Dr Berlin (15 page)

As Ivan walks away from the devastated village, there is the sound of an explosion. He is suddenly consumed by fire. Flames curl around his body. The images on the screen disappear, and the sheet is a blank rectangle of light once more. The projector is smoking. The broken reel of film clatters helplessly against the metal spool. There are expressions of anger and dismay. Children stand up to see what is happening. The projectionist bends over his machine, doing his best to douse the fire while others inspect the damage by the light of hastily lit lanterns.

‘How bad is it?'

The projectionist shakes his head. ‘We'll have to show the rest tomorrow.'

‘It's nearly at the end of the first reel,' someone says. ‘We didn't miss much.'

There are groans and cries as the illusion is lost. Secretly Andrei is pleased. Now he can dream of what Ivan will do next, amid a feeling of delicious anticipation, waiting for this time tomorrow.

On the morning after the breakdown, a number of the fathers gathered in one of the family apartments to inspect the projector. Andrei hung around on the off chance that they might show some of the second reel to test their repairs. He listened patiently to the theories for the breakdown – a faulty fuse, a surge in power, poor connections on the cable – a lot of head-shaking and advice but no agreement on the cause. The projector was stripped down and reassembled. He dozed at
one point, to be awakened by cheers when the machine was working again. Someone had spliced the broken film together, and he was able to watch the last few moments on the reel projected onto the white wall of the common sitting room.

The day dragged by. He went down to the crowded beach, swam with his mother, walked to the end of the concrete groyne and dangled his feet over the edge. His mother gave him some sandwiches and fruit for lunch and urged him to play with the other boys his age. He hated football, he told her. Surely she knew he was no good at it. Anton appeared soon after with his friend Igor Orenko, and did his best to persuade Andrei by kicking him to get up off the red towel he shared with his mother as they lay on the sand.

‘He's got a headache,' his mother declared, defending Andrei with lies. For once Anton believed her and left his younger brother alone.

‘You're thinking about Ivan,' his mother said later, as they made ready to leave the beach.

‘Yes,' Andrei said. ‘What else is there to think about?'

‘I've seen the film before,' she said, giving him a hug.

‘I don't want to know,' Andrei pleaded.

‘It's all right, I won't spoil it for you.'

As they climbed the steps towards the huge building, Andrei took his mother's hand.

They didn't see the film that night nor the next day because it rained, a light, incessant veil of warm rain that made the dry countryside green. Andrei spent much of his time by himself lying on his bed. He avoided the other boys, especially Anton. In his mind he relived Ivan's adventures as if they were his own. What would he do if his mother, father and brother were suddenly killed? Where would he go? How would he survive? His impatience to learn where Ivan's journey would take him forced him to beg his mother to tell him what happened. She laughed at his curiosity, saying he must wait and see.

Two nights later Ivan's adventures began again.

*

Ivan wakes, desperate with hunger. It is more than a day since he's last eaten and he is almost too weak to move. The pall of smoke that only a few hours before had turned day into night has gone. Only the acrid stink of burned houses remains now, smouldering fabric, charred corpses. The smell brings back terrifying memories of the horror of what had happened only a few hours before, and he feels tears welling in his eyes.

His companion of the previous day is still asleep. He appeared from nowhere yesterday afternoon. He said nothing about where he came from, nor who he was. A refugee, probably, from some neighbouring village that had been burned to the ground just as his had been. Together they had escaped the fighting by hiding under a pile of sacking in a coal cellar. Once they heard shouts and a woman's screams in the room above, followed by a single shot. They had clung together from fear that they might be discovered, dragged from their hiding place and killed. They had waited until well after dark before they ventured out. By then, they had been surrounded by silence for hours.

The village is deserted. The only light comes from the flickering flames in the houses that are still burning. No building has been left untouched, no door unbroken, no window unsmashed. They see a headless body in the street and a dead donkey lying on its back. They search in the ruined houses for something to eat but find nothing. The village has been ransacked. What couldn't be stolen has been destroyed. Then, exhausted by their ordeal, they find shelter in a ruin and fall asleep.

Ivan knows it is early because his breath is visible in the morning air. His nameless companion lies a few feet away, wrapped in an old coat he must have salvaged, his arms around his face to keep out the light. He can hear the rhythmic sound of his breathing. He creeps towards him and feels carefully in the pocket of his overcoat. His fingers close on something
hard. He pulls out a lump of cheese. He'd had it on him all the time yesterday, the bastard, and he hadn't once talked of sharing it.

