Stone's Fall

'The subject has never come up, but I imagine so. Do you wish to meet him? You are a journalist, I take it.'

'How did you know that?'

'Because the moment you open your mouth you start asking questions. Because you clearly know nothing about anarchism and because you are a friend of Stefan, who is a journalist as well. You don't work for the Daily Mail, do you?'

'Certainly not,' I said, almost offended.

'That is good.'

'You don't mind me coming?'

'Oh, no. The more publicity the better. Comrade Kropotkin has written many articles for newspapers, here and abroad, showing the origins and nature of what we believe. He has just finished a long article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And now, if you will excuse me.'

The courteous anarchist moved off towards the stage. He walked with a limp, I noticed, and he looked as though moving was painful for him. He weaved an erratic course as he went, stopping frequently to greet people, pat them on the back, talk briefly with them. One woman he bowed to in an oddly old-world fashion. She was dressed simply, with a muffler around her head as though she had a cold, and a sprig of flowers in her hair. She briefly broke off her conversation with a large unshaven man to greet him, and half turned to respond with an unsmiling, cold nod of the head.

'These, eh?'

'What?' I turned, to see a grim man staring at me as though I had just advocated the abolition of taxes for land-owners. Powerful, intelligent, his eyes radiating annoyance at his feeble grasp of language.

He waved his arm. 'Chairs. They must organise.' He spoke with such a thick and indeterminate accent that it was difficult to realise his understanding of English grammar was rudimentary, as it was almost impossible to make out anything at all.

'What?' I repeated, almost panicking.

He picked up a chair, put it into my hand and propelled me roughly across the room until it was next to the one in a line, and made me put it down. Then he gestured to all the other chairs.

'Again.'

'Ah. Right.' He was not the sort of man who would brook any refusal. I half expected him to whip out a revolver and shoot me on the spot if I so much as looked reluctant. So I picked up another chair, and then another, and slowly set them out, row by row.

'Good. Very good.' A thunderous clap on the back and a broad smile signified my labours for the common good had met with approval. 'Drink.'

He thrust a bottle of beer at me, contrary to the 1892 Regulation of Drink Act, and scowled, or maybe it was a smile. Hard to tell. I smiled back, as best I could. I really didn't want a drink, but again I felt it unwise to refuse. We toasted each other, smiled again, indulged in another bout of backslapping, and then he drifted off.

'And you will be Comrade Matthew, the journalist friend of Comrade Stefan,' came a cold female voice behind me. It spoke with a heavy German accent, but was both grammatical and comprehensible.

I spun round. I opened my mouth to speak. Suave and sophisticated, able to deal with any eventuality. That was the way I wanted to be, and very definitely the way I wasn't. I couldn't say a word.

'Are you here to hear the speech? It is not often we get journalists here, so I imagine you are here to see Comrade Peter.' She spoke quietly, and was one of those who did not look at the person she was speaking to. Stared hard, rather, somewhere above my left shoulder, communicating a contempt which fully matched the harshness of her voice.

'Um.'

'Get a good seat. He mumbles.'

She tossed back her head, and swept a strand of loose hair from her eyes with one finger. I had watched her intensely; had memorised her every gesture, and that was something she did not do. It was as though she had taken on a different persona entirely. Almost as though she was a different person. I felt utterly confused. Surely it could not be so.

She was dressed in the manner of everyone else in the room; thin, old clothes, utterly unbecoming, with thick black boots. Buttoned up to the neck with a row of buttons, one of which was undone, one missing. Her face was severe and more serious, it looked as though it had been angry often. Her skin was pallid, old looking. Weary. The smile had no warmth in it at all.

No, I decided.

'And you are?'

'Call me Jenny,' she said flatly.

'Is it your real name?'

'What does that matter? With women names are ownership. Who your father was, who your husband is. We must choose our own names, you agree?'

'Absolutely. Just what I was thinking myself.'

'I do not approve of frivolity.'

'Sorry. Habit.'

'Divest yourself of this habit.' She had pronounced. She had finished. 'You will find the meeting instructive if you pay proper attention.'

She almost clicked her heels together, I swear, and then, very briefly, for a fraction of a fraction of a second as she turned away, I caught her eye. Grey. And I got that familiar shock, running through my system; the curdling feeling in my stomach, the outpouring of breath, the sudden speeding up of my heart.