Cold Blood Read online

  He said to me, “Your gold for my jewellery, is that to be the bargain?”

  “But only the best.”

  He went to his safe and unlocked it. He took out a tray and laid it between us on the work table—beside the Luger and the gold. He checked that the key in the door was fully turned. Then he rolled back the napkin of dark blue velvet and gave the tray a little shove mixed with a little shake, which I construed as disdain. “The Skobolov woman’s.”

  I said, “These things must have belonged to her maid. Please, the best.”

  So we looked at the Kuzminsky tray and the Morozov tray and we picked through an unsorted bag from Prince Gorevsky that Shansky had purchased only that morning. All I took from these was one emerald ring of Gorevsky’s because of the magnificent vulgarity of its setting. Revolutions have winners as much as they have losers. Some day I might have to appease a Bolshevik warlord. It could be touch and go, a pistol to my head and the brute counting down to zero. Then I’d say, “Wait a moment, comrade, I’ve got just the thing for your woman. She’ll flash like gunpowder with this on her finger.”

  Well, it took time but eventually my gold was translated into 180 brilliant cut diamonds, medium to small. Those are the sizes that are best for day-to-day use, for turning into the where-withal for bribes, information, wages—the necessary costs of life. I didn’t worry about finding buyers for them: there are always greedy people around.

  For bigger purchases such as artillery or an aeroplane, I took three of the gaudiest Gorevsky necklaces, things designed for the huge pink flabby women in his family. Shansky offered me pearls, good ones, but I declined: too fragile for what might lie ahead.

  Helping me wrap the diamonds in individual tissues and fiddle them into the woollen lining of my boots, he said, “The moment I saw the posters this morning I said to myself the magic word— America. Have you read what Lenin’s written, Excellency? This won’t be the place for anyone who owns anything. My wife and I have often talked about this happening. She has reservations about America. The hard journey—our age—how to survive when we get there. She says, ‘Who will buy our jewellery? What do we know of American taste?’ And then you entered and now we have an international currency bearing the stamp of the Imperial Bank. So we can get to America in comfort and when we arrive we can afford to take our time. I thank you, Excellency, I thank you from my heart.”

  He carefully inserted the last of the necklaces deep into the wool. “Why do you remain, Excellency, if I may ask? You are young. Your future is surely not here.”

  “Glebov is his name. Prokhor Fedorovich Glebov.”

  He sewed up the slits in the top of my boots and finished the thread with a roving knot so that I could get at the diamonds without messing up the whole arrangement. I watched his neat, lean fingers. He said, “Glebov—no, I don’t know that name.” Then ruminatively, “The Tsar’s gold is the purest in the world. Believe me, I know about such things. The same reddish colour as your uncle’s, from the copper particles in the rock. When times are dangerous—well, Excellency, we understand each other about the value of paper money.”

  Then he waxed the strip of leather to disguise his handiwork and to stop the stitching from icing over, humming to himself and smiling.

  It was well after midnight that Joseph returned to the palace. I awoke—I’d been dozing in the chrome chair—to find his dark, sardonic face peering at me through the haze rising from the table lamp.

  Without any preamble, he said, “Vladimir Ilyich’s sisters were brought to the station in a black car. On getting out, the fattest one missed her footing on the running board and fell over, as if unaccustomed to cars. They both wore black— waddling black dumplings, that’s what they were. And his wife, the Krupskaya woman—one would not say that they are often intimate—”

  “You want them to breed, for God’s sake?”

  “Permit me to reply like this, that he looked the sort of man who hangs his testicles up behind the door when he goes to bed. There is no danger of young Lenins. He has a big head. His mother must have had a bad time at his birth. He was smirking the whole time, not genuinely pleased and grateful as I’d have been... As he was being carried along, someone noticed that his boots were new. Walking boots they were, Doig, not our valenki. This man called up to him, ‘Comrade Lenin, why did you not buy our Russian boots?’ He laughed: ‘Krupskaya made me get these when the train halted in Stockholm. She said my old ones were a disgrace to the cause.’ Another man shouted to the first one, ‘Why do you say that? Proper boots they are, with iron heel and toe plates. Hurrah for Comrade Lenin’s boots!’ And a schoolmaster next to me said to all who could hear, ‘Comrades, how these boots will ring in history!’

