The collected stories (18 page)

'If everything's in order I'll be off then,' said Undershaw.

'Take care,' said Harper, and watched him go.

In the outer office, Claire was filling her handbag. Harper paused, because he believed it was expected of him to ask her out to dinner - he would not be able to leave until the next day.

WORLD S END

Claire said, 'I can't see you tonight. I am meeting a woman. I may have an adventure. You can stay - shut the door and it will lock.'

'I hope she's nice,' said Harper. 'Your woman.'

'Yes,' said Claire, ladylike in concentration. She went to the door and stuck out her lower lip. 'She is my fiance's girl friend.'

When she had left, Harper wanted to sit down. But the chairs disgusted him. There were four of them in this dreadful yellow room, this rallying place for the crooked - they were not evil, but idle. The room had held Bumgarner, and Claire, and Undershaw; and now they had gone on their tired errands. But their snailtracks were still here. There are rooms - his hotel room was one - in which the weak leave their sour hope behind; from which they set out to succeed at small deceptions and fail in the hugest way. Harper wanted to be home. He felt insulted and had never hated himself more. The briefcase, weighted with money, reminded him that he was still in Paris, and that he would have to complete his own shameful errand before he could look for a new job in the United States of America.

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the impertinence to ask, 'Why was it that you were known as the Mephisto of the Twentieth Plenum?' Spurning the assistance of the translator, I shot back quickly, 'Could I help it if I was all things to all men?' smartly putting a stop to his nonsense. I am especially sick of these interviewers looking over their clipboards into the camera lens and solemnly prefacing their questions with my full name - something that would only be done in my country in a courtroom or a grade school. Is this intentional ridicule (perhaps my name sounds a bit silly to the American tin ear?) or is it done for the benefit of viewers who have tuned in late and wonder, in their ample distraction, who is the hairy chap on the stool being abused? I know I lost my temper in front of (or so I was told) ten million viewers. There was a simple explanation for that. I had, at that point in the program, reached the conclusion that I was not being interviewed but having my head examined. I have more than compensated the studio for all breakage and all injuries sustained.

On my arrival I graciously consented to the interviews, and now I am terminating them. I have four lawyers working day and night on what I believe are serious breaches of contract; it would be unfair of me to make more work for them by engaging in yet more of these abusive television shows. Editorial innuendo has not escaped my notice either. You are not easy with strangers, you are not above the petty suspicions of your peasant ancestors who left their plows and groped toward these shores as stowaways.

It is not as if I came to this country cap in hand pleading for asylum. Far from it. A narrow-shouldered Italian publisher of Iron Curtain horror stories dogged my heels throughout Europe. He tossed lire my way and, alternately whining and shrugging in the Italianate style, pestered me for a peek at the manuscript I kept photographed on a roll of film in my pocket. Others, French, German and English, each clamored for a hearing. I lunched with each but said no and fled west, leaving in my wake many a crestfallen editor. I am nagged by the thought that my negatives - the ones on my lips, not in my pocket - were a mistake. Both Stern and the London Sunday Observer offered particularly good terms, and Paris-Match dumped lashings of francs beside my plate. My accountant is understandably furious and keeps reminding me that on Jersey, in the Channel Islands, I could be living like a king, whereas here in America I am subjected to your spiteful taxes. But let this pass. The early brouhaha here has, after the expensive legal

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tangle, neither soothed nor enriched me. The bungalow that was so grandly presented to me after my arrival has a leaky roof and a perpetually flooded cellar; and my television is, as you say, on the fritz. Still, I can't complain.

My concern is the diary. It is to this I now turn.

The manuscript that caused so many powerful Europeans to cluster about me is indeed a rare document and deserves patient study. I am happy to report that my present editor has consented to print it in full and has paid a substantial sum for the American rights. This is especially gratifying for, after getting to know you better, I find that you have really no taste for literature at all. Not like my country, where any garbage collector can sing grand opera or quote you whole cantos of the classics. You make a whole literature out of the sordid and silly nuances of Jewish behavior and, ironically, the writing style you most admire sounds like a direct translation from Perplexed Old Teutonic. You love obvious symbols and popular science. Long sentences annoy you, sentiment embarrasses you; you feel safe with alliteration - you think that is a sign of genius. Your heroes are as unlettered as their creators, your gods are all dogs, you have no appreciation of the simple human story.

