Russian Hide-and-Seek

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.

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