The Clown Service (31 page)

‘You don’t remember, of course,’ she said. ‘But I can change that. Would you like me to change that?’

‘I think you have the wrong person,’ I replied.

She gripped me by the arm and suddenly my head was spinning. I stumbled slightly, toppling back against the street railings, the old woman’s grip remaining utterly firm.

‘Feel it now?’ she said. ‘Remember?’

And I did. I remembered
everything
, the numbers station, Krishnin, Operation Black Earth … everything that had just happened and the desperate, stupid thing I had done to avoid it all.

‘There is no simple reset button in this universe,’ she continued. ‘You might think so. You might think you’ve done a good thing here today. And maybe you have. A lot of lives have been spared after all, a lot of people saved … But the
cost
!’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, finding it hard to catch my breath. ‘It worked. Krishnin’s gone. It’s all gone. Job done.’

‘For now. But one day … one day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you and all your friends. Time doesn’t like being pushed, boy. It pushes back. And when it does, you’re going to come crawling to me, because that’s the day that only I’ll be able to help you.’

‘Yeah? Well, leave me your card and I’ll give you a call.’

She chuckled at that, or the thing inside her did.

‘Oh, we’ll keep in touch young man, don’t worry about that. We’re going to become good friends, you and I. When the fallout descends, I’m going to be the best friend you’ve got, the only one that will be able to keep you alive. Remember that. The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg.’

She let go of my arm and wandered off. After a couple of steps she seemed to become unsteady on her feet, turned around, looked at me in confusion and then meandered on.

What girl?
I wondered.
What had she … it … meant?

‘Making friends?’ said Shining, having come back out of the shop.

‘Apparently.’

I looked at him with new – or perhaps that should be
old
eyes – remembering everything I had experienced over the last few days. ‘In the Clown Service I think you need all the friends you can get.’

‘The what?’

‘That’s what my old section head called Section 37, the Clown Service.’

He laughed. ‘I rather like that! Embrace the insults they throw at you, Ludwig – that’s my advice. Come on, let’s see what the rest of the day brings. One thing you’ll learn soon enough, life in the Clown Service is many things, but it’ll never be quiet.’

I knew that only too well.

He opened the door and began to climb the stairs to the office. I followed on behind, suddenly struck by an urge.

‘I wonder if Tamar’s in?’ I asked. I thought about her, her ferocious love for the head of my new section, the indomitable strength of her. I wanted to see her again. And April, and Derek … all of us had done this together.

‘Tamar?’ Shining asked, turning to me as he unlocked the office door. ‘Who’s Tamar? Don’t think I know anyone of that name. Armenian?’

The girl.
That’s what it had said – whatever that thing was that seemed to dog me at every step, hopping from one body to another.

‘Tamar. Your …’ I shrugged, ‘… bodyguard. She lives upstairs.’

He shook his head. ‘The upstairs flat’s been empty for years;
the landlord always struggles to rent it. I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m afraid.’

He stepped into the office and I just stood there, staring up at the next landing.

The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg … One day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you all
…

‘Who’s going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one.’

Joseph Stalin, authorising the execution of 40,000 ‘enemies of state’

The ground was frozen. Digging the potatoes was mining rather than farming. Olag forced his hands into his armpits, trying to squeeze some warmth back into fingers that felt like they were broken. They bled onto the thick wool of his shirt, leaving hard crusts that scraped and cracked as he moved.

‘This is no life,’ he said to his brother, Artur, four years his senior but so beaten by his years in the fields he looked much older.

‘It’s the only one you have,’ Artur replied, not looking up because he knew they were being watched by the soldiers. ‘Get on with it or you’ll cause trouble.’

‘Father says I’m good at causing trouble.’

‘He’s right. I wish he wasn’t.’

‘He says I’ll grow up to be better than this. That I’ll change the world.’

‘He says a lot of things, because he hates his life and wants the next generation to change what he cannot. One day he’ll say it too loudly and it’ll get him killed. Unless you want to beat him to it, shut up and dig.’

