The Russian Interpreter

by Michael Frayn

  ‘We’re going to have a lot of time in hand,’ said Sasha. ‘I don’t know whose idea it was, starting this early. Perhaps we’ll be able to get breakfast at the airport.’

  The car cruised slowly out to the north-west. Manning wanted to ask about Konstantin and Raya, but felt that it might imply that he knew of some reason why they should be in trouble. It might be wrong to inquire even about Katerina.

  ‘What’s happening to Proctor-Gould?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I don’t know, Paul.’

  ‘He was arrested?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You haven’t heard any of the details?’

  ‘I haven’t been told anything.’

  ‘Korolenko was arrested, too, of course.’

  ‘Korolenko? Have either of them been charged?’

  ‘I don’t know. There was a lot about it in the papers for a start. It’s all public knowledge – I don’t suppose it matters if I tell you.’

  He glanced at one of the men sitting next to Manning. The man raised his eyebrows disclaimingly, and looked out of the window.

  ‘It was all to do with those books which Gordon was presenting at the Faculty dinner that night,’ said Sasha. ‘Apparently the police had examined them beforehand. According to the papers, the books had been in a suitcase which you had deposited at the Kiev Station. I don’t know whether that’s right…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, the police took the case away from the station, examined the books, and then replaced them in the left luggage office in order to see who they were intended for. The police said that the book which Proctor-Gould gave to Korolenko had a very heavy binding in which there was some money concealed.’

  Manning looked out of the window, warmed and dazzled by the serene sunlight which shot into the car between each building shadow. So it had been royalties after all. The terrible deviousness which Proctor-Gould had imposed upon himself was entirely quixotic. Manning remembered the various moral attitudes he had struck about him, and felt ashamed.

  At Sheremetyevo Manning opened the brown paper parcel and put on his tie. They got fresh ham rolls at the buffet, and when the girl had raised steam in the Espresso machine, large capuccino coffees.

  ‘It’s rather ironical, coming to the airport like this to see you off,’ said Sasha. ‘I told Gordon at that dinner that I was ready to go to England as one of his clients.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Manning.

  They sat, waiting for time to pass. Sasha told Manning the Faculty gossip, but to Manning it sounded unreal and dull, like the annals of some village club. He got permission to go to the men’s room under the supervision of one of the guards to shave.

  He had his face close to the mirror, and was absorbed in trying not to breathe and steam up the last few clear inches of the glass, when a finger came between himself and his reflection. He stared at it. In the condensation on the mirror it scribbled a six-pointed squiggle, like two cursive w’s – ‘shsh’ – then deleted it, and was immediately withdrawn.

  Manning slowly straightened up, and without turning his head looked into the mirror above the wash-basin next to his. The face reflected in it was Konstantin’s. They gazed at each other in the mirror, neither of them giving any sign of recognition. The guard paced slowly up and down the room, gazing at the floor, tapping his ring idly against each hand-basin as he passed, missing out the two which Manning and Konstantin were using. Without hurrying Konstantin dried his hands, and went into one of the lavatory cubicles on the other side of the room.

  Manning finished shaving as quickly as he could, cutting himself messily, and asked the guard for permission to use the lavatory. The man nodded, without ceasing his patrol. Manning locked himself into the cubicle next to Konstantin’s, tore off a piece of toilet paper and scribbled on it:

  ‘Kostik! You’re safe! How did you know I was out?’

  He dropped the paper over the partition and waited. He waited for what seemed a long time. The tapping of the ring against the basins began to sound impatient; he became frightened that the guard would order him out. Then Konstantin’s hand appeared over the top of the partition, and a sheet of toilet paper fluttered down. It said:

  ‘1. Paul! My great joy at your safety and freedom.

  ‘2. My humble thanks for your silence.

  ‘3. A message I promised I would deliver from Katya. She is out of hospital (it was hunger and exposure), but not well. Her mother has died. R. and I are looking after her. She insists you should know that while she was in hospital the police visited her and asked her about you. She told them you had deposited the books at the Kiev Station, and she asks your forgiveness.

  ‘4. R. and I – both all right. Knew about you through R’s father.’

  The guard tapped on the door of the cubicle.

  ‘Finished?’ he said.

  ‘Coming,’ said Manning. In great haste he tore off another piece of paper and scribbled:

  ‘Tell K. police would probably have known anyway. I kiss her feet and ask her forgiveness for involving her. My love to her, to R., and to you, Kostik.’

  He dropped it over the partition. Then he put Konstantin’s note in the lavatory pan and flushed it away.

  39

  The stubby silver Tu-104 screamed and shook, straining against its wheel-brakes. Dust and scraps of paper on the apron fled back from the blast of its jets. Manning pressed his face against the vibrating window glass, trying to make out Sasha or Konstantin among the scattering of spectators. But the only person he could distinguish for certain was one of the police escorts watching discreetly from a doorway.

  He gave up trying to see and felt the shaving cut on his neck. It was still wet. He would arrive in London with blood on his collar. London … the name sounded as strange and promising as Samarkand or Valparaiso. Was the same brilliant summer’s day just starting in London? Would anyone know he was arriving? Would his mother have been told about him?

  The engine note rose. Suddenly Moscow, and all its cares and heavinesses, seemed remote and insubstantial. He had an almost physical sense of the city and his life in it as being behind him. For the first time he began to take in his sudden liberty.

  Then the engine note fell again, and each engine in turn was switched off.

  A great silence fell. Manning could hear passengers making small interrogative noises to each other. He had a sensation of falling. And only at that moment did he really appreciate the true quality of the nightmare from which he had just been delivered.