  “The sound of Lenin’s words, many of which were long and completely unknown to me, was disgusting, like an enormous cud being chewed. But the fools, they all shouted, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ Then he climbed onto an armoured car and a searchlight shone its beam on him. The schoolmaster at my side called out loudly, ‘Look at him, like Jesus clad in the glowing armour of truth.’ I thought they weren’t supposed to mention Jesus but of course I didn’t say anything.

  “To sum up, it was like a holiday to honour a great victory. Everyone was in high spirits. They’d have torn Kerensky to bits if they’d got hold of him. Several thousand people were there, men, women and children, even though it was late. I was shaking with relief when I got away.”

  Six

  I NEVER DOUBTED that Lenin’s arrival would spell the end for Kerensky. Nothing is ever gained by quibbling with history. It contains a whole bunch of questions to which the only possible answer is the answer obtained. The smoke of victory already clung to him. It was that, not a halo, that Joseph had seen at the Finland Station.

  Perversely, it cheered me to know Lenin was in the country. Somewhere Glebov was resting up, but now the cheese had got to the stinking stage, he was sure to pop out of his hole. Then I’d have him.

  But there were others who believed in Kerensky and were betting on him. Here let me mention the name of Countess Cynthia Zipf, a child in Newark, New Jersey, a beauty in Paris, a bride in Berlin, and now the mistress of one of the most prominent members of Kerensky’s cabinet. She had this man’s ear, his money and the run of his houses in St. Petersburg and Moscow and of his country estate at Kaluga. An outsider would have said she depended on him for everything. Such a person would have been wrong. She had investments of her own and above all she had her nerves, which she was fond of boasting were descended from the best Jewish nerves in America.

  For a while, during that hot—that exceptional—summer of 1917, it looked as though her predictions would be proved right. Everything that Kerensky did was just what the country wanted from him. Though not from a military background, he struck all the right notes when he toured the battlefields of the European conflict. Some of his speeches to the troops were inspirational. He was everywhere at once, never short of an answer or a beautiful phrase. The newspaper photographs of him were invariably reassuring. The short dark hair, the shrewd eyes, the decisive forehead (neither too low nor too intellectual) appealed to men, while those lips of his, so fleshy and uxorious, conveyed to every woman the idea of a good family man.

  Kerensky made it possible to feel encouraged. And when, in the brilliance of May, the purple trusses of lilac dangled over the sidewalks and their scent inflated the air to bursting point, when dreams began to stir of the creamy flesh of potatoes dug from our rich dark soil, and of baby onions and beetroots, there were many people besides La Zipfa who professed optimism. Everything was going so well for Russia. Could one invoke— at long last—after so many sacrifices—the longed-for word, victory? And if that were so and the Hun were bashed to pieces, might not his palaces and positions be restored to the Little Father, at present mooning around at Tsarskoe Selo, preening himself in his Jaeger underwear and cataloguing his collection of seaside postcards? If only, murmured these optimists, someone had taught him to think for himself, t
o articulate boldly—to make every word he spoke stand up and salute. He had such a nice voice...

  The heat grew. Russia baked. Kerensky declared that along our country lanes the wild flowers had never looked so lovely in his entire life.

  “Doesn’t he express himself charmingly?” said Cynthia to me one day upon meeting by chance in Nevsky. “But you know what he should really do, of course you do.”

  She drew her forefinger across her throat and gurgled. “Kaputnik. The only definitive solution.”

  She swayed towards me. Such a fine, strapping body when viewed as a whole. With first-class technique, one could count absolutely on it just by the way she walked and by the confidence with which she moved her limbs, as if she were already in bed with her favourite man. She’d tried to jump my uncle, Count Igor, when she was down on her luck. She’d had herself driven over in a rented carriage to dine and play a few hands of piquet. She’d worn a strong scent—like a she-buffalo, said Joseph. Had offered my uncle several perspectives of her bosom but then had spoilt everything by tapping him reprovingly on the wrist when he made a poor play and calling him an asshole. Uncle Igor had sent her packing. Thud! went the heavy beam that secured the front door—with the Countess on the wrong side. Igor had turned to Joseph, put a mottled hand on his shoulder and murmured, “Womanhood and its perils, my dear Joseph.”

