Lom said nothing. Kantor leaned back in his chair.
‘So. Here we are. I wanted some time alone with you before Lavrentina comes. She’ll be here soon, I’m afraid, and after that it won’t be possible for us to speak like this any more. Which for me is genuinely regrettable.’ Kantor looked at his watch. ‘You’ve impressed me. Do you want to know what time it is? Ask me, and I’ll tell you.’
Lom said nothing.
‘Would you like to smoke?’ He laid a packet of cigarettes on the table. ‘Oh please, say something. We both know the game. I’ve been beaten myself, in rooms like this one. You ask yourself, will I be brave? But it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. Lavrentina will come soon, and that won’t be the kind of roughhouse you and I are used to.’
The strangest thing about Kantor, thought Lom, was that, despite all he knew about him, he was attractive. He turned interrogation into a teasing game. He made himself charming, fun to be with. You sensed his strength and power and his capacity for cruelty, but somehow that made you want him to look after you. He might kill you, but he might also love you.
‘Perhaps you’re still hoping you’ll be able to deliver Lavrentina’s stupid file to Krogh. Perhaps you’re thinking, Krogh is arresting Chazia even as we speak. He will come through the door any moment now and rescue me. But that isn’t going to happen.’ Kantor paused, and looked into Lom’s eyes with warm sympathy. ‘We found the files in the bathroom. And Krogh is dead. She had to do that, didn’t she, after that telephone call?’
Lom felt his defences crumbling. He was tired and scared and weak and sick.
‘You killed him, actually,’ Kantor was saying. ‘Of course you did. You knew you were doing it at the time. At least, you were indifferent whether it happened or not. See why you interest me, Lom? I see something of myself in you, as a matter of fact. And you killed Vishnik too.’
‘No!’
‘What do you want to know, Lom? Go on, ask me something and I will answer, I promise, even if only to repay the pleasure of having finally got you to speak. I have to get something out of you before Chazia does. You have the advantage of me: you’ve seen my file. Tell me about it. What does it say?’
It was as if he had been reading Lom’s thought processes in his face.
‘Chazia thinks she can use you,’ said Lom. ‘But she’s wrong, isn’t she? You’re using her. The question is, what for? What do you want, Kantor?’
‘Ha!’ cried Kantor. ‘You wonderful man! You do see to the heart of things, don’t you? You’re right, that is the biggest question. No one, not even the angel, has asked it until now.’
‘You owe me an answer.’
‘I do.’
‘So answer.’
‘Have you ever wondered where the angels come from?’
Surprised, Lom shook his head. ‘The stars, I guess,’ he said. ‘The planets. Outer space. Galaxies.’
‘Exactly. And what about that? We hardly consider it, do we? They arrive, and we take them for signs and wonders. Messages about us. Who is justified, who not? What clever machines can we make of their dying flesh? It’s all so narrow and trivial, don’t you think? As if this one damp and cooling world with its broken moons was all there is. The Vlast looks inwards and backwards all the time. But we’re seeing angels the wrong way round. What they tell us is, there are other worlds, other suns, countless millions of them; you only have to look up in the night to see them. And we can go there. We can move among them. Humankind spreading out across the sky, advancing from star to star.’
‘Impossible,’ said Lom.
Kantor slammed his hand on the table. ‘Of course it’s possible. It’s not even a matter of doubt. The engineering is straightforward. Like everything else, it is only a matter of paying the price. A few generations of collective sacrifice is all that’s needed. The fruit of the stars is there to be harvested. That’s our future. I know it. I’ve seen it in the voice of the angel. A thousand thousand glittering vessels rising into the sky and unfolding their sails and crossing the emptiness between stars. All it requires is ingenuity. Effort. Organisation. Purpose. Sacrifice. The deferment of pleasure. Imagine a Vlast of a thousand suns. That would be worth something. Can you see that, Lom? Can you imagine it? Can you share that great ambition?’
It seemed to be an honest question. It might have been a genuine offer, a door out of the torture room.
‘No,’ said Lom. ‘No. I can’t.’
‘Ah,’ said Kantor and shrugged. ‘Pity.’
The door opened and Lavrentina Chazia came in.
Archangel unfurls his mind like a leaf across the continent.
The dead dig trenches to bury themselves.
The dead ride long slow cattle trains eastwards, the streets behind them empty, the walls fallen from their houses, their wallpaper open to the rain, their home-stuff spilled across the streets. The smell of wet, burned buildings enriches the air.
Grey-haired young men with ears turned to bone.
A naked corpse lies at the foot of the slope; a lunar brilliance streams across the dead legs stuck apart.
Conscripts in trenches kiss their bullets in the dark and drink the snow.
Corpses awaiting collection stiffen like thorn trees.
Men and women hang by the neck from balconies on long ropes, like sausages in a delicatessen window.
I becoming We.
The clock and the calendar reset to zero.
Everything starts from here.
Archangel — voice of history, muse of death — reaches out across his world — the is and the will-be-soon — touching its unfolding — tasting its texture with his mind’s tongue — testing it with his mind’s fingers — it is satisfaction — it is joy — it is hope. The stars are coming, and the space between them.
And yet — and still — nearby but out of reach — the tireless egg of time glimmers diminutively in the massy dark — his future tinctured still with the edge of fear.
Chazia had brought a carpet bag with her, which she set on the table and began to unpack. Lom watched as she unrolled a chamois containing an array of small tools: blades, pliers, a steel-headed hammer.
Kantor picked up his hat and cigarettes and withdrew to a chair at the edge of the room. He laid the hat on his lap and folded his arms across it. It seemed like an instinctive act of self-protection. It wasn’t deference. It might have been distaste.
‘There is only one subject of interest to us, Investigator,’ said Chazia. ‘The whereabouts of Maroussia Shaumian, the daughter of Josef’s late wife. That is all. There is nothing else. The sooner we have exhausted that topic, the sooner we can leave this unpleasant room.’
His flimsy constructions of hope and defence crumbled. He said nothing.
‘Major Safran saw you talk to her, and now we can’t find her. I think you know where she has gone.’
‘He won’t speak,’ said Kantor. ‘He’s playing dumb.’
Chazia came round to Lom’s side of the table and knelt beside him. She began to bind him with leather straps like the collars of dogs. She fixed his hands to the legs of the chair, so that his arms hung down at his sides, and then she bound his ankles to the chair legs as well. Her face was close to his lap. Her breasts were pressing against the rough material of her uniform blouson. The patches on her skin didn’t look like stone, they were stone. Angel stone.