She released him and, like the happy idiot he by now was looking, Barley let out a cry of ‘God, nearly forgot!’ He meant the carrier bags. He had propped them against the wall of the hotel beside the entrance and by the time he reappeared with them, Matvey was trying to climb out of the car to make room for him in the front, but Barley would have none of it.
‘No, no, no, no! I’ll be absolutely fine with the twins! Bless you all the same, Matvey.’ Then he threaded and backed his long body into the rear seat as if he were parking an articulated lorry, while he handed round his parcels and the twins giggled at him in awe: this giant Westerner with so many joints and bits left over, who has brought us English chocolates, and Swiss crayons, and drawing books, one each, and the works of Beatrix Potter in English to share, and a beautiful new pipe for Uncle Matvey, which Katya is saying will make him happier than is possible to imagine, with a pouch of English tobacco to smoke in it.
And for Katya everything she could want for the rest of her life – lipsticks and a pullover and scents and a French silk scarf too beautiful to wear.
All this by the time Katya drove out of the Mezh forecourt and bumped on to a pockmarked highway, chatting about the book fair that was opening tomorrow, and steering inaccurately between the flooded craters.
They were heading roughly east. The friendly gold September sun hung ahead of them, making even the Moscow suburbs beautiful. They entered the sad flatland of Moscow’s outskirts, with its proprietorless fields, desolate churches and fenced-in transformers. Clusters of old dachas were scattered like ancient beach-huts along the roadside, and their sculptured gables and boxed gardens reminded Barley as always of the English country railway stations of his youth. From his seat in the front, Matvey was poisoning them all with his new pipe and proclaiming his ecstasy through the clouds of smoke. But Katya was too busy pointing out the sights to pay him much attention.
‘Over that hill lies the so-and-so metal foundry, Barley. The shabby cement building to your left is a collective farm.’
‘Great!’ said Barley. ‘Fascinating! What a day, though, wow!’
Anna had emptied her crayons on to her lap and discovered that if she licked the points they left wet trails of paint. Sergey was urging her to put them back in their tin and Barley was trying to keep the peace by drawing animals in her sketch book for her to colour, but Moscow road surfaces are not kind to artists.
‘Not green, you chump,’ he told her. ‘Who ever saw a green cow? Katya, for heaven’s sake, your daughter thinks cows are green.’
‘Oh Anna is completely impractical!’ Katya cried laughing, and spoke quickly to Anna over her shoulder, who giggled up at Barley.
And all this had to be heard over Matvey’s continued monologue and Anna’s immense hilarity and Sergey’s troubled interjections, not to mention the anguished thunder of the little engine, until nobody could hear anything except themselves. Suddenly they swung off the road, across a grass field and up a hill without even a track to guide them, to huge laughter from the children and from Katya too, while Matvey clutched his hat with one hand, and his pipe with the other.
‘You see?’ Katya was demanding of Barley above the din, as if she had proved a long-contested point between lovers. ‘In Russia we may go exactly where our fancy takes us, provided we do not trespass into the estates of our millionaires or government officials.’
They crested the hill amid more riotous laughter and plunged into a grass dip, then rose again like a brave little boat on a wave to join a farm track that ran beside a stream. The stream entered a birch grove, the track raced beside it. Katya somehow hauled the car to a halt, heaving on the handbrake as if she were slowing down a sledge. They were alone in Paradise with the stream to dam, and a bank to picnic on, and space to play lapta with Sergey’s stick and ball from the boot of the car, which required everybody to stand in a ring, and one to bowl and one to bat.
Anna, it quickly became apparent, was frivolous about lapta. Her ambition was to get through it with as much laughter as possible, then settle down to lunch and flirt with Barley. But Sergey the soldier was a believer and Matvey the sailor was a zealot. While Katya spread out the picnic, she explained the mystical importance of lapta to the development of Western culture.
‘Matvey assures me it is the origin of American baseball and your English cricket. He believes it was introduced to you by Russian immigrants. I am sure he also believes that it was invented by Peter the Great.’
‘If it’s true, it’s the death of the Empire,’ said Barley gravely.
Lying in the grass, Matvey is still talking volubly while he puffs at his new pipe. His generous blue eyes, receding into their glorious Leningrad past, are filled with a heroic light. But Katya hears him as if he were a radio that can’t be switched off. She picks on the odd point and is deaf to all the rest. Marching across the grass, she climbs into the car and closes the door behind her, to reappear in shorts, carrying the picnic in an oilcloth bag, with sandwiches wrapped in newspaper. She has prepared cold kotleti and cold chicken and meat pies. She has salted cucumber and hard-boiled eggs. She has brought bottles of Zhiguli beer, Barley has brought Scotch, with which Matvey fervently toasts some absent monarch, perhaps Peter himself.
Sergey stands on the bank, raking the water with his net. His dream, Katya explains, is to catch a fish and cook it for everyone who depends on him. Anna is drawing. Ostentatiously, leaning away from her work so that others may admire it. She wishes to give Barley a portrait of herself to hang in his room in London.
‘She is asking, are you married?’ Katya says, yielding to her daughter’s importuning.
‘No, not at present, but I’m always available.’
