Yellow Blue Tibia (36 page)

She looked at me for a long time. Then she laid a hand - one of her tiny, delicate hands - on my cheek. ‘[But you have a beautiful soul,]’ she said, simply.

Later she and Saltykov examined the back of my neck: she moved the back of my collar down, so that he did not have to touch me, and he peered. ‘There is a lump,’ Saltykov told me. ‘A redness and a lump. Something under the skin.’

‘A boil,’ I said.

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps your dream was not a dream?’

‘You think Frenkel crept into my hospital room in the middle of the night, injected me with this, and then crept away again without killing me? It doesn’t seem very likely to me.’

The two of them pondered that.

‘You could cut it out,’ I said, to Saltykov.

‘What!’

‘’Get a knife and cut it open . . . to see if there’s anything inside.’

‘Not I,’ said Saltykov, very emphatically.

I pondered making the same proposal to Dora, but thought better of it.

 

‘Come,’ said Saltykov. ‘Time for your constitutional.’

‘I would prefer to sit here.’

‘[Come along,]’ said Dora, tipping the perfect sphere of her body forward in the settee just enough to kiss me on the end of my scarred nose. ‘[You need your exercise.]’

‘[Very well],’ I replied. ‘[But I shall expect you to wait upon me like a geisha when I return, as a reward for my efforts.]’

She laughed, and rolled backwards, settling into her seat again.

Saltykov and I went down in the lift and exited the hotel. We waited for an especially shuddery and noisy tram to pass by and, crossing the road, made our way unrapidly into the park. Above us, barely visible flying saucers darted from the cover of one cloud to another. All the onion domes of all the towers of the Kremlin had detached themselves and flown straight up, and now they were flying in V-formation in the
very
high blue sky. Then, with an effort that brought a sweat to my skin, I walked a hundred yards, with Saltykov walking beside me. ‘It would be easier for me,’ I said, ‘if I could lean upon your arm.’

‘Perhaps you have forgotten,’ he said. ‘I suffer from a syndrome, one symptom of which is—’

‘Syndrome, syndrome, syndrome. Do you know the English name for your syndrome? [Fuckwittery].’

‘Really? I have come across American studies of my syndrome, and have never yet heard it so described.’

‘You live and learn,’ I said.

‘Is [Fuckwitter] perhaps the name of a doctor who . . .’

‘I have to sit upon this bench,’ I said, lowering myself into the wooden slats.

‘I shall sit beside you,’ said Saltykov, primly. He sat at the other end of the bench, ensuring of course that there were several feet of wood between us. It would not do for him to come into contact of any kind with another man.

For a while we simply sat, and the sweat cooled on my face. The chill of early spring was in the air. It being a weekday, the park was more or less deserted.

‘I do not comprehend love,’ said Saltykov, out of the blue. I understood this to be his oblique way of making reference to the situation between Dora and myself.

‘No?’

‘People talk about it as a wonderful thing. An exciting and pleasurable thing. Certainly I can see that it is, in terms of the successful transmission of genes, an immensely
useful
thing. But to elevate
love
to transcendental, cosmic and godly proportions, as people do? Is this not a little self-regarding? As if because I enjoy eating beefsteaks, and because beefsteaks serve the useful purpose of keeping me alive, I therefore declared that the universe is beefsteak, God a beefsteak and beefsteak the universal core value of everything?

‘Your words produce in me,’ I replied, ‘an enormous desire to piss.’

‘Are you referring to an actual desire, or a metaphorical one?’ he replied, blandly.

‘An actual one.’

‘In that case the public toilets are over there.’

‘Shall you come with me, to assist me?’

‘The nature of my syndrome, as far as any intimacy at all with another man is concerned,’ he began, but I cut him off with the groans I made as I levered myself upright from the bench.

‘I appreciate,’ I said stiffly, ‘your courteous attempt to raise the subject of the state of emotional affairs between Dora Norman and myself.’ He blinked at me. ‘It is more than beefsteak,’ I added, ‘to my soul.’

‘Good,’ he said. Just that.

I walked slowly into the toilets, and stood at a bra-cup-shaped urinal, and relieved myself. Then I walked, slowly, back through the park. As I approached the bench I could see that another man had sat down upon it, next to Saltykov. But it was not until I had actually sat myself down that I saw that this new person was Frenkel.