  The steps were wheeled forward again, and the door of the plane was opening. Manning strained to see what was happening, but he was on the wrong side of the cabin. There were voices. Then the noise of someone coming swiftly up the steps, and pretending to pant, as if to demonstrate that he had hurried.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the voice of one of the stewardesses.

  The door was shut again. One by one the engines started and rose to a scream. And down the gangway in the centre of the cabin came Proctor-Gould, grinning guiltily, peering round to find a seat, and too confused to see.

  Manning waved at him wordlessly over the noise of the engines. For a moment Proctor-Gould didn’t take him in. Then his face came over red, and he shook Manning’s hand with curious formality, and when he had finished, pulled desperately at his ear. They mouthed incomprehensible questions and answers to each other. Manning pointed at the empty seat next to him, and mimed doing up his safety-belt. Proctor-Gould sat down vaguely, for once apparently left at a loss by the progression of events.

  After the plane had started to taxi, and the engine noise had fallen a little, Proctor-Gould shouted:

  ‘Where did they put you?’

  ‘Somewhere out beyond the Yauza. I’m not sure exactly.’

  ‘I was in Vladimir. We had a nightmare ride in this morning – eighty miles an hour all the way.’

  The plane took off and climbed into the perfect sky. Manning looked out of the window. Already Moscow was disappearing into the ground ha
ze behind them. He could just make out some of the skyscrapers – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Leningrad Hotel, the University.

  ‘Were you treated all right at Vladimir?’ asked Manning.

  ‘Not too badly, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Did anybody ask you any questions?’

  ‘It was nothing but questions. I was interrogated almost every day.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘Everything, Paul. It would have been insane to try and prevaricate at that stage. I take it you did the same?’

  ‘No one asked me, Gordon. Apart from the warders, no one came near me all the time I was inside.’

  Proctor-Gould looked at Manning rather strangely, the suggestion of an embarrassed smile forming about his lips.

  ‘You mean, you haven’t heard the details?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘Sasha filled me in on the way out to the airport.’

  ‘So you know what they found in that book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The stewardess was hovering over them, offering them glasses of tea. Proctor-Gould opened his brief-case and took out a tin of Nescafé.

  ‘I wonder if you would make me up a cup of this instead?’ he asked the stewardess. ‘One teaspoonful in boiling water, if you would be so kind.’

  ‘Like old times,’ said Manning, after the girl had taken the tin away. ‘How on earth do you come to have it with you?’

  ‘I managed to persuade them to let me have it in the prison. The police had impounded it for examination. I couldn’t bear the prison tea.’

  The stewardess brought the Nescafé. It would scarcely taste the same, thought Manning, not having been measured out in a Woolworth’s apostle spoon. He sipped his lemon tea luxuriously, cradled in the noise and the vibration, and the odd voices of people talking, squeezed to that high, soporific unnaturalness that voices have in aircraft.

  ‘To be quite candid,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘I was rather surprised to get such a friendly welcome from you. I mean, I got you involved in all this business, without so much as a by-your-leave. Any apology I might make would scarcely seem adequate. Nevertheless, Paul, I am sorry – deeply sorry.’

  ‘I think I’m the one who should be apologizing, Gordon. I said a lot of stupid things. I see now that I was wrong.’

  Proctor-Gould gazed at Paul, his head turned sideways against the upholstery of the seat.

  Thank you, Paul,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. I’m very touched.’

  ‘It’s almost certainly my fault we were caught, too. I told Katya about taking those books to the station. She told the police.’

  Proctor-Gould frowned.

  ‘Katya?’ he said. ‘Who’s Katya?’

  ‘A girl I know. Or rather, knew. You put your arm round her once, a long time ago. Anyway, I’m sorry, Gordon.’

  ‘Never mind, Paul. The whole thing was my responsibility entirely.’

  ‘I suppose this is the end of the career you’d built up?’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  Manning closed his eyes and tried to take in his freedom by imagining that he was still in his cell, and imagining that he was only imagining being on a plane bound for London. When he opened his eyes again Proctor-Gould was still watching him dreamily from the cushion.

  ‘Nice to be on your way home, Paul?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you think they expelled us, Gordon, instead of bringing us to trial?’

  ‘I don’t know. Political reasons, perhaps – something in the current international situation. Or perhaps it would have been embarrassing to reveal who was implicated on the Soviet side.’

  ‘Maybe when they discovered it was just a matter of getting manuscripts out for publication they decided to turn a blind eye. It’s the sort of back-door liberalism that’s in fashion.’

  Manning realized that Proctor-Gould had lifted his head from the head-rest, and was looking at him rather strangely. The suggestion of an embarrassed smile was forming about his lips.

  ‘You did say Sasha told you what they found in the book?’ he asked awkwardly.

  ‘He said they found some money in the binding.’

  ‘He told you how much, did he?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  Proctor-Gould sighed and fingered the lobe of his ear.

  ‘I was afraid there must be some misunderstanding between us,’ he said.

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘I suppose there’s no point in not telling you,’ he said. ‘You’ll hear soon enough in London. Well, Paul, according to my interrogating officer, they found 30,000 dollars in the book, in thousand-dollar bills.’

  The balance of probabilities shifted quite slowly in Manning’s mind.

  ‘Somebody must have written a real best-seller,’ he said.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it, Paul.’

  ‘There were no cuttings, I take it?’

  ‘Cuttings, Paul?’

  ‘Of reviews. You said there were cuttings of reviews….’

  ‘Oh. No. Listen, Paul. I’m just telling you what the interrogating officