Russian Hide-and-Seek

12

‘You know, Brevda, when you come to think about it, life is hell.’

‘It notoriously has its negative aspects, sir.’

‘There seems no rest from having to decide what one ought to do in a given situation.’

‘The necessity of moral choice can be most onerous, sir.’

‘Self-interest just isn’t a sufficient guide to behaviour, is it?’

‘Sadly deficient in many respects, sir.’

‘After all, there is such a thing as right and wrong.’

‘Bravely spoken, sir.’

Having paced the length of the gallery a couple of times engaged in this style of talk, master and man halted at the east window of the house. It was Friday evening about six-thirty. In the afternoon there had been a heaviness of the air that had seemed to threaten thunder, but this had passed and the sun sparkled brightly on the dark waters of the pond below them. Alexander’s mind was blank; he could not now remember why he had started this conversation, nor had he any idea what to say next. In an effort to shake off inertia he turned abruptly on Brevda, saying almost at random,

‘Have you got me some fresh cigarettes?’

‘No, sir, I-’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I have to go in tomorrow, sir, and you still have about ten, and you never smoke more than about two or three in a-’

‘Tonight might be just the night I want twenty. Simply because you lead such a wretchedly repetitive mean little life you needn’t suppose others do the same. In future see I have a full packet at all times. I’m sick of the sight of you – be off and draw my bath.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Brevda.’

‘Sir?’

Alexander stared at his valet for a long time, blinking and slowly opening and shutting his mouth. Then he said, ‘Sorry. It’s… the heat,’ this in such a way as to leave no doubt that, whatever it was, it was not that. ‘Well, am I forgiven?’

‘Of course, your honour.’

Half an hour later Alexander was in his bedroom putting on his mess-dress. By now he seemed in the best of spirits; he was whistling a song of the regiment, fresh in his mind after hearing the band practising it in preparation for the next morning’s ceremonial parade. The vodka-bottle still stood on the writing table, but its level had not changed for over a week. In the same kind of way he had given notice of his intention to turn up this evening and had spent the last half-hour quietly reading when he could have been lying face down on his bed. These improvements originated not in any self-reformatory efforts but in the completeness with which his energies were now absorbed: any time left over from work and sex was used up by the revolution and there was none to spare for drink, plaguing the household or behaving like someone in a nineteenth-century Russian novel. As a result he was nearer to being contented, even happy, than he had been for years; it was true that his second visit to the rehearsals of the English play, paid the morning after the first one, had been productive only of irritation, but a kind of semi-discreditable relief had soon followed. His obvious response to the set-back must be complete inactivity for as long as possible, not a daunting prospect to one already so extended. In fact, he had since realised, his original approach to Sarah Harland had been in pursuance of that earlier and comparatively juvenile policy of his that dictated instant pursuit of any attractive female – earlier than his association with Mrs Korotchenko, the most unjuvenile passage, it seemed to him, of his career to date.

His comb struck a tangle of hair at the crown of his head, spun out of his hand and skidded across the top of the dressing-table to vanish between it and the wall. Cursing loudly in English, he used excessive force to make an aperture for his arm. His groping fingers soon found the comb, but they had already found something else as well, something that felt like a crumpled piece of card. It proved to be a treasure he had thought for a year or two to be lost – he had had no cause to look behind the dressing-table in that time, and no more had any servant: the ancient photograph, taken seven metres below where he stood, that had told him of the cypress avenue, the yew hedge, the statues of nymphs and hunters, the little stone lions once to be seen from his window. Whether because of the lapse of time, or the renewed effect of the old flat-look process, or most likely the experience he had gained in the interval, the sight affected him strongly.

In a few seconds his manner lost all its new firmness and sobriety and his eyes grew unfixed. He imagined, or tried to imagine, the scene in the photograph not as it was, not empty, not strange and sad, but enlivened by some of the people who had known it just as it was then, at the very moment the camera had recorded it, the men in tweed suits, striped shirts and the ties of their school, university or regiment, the women wearing elaborate dresses of light coloured silk and fine silk stockings, with much jewellery. At this hour, perhaps, they would have been eating gherkin sandwiches and drinking gin, Scotch whisky, port, champagne, out of crystal goblets.

