The Human Factor

by Graham Greene

  ‘Quiet, quiet,’ Ivan said. ‘Wait awhile. When they take the wrappers off . . .’

  Castle nearly struck Ivan and he saw that Ivan knew it. Ivan mumbled something and backed away down the cement stairs.

  2

  Was it perhaps a microphone that conveyed this scene to a higher authority or had Ivan reported it? Castle would never know, but all the same his anger had worked the trick. It had swept away the wrappers, swept away, as he realized later, even Ivan. Just as when Ivan was removed from London because they must have decided he had the wrong temperament to be the right control for Castle, so now he put in only one more appearance – a rather subdued appearance – and then disappeared for ever. Perhaps they had a pool of controls, just as in London there had been a pool of secretaries, and Ivan had sunk back into the pool. No one in this sort of service was ever likely to be sacked, for fear of revelations.

  Ivan made his swan song as an interpreter in a building not far from the Lubianka prison, which he had pointed proudly out to Castle on one of their walks. Castle asked him that morning where they were going and he answered evasively, ‘They have decided on your work.’

  The room where they waited was lined with books in ugly economy bindings. Castle read the names of Stalin, Lenin, Marx in Russian script – it pleased him to think he was beginning to make out the script. There was a big desk with a luxurious leather blotting pad and a nineteenth-century bronze of a man on horseback too large and heavy to use as a paper-weight – it could only be there for decorative purposes. From a doorway behind the desk emerged a stout elderly man with a shock of grey hair and an old-fashioned moustache yellowed by cigarette smoke. He was followed by a young man dressed very correctly who carried a file. He was like an acolyte attending a priest of his faith, and in spite of the heavy moustache there was something priestly about the old man, about his kindly smile and the hand he extended like a blessing. A lot of conversation – questions and answers – went on among the three of them, and then Ivan took the floor as translator. He said, ‘The comrade wants you to know how highly your work has been appreciated. He wants you to understand that the very importance of your work has presented us with problems which had to be solved at a high level. That is why you have been kept apart during these two weeks. The comrade is anxious that you should not think it was through any lack of trust. It was hoped that your presence here would only become known to the Western Press at the right moment.’

  Castle said, ‘They must know I am here by now. Where else would I be?’ Ivan translated and the old man replied, and the young acolyte smiled at the reply with his eyes cast down.

  ‘The comrade says, “Knowing is not the same as publishing.” The Press can only publish when you are officially here. The censorship would see to that. A press conference is going to be arranged very soon and then we will let you know what you should say to the journalists. Perhaps we will rehearse it all a little first.’

  ‘Tell the comrade,’ Castle said, ‘that I want to earn my keep here.’

  ‘The comrade says you have earned it many times over already.’

  ‘In that case I expect him to keep the promise they made me in London.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was told my wife and son would follow me here. Tell him, Ivan, that I’m damned lonely. Tell him I want the use of my telephone. I want to telephone my wife, that’s all, not the British Embassy or a journalist. If the wrappers are off, then let me speak to her.’

  The translation took a lot of time. A translation, he knew, always turned out longer than the original text, but this was inordinately longer. Even the acolyte seemed to be adding more than a sentence or two. The important comrade hardly bothered to speak – he continued to look as benign as a bishop.

  Ivan turned back to Castle at last. He had a sour expression which the others couldn’t see. He said, ‘They are very anxious to have your co-operation in the publishing section which deals with Africa.’ He nodded in the direction of the acolyte who permitted himself an encouraging smile which might have been a plaster cast of his superior’s. ‘The comrade says he would like you to act as their chief adviser on African literature. He says there are a great number of African novelists and they would like to choose the most valuable for translation, and of course the best of the novelists (selected by you) would be invited to pay us a visit by the Writer’s Union. This is a very important position and they are happy to offer it to you.’

  The old man made a gesture with his hand towards the bookshelves as though he were inviting Stalin, Lenin and Marx – yes, and there was Engels too – to welcome the novelists whom he would pick for them.

