The Golden Sabre

‘But we don’t need the Americans, do we, Pemenov?’

The dwarf smiled his child’s smile. ‘Not here in Verkburg, General.’ He addressed Cabell directly for the first time, spoke in English: ‘We don’t need the Americans anywhere at all in Russia, Mr Cabell.’

‘Are you a Bolshevik, Mr Pemenov, and the General doesn’t know it?’

The child’s smile flickered again on the big adult face. ‘Don’t be stupid, Mr Cabell. You’re too far from home and all alone – being insulting isn’t going to help you. No, I’m not a Bolshevik. I just hate Americans, all of you.’

Cabell looked at him, feeling a reluctant pity. ‘Your mother must have been a real bitch.’

‘She was, Mr Cabell. A real shit of a bitch.’

‘What a beautiful language!’ Bronevich blew out a cloud of smoke, rolled his head in ecstasy at the music he had been listening to. ‘I could listen to English all day. What a pity I don’t understand it.’

‘Two thousand dollars, Cabell,’ said Pemenov, this time in Russian. ‘The General will be waiting for it – after we have investigated you.’

Two minutes later Cabell was out in the square that fronted the barracks. The August sun pressed down like a bright golden blanket; the air was dry but so hot that it seared the nostrils and dried Cabell’s lips almost instantly. The bell in the tower beneath the green onion dome of the church at the far end of the square tolled noon; the iron notes hung on the heavy air as if cloaked in velvet. Soldiers lolled like dark shocks of corn in the thin midday shadows; a row of them looked as if they were stacked ready for loading on the two military trucks parked by the barracks wall. But Cabell noticed that each truck, decrepit antiques, had a wheel missing: the axles were jacked up on bricks. He knew then that he would never get his own truck on the train for Ekaterinburg. Battered though it was, it was still in better shape than the two military vehicles and General Bronevich wouldn’t let it slip out of his hands.

Shopkeepers were locking up their stores, getting ready for lunch; in a town full of soldiers they had learned to leave nothing unattended. Shutters were closing on house windows, locking out the heat. A peasant crossed the square at a slow walk, bent over beneath the load of firewood on his back: the heat didn’t fool him, he knew winter would have no memory of today and would freeze him if he was not prepared against it. An open carriage drawn by two black, sweat-shining horses came round the square and broke into a trot as Cabell, eyes blinded by the white cobblestones, stepped out of the shade to cross the road.

The horses were abruptly pulled up, rearing high, one of them almost knocking Cabell’s head off as its front hooves pawed at the air. Cabell fell back, just managing to keep his feet, and leaned against the side of the carriage as it came level with him. He looked up into the sun and dimly saw the shape of a woman pulling hard on the reins.

‘For crissakes, lady, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’

‘Watch it!’ said the lady, let go of the reins with one hand, swung her handbag on its long strap and whacked Cabell across the ear. ‘If you’re going to use that sort of language, you’re not getting an apology out of me. Out of the way, you lout!’

The carriage swept on and Cabell jumped back to avoid being run down. He held a hand to his ear, glad to find it was still attached to his head; his other ear was still ringing with the echo of the sharp voice that had spoken to him in English. It was not his day; first a general who suspected he was a spy, then a dwarf who hated him because he was an American, now an English-speaking woman who thought he was a foul-mouthed lout. He stood in the middle of the square, looked around him, wondered where he might find a friend; but two thousand miles of isolation stretched away from him in all directions. All at once he realized that he was sinking very rapidly into a very serious situation.

He walked across the square, still feeling his sore ear, swore at a dog that lazily snapped at him, and came to the line of plane trees under which he had parked his truck. It was not strictly a truck; it was a 1914 Chevrolet car which had had its rear seat and bodywork stripped away and a high-sided platform substituted. It had done more than its fair share of hard travelling and Cabell did not dare to guess how many more miles it had left in it before it fell apart from the battering it had taken in the past five years. It was a car that had been built for the soft dirt roads of America and not for the jungle tracks of Venezuela and the trackless rocky ground he had driven it over here in the Urals. The tyres, worn to condom thinness, had had forty punctures in the past three months; the brakes, when applied, were just a plunger pressed into a well of wishful thinking. He had intended taking it home more for sentimental reasons than because he thought it had many more years of usefulness left in it.

But it was useful now. He knew that the next train for Ekaterinburg did not leave for another three days; by then General Bronevich might have decided that he was indeed a spy. He turned his mind against any thought of what might happen to him. Houdini, the greatest escape artist of all time, always made sure that he did his magic in front of a friendly audience. He never attempted anything where the nearest applause was two thousand miles back in the stalls.

