Russian Hide-and-Seek

9

At about the time Alexander was leaving the Korotchenko residence Theodore Markov was riding his power-assisted bicycle up the drive of a large house on the other side of Northampton. Several other such machines stood near the portico, as did two motor-cars: he recognised those of Controller Petrovsky and Commissioner Mets. There were also a number of horse-carriages of various kinds. Theodore dismounted and moved to the side of the building, where a path lined with flowering shrubs took him into a large open garden. Here some dozens of people were sitting or standing in groups round two all-weather tennis-courts, on each of which play was going forward. White-coated servants moved about with trays of wine, soft drinks, fruit, cakes and cold meat pasties; more substantial refreshments were being prepared in a marquee. Beyond the courts, where four English ball-boys darted to and fro at need, a woodwind orchestra occupied a small bandstand and played waltzes and galops from a century and a half before, while two or three couples danced on the surrounding paved space. Everything was supposed to be done in style, for this was one of the regular summer parties given by Igor Swianiewicz, victualler-general to the units of supervision.

And everything, from a sufficient distance, looked as if it had been done in style, looked right; to everyone there everything was right. No one thought, no one saw that the clothes the guests wore were badly cut from poor materials, badly made up, ill-fitting, unbecoming, that the women’s coiffures were messy and the men’s fingernails dirty, that the surfaces of the courts were uneven and inadequately raked, that the servants’ white coats were not very white, that the glasses and plates they carried had not been properly washed, or that the pavement where the couples danced needed sweeping. No one thought, no one perceived with other senses that the wine was thin, the soft drinks full of preservative and the cakes stodgy, or that the orchestra’s playing was ragged and lifeless. No one thought any of that because no one had ever known any different.

In Theodore’s eyes it was certainly grand enough, to an intimidating degree in fact, and he looked round with some eagerness in search of a friendly or even a known face. It was Nina he had come to see, must find before long in order to exploit the stroke of luck by which they had both been invited here at this stage, when for him to have asked her out might have seemed forward. There was no sign of her between the back of the house and the tennis-courts – or rather there was, in the shape of her parents in conversation with Colonel and Mrs Tabidze and Commissioner Mets. First taking a glass of wine from a proffered tray, he went up and paid his respects, in silence for the time being because the colonel was evidently in the middle of advancing some strongly-held view of his.

‘Where shall we date its death?’ he was saying in a not very interrogative tone. ‘The year 2000? 2020? – before that, surely. It doesn’t affect the point: as an active force, as. something to be reckoned with, Marxism has ceased to exist. Its followers have died or fallen into cynicism or impotence. And what has replaced it? Ah, good evening, my dear boy.’

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Theodore, and exchanged greetings with the others, including Mrs Petrovsky, who thanked him for his thank-you note after her dinner-party. When this was over he said, ‘Please don’t allow me to interrupt you, colonel.’

‘Oh, a smart young fellow like you doesn’t want to hear an old buffer’s maunderings,’ said Tabidze.

‘The voice of wisdom,’ said his wife. ‘Heed it.’

‘I promise you I’m most interested,’ said Theodore with sincerity.

‘Very well, you bring it on yourself… Where was I?’

‘What has replaced Marxism.’ Petrovsky’s face showed a great deal of eager expectancy.

‘Indeed. What has replaced it is nothing, nothingness. No theory of social democracy, or liberalism, anything like that, nor even a non-political code of decency or compassion. And when the computer revolution broke down the idea of progress or just betterment in general broke down too. Christianity had gone long since and none of the new religions and cults took hold. And as for being Russian… No belief, no confidence, no guides to behaviour. All our books are lies. So what do we live by? Self-interest isn’t enough for most people, there are too many activities it doesn’t enter into. Sensual enjoyment – even more limited. So we act: we choose a part not too incongruous with our age and station and play it out to the best of our ability and energy. We can’t keep it up all the time, but it’s there when we need it, and being Russian is a great help.’

‘You were saying just now that being Russian was no good or had disappeared or something,’ said Mrs Tabidze.

‘No no, my love, that was the idea of being Russian as a system of conduct. I mean the fact of being Russian as an aid to play-acting. The essence of the Russian character, in fact as well as in fiction, has always been theatricality. Of course, some of us have more trouble than others with the part available to us. I’m one of the lucky ones – my part’s the honest soldier: loyal, hard-working, a father to his men, strict but fair, all that, and devoted to some mysterious relic called the honour of the regiment.’