Anna asks another question but Katya blushes and rebukes her. His loyalist duties completed, Matvey is lying on his back with his cap over his eyes, rattling on about heaven knows what, except that, whatever it is, it is all delightful to him.
‘Soon he will describe the siege of Leningrad,’ Katya calls with a fond smile.
A pause while she glances at Barley. She means, ‘Now we can talk.’
The grey lorry was leaving, and high time too. Barley had been resenting it over her shoulder for quite a while, hoping it was friendly but wishing it would leave them alone. The side windows of its cab were dark with dust. Gratefully he saw it lumber to the road then lumber out of sight and mind.
‘Oh, he is very well,’ Katya was saying. ‘He wrote me a long letter and everything is excellent with him. He was ill but he is completely recovered, I am sure. He has many matters to discuss with you and he will make a special visit to Moscow during the fair in order to meet you and hear the progress concerning his book. He would like to see some prepared manuscript soon, perhaps only a page. My opinion is that this would be dangerous but he is so impatient. He wants proposals about the title, translations, even illustrations. I think he is becoming a typical dictatorial writer. He will confirm everything very soon and he will also find an apartment where you can meet. He wishes to make all the arrangements himself, can you imagine? I think you have been a very good influence for him.’
She was searching in her handbag. A red car had parked on the other side of the birch grove but she seemed oblivious to everything but her own good spirits. ‘Personally I believe his work will soon be regarded as redundant. With the disarmament talks advancing so rapidly and the new atmosphere of international cooperation, all these terrible things will shortly belong to the past. Naturally the Americans are suspicious of us. Naturally we are suspicious of them. But when we have joined our forces, we can disarm completely and between us prevent all further trouble in the world.’ It was her didactic voice, brooking no argument.
‘How do we prevent all further trouble in the world if we haven’t got any arms to prevent it with?’ Barley objected, and won a sharp look for his temerity.
‘Barley, you are being Western and negative, I think,’ she retorted as she drew the envelope from her handbag. ‘It was you, not I
, who told Yakov that we required an experiment in human nature.’
No stamp, Barley noticed. No postmark. Just ‘Katya’ in Cyrillic, in what looked like Goethe’s handwriting, but who could tell? He felt a sudden sense of warning in his head and shoulders, like a poison, or an allergy coming on.
‘What’s he been recovering from?’ he asked.
‘Was he nervous when you met him in Leningrad?’
‘We both were. It was the weather,’ Barley replied, still waiting for an answer. He was feeling slightly drunk as well. Must be something he had eaten.
‘It was because he was ill. Quite soon after your meeting he had a bad collapse and it was so sudden and severe that even his colleagues did not know where he had disappeared to. They had the worst suspicions. A trusted friend told me they feared he might be dead.’
‘I didn’t know he had any trusted friends except you.’
‘He has appointed me his representative to you. He naturally has other friends for other things.’ She drew out the letter but did not give it to him.
‘That’s not quite what you told me before,’ he said feebly, while he continued to battle with his multiplying symptoms of mistrust.
She was unmoved by his objection. ‘Why should one tell everything at a first encounter? One has to protect oneself. It is normal.’
‘I suppose it is,’ he agreed.
Anna had finished her self-portrait and needed immediate recognition. It showed her picking flowers on a rooftop.
‘Superb!’ Barley cried. ‘Tell her I’ll hang it above my fireplace, I know just the spot. There’s a picture of Anthea skiing on one side, and Hal sailing on the other. Anna goes in the middle.’
‘She asks how old is Hal?’ Katya said.
He really had to think. He had first to remember Hal’s birth year, then the year it was now, then laboriously subtract the one from the other while he fought off the singing in his ears.
‘Ah well now, Hal’s twenty-four. But I’m afraid he’s made a rather foolish marriage.’
Anna was disappointed. She stared reproachfully at them as Katya resumed their conversation.
‘As soon as I heard he had disappeared I tried to contact him by all the usual means but I was not successful. I was extremely distressed.’ She passed him the letter at last, her eyes alight with pleasure and relief. As he took it from her, his hand closed distractedly over hers and she let it. ‘Then eight days ago, a week ago yesterday which was Saturday, just two days after you telephoned from London, Igor telephoned me at my house. “I have some medicine for you. Let us have a coffee and I will give it to you.” Medicine is our code for a letter. He meant a letter from Yakov. I was amazed and very happy. It is even years since Yakov has sent me a letter. And such a letter!’
‘Who’s Igor?’ Barley said, speaking rather loudly in order to defeat the uproar inside his head.
There were five pages of it, written on good unobtainable white writing paper, in an orderly, regular script. Barley had not imagined Goethe capable of such a conventional-looking document. She took back her hand, but gently.
‘Igor is a friend of Yakov from Leningrad. They studied together.’
‘Great. What does he do now?’
She was annoyed by his question and impatient to have his good reaction to the letter, even if he could only judge it by appearance. ‘He is a scientist of some kind with one of the ministries. What does it matter how Igor is employed? Do you wish me to translate it to you or not?’
‘What’s his other name?’
