Suddenly a zizzing noise came from the rails. It’s just a vibration, he told himself. The heat. But no, a bell rang twice, a long harsh ring and then a shorter one. The half-dozen other passengers waiting for the local train began to gather up their bundles and baskets. A woman who had taken out her chicken for a breath of air stuffed it into its carrier, squawking.
The bell rang again. The rails were trembling. Yes, it was really coming. The train whistle shrieked, and Eeva started violently.
‘It’s all right. It’s only whistling to warn people off the track,’ he said. And then the train was in sight.
‘You remember where you’ve to change?’
She nodded.
‘Ask if you’re not sure. And you’ve got your ticket safe?’
My God, he sounded exactly like her father. When she unpacked, she’d discover the money he’d tucked into the bottom of her bundle. He had thrust it down between some books. She had let him buy her ticket in the end.
‘You didn’t choose to leave Helsinki. Why should you have to pay to go back there?’ he’d argued, when she told him she had enough money for the fare.
The train let off steam. Suddenly everything fell into stillness around him. Eeva was up there at the window, looking at him or perhaps even beyond him. Midday heat simmered with the smell of coal. Maybe the train would stay there for ever, breathing like a horse, and Eeva would continue to stand and he’d stand too, looking up at her and finding no words. They stood there awkwardly, their wait lengthening into embarrassment. And then the train jerked, the whistle shrieked and the engine began to pull. Slowly at first, as if it didn’t really mean to leave. And then the deep, wide-spaced chuffs of the engine grew more rapid and began to join together. For a few more seconds he could keep pace with the train, but suddenly he seemed to be walking backwards. The train was passing him without effort. He lengthened his step, but it still wasn’t fast enough. The train’s wheels beat faster and faster like a hammer in a dream which is really the rush of blood in your own head. He began to run and the train shrieked again, warning him off, and then it gathered itself and cantered past him, blowing down a plume of smoke and steam. And there he was at a standstill, on the cinders beyond the end of the shallow platform, watching the end of the train sway off down the rails.
She was gone. No matter how far he looked he wouldn’t find her. Only a grey cat twisting its belly in the sun as it rolled in a bed of nasturtiums. Slowly his hands crisped.
‘Fool,’ he said aloud. ‘You fool. Why didn’t you stop her?’
But that wasn’t what he meant. If only he could go back, that was it, that was what he meant. If he could go back to sitting in the hay hut, against the wall, while Eeva slept. If he could smell the sweetness of the grass. And this time he’d put out his hand, and touch her, and she’d open her eyes.
He’d missed his chance.
He doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping with pain. It was running in the heat that had done it. After a night without sleep, it had been too much for him. His heart beat thickly, and he tasted metal in his mouth. All your fine dreams, my friend, this is where they end up, he told himself. On the end of the end of the platform, in a little town in the middle of nowhere.
Those nasturtiums seemed to be pulsing, red and orange. He smelled their hot peppery scent where the cat had crushed them. He would never see her move about his house again. Give me a minute, just a minute, and I’ll be myself again, he thought. It’s the heat, it’s too much for us. We don’t understand it. We know how to shelter from the cold but when it comes to the sun we can’t defend ourselves.
But the cat rubbed her flanks into the flowers and yowled softly with pleasure.
21
‘But if you want to kill someone, first you have to get close to him,’ said Sasha. He swallowed more beer, wiped his mouth, and smiled.
‘In what way close?’ asked Lauri.
‘Physically close, that goes without saying. Unless you’re close enough to see the whites of his eyes, you’ll screw it up. You’re a bag of nerves on a mission like that, all keyed up so a touch’ll set you off. The bullet ends up going through some gormless official, and your man gets away. That’s if you’re using a pistol. If you’ve a rifle and some nice lead-alloy bullets, then naturally your range improves ex-pon-en-tially. But whatever happens you don’t want to be up so close that there isn’t a hope in hell of getting away afterwards.
‘We’re not talking martyrdom here, Lauri. We’ve had enough martyrs. Shooting your man at point-blank range and then turning the gun on yourself, leaving a note behind to explain your noble actions: no, that’s out. We’re too valuable, my son. We can’t afford to throw ourselves away.’