What had they thought was awaiting them? -for Alexander had always fancied, had taken it for granted, that the picture commemorated a vanished world not by chance but by design, that it dated from the last months or days of that world and had been pushed under the gallery floor for him to find, or more strictly for him to take possession of some years after a workman replacing rotten boards had found it. What had they said to one another, those men and women of the final stage of capitalism? Had they talked of the starving pensioners in their tiny unheated rooms, of the dying children turned away from hospitals because their parents could not afford to rent a bed for them, of the immigrants cowering at the backs of their shops while the racist mobs looted and burned and the police stood by or joined in the rapine, of the groups of workers hastily assembling and training for the supreme struggle? (Hardly of the last-mentioned, which could be assumed to have taken place in secret, though details of this and of all the other matters were lacking.) Or had that conversation of long ago revolved round traditional interests, fox-hunting, pheasant-shooting, cricket, the London theatre, adultery? He had no idea whatever of the answers to any of these questions, just hoped very much that some sort of Yes could be attached to the last one because that made the participants more admirable, more aristocratic, more English. And surely that other Alexander would have enjoyed his hold on the life he had always known until the instant when it was forcibly taken from him.

At the thought of his namesake and predecessor, Alexander Petrovsky raised his head and lost some of his dreamy look. After a pause he stepped across to the bookcase, took out the purple-bound volume, opened it at an acute angle and popped his finger inside. Then he read aloud, in a high, slow, monotonous voice, the passage that either chance or a prodigiously close knowledge of the lay-out had put in his way.

‘Freckled hands reach out to clasp in love,

The mouth drools that would kiss, the straining eyes

Hold sweet images of what never was;

Ah, shut them with a blow, strike aside

The hands, silence the mouth for ever

Before it calls for reason, faith, justice,

And the hangmen come.

This time the reader shut the book without a sound and replaced it gently on the shelf. After standing a minute in thought, evidently unpleasing thought, he gave a long sigh, checked his appearance in the wardrobe mirror and marched out, straightening his mess-jacket.

Downstairs, in the drawing-room, in the east hall, by the east front, the first guests were assembling. Three long tables formed an open square on the paved space between the entrance staircases and the edge of the pond. There were dishes of ham, smoked goose, cold mutton, cold chicken, cold sliced beetroot, marrow, red cabbage, watercress and endive, bowls of date chutney and pickled mushrooms and onions, and plates of thick white bread and butter. Peaches, gooseberries, loganberries and cream and junket were also offered, together with several varieties of cake. Bowls of a transparent plastic meant to resemble glass contained a cold punch of Krasnodar Riesling with lemon-juice and sugar-syrup and a slight stiffening of vodka. Vodka itself was to be had for the asking, and of course there would be plenty of asking.

These informal receptions of the Controller’s, held on the second and fourth Friday of every month from March to October, were highly valued throughout the units of supervision, not for the generous hospitality alone, though this was indeed a factor, nor so much for ordinary social reasons as for the opportunity, provided almost nowhere else, of running into colleagues, opposite numbers, persons normally inaccessible for reasons of rank or protocol and, in these unceremonious circumstances, settling in a couple of minutes difficulties that weeks of official exchanges might have failed to solve.

The difficulty which now occupied the Controller and his wife had been doing so on and off for nearly ten years and was certainly not going to be settled in a couple of minutes. Even so, the urgency in Tatiana Petrovsky’s tone and manner suggested that she had by no means given up hope of one day carrying her point. She and her husband were standing some distance round the curve of the pond, away from the sprinkling of guests; it was years since, in furtherance of informality, Petrovsky had left off the practice of having individuals presented on arrival at the fortnightly receptions.

‘You must speak to him,’ she said, not being a believer in originality for its own sake.

