on the Table of Ranks. But despite all this, he was still a Jew, a discreet Jew but a Jew nonetheless. He still remembered the tune of Kol Nidre—and the excitement of asking the Four Questions at Passover.
“You’re as white as a sheet, Samuil,” Miriam told him. “Sit! Here, drink this!” She handed him a glass of vishniak and he downed it in one. Shaking his head slightly, he raised the empty glass to his motherinlaw and then, wordlessly kissing her blueveined hand, he hurried downstairs, taking his beaverskin coat and hat from Pantameilion at the front door. He was ready to begin.
10
The surface of the frozen canal shone grittily in the moonlight as Captain Sagan’s sleigh drew up outside the headquarters of the Department of Police, 16 Fontanka.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, Sagan passed the two checkpoints, each with two gendarmes on duty, to enter the heart of the Empire’s secret war against terrorists and traitors: the Tsar’s Security Department, the Okhrana. Even late at night, the cream of the security service was at work up here—young clerks in pincenez and blue uniforms sorting the card indexes (blue for Bolsheviks, red for Socialist Revolutionaries) and adding names to labyrinthine charts of revolutionary sects and cells.
Sagan was one of the organization’s rising stars. He could have drawn the Bolshevik chart, with Lenin at its center, in his sleep, even with its latest names and arrows. He hesitated before the chart for a moment just to relish his success. Here it was: all the Central Committee arrested, except Lenin and Zinoviev, plus six Duma members—the whole lot in Siberian exile, too broken ever to launch a revolution. Similarly, the Mensheviks: castrated as a group. The SR Battle Organization: broken. There were only a few more Bolshevik cells left to smash.
In the offices farther along the corridor, the code breakers with their greasy hair and flaky skin were poring over columns of hieroglyphics, and oldfashioned provincial officers in boots and whiskers leaned over maps of the Vyborg Side, planning raids. The security service needed all sorts, Sagan told himself, spotting a colleague who had been a revolutionary but had recently changed sides. Across the room he noticed the exburglar who was now the Okhrana’s specialist housebreaker, and he greeted the homosexual Italian aristocrat, really a Jewish milkman’s son from Mariupol, who specialized in sensitive interrogations…As for me, Sagan thought, I have my speciality too: turning revolutionaries into double agents. I could turn the Pope against God.
He ordered a clerk to bring the files on that night’s raids and the reports of his fileri agents on the movements of the Jew Mendel Barmakid, and his niece, the Zeitlin girl.
11
The scent of rosewater and perfumed candles at Prince Andronnikov’s salon was so powerful that Zeitlin’s head spun and his chest ached. He took a glass of champagne and downed it in one: he needed courage. He started to search the crowd, but knew that he mustn’t seem too desperate. Does everyone know why I am here? Has the news about Sashenka spread? he asked himself. He hoped not.
The room was crowded with petitioners in winged collars, frock coats and medals, florid men of business puffing on cigars, but they were outnumbered by the bare shoulders of women, and shinycheeked, roselipped youths wearing velvet and rouge, smoking scented Egyptians through golden holders.
He was pulled aside by the obese exminister Khvostov, who began: “It’s only a matter of time now until the Emperor appoints a representative ministry—this can’t go on, can it, Samuil?”
“Why not? It’s gone on for three hundred years. It may not be perfect but the system is stronger than we think.” In Zeitlin’s lifetime, however much the cards were shuffled, they had always ended in a configuration not entirely disadvantageous to his interests. It was his future, his luck sealed in the Book of Life.
“You’re as white as a sheet, Samuil,” Miriam told him. “Sit! Here, drink this!” She handed him a glass of vishniak and he downed it in one. Shaking his head slightly, he raised the empty glass to his motherinlaw and then, wordlessly kissing her blueveined hand, he hurried downstairs, taking his beaverskin coat and hat from Pantameilion at the front door. He was ready to begin.
10
The surface of the frozen canal shone grittily in the moonlight as Captain Sagan’s sleigh drew up outside the headquarters of the Department of Police, 16 Fontanka.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, Sagan passed the two checkpoints, each with two gendarmes on duty, to enter the heart of the Empire’s secret war against terrorists and traitors: the Tsar’s Security Department, the Okhrana. Even late at night, the cream of the security service was at work up here—young clerks in pincenez and blue uniforms sorting the card indexes (blue for Bolsheviks, red for Socialist Revolutionaries) and adding names to labyrinthine charts of revolutionary sects and cells.
Sagan was one of the organization’s rising stars. He could have drawn the Bolshevik chart, with Lenin at its center, in his sleep, even with its latest names and arrows. He hesitated before the chart for a moment just to relish his success. Here it was: all the Central Committee arrested, except Lenin and Zinoviev, plus six Duma members—the whole lot in Siberian exile, too broken ever to launch a revolution. Similarly, the Mensheviks: castrated as a group. The SR Battle Organization: broken. There were only a few more Bolshevik cells left to smash.
In the offices farther along the corridor, the code breakers with their greasy hair and flaky skin were poring over columns of hieroglyphics, and oldfashioned provincial officers in boots and whiskers leaned over maps of the Vyborg Side, planning raids. The security service needed all sorts, Sagan told himself, spotting a colleague who had been a revolutionary but had recently changed sides. Across the room he noticed the exburglar who was now the Okhrana’s specialist housebreaker, and he greeted the homosexual Italian aristocrat, really a Jewish milkman’s son from Mariupol, who specialized in sensitive interrogations…As for me, Sagan thought, I have my speciality too: turning revolutionaries into double agents. I could turn the Pope against God.
He ordered a clerk to bring the files on that night’s raids and the reports of his fileri agents on the movements of the Jew Mendel Barmakid, and his niece, the Zeitlin girl.
11
The scent of rosewater and perfumed candles at Prince Andronnikov’s salon was so powerful that Zeitlin’s head spun and his chest ached. He took a glass of champagne and downed it in one: he needed courage. He started to search the crowd, but knew that he mustn’t seem too desperate. Does everyone know why I am here? Has the news about Sashenka spread? he asked himself. He hoped not.
The room was crowded with petitioners in winged collars, frock coats and medals, florid men of business puffing on cigars, but they were outnumbered by the bare shoulders of women, and shinycheeked, roselipped youths wearing velvet and rouge, smoking scented Egyptians through golden holders.
He was pulled aside by the obese exminister Khvostov, who began: “It’s only a matter of time now until the Emperor appoints a representative ministry—this can’t go on, can it, Samuil?”
“Why not? It’s gone on for three hundred years. It may not be perfect but the system is stronger than we think.” In Zeitlin’s lifetime, however much the cards were shuffled, they had always ended in a configuration not entirely disadvantageous to his interests. It was his future, his luck sealed in the Book of Life.
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