The Russia House

by John le Carré

  ‘Sir? Excuse me, sir. I think we are acquainted.’

  But Barley at first refused to hear. The voice was too nervous, too tentative. He went on frowning at his Informationen. Must be another tout, he was saying to himself. Another of those drug-pedlars or pimps.

  ‘Sir?’ Goethe repeated, as if he himself were now unsure.

  Only now, won over by the stranger’s insistence, did Barley reluctantly raise his head.

  ‘I think you are Mr. Scott Blair, sir, the distinguished publisher from England.’

  At which Barley finally persuaded himself to recognise the man addressing him, first with doubt then unfeigned but muted pleasure as he thrust out his hand.

  ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said quietly. ‘Good God. The great Goethe, as I live and breathe. We met at that disgraceful literary party. We were the only two people sober. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I am very well,’ Goethe said as his strained voice gathered courage. But his hand when Barley shook it was slippery with sweat. ‘I do not know how I could be better at this moment. Welcome to Leningrad, Mr. Barley. What a pity I have an appointment this afternoon. You can walk a little? We can exchange ideas?’ His voice barely fell. ‘It is safest to keep moving,’ he explained.

  He had grasped Barley’s arm and was propelling him swiftly along the embankment. His urgency had driven every tactical thought from Barley’s mind. Barley glanced at the bobbing figure beside him, at the pallor of his racked cheeks, the tracks of pain or fear or worry that ran down them. He saw the hunted eyes flicking nervously at every passing face. And his only instinct was to protect him: for Goethe’s own sake and for Katya’s.

  ‘If we could walk for half an hour, we would see the battleship Aurora, which fired the blank shot to launch the Revolution. But the next revolution shall begin with a few gentle phrases of Bach. It is time. Do you agree?’

  ‘And no conductor,’ said Barley, with a grin.

  ‘Or maybe some of that jazz you play so beautifully. Yes, yes! I have it! You shall announce our revolution by playing Lester Young on the saxophone. You have read the new Rybakov novel? Twenty years suppressed and therefore a great Russian masterpiece? It is a rape of time, I think.’

  ‘It hasn’t appeared in English yet.’

  ‘You have read mine?’ The thin hand had tightened on his arm. The pressed-in voice had fallen to a murmur.

  ‘What I could understand of it, yes.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s brave.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘It’s sensational. What I could understand of it. Great.’

  ‘We recognised each other that night. It was magic. You know our Russian saying “One fisherman always sees another from afar”? We are fishermen. We shall feed the thousands with our truth.’

  ‘Maybe we will at that,’ said Barley doubtfully, and felt the gaunt head swing round to him. ‘I have to discuss it with you a bit, Goethe. We’ve got one or two problems.’

  ‘That’s why you have come. I too. Thank you for coming to Leningrad. When will you publish? It must be soon. The writers here, they wait three, five years for publication even if they are not Rybakov. I can’t do that. Russia has no time. Neither have I.’

  A line of tugs drew by, a two-man scull flicked cheekily in their wake. Two lovers were embracing at the parapet. And in the shadow of the cathedral a young woman stood rocking a pram while she read from the book she was holding in her spare hand.

  ‘When I didn’t show up at the Moscow audio fair, Katya gave your manuscript to a colleague of mine,’ Barley said cautiously.

  ‘I know. She had to take a chance.’

  ‘What you don’t know is that the colleague couldn’t find me when he got back to England. So he gave it to the authorities. People of discretion. Experts.’

  Goethe turned sharply to Barley in alarm and the shadow of dismay spread swiftly over his fraught features. ‘I do not like experts,’ he said. ‘They are our gaolers. I despise experts more than anyone on earth.’

  ‘You’re one yourself, aren’t you?’

  ‘Therefore I know! Experts are addicts. They solve nothing! They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us. Did you not read what I wrote? When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats. You have betrayed me.’

  ‘Nobody’s betrayed you,’ Barley said angrily. ‘The manuscript went astray, that’s all. Our bureaucrats are not your bureaucrats. They’ve read it, they admire it, but they need to know more about you. They can’t believe the message unless they can believe the source.’

