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Ryzhkov walked out of the American Hotel, past the young guards who were not quite sure what they were guarding, down to the street. The ground sloped slightly towards the area around the dam, and he kept going until he came to the municipal hall, an old building that looked suddenly out of date and in the process of being abandoned, its doors thrown open and two anxious Red Guards still lingering outside. A motor car and a truck were idling there, ready for a final run to the station.
He asked directions, and across the park he caught the Number 14 tram which was still running, and which carried him some dozen blocks past the sprawling and dead quiet Selki factory and let him off at the last stop.
From there Kushok Lane was only two blocks, and he stepped out into the muddy street and began walking. On one side of the street was a row of workers’ houses that had been arranged diagonally to the street, climbing the low ridge with a fine view of the city beneath. There were children playing in the worn expanses in front of the houses, running around the fruit trees that had been girdled with octagonal planters for protection.
No. 2 was a semi-collapsed ancient wooden house, the logs darkened to blackness with soot, weeds grown up and died in a tangle around the foundations. A wide canvas tarpaulin that had been rigged up to shade half of the house, where a woman was butchering what Ryzhkov recognized to be a goat.
‘I am looking for Nikolas Eikhe,’ he said to her.
She turned and gave him a long look, taking in the suit – now truly shabby – the thick shoes, the rucksack with the leather raincoat rolled into it. ‘He’s not here.’
‘Ahh…’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I need to speak to him. It’s important.’
‘He’s not here, Excellency.’
‘When he comes back, maybe you can give him this.’ Ryzhkov set the rucksack down, groped in the pockets for some paper. All he had was an envelope with his train schedule written on it. He wrote ‘Ryzhkov, #3 Hotel American.’
‘Shall I say what it is concerning?’ the woman said. She was busily scrubbing out the great cavity that had been made by extracting the entrails of the animal.
Ryzhkov looked around the little street. The houses here were much older than the workers’ factory houses at the end of the block. ‘Eikhe is a German name, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, the family were Volga Germans. Here since the 1700s, so he claimed,’ the woman said. She was older, but still strong, with her hair bound up in a series of towels that made her look like some sort of peasant queen, wearing a large apron, her sleeves rolled up to her armpits.
‘I just want to talk to him, and I want to talk to someone who can put me in touch with the soviet.’
‘They’re all gone,’ she said with finality.
‘You’re sure? There has to be someone around.’
‘They’re gone. I’m sure.’
‘What about his friends? Maybe someone knows where I can find him.’
‘He doesn’t have any friends,’ she said flatly.
‘What about the Tsar?’
She looked up at him, shook the bloody rag out and dumped it in a dish beside the table. ‘All of them are dead.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh, everybody knows it. It happened at the weekend. I know one of the women who mopped up the blood.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Just a woman. Someone I know. Look, they’re dead, comrade. When he comes back I’ll give him your message. What does it say?’
‘Ryzhkov. Number 3, American Hotel.’
‘Is that where you’re staying?’ Her eyebrows went up at the cost of it.
‘No. It’s just to let him know who I am. You make sure and tell him. It’s important. And I’ll come back, eh?’ he said, jabbing his finger at her.
At the bottom of the hill he waited to catch the tram, but gave up and walked past the long façade of the factory into the city. There was another distant crash and Ryzhkov realized that the artillery had stopped for some hours and only just begun firing again. A few minutes later an automobile blew past him with several Red Guard officers packed into the seats.
When he had walked another block, at the corner he could see a stream of citizens entering the Civic Theatre. The fast car that had passed him on the slope was sitting there, with steam coming out of the radiator cap. Several carriages and military wagons were drawn up in the lane and soldiers were milling about the entrance. Ryzhkov let himself be funnelled through the great doors to the theatre with everyone else. The windows had been thrown open and the curtains pulled shut against the sun. The whole room was a stew of dust motes and muttered conversations.
He found himself standing in the aisle at the back of the house. A squad of soldiers marched in, split into two ranks, and half of them passed right behind him, eyes alert and looking around for assassins. They went down the aisles and took positions with their rifles at rest at the foot of the stage.
Immediately a man came out from the wings, clutching a yellow sheet of paper in his hand. He was in his thirties, with dark hair slicked back and combed neatly behind his ears. He had a pince-nez that he wedged onto his nose and he moved to the centre of the stage and began to read before half the crowd noticed he was even there. He had to wait for the room to quieten and then began again. His voice was light, and someone called from the back rows for him to speak up.
‘My name is…’ It was still noisy in the room; they were letting people come upstairs onto the balcony and they were all still talking, not aware that the show had begun. The man backtracked yet again.
‘My name is Fillip Goloschokin, military commissar of the Ural Soviet, and I announce today that, by order of the regional Ural Soviet, in the awareness that the Czecho-Slovak soldiers, those hirelings of French and British capitalists, are now close at hand, and in view of the fact that a White Guard plot to carry off the whole Imperial Family has been discovered, and that all the old Imperial generals are in it with them, that the Cossacks are also coming, and they all think that they will get their Emperor back, but they never shall –’ His thin voice hung in the hall. ‘We shot him three nights ago!’
There was a pause. Goloschokin repeated the last line again and looked off stage. Someone was speaking to him, but the words were distorted.
‘Three nights ago!’ Goloschokin repeated, and walked off into the wings.
The theatre was immediately filled with a torrent of conversation. A great crash of applause began which was almost immediately stifled by a series of shouts. Several women were in tears and were being assisted by their friends. ‘Where is the body?’ someone screamed from the balcony over and over. A group had rushed forward and were being held back by the young soldiers who had lifted their rifles to the ready and were guarding the two approaches to the stage. There was a rush for the exits.
Ryzhkov joined the flow out onto the street. The military trucks were already speeding down Glavni Prospekt in the direction of the station.
Now that Goloschokin had gone with the rest of the Ural Soviet and all that was left was the echo of the official announcement, Ryzhkov thought he ought to make for the station and telegraph NOSMOC4, but what would he say? The announcement would be wired back to the Kremlin by the Ural Soviet themselves; everything else was rumour.
He walked along the embankment of the pond that occupied the centre of the city, heading for the station. All around him people were moving, like ants that had been driven out of their hiding places. Several lorries rushed past him, and people ran across the street, hurrying to hoard anything that their fantasies suggested they might need before they dashed