‘I’ve never fired a gun.’
‘No,’ answered Sasha easily, as if this was exactly what he’d hoped Lauri would say. ‘Why would you? Where would you get a gun? And besides, would it be your role in this situation, to fire a gun? Probably not.’
‘Who decides?’
‘Us. We decide. This business is ours. Nash.’
‘If it’s ours,’ retorted Lauri, ‘we’ve got to know what we’re talking about. You’re talking about assassination, Sasha, but neither of us can shoot. All I know about bomb-making is what I’ve seen on the back of an Anarchist pamphlet, and I wouldn’t trust that cack-handed lot to get it right.’
‘Fair point. You’d be more likely to blow your own foot off.’
Sasha was smiling again. He’s having a laugh, Lauri thought. We’ve been working away to create the correct conditions for Sasha’s ‘in-ev-it-able’ revolution, and now all of a sudden we’re switching to blowing people’s feet off.
‘Ass-ass-in-ation,’ drawled Sasha. ‘Scaa-aary word, isn’t it? I often think that if there was a better word, people would be able to cope with the idea, move forward, understand what’s going on. But pol-it-ic-al ass-ass-in-ation… No, as soon as you say it, off they canter on the old moral high horse. Out it all pours for the thousandth time. Is it wrong to kill, is it right to kill, what does God say, what does my conscience say, is it a sin, does the end justify the means?’ Sasha’s voice took on a narcissistic whinge. “‘Will I ever be able to live with myself afterwards?” Forgive me, Lauri,’ he interrupted himself with quick warmth, leaning forward, ‘I’m not putting you into that category. You’re different. You’re one of us. You’ve got your head screwed on. But it’s what they say. They can’t get it that all this conscience stuff is completely beside the point. It’s not even part of the argument.’
‘So what is the point?’
‘Method. It all comes down to method. Nothing else matters. Get the method right, and everything else falls into place. That’s what you’ve got to focus on, and then other questions don’t arise.’ He spread out his open, weaponless hands. ‘Right. Method One. Ambush your man in the middle of the night, coming back from a party somewhere, preferably drunk, probably careless. Knock him over the head, and then run away. That doesn’t sound too hard, does it?’
‘No,’ said Lauri. Voices crowded into his head. Big Juha, Eero. The shape of the stranger who was a police spy. He struck the back of his head… not likely he’ll be found before morning.
‘But Method One, admirable as it is, won’t do in this case. We’re not talking about a nobody here. Your man will have protection all the time. So, on to Method Two. Poison. Get someone into his household, trusted servant, whatever, arsenic in the caviar or whatever else it is that he can’t resist. It sounds all right, but it won’t work. We’re not living in Italy in the fifteenth century, and it’s too chancy. These are modern times. Everybody loves caviar, and someone else will get at it first, even if it’s got a great big label stuck on the jar saying “Personal – Exclusive – Governor-General’s Caviar”. Besides which, that way they can easily cover it up, say he had a stroke or something. And your man’s dead, but you haven’t made your point.
‘So, on to Method Three. Bombs. Plenty of good points here, as long as you don?
??t follow the instructions on the back of Anarchist pamphlets. They work, they’re not hard to make, they don’t cost much, they can be lobbed out of a crowd or planted beforehand, and they create terror as well as achieving their end. Two for the price of one, in fact. But then there’s the innocent bystander question –’ and here Sasha’s voice whinged again – ‘not that it’s possible to make an omelette, as we all know, without breaking eggs – but all the same, if you keep breaking eggs all over the place and it turns out your man’s changed his route and you’ve blown up a crocodile of schoolchildren instead… People don’t like it. Not that I’m saying bombs can’t be exactly what’s called for, in the right time and the right place.
‘And then there are the exotics. Mostly they’re far too ingenious, and so they go wrong. Garrotting, smothering with pillows, drowning in the bath, defenestration, poisoned umbrellas… plus points to all of them, I grant you, but plenty of minuses, too. Really, there are no limits to the ways a man can die, if you put your mind to it. As a rule of thumb, the more imaginative the method, the less chance it has of succeeding. And so we’re back where we started, with guns.’
