The Colloquium of Four sat on the high platform at the north end of the All-Dominions Thousand Year Hall on chairs of plush red velvet. Chazia was in the centre with Chairman Fohn. Dukhonin, the General Secretary, was on Chazia’s left, and Khazar–negligible Khazar, the Minister for Something–sat at Fohn’s right hand. The platform, raised high above the crowd, had room for a hundred, but the Four sat alone, a wide frosty space gaping between each chair. To the crowd we look small, Chazia thought. Unimpressive. Vulnerable. Fohn had planned the Novozhd’s funeral and he had fucked it up. Every part of it.
Fohn would make the speeches. Reading the exequies of the lost leader. Chazia had not objected. Let Fohn lick the dead man’s arse; she wouldn’t wrap herself in his corpse-shroud. They would know her for other reasons soon enough.
Behind the Four on their chairs, Fohn had hung immense waterfalls of red and black fabric and, bathed in a golden spotlight, a portrait of the Novozhd fifty feet tall. Fine words picked out in letters of gold.
WE WILL REMEMBER HIM, AND IN REMEMBERING, VICTORY!
STAND TOGETHER, CITIZENS, AGAINST ENEMIES WITHIN AND WITHOUT!
Beneath the platform the corpse itself was displayed. It lay on crimson silk in an open casket of black wood polished to a mirror shine. The embalmers had done their work thoroughly: repaired his bomb wounds, given his face a waxy apple flush, blacked and glossed his hair and moustache. A man in the prime of life. The image of his portrait. Only the drab khaki uniform that Fohn had insisted on–We must remember, colleagues, that we are, after all, in a state at war–spoiled the fine effect. The four mudjhiks faced outwards, one at each corner of the catafalque, motionless and watchful, the colour of dried blood.
From the Thousand Year Hall, after the funeral, the body was to be carried in solemn procession to the Khronsk-Gorsk Mausoleum. Factories had been closed for the day so the workers could line the avenues for the cortège. Free meals were being served at the municipal canteens. On the way to the funeral Chazia had seen huge crowds of people in mourning black. Karetas, droshkis and cars, black ribbons and pennants fluttering.
Chazia’s attention was fixed on the crowd in the hall. The first rows of seating were reserved for war veterans. They sat in rigid silence, holding up their crutches, pointing with them towards the leaders on the podium like arms raised in salute. And behind them, row after row, dissolving into shadow, one hundred thousand persons dressed in black with touches of red, standing to attention in perfect rank and file, not one speaking a word. So many feet, so many shoulders, so many lungs breathing. The noise of a hundred thousand silences–the small shuffle for balance, the rub of cloth against cloth, the swallow and stifled cough–roared against the platform like the sea. One hundred thousand faces, one expression. The sombre gravity of grief. It was one body. One mass. It had heaviness. Inertia. An existence all of its own. It was the Vlast.
Chazia pictured how it would be when she stood alone before them, speaking in a fine clear amplified voice. Two hundred thousand shining eyes fixed on her. The roar of their cheering. The rhythmic stamping of two hundred thousand feet. They would chant her name. She would throw her arms wide to embrace their acclamation, and her hair would lift and stir in the wind of their breath.
In the Thousand Year Hall, the waiting dragged on too long. The hundred thousand people waited. On their platform the Colloquium of Four waited. Dead time. Chazia felt the mass dissolving. Atomising. A hundred thousand separate thoughts. Fucking Fohn. He was surely finished after this.
There was a deep loud crash from outside the hall. Another. And another. The distant explosions roared on and on, ceaselessly, merging into a rolling brutal thunder. The veterans were standing to attention, right hands clenched against their chests. Somewhere in the crowd a woman was screaming. The Archipelago! The Archipelago has come! But it was only the five hundred guns of the fleet at the Goll Dockyards doing their bit.
At last the thundering guns subsided into silence and a magnified rustling came over the tannoy. The Combined Services Orchestra in the gallery was getting ready to play. Chazia could see them across the vastness of the auditorium, minute figures in a splash of stark white light for the kinematograph camera. When Colonel of Music Vikhtor Vanyich Forelle raised his baton, all other lights in the hall fell dim. Everything disappeared in shadow, apart from the orchestra and the corpse itself, isolated under a single spotlamp. The effect drew murmurs of appreciation from the mourners. Well done, Fohn. They can’t see us at all now.
The music began. The slow movement from Frobin’s Lake Horseman Suite. The massed voices of the Navy Choir singing the ‘Blood of Angels’ chorus from Winter Tears.
Vlast! Vlast! Freedom land!
My heart a flag in winter–
The drum of my blood
In storms of rain.
Music was of no interest to Chazia. She waited for it to end.
Someone edged across the platform towards her, taking advantage of the dimness that hid them from the hall. It was Iliodor. Ignoring Fohn’s ostentatious disapproval, he crouched behind Chazia and whispered in her ear.
She smiled.
‘Good,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Good. When you have her, bring her to me.’