The following diary if published in my country would be unacceptable and might land the author in jail. But this is not to say that we are an artless people. Other books have readerships in the millions, they go through forty editions in a matter of weeks and have workers banging through the doors of bookshops at all hours. They are read on factory and farm; the authors are mobbed on the pavement, their names are household words, they get proposals of marriage in the morning mail.

Mind you, the present manuscript is an exception. The author is not heroic; he never did a stroke of work in his life. That he is a simple soul is apparent in every craven line he writes. He is not to be emulated., only studied. His story shows just the sort of quaint dilemma expressed in grumbles that is common to a certain sort of person - though no more common, I repeat, no more common in my country than in yours. Frankly speaking, when I left I was under the impression that this was someone only our system chucked up; but since being warmly welcomed in your very lovely country I have noticed that you get these deluded cranks too. And so take this as a cautionary tale: read it to those unkempt sons of

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yours who stuporously slope along wearing garish beads around their filthy necks; read it to your daughters who lick at drugs and keep condoms in their handbags, and to those uncles of yours who when their god failed began striking out, cursing us with the sorry wrath of the recently reconverted. And those of you who chaffed me about my 'convenient departure' and 'untrustworthy explanations,' remember that although I am hesitant to use this manuscript as a visa de voyage, I am aware that it gained me access to your country, and with it in my pocket I know I am welcome anywhere. You need me much more than I need you.

The pseudonymous author of this diary was known to me from youth. As the poet Drunina puts it so skillfully, 'We were as twinned lambs that did frisk in the sun, / and bleat one at the other: what we changed / Was innocence for innocence . . .' The difference, a large one, was that he made at least one big mistake and possibly more. This is clear in the text. The diary requires very little explanation except the following two points.

Number one, his name was not Jack Faust. Another Slav scurrying westward dropped half the letters from the dozen of his name and in doing so earned a permanent place in English literature (would anyone seriously believe a man called Korzeniowski capable of writing a story called 'Because of the Dollars'?). I have taken that hint and expunged his real name and, on the advice of my present editor, adopted this crisp two-syllable alias. It is intentionally symbolic: a jack is used to hoist a heavy object; he is jack, the object a weighty truth he was too simple to grasp wholly. For consistency I will neither name the country nor the prison in which this diary was written. This will not confuse anyone. Western readers are not unfamiliar with this prison, despite its edited anonymity. Our dungeons are as familiar to students of Eastern European political fortunes as our boarded-up synagogues are to anxiously vocal Western Jews who have never set foot in our country (name-calling is easy at that distance!). One has the impression that any regular reader of the current crop of frenzied memoirs by ex-Bolsheviks ('The man of steel took me on his lap and cooed, "My little sparrowchik"') would have no difficulty at all rinding his way about in a penal colony in Pskov, though he would probably become irretrievably lost in the rather grand Moscow metro or the modern \\ arsaw sink works. Even a dispirited and disaffected Party hack like myself is appalled by the general ignorance in the West

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of my country's achievements: sharp new flats have replaced cheesy peasant cottages, to name but one. Progress is progress; one should not hate the jackboot so much that one fails to notice whether it is down at the heel or making great strides. And simply because I was never given a chance to mention these things on television does not make them untrue.

Number two, what follows is a translation of the photographed manuscript I carried to America at great personal risk and sacrifice. I won't rub it in. No more explanation is in order. I can vouch for the truth of every word that 'Jack Faust' wrote and for the gaumlessness with which he set each down. I can see him licking his pencil lead and scribbling, scribbling.

12 Nov. I have committed no crime, but today I was arrested. My arm is still stiff from being twisted. I cannot write any more now except I am innocent . And this, though my hand pains me, I underline.

