it up in the corner behind the stove. It was there now. And he’d accumulated other treasures over the years: the plain gilded mirror, only a little tarnished; the red lacquer caddy; the tinted lithograph of dancers. He looked at it now, all spilled across the floor.
‘Fuck,’ said Vishnik quietly, almost to himself. ‘Fuck.’ A tired resignation settled over him. None of it mattered now. He had known this time would come. He picked up the holdall, waiting packed by the doorway. ‘OK,’ he said to the VKBD man. ‘OK. Let’s go.’
The VKBD man took the bag from Vishnik’s hand and shut the door.
‘You won’t be needing that,’ he said. ‘We’re not going anywhere. All we need is here.’
‘What?’ said Vishnik.
‘Where is Lom? Where is the girl? Where is the file?’
‘What the fuck is this?’ Vishnik was angry. Livid. ‘Who the fuck are you, with your fucking questions? Look at my room. Look what you have done. You can go fuck yourself.’
‘Where is Lom? Where is the girl? Where is the file? Please answer.’
‘Number one,’ said Vishnik. ‘I don’t know. Number two. What girl? Number three. What fucking file?’
The two men in rubber overalls were standing now. They picked up the couch and moved it to the middle of the room. The VKBD man repeated the questions. And then the fear came. Vishnik stumbled and almost fell. But he would not fall. He would not.
‘You,’ said Vishnik, ‘can piss for it.’
The VKBD man indicated the couch in front of him.
‘Sit down, Prince Vishnik. No, lie down. Close your eyes and think. We have plenty of time. Shout all you like. No one will come. The dvornik will have told them we are here and they’ll keep quiet until we are gone. You know this is true. No one will come to help you. Now…’ He put a hand on Vishnik’s shoulder and propelled him gently forward. ‘Please don’t feel you must attempt to endure. Prolongation of your pain is needless and inconvenient.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Vishnik. ‘Fuck you.’
55
Lom’s tram forced its way against the rising storm. The other passengers sat tightly silent, staring out through the rain-streaming windows. The air grew bruises, purple and electric. Wind burst upon the streets in panicky, erratic bellows. Ragged whorls and twisters of wind-lashed rain threw hard gobbets against roofs and windows. Within moments floodwater was gushing up through the gratings of the sewers.
The tramway was raised above it, running on embankments and viaducts. Lom watched the mounting flood through blurred glass. People caught in the streets wrapped their arms over their heads and waded for shelter. The embankments of the city overbrimmed. Canal barges and ferries were tipped out of their channels into the streets and surged about helplessly before the wind, thumping hollowly against the walls of buildings, smashing through the windows of shops and theatres and restaurants. Pale faces looked out from upper windows. Droshki drivers struggled in the teeth of the storm to cut their horses loose from their traces and let them swim. It was impossible to tell street from canal. Some people had taken to boats and sculled their way slowly between tenements and shopfronts. A few souls swam, making little progress against the currents and churn.
The tram trundled on, deeper into the city, until at last the inevitable confronted it and it lurched to a halt in a shower of sparks from the power cable overhead, up to its wheel-tops in mud-thickened surging water. In the aftermath of the engine’s surrender, wind and rain filled Lom’s ears. His first instinct was to wait where he was, but the driver was shouting at them that they had to get out.
‘The water is rising! The car will tip!’
They could already feel her shifting uneasily under the pressure of the flood. One by one they climbed down. The water was almost up to his waist, brown and icy cold.
The passengers from the tram stood in a huddle in the water, ineffectually wiping at the rain streaming down their faces, at a loss. There was a small bakery nearby, its door open, the flood lapping dully at the counter lip. Baskets and sodden loaves and pastries floated low in the water. From an upstairs casement a man in a pink shirt was beckoning, mouthing, his words lost in the rain. The others moved towards the shop, but Lom ignored him. He had to get to Pelican Quay.
56
When Lakoba Petrov came to his room, Josef Kantor’s first instinct was to shoot him out