‘I can hardly speak to him this minute, my love.’

‘That’s precisely what you can do, Sergei. He’s just arrived, he’s on his own, he’ll be sober and above all he’ll be unprepared. That’s your only chance of getting him to listen to you. If you signal your intention by telling him you want to have a chat with him, or… however you put it, by the time you see him he’ll have worked out which attitude to use to keep you at a distance, cold or humble or… You know how he is.’

‘Yes, I think I do. What do you want me to say?’

‘Dear God, what I’ve just been telling you, that she’s a notoriously disreputable creature, also that one of her young men committed suicide and she was suspected of murdering another, or at least accidentally killing him, but she was never charged, nobody was, that she-’

‘All allegation. Rumour.’

‘What else would you expect? One’s friends and their friends aren’t on oath, but why should they lie, and tell the same lie? That woman is a pervert. She likes… Well, Agatha Tabidze wouldn’t specify, and we’ve been friends for ten years. Surely that suggests something.’

‘Indeed it does, like everything else you say about her-that the lady must be irresistible to any young man of spirit. Oh, I don’t welcome it, of course, but…’

‘But what?’

Sergei Petrovsky’s handsome bearded face showed a refined discomfort, an awareness of duty left undone coupled with mild, regretful cynicism about the real value of that duty. His attire was similarly diversified: austerely-cut suit of dark-grey flannel or an approximation to it, bright-coloured striped waistcoat with copper buttons in student style and cream shirt with open collar, bureaucratic necktie thrown aside. Beside him, round-shouldered and not tall, in finely-woven azure cotton with lilac ribbons, Tatiana was to the casual eye a much less impressive figure. A second glance might have noted determination in her gaze and in the set of her mouth, and strong will or at least obstinacy in the prominent bar of frontal bone above her eyes, a characteristic inherited by her sons but not her daughter, and one who had noted so much might very likely have gone on to feel a certain sympathy for a man whose wife knew so precisely and so certainly how he ought to behave on any occasion and was so fully prepared to make him a present of that knowledge at any time. Only a close and attentive friend of the family, perhaps, Agatha Tabidze or another, was in a position to observe how unimpressively, how lamely Sergei answered Tatiana’s scoldings and urgings and how serenely he did or went on doing just as he pleased, which in practice usually meant not doing something that would incur hostility.

‘But what can I do?’ he answered her now. ‘What should I do? And what makes you so sure there’s an affair going on? I’m not aware of any evidence of it.’

‘My darling, you wouldn’t be aware of any evidence if you saw them in bed together, but if you want to hear I’ll tell you what makes me so sure. Two things at least. The way she behaved that night when they’d come back indoors. Not a word out of her all evening and then all of a sudden interested in everything. Like a drug-addict in a last-century movie, before and after taking a dose. He carried it off very well. But then he’s grown so secretive, that’s the other thing. Oh, he has his silly fits but until this started, one way or another I always knew what he was up to. He senses I’d disapprove more strongly than I usually do. His manner’s altogether different.’

‘Young men may have all manner of reasons for being secretive.’ Petrovsky spoke very gently, or at least in a very propitiatory way.‘ And why do you disapprove? Having moral attitudes these days seems rather… pointless.’

‘These days there’s more point than ever before. But no need to take things as far as morality – surely you can see other grounds for disapproving, practical ones. Suppose her husband finds out; have you thought what damage he might do? And what she might do? At least you should warn him.’

‘I’m sure he’s taken all that into consideration, my love.’

‘Are you really’? When was he last seen taking into consideration anything that might hinder him from doing whatever he wanted to do?’

Still gently, Petrovsky said, ‘We’ve come as far as morality now all right, haven’t we? Moral disapproval of someone doing as he pleases, of that in itself. I’m afraid I’ve never been able to summon up very strong feelings along those lines.’