‘I’m sure you really are every one of those things, Nicholas,’ said Petrovsky earnestly.

‘Thank you, my dear Sergei, I have to say I hope you’re right because it would be out of character to say that the question is of the most perfect indifference to me, and also untrue, because obviously the game must be played to the full.’

‘How is it you’re playing a part?’ asked Mrs Tabidze. ‘If you really work hard, and I know you do, you’re not pretending to be hard-working, you are hard-working.’

‘What I say to myself about everything I do is quite different from what a real honest soldier would say to himself.’

‘I’ve never heard such rubbish, my dear. However great the difference, it could make no difference.’

‘But how does all this philosophising fit the part?’ Petrovsky went on evincing curiosity while he beckoned to a waiter. ‘An honest soldier surely confines himself to honest soldiering.’

‘That’s all you know about honest soldiers, Sergei. Cultivation of unexpected interests is de rigueur for the type. My squadron commander in India was an authority on the fauna of Lake Balkhash.’

‘That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’

‘No, but it’s almost the same sort of thing.’

As he spoke Tabidze helped himself to a glass of wine, his fourth since arriving forty minutes before; it was another hot day and he had been thirsty. What with his hard head and the weakness of the drink its only effect was to introduce a certain relish into his tone. If he took much more that evening he would be troubled the next day not with a hangover but with taking off the resulting added weight. Not even his wife fully appreciated the savage self-discipline by which he kept his figure. She knew he kept his grey hair dyed black. This and the dieting she put down to harmless vanity, wrongly: they were necessary effects of his determination to retain the semblance of the particular variety of honest soldier he had chosen thirty years before in preference to, among others, the tubby, grizzled and usually less intelligent type to be seen in others’ messes everywhere.

‘I wonder how you’d apply your theory to other members of this company,’ said Petrovsky with a reflective air. ‘What part am I playing, for instance? Don’t spare me, now.’

‘Spare you? You’re the all-round liberal, unreservedly tolerant, not least of what others condemn, in favour of equal treatment for unequals, exercising no authority over his children, the master who’s patient but firm, but more patient than firm, where I’m strict but fair, but more strict than fair. The character’s greatest fear is to be caught disapproving of something.’

When, on his way home at the end of the evening, Theodore went over this moment in his mind, it struck him that what Tabidze had been doing was trying to impress the others with how unlike an honest soldier he was while asserting the opposite; nothing more than that. But at the time his feeling about what had just been said was that he had never heard an utterance more delicately poised between compliment and insult. He held his breath as Petrovsky’s interested smile grew fixed on his handsome face. It was a relief when Mets spoke up in his clear tones.

‘That’s good but rather obvious, colonel, if I may say so. What about my part? I can’t wait to hear what it is.’

‘I don’t think I know you well enough, Commissioner. Well enough, that is, to see if there’s anything beyond the obvious administrator-with-imagination. I mean of course anything in the way of a further part, not anything more in your actual self.’

‘You mean it’s possible to play more than one part?’

‘Oh, it’s usual. Singletons like my soldier and the Controller’s liberal aren’t all that common.

‘Stop this nonsense, Nicholas; you don’t even believe it yourself.’

‘Sometimes I don’t, my dear, and sometimes I do.’

‘Sometimes I do too – I mean at this moment,’ said Petrovsky.

He nodded in the direction of Theodore, who after standing stock-still for an instant was hurrying over to where Nina was approaching with Elizabeth Cuy at her side. Both girls wore tennis outfits and carried rackets.

‘What do you see in that, Sergei?’

‘Nobody in that youngster’s position, nobody as bright as he, is really as smitten as that at the sight of a girl he knows so little, even a girl as attractive as my daughter. So smitten, I mean, that he really forgets the existence of his elders and supposed betters and goes rushing off without a word. Not really. Do they? So as well as the conscientious researcher we seem to have the romantic lover. – I don’t of course mean‘ -he turned to Mets – ‘that he isn’t in fact a conscientious researcher.’

‘No no, Controller, point taken.’ Mets looked at the ground and went on, ‘There must be cases where three parts are taken.’

In fact Theodore had briefly weighed the advisability of interrupting an animated conversation among important persons and decided against it; it was his bad luck that nobody had noticed the little bow and wave he had given between laying eyes on Nina and moving away. Now he stood in front of her and looked at her. She was wearing her satin-weave waistcoat over a white blouse with mauve edging and the white culottes then in favour for sports. He noticed the freckles at the base of her neck. After some hesitation they shook hands, awkwardly, as if repairing a quarrel. Neither spoke. Elizabeth began patting herself lightly on the arms and thighs.

