Homesickness (40 page)

‘One of you is missing,'

They looked around. They turned to Doug. ‘Hey, just a minute!' he laughed. ‘She toddled back to the entrance. Anyway, she wouldn't dream of—' He made a second embarrassed laugh, looking at the Russian. ‘You don't know my wife…'

‘It's in biro,' Gerald reported.

‘It doesn't matter,' said Borelli. ‘These things unfortunately happen.' To show his nonchalance he practised a golf swing with his walking stick, and almost fell over.

‘Incorporate it in the Centre's collection. What's wrong with that?'

‘It will be reported,' said the Russian. And they didn't feel sorry for him any more. Moving quickly—for a bear of a man—he slid to the right preventing Kaddok photographing the defiled corner. Remaining there he pointed to the door.

So no one noticed the last exhibit, the attempt on the Russians' part to finish on a light note. Tilted above a false door a bucket of whitewash hung in the balance: the old silent-film joke, akin to falling down the open manhole; depends entirely on gravity. No one noticed. And in all likelihood they would have enjoyed that. It would have relaxed the strained atmosphere. The guide seemed to remember. He half-turned, programmed, but went on without another word.

‘They're a strange people,' Hofmann was saying. ‘They're definitely paranoid.'

Garry nodded. ‘A bit of bloody graffiti never hurt anyone.'

They made their way carefully up the narrow slope, the Russian taking up the rear.

Mrs Cathcart was seated at the entrance, watching Anna knitting. She scarcely looked up.

‘A spot of bother,' Doug reported, and hitched up his trousers. ‘Silly business. We've got to watch our Ps and Qs.'

‘It's still hot as blazes outside,' Mrs Cathcart observed. ‘Anna and I have been sitting here.'

When Sheila asked the guide if the Centre had any postcards he didn't answer.

‘Let's go,' several suggested. ‘Come on.'

They pushed open the door. Garry stopped and looked back.

‘Say, where's Smiley, our bag of laughs?'

‘I think he's gone to report us.'

‘We could be shot, all of us.'

‘He could be, more like it.'

Anna was gathering up her knitting.

By sticking together they could come to no harm. That was the feeling: it showed in the way they barged out into the open air, and for several minutes stood around, squinting, a form of carelessness.

Coughing, exaggeratedly slapping himself, Garry made Russian cigarettes briefly the centre of attention: trying them was part of the overseas experience. Back home before recalling the curiosities of the Kremlin or even the Centre of Gravity he'd say, ‘Ever tried a Russian cigarette? Chrrrist! In Moscow…'

Opposite at the table sat their guide, the moon on embroidered cotton.

‘Don't take any notice of him,' Sasha advised. ‘We all hope he chokes.'

Nodding and smiling Anna wiped her mouth with her handkerchief.

They were picking at the pink salmon. The white wine was sweet.

‘There aren't many lights at night,' Sheila observed, and they twisted in their seats to check. ‘It's black as pitch outside.'

‘Compared to Europe and New York, it is.'

‘There were more lights in Africa, I feel,' Sheila persisted. ‘Remember?'

‘I don't suppose here they're allowed out on the streets.'

‘Louisa, you always exaggerate,' said Sasha.

When Hofmann joined in, his windows glittered. ‘Not in this case, she doesn't. You're in Russia, don't forget.'

The dentist suddenly coughed and quickly picked inside his back teeth: almost another fishbone incident.

Further comparisons were made here and there around the table.

‘Don't we talk so much rubbish?' Borelli turned to Phillip North. ‘We expect you to lift the standard and you haven't said a word.'

North pointed with his index finger. ‘With this ring through my nose I'm a trifle inhibited.'

‘So we've noticed. It must be terrible—difficult to breathe?'

Sasha who had been listening to Violet swung around. ‘Thank-you-very-much!' But the toss of the head and distant glance showed she was pleased. While Borelli and Louisa watched, she leaned against North and whispered, ‘You don't feel inhibited, do you?'