She told him, and in the midst of his confusion he was exalted by her abrasiveness. We should have had years, he thought, not hours. We should have pulled each other’s hair when we were kids. We should have done everything we never did, before it was too late. He held the letter for her and she knelt herself carelessly behind him on the grass, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulder, while with the other she pointed past him at the lines as she translated. He could feel her breasts brushing against his back. He could feel his world steady itself inside him, as the monstrosity of his first suspicions made way for a more analytical frame of mind.
‘Here is the address, just a box number, that is normal,’ she said, her fingertip on the top right corner. ‘He is in a special hospital, perhaps in a special town. He wrote the letter in bed – you see how well he writes when he is sober? – he gave it to a friend who was on his way to Moscow. The friend gave it to Igor. It is normal. “My darling Katya” – that is not exactly how he begins, it is a different endearment, never mind. “I have been struck down with some variety of hepatitis but illness is very instructive and I am alive.” That is so typical of him, to draw at once the moral lesson.’ She was pointing again. ‘This word makes the hepatitis worse. It is “irritated”.’
‘Aggravated,’ Barley said quite calmly.
The hand on his shoulder gave him a reproving squeeze. ‘What does it matter what is the right word? You want me to fetch a dictionary? “I have had a high temperature and much fantasy –” ’
‘Hallucination,’ Barley said.
‘The word is gallutsinatsiya –’ she began furiously.
‘Okay, let’s stick with that.’
‘ “– but now I am recovered and in two days I shall go to a convalescent unit for a week by the sea.” He does not say which sea, why should he? “I shall be able to do everything except drink vodka, but that is a bureaucratic limitation which as a good scientist I shall quickly ignore.” Is that not typical also? That after hepatitis he thinks immediately of vodka?’
‘Absolutely,’ Barley agreed, smiling in order to please her – and perhaps to reassure himself.
The lines were dead straight as if written on a ruled page. There was not a single crossing out.
‘ “If only all Russians could have hospitals like this, what a healthy nation we would soon become.” He is always the idealist, even when he is ill. “The nurses are so beautiful and the doctors are young and handsome, it is more a house of love here than a house of sickness.” He says this to make me jealous. But do you know something? It is most unusual that he comments on anybody happy. Yakov is a tragedian. He is even a sceptic. I think they have cured his bad moods as well. “Yesterday I took exercise for the first time but I soon felt exhausted like a child. Afterwards I lay on the balcony and got quite a suntan before sleeping like an angel with nothing on my conscience except how badly I have treated you, always exploiting you.” Now he writes love talk, I shall not translate it.’
‘Does he always do that?’
She laughed. ‘I told you. It is not even normal that he writes to me, and it is many months, I would say years, since he spoke of our love, which is now entirely spiritual. I think the illness has made him a little sentimental, so we shall forgive him.’ She turned the page in his hand, and again their hands met, but Barley’s was as cold as winter and he was secretly surprised that she did not comment on it. ‘Now we come to Mr. Barley. You. He is extremely cautious. He does not mention you by name. At least the illness has not affected his discretion. “Please tell our good friend that I shall try my best to see him during his visit, provided that my recovery continues. He should bring his materials and I shall try to do the same. I have to deliver a lecture in Saratov that week” – Igor says that is the military academy, Yakov always gives a lecture there in September, so many things one learns when somebody is ill – “and I shall come to Moscow as soon as possible from there. If you speak to him before I do, please tell him the following. Tell him to bring all further questions because after this I do not wish to answer any more questions for the grey men. Tell him his list should be final and exhaustive.” ’
Barley listened in silence to Goethe’s further instructions which were as emphatic as they had been in Leningrad. And as he listened, the black clouds of his disbelief swept together to make a secret dread inside him, and his nausea returned.
A sample page of translation, but in print, please, print is so much more reve
aling, she was saying on Goethe’s behalf.
I wish for an introduction by Professor Killian of Stockholm, please approach him as soon as possible, she was reading.
Have you had further reactions from your intelligentsia? Kindly advise me.
Publishing dates. Goethe had heard that autumn was the best market, but must one really wait a whole year? she asked, for her lover.
The title again. How about The Biggest Lie in the World? The blurb, please let me see a draft. And please send an early copy to Dr. Dagmar Somebody at Stanford and Professor Herman Somebody-else at MIT …
Barley painstakingly wrote all this down in his notebook on a page he headed BOOK FAIR.
‘What’s in the rest of the letter?’ he asked.
She was returning it to its envelope. ‘I told you. It is love talk. He is at peace with himself and he wishes to resume a full relationship.’
‘With you.’
A pause while her eyes considered him. ‘Barley, I think you are being a little childish.’
‘Lovers then?’ Barley insisted. ‘Live happily ever after. Is that it?’
‘In the past he was scared of the responsibility. Now he is not. That is what he writes and naturally it is out of the question. What has been has been. It cannot be restored.’
‘Then why does he write it?’ said Barley stubbornly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you believe him?’
She was about to be seriously angry with him when she caught something in his expression that was not envy and not hostility but an intense, almost frightening concern for her safety.
‘Why should he spin you the talk just because he’s ill? He doesn’t usually fool around with people’s emotions, does he? He prides himself on speaking the truth.’
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