‘I seem to have gone invisible,’ she said. ‘I hope it won’t get any worse.’

‘I’m so sorry, Elizabeth; I was coming to you.’

‘Of course, in your own good time.’

‘Why aren’t you dressed for tennis?’ Nina sounded accusing.

‘Well, there wouldn’t be much point in that, I can’t play it. You see, it’s never really caught on in Russia,’ Theodore found himself explaining,’ and since I’ve been over here there doesn’t seem to have been time to learn. Anyway, I…’

‘Merciful God, it’s not a crime not to play tennis,’ said Elizabeth. She looked as though she had caught the sun a little. ‘No need to cite extenuating circumstances.’

‘I was only-’

‘I think I’ll go and try and fix up a four for us; there’s-’

‘No, stay,’ said Nina, this time with excessive urgency, then at a more natural level, ‘let’s go and sit down.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t stand any more of this.’ Elizabeth was now equally agitated. ‘Why two grown-up people have to gape and roll their eyes and babble nonsense at each other just because they want to, I suppose I’d better say have sex with each other I simply… If anybody wants me I’ll be by the further court.’

Theodore looked troubled. ‘I hope it was nothing I said or did.’

‘No. You’ll have to bear with her. She took a bad tumble over Alexander about a year ago – she was very serious about him, still is, but of course as far as he was concerned she was just another girl. Not even that in a way. He doesn’t like girls to scold him and make fun of him, give him any sort of opposition. I can never understand why she can’t see that if she’s really after him she’s going about things completely the wrong way. He wants to be told that he’s wonderful, not that he’s wrapped up in himself. I can’t understand it; she’s usually so bright about things like that. But she won’t discuss it. Anyway, she’s dead against…’ Nina stopped.

‘Strong emotion in others.’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. Alexander told me he’s tried to persuade her to have an affair with him but she’d turned him down. About a year ago.

‘You don’t want to believe everything he says,’ said Nina, more easily now that the talk had shifted from strong emotions.

‘I can assure you I’m very far from doing that, but I believe him in this case because to a small degree it shows him in a disadvantageous light.’

‘Or alternatively in an engagingly frank and humble light. It’s always one light or another with him, you’ll find.’

‘Obviously you know him very well.’

Theodore had not changed his view of the truth of the statement under discussion. He had already noticed that Alexander talked for effect sometimes, but he was confident of being able to identify these occasions accurately enough, more so at least than Nina, whose manner at their previous meeting, as now, had suggested an unrancorous envy of her brother’s sexual success. This envy might lead her, he judged, to take the less favourable view in questions relating to that success. What was much more interesting was how on earth she came to have anything to be envious about. With the amiability driven from her face by tension she was as beautiful as most men would require. She sensed the direction of his thoughts and said quickly, ‘Is he coming this evening, do you know? You’ve seen him since I have.’

‘No, I don’t know,’ he answered untruthfully but usefully for smothering the digression. ‘Aren’t you going to play tennis?’

‘We can’t yet. I mean the older ones have to play first, the important ones, that is.’

‘Good. You’ll tell me when you want to play?’

‘Yes, but I don’t really want to play,’ she said.

They had strayed away from the marquee and the courts and there was nobody near them. This time he did take her hands and kissed them and let them go. Presently he said,

‘I’m excited, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but very certain as well. Confident. Till a few seconds ago I thought I never could be.’

‘And happy.’

‘Yes.’

Later Nina and Elizabeth played tennis and lost almost every point that involved Nina, who also kept forgetting things like her turn to serve and thereby annoying Elizabeth. Later still the two girls and Theodore and another young man who had attached himself to Elizabeth went up for their five minutes with Igor Swianiewicz. He was said to be the richest man in the district; he was known for a fact to have made his fortune by selling supplies illegally. But he was generous – as well as giving what were thought to be good parties he reputedly allowed the mothers of his illegitimate children to buy from him at a reduced rate – and after all somebody had to run a system of that kind, as even Director Vanag would have agreed. There was also the consideration that virtually every Russian household had had unofficial dealings with him. He spent the first part of the allotted five minutes describing the house he was having built in Cornwall, the second part asking his listeners riddles with obscene but otherwise impenetrably mysterious answers, and the third part telling them that a dozen English ought to be shot every day to teach the others a bit of respect.