  ‘But do they want to publish it?’

  ‘First of all they need to reassure themselves you’re not a trick, and their best way to do that is to talk to you.’

  Goethe was striding too fast, taking Barley with him. He was staring out ahead of him. Sweat was running down his temples.

  ‘I’m an arts man, Goethe,’ Barley said breathlessly to his averted face. ‘All I know about physics is Beowulf, girls and warm beer. I’m out of my depth. So’s Katya. If you want to go this road, go it with the experts and leave us out. That’s what I came to tell you.’

  They crossed a path and struck out across another segment of lawn. A group of schoolchildren broke ranks to let them through.

  ‘You came to tell me that you refuse to publish me?’

  ‘How can I publish you?’ Barley retorted, in turn fired by Goethe’s desperation. ‘Even if we could knock the material into shape, what about Katya? She’s your courier, remember? She’s passed Soviet defence secrets to a foreign power. That’s not exactly a laugh a minute over here. If they ever find out about the two of you, she’ll be dead the day the first copy hits the stands. What sort of part is that for a publisher to play? Do you think I’m going to sit in London and press the button on the two of you here?’

  Goethe was panting, but his eyes had ceased to scan the crowds and were turned to Barley.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Barley pleaded. ‘Just hold on a minute. I understand. I really think I understand. You had a talent and it was put to unfair uses. You know all the ways the system stinks and you want to wash your soul. But you’re not Christ and you’re not Pecherin. You’re out of court. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your business. But you’ll kill her too. And if you don’t care who you kill, why should you care who you save?’

  They were heading for a picnic place with chairs and tables cut from logs. They sat side by side and Barley spread his map. They bent over it, pretending to examine it together. Goethe was still measuring Barley’s words, matching them against his purposes.

  ‘There is only now,’ he explained finally, his voice not above a murmur. ‘There is no other dimension but now. In the past we have done everything badly for the sake of the future. Now we must do everything right for the sake of the present. To lose time is to lose everything. Our Russian history does not give us second chances. When we leap across an abyss, she does not give us the opportunity for a second step. And when we fail she gives us what we deserve: another Stalin, another Brezhnev, another purge, another ice age of terrified monotony. If the present momentum continues, I shall have been in the vanguard. If it stops or goes back, I shall be another statistic of our post-Revolutionary history.’

  ‘So will Katya,’ Barley said.

  Goethe’s finger, unable to stay still, was travelling across the map. He glanced round him, then continued. ‘We are in Leningrad, Barley, the cradle of our great Revolution. Nobody triumphs here without sacrifice. You said we needed an experiment in human nature. Why are you so shocked when I put your words into practice?’

  ‘You got me wrong that day. I’m not the man you took me for. I’m the original useless mouth. You just met me when the wind was in the right direction.’

  With a frightening
control Goethe opened his hands and spread them palms downward on the map. ‘You do not need to remind me that man is not equal to his rhetoric,’ he said. ‘Our new people talk about openness, disarmament, peace. So let them have their openness. And their disarmament. And their peace. Let us call their bluff and give them what they ask. And make sure that this time they cannot put the clock back.’ He was standing, no longer able to bear the confinement of the table.

  Barley stood beside him. ‘Goethe, for God’s sake. Take it easy.’

  ‘To the devil with easy! It is easy that kills!’ He began striding again. ‘We do not break the curse of secrecy by passing our secrets from hand to hand like thieves! I have lived a great lie! And you tell me to keep it secret! How did the lie survive? By secrecy. How did our great vision crumble to this dreadful mess? By secrecy. How do you keep your own people ignorant of the insanity of your war plans? By secrecy. By keeping out the light. Show my work to your spies if that’s what you must do. But publish me as well. That is what you promised and I shall believe your promise. I have dropped a notebook containing further chapters into your carrier bag. No doubt it answers many of the questions the idiots wish to put to me.’

