The Russia House (23 page)

‘They say you should please kick it,’ Katya said, and to his amazement he saw that she was smiling.

‘If you can smile now,’ he said, ‘how do you look when you’re happy?’

But he must have said it to himself because she didn’t answer. He kicked it and it gave, the grit beneath it screaming. The boys laughed and went back to their game. He stepped into the black and she followed him. He pressed a switch but no light came. The door slammed shut behind them and when he groped for the handle he couldn’t find it. They stood in deep darkness, smelling cats and onions and cooking oil and listening to bits of music and argument from other people’s lives. He struck a match. Three steps appeared, then half a bicycle, then the entrance to a filthy lift. Then his fingers burned. You go to the fourth floor, Wicklow had said. Watch for the red marks. How the devil do I watch for red marks in the dark? God answered him with a pale light from the floor above.

‘Where are we, please?’ she asked politely.

‘It’s a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘A painter.’

He pulled back the lift door, then the grille. He said ‘Please’ but she was already past him, standing in the lift and looking upward, willing it to rise.

‘He’s away for a few days. It’s just somewhere to talk,’ he said.

He noticed her eyelashes again, the moisture in her eyes. He wanted to console her but she wasn’t sad enough.

‘He’s a painter,’ he said again, as if that legitimised a friend.

‘Official?’

‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

Why hadn’t Wicklow told him which kind of bloody painter the man was supposed to be?

He was about to press the button when a small girl in tortoiseshell spectacles hopped in after them hugging a plastic bear. She called a greeting and Katya’s face lit up as she greeted her in return. The lift juddered upwards, the buttons popping like cap pistols at each floor. At the third the child politely said goodbye, and Barley and Katya said goodbye in unison. At the fourth the lift bumped to a halt as if it had hit the ceiling and perhaps it had. He shoved her ashore and leapt after her. A passage opened before them, filled with the stench of baby, perhaps a lot of babies. At the end of it, on what seemed to be a blank wall, a red arrow directed them left. They came on a narrow wooden staircase leading upwards. On the bottom step Wicklow crouched like a leprechaun reading a weighty book by the aid of a mechanic’s light. He did not lift his head as they climbed past him but Barley saw Katya stare at him all the same.

‘What’s the matter? Seen a ghost?’ he asked her.

Could she hear him? Could he hear himself? Had he spoken? They were in a long attic. Chinks of sky pierced the tiles, bats’ mess smeared the rafters. A path of scaffolders’ boards had been laid over the joists. Barley took her hand. Her palm was broad and strong and dry. Its nakedness against his own was like the gift of her entire body.

He advanced cautiously, smelling turpentine and linseed and hearing the tapping of an unexpected wind. He squeezed between a pair of iron cisterns and saw a life-sized paper sea-gull in full flight strung from a beam, turning on its thread. He pulled her after him. Beyond it, fixed to a shower-rail, hung a striped curtain. If there’s no sea-gull there’s no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That’s my epitaph, thought Barley. ‘There was no sea-gull, so he aborted.’ He swept the curtain aside and entered a painter’s studio, once more drawing her after him. At its centre stood an easel and a model’s upholstered box. An aged chesterfield rested on its stuffing. It’s a one-time facility, Wicklow had said. So am I, Wickers, so am I. A homemade skylight was cut into the slope of the roof. A red mark was daubed on its frame. Russians don’t trust walls, Wicklow had explained, she’ll talk better in the open air.

The skylight opened, to the consternation of a colony of doves and sparrows. He nodded her through first, noticing the easy flow of her long body as she stooped. He clambered after her, barking his spine and saying ‘Damn’ exactly as he knew he would. They were standing between two gables in a leaded valley only wide enough for their feet. The pulse of traffic rose from streets they couldn’t see. She was facing him and close. Let’s live up here, he thought. Your eyes, me, the sky. He was rubbing his back, screwing up his eyes against the pain.

‘You are hurt?’

‘Just a fractured spine.’

‘Who is that man on the stairs?’ she said.

‘He works for me. He’s my editor. He’s keeping a lookout while we talk.’