  Castle said, ‘They haven’t answered me. I want my wife and son here with me. They promised that. Boris promised it.’

  Ivan said, ‘I do not want to translate what you are saying. All that business concerns quite a different department. It would be a big mistake to confuse matters. They are offering you . . .’

  ‘Tell him I won’t discuss anything until I’ve spoken to my wife.’

  Ivan shrugged his shoulders and spoke. This time the translation was no longer than the text – an abrupt angry sentence. It was the commentary by the old comrade which took up all the space, like the footnotes of an over-edited book. To show the finality of his decision Castle turned away and looked out of the window into a narrow ditch of a street between walls of concrete of which he couldn’t see the top through the snow which poured down into the ditch as though from some huge inexhaustible bucket up above. This was not the snow he remembered from childhood and associated with snowballs and fairy stories and games with toboggans. This was a merciless, interminable, annihilating snow, a snow in which one could expect the world to end.

  Ivan said angrily, ‘We will go away now.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘I do not understand the way they are treating you. I know from London the sort of rubbish you sent us. Come away.’ The old comrade held out a courteous hand: the young one looked a bit perturbed. Outside the silence of the snow-drowned street was so extreme that Castle hesitated to break it. The two of them walked rapidly like secret enemies who are seeking the right spot to settle their differences in a final fashion. At last, when he could bear the uncertainty no longer, Castle said, ‘Well, what was the result of all that talk?’

  Ivan said, ‘They told me that I was handling you wrongly. Just the same as they told me when they brought me back from London. “More psychology is needed, comrade, more psychology.” I would be much better off if I was a traitor like you.’ Luck brought them a taxi and in it he leaped into a wounded silence. (Castle had already noticed that one never talked in a taxi.) In the doorway of the apartment block Ivan gave grudgingly the information Castle demanded.

  ‘Oh, the job will wait for you. You have nothing to fear. The comrade is very sympathetic. He will speak to others about your telephone and your wife. He begs you – begs, that was the word he used himself – to be patient a little longer. You will have news, he says, very soon. He understands – understands, mark you – your anxiety. I do not understand a thing. My psychology is obviously bad.’

  He left Castle standing in the entry and strode away into the snow and was lost to Castle’s eyes for ever.

  3

  The next night, while Castle was reading Robinson Crusoe by the radiator, someone knocked at his door (the bell was out of order). A sense of distrust had grown in him through so many years that he called out automatically before he opened, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The name is Bellamy,’ a high-pitched voice answered, and Castle unlocked the door. A small grey man in a grey fur coat and a grey astrakhan hat entered with an air of shyness and timidity. He was like a comedian playing a mouse in a pantomime and expecting the applause of little hands. He said, ‘I live so near here, so I thought I’d take up my courage and call.’ He looked at the book in Castle’s hand. ‘Oh dear, I’ve interrupted your reading.’

  ‘Only Robinson Crusoe. I
’ve plenty of time for that.’

  ‘Ah ha, the great Daniel. He was one of us.’

  ‘One of us?’

  ‘Well, Defoe perhaps was more an M15 type.’ He peeled off grey fur gloves and warmed himself at the radiator and looked around. He said, ‘I can see you’re still at the bare stage. We’ve all passed through it. I never knew where to find things myself till Cruickshank showed me. And then later, well, I showed Bates. You haven’t met them yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder they haven’t called. You’ve been unwrapped, and I hear you’re having a press conference any day now.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘From a Russian friend,’ Bellamy said with a little nervous giggle. He produced a half bottle of whisky from the depths of his fur coat. ‘A little cadeau,’ he said, ‘for the new member.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you. Do sit down. The chair is more comfortable than the sofa.’

  ‘I’ll unwrap myself first if I may. Unwrap – it’s a good expression.’ The unwrapping took some time – there were a lot of buttons. When he was settled in the green wicker chair he giggled again. ‘How is your Russian friend?’

