The Longest Pleasure (34 page)

'Lumme. I must say, you're no advertisement for growing old. You look at least forty. And you've had all of those problems?'

'Some of them. Enough. I know the others are coming.'

'Um. So maybe I'll be lucky and die. Soon.'

'Then you are contradicting yourself. You said just now that life is the most marvellous thing there is. So why should you wish to die?'

"You're sure you're not a lawyer, or something? Let's go back to the hut. It's freezing, and you're looking whacked.'

'And you're afraid to think about the future.'

'Isn't everyone?' Wendy asked.

Alan Shirley wrote in his diary: 'Page
7,150, 28th
February
1958.
One month, and not a word of Galitsin. The police assume he is dead. How? Why? And why has no body ever been found? Dead people do not disappear. They are found more easily than the living. So the police are wrong. In my opinion.

'And if he were dead, Renee Smith/Irena Szen would have reappeared. One can imagine the pair of them, setting up house after all these years, down some back street in London. In which case he will be back, one day.

'Does that thought disturb me? Galitsin is no more than an episode. He is not even newspaper material, any more, although presumably he will be if and when he reappears.

And Nancy? One never can tell with Nancy. Certainly Galitsin was probably the most important experience of her life.
To date. So she is writing a novel People with any sensitivity at all always begin novels after a traumatic experience. Prediction, Nancy will not finish her novel. Will she get over Galitsin? Yes. Provided he doesn't reappear too soon. I will wish him luck in his hideaway.

‘
But what about Tigran Dus? I wonder if he supposes that Galitsin is dead? But assuming that his reasoning follows the same line as mine, I wonder what he intends to do about it?'

6

The
Assassin

Tigran
Dus
realised that he was uncomfortable. It was not a usual experience for him. No doubt the woman had a great deal to do with it She had the hardest female face he had ever seen, reminded him of his own mother.

Now she replaced the telephone on its hook, smiled at him, a mechanical widening of her lips. 'She is on her way up, Comrade Colonel. And I have given orders for her to change into her own clothes. Will she be coming back to us?'

Tigran Dus shrugged. 'Who knows, Comrade Commandant'

'She is bourgeois,' the commandant said, with utter distaste.

Tigran Dus made no reply. He wondered just how great a crime it was to be obviously middle class in a place like this, where time had come to a standstill in
1921.
He listened to feet outside, watched the door open, had to remind himself not to stand.

Helena Isbinska wore boots, heavy trousers, a shabby jacket, and a red and white headscarf. There were pink .spots in her cheeks, the same patches of colour he had always found so attractive, and the cheeks were no thinner than he remembered. But her expression had changed. It had become watchful. She kept her gaze on the commandant. She said, 'You sent for me, ma'am.'

'Colonel Dus has come for you, Isbinska,' the commandant said.

Helena Isbinska's head turned, and the colour spread across her cheeks.

'Good morning, Helena,' Tigran Dus said. You are looking well.'

Helena Isbinska caught her breath, and the commandant allowed herself another sm
ile, more frosty than the last ‘
You are to be released into Colonel Dus's custody, Isbinska,' she explained.
‘I
understand that he needs you.'

Helena Isbinska gazed at Tigran Dus. But Dus was once again in control of the situation. He stood up, smiled. 'That is correct, Comrade Commandant I will wish you good day.'

He opened the door, nodded towards it. Helena Isbinska hesitated, glanced at the commandant once again, went into the corridor. 'You will have to show me the way out,' Tigran Dus said. 'This place reminds me of a labyrinth.'

Helena Isbinska walked down the corridor, turned a corner, descended a flight of steps. At the foot of the stairs they encountered a female guard. Helena Isbinska checked, waited for Dus to catch up with her. He nodded at the guard, who stared at them as they walked past.

"You are afraid of these people,' Tigran Dus remarked.

Helena Isbinska did not look at him. 'Are you not supposed to be afraid of the guards, Comrade Colonel? When you are a prisoner?'

'Do you always do what you are supposed to, Helena Petrovna?'

'In this place, Colonel, always. It is the first thing they teach you.'

She halted in front of another door, her hands at her sides, her fingers curled into small fists.

'Open it,' Tigran Dus suggested.

'It is not permitted, Comrade Colonel.'

'What is the punishment for opening that door, Helena?'

Her head started to turn, and she checked the movement. 'A beating, Comrade Colonel.'

'But I have commanded you to open it Should I, then, beat you for refusing?'

Helena Isbinska turned the handle, stepped into the yard. She gazed at the car which waited on the far side of the yard, at the opened gate. She inhaled the March air, cold and crisp, watched the snow lying on the ground, looked up at the empty blue sky. She said, 'I am not being released?'

Tigran Dus took her elbow, as he might have done in the Hotel Berlin, guided her across the yard. 'Not at this moment, Helena. But your relea
se may arise from your proper co
-operation.' He felt the arm move, the muscles flex.
'You
have not been charged?'

‘
No, Comrade Colonel. I do not know what I could be charged with.'

There are very grave charges hanging over your head, Helena Petrovna.' He opened the door of the car, and once again she hesitated. The blinds were drawn over the windows, and the interior of the car was dark. She sighed, and got in. Tigran Dus sat beside her, tapped the frosted glass partition. The driver engaged gear, and the car moved.