‘Yes, Sergei, that is your serious misfortune, and others’. All human beings, especially those with good looks or some other advantage over their fellows, need strong opposition when young, that in itself. If it isn’t forthcoming, their characters suffer. They become egotistical, impossible to deflect from any course of action they may have set themselves, and yet erratic, given to abrupt, entire changes of direction for no external cause. I can’t image why it’s always supposed to be the over-indulgent mother who spoils her son when the father is obviously so much more important in teaching him how to behave. It must be more difficult for a father to take in the fact that his son is growing up, that he isn’t still the little boy whose activities are too harmless and unimportant to have a strict watch kept on them. And of course being tolerant is so much less trouble. At the time. But just wait. Our son is now a very dangerous person – to himself. I hope for all our sakes, Sergei, that you’re a less liberal administrator than you are a father.’

When he judged she had finished, he said in the same tone as before, ‘Goodness, I could tell there was a good deal of moral disapproval about. What I hadn’t realised was how much of it was reserved for me.

As they stared at each other, the lines of bitterness and accusation round her mouth and eyes began to fade a little, but there was still an edge to her voice when she said, ‘We all need opposition from time to time, including you, dearest Sergei,’ thinking to herself as so often before that this time there was a chance he might actually do something about the matter in hand.

‘I’ll speak to him. If he knows we know, at least it’ll make it easier for him to come to us in a crisis.’

‘Don’t let him get away with denying it.’

‘I think you can trust me not to do that,’ he said, sounding less than bland for the first time.

Already wondering whether she thought so too, she looked over his shoulder and at once her manner changed slightly but perceptibly. A small figure, no more than a metre and a half high but finely proportioned, had just emerged from the house and now stood for a moment surveying the assembled company before starting to walk down the steps.

Petrovsky glanced briefly at his wife and followed her gaze. Without conscious thought the two moved nearer each other as if the better to resist some form of physical attack. For the new arrival was Director Vanag, who had never been known for certain to do anything whatever in his official capacity except go to his office in Northampton Town Hall five and a half days a week, but who was always brought to mind (though less often mentioned) when someone was recalled to Moscow and never heard of again, or when someone else met an unnatural death in the district. Earlier that very week, the drowned body of a clerk in the administrative department concerned with housing had been pulled out of the river Nene, a man of unblemished public and private life, a man with no visible enemies. He had suffered a blow on the head, perhaps in falling, perhaps not. It was inferred as a matter of course that Vanag had been responsible, the victim’s strongly-presumed innocence being taken by some as positive confirmation, on the argument that indiscriminate ‘demonstrations’, as such acts had become known, were more efficacious than selective ones. According to a simpler and more fashionable view, Vanag was too lazy or incompetent to track down any real undesirables there might have been and ordered the occasional random murder purely as evidence of zeal. Whatever the truth of that, nobody was amused, and the need to stand well with the Director was so thoroughly understood that nobody, except perhaps Alexander, seriously blamed the Petrovskys for inviting him to their parties.

Now he paused again, standing on the bottom step, and again looked about him. As always he was unaccompanied; at no social gathering had he ever been seen with a companion of either sex and, although he was universally believed to be under strong guard night and day, any guards were never identifiable as such. He seemed just on the point of resuming his progress when he caught sight of his hosts and raised his hand to them. It was a curious gesture, prolonged until what had looked like a greeting became something not far from a warning; than he moved off and was lost to sight among his taller fellow-guests. The Petrovskys looked at each other once more, this time in a way that showed deep intimacy and mutual trust, he conveying a mild request for moral support against any difficulties that might ensue, she warmly promising it. They were about to join a nearby group when Alexander, Nina and Theodore came up to them. The latter pair were holding hands and had an air of great seriousness and suppressed excitement and a little discomfort.

‘These two have something to say to you, papa.’ Alexander too seemed ill at ease, but amused at the same time. ‘For some reason they want me to be present when they say it, though I can’t see what business it is of mine.’

‘Have I your permission to speak, sir’?’ asked Theodore.

‘To speak? Why, certainly.’