Carefully he removes his prize. The lump is old and stale, with green bits of mould around the outside. He rubs them off with a stone and eats hungrily. It doesn't taste good but it is better than nothing. He gets to his feet, brushing yesterday's coal dust off his arms and legs. The morning sun is low in the sky. There is the smell of smoke everywhere. The village where he has spent his entire life is unrecognisable. He has got to go somewhere but where? He has no idea. All he knows is that he must escape. One life has ended, when his parents and his elder brother were dragged away, their screams finally silenced by three pistol shots. That was the past. Survival means forgetting about what happened. Today a new life is about to begin. Where that might take him, whether he will survive, he has no idea. All he cares about now is food, how he will quell the raging demands of his stomach. He hopes he ends up where they have plenty to eat.

‘You bastard. Come back.'

The stone hits him on the back and he turns to see his companion chasing after him. He puts up his arm to protect himself from more missiles.

‘You stole my cheese.'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Lying bastard. You did.'

The boy is running towards him, shouting angrily. This, he knows,
is
about survival, the primitive urge to stay alive. He runs away, but not fast enough. The next moment he is rolling in the dirt, fighting for his life.

The demented boy's hands are around his throat, squeezing the life out of him. He is going to die, he is sure of it. With one desperate movement, he grabs a piece of broken brick and cracks it on the skull of his assailant as hard as he can. The fingers around his neck relax their grip. Ivan chokes and breathes heavily, filling his starving lungs with air. The boy is
unconscious, blood leaking through his hair and down his cheek from the wound in his head. He is still alive because blood is bubbling out of his nose.

‘One more,' he says to himself. ‘One more for safety.'

He hits the boy again, as hard as he can. He feels the skull give under the force of the blow and blood bursts from the wound and covers his arms. He is disgusted by this and drops the brick.

‘Serves you right.' The boy has stopped breathing. He looks at his open, sightless eyes. ‘Your cheese was stale.'

He walks off without a backward glance.

The small, barrel-like figure of the First Secretary, wearing a crumpled suit and holding a panama hat, emerges smiling from the Parliament building. He waves his hat in salute at the crowds of onlookers kept at a safe distance behind steel railings and ranks of helmeted security police. As he walks towards the microphones erected on the forecourt, to face journalists and photographers, he is followed by the nondescript figure of the Romanian president. Pountney, watching the film on the television monitor, is sure that the little man is enjoying all the power of the moment.

‘Addressing a special session of the Romanian parliament today,’ the Soviet commentator intones in English, ‘the First Secretary pledges a series of economic measures in support of the Romanian five-year plan.’ In an echoing voice that gives his words an eerie metallic edge, he reels off figures for annual coal production in Romania and the quotas that will be exchanged for Soviet oil.

Impatiently, Pountney presses the fast-forward button on the editing machine. For a few seconds, the bald man becomes a manic puppet, gesticulating wildly, his expression changing from smile to grimace and back again, while the commentary squeaks unintelligibly.

Restored to normality, the Soviet leader nods towards the Romanian president as if to say, ‘That’s it, that’s enough’, and walks back towards the Parliament building. Suddenly he
stops. He returns to the microphone as if there is something he has forgotten to say. In those few seconds, his expression changes. Gone is the familiar geniality, and in its place is an anger whose sudden and unexpected appearance Pountney finds frightening. His face and his body bristle with aggression as he barks out what he has to say.

‘The First Secretary reminds the West,’ the commentator says, ‘that the Soviet lead over American space technology is widening with each day that passes. The Soviet Union was the first nation to put a satellite into space, followed by a historic orbit of the earth, both events proving the superiority of the socialist system.’

The First Secretary pauses to assess the effect of his words. The crowd waits in obedient silence. Then, his hand stabbing the air in front of him, he continues.

‘Soon, the Soviet Union will have the capability of firing nuclear missiles from a satellite orbiting above the earth. That will be the moment when the West will have to recognise that the Soviet Union has won the arms race. No military installation, no airport, no arms factory, no garrison, no home, not even the bunkers deep in the White House, nowhere in the world will be beyond the reach of Soviet missiles. The West should take good note of the unassailable power of the Soviet Union, and bear this in mind when reviewing Soviet intentions for the absorption of the city of Berlin into the German Democratic Republic.’

The camera dwells on his frowning, aggressive expression as he issues his threat to enthusiastic applause. The little fat man nods angrily at his audience and walks away.

Pountney reaches for telephone. ‘Julius,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something here you ought to see.’

The sign hanging over the front door showed two links on a chain painted gold above the letters ‘F. S.’ in dark blue, signifying the commercial marriage of Fischer and Stevens. If what she’d heard was to be believed, the marriage had prospered, an impression strengthened by the newly painted exterior of the elegant Georgian building. Marion Blackwell pushed open the door and went in.