  In recounting this anecdote, Joseph had played the parts of himself and both principals, making free use of the floor space and not holding back on La Zipfa’s idiosyncratic Russian.

  “Of course you know what I mean,” she said to me, “you’re Russian yourself. One day he’ll have Lenin killed, has to. Then— oh boy, shan’t we have a party! Meanwhile you should be grabbing the common stock of the Archangel Timber Corporation. Trades at forty-five. Never been so low. Fill a barrow. Bye, Charlie.”

  But all the successes that Kerensky initiated somehow failed to be completed. People began to believe him less. They had only to glance at the roadside flowers to see they were actually wilting in the heat. From that it was a short distance to noticing the pouches deepening beneath his eyes, that he was losing weight, that his clothes now hung poorly on him, as if he were a peasant. His voice grew hoarse. Was it cancer of the throat, perhaps? Then he took to bringing up Lenin’s name gratuitously so that, it seemed, he could abuse him in a cheap, rather womanish way.

  Gradually, by these imprecise but convincing signals, one began to understand that Kerensky no longer believed in himself. And the reason for this was sensed by all: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

  Even though they’d grown up in the same small town, even though Kerensky’s father had actually taught Lenin at school, even though Kerensky controlled the state, the army, the secret police and the executioners themselves, the fact remained that he was eleven years younger than Lenin and was afraid of him. I was sure of it.

  By a flourish of his pen, he could have had Lenin killed. No one would have been shocked. In fact, the more imaginative his demise the more impressed Russians would have been. What was vital was to get it done.

  Every day La Zipfa expected the discovery of Lenin’s corpse in some humiliating corner such as the outlet into the Neva of the main sewer. A fisherman would hook it. The leader of the Bolsheviks, drowned in shit! His cause would be totally discredited. Every day that she was disappointed, she grew gloomier.

  I said, “Cyn, it’s not going to happen. Kerensky is too feeble. You should get out of the country. You don’t have to live here, you know.”

  “Me quit? After all the effort I’ve put into being someone who matters? Look you here, Charlie boy, I’m right about the old buzzard. And to show how confident I am, this morning I installed my servants permanently at the mortuaries here and in Moscow with orders to telephone me the instant Lenin’s cadaver is presented. ‘Lift every sheet,’ I commanded them. ‘Vomit as much as you want.’ That’s the language they understand. I’m telling you, one morning it’ll happen. The phone will ring. Mine before anyone else’s. I’ll make a killing. Then shareholders will have the most fabulous Settlement Day that the Exchange has ever seen. After that I’ll get out. Hey, did you buy Archangel when I said? They were down to twenty last night. Buy another barrowful. Follow them down. All the way. Yeah, that’s right, corner the market. What’s a few thousand roubles to a Rykov.”

  The next time I met her, in the fog and mud of that fatal St Petersburg autumn, she came up with her best line ever.

  “Charlie,” she said, “I’ve made up my mind. You were right all along. That Kerensky doesn’t have the balls for the job. I’m off. When the ship docks in the US of A, I’ll be back to plain Cynthia Cohen again, older and wiser. But first I’m going to have myself a party and on the invitation cards will be printed this, like they print the headings in a book, all la-dida—‘Every woman of blue blood should buy herself some stock when she gets her period, to celebrate it not being red.’ Maybe some of my friends will laugh enough to go out and buy. Maybe for a morning the Exchange’ll soar. Then I’ll be able to get out a rich woman. And you know what I’ll regret most? Not having laid you. I’d have given you the time of your life. Too bad you’re still in love with your wife. Couldn’t you spare just one afternoon for me...? I guess not. You’re too honourable beneath all that warpaint. You know, Charlie, this could be the beginning of goodbye for our sort. It’s not far off. I can feel it.”

  We were both right: I about Kerensky being too weak, she about the beginning of the end. It gave neither of us satisfaction that when next we met, we could read in each other’s faces exactly how right we’d both been.