‘Nina and I are in love with each other, I have asked her to be my wife and, subject to your approval, sir, she has accepted. So I now formally request your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

‘I see. Well… of course. A splendid idea. I formally… award you her hand. A splendid idea. My congratulations to you both. We must arrange a party. An engagement party.’

Alexander and his mother added their congratulations. Petrovsky stepped forward, his arms held out, but Theodore checked him for the moment, took Nina’s hand and put on her fourth finger a ring that featured a large purple zircon or other imitation gem set in a platinum claw. When he had kissed her there were sundry embraces, followed by some discussion of dates. After that Petrovsky said there were other family matters to be discussed with Alexander, and the engaged couple withdrew.

‘Your father looked thoroughly mystified,’ said Theodore with a chuckle.

‘Oh, wasn’t he sweet? Just managing to prevent himself from asking why on earth you needed permission to marry a female indisputably of age. But he came through like a born administrator. I was proud of him. You two should get on like a house on fire.’

‘There was something else he’d have liked to ask, or rather get confirmed – that we’re sleeping together.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m so glad he didn’t, aren’t you? We’d have had to say No, and he’d either have been hurt at our lying to him or been terribly shocked at our unprogressiveness.’

‘I know, but really I think it would be hard to find anybody much who’d understand that we both simply would much rather not until we’re married. Perhaps your mother would.’

‘I doubt it. She’s very moral but her ideas are rather fixed.

And of course someone like Elizabeth would just think we were mad. That reminds me: she says she’ll join the… music society. She’ll do anything within reason that isn’t either dangerous or disgusting. By disgusting she means sleeping with Vanag’s men to get information out of them.’

‘Very sensible. I’m so happy I’m going to do something that isn’t sensible at all and may be both dangerous and disgusting.’

‘Oh, darling, he knows I hate him.’

‘He must know everybody hates him… Good evening, sir – I trust I find you in good health.’

‘I beg your pardon, I so rarely have need for that language. Nevertheless good evening, Miss Petrovsky, Mr Markov.’ Director Vanag spoke in a high tenor, almost an alto. He wore one of the badgeless uniforms, very dark blue and buttoned to the neck, in which he was always seen, this version being of distinctly superior cloth to that of his everyday dress. Theodore’s greeting might not have been to his taste, but he had responded to it with what in almost anyone else would have been taken as a pleasant, even attractive smile. The glance of his large, clear grey eyes had similar connections with friendliness and candour. In repose his face, almost unlined and of a healthy complexion, had a wistful, unworldly look. His crisp, sandy hair, cut short and parted on the right, lifted a little in the faint evening breeze. His teeth were small and regular. He was forty-five and looked thirty-five.

‘You must congratulate us, Director,’ Theodore went on. ‘Miss Petrovsky and I have just become engaged to be married.’

‘Indeed? What a splendid concept. I do very heartily congratulate you.

‘We can take it that you approve, then, can we, sir?’

‘Approve?’ Vanag gave a merry laugh of pure amusement. ‘Of course I approve, but what possible difference could it make whether I did or not? The view of a humble pen-pusher can hardly be of much interest to anyone. Well now, this chance encounter is very timely, Mr Markov. I was thinking to myself just the other day that my ignorance of the activities of your Commission was quite shameful. You can enlighten me. Perhaps you’d be good enough to give me a short account of them.’

Theodore set himself to do so and the talk flowed with some freedom. After a couple of minutes Alexander joined the group, but seemed to have nothing to contribute. He soon began making small impatient movements which the other two men paid no attention to.

‘It’s an impressive undertaking,’ said Vanag in tones of great interest and also of finality. ‘More ambitious than I’d realised.’

‘It’s the least we can do, after the way we treated them in the past.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t quite…’

‘The denationing programme was nothing but an act of savagery.

‘With respect, Mr Markov, if it was that it was also something more: it was the means of breaking the English will to resist, and that had to be done.’

‘It broke everything English. The scale of the thing was altogether wrong. After all, organised resistance collapsed on the third day.’ Theodore was trying hard to speak calmly and civilly. ‘Isn’t that true, sir?’