‘Mr Stevens is expecting you. His secretary will be down in a moment.’

She was in a low-ceilinged, oak-panelled room, one among what appeared to be a warren of rooms, all leading off this hub of the building. On a table to her right, under a Joan Eardley painting of a soulful waif outside a tenement building, was a large display of copies of a book on whose green and blue jacket a warship was plunging through raging seas. Who on earth bought novels like that?

‘Dr Blackwell? Mr Stevens will see you now.’

She was taken upstairs into a well-proportioned study with a bow window looking out over the tiny square off St James’s Street that, until a few minutes ago, she hadn’t known existed.

‘Hello. I’m Danny Stevens. Good to meet you.’

He was younger than she’d expected, late thirties she guessed, and very like his father: tall, fine-looking, fair hair already turning grey. He greeted her warmly and talked about his partner, whose portrait behind his desk she had remarked upon.

‘George Fischer escaped from Czechoslovakia when the communists took over after the war. He arrived here penniless, hardly able to speak a word of English. Over the years he made a fortune from property, and then he took a punt on me. Mercifully, it all worked out before he died. In his will he asked me to remove his name from the masthead because he said it made him a ghostly impostor in a world he
would never understand, even if he were to live two lifetimes. I won’t do that because of the debt I owe him. He was a great man. I’m proud to have known him.’ He turned towards her, smiling. ‘Now, after that potted history of the origins of Fischer Stevens, how about some tea?’

While they waited for the tea to appear, he told her about a novel he was publishing – she might have seen copies of it displayed in the hall. Not literary at all, he said; it was an adventure written by a former naval engineer with, he claimed, real storytelling ability. It would sell in its thousands, he predicted, and they’d got a good book-club deal. The question now was what would happen in America? He was going to New York in a fortnight, where he hoped to auction the American rights. Wasn’t that exciting? He talked to her, she noticed, about what was uppermost in his mind.

‘My father tells me you’re involved with Andrei Berlin,’ he said, as soon as their tea came.

‘We’ve asked him to speak in Cambridge at the beginning of the Michaelmas term, and I’m looking for support,’ she said bluntly.

‘Not financial support, I take it?’ Was it her imagination, or did she sense his uncertainty?

‘No, no, nothing like that.’ She explained the circumstances of her invitation to Berlin. ‘Blake-Thomas was a rich man. The trust that supports these lectures is very well endowed. We can cover all travel and accommodation costs. My concern is that I want to make Berlin’s visit a success. I want to prove to my colleagues that my choice was right.’

What she didn’t say was that by going out on a limb, relying on Eastman’s vote, she was taking a huge risk. If the visit were a disaster, Michael Scott would not be the only one dancing on the grave of her career.

‘I suppose what I’m after is moral support.’

‘That’s the kind we’re best at.’ Was Stevens smiling with relief? ‘We’d be thrilled if he came over. It would do the house good to remind literary editors that we’re Berlin’s
publishers. They tend to think of us as popular publishers and nothing else, because we’re better at selling books than many of our competitors. We like to remind the trade that we can also make a success of books by distinguished academics like Berlin.’

He finished his tea. ‘I must confess, I found
Legacies
of
History
rather over my head, though it goes on selling steadily, I’m glad to say.’

‘May I count on your support?’

‘Of course.’ He wrote something in a notebook. ‘We’ll get our rep to set up some window displays in Heffer’s and Bowes & Bowes, and our publicity people will meet him from the airport. We’ll put him up in the hotel next door for a day or two. I’m sure we can get him some interviews with the press. We’ll see he gets to Cambridge on time. All you’ve got to do is tell us when. Is that a deal?’

‘You’re very kind.’

‘Not at all, we’re delighted to help.’ He smiled again at her. ‘Now, Dr Blackwell, I’m very interested to hear what you do, exactly. My father tells me you’re a historian. He’s been singing your praises. What’s your period? Are you writing anything at the moment? We have a very strong history list, and we’re always looking for new authors. I’m sure there must be something you’re burning to say.’

The air is already warming up. Kate knows these Moscow days, when the sky starts clear blue and it gets hot too soon, then heavy grey clouds progressively threaten the city, intensifying the heat with no prospect of the relief of rain. A languid day stretches ahead, when every movement demands too great an effort, when it is too hot to do anything except wait for night and hope it will bring some relief.

Tomorrow she will wake up in her bedroom in the house
in York. It will probably be cool or raining – her memories are always of rainy days – and Moscow will have become a dream once more. She tries to picture what her life will be like, but quickly gives up because the thought of returning home makes her want to cry.