13 Nov. My arm still hurts.

14 Nov. Better. It happened in this way. Two burly secret policemen in shiny boots and well-cared-for truncheons beat at my door at five a.m. and told me to get dressed. I offered them buns. They refused saying, 'This is not a social call, Comrade Faust. We are here on Party business.' I asked one to pass me my new felt boots. 'You won't be doing much walking where you're going,' he said, and with that he kicked them out of my reach. As it turns out they would have come in quite handy. It is true I am in a small cell and do not walk much; but my feet are cold and I miss those boots. I hope Madam Zloty found them when she came to tidy up and had the good sense to pass them on to the chauffeur. The dopes will probably sell them, in which case I have the feeling the boots will eventually end up here: there seems to be quite a bit of black marketeering in this prison. Last night a voice whispered through the high window, 'Cigarettes, chewing gum, razor blades.' A small boy's voice, but I thought of Marushka with her little tray and her pathetic bunny costume and how she was so grateful when I befriended her. I mocked her crucifix and taught her to love the Party. If only she could see what the Party has done to me! And yet . . . and yet I find it hard to believe that the committee knows of this. Surely this is a trick. They are testing me. I make no

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observation except the following: it is said that the Marquis de Sade wrote Justine in prison on a roll of toilet paper. This strikes me as incredible. Mine is already coming to bits under the flint of my stubby pencil, and I am hardly past square one.

15 Nov. The warder's name has a familiar ring. 'Comrade Gold-pork doesn't allow reading in this prison,' the guard said when he saw me looking over some scraps of newspaper I found in the ticking of my mattress. 'Goldpork, Goldpork,' I murmured, shredding the newspaper, 'I know that name.' I believe we were in the Youth Wing together. He used to slouch horribly, a poor specimen of a Youth Winger. How I remember him being shouted at by the Platoon Commander! Tig! Dog! Twist of dogshit!' the PC called at him. Goldpork stiffened under this abuse. Of course he could make no reply. A Youth Winger simply does not slouch. He stands straight as a ramrod; he snaps his salutes; he keeps his knickers in good order; he assiduously oils his truncheon. He coldly reports the activities of his grasping parents and notes how many pounds of lard have been hoarded by his mother. The Youth Wing is the backbone of the Party. Goldpork slouched and so was given the job of looking after this shabby penitentiary while I was composing rather hush-hush memoranda for B. And Goldpork doesn't allow reading! I wonder if he himself can read? The guard gave the order so stupidly (Can he know who I am?) I am not surprised Goldpork never got further than this prison. If I had my way he would be scrubbing the toilets - that is, all the toilets except the one in which I scribble this!

17 Nov. Just to while away the time I have spent the past day and a half itemizing a clean-up and renovation memorandum. I haven't lost my touch.

Memo to Goldpork

(a) As this is not a fish tank surely moss and fungus are not needed to keep the inmates well and happy. Scrape those tiles and make them shine.

(b) In my day, guards clicked their heels and polished their boots; the fact that guards are seen by no one but detainees should not excuse sloppy habits. Look smart.

(c) Note that chamberpots are designed for easy emptying. It is axiomatic that the full chamberpot overflows.

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(d) There is an accumulation of rust on every iron bar in this prison. Prisoners should be made to feel that this is their prison as much as it is every citizen's. A sense of pride and purpose is wanted; a rust-scrubbing session with wire brushes would do wonders for morale. Let's buckle down.

(e) We have noted a preponderance of nightly comings and goings of small boys in frocks. This seems a questionable way of passing an evening. Must moral fiber necessarily break down because a man is behind bars? Work, cold showers, an honest fatigue: such things build the Party.

(f) We would like to see more prunes on the menu.

(g) If reading is not allowed, surely the ticking of all prison mattresses should be winnowed for bits of newspaper. This is a sensible measure: any of these newspapers may have reports of past events which have since proved to be malicious fabrications. We know many news items have been planted by foreign spies. Here, it is possible they will fall into the wrong hands. Sift, winnow, purge; get straw in those mattresses.