As Cabell approached the Chevrolet a soldier rolled out from behind the shadow of the tailboard, stood up, lethargically brushed the dust from himself and asked Cabell where he thought he was going.

‘Can you drive?’ Cabell said.

The soldier squinted and pondered, decided he understood the question and shook his head.

‘General Bronevich wants the truck round in the barracks yard. You better let me drive.’

The soldier looked around for guidance, saw that he was alone, squinted and pondered again. Then he shook his head and raised his rifle threateningly. It was a Krenk, an ancient one that looked as if it might go off without its trigger being touched.

Cabell smiled, feeling that his lips were splitting and his teeth falling out of their gums. ‘You can ride with me.’ He patted the front seat. ‘Right up there with the driver, Ivan. That should do wonders for your prestige with the girls around here.’

The soldier squinted and pondered once more. Then he abruptly nodded and was up in the front seat so quickly it was almost a feat of instant levitation. Cabell went round to the front of the truck, swung the starting handle, got the engine to fire at the first couple of turns, got in behind the wheel and let in the gears. He drove slowly round the square till he came to the street that headed out to the main road to Ekaterinburg. The gasoline tank was half-full and there were eight four-gallon cans packed in boxes in the back of the truck. If the tyres held he could be in Ekaterinburg in just over two hours, three at the most. A British consul was stationed there and perhaps he could be persuaded to shelter an American till the latter could board the first train going east to Vladivostok. Cabell decided he would make the Consulate a present of the Chevrolet.

As they reached the far side of the square Cabell, glancing across past the broken plinth that had once held a statue of the Tsar, saw General Bronevich come out of the barracks with Pemenov. There was a yell from the General and next moment a shot; a bullet hit the soldier in an arm and he dropped his rifle and screamed in pain. Cabell stepped on the accelerator.

‘Sorry, buddy,’ he said in English, ‘I think you’ll be safer on the ground.’

There were no doors on the truck. Cabell reached across, gave a hard shove as he took the truck round a corner, and the soldier went tumbling out and hit the cobblestones with a thud that made Cabell flinch guiltily. But there was no time for conscience or sympathy. He put his foot down hard and the Chevrolet leapt away up the road towards Ekaterinburg.

In the square General Bronevich was shouting Mongolian obscenities, than which there is nothing more obscene. An officer appeared out of the shadows and, hampered by his heavy riding boots, galloped across to the line of slumbering soldiers who, startled by the shot, were blinking themselves awake and looking for the enemy. The officer kicked them to their feet, yelling at them and himself, urged on by the yelling of General Bronevich. The soldiers, still only half-awake, stumbled towards the barracks stables and their horses.

General Bronevich, no runner, waddled back into the barracks and through to the barracks yard; Pemenov, following him, looked more agile despite his tiny legs. The General’s driver, having taken both front wheels off the General’s car to repair the tyres, had lain down in the shade of the car and fallen asleep. He had taken off his boots and in his sleep, dreaming of his wife’s sister, was sensually wriggling his bare toes. General Bronevich, beside himself and everybody else with rage, shot off three of the driver’s toes and waddled back into the barracks and out into the square as half a dozen soldiers, mounted now, thundered out of the stables and took the road for Ekaterinburg.

‘Get my car fixed!’ General Bronevich bellowed to Pemenov. ‘I want that American’s head fitted to the radiator!’

‘Yes, General!’ Pemenov whirled and his short legs blurred as they carried him back into the barracks at surprising speed.

Two miles up the road, the outskirts of the town already behind it, the Chevrolet was bowling along like the excellent car it had once been. Cabell, feeling better already as the wind drove in to cool him, began to think of home. In another month, six weeks at the outside, he would be driving down the road to Bloomington. His mother had died three years ago and since then his father had moved from Chicago to just outside Bloomington, where he had a small general store. If he was lucky he might even be home in time to take his father to see the White Sox play in the World Series. The Old Man’s last letter, picked up in Verkburg only this morning, had been dated June 1; but Jack Cabell had already been claiming then that this White Sox team was the greatest of all time, would be sure to make it to the World Series. Cabell had not seen a major league game since May 1912 and he was looking forward to seeing the men his father acclaimed, Eddie Collins, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Shineball Eddie Cicotte.

He was dreaming of heroes of the past, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, thinking what a nice clean war baseball was compared to this civil war going on around him, when the off-side front tyre blew out. The car swerved violently and it was only with tremendous luck that he managed to keep it on the road. He had just got it under control and on a straight course again when the other front tyre blew out.