  ‘Not very friendly.’

  ‘Get rid of him then. Have no nonsense. They want us to be happy.’

  ‘How do I get rid of him?’

  ‘You just show them that he’s not your type. An indiscreet word to be caught by one of those little gadgets we are probably talking into now. Do you know, when I came here first, they entrusted me to – you’ll never guess – to a middle-aged lady from the Union of Writers? That was because I had been British Council, I suppose. Well, I soon learned how to deal with that situation. Whenever Cruickshank and I were together I used to refer to her scornfully as “my governess” and she didn’t last very long. She was gone before Bates arrived and – it’s very wrong of me to laugh – Bates married her.’

  ‘I don’t understand how it was – I mean why it was they wanted you here. I was out of England when it all happened. I didn’t see the newspaper reports.’

  ‘My dear, the newspapers – they were quite awful. They grilled me. I read them in the Lenin Library afterwards. You would really have thought I was a sort of Mata Hari.’

  ‘But what value were you to them – in the British Council?’

  ‘Well, you see I had a German friend and it seems he was running a lot of agents in the East. It never occurred to him that little me was watching him and making my notes – then the silly boy went and got seduced by a quite awful woman. He deserved to be punished. He was safe enough, I would never have done anything to endanger him, but his agents . . . of course he guessed who had given him away. Well, I admit I didn’t make it difficult for him to guess. But I had to get away very quickly because he went to the Embassy about me. How glad I was when I put Checkpoint Charlie behind me.’

  ‘And you are happy here?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Happiness always seems to me a matter of persons not of places, and I have a very nice friend. It’s against the law, of course, but they do make exceptions in the service, and he’s an officer in the KGB. Of course, poor boy, he has to be unfaithful sometimes in the course of duty, but that’s quite different from my German friend – it isn’t love. We even have a little laugh about it sometimes. If you’re lonely, he knows a lot of girls . . .’

  ‘I’m not lonely. As long as my books last.’

  ‘I’ll show you a little place where you can pick up English language paperbacks under the counter.’

  It was midnight before they had finished the half bottle of whisky and then Bellamy took his leave. He spent a long time getting back into his furs, and he chattered all the while. ‘You must meet Cruickshank one day – I’ll tell him I’ve seen you – and Bates too, of course, but that means meeting Mrs Union-of-Writers Bates.’ He warmed his hands well before pulling on his gloves. He had an air of being quite at home, although ‘I was a bit unhappy at first,’ he admitted. ‘I felt rather lost until I had my friend – like in that chorus of Swinburne’s, “the foreign faces, the tongueless vigil and” – how does it go? – “all the pain”. I used to lecture on Swinburne – an underrated poet.’ At the door he said, ‘You must come out and see my dacha when the spring comes . . .’

  4

  Castle found that after a few days he even missed Ivan. He missed having someone to dislike – he couldn’t in justice dislike Anna who seemed to realize that now he was more alone than ever. She stayed a little longer in the morning and pressed even more Russian names on his attention with her pointing finger. She became even more exigent too over his pronunciation: she began to add verbs to his vocabulary, beginning with the word for ‘run’, when she made motions of running, raising her elbows and each knee. She must have been receiving wages from some source for he paid her none; indeed the little store of roubles Ivan had given him on his arrival had been much diminished.

  It was a painful part of his isolation that he earned nothing. He began even to long for a desk at which he could sit and study lists of African writers – they might take his mind for a little from what had happened to Sarah. Why hadn’t she followed him with Sam? What were they doing to fulfil their promise?

  At nine thirty-two one evening he came to the end of Robinson Crusoe’s ordeal – in noting the time he was behaving a little like Crusoe. ‘And thus I left the island, the nineteenth of December, and I found by the ship’s account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight and twenty years, two months and nineteen days . . .’ He went to the window: the snow for the moment was not falling and he could see clearly the red star over the University. Even at that hour women were at work sweeping the snow: from above they looked like enormous turtles. Somebody was ringing at the door – let him, he wouldn’t open, it was probably only Bellamy or perhaps someone even more unwelcome, the unknown Cruickshank or the unknown Bates – but surely, he remembered, the bell was out of order. He turned and stared at the telephone with amazement. It was the telephone which was ringing.