But Olag was angry and the idea of forcing his bleeding fingers back into the sharp rocks for the sake of a lousy potato – a potato he wouldn’t even be allowed to eat as it was deemed ‘socialist property’ – made him so angry he couldn’t bear to do it.

‘No,’ he said, walking away from the trench and towards the soldiers.

‘No more potatoes,’ he said, folding his arms and trying not to wince.

The soldiers laughed. They were men from the village, drunk on the power their position afforded them. One of them stooped down to Olag’s level and prodded him in the chest.

‘How old are you, little rebel?’

‘Nine.’

‘School age. Time for your lesson, I think.’

The soldier straightened up, still smiling and punched Olag in the face. He tumbled backwards, falling to a sitting position on the hard ground. For a moment he was in shock, his left cheek burning.

Then he was back on his feet and running at the soldiers.

‘Bastards!’ he shouted, kicking and punching at them – to hell with how much it hurt his hands.

The soldier who had hit him continued to laugh, his colleague
joining him as they threw Olag back to the ground and gave him a kicking that felt endless.

Lying in the dirt, tears in his eyes, Olag looked up at the soldiers and wished he could tear them apart.

He felt someone pulling him to his feet, his brother Artur.

‘Please,’ Artur said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’ll keep him out of trouble.’ He dragged Olag back towards the trench.

‘You mind you do,’ the soldier shouted, ‘or next time he won’t be getting back up again.’

Artur wiped at the dirt and blood on his younger brother’s face. ‘I hope you learned your lesson?’

‘Yes,’ Olag said, his teeth grinding together as he fought back the hatred he felt inside himself. ‘It is better in this life to be the soldier and not the peasant.’

‘You dance like a peasant,’ the girl said, as Krishnin carried her around the floor. Noticing his face fall, she squeezed his hand. ‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism. The men here are stiff and unfeeling, they don’t know how to connect to the music. They are all thinking about how they look, about whether people are impressed by them. You just move. It’s nice.’

He smiled and said nothing, twirling her around as the band played on. He wondered if he was in love. The girl was beautiful and, for all her criticism of the men of Stalingrad who tried too hard to impress, he had noticed how she looked at his uniform. He had seen the look before: women loved a man of power.

‘Do you think the Germans will overrun us?’ she asked,
clearly eager to move the conversation away from what she feared had been taken as an insult.

‘They will try,’ he said.

‘And you will stop them?’

He just smiled.

The band stopped playing and the dancers rewarded them with polite applause. As the sound of clapping faded a new sound replaced it, a low whine that he recognised only too easily.

‘I think the dancing is over,’ he said, reaching forward and kissing her on the lips. She looked at him, startled and yet accepting.

‘Are you propositioning me?’

‘If I were, what would be your answer?’

She laughed and held him close, whispering in his ear. ‘The answer would be “yes”.’

Perhaps that would have to be good enough
, he thought, because the sound of the planes overhead was growing louder.

‘Bombers!’ someone shouted, bursting into the dance hall. ‘Wave after wave of them!’

The room erupted into panic but Krishnin held the girl close, even as she fought to pull away.

‘There is nowhere to hide,’ he said. ‘Running won’t help. Either God lets us live or he lets us die.’

Her face had gone from lust to terror, a look that sharpened his own desire.

The air was filled with the sound of whistling, tons of explosive charges raining down on the city. To Krishnin it was a continuation of the music. The bombs began to hit their targets, the ground shook and explosions cut their way through the streets.

‘Let’s dance some more,’ he said, pulling her around the floor with him, holding her body tight against his own. ‘If we are to die tonight then we may as well. God favours the brave.’

She pulled away from him and, though he reached for her, she evaded him.

She followed the rest of the dance hall’s patrons out of the doors and onto the street outside. The air was thick with fire and bricks and screaming and smoke. Like cement stirred into water, the atmosphere thickened around them until it felt hard to move.

