The Russian Interpreter

by Michael Frayn

  ‘The difference,’ said Proctor-Gould, as they cast about for the right staircase, ‘is that we’re going to get all the books back. For nothing.’

  ‘But how can we? Konstantin isn’t at home now.’

  ‘Exactly, Paul.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of breaking in, Gordon?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘But the books aren’t there. Konstantin sold them.’

  ‘I don’t think he did, Paul. I don’t think he can have done. Look, he was already back in the restaurant waiting for Raya to bring the second case when we arrived, and he’d had time to drink at least three cups of coffee. In fact he must have been expecting Raya about three-quarters of an hour earlier – at the time she would have arrived if I hadn’t stopped her. In other words, the only time he had to dispose of the first case was about as long as it would take Raya to get to the hotel and return with the second one. How long would that be? Well, it depends whether she went by bus or took a taxi. Either way it can’t have been much more than half an hour. Now I don’t believe that within half an hour he can have got the case open, examined the books, and found a buyer for them.’

  ‘You think he just took the case home and dumped it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if you’d been in his position?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  A small boy crashed into Manning’s legs, looked up at the two abstracted faces above him, and ran away shouting.

  ‘But, Gordon,’ said Manning, ‘why did Konstantin say he’d sold the books if he hadn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps as an excuse for raising the price by claiming that he had to cover the fence’s margin as well.’

  ‘But that’s not the line he took at all. He said that he couldn’t get all the books back at any price. And then he said that he could get any one of them back for nothing.’

  Proctor-Gould stopped and gazed at the ground, pulling his ear. Some of the children stood round in a semi-circle, watching them, and an old woman sitting on a doorstep shouted something that Manning couldn’t catch.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Proctor-Gould finally. ‘It was some piece of sales talk. The details aren’t important. All I’m interested in is getting the books back. Come on.’

  Manning followed Proctor-Gould dubiously up a staircase in the corner of the yard. The walls of the staircase were pitted all over, as if they had been subjected to rifle fire, worn down to such a variety of levels of paint and plaster and brick that the mottling seemed almost uniform and intentional. On each dark landing there were four front doors, all of them the colour of Konstantin’s tie – neutral with age and dirt – except at the edges and around the locks, where use had exposed the wood itself.

  The front door of number 67 was exactly like the rest, identified only by a rusted and empty bell-push on the lintel, with a piece of card stuffed behind the flange bearing the name ‘Churavayev’ in a ballpoint scribble.

  Proctor-Gould rapped on the door with his knuckles.

  ‘Gordon, what am I going to say …?’ began Manning.

  ‘Sh!’

  They listened. There was no sound from the other side of the door. Proctor-Gould knocked again. Then he kicked, making the heavy door reverberate in its frame. At this the next door but one opened a crack, revealing an inch of pyjama and a sleepy eye.

  ‘They’re not in,’ said the man, apparently trying not to wake himself up any further by the effort of opening or closing his mouth. ‘So shove off.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Manning, as the door shut again. He passed the message on to Proctor-Gould. Proctor-Gould leaned his weight against the door of 67 and pushed.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Manning.

  Proctor-Gould went on pushing, grunting a little, scarcely breathing, until his face was visibly dark even in the darkness of the landing.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gordon,’ said Manning, looking round to see if anyone could see them.

  Proctor-Gould stopped pushing and got his breath back. Then he stepped back to the other side of the landing, bunched his right shoulder up, and charged at the door, changing his mind at the last moment and waltzing round so that he stopped himself awkwardly against the door with the flat of his hands and his forehead.

  ‘I think perhaps not,’ he said, rubbing his head. He took his key-ring out of his pocket and tried all the possible-looking keys on it.

  ‘Gordon, it’s not worth risking it just for the sake of a few books.’

  Proctor-Gould put the keys away and took out a tiny pearl-handled penknife, with which he began to prod about in the keyhole. Then, abruptly, he straightened up.

  ‘Did you say the man said they, plural, were out?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that’s what he said.’

  Proctor-Gould began to peer closely at the lintel, running his hands over the pock-marked wood. Then he gazed about the landing walls.

  ‘Now what are you up to?’ asked Manning, becoming more indulgent now that it was clear nothing embarrassing was going to occur after all.

  ‘If there’s more than one person living here they may have left a communal key hidden outside somewhere.’

  He got down on his hands and knees and crawled about the filthy landing, testing the skirting-board and the risers of the stairs. Manning began to laugh.

  ‘I must say, Gordon,’ he said, ‘this display of determination is a new side to your character.’

  Proctor-Gould put his face nearer and nearer to the floor, until at last he was squinting along it, with his cheek resting on it.

  ‘If anyone comes by,’ said Manning, ‘I’ll tell them you’re a Moslem. Your face will certainly be dusky enough.’

  Proctor-Gould was quite still.

  ‘I can see it,’ he said. ‘It’s under the door.’

  He crawled across to the door, and ran his hand along the floor in front of it.

  ‘On a thread,’ he added, finding it, and pulling it until the key slid out. He stood up, and without even stopping to brush the dust off his face and knees, unlocked the door and walked inside.

