‘Jesus Christ!’ a Canadian from the Parti Unite Nationale shouted. ‘How close was that?’
‘This way, please’, Yulia was saying, leading them up a stairway, circling the conference room’s arched porticos. ‘The building is protected!’ Tom estimated there were over a hundred delegates crowded into the anteroom where hot drinks and digestive biscuits were being served. Taking a cup and spooning sugar, he looked over his shoulder. Janssen was nowhere to be seen. The Professor figured he was supervising security.
‘Anyone here from the USA?’ someone called. ‘I’m from Dallas.’ Tom found himself talking to a short, fat American clutching a book entitled Suprahumanism. They exchanged business cards. Everyone was sizing each other up in the usual academic dick-measuring contest that these events inevitably became. The atmosphere was male and predatory. Young, female interpreters were getting plenty of unsolicited attention.
‘I think some are hookers’, the Texan said under his breath. ‘See the butt on that one!’ Tom looked with a degree of contempt at the paunchy wisecracker in front of him.
‘That, my friend, is a product of the Shintashta gene pool!’ Tom replied, casting a warm gaze over the slinky figure of a young student, ‘the very same people who first mastered the horse, used the wheel, and gave birth to the Proto-Indo-European languages.’
‘What is it with these women, man?’ came the superficial reply. The American’s eyes were bulging, lips moistening with the thought of unfastening her bra strap.
‘You are looking at a time capsule. That is what women should look like. Your attraction is more than just physical. It is embedded in your DNA. Do you have any idea of her lineage?’ The American was lost now, he was hoping to talk about copulation and alcohol. This lecture was unnerving him. ‘She is a descendent of Vlasta, the famed female warrior who gave rise to the legend of the Amazons. Anna Michailivna and Queen Olga of Kiev who annihilated the Devlians.’ He stopped for a moment to gauge the American’s response. Sensing confusion, he decided to make it easier for him. ‘And through her Rus heritage, she is Varangian. Their women stood side-by-side with the men in the shield wall. A lady called Marulla drew a line in the sand at Lemnos with the tip of her sword, before driving off Mohammed’s Turks.’
‘Awesome!’
‘Quite!’
He sat on the window’s ledge, flicking through vintage editions of Nash Put (Our Path), observing the networking. Peter Janssen was talking confidentially to a tall man with a wire running to his ear. Karre was flirting mercilessly with a swarthy Spanish liaison officer from the Populist Party. Behind him, in the courtyard, two lichen-covered statues stared blindly back in a tone of intellectual defiance. Memorials to academic heavyweights, he thought to himself. Names on Russian journals and research papers he would never read or comprehend. They were yesterday’s men. Fighters like Janssen were today’s men, a new breed. He smiled inwardly, thinking about where he fit in. What was it Eliot had written?
His reverie was broken by Yulia’s harping. Her words fell irritatingly like cockroaches dropping from a straw roof. Hoffman was standing next to him, nicotine fingers stroking his chin.
‘You look tired. Did you have an active night?’
‘Yeah, you could say that.’
‘You like Russian hospitality?’
‘Yes, very much…’
‘So I see…’ Hoffman’s eyes followed Tom’s face as it slipped all over a pert young lady swinging by, coffee cup in hand. ‘Now let me introduce you to Valentine, Rector of this august establishment. You know this is part of a new Arctogaia, a different sort of university. There was another in Kazakhstan, named by President Nursultan Nazarbayev after Lev Gumilev, the National Eurasian University. Valentine is a very important person, a leading light in the Vtorzhenie Movement, against Left and Right, a recognised authority on the anthropological aspects of the Don Basin.’ They walked together to the lecture theatre. Hoffman unbuckled the pipe stem from his mouth, licking cracked lips as Yulia came towards them, brandishing her umbrella like a medieval weapon.
‘Come, come, honoured guests, it is time, please!’
Entering the auditorium, they were hit by a wall of light. The atmosphere crackled. The hair on Tom’s arms stood on end. You could practically taste the tungsten at the back of your throat.
‘Where do we sit?’ Yulia overheard Hoffman’s question and orchestrated them with the metal tip of her umbrella to some seats midway across the third aisle.
‘Reserved for you!’ They clambered along, causing a Mexican wave of shuffling knees and jostling briefcases, assuming their places next to Iryna, Tom’s guide around the Peter and Paul fortress. ‘I see you are a keen student’, she gushed. ‘Welcome!’
‘Indeed, spasibo.’ By the time the audience had settled, the hall was impressively full. Besides representatives from the Zaporozhian Sich, sitting under a bright red Cossack flag with a Maltese Cross above the stage, there were leading figures from Golden Dawn, Germany’s NPD, Austria’s Freedom Party, Hungary’s Jobbik, the Lithuanian Unity Party, the National Alliance Latvia, the Progress Party Norway, the Danskernes Parti from Denmark, the Sweden Democrats, Bulgaria’s Natsionalen Sayuz Ataka, National Union Attack, the Finnish Perussuomalaiset, the True Finns, the National Front from France, and an assortment of British nationalist groups. Valentine Bondarenko, the Rector, stepped up to the microphone and began to speak. His willow-thin features and speckled scalp were sweating in the spotlights. In his opening remarks, he ventured to say that in the past, such a multi-national gathering of White advocates would never have occurred. ‘But that time of suspicion and division has come to an end. We stand straight and tall’, he said proudly, ‘and speak out loudly for our ancestry!’ The audience responded with a standing ovation. Waiting for the exuberance to subside, he concluded, ‘Now it is my pleasure to invite our respected colleague, Vasili Burov, to commence proceedings with his introductory lecture on “Contemporary Misconceptions of the politics of Belarus”.’ A further wave of applause drum-tapped the speaker to the podium. A plasma screen lit up, and Burov’s right hand squeezed the computer controls like a well-drilled Tupolev fighter pilot. Two hours and three presentations later, the first break was announced. Taking the opportunity, Tom slipped away while the other delegates milled around talking, dipping malted biscuits in sweet black chai.
3.
… to discover where this exquisite creature lived who seemed to have flown straight down from heaven onto the Nevsky Prospekt, and who would probably fly away…
Hard rain pelted the college cloister. The muddy rivulets were running zig-zag cracks on the path. Tom was sheltering under a wild cherry when he first noticed the whisper trails of her brown hair, then the determined step of leather boots, textbooks clutched firmly to her breast. Coming out from under peeling bark, scabrous flesh blowing like a leper’s limbs, he fell in stride behind, eyes focussed on the suede shoulderbag swinging at a sleekly-curved hip. Following through arched gateways, along cobbled courtyards, he was mesmerised by the rhythmic click-clack of heels ricocheting like sniper bullets off stone.