Russian Hide-and-Seek

10

‘But what does a Guards officer want with an ancient clergyman?’

‘According to him it isn’t in his capacity as a Guards officer but to oblige Commissioner Mets.’

‘So you said earlier. I meant, what does the particular kind of barbarian that officers their Guards want with me?’

‘I’m sorry, sir – what this one wants, I think, is to impress this chap Mets with his powers of diplomacy and his knowledge of the English. He rather plumes himself on that, I’m not sure why.’

‘How? Impress his friend how?’

‘By persuading you to do what Mets wants and take a hand in this festival I mentioned.’

‘Take a hand in what?’

‘In the festival of English art and-’

‘Yes, yes, yes. If that’s the case his knowledge of the English is in some disarray.’

Dr Joseph Wright wanted to say that not all the English were the same, but held his peace. On their brief re-acquaintance he had not found the Reverend Simon Glover the easiest of men, though no less easy than most nearly blind, rather deaf, rheumatic and very old men must tend to be. This one, clearly robust and handsome in former times, with an aggressive high nose, was housed and looked after by his granddaughter and her husband, the manager of a village eating-house and so quite prosperous by local standards. Their cottage was comfortably furnished: the chair Glover sat in, and nowadays rarely left by choice except to go to bed, was too well made not to have dated from before the Pacification.

He wore carefully-pressed grey flannel trousers, a check shirt with open neck – no clerical collar, not for fifty years – and a navy-blue cardigan his granddaughter had knitted. His expression was of slight but settled contempt for something outside his immediate surroundings.

‘What are you going to say to this fellow?’ Wright pitched his voice well up.

‘That depends rather on what he says to me.’

‘I meant,’ said Wright, summoning his charity, ‘I take it you will turn down his suggestion.’

‘Well, I’d better hear what it is precisely, but yes, I can certainly see no reason for accepting any such proposal at the moment. That’s to say while it remains no more than a proposal. If he applies pressure I shall obviously have to think again.’

‘To be fair, they don’t really behave like that these days, Mr Glover.’

‘Can you see them refraining if they want something badly enough? I may be very important; that’s one of the things we don’t know. I can’t imagine why I should be, but that’s always the way where they’re concerned. You can’t tell what they’ll be up to next because they can’t either. You can see it in their faces – anxious, desperately puzzled, like children suddenly made to take part in some adult activity. I remember…’

The old man fell silent, tightening and relaxing his clasped fingers. He had not seen in any detail the face of a Russian or of anybody else for several years; nevertheless, what he had said did not sound like the product of fancy. The doctor looked at his watch.

‘He’s late.’

‘He’ll probably not come at all. Are you sure you understood him correctly?’

‘Oh yes, sir, he was quite specific.’

‘It seems slightly odd that he should go to all this trouble to win a good opinion that can’t be much use to him.’

It seemed something of the kind to Alexander himself, now entering the village. With Theodore’s revolution so much in his thoughts, or rather in his day-dreamings as yet, standing well with Commissioner Mets seemed even less important than it had at first. But he could not get out of this evening’s visit; to say that he had changed his mind, simply not done what he had undertaken to do, was unthinkable. His mistake had been in agreeing to see Mets in the first place; he might have foreseen that his father’s silly paternal pride would light on some ridiculous chore that all the same could not be refused – indeed, must even so be prosecuted as vigorously as possible.

He found the cottage without trouble. It stood nearly opposite the village church, from which came the music of a synthaccordion and voices raised in song and raucous laughter. As he drew level the heavy door swung open and the racket was intensified. Two middle-aged men lurched out, talking loudly, drunk at half-past six. When they saw the Russian uniform they quietened down and straightened themselves and one of them hastily shut the door, an unnecessary switch to decorum, for the days were past when a member of the units of supervision would have been likely to correct English misbehaviour with riding-whip or pistol-butt. These two must have learned their lesson thoroughly in youth.

A dark-haired young woman answered Alexander’s knock. She was pleasant enough to look at but not such as to arouse his desire, or no more than any other undeformed female of her age would have done, which was just as well in the circumstances. A boy of five or six had his hand in hers. After greeting them pleasantly in Russian Alexander picked the child up – he at least showed no mistrust – and set him in the mare’s saddle. A short game ensued, evidently acceptable to both him and his mother. By the time it was over a man who was evidently his father had appeared. He took the reins and led Polly away round the side of the cottage. Alexander was shown into a long narrow room that ran from front to rear and had a window-bay at its far end. As he entered, two men who had been sitting in this space got to their feet without alacrity and faced him. He recognised Dr Wright with an irritation he strove to conceal; what lay ahead was going to be hard enough without such a presence on his flank, so to speak. He wished them good evening, again in Russian, a choice which surprised Wright and almost aroused a flicker of respect in him.

