLUMN moved on, closer to the burial pit. Walking beside Stiffy, I said, “Chin up.” But he was done for. His scalp had caught the sun earlier in the day. He had a white handkerchief over his head knotted at its four corners. He shambled along, stooping and dreadful.

  I said, “Don’t be so anxious. You’ll soon be someone else.”

  The pye-dogs continued to lap at the blood dripping from the carts. Not bothering with the frame for its toes, Smichov whipped up his tripod and took a photo of them. “I’ll sell it to Muraviev’s paper with the caption, ‘Dogs and Bolsheviks sup from the same bowl.’ They’ll enjoy that in town.”

  “You’ll be eating those dogs soon,” I said. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

  “Not a chance. Killing the Little Father was a terrible error. People will really turn against the Reds now. I give them a fortnight, a month at the most. Our armies’ll roll them back like carpets—into the sea, into Poland, Germany, I don’t mind where. We’ll send their heads bowling down the streets, lots of choppedoff heads with those filthy ink-stained beards their sort grow to show they’re not women. But they are. They’re red cunts, that’s what they are, useless to everybody. Now let me get these photographs done so I can go and have my dinner.”

  In no other country of the world is human life valued so cheaply. The proof was in front of me in those pits. And it was in the odour that rose from them, of decomposing flesh. Once experienced, the smell of rotting humans is impossible to forget simply because of the associations that accompany it.

  I thought, one slip and I could be down there with them. It wouldn’t have to be my slip. Someone a bit drunk, someone who took me for a Romanov prince, someone who wanted to try out a new pistol or someone who just hated me on sight: for any of those reasons I could be down there in the swelter.

  Or stuffed into a hole in the forest, at any rate tossed out of life.

  Elizaveta—I took a deep breath. It was what I’d done to her. What Glebov had started and I’d finished. I’d shot her through the temple, aiming for that mole, from three paces. It hadn’t been Glebov who’d squeezed the trigger. It was I. But it was he who’d loaded the pistol and pointed it.

  That was how it stood between us, between the three of us you could say—four, if you counted Death itself.

  Yes, you had to count Death as a person. He was always there, behind the screen or not, whichever he chose. Watch in hand, tapping out the seconds left. Striking through names on the register—address, occupation, collar size, the lot: mopping his brow and thinking about humping his girlfriend, Time. The two of them, deadly conspirators. Barren, thank God, like Lenin. There were some people in the world of whom a single example was quite sufficient.

  Harden up, Charlie, I said. Nothing is wretched unless you think it is.

  I looked down at the pit before me. It was no wonder the priests were so powerful in Russia. Not much religion was needed to believe that what lay down there was a mass of sins, writhing and spitting like snakes, trying to crawl out and get among the population. I offered thanks that Xenia wasn’t with me. No woman should have to face such a scene. The bodies, the dogs, Smichov the twizzle-moustached photographer getting copy for the newspaper—for the benefit of posterity, detailing what men were capable of.

  It was awful what was happening. I swore that from now on I’d treat Xenia with unfailing compassion. In fact all women, until I died. Their burden of responsibility was too great. It wasn’t their fault that from their wombs came forth tyrants and the like, real monsters screaming for power from the word go. But of course it was they who got the blame, the fathers waltzing away scot-free. And accepted it, went staggering beneath its weight for the rest of their lives.

  So on behalf of womanhood I’d take Xenia to Odessa and make her Mrs. Doig. The children we’d have would be beautiful. I’d do my share of raising them. They’d call me Papa, slide their trusting hands into mine as we walked, get me to tell them stories—

  “Watch your heels,” shouted a carter. He unfastened the traces and knocked out the backboard pins. The cart tipped up. The bodies slithered out of their own accord.

  Stiffy stood on the brink of the pit, peering down expressionlessly. Jones was with Smichov, setting up the camera and getting it clear about the shots he wanted. Smichov had lit a yellow makhorka and was taking huge puffs from it, drawing his cheeks right in as if he were an underwater swimmer. He queried something with Jones, making a new camera angle with his hands.

  Jones nodded, patted him on the back and went over to Stiffy: “Eighty million dollars. One jump. Not bad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put your forage cap on.”

  “Why, sir? It came off when I was fighting the Reds, didn’t it?”

  “You’re right. Hold there, I’m going to sponge more blood over our faces.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll just have to take a chance with disease, is that it, sir?”

  “We’ll go to the baths immediately. I said to the guy, have them hot by eight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stiffy, believe you me, you’ll never be poor again.”

  “I would like that, sir. Bristol docks are no place to be poor. If you saw my home, you’d say, ‘Stiffy, why the heck didn’t you get out sooner’? Is the geezer over there ready? Then I’m jumping. Mr. Doig, sir, fetch me that box from over there, would you? I’ll do it off that. It’ll look more like the real job.”

  He balanced on it, Jones holding onto his tunic. Smichov hid himself under his black cloth. The carters stood back looking bemused. There was a click as Smichov inserted the plate. He raised his hand. Jones gave Stiffy a shove.