When that was finished, they went into the marquee for supper. The noise was like that of a mob perpetually on the point of breaking through a line of police. Great wafts of stale sweat relieved with dense cigar-smoke drifted through the sticky air. It was not easy to find four places close together; a waiter came to the rescue by grabbing an unconscious woman under the armpits and hauling her out. The heels of her shoes made an excited whining sound on the canvas floor. At the other end of the tent, a very fat man who had climbed up on a table at once fell off it again on to a large tray of empty bottles and dirty glasses just then being carried past by another waiter. Two younger and less fat men, each with his hands at the other’s throat, went out of sight under the same table and those near them moved their legs aside as they continued without pause to eat, drink, smoke and bawl anecdote, assertion or invective. The main dish, narrowly preceded by a cold nettle soup with capers in it, was beef stroganoff served complete with knife and fork on the plate; the texture of Theodore’s portion, if nobody else’s, was such that it might well have included a stray tennis-ball sliced up along with the meat. There was wine on the table and vodka and brandy were swigged, in many cases straight from the bottle. Bowls of tired fruit and cups of coffee arrived after another short interval, not because the English waiters were efficient in the ordinary sense but because they wanted to pack up and go home; no doubt this threw some light on Igor Swianiewicz’s corrective proposal.

‘It was stuffy in there,’ said Nina when they had finished and emerged.

‘Yes,’ agreed Theodore. ‘Noisy too.’

They left the brilliantly illuminated area near the house and move into summer twilight as far as the deserted bandstand. Here they halted; if they had gone much further they would have started to come upon the fornicating couples that littered those parts of the garden. Soon they were comfortably settled on the dry grass.

‘When we met before,’ began Theodore in that agreeable voice of his, ‘you said something that made me think you were very strongly opposed to Director Vanag. Was I right? Why do you dislike him so much?’

‘He’s a tyrant.’

‘And you hate tyranny. What would you do to fight it?’

‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. What can I do?’ He started to tell her. In a little while he was saying, ‘I’m not a romantic revolutionary in the way that Alexander half is, even though he’s a soldier. I know wounds hurt and cold freezes the blood and prison eats away the mind and soul. But against this enemy…’ He fell silent.

‘What did you say?’ After several seconds, Nina went on, ‘Alexander? Do you mean he’s part of this?’

‘He’s about to-’

‘But he can’t be!’ she said violently. ‘He’s quite unsuitable. You can’t rely on him. He’d give you away if it suited him. He’d tell everything if he thought it would help him to get hold of a woman.’

At this last remark he shook his head in a troubled way. ‘Admittedly you do know him better than anybody else does in one sense, but…’

‘As you were saying earlier.’

‘But there are other sides to him. He has qualities you don’t know about that make him absolutely-’

‘He has one quality that you can’t know about or you’d never have gone near him: everything he does depends entirely on his own will, on whether it suits him to do it. If he keeps a promise it’s because he wants you to see how he… You’re not listening.’

‘My dear Nina, I recognise what you’re describing – there is an impetuosity there which could be dangerous, it needs watching, but it’s potentially very valuable to us. If Alexander can be induced to identify himself with the revolution, to embrace it completely, and you can help to make that happen – then I promise you we’ll have a weapon that Vanag himself ought to be afraid of. And I didn’t walk into this business yesterday afternoon; I’ve spent years preparing for it, and I have been trained. That doesn’t make me infallible, but I might be right, mightn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Nina. In the half-minute since she had last spoken, her look of distress and disquiet had altogether disappeared, and when she spoke again it was almost abstractedly. ‘I suppose it can’t be done peacefully, the revolution I mean.

‘No, I was just coming to that. If I thought reform would come in twenty years, in thirty, fifty years, I swear I’d work for that. But it won’t. You can’t reform a monolith, you can only knock it over. We’re going to use force, and that means locking people up, and if they resist they’ll be compelled, and if they won’t be compelled, if they shoot, we’ll shoot back. A terrible thing to do, so terrible that only one cause in the world can justify it. Our cause. Freedom. Freedom for Russian and English together.’

They had both got up as he spoke and now stood facing each other in the darkness; clouds had covered the moon. Slowly he put his arms round her and kissed her on the lips.

She said hesitantly, ‘I think this must be…’ and could not go on.

‘It is,’ he said.