  He lifted the receiver and a voice spoke to him in Russian. He couldn’t understand a word. There was nothing more – only the high-pitched dialling sound – but he kept the receiver to his ear, stupidly waiting. Perhaps the operator had told him to hold on. Or had he told him – ‘Replace the receiver. We will ring you back’? Perhaps a call was coming from England. Unwillingly he put the receiver back and sat on beside the telephone waiting for it to ring again. He had been ‘unwrapped’ and now it seemed he had been ‘connected’. He would have been ‘in touch’ if only he had been able to learn the right phrases from Anna – he didn’t even know how to ring the operator. There was no telephone book in the flat – he had checked that two weeks ago.

  But the operator must have been telling him something. At any moment he was sure the telephone would call to him. He fell asleep beside it and dreamt, as he had not dreamt for a dozen years, of his first wife. In his dream they quarrelled as they had never done in life.

  Anna found him in the morning asleep in the green wicker chair. When she woke him he said to her, ‘Anna, the telephone’s connected,’ and because she didn’t understand, he waved towards it and said ‘Ting-a-ling-a-ling’, and they both laughed with pleasure at the absurdity of such a childish sound in the mouth of an elderly man. He took out the photograph of Sarah and pointed at the telephone and she nodded her head and smiled to encourage him, and he thought, she’ll get on with Sarah, she will show her where to shop, she will teach her Russian words, she will like Sam.

  5

  When later that day the telephone rang he felt certain it would be Sarah – someone in London must have conveyed the number to her, perhaps Boris. His mouth was dry when he answered and he could hardly bring out the words ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Boris.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here in Moscow.’

  ‘Have you seen Sarah?’

  ‘I have talked to her.’

  ‘Is she all right?’
>
  ‘Yes, yes, she is all right.’

  ‘And Sam?’

  ‘He is all right too.’

  ‘When will they be here?’

  ‘That is what I want to speak to you about. Stay in, please. Do not go out. I am coming to the apartment now.’

  ‘But when will I see them?’

  ‘That is something we have to discuss. There are difficulties.’

  ‘What difficulties?’

  ‘Wait till I see you.’

  He couldn’t stay still: he picked up a book and put it down: he went into the kitchen where Anna was making soup. She said, ‘Ting-a-ling-a-ling’, but it wasn’t funny any more. He walked back to the window – snow again. When the knock came on the door he felt that hours had passed.

  Boris held out a duty free plastic sack. He said, ‘Sarah told me to get you J. & B. One bottle from her and one from Sam.’

  Castle said, ‘What are the difficulties?’

  ‘Give me time to get off my coat.’

  ‘Did you really see her?’

  ‘I spoke to her on the telephone. At a call box. She’s in the country with your mother.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I would have looked a little conspicuous visiting her there.’

  ‘Then how do you know she’s well?’

  ‘She told me so.’

  ‘Did she sound well?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Maurice. I am sure . . .’

  ‘What are the difficulties? You got me out.’

  ‘That was a very simple affair. A false passport, the blind man dodge, and that little trouble we arranged at the immigration while you were led through by the Air France hostess. A man rather like you. Bound for Prague. His passport wasn’t quite in order . . .’

  ‘You haven’t told me what difficulties.’

  ‘We always assumed, when you were safely here, they couldn’t stop Sarah joining you.’

  ‘They can’t.’

  ‘Sam has no passport. You should have put him on his mother’s. Apparently it can take a lot of time to arrange. And another thing – your people have hinted that if Sarah tries to leave she can be arrested for complicity. She was a friend of Carson, she was your agent in Johannesburg . . . My dear Maurice, things are not simple at all, I’m afraid.’