‘You’re having a laugh, Sasha.’
‘Why?’
‘A crocodile of schoolchildren? You’re not serious.’
‘I am perfectly serious. What we’re all working for won’t happen, unless we have method. I’m being straight with you, that’s all. Telling you straight. Maybe you don’t like it. Maybe you rather like the status quo, in your heart of hearts. There are plenty of so-called revolutionaries who are wedded to the present and can’t see beyond it. Keep on holding meetings, advancing our political education and everybody else’s, defining our targets and our objectives, running around the country until we’re burned out. But that’s not political activism. It’s masturbation. Another word for it is liberalism.’
Lauri flushed angrily. ‘I’m no liberal, you know that.’
Sasha threw his arm around Lauri’s shoulder. ‘Of course you’re not, I know that. We’re in this together, bro. But don’t get trapped by thinking of one man, one single life, when there are so many lives.’ His tone darkened. His eyes blazed with a passion that Lauri had seldom seen. ‘Don’t get trapped by pity for one man who’s had everything the world’s got to offer, while there are workers with their arms crushed and cut off after factory accidents which need never have happened. While there are women who can’t feed their kids or get a doctor to them, families rotting in tenements with damp running down the walls, old people who haven’t got a coin to bury themselves with even though they’ve found kopecks for the priest all their lives, while you can work all your life long and still have to beg.
‘These are our people, Lauri. Not him. He’s had his turn. They need us and they’re relying on us, even though they’ve never heard of us and they probably never will. They’re our people. What does a man like Bobrikov count beside them? What’s conscience worth when all it’s capable of is keeping things the way they are? And yes, all right, let’s look at the innocent bystander question. Let’s not duck it. Suppose one child dies, so that a hundred children can live?’
But slowly, Lauri shook his head. ‘No. No. No, Sasha. I mean, I agree with you up to a point, but not with a child, not a real child.’
‘All right. That was just an illustration. We’re not using bombs this time, so nothing like that’s going to happen.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘I swear to you, Lauri,’ said Sasha. Again, his eyes shone with that fervour which can’t be faked, it has to come from the heart. ‘You believe me, don’t you? The operation with Bobrikov, it’ll be like – well, think of it like a surgeon cutting into a body to get rid of a diseased organ. I mean, it’s not safe, there’s blood and mess and danger, but if he didn’t do that operation, then the patient would die. The whole body would die for the sake of that one part that’s a cancer to it. In-ev-it-ably. All this is about life, Lauri, not death, even though we have to talk about death. Like a road, you understand? You have to go through death to get to life.’
Lauri took a deep breath. His own heart was pounding with an emotion he couldn’t name. When Sasha was like this, you felt you could refuse him nothing.
‘Only Bobrikoy? Just him?’
‘Just him.’ Sasha’s eyes were fixed on Lauri. ‘I’ve told you this much because I trust you. I’ve been watching you a long time, don’t you know that? Don’t go soft on me now, Lauri.’
‘Who’re you calling soft?’
‘Hey, no need to get angry. But what’s the point of political activism if all we do is preserve this rotten status quo? We know where we stand. Unless we’re prepared to take the next step we might as well all pack up, go home and take up fishing. I won’t do that, Lauri. I’m not going to betray everything I believe in.’ His dark eyes glowed, pupils dilated. Yes, Lauri had heard something like this a hundred times, but not from Sasha, not direct like this. it wasn’t theory Sasha was talking about, it was reality. It sounded fresh, new, like snow nobody else had ever trodden on.
Sasha’s face was naked in its intensity. For once, Lauri saw, he’d thrown off his mask of control to reveal the raw passion underneath. And he’d named his man. Bobrikov. The Governor-General, the Tsar’s man. You couldn’t aim any higher, not without…
Now it was said, Lauri couldn’t help a chill of fear. The name was too big. Was it possible that they could think of killing Bobrikov, a man as much part of the Tsar as his right arm?
‘But he’s so high up,’ he said, and as soon as he’d said it he felt as stupid as a ox, balking on his way to the slaughterhouse. The weight of Sasha’s arm was heavy around his shoulders. He smelled Sasha’s sweat.