Gerald was talking to Hofmann. ‘It should be interesting seeing the Kremlin; I'm looking forward to that.'

‘The fifteenth century,' Kaddok volunteered.

Those fragments; comparisons: distant memories of the skirting travellers.

Gerald reversed, having doubts. ‘What can be seen in two days? Russia is too enormous. But even if it wasn't—'

‘Anything is better than nothing, I always think.'

‘I'm not so sure,' said Gerald.

‘But you're never satisfied,' Gwen turned. ‘You can be a very negative person. What is it you like?'

Reddening, Gerald looked down at his plate. Towards the end of their tour people were speaking freely.

This was the hotel, Anna mentioned, where the Provisional Government first met in 1917. ‘Red Square is directly behind us.'

Violet suddenly turned and smiled tightly. ‘You never ask us about our country. Aren't you interested?'

‘Ah yes. You have told me. And I have your passports—'

She smiled.

‘They're not interested,' Hofmann shook his head. ‘Everyone's got to understand that.'

Anna smoothed her skirt. ‘We don't travel as much as you.'

‘Because you can't.' Hofmann again.

‘I couldn't stand that, Anna.' Violet lit a cigarette. ‘I'd go right out of my mind.'

‘Why can't you travel?' Hofmann asked. ‘Why don't you tell us that?'

‘Don't be harsh,' Louisa turned to him. ‘Let her be.'

‘We have no need,' said Anna. ‘Oh I would like one day to go to Egypt.'

‘Egypt?' Garry yelled.

Anna remained smiling. ‘You can take trips all your life, but there's always death. Don't you think?'

The others were listening, leaning forward. Anna turned and said something in Russian to the waiter.

‘She always wears that lovely smile,' Violet muttered.

‘Fair go, Anna's all right.'

‘We're supposed to be on holidays,' Mrs Cathcart reminded. ‘We're their guests, in a strange country.'

Only Borelli seemed to consider Anna's statement. Tapping his lips with his fingers he glanced at Hofmann.

‘We come from a country,' Louisa turned to Anna, ‘of nothing really, or at least nothing substantial yet. We can appear quite heartless at times. I don't know why. We sometimes don't know any better.' All smiles; to help Anna. ‘Even before we travel we're wandering in circles. There isn't much we understand. I should say, there isn't much we believe in. We have rather empty feelings. I think we even find love difficult. And when we travel we demand even the confusions to be simple. It is all confusing, isn't it? I don't know why we expect all answers to be simple, but we do. We expect it to be straightforward. In some ways, in your country, you are lucky.' Louisa slowly flushed, noticing everyone looking at her. ‘At least that's what I think.'

Sitting away from her, Hofmann snorted.

‘Speech! Speech!' Garry banged; a form of reduction, of fragmentation. And the Cathcarts stared at their plates and solemnly up at the cornice.

‘We are an odd lot,' admitted North, and suddenly began laughing.

Louisa was biting her lip; Borelli had touched her arm.

Of little or no concern to Gerald: gazing through the dark window at nothing in particular, trying not to be negative. And North at the far end bent towards Sasha to hear better.

Uncertainties may have increased as they stood in the queue outside the tomb of Lenin. The mausoleum was invisible, uphill. The flagstones of Red Square rose before them, a solid wave, and darkened in the heat, produced a kind of undertow. The queue of several versts moved slowly forward, dragging: inevitable tourism.

They were sandwiched between a delegation of jabbering bookbinders from Kiev and a clan of ginger-faced Highland flingers in kilts and all, red knees, said to be ballet devotees. With Gerald at the point the group cast Japanese shadows, a source of idle interest. All but Anna had turned somewhat reflective, little being said. A sense of loss spread as they stood now in the open, within sight of the tomb; a sense of sliding time and place. Apart from the long queue Red Square was empty. And what: those tattered trumpets could be heard somewhere producing unexplained exhortatory tunes, reminding them. It didn't make sense. It was hard to hold the moment; and yet time and the surrounding solid objects passed slowly. It all slipped through their bodies.