*

Two weeks after her visit to the Lenin Library, Kate received a note from Valery Marchenko, asking if she could help him translate an article from an American scientific journal. He suggested that they meet outside the Conservatoire the following Thursday at five. The note had no address or telephone number to which she could reply. It assumed that she would be available. She shrugged her shoulders. If she was free she would meet him. A few days later, she stood in Gerzen Street as he’d asked. She waited in the October cold for an hour before deciding that he had either forgotten or had found something better to do. Either way, soon after six she gave up and made her way home, cold enough to wish she had never met him, and miserable that he had failed to turn up. She was disappointed that he could have treated her like this. He had seemed so different when they’d met. She was determined to put him out of her mind.

*

Valery sat at his office desk, his chin resting on steepled fingers, a sheet of calculations and a series of sketches of a mechanical moon excavator in front of him, an untouched cup of tea rapidly cooling by his side. If anyone in the Department had bothered to look they would have recognised the posture – the leader and inspiration of the robotics project, lost in thought. Best not to disturb him.

Had they been able to look inside Valery Marchenko’s head, they would have questioned their assumptions. He was thinking about neither the design of the excavator nor the merits of different solutions to the problem of the weight of
the digging arm that was still too heavy for the robot platform it would sit on. He was in fact dreaming about the English music student he had met in the Lenin Library.

He found he had no way of controlling her presence in his life. She travelled with him on the metro in the morning and evening; she would interrupt his concentration on his work; she was present in his dreams at night. However hard he might try, he was unable to shift her out of his life, and after a few feeble attempts he gave up. She had invaded his mind, and her presence delighted him.

She sprang unexpectedly into his consciousness when he least expected it, pushing aside any other thought until he was willingly overwhelmed with images of her – Kate listening, talking, laughing, looking earnest, worried, amused, relieved, concerned. How was it that in the space of little more than an hour he had seen her in so many guises? Was that really true, or was he inventing images to suit himself? That was the problem. She was a mystery – he knew next to nothing about her. Until he saw her again, he would have to work like a detective and make deductions from the little he knew.

Coming to Moscow for a year told him she was a brave woman. Her reason – that the chance to work with one of the country’s leading cellists was one she could not pass up – told him that she was ambitious and dedicated. She was also a realist. She must have weighed up the advantages of studying under Vinogradoff against the awfulness of a year in Moscow. So far so good. Then the process of deduction skidded to a halt as he remembered her fair hair, her dark blue eyes, her long neck that he had so much wanted to touch, how her eyelids flickered sometimes when she talked. Her laugh, the sheer uninhibited gaiety of it, her shyness – or was it innocence? – that would suddenly appear like a blind being drawn down. Her reserve – was it English reserve? – that perhaps hid some kind of unexpected passion waiting to be discovered behind it.

Five days ago he had written her a note suggesting a
meeting. He had invented a reason – the translation of a technical article into Russian – one he could read perfectly well in English, but he would make sure she never knew that. He could not give her either a daytime contact address or telephone number. The building where he worked had no official street address. He would simply turn up outside the Conservatoire at the appointed hour and hope she was there, though he wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t.

Throughout the day of their meeting he was unable to concentrate. What would she be wearing? Would she be as he remembered her; or should he prepare himself for disappointment? Memory, after all, can play tricks. Would he be able to recapture that extraordinary emotion he had experienced in the Lenin Library, when no power that he knew could have stopped him going to help her?

The day passed slowly. He achieved little. He was irritable with his colleagues. He put off two meetings on issues that only a day before he had been arguing were urgent. His poor excuses mystified the Department. Marchenko was in a bad mood – best avoid him. He saw their reaction and didn’t care. Nothing was going to get in the way of his rendezvous, and in his mind he was already there.

At ten to four, Viktor Radin’s secretary, Galina, put her head round the door.

‘The Chief Designer wants you.’

‘I have an external meeting. I’m leaving in five minutes. I’ll see him tomorrow.’

Galina remained by the door, stony-faced. ‘He wants you now.’

‘It’ll have to be quick.’ If the meeting went on for long, he’d have to find some excuse to cut it short.

Radin was on the telephone when Valery went in. He motioned to him to take a chair. Why, Valery wondered vaguely, did he never wear a tie? Radin replaced the receiver and pushed a file of papers across to Valery. ‘These figures don’t make sense. Baikonur say they’re correct but I don’t
think so. There’s a flaw somewhere. Something wrong with the volumetrics. I want you to recalculate them for me.’