  The breeze of the river washed over Barley’s heated face as they strode along. Glancing at Goethe’s glistening features, he fancied he glimpsed traces of the hurt innocence that seemed to be the source of his outrage.

  ‘I shall wish a book jacket that is only letters,’ he announced. ‘No drawing, please, no sensational design. You heard me?’

  ‘We haven’t even got a title,’ Barley objected.

  ‘You will please use my own name as the author. No evasions, no pseudonyms. To use a pseudonym is to invent another secret.’

  ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘They will know it. After what Katya told you, and with the new chapters, they will have no problem. Keep correct accounts. Every six months, please send the money to a deserving cause. Nobody shall say I did this for my own profit.’

  Through the approaching trees the strains of martial music vied with the clatter of invisible trams.

  ‘Goethe,’ said Barley.

  ‘What is the matter? Are you afraid?’

  ‘Come to England. They’ll smuggle you out. They’re smart. Then you can tell the world everything you want. We’ll rent the Albert Hall for you. Put you on television, radio – you name it. And when it’s over, they’ll give you a passport and money and you can live happily ever after in Australia.’

  They had stopped again. Had Goethe heard? Had he understood? Still nothing stirred behind his unblinking stare. His eyes were fixed on Barley as if he were a distant spot upon a vast horizon.

  ‘I am not a defector, Barley. I am a Russian, and my future is here, even if it is a short one. Will you publish me or not? I need to know.’

  Buying time, Barley delved into his jacket pocket and pulled out Cy’s worn paperback. ‘I’m to give you this,’ he said. ‘A memento of our meeting. Their questions are bound into the text, together with an address in Finland you can write to and a phone number in Moscow with instructions on what to say when you call. If you’ll do business with them direct, they’ve got all sorts of clever toys they can give you to make communication easier.’ He placed it in Goethe’s open hand and it remained there.

  ‘Will you publish me? Yes or no.’

  ‘How do they get hold of you? They have to know.’

  ‘Tell them I can be reached through my publisher.’

  ‘Take Katya out of the equation. Stay with the spies and keep away from her.’

  Goethe’s gaze had descended to Barley’s suit and remained there, as if the sight of it troubled him. His sad smile was like a last holiday.

  ‘You are wearing grey today, Barley. My father was sent to prison by grey men. He was shot by an old man who wore a grey uniform. It is the grey men who have ruined my beautiful profession. Take care or they will ruin yours too. Will you publish me or must I start again in my search for a decent human being?’

  For a while Barley could not answer. His mechanisms of evasion had run out.

  ‘If I can get control of the material, and find a way through it to a book, I’ll publish you,’ he replied.

  ‘I asked you, yes or no.’

  Promise him anything he asks within reason, Paddy had said. But what was reason? ‘All right,’ he replied. ‘Yes.’

  Goethe handed Barley back the paperback book and Barley in a daze returned it to his pocket. They embraced and Barley smelt sweat and stale tobacco smoke and felt again the desperate strength of their farewell in Peredelkino. As abruptly as Goethe had seized him, so he now released him and with another nervous glance round him set off quickly towards the trolleybus stop. And as Barley watched him he noticed how the old couple from the outdoor café was watching his departure too, standing in the shadow of the dark blue trees.

  Barley sneezed, then started sneezing seriously. Then really sneezed. He walked back into the park, his face buried in his handkerchief while he shook his shoulders and sneezed and shook again.

  ‘Why, Scott!’ J. P. Henziger exclaimed, with the over-bright enthusiasm of a busy man kept waiting, as he snatched back the door of the largest bedroom in the Hotel Europe. ‘Scott, this is a day when we discover who our friends are. Come in, please. What kept you? Say hullo to Maisie.’

  He was mid-forties, muscular and prehensile, but he had the kind of ugly friendly face that Barley would normally have warmed to instantly. He wore an elephant hair round one wrist and a gold-link bracelet round the other. Half-moons of sweat blackened his denim armpits. Wicklow appeared behind him and quickly closed the door.