  He was inspired—I’d never have believed it of him. He’d thought how a corpse would appear as thrown by two men and he did it, hurling himself sideways like a bolster. When he landed his body collapsed into the careless position of the dead lying all round him. His blue eyes stared right up at me, not blinking, his jaw slack and his mouth open.

  Smichov was moving around beneath the black cloth as he inserted a second plate. His head came whipping out. He shouted to Stiffy, “Don’t move, Yankee corpse,” and squeezed the bulb with the same hand that held his cigarette.

  Jones was stilted in his method of falling, even though he took a run at it. But it’d be good enough to convince Consul Gray. If anyone began to say, That guy wasn’t thrown, he jumped—if an expert got around to studying the photographs closely, they’d be busted, that was all ther
e was to it. But it was good for a pair of amateurs, good enough.

  They lay together, overlapping, criss-crossed, bloody. The flies were going in and out of Stiffy’s mouth.

  Smichov asked if that was it. Just then I saw that the creases in Jones’s tunic were too sharp. Men who’d been fighting the Reds for a day and a night without food or water shouldn’t be looking as if they’d just marched off the parade ground. I jumped down and lugged one of the corpses over so that it was sprawled across Jones and obscured the evidence. I climbed out. Smichov took a last plate.

  “Thank God for US Army boots,” said Leapforth as he oozed his way to the edge, where I was waiting to give him a hand up.

  “We’ll deal with all these rags back on the train,” he said. “We’ll have Shmuley burn them in his furnace. Civvies! I’ve got myself a nice blue cotton shirt awaiting me, and summer slacks, special lightweight for Siberia, and a natty blazer from Scott’s in Main Street. Two-tone shoes, long fawn socks, all that I need to be John S. Piler, haberdasher from Columbus, Ohio. You guys want to test me on my life history? Parents, parents’ parents, schooling, dates, football, all that sort of stuff? You’re welcome. Come right in, folks, and spread yourselves around, door’s wide open. Any time you think you’re getting to my true line of work, I’ll wink and say, Munitions, old fella, leave it at that. John S. Piler, thirty-five, nice wife, two kids, great to see ya.”

  “Leapforth—by losing that name, you lose some distinction,” I said.

  “Hell no! I only got that stuck on me because my ma and pa were friendly with a preacher fella and thought to oblige him. Leapforth! I’ll be glad to see the back of him. Stiffy here— what name did you choose, Stiff?”

  “Dave Cram. One of the crew on the boat to New York was called Cram. I was in love with him. He never knew about it. I’ve always wanted to be a Dave.”

  “Nothing in the middle?” I asked.

  “Dave Cram’ll do me fine, sir.”

  “OK, Dave... goddam these pesky flies,” Jones said. “Stiffy, cut the regimental buttons off before Shmuley burns our tunics and throw them in a lake somewhere. Can’t be too careful.”

  “Yes, sir, and then I’m going to take Mr. Doig’s Vladimir and get drunk. Even for eighty million dollars I wouldn’t do that again. If I don’t scrub every inch of my skin it’ll get infected and turn grey.”

  “First thing in the morning we’ll go to the passport place that Jew runs. He’ll fix us with new papers in a day.”

  “Blahos’ll have a stake in that business, I shouldn’t wonder,” I said.

  Jones said, “Every game you can think of is going on in Strabinsk. What worries me is whether he’ll have the blank sheets for American passports. It has to be a special weave, as I recall. Special watermarks too. I don’t want to have to become a citizen of Panama or some goddam anyoldwhere like that.”

  I said, “At the very least he’ll have Brazilian paper. That’s where all the crooks head for.”

  Which I said encouragingly, grinning, for they deserved a pat on the back for having jumped into that pit. But what was actually on my mind was the extreme difficulty they’d have running all that gold out of Russia and then converting it into fluffy clouds of happiness.

  Thirty-six

  THREE HUNDRED and forty-five tons of gold would fall to Jones and Stiffy. No burden at all for a boat once it was aboard. It was on and off that’d be the problem areas. And getting value for it.

  They’d entered Russia at Vladivostok and come up the TransSib. It was what they knew: it was how they’d want to get out. But Admiral Knight and the US Navy were anchored in Vladivostok harbour. They wouldn’t fancy running that gauntlet. So they’d be looking to do something nifty at Chita and transfer on to the Chinese Eastern Railway. Who was top man down there? The animal Semenov was in it somewhere. He’d want a good chunk. So bye-bye 10 per cent. Then south through Manchuria via Harbin and its fleapits and its counterfeit countesses whose glacé silk petticoats would make a soft frou-frouing that an outdoor man could easily mistake for the murmur of bulrushes. Oh perils most horrible for Stiffy! But they’d get through somehow and reach Port Arthur.