‘Sit down, Konsty,’ he said, patting the wooden slats beside him. I would have preferred to remain standing, and would have liked to have been able to say, ‘I prefer to stand’; but it so happened that my clapped-out legs would in no way support my weight. I lowered myself onto the seat.

‘Jan,’ I said, recovering my breath. ‘It is surprising to see you again.’

‘Surprising?’

‘Saltykov?’ I said, speaking across Frenkel’s lap. ‘Allow me to introduce Jan Frenkel, formerly of the KGB.’

Saltykov was looking away to the left, disdainfully.

‘I have already introduced myself to Comrade Saltykov,’ said Frenkel. ‘I’m afraid he has taken a dislike to me. He is sulking.’

‘He suffers from a syndrome,’ I said.

‘But why,’ Frenkel went on, ‘do you refer to me as
formerly
of the KGB?’

‘I met a senior officer in hospital,’ I replied, ‘who gave me to believe . . .’

‘Oh, I’m under internal investigation,’ said Frenkel, airily. ‘They’ve taken away my gun. But that doesn’t stop me being a member of the KGB. The KGB is not a club that people enter and leave at will.’

‘I understand that you are now a colonel,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your elevation.’

‘Thank you!’

Saltykov was glowering with supreme intensity at some sparrows away to the left, as if
they
were somehow responsible for the career-advancement of so wicked a man as Frenkel.

‘Did your promotion have anything to do with UFOs?’

‘Ah,’ said Frenkel.

‘UFOs are good,’ I said, ‘at imparting
elevation
to individuals, after all. Lifting them up. One way or another.’

‘UFOs,’ said Frenkel. ‘Do you know how many departments in the KGB are dedicated to UFOs?’

‘I am of course prepared to guess.’

‘Or I could just tell you,’ he said, crossly. ‘
Seven
research institutes and
eleven
departments. All of them are attached to a secret wing of the KGB created specifically for this purpose. So. Why do you think the KGB is prepared to expend such resources on UFOs?’

‘Is there a word for an acronym that has, specifically, three letters?’ I asked, because the thought had just then struck me, and because it made me curious. ‘Acronyms such as
UFO
and
KGB
.
Tricronyms
, perhaps?’ But that didn’t sound very convincing. ‘What do you think, Saltykov?’ But my friend was still sulking.

Frenkel glowered at me. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I preferred you before the lobotomy.’

‘I was more anxious then, I think,’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘And more, as they say in America, [stressed-out]. More sarcastic, for that reason. But on the other hand, I had a better sense of future possibilities. I tried playing chess,’ I added, ‘with the nursing staff in the hospital, after my accident; but I can’t plan my moves. I have lost the ability to play chess. And my memory is very erratic.’

‘I really could not be less interested in your condition,’ said Frenkel. ‘You have lost
focus
, my old friend.’ He shook his head. ‘You were always an ironist - but now? What are you now? A blatherer! I preferred the caustic old Skvorecky, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘I don’t mind hearing it,’ I said.

‘And how’s your memory?’

‘It has holes.’

‘Do you remember this? Stalin personally commissioned us to write a coherent and plausible story of alien invasion, and then - surely you’ll remember this - not long after, Stalin
personally ordered us
to quit the undertaking. Your memory isn’t so malfunctional as to forget that, is it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not to forget that.’

‘Kiev,’ he said looking around. ‘It always was a shithole. I was here in the war, you know? It was a shithole then, and it’s a shithole now.’

‘It was certainly full of holes, in the war,’ I said. ‘And, to be fair to it, it has far fewer holes now.’

‘Shitheap, then,’ he said. ‘Eh Saltykov?’

And the conversation stalled for a while.

‘After the war,’ said Frenkel, in an expansive tone of voice, as if beginning a lecture, ‘an official Soviet archeological expedition was digging in Kiev. There was a lot of rebuilding, so there was plenty of opportunity. This was a site on Reitarskaya Street - it’s been kept completely secret, of course. It was a tomb, a
vault
, twenty feet below the ground. Inside was a massive chest. Inside the chest were five
hundred
books. Books in Russian, but also in Greek, in Arabic, even in fucking
Sanskrit
. The MVD arrived in a matter of hours, bunged everything into three covered trucks, and carried it all away to Moscow.’

‘Intriguing,’ I said, ‘if not wholly plausible.’