'I did not know,' Helena Isbinska said from the shadow.

Tigran Dus offered her a cigarette. She stared at it for some seconds, then placed it between her Hps. He flicked his lighter, and the flame illuminated her face. Now at last-she was looking at him. 'How lo
ng were you in there, Helena?'

She waited for the light to go out 'I am not sure, Comrade Colonel. I kept no track of the time. But it must have been several weeks. It was much colder when they arrested me.'

'And you have been well treated?'

Again she considered. 'I think I would say yes, Comrade Colonel. I have had food and company, and I have not had a great deal of work to do.'

'But they did ill-treat you from time to time.'

Helena Isbinska's face was a faint glow behind the cigarette. 'From time to time.'

'What did they do to you?'

'Are you very interested?'

‘
Yes.'

They searched me, after my arrest. That was not very nice. They searched me inside and out, as if the contents of my stomach might contain something of enormous value.'

'It is routine.'

'Of course, Comrade Colonel. But it was very unpleasant. No doubt it is unpleasant for the searchers, too, so they are chosen for their unpleasantness. And then one day the commandant caned me.'

'Caned you?'

Helena Isbinska leaned forward, opened the ashtray, stubbed out her cigarette.
‘D
id you not know, Comrade Colonel? In there we are all little girls, and she is mother. So we are inclined to behave like little girls. I lost my temper one morning. It was quite irrational. It just happened. I was frustrated, I suppose. I felt that I was going mad. It was after the first week, you know, and the end of the first week is the worst. So I picked up my cup and my plate and I threw them at the wall. It was something I had to do.'

'So she caned you.'

'She made me bend over a trestle. Do you know I had never been caned before? It was not even very painful. Yet I wept. It was humiliating. And it was more humiliating to weep. I sometimes think that is the most unpleasant aspect of prison, the sudden stepping backwards in time, the shedding of all adulthood, all sense of responsibility, all sense of dignity. Children do not have dignity, really. And without it they are lovable. Adults without dignity are contemptible.'

'I am sorry you were humiliated,' Tigran Dus said. 'I think it is the worst thing that can befall a human being.'

'And then I think,' Helena Isbinska continued, as if he had not spoken, 'that
I am wrong. That the worst part
of being in prison, at least in
that
prison, is the uncertainty. Not knowing why you are there. None of us knew why we were there, how long we would be there, what would eventually happen to us. There was a girl in the cell next to mine, Comrade Colonel, who has been awaiting trial for two years.
Two
years.'

'Sometimes the accumulation of the necessary evidence takes a great deal of time. But you may rest assured, Helena, that there is no one in that prison who does not deserve to be there.'

'I
did not realise that, Comrade Colonel. My crime is having a brother?'

Your crime is a conversation you had with your brother, in hospital, over a year ago, now. It is on tape, in my office.'

She turned her head, just for a moment, looked away again. Her cheeks flamed. 'It must give you great amusement, Comrade Colonel, to play it over to your friends.'

'I have played it over to no one as yet, Helena.'

The
car slowed, and he watched her li
stening, to well
-
known sounds. She was a Muscovite by adoption, as he. 'You are not taking me home? Her voice was sharp.

'Don't you wish to go home? Don't you wish to see Ewfim again, and your sons?'

She chewed her upper lip. 'I would like a little time to prepare myself.'

Tigran Dus smiled. 'Well, you are not going home right now, Helena. Not for some time yet. First of all we are going to take a journey, you and I.'

He watched her hand, sliding along the arm-rest, the long fingers reaching out to touch the curtain, move it a fraction of an inch, admit a sliver of light, allow her a similar limited view of the street, of the cars and buses and people. People who were free.

'You see,' Tigran Dus explained, 'your crime was not so very terrible, because it fell in with my plans. I had no objection to Alexander Petrovich running off to the British, provided he did it publicly enough. And as we took some pains to make him a public figure, there was little likelihood of his defection being unnoticed. But something very odd has happened. His defection itself went off very well. He was assisted by that American journalist I mentioned when last we met, and he received splendid coverage in the newspapers. We assumed we had nothing more to do than wait for him to be contacted by the people we are interested in. And I can assure you that we meant Alexander Petrovich no harm at all. But then he just disappeared. Vanished totally. Even the British police have been unable to find him.'

Helena Isbinska listened to the car changing gears, rocked slightly in her seat as it swung to the right, and the street sounds disappeared. 'Is this the headquarters of the Fourth Bureau?' she asked.

'One of them. Are you not interested in what has become of Alexander Petrovich?'

The car stopped. The driver got out and opened the rear door. Helena Isbinska stepped on to snow-dusted cobbles, looked up at the walls rising on every side, dotted with windows, around her at the other cars, the men, the sentries. The watchful expression was back on her face. 'Perhaps Alexander has more intelligence that you give him credit for, Comrade Colonel. So he has disappeared, so com
plete
ly, as you say, that even the B
ritish police cannot find him. I think he should be congratulated.'

Tigran Dus returned the salute of the sentry on the door, showed Helena Isbinska into a bare passageway, which ended in a lift. He pressed the ascent button. 'And does it not occur to you to wonder why the British police should also be looking for him? He assaulted a man, robbed
him
of his clothes and his money and his car.'

Helena Isbinska frowned. 'Alexander did that?'