‘All the better to fall,’ said Sasha. His mouth was so close to Lauri’s ear that the warm moisture of his breath curled into it. There was a long silence. Lauri began to wish that Sasha would take his arm away, but it didn’t seem comradely to move. After a while, however, he shifted position, trying to make it seem natural, as if his leg was cramped.
‘All this, but I still can’t fire a gun,’ he said, trying to make light of it. They seemed to have moved beyond the point of agreement, before Lauri realized that they had reached it.
‘There’ll be someone else for that. You’ll meet him when it’s time. He’s a Swede, a student, from a good family.’
The way he said it made Lauri curious. ‘Sasha, you never talk about your family. What are they like?’
‘They’re not like anything,’ said Sasha, his face closed. ‘I don’t have anything to do with them.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘I doubt if you do. To put it simply, he’s an animal. She’s very religious. My mother. Everything she thinks and does, she has to hide it from him, because if he found out he’d smash it. He’s as stupid as shit, but he’s cunning. He can get into everything. Even your feelings, your thoughts. He smashes everything. So everything’s got to be hidden away. You’ve even got to hide the fact that you breathe. It’s the only way to survive, until you can get out. I got out, but she never will. My mother.’
‘You could help her.’
Sasha shrugged. ‘She’s weak. You can’t help weak people. I’ve learned that.’
‘So what about this Swede of good family, then?’ asked Lauri.
‘You don’t need to know his name yet. He’s perfect. He can get as close as you like to Bobrikov, and they’ll never think of suspecting him, because he’s close in all the other ways that matter, too. He’s part of them, born to be one of those high-ups you were talking about, the ones who keep the system running. Our precious “administrator class”. They have all kinds of high ideals about service and social responsibility and preserving Finland’s autonomy through cooperation with Russia. But all it means is that they do the Tsar’s dirty work for him, until the work gets so dirty that even they can’t help noticing it. And then they retire to their country estates and tug their moustaches and enjoy their moral virtue.
‘But our student, for some reason, is different. He doesn’t want to administer Finland for the Tsar, because he’s a real old-fashioned patriot, and for once it’s not all talk. He’s ready to put his money where his mouth is. Or, in this case, his gun. He’s nobly agreed to shoot Bobrikov in order to “free Finland from the yoke of Russian oppression”.’
Yes, there it was again. Sasha, mocking the ideals he was about to make use of. Lauri thought again that he wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of Sasha.
‘Shoot Bobrikov,’ Sasha continued, ‘and then the Tsar will immediately see sense – the Romanovs are well known for seeing sense – and we can get back to the old comfortable state of affairs where the Tsar will let the Swedes run the country for him, and we’ll all call it Finnish autonomy.
‘So you see, the goals of our student and his friends aren’t quite the same as our goals. In fact they are completely different. We know that the Tsar won’t see sense, no matter how many Governors-General are shot. It’s not remotely possible for a Romanov. In fact the Tsar will probably oblige us by bringing in a crackdown which will make the present situation seem like heaven on earth. A crackdown’s exactly what we want. Then, my friend, we’ll start to see some friction. And after the friction comes the action. It’s precisely – pre-cise-ly - such extreme situations that will create the correct conditions for revolution. They draw together all the elements that should be drawn together: workers, peasants, students, even, God help us, the intelligentsia.
‘So never mind what our Swede thinks is happening. It doesn’t matter. He can shoot, that’s the only thing about him that matters. We took him out to a birch wood and set up a target and I can tell you he was impressive. Right into the heart of it without a blink. And he can get close to Bobrikov. He’s got no previous form at all, the Okhrana have never even heard of him, and he doesn’t look like one of the comrades.’ Sasha laughed appreciatively. ‘He’s so nice. Brushed hair, good clothes, smells of Cuir de Russie, beautiful manners. Above all, he’s got that milk-fed innocent look those Swedish high-ups always have. They’ve got this knack of finding themselves at the top of the pile without so much as soiling their gloves,’ said Sasha. ‘Yes, our Swede is perfect. You could take him anywhere, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’