At intervals—as if pulled by wires—a buxom or a bow-legged fixture, usually elderly, would fall out of the line, a quadrant collapse to the eye, left or to the right, immediately clustered with crouching next of kin or friends, and carried into the shade. It caused Mrs Cathcart to wonder aloud if they, poor beggars, were given enough to eat.

Astride a rise, hemmed in by ancient dark walls, Red Square had a bulging orthodox church at each end. It was so vast it remained continually empty; how could it ever be filled? At its church end it leaked air and people, and there was that dramatic fall away from the approximate centre. The low mausoleum had been slotted in there on one long side, against the Kremlin wall. They were now less than fifty paces from its entrance. Violet who'd undone a few buttons stood with her eyes closed, catching the sun.

Remembering her job Anna turned from the nodding bookbinders and with a raised finger made these points:

The mausoleum is

a) of red granite

b) bulletproof and bombproof

c) the sole remaining example in the Soviet Union of pure Constructivism

d) upwards 7 million respectful visitors per—Something had caught their eye.

‘Yoo-hoo!' Mrs Cathcart waved. ‘Excuse me, Anna,' she said. She elbowed Garry like a son, ‘Here we are, tell them.'

The Kaddoks came towards them in the heat, Leon holding Gwen's elbow and sloping forward as if trip-tripping into a wind. Gwen was hurrying, anxiously scanning the line. Festooned with his leather-hooded equipment, similar to the blackened trophies on primitive necklaces, he cut a powerful figure, ultra-modern and complacent, unable of course to see Gwen biting her lip. The party smiled when relief suddenly smoothed her features.

‘You almost missed the boat,' Doug slapped by way of a welcome.

Kaddok immediately began telling them about the Party Machine he had gone to photograph, housed in the longest building in the Eastern bloc, ‘Kouznetski Street, a stone's throw from here.' Of immense proportions; it actually covered several blocks: yet apparently it could apply itself to the smallest, seemingly trivial detail.

Having spent several hours in the queue, the scenery of Red Square had become progressively mundane, like the shoulders and back of the neck of the person directly in front, and so the group turned to Kaddok's story with an interest perhaps out of proportion. The Scotties leaned forward to listen too.

Yes, it is off the beaten track—Kaddok told them—more the obligatory mecca for travellers from the Eastern bloc; and well worth a visit, well worth a trip. The glass megastructure allowed the Machine to be viewed from the street. But it was much better inside. Parallel catwalks had been fitted for visitors to follow the workings in close-up. It consisted, in the main, of rigid maroon pipes and drums attached to shivering copper feedlines. The drums revolved, see, setting forth a chain-reaction further down the line. Ratchets and sprockets interconnected to pulleys and lazy S-shaped wheels, vigorous elbows as in a steam engine, then activated the machine in various parts and in all directions, and yet somehow prevented the whole from disintegration, heavy flywheels, governors, ironed out the contradictions, the slight discrepancies. The rocking chassis with its esoteric standards and cesspools of grease held her steady; sideways movements were at once activated and yet kept to a minimum by rubber connecting rods and torsion bars, all wired to warning gauges. It had been working for years. The maintenance supervisor, the zealot with the oil can, said many decades. This man's name, Kaddok declared, was Axelrod.

‘Do you know what?' North asked over the smiles.

‘What?' Kaddok hated being interrupted.

One of the Scots jumped in. ‘It must have set up a God-awful racket.'

‘It was relatively quiet, in fact. It was hard, in fact, to know if it was working. I was impressed.'

Gwen nodded.

It was a machine of words, largely.

‘The interesting thing,' Kaddok tried to continue, ‘was at the finish, it reproduced replicas of itself. They were quite something, like transistors. They were only an inch or so long, of the whole machine.'