  Manning stayed where he was.

  ‘Come on,’ said Proctor-Gould. ‘Don’t let’s stand here with the door open.’

  ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with this …’ began Manning, but he stopped. Someone was coming out of an apartment on the floor above. They both listened. There was the sound of a front door shutting, and of a key being turned in a lock. Then the noise of footsteps descending the stairs. One, two, three … in another six or seven steps the man would reach the semi-landing, turn, and look down on them as they stood, half in and half out of the apartment. Manning stepped inside and shut the door. At once Proctor-Gould locked it behind them.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘the sooner we find the books the sooner we can go.’

  25

  There was only one room in the apartment. It was about twelve feet wide by fifteen feet long, and it looked out not on the courtyard but a derelict back-street running behind the block, lined with shuttered single-storey buildings which sagged in the middle, and plots of waste land covered with old boxes and rusty oil drums. Against one wall of the room was an unmade bed; in the corner, a primus stove standing on an asbestos sheet, and a dirty frying-pan; under the window a solid mahogany desk, covered with a confusion of books, papers, pencils, protractors and luxuriant pot plants.

  There was scarcely any wall to be seen. Almost every inch of it was covered with books, crammed on to thin makeshift shelves which sagged under the weight, giving the room an odd impression of being hung with swagged draperies. On the shelves in front of the books was a confusion of objects for which there was no room anywhere else – framed photographs of people in the fashions of thirty years before, pen-and-ink sketches, a marble bust of Lomonosov, a compass, a cheap icon, a jar of feathers, pebbles, birds’ eggs, pieces of quartz, dried flowers, solid projections of mathematical functions, a metronome, a gramophone with a home-made amplifier and a dusty stack of long-playi
ng records without envelopes. It was a dark, overstuffed, sympathetic room, a young man’s room that had gone to seed. The air smelt of frying and paraffin and sleeping.

  Manning picked up a single nylon stocking which was lying across the back of a chair.

  ‘Wife? Girl friend?’ he said, showing it to Proctor-Gould.

  Proctor-Gould threw back the bedclothes to look under the bed. It revealed an assortment of women’s shoes, all well-worn, standing in a silent grey desert of dust.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have done much housework recently,’ he said.

  Manning sat down at the desk, on an ancient swivel-chair with stuffing leaking out of its torn upholstery. There were crumbs among the papers on the desk, and a plate covered with cold grey grease. There was also a mirror on a swivel stand. Manning adjusted it slightly so that he could see himself. What on earth did Konstantin want a mirror on his desk for? It was difficult to believe from his appearance that he had ever examined his reflection in his life. But of course, it was for the woman; the desk/dining-table was also her dressing-table. He lifted some papers, and found a lipstick without a top, a broken eyebrow pencil, and a small jar of cold cream.

  He tried to imagine Konstantin’s woman sitting there, among all the books and the masculine curiosities. Were some of the books and papers hers? Did she work at the desk, too, and own a share of the room’s character? Or was she indifferent to it, creating a small life in the midst of it all with her own props – the shoes, the cold cream, the broken eyebrow pencil? He pictured them getting up in the morning. He saw Konstantin, not her, putting the coffee on the primus. She would be sitting in the swivel-chair in her underwear, gazing at herself expressionlessly in the mirror, rubbing cream into her skin. She was self-contained, indifferent to him. If he asked her a question, she would let a minute go by before she answered. There was total confusion in the room; her clothes were scattered everywhere.

  But somehow the room didn’t quite fit the picture. There should have been more confusion, more traces of her. A stocking, a few pairs of shoes – why were there no dresses lying around? Why was there no underwear hanging up to dry? One lipstick, one jar of cold cream, one eyebrow pencil – why was the eyebrow pencil broken?

  He looked closely at the cold cream jar. It was covered in a fine film of dust. It hadn’t been opened for – how long? A week? Two weeks? A month? How quickly did dust collect in Moscow? He went across to the bed. There was a pair of men’s pyjamas mixed up in the bedding. But no nightdress. Nothing to indicate that a woman had slept there.

  ‘I think she’s left him,’ he said.

  Proctor-Gould was searching among some clothes crammed behind a dusty curtain in the corner.

  ‘She expects to come back, then,’ he said. ‘She’s left some of her clothes on the rail here. Look at this.’

  He held up a pale blue evening dress, with silk flounces and sequins. The colour had faded – the silk was almost brown in places – and a number of sequins were missing.

  ‘Rather a museum piece, isn’t it?’ he said, giggling. ‘Konstantin must have a pretty curious taste in lady friends.’

  But the sight of the dress softened Manning towards the girl.

  ‘I expect her parents bought her that when she was about seventeen,’ he said. ‘It’s rather touching she should have kept it. Incidentally, they must have moved in exalted circles. There aren’t many places in Moscow where you wear long evening gowns.’

  Proctor-Gould hung the dress up again.

  ‘Perhaps they quarrelled,’ said Manning, ‘and she walked out without having time to pack everything.’

  Proctor-Gould shrugged.