‘Do please sit down,’ went on Alexander. ‘It’s good of you to be at home, Mr Glover. Now this won’t take long.’

‘What does he say’?’ asked Glover.

‘Just politenesses. – You’d better speak up, and go slow too; his Russian isn’t much good.’

‘Very well. – Dr Wright will have told you why I am here, sir. May I ask how you feel about taking part in the festival he will also have spoken of?’

‘The same way as I feel about everything you people… demand of me.’ Glover’s accent was thick and his delivery halting. ‘If I can resist you I will.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir. I agree we are in a position to demand this. But there’s more to the case than our demanding and your complying, or, possibly, not complying. What we demand is also what will benefit your fellow-countrymen in an important way, and you are one of the very few in a position to bring it to them.’

‘What do you know of this “it” that I can bring my fellow-countrymen?’

‘At first hand, nothing, of course, but am I wrong in thinking it important?’

‘You have no… you don’t know what importance is. Or truth. You Russians simply have an uneasy… feeling about having taken our culture and our religion away from us.’

‘Perhaps you mean an uneasy conscience. That would be an excellent description.’

‘Why stop there? Why not set about giving us back our history’? To take away our books was a crime as great as taking away our churches. Until the year before you came we were still free. We… we chose our rulers and dismissed them if they were unsatisfactory, within some limits we could say and write what we pleased, the courts were fair, we could come and go… And we had fought for our freedom, again and again. The knowledge of that you had to take away, because our national pride was rooted in it. It won’t be very long now before nobody knows how we stood alone against Hitler, how but for us and the Americans your own precious country would have been defeated. You yourself don’t know the bare fact that we and our allies invaded Western Europe in 1944-I do, because my father was there, at a place called Arnhem. You don’t even know how we fought you. You think it was all over in three days, you poor ignorant illiterate incurious nitwit…

The old man said a good deal more to the same effect. Alexander listened respectfully, or with a show of respect. His English was good enough for him to be able to follow the general drift and he was familiar with the material, especially the part about the 1944 ‘invasion’, the usual pre-war term and a surprisingly grandiose one, given the English tendency to understatement, for a raid on a single port. Like the rest of the stuff – the talk of choosing between one or other set of nominees of the boss, freedom of the press when the boss owned the press, unhindered access to any slum or ethnic ghetto – it was a comforting myth, important to a proud nation that had held India and large parts of Africa before being chased out by the indignant inhabitants. (Not that those inhabitants were much better off today, if the truth were known.)

The myth apparently meant a good deal to Glover, who was crying as he finished his tirade. Wright went across and laid a hand on his shoulder. He said quietly to Alexander,

‘I think you’d better go now, don’t you? You won’t shake him.’

‘We shall see.

‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Wright abruptly.

‘No good reason. My father suggested it and I couldn’t think how to get out of it.’

‘I suppose that might even be true.’

Alexander made no reply. He started thinking hard. After a couple of minutes he raised his voice. ‘What about your duty as a Christian, Mr Glover?’

‘My what?’

‘Duty as a Christian, sir,’ said Wright.

‘What do you know of that, you atheistical swine?’

‘As before, nothing, but you must know more than a little.’

‘My duty as a Christian is a matter for my own conscience.’

‘In that case let’s save ourselves some time. This is a very attractive cottage and your granddaughter – yes? – is a delightful young lady. It would be terrible if a party of drunken soldiers broke in and wrecked the place and raped her. And her husband might get badly hurt if he tried to intervene, or if they thought he was going to. Even the boy – fine little chap, isn’t he? – well, you know what brutes those Russian rankers are; some of them aren’t even Russian, they’re Tar-tars, Uzbeks – Asiatics. No one would be safe from them. Except you, Mr Glover. They’d have too much respect to lay a finger on you. Apart from making certain you saw everything of course. Now if-’

‘Oh, dear God.’

‘And you could fix that up easily enough, couldn’t you?’