[2]

Eden Penfold dusted herself off after the truck, its horn blasting at her, had sped by. The horses had shied, but she had managed to steady them, though they were still trembling and nervous as she got them back into a steady trot. Beside her the children were brushing dust from themselves and Frederick was cursing in Russian.

‘Watch it!’ she snapped in English.

‘But I don’t know any English swear words—’ Frederick was twelve, a handsome, dark-haired boy with a slim frame, an innocent expression and an attitude towards life that suggested his education had begun some years before his actual birth. ‘You are always saying, Miss Eden, that one should never hide one’s true feelings—’

‘There’s a time and place for everything, even feelings.’ Ah dear God, if I could only express my true feelings. After six years she had begun to doubt that she had a true vocation as a governess. Sometimes she found herself thinking thoughts that were as revolutionary as those being trumpeted in Moscow right now; though hers were social and romantic rather than political. So far she had managed not to reveal any of her thoughts to her two charges.

‘You have a double standard,’ said Frederick. ‘One law for the rich like us and another one for you.’

‘How on earth can you stand him?’ Eden asked Olga.

Olga, ten years old, already beautiful and waiting for the world to be laid at her feet, shrugged. ‘He’ll get worse, I’m afraid. But by then I shall be married and living on the French Riviera.’

‘You have a little while to go before that happens, my girl.’

Ah, what dreams we women have! But at ten she, living in the semi-detached house in Croydon, south of London, had been dreaming of nothing more than being the bride of the boy next door who, she remembered now, had had adenoids and a tendency to nervously pick his nose when spoken to by a girl. She had never thought of herself as of the stuff of which French Riviera beauties were made. But then she had also never thought that she would finish up here in Russia and Siberia as governess to the children of a Russian aristocrat.

It was another hour before they came to the first fields that marked the border of the Gorshkov estate. Once a month Eden drove into Verkburg in the carriage to see if any mail had arrived for herself or the children; it was a twelve-mile drive each way and she did not enjoy it in the summer heat. There had been no letter today for her from her parents, but there had been one each for the children from their mother and another one for her. The children had read theirs with excitement and delight; she had read hers with growing trepidation and despair. She turned the horses in through the white pillars of the gateway and drove up the long avenue of poplars and wondered how much longer she and the children were going to be isolated here, the children separated from their parents and she from the England that she had now begun to pine for.

She pulled the horses to a halt in front of the Gorshkov house. The house, built of a white-painted stone with a Palladian façade that had been added by the children’s grandfather, looked out of place amongst the wooden barns that surrounded it. Grandfather Gorshkov, the first Prince Gorshkov to add wealth to his title, had tried to buy taste at a time, in Europe, when taste was not at its highest. The Palladian-fronted house in itself was attractive; he had just not known enough to complement it with the appropriate surroundings. Plane trees threw shadows that softened the grey drabness of the barns and cow-sheds, and a few lilacs, faded now by the summer sun, added a touch of colour in the yard between the main barn and the house.

The Gorshkov estate covered fifteen thousand acres. It had been founded originally by a Prince Gorshkov who had been one of Catherine the Great’s lovers; he had lasted three months and had been known as the Wednesday Man, that being his day to perform. Arriving one Wednesday and finding he was in a queue, he had decided his time was up and left St Petersburg, exiling himself before Catherine disposed of him more permanently. He had come east, established himself and died here on the estate, leaving a wife, a son and two daughters. Following generations had built up the estate and in 1860, in the reign of Alexander II, they had moved back to St Petersburg and built themselves a small mansion just off the Nevsky Prospekt. The young princes had been educated in the Cadet Corps; the princesses went to the Smolny Institute. Though their names were never entered in the livre de Velours, they were close enough to flutter like loose addenda to that almanac of nobility. Princess Gorshkov, the children’s mother, whose family had been in the Livre de Velours, had impressed all this on Eden when she had first arrived in St Petersburg. Eden, who had not even met the Mayor of Croydon, had been suitably impressed at the time, though her awe had since worn off.

Far out on the rear boundary of the estate Eden knew the farm workers would be bringing in the harvest; tomorrow the traction engine in the threshing yard would be started up and today’s somnolent peace would be gone. This would be the first harvest since Prince Gorshkov had gone off to fight with General Denikin’s army. She wondered if the workers would demand it as their own property. No one knew these days what the workers were going to demand next.

As she got down from the carriage Nikolai Yurganov came across from the stables and took the horses’ heads. ‘Miss Eden—’

She turned back as she was about to follow the children into the house. ‘What is it, Nikolai?’

‘There’s a man in the big bam – I think you should see him—’

‘A man? What sort of man?’