‘Perfectly true. Hostilities didn’t cease immediately, how-ever.

‘There were isolated pockets of resistance, according to the official history of the operation.’

‘Just so. I take your point, Mr Markov, and if your feelings about these events cause you to approach your work with heightened enthusiasm, so much the better for everybody concerned. I’ve enjoyed our chat. Now I fear I must leave you. Miss Petrovsky; gentlemen.’

And with a gracious inclination of the head Director Vanag turned away and took a proffered glass of the freshly-squeezed lemonade that was always available to him wherever he went and whatever the hour.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Nina a moment later. ‘If you didn’t know-’

But Alexander interrupted her. ‘Forgive me, darling, I must just have one minute with your fiance. Men’s talk. Then I’ll get you a lovely drink.’

As soon as they were alone, Theodore said, ‘What on earth’s the matter? You look-’

‘My parents know about me and Mrs Korotchenko.’

‘Are they here tonight, the Korotchenkos?’

‘I haven’t seen them.’

‘Let’s hope… Sorry, go on.

‘Well, I was all surprise and indignation but my mother just went on saying she knew – she’s always much tougher than my father over things like this, over most things, in fact. They were trying to warn me off, saying she’s mad and bad, but that’s no news, though they had plenty of documentation, I must admit. At any rate, they know.’

‘How?’

Alexander drew in his breath and shook his head. ‘That’s just it. My mother was quite firm that it was nothing but her observation of me and Mrs K on the evening in question, but she may have some source she didn’t want to mention.’

‘Who could it be?’

‘I can’t imagine. It’s depressing. Perhaps I could… No. Let’s think. Not Korotchenko or they’d have mentioned it, and so would he, presumably. They’d have mentioned the Tabidzes too. Or would they? Who else is there? Think.’

‘Look, will your parents keep quiet?

‘My mother will. My father… well, yes, probably. I’ll take a chance on it, anyway.’

‘You must. The great thing is that Korotchenko clearly doesn’t know. That list of their agents is important to us.’

‘All right.’

‘When is it, next Thursday? The best of luck, my dear fellow.’

Before the night was out Theodore Markov had another conversation that was later to seem important to him, even though this later one lasted only half a minute. The sturdy figure of Commissioner Mets had approached him and Nina rather abruptly.

‘How did it go’?’ Mets had known about the impending engagement.

‘Oh, very well, thank you, sir. The old boy was rather taken aback but he soon rallied.’

‘Good. I saw you having a word with the big boss. Vanag.’

‘Yes, sir. Just briefly.’

‘What do you think of him?’ asked Mets in a loud expressionless voice.

‘We had met once before. He was most polite.’

‘Good. He didn’t make any interesting remarks, I suppose, about any of us? I mean he’s a bit of a joker in his way.’

‘Is he? No, the conversation was general.’

‘I see. He can be quite a joker, you know. Well… good night.’

‘Your boss might have congratulated me or something,’ said Nina as soon as it was opportune.

‘I think he must have been drunk.’

‘Probably. He looked to me as if he was frightened.’

Time was advancing. No food remained on the tables; a large part of it had been eaten by the guests, the rest smuggled out of sight by the waiters for selling to the English gardeners, grooms and lower house-servants for a few hundred pounds a time. The punch had all been drunk, and the company, now somewhat reduced in both numbers and condition, was regaling itself on inferior white wine, rye beer and various spirits. As the light began to fail there was a general move indoors, partly because the breeze had freshened, partly because a good deal of noise was now coming from an impromptu male-voice choir and, round the miniature temple, a remote kind of prayer-meeting with the principal role being taken at the moment by a naked man flourishing a bottle of vodka, during the day a senior official in the department of communications.