‘He was at the hospital last night.’

‘What hospital?’

‘Last night after seeing you, I was obliged to visit a certain hospital.’

‘Are you ill? Why did you go to hospital?’ Barley asked, no longer rubbing his back.

‘It is not important. He was there. He appeared to have a broken arm.’

‘He can’t have been there,’ Barley said, not believing himself. ‘He was with me the whole evening after you left. We had a discussion about Russian books.’

He saw the suspicion slowly leave her eyes. ‘I am tired. You must excuse me.’

‘Let me tell you what I’ve worked out, then you can tell me it’s no good. We talk, then I take you out to dinner. If the People’s custodians were listening to our call last night they’ll expect that anyway. The studio belongs to a painter friend of mine, a jazz nut like me. I never told you his name because I couldn’t remember it and perhaps I never knew it. I thought we could bring him a drink and look at his pictures but he didn’t appear. We went on to dinner, talked literature and world peace. Despite my reputation I did not make a pass at you. I was too much in awe of your beauty. How’s that?’

‘It is convenient.’

Dropping into a crouch, he produced a half bottle of Scotch and unscrewed the cap. ‘Do you drink this stuff?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither.’ He hoped she would settle beside him but she remained standing. He poured a tot into the cap and set the bottle at his feet.

‘What’s his name?’ he said. ‘The author’s. Goethe. Who is he?’

‘It is not important.’

‘What’s his unit? Firm? Postbox number? Ministry? Laboratory? Where’s he working? We haven’t time to fool around.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where’s he stationed? You won’t tell me that either, will you?’

‘In many places. It depends where he is working.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I may tell you.’

‘What did he tell you to tell me?’

She faltered, as if he had caught her out. She frowned. ‘Whatever is necessary. I should trust you. He was generous. It is his nature.’

‘So what’s holding you up?’ Nothing. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’ Nothing. ‘Do you think I enjoy playing cops-and-robbers in Moscow?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you send me the book if you don’t trust me?’

‘It was for him that I sent it. I did not select you. He did,’ she replied moodily.

‘Where is he now? At the hospital? How do you speak to him?’ He looked up at her, waiting for her answer. ‘Why don’t you just start talking and see how it goes?’ he suggested. ‘Who he is, who you are. What he does for a living.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who was in the woodshed at three a.m. on the night of the crime.’ More nothing. ‘Tell me why you’ve dragged me into this. You started this. I didn’t. Katya? It’s me. I’m Barley Blair. I do jokes, I do bird noises, I drink. I’m a friend.’

He loved her grave silences while she stared at him. He loved her listening with her eyes and the sense of recovered companionship each time she spoke.

‘There has been no crime,’ she said. ‘He is my friend. His name and occupation are unimportant.’

Barley took a sip while he thought about this. ‘So is this what you usually do for friends? Smuggle their illicit manuscripts to the West for them?’ She thinks with her eyes as well, he thought. ‘Did he happen to mention to you what his manuscript was about?’

‘Naturally. He would not endanger me without my consent.’

He caught the protectiveness in her voice and resented it. ‘What did he tell you was in it?’ he asked.

‘The manuscript describes my country’s involvement in the preparation of anti-humanitarian weapons of mass destruction over many years. It paints a portrait of corruption and incompetence in all fields of the defence-industrial complex. Also of criminal mismanagement and ethical shortcomings.’

‘That’s quite a mouthful. Do you know any details beyond that?’

‘I am not acquainted with military matters.’

‘So he’s a soldier.’

‘No.’

‘So what is he?’

Silence.

‘But you approve of that? Passing that stuff out to the West?’

‘He is not passing it to the West or to any bloc. He respects the British but that is not important. His gesture will ensure true openness among scientists of all nations. It will help to destroy the arms race.’ She had still to come to him. She was speaking flatly as if she had learned her lines by heart. ‘He believes there is no time left. We must destroy the abuse of science and the political systems responsible for it. When he speaks philosophy, he speaks English,’ she added.

And you listen, he thought. With your eyes. In English. While you wonder whether you can trust me.