  There they’d meet a delay occasioned by a savvy customs officer who’d take to wondering about the contents of so many identical packing cases that required two coolies a case. So off would go another 5 per cent, a customs officer having only half the clout of Semenov. But in the end they’d decide it was worth the price, a deal would be struck, and they’d get to dockside.

  Through the China Sea their vessel would glide, a swish schooner powered by the new Gardner diesel that had individual cylinder heads. No flag would be flown. Though Dave Cram had sworn to keep his pinkies off the Marconi wireless set, he’d still stroll along and, um, just cock an ear to the maritime radio traffic—listening through one headphone only and so not calling down the wrath of John S. Piler, who was now much exercised by the difficulty of finding a private buyer, cash only, for what remained of the dead Tsar’s gold.

  Obviously they’d play mah-jong, which they’d learned while delayed by that customs officer. By day they’d drink green tea, infused with an oriental tincture to loosen their anxious American bowels. By night the best clarets in the world would be theirs, which in the hands of their previous owner, the last Prince Kuprin ever to exist, had travelled from Bordeaux to St. Petersburg to Moscow to Harbin where the Prince and his Princess had died from stab wounds inflicted on them by a maniac in the bar of the Hotel Popov.

  They would start to grow a little chubby.

  The voyage would continue with apparent serenity. The fish would fly: the sea would sparkle: the rigging would moan and the Chinese crew remain obedient. To pass the time, Dave would compose a number of decrypt exercises for John S. The latter would solve them all solely by observing closely the shapes taken by Dave’s mouth, which he’d watch as diligently as if he were a deaf man attending choir practice. He’d never ask for a reprise, never write anything down. With his yachting cap pulled well down against the dazzling marine light, he’d just stare and stare at Dave until he found the answer.

  Try as he may, Dave’d be unable to think of enough keywords without letter repetition. Piler would twig everything and criticise him for lack of originality.

  Unflagged, incommunicado, the good ship Anonymous would plough its furrow across the Pacific Ocean. In its hold there’d now be only about two hundred and eighty tons of the reddish gold.

  So where’d be the buyer with a hoard of cash? Would they find him in Valparaiso or have to run the Horn to Rio? But would the Chinese crew stand for all that rough and tumble with the waves? Another thing, the Gardner had been spluttering a bit of late. How the devil did one clean that new type of cylinder head? It’d never do to be without power off Cape Horn...

  And what was to be done if they failed to find a buyer? Would they have to hole up on a remote island, eyeing their unsaleable gold as they eked out the last of the Smith-Haut-Lafite and listened to the patter of coconuts?

  I couldn’t see happiness anywhere. I could see nothing but worry and the potential for misadventure.

  I said to Leapforth, “Fat lot of fun that gold’ll bring you. You might as well stay ordinary folk.”

  “Man,” he said, “you’re welcome to your opinion. Meanwhile, I’m for the baths with Stiffy, to wash everything away and start my life as John S.”

  I left them to it and walked over to Stupichkin’s black carriage. The door swung open. Bending my head, I mounted the two steps and sat down beside this crumbling old man.

  Thirty-seven

  I HAD THE prisoners brought out of their cells and gathered below me. I said, ‘Do you want to be shot in the evening or in the morning?’ I could have had them shot at any time I wanted. I thought they should be given the choice since the only reason they were being shot—well, there was actually no reason, not as a Frenchman would understand the word. Because they’d been captured, that’s as close as you could get.”

 
In the centre of his desk, on a square of black velvet, was a skull. He picked it up, hopped it around on his fingertips. “My second wife, not the mother of poor Misha Baklushin. This woman, to whom I would gladly have given all my chances of going to Heaven, died in a carriage accident. I had the greatest difficulty making her head my own. Religion, undertakers, tradition, you can imagine the barriers.”

  I murmured about letters and pressed flowers in a book and even photographs being not quite the same.

  “Yes,” he said. “With a skull you know where you are. You can speak to it without feeling you’re going gaga. Your people, they have similar feelings so they don’t look queerly at you . . . It’s good to have your company, Doig. Your father was quite a scamp, you know, always getting into one trouble or another. Your mother . . . But that’s all in the past. Everything worthwhile is in the past. How were we to know that what we were doing was wrong? We’d been doing it for centuries. No one ever thought before that it was wrong to have servants or money. Yet now that little tradesman fellow is calling us names that were only ever used for the devil. Thank God I’m not young.”

  He gave the skull another twirl. Puffed at the eye sockets, dusting them. “We never had children, no little Stupichkins. The doctors said her shelf was lying the wrong way. I’m glad. To have one’s children die before one must be an unspeakable pain. And today they might well die first, you know. There’s so much mischief around. Whenever peasants take over, you get bad government... Misha Baklushin, my stepson, he was the closest I got to having a child. Lydia, his mother—we remained friendly. When I became a widower and got sent here, she would write to me almost every month.”

  “Was that how you heard about Misha?”

  “Yes. It was the most frightful letter I ever received. Misha, your cousin Nicholas—and of course your wife.”