A visitor who knew the house as it normally was would have noted certain arrangements made for the occasion. The standard of behaviour expected tonight was far higher than that at, say, Igor Swianiewicz’s parties, which were as different as they could possibly have been from the present gathering. Otherwise the outer doors would have been barred and heavy furniture run up against them, to be removed only when the last departure was reliably reported. As it was there was free access to east and west halls, in which hard chairs and folding tables were set, and only the more expensive appointments had been locked away. All internal doors except those of the downstairs lavatories, where the floors were covered with sheets of waterproof material, had of course been securely blocked.

The more sober spirits were grouped at the western end. It was here that, about eleven o’clock, Mrs Tabidze yielded to persistent requests and began telling fortunes with a pack of playing-cards. She stipulated that she would not choose her clients – individuals must suggest themselves, thereby nettling Alexander, who felt that this undemanding way of holding the stage would be unacceptably degraded if one were seen to bid for it. Nina had no such inhibitions. Ignoring Theodore’s mild dissuasion she went forward and sat at the small baize-covered table on the other side of which Agatha Tabidze was putting out the cards face down in heaps of half a dozen and turning them over apparently at random. Nina’s virtues were rehearsed, then some of her accomplishments, like making a good lemon souffle; this part was light and facetious in tone. Her engagement was treated rather more sedately, with a few minor facts revealed which it seemed she had not thought at all generally known. Finally – it was soon clear that the fortunes told were to be of no great comprehensiveness – Mrs Tabidze drew a fresh card and said in a gentle voice,

‘And what is to come will be good. Soon there will be a time of trial, not of your making, for between the two of you there will never be any serious difficulty, yet none the less it will be a troublesome time. But it will pass, and you will be together, and you will be happy.’

There was shouting and applause from the couple of dozen in the west hall. Nina jumped to her feet and embraced Mrs Tabidze, then, streaming with tears and grinning broadly, ran to Theodore’s arms. Petrovsky made a confused re-announcement of what had just been made public and the company cheered, renewed their applause and proposed and drank toasts. One of the drinkers, a burly bearded man in a short bottle-green jacket and white trousers, immediately afterwards clapped his hand across his mouth and made off towards the lavatories at a lurching trot. Then things quietened down for a time. Successively, two middle-aged ladies, each the wife of an official, were taken at a smart pace through their pasts, presents and futures. General attention wandered; after emotional farewells, or in one case after being hauled upright and supported from either side, several people left. When the second lady had been dismissed there was a pause, and the entertainment, already languishing, seemed about to cease altogether. At last Commissioner Mets put up his hand and was accepted.

The fortune-teller had run into a small difficulty in that her acquaintance with her new customer was recent and slight, though it certainly included the fact that he held an important and therefore sensitive post; banter, the obvious recourse, would not do here. Hesitantly at first, consulting the cards a great deal, she told the Commissioner that he was a man of wide knowledge, refined taste and steady judgement, that he showed total dedication to his job but was always extending his horizons in new directions, and other things no self-respecting bureaucrat could demur at. When the talk turned to the inevitable difficulties along the way and the patience that would in time resolve them, someone gave a great yawn, but the next moment Mrs Tabidze turned up a card, looked at Mets and gave a sharp exclamation of surprise. She was not hesitating now; it was just that the words would not come.

‘Those difficulties we were speaking of,’ she said. ‘Are some of them… is one of them exceptionally severe?’

‘Yes,’ said Mets in a neutral tone, sitting forward in his chair with his hands pressed together.

‘In fact, would a stronger word be more appropriate? Quandary? Dilemma? Crisis?’

‘Yes. Well, in a way, in a manner of speaking.’

‘And has it presented itself recently? Very recently?’

‘Somewhat recently.’

Mrs Tabidze turned up another card and stared at it for some time in silence. Without lifting her eyes she said slowly, ‘Then I have to tell you that within a comparatively short time, certainly no more than four weeks, the situation will have resolved itself in your favour. You will have achieved success.’

‘How satisfactory. Thank you. Thank you very much.’

‘I’ve never known her to behave like that before,’ said Tatiana Petrovsky to her husband. ‘It’s as if she really had seen something in those cards.’

‘Oh, old Agatha’s a marvellous actress.’