  Twin beds, draped in olive counterpanes, commanded the centre of the room. In one of them languished Mrs. Henziger, a thirty-five-year-old kitten without her make-up, her combed-out tresses spread tragically over her freckled shoulders. A man in a black suit hovered uneasily at her side. He wore liver-coloured spectacles. A medical practitioner’s case lay open on the bed. Henziger continued vamping for the microphones.

  ‘Scott, I want you to meet Dr. Pete Bernstorf from the US Consulate General here in Leningrad, a fine physician. We are indebted to him. Maisie is improving fast. We are indebted to Mr. Wicklow also. Leonard fixed the hotel, the tour people, the pharmacy. How was your day?’

  ‘One bloody long laugh,’ Barley blurted, and for a moment the script threatened to go badly wrong.

  Barley tossed the carrier bag on to the bed and with it the rejected paperback book from his jacket pocket. With shaking hands he pulled off his jacket, tore the microphone harness out of his shirt and flung it after the bag and the book. He reached behind him into his waistband and, brushing aside Wicklow’s offer of assistance, extracted the grey recording box from the small of his back and threw that on the bed as well, so that Maisie let out a stifled ‘shit’ and moved her legs quickly to one side. Marching to the washbasin, he emptied his whisky flask into a toothmug, hugging his other arm across his chest as if he had been shot. Then he drank and went on drinking, oblivious to the perfect drill unfolding round him.

  Henziger, light as a cat for all his bulk, grabbed the carrier bag, picked out the notebook and shoved it at Bernstorf who spirited it into his medical case among the phials and instruments, where it mysteriously disappeared. Henziger passed him the paperback, which also vanished. Wicklow swept up the recorder and harness. They too went into the case, which Bernstorf snapped shut while he issued departing instructions to the patient: no solids for forty-eight hours, Mrs. Henziger, tea, a piece of brown bread if you must, make sure you complete the course of antibiotics whether or not you feel better. He had not finished before Henziger chimed in.

  ‘And Doctor, if ever you are in Boston, and you need anything, because I mean anything, here’s my card and here’s my promise and here’s …’

  Toothmug in hand, Barley remained facing the washbasin, glowering in the mirror as the Good Samaritan’s case made its journey to the door.


  Of all his nights in Russia and, come to think of it, of all his nights anywhere in the world, this was Barley’s worst.

  Henziger had heard that a cooperative restaurant had just opened in Leningrad, cooperative being the new codeword for private. Wicklow had tracked it down and reported it full, but rejection for Henziger was challenge. By dint of heavy telephoning and heavier tipping, an extra table was laid for them, three foot from the worst and noisiest gypsy opera Barley ever hoped to hear.

  And there they now sat, celebrating Mrs. Henziger’s miraculous recovery. The mewing of the singers was amplified by electronic bullhorns. There was no remission between numbers.

  And all round them sat the Russia that the slumbering puritan in Barley had long hated but never seen: the not-so-secret czars of capitalism, the industrial parvenus and conspicuous consumers, the Party fat-cats and racketeers, their jewelled women reeking of Western perfumes and Russian deodorant, the waiters doting on the richest tables. The singers’ frightful voices rose, the music rose to drown them, the voices rose again and Henziger’s voice rose above them all.

  ‘Scott, I want you to know something,’ he bellowed to Barley, leaning excitedly across the table. ‘This little country is on the move. I smell hope here, I smell change, I smell commerce. And we in Potomac are buying ourselves a piece of it. I’m proud.’ But his voice had been taken away from him by the band. ‘Proud,’ his lips repeated soundlessly to a million gypsy decibels.

  And the trouble was, Henziger was a nice fellow and Maisie was a sport, which made it worse. As the agony dragged on, Barley entered the blessed state of deafness. Inside the cacophony he discovered his own safe room. From its arrow-slit windows his secret self stared into the white Leningrad night. Where have you gone, Goethe? he asked. Who stands in for her when she isn’t there? Who darns your black socks and cooks your washed-out soup for you while you drag her by the hair along your noble altruistic path to self-destruction?