  ‘She’s probably gone off on some sort of business trip,’ he said. ‘Or living with someone else for a month. Some of these Soviet girls are pretty casual, you know. But never mind her – where’s the suitcase?’

  Manning went slowly along the bookshelves, running his eye along the titles. There were all the standard Russian classics, and a number of foreign ones in translation. Farther on there were shelves full of books on Russian history and Russian economic geography, then a row of textbooks on mechanics, mathematics, and aircraft construction, tables of engineering constants, and forty or fifty issues of a learned journal devoted to high-temperature metallurgy.

  Manning was surprised to find a number of philosophical works in French and German, expounding existentialism and positivism. At random he took down Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt. There was a tram ticket between pages nine and ten. Before the ticket the margins were full of scribbled translations of even quite simple words. After the ticket they were empty. On another shelf were books about the Soviet Union written by foreigners who had visited it. Manning noticed Gide’s Retour de I’URSS. The margins were full of translation notes all the way through. He wondered how much it had cost Konstantin on the black market.

  ‘Well?’ said Proctor-Gould.

  ‘No luck so far.’

  He went on looking; it upset and offended him to think that this intelligent and coherent library had been assembled by a petty criminal. Perhaps it was all stolen property.

  Among a small selection of books on Borodin and Glinka he came across a copy of A Hero of Our Time. An odd place for it to be – particularly since there was another copy of it among the rest of Lermontov’s works. It occurred to him that he had passed two separate copies of An Economic History of the R.S.F.S.R. in different places. A moment later he saw The Behaviour of Aerofoils in Lateral Turbulence for the second time round, and two copies of The Nimzovich Defence.

  Puzzled, he stared at the spines of the two Nimzovich Defences. They seemed to be the same edition. The only difference between them was that one was in a dust-jacket and one was not. He looked back to the two copies of The Behaviour of Aerofoils. Again, they were the same edition. Again, the only difference was that one was dust-jacketed and one was not.

  He saw the explanation suddenly and completely, as if it had been held up on a card in front of him. He took out the copy of The Behaviour of Aerofoils with the dust-jacket and opened it. Inside the jacket was a copy of Yeats’s Collected Poems.

  ‘One of yours?’ asked Manning.

  ‘Ah!’ said Proctor-Gould.

  They began to pull out all the other dust-jacketed books they could see on the shelves one after another, throwing them down on the floor if the jackets did not conceal volumes belonging to Proctor-Gould, until they had recovered some twenty books.

  ‘I wonder where the suitcase is?’ said Manning.

  ‘Somewhere on that waste lot outside the window, I should think.’

  ‘Any more to come?’ asked Manning. ‘I think it’s about time we left.’

  ‘There should be one or two. What’s that one you’ve got there?’

  It was the Proceedings of the Institute of Civic Studies. Proctor-Gould took it out of Manning’s hands and flicked through it.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it a day.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Manning. He put his hand into the gap left by the Proceedings and pulled out something which had been concealed behind the row of books. It was a tin of Nescafé.

  They both stared at it without a word. Then Manning pulled out all the other books on the shelf. There, lined up against the wall at the back, were four more tins of Nescafé.

  ‘You lost six, didn’t you?’ asked Manning.

  ‘She brought one back.’

  They picked up the tins and examined them. One of them was almost empty, as it had been when it disappeared from Proctor-Gould’s room. The others were still full. But they had all been opened and unsealed.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ asked Manning.

  Proctor-Gould shrugged.

  ‘I suppose he opened them to make sure they were genuine.’

  Manning thought.

  ‘Would you have opened them,’ he said, ‘if you’d been buying them?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Gordon. N
ot if you’d wanted to sell them again.’

  ‘If I had a suspicious nature …’

  ‘You might have opened one at random as a sample, Gordon. But not all of them.’

  Proctor-Gould fixed Manning with his great brown gaze.

  ‘What’s your explanation then?’ he asked.

  ‘I think he was looking for something.’

  ‘Looking for something? What?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gordon. Do you?’

  Proctor-Gould went on gazing at Manning for some moments. But the focus of his eyes shifted, so that he seemed to be looking right through Manning’s head at the wall beyond. Finally a great sigh heaved his shoulders up and dropped them again.

  ‘No, Paul,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’

  There was a conclusion about another matter that the tins suggested to Manning. He caught Proctor-Gould’s eye.

  ‘I wonder if you’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ he said.

  ‘What about, Paul?’

  ‘Who the girl is who shares Konstantin’s room.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Proctor-Gould. He sighed again. ‘Yes, that did occur to me.’

  ‘No mystery about her any longer.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor where she’s been for the past few weeks.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Proctor-Gould picked up the single nylon stocking and rubbed it softly between finger and thumb, then put it in his pocket. He noticed Manning watching him.

  ‘She’s probably looking for it,’ he said.

  26

  They staggered along Kurumalinskaya Street with their arms full of books until they found a taxi, and drove to one of the big department stores, where they bought another suitcase to put the books in. Then they took the bus to the Kiev Station, and deposited the suitcase in the left luggage office.