‘Is he a scientist?’ he asked.

‘Yes. He is a scientist.’

‘I hate them all. What branch? Is he a physicist?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

‘His information comes from across the board. Accuracy, aimpoints, command and control, rocket motors. Is he one man? Who gives him the material? How does he know so much?’

‘I don’t know. He is one man. That is obvious. I do not have so many friends. He is not a group. Perhaps he also supervises the work of others. I don’t know.’

‘Is he high up? A big boss? Is he working here in Moscow? Is he a headquarters man? What is he?’

She shook her head at each question. ‘He does not work in Moscow. Otherwise I have not asked him and he does not tell me.’

‘Does he test things?’

‘I don’t know. He goes to many places. All over the Soviet Union. Sometimes he has been in the sun, sometimes he has been very cold, sometimes both. I don’t know.’

‘Has he ever mentioned his unit?’

‘No.’

‘Box numbers? The names of his bosses? The name of a colleague or subordinate?’

‘He is not interested to tell me such things.’

And he believed her. While he was with her, he would believe that north was south and babies grew on jacaranda trees.

She was watching him, waiting for his next question.

‘Does he understand the consequences of publishing this stuff?’ he asked. ‘To himself, I mean? Does he know what he’s playing with?’

‘He says that there are times when our actions must come first and we must consider consequences only when they occur.’ She seemed to expect him to say something but he was learning to slow down. ‘If we see one goal clearly we may advance one step. If we contemplate all goals at once we shall not advance at all.’

‘How about you? Has he thought about the consequences to you at all if any of this comes to light?’

‘He is reconciled.’

‘Are you?’

‘Naturally. It was my decision also. Why else would I support him?’

‘And the children?’ he asked.

‘It is for them and for their generation,’ she said with a resolution bordering on anger.

‘What about the consequences to Mother Russia?’

‘We regard the destruction of Russia as preferable to the destruction of all mankind. The greatest burden is the past. For all nations, not only Russia. We regard ourselves as the executioners of the past. He says that if we cannot execute our past, how shall we construct our future? We shall not build a new world until we have got rid of the mentalities of the old. In order to express truth we must also be prepared to be the apostles of negation. He quotes Turgenev. A nihilist is a person who does not take anything for granted, however much that principle is revered.’

‘And you?’

‘I am not a nihilist. I am a humanist. If it is given to us to play a part for the future, we must play it.’

He was searching her voice for a hint of doubt. He found none. She was tone perfect.

‘How long’s he been talking like this? Always? Or is it only recent?’

‘He has always been idealistic. That is his nature. He has always been extremely critical in a constructive sense. There was a time when he was able to convince himself that the weapons of annihilation were so terrible they would have the effect of abolishing war. He believed they would produce an alteration in the mind of the military establishments. He was persuaded by the paradox that the greatest weapons contained within them the greatest capacity for peace. He was in this regard an enthusiast of American strategic opinions.’

She was starting towards him. He could feel it in her, the stirring of a need. She was waking and approaching him. Under the Moscow sky, she was shedding her mistrust after too much loneliness and deprival.

‘So what changed him?’

‘He has experienced for many years the incompetence and arrogance of our military and bureaucratic organisations. He has seen how it drags on the feet of progress. That is his expression. He is inspired by the
perestroika
and by the prospect of world peace. But he is not Utopian, he is not passive. He knows that nothing will come of its own accord. He knows that our people are deluded and lack collective power. The new revolution must be imposed from above. By intellectuals. By artists. By administrators. By scientists. He wishes to make his own irreversible contribution in accordance with the exhortations of our leadership. He quotes a Russian saying: “If the ice is thin, one must walk fast.” He says we have lived too long in an era we no longer need. Progress can only be achieved when the era is finished.’

‘And you agree?’

‘Yes, and so do you!’ Heat, now. Fire in her eyes. An English too perfect, learned in the cloister, from permitted classics of the past. ‘He says that he heard you criticise your own country in similar terms!’

‘Does he have any small thoughts?’ Barley asked. ‘I mean, does he like the movies? What car does he drive?’