‘It’s real,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen these artefacts. I have held the books in my hand.’

‘Really?’

‘Books filled with drawings, technical plans, instructions. Orbital stations. Docking equipment for spaceships.’

‘If the KGB owns the groundplans for spaceships and space-stations, then am I to assume that the Soviet Union has been secretly constructing advanced spacecraft?’

‘No. It was not about building our own spaceships. It was about preparing the machinery necessary to receive
their
spaceships.’

‘Like getting instructions from Hitler to build garages in Moscow so he can park his tanks?’

‘Not like that! Do you know what else was there? A handwritten manuscript.
Slovo o polku Igoreve
, Prince Igor’s adventures. The
Prince Igor
! Written by Pyotr Borislavovich - the famous Pyotr Borislavovich. They’ve been here for thousands of years.’

‘And yet they are still to arrive.’

‘That’s it!’ he sounded, excited. ‘That’s exactly right!’

 

‘Back in Moscow, when I sent you up to that safe apartment with Trofim. You were supposed to call her, Dora Norman, and get her to meet with me, remember?’

‘I remember the chute,’ I said, darkly. ‘And I remember you putting a pistol into my mouth.’

‘Oh that was just to, you know. What do the French say?
Pour encourager les - les—,’

‘Aliens?’

‘Exactly. We’re old friends, you and I. I went to a good deal of effort to bring you onside. To
help
you believe. You could have done some good. You see, I was foolish enough to trust our friendship. We’d been friends before, hadn’t we? When we met Stalin? I didn’t see why we wouldn’t be friends still. You would have helped me
because
of our friendship. But you’re not very good at friendship. Too much the ironist.’

‘Irony is a jealous mistress,’ I said.

‘But,’ Frenkel went on, adopting an incongruously oleaginous voice, ‘I still think of myself as
your
friend, Konsty,’

‘Is that why you sent the red-haired fellow to smother me with a pillow in my hospital bed?’

‘I wonder if you’ll be able to understand why I would do such a thing?’ he mused.

‘Wonder away.’

‘Besides he was unsuccessful - wasn’t he? You’re still alive - aren’t you?’

‘Not for want of trying.’

‘The important point is,’ said Frenkel, locking his fingers together, and pushing his palms out, producing thereby a Geiger-counter crackle of pops and snaps in his joints. ‘You don’t believe in UFOs?’

This question, calmly posed, seemed to me to distil the entire hectic week into a quiet intensity. It was, it occurred to me,
it
. I did not rush an answer. I opened my mind to my thoughts, as a person flips through a well-read novel. What evidence was there? None. ‘Let us say, no,’ I said.

‘Would you say that you can
prove
there are no UFOs?’

‘The burden of proof is not mine,’ I noted. ‘It is on the people claiming the extraordinary.’

‘But who is to say which state of affairs - aliens, no aliens - is extraordinary? At any rate, you accept that you cannot prove that aliens do
not
exist.’

‘It’s a big cosmos.’

‘Exactly! Let us say, then, that I cannot prove to you that aliens exist. Even though I believe it with a perfect certainty. And you cannot prove to me they do
not
exist.’

‘We should, then, go on the balance of probabilities. My belief is more probable than yours.’

‘I disagree.’

‘We can agree to disagree. I think we both know what is going on.’

‘And what is that?’ Frenkel asked.

The words came smoothly, and easily, although I am not sure I had arranged all the elements in the picture until that moment. But as I said it, there, it all cohered. It was my brain’s new-found ability to understand the picture. It was my new brain.

This is what I said to him. ‘The world is changing,’ I said. ‘Gorbachev is dismantling the Soviet Union. You, and people like you - people with authority, people hidden and secret - do not want it to happen. You are engaged upon an illegal and covert operation to destabilise perestroika, and unseat Gorbachev; to create - no, wait: to
recreate -
the crisis days of the Great Patriotic War. Because the USSR is losing the Cold War, you have decided that America will not function as the enemy. But because you, like all old and stubborn Communists, revere Stalin, you have decided to resurrect the old man’s plan. And so you have spent years building the narrative of alien invasion, and adding heft to it by scattering clues, props, assertion and even creative denial to fix the belief in people’s minds. It’s nonsense, but it is surprising how much nonsense people will believe. Particularly in worrying times.’