‘What do you think, doctor?’

‘I think you could and would, out of spite at being crossed in a matter you admit is of no concern to you.’

‘Good. If you think that, so will others.’ Alexander spoke up again. ‘I couldn’t arrange that, Mr Glover, even if I wanted to. Suppose for the moment it none the less took place. Somebody would be able to identify those soldiers – wearing civilian clothes would do no more than delay things slightly. Every Russian in the district would be paraded and the culprits picked out and sent to die in the Arctic. But it would never come to such a pass. If I were to give my men an order like that they’d simply not carry it out, quite confident I’d never dare charge them with disobedience. They know all this. The English don’t, and wouldn’t be inclined to believe it if they were told. So when your friends hear indirectly that you’ve been threatened with the rape of your granddaughter and sundry other dire things, they’ll understand why you’ve agreed to cooperate with Commissioner Mets and they won’t do what you’re so afraid of and…send you to Coventry. Yes, I’ve learned a little about pre-wars over the years. I was brought up here, you know. Perhaps Dr Wright told you that.’

Glover had put his hands over his face. He said something in a pathetic whimpering tone to Wright, who looked consideringly over at Alexander. Finally he spoke, but his voice was hard and cold.

‘He says it’s worse being lonely when you’re eighty and it’s harder to be brave too.’

‘I believe him. I don’t quite see why you’re talking to me in that strain, doctor. Mr Glover is in my debt. He can now do his duty without fear.’ When Wright said nothing to that, Alexander went on more loudly,’ Am Ito take it, sir, that Commissioner Mets is welcome to call’?’

Wright turned to relay this but Glover was already nodding his head. Alexander got up and adjusted the hang of his tunic.

‘So you’ve got what you wanted,’ said Wright, not quite so coldly as before.

‘It seems so. And what I wanted is in the general interest. For once. Is Kitty at home’?’

‘I hope she is. She’s meant to be cooking the dinner.’

‘I’ll call on her. I won’t stay.’

‘I’ll be along in an hour. Why aren’t you at the grand levee given by that thieving grocer of yours?’

‘It’s not my sort of party.’

‘Really. I should have thought that that was just what it was.’

‘Off my home territory it’s hard for me to shine as I like to do with all those important people there. I might look in late when most of them will have gone.

Wright laughed without merriment. ‘You’re a fraud, Petrovsky, but quite a clever fraud.’

‘I call that handsome of you, doctor. And I might surprise you one day about the fraud part.’

‘Everything’s possible.’

Alexander nodded, clicked his heels and called, ‘Good night, Mr Glover.’

After a long pause the old man said, ‘Good night. Thank you.’

A little later, in Wright’s house, in the sitting-room next to the conservatory, Alexander and Kitty were vigorously kissing and caressing each other.

‘Oh darling, you make me so happy,’ she said.

‘I love you.’

‘And I love you, but it’ll have to wait a minute or two – I’ve got to take the bean salad off the stove and dress it while it’s still warm.’

A little later yet they were lying side by side in the bed upstairs.

‘What are you thinking about?’ said Alexander.

‘Just wondering what’s going to happen to us. I mean will you be coming to see me like this in a year’s time, or in ten years’ time, or what? Will we be married? I’m not asking you to, just wondering what you think will happen.’

‘Darling, I couldn’t marry you – I can’t marry you. The law won’t have it.’

‘They might change the law. Things are getting easier.’

‘Yes. Well, if they ever do change the law, of course we’ll get married,’ said Alexander, who never minded making this sort of promise, or indeed any other. He added deftly, ‘That’s if you still want to.’

‘Oh, of course I will, of course I will. Where would we live?’

‘In a grand house somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said rather irritably; this sort of imagining bored him. ‘Where would you like it to be’?’

‘Don’t laugh, dearest, but where I’d really like it to be is Moscow.’

He stared at her in unaffected surprise.

‘I know it could never happen,’ she went on wistfully, ‘but I keep imagining it. The Kremlin and the Kitai Gorod and Red Square and Lenin’s tomb and the Praise of the Holy Virgin church. There’s not a day goes by but I think of it all and wish I were there.’

‘Why? From your point of view it’s a foreign place at the other end of Europe where you’ve never been.’

‘That’s just it, it’s so remote and mysterious and romantic. The great city in the snow. The last citadel on the road to Asia. After all it is the centre of the world.’