‘I don’t think it’s that, or not only that. There’s something funny going on here.’

Alexander had had a poor evening: no real chance to show off, irritating conversation with parents, and now boredom with no end in sight. He was weighing the merits of getting sonorously drunk against those of denouncing the company as rotten with credulity and superstition before storming off to bed (quicker, for one thing) when Sonia Korotchenko passed him on her way to the vacant chair at the baize-topped table. He made no sound but gave a start that scraped his foot on the stone floor. If asked at any previous stage, he would have stated with total confidence that she had not turned up at the party. Where was her husband? Not in sight, or not completely or identifiably; a pair of trousered legs and the crook of an elbow on the far side of a nearby pillar might quite well have been his. Several voices asked more or less loudly who that woman was, meaning the one now seeking (with some determination, to judge by the set of her bare shoulders) to have her fortune told.

For a moment Alexander considered withdrawing as quietly as he could. It was impossible, no, but it was most unlikely, that she should not know he was there, far from impossible that within a minute she would tell of or otherwise reveal, as it might be by diving at his genitals, something he would on the whole prefer should remain undivulged, and quite certain that parts at least of this risk would be removed if he should prove not to be there after all. And yet – the limelight was always the limelight, whatever colours it showed one in, and the sort of things she did were apt to lose heavily in the telling. He was finally decided to stay by Mrs Tabidze’s expression of restrained disquiet coupled with having heard from his parents something of what she knew about the lady in the low-cut muslin dress – the same, he was nearly sure, that she had twitched so unreluctantly over her head on her previous visit to the house. It could well be her only garment if when at home she went about naked all the time instead of just when receiving visitors.

After thoroughly shuffling and cutting the pack Mrs Tabidze put it out as before and glanced at the top card on each heap. Alexander could see her chewing at her lips and hid a grin. After a false start she said rather hoarsely,

‘When you were very young you made a long journey. You and your mother and father came from-’

‘I don’t want to hear about the past, I know about the past.’ Mrs Korotchenko sounded as if her mouth and lips were dry. ‘Tell me about the future.’

‘Very well… You will have a long and happy married life. You will continue to be a source of strength and comfort to your husband. Over the years, you- ‘That’s the sort of thing that happens to a lot of people. Isn’t anything going to happen to me that never happens to anybody else? And shall I never do anything? Surely I shall do something, however trivial, that nobody else has ever done?’

The wooden phraseology, the loud, grating, uninflected voice seemed to add to the impression made on the audience. Unbelievably, they fell silent, except for the continued frenzied coughing of a hugely fat, pop-eyed old character whose frilled shirt lay open to the navel. The cards clicked loudly in Mrs Tabidze’s hands. Coming to the last one of a heap, she sat still for a moment and turned it over. What she saw, or the interpretation she put on the sight, made her spring to her feet and grunt with an astonishment much more acute than that shown over Mets’s fortune a few minutes earlier. In years of acquaintance Alexander had never known her behave so excitedly before. Mrs Tabidze looked up, became aware she was standing and sat down again in some confusion.

‘I could have sworn I’d…’ She paused and collected herself, blinking rapidly. ‘Forgive me, all of you – the cards spring their surprises on occasion. Now… my dear, I have good news for you. Soon, you will perform an act of great virtue, of great courage and humanity, an act for which your name will live in praise. And this will be soon. Within four weeks. No, sooner than that,’ she added, looking momentarily troubled again, but went on with all her usual firmness, ‘The performance is at an end. Thank you for your attention.’

Mrs Korotchenko rose almost as quickly as Mrs Tabidze had done and, looking to neither right nor left, marched away and into the spacious corridor that ran the breadth of the house. When, after leaving it long enough not to court suspicion, he followed in her track, it appeared that he had also left it long enough for her to disappear. She was not to be found in the east hall nor anywhere within sight in the garden. On his return he saw that the chair beside the pillar was empty, and so he never knew whether its occupant had been Korotchenko or another.