  By then, the only real question was when Lenin would strike. The city was alive with rumours. The day after I spoke to Cyn, I gave Joseph a hundred roubles and told him not to come back until he knew every detail of the coup.

  On the morning of 25 October 1917, not having seen him for a week, I spotted him walking wearily up the steps at the front of the palace. I went to the door. He didn’t come in, just leaned against the jamb.

  He laid his forefinger across his palm: “Tonight.”

  His second finger: “The Smolny Convent.”

  And the third: “Lenin, Trotsky—and Glebov. The three of them. By tomorrow Kerensky will be out.”

  He was exhausted. I steered him down the corridor to our room. He collapsed into the American chrome chair. “To do it a week ago was their original plan. Then someone remembered that Chaliapin would be singing Don Carlos tonight. So they postponed the coup. The first shots won’t be fired until Kerensky is snug in his box and the man is singing.”

  Seven

  WE LEFT the palace at ten that night, going out the back way. I’d bought the trays and their smocks from a couple of gribochki, or mushroom sellers, as a disguise and wanted to have a stroll along Nevsky to see how best to carry the act off.

  “Stoop, Doig,” said Joseph. “Be common.”

  That wasn’t so easy from a height of six foot two with a tray round my neck. In any case no one gave us a second glance. And the reason that they didn’t was they were watching open-mouthed as a file of Red Guards marched down the Prospekt— politely, disciplined, not on the pavement but in the gutter with the horse shit. You could even say they were marching humbly.

  A group of young officers staggered out of the Makayev champagne bar clinging to their bottles of Krug Elite and their furred-up whores. Everything was funny to them. They bayed at the beggars blinded in the war, and tossing scarves round their long necks they bayed at the moon, which was gliding along behind the battlements of a dense bank of sea fog.

  The Guards drew level with them. I heard the soldier in charge say loudly, “Smarten up, smarten your step there! Swing those arms, pick up your knees, let’s show the boorjoi swine who’s who in Russia!”

  “Make no mistake,” I said to Joseph, “the age of cigars and palaces is over. This morning it was on its deathbed. Now it’s a goner. Nothing’s surer when Bolsheviks parade down Nevsky and no one can stop them.”


  “What comes next?”

  “The age of survival,” I replied, at which point Kerensky, in an act of desperation, had the electricity turned off. For an instant the coils in the street lamps glowed orange, then there was darkness except for the charcoal beds of the chestnut sellers’ braziers. Darkness and the smell of fog.

  I was glad for that shroud of fog. When murder’s in one’s heart one looks different. One’s nerves get taut. Slips are made. In fact one’s entire behaviour is altered, and people notice this. They follow you with their eyes and quietly observe all the ways in which you’ve ceased to be normal. A man thinking of murder becomes a public spectacle.

  We walked quickly, along Konyushennaya, right past the Church of the Resurrection and into Mikhailovski Gardens.

  Everything was quiet. A couple of mallard lay tucked up on the lake, floating on the murky water like a pair of abandoned shoes.

  I said to Joseph, “This is a very tranquil affair. Are you sure?”

  He replied in a low, intense voice—grabbing my arm, “Doig, is it true that you’ve never been afraid?”

  I could think of nothing I wanted to tell him.

  We left the Gardens and went past the Circus to Engineers Bridge. The fog had overflowed the banks of the canal. I took out my Luger. All the Fontanka footbridges were haunted by cut-throats what with the canal being so handy. When the Tsars had the upper hand, Uncle Igor had told me, there used to be a policeman night and day in a box on the eastern side of this bridge. The name of the last one had been Tikhonov. He’d had a red beard.

  But times had changed. They were fresh and sparkling with the dew of Utopia and the policemen, afraid of being knifed, went around in gangs. So no Tikhonov, no red beard pimpled with droplets of moisture, no friendly salutation. Instead, we were halfway across, with the uneven grid of the iron walkway clanking beneath our boots—

  A trumpet—a single call, descending without a falter through two octaves, the player not squirting the notes out with force but releasing them reluctantly, as a mourner would the grains of soil he lets fall on a coffin lid.