The Ocean of Time Read Online Free PDF

partner on this venture. If I am hurt, she tells me, then she will get me home.
    I like that, even if it’s unnecessary. Because if I am badly hurt, then someone from Four-Oh will come and get me, and Time will be changed so that no hurt has been done. Nor will any burden be placed on Katerina’s memory, for with that change her recollection of everything will also be erased.
    But she doesn’t know that. As far as she’s concerned, I’m Otto, a German trader from her own century, and that is
all
I am.
    I put the map away, then lie back, stretching out, totally relaxed for the first time in weeks, and after a while she lies down next to me, her head resting on my chest, her eyes closed, dozing in the warm sunlight. It’s a pleasant way to spend time: the sound of the oars, the rush of the water going by the hull of the twelve-man
ushkui
, the call of birds high in the clear blue sky above us. After a while, the boatmen begin to sing and I hear – and feel – Katerina humming the tune to herself.
    And so we sail on, as the afternoon becomes evening. The sun slowly sinks beneath the trees far to our right as we sit there, watching the land draw closer.
    It’s a beautiful evening, the thin wisps of cloud on the horizon painted crimson by the setting sun, and as we row into the river’s mouth, I have a sense of the enormity of Time, of the weight of the long centuries surrounding us, and I want to say something to her, only I can’t. She must never know.
    The land here is unspoiled, the virgin forest stretching away unchecked to either side, and as the last trace of sunlight disappears, so the night rushes in, the sky dark suddenly, the stars burning above us.
    Katerina snuggles close as I put my arm around her and begin to tell her about the stars – the truth this time, not some romantic myth – and after a while she stares at me, astonished, then laughs.
    ‘You’re making it up, Otto! Teasing me!’
    ‘No,’ I say, then let her have it her own way. Maybe she is not ready for that yet. Maybe …
    Her kiss surprises me. Reminds me where I am and when.
Home
, I think. For wherever she is, is home.

162
    Shaposhnikov, the captain, moors the boat at a turn in the river and, leaving us on-board, takes his men ashore. From where we lie in the darkness we can see their campfire burning brightly, throwing up cinders into the night, and hear, in the stillness, the deep, low murmur of their voices. For a while I hesitate, wondering if any of them have perhaps crept back, to hide in the dark nearby and watch us, but it’s no good, the warmth of her naked body beside me on the fur-lined pallet makes me forget myself and, after a long and pleasant while, I come to myself again as if from the depths of dream, the stillness of the night much more intense than before.
    I frown, then realise that the boatmen have fallen silent, listening to us.
Imagining
us. Beneath me, Katerina stirs and softly laughs.
    ‘Do you think they heard us, Otto?’ she whispers.
    Her pupils reflect the stars. So beautiful, her eyes. Like mirrors into the cosmos itself. I smile and touch my lips to hers. My flesh is still within her, is still hard despite all her best attempts to blunt its ardour.
    ‘Maybe,’ I whisper back, moving slowly against her, making her catch her breath. ‘But you know what?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I don’t care.’
    She is moving now, pushing herself up against me to meet each slow, deliberate thrust. She giggles. ‘You were very noisy, Otto.’
    ‘Noisy?
Me
? What about
you
?’
    She answers with a kiss and, in a while, the voices round the fire take up again, even as my love and I begin again, the warm Russian darkness surrounding us, without and within, timeless and eternal.

163
    We make good time. At midday on the tenth day we come to Velikie Luki, the small town nestling into the trees on a bend in the river. There was a Rus’ fort here a century ago, but it fell into ruin, its log walls rotting away. Then, thirty