Krishnin held back, standing in the doorway and watching as the city fell apart. Above them, line after line of planes moved through the sky, lit by the fires that bloomed beneath them. The heat and the noise made him hornier than ever. He imagined it was
his
finger on the trigger, imagined he was the cause of the destruction all around him. Such power. To brush aside whole cities as if with a giant hand. Crumbling houses within your grip, grinding the populace beneath the tip of your finger.

An explosion roared along the street and Krishnin saw the panicking citizens in silhouette, running in all directions.

He stepped outside and began to make his way up the road, already having to step over dead bodies and piles of bricks. He felt as if nothing could touch him, as if he were just an observer in this broken world.

He looked down, recognising the fallen body of the girl he had been dancing with. The back of her head was covered in blood, blood pumping from a wound caused by flying shrapnel. He hadn’t loved her, he decided. How could he love someone as easily struck down as this?

He picked up her body, smiling as she gave the faintest moan in his ear. He held her close and began to hum one of the tunes
the band had played earlier. Slowly he danced with her, swinging her limp body around in his arms as the bombs beat on the city as if it were a drum.

‘A toast,’ said Krishnin, raising his glass, ‘to fruits sown in Black Earth.’ He drained his drink, pretending not to notice Andrei Bortnik’s look of disapproval. He had known that the old man was going to get cold feet, after all. It was no surprise. Nonetheless, he would make Bortnik squirm while he tried to pour cold water on Krishnin’s fire. No, he wouldn’t make it easy for him.

‘Olag,’ the fat man said, ‘Black Earth is … We cannot sanction it.’

Krishnin feigned horror, twisting the stem of his glass in his hands. ‘Not sanction?’ he asked. ‘But why?’

‘It’s …’ His superior stood up and moved over to the patio doors. ‘It’s just too much,’ he said finally. ‘We haven’t …’

‘The stomach for it?’ Krishnin asked.

Bortnik looked at him, a mixture of anger and fear on his face. ‘Can you blame us? What you’re proposing … It’s monstrous.’

Krishnin joined him in the warm sunlight that fell through the glass doors. ‘So beautiful here,’ he said, ‘I think I would like to retire to somewhere like this. Once my work is done.’

Bortnik was clearly uncomfortable at having Krishnin so close. He reached forward and opened the doors. ‘Let’s take a walk outside,’ he suggested.

‘Yes,’ Krishnin replied, putting his glass down, ‘you can show me your pool.’

Krishnin dragged the man into the dining room and hurled him down into a chair.

‘Who is he?’ Viktor asked. ‘How long as he been listening?’

‘All questions we will be asking,’ Krishnin replied.

‘Ask all you want,’ the stranger said. ‘I’ll tell you nothing. Besides, you know why I’m here. Did you really think they would just let you go? This is a disgrace! What you’re doing must be …’

Krishnin punched the man hard in his mouth. He didn’t need him sowing dissent amongst his men. Viktor was very much under his control – at the moment too scared to ask questions, but if this man brought enough doubt onto his operation …

‘You heard the man,’ Krishnin shouted. ‘How long have you been here and what have you heard?’

The man spat a froth of spittle and blood onto the floor between them and Krishnin hit him again.

Krishnin turned to Viktor. ‘The kitchen. Bring me tools.’

Viktor nodded, and left the room.

Krishnin leaned in close to the spy, whispering so that only they could hear.

‘Say what you like, but know this: the more you speak, the more I’ll hurt you. The only hope you have now is that I’ll kill you quickly.’

Viktor returned with the plastic tray of cutlery, dropping it onto the table with a loud crash.

‘Excellent,’ said Krishnin, selecting a fork. ‘Let us begin.’

‘Look at him,’ the old woman said, moving in so only her daughter could hear. ‘Like a dirty little raven in his funeral clothes. Black suit and black heart.’

‘Don’t be so cruel,’ her daughter replied, looking at the young Olag Krishnin as he walked behind the funeral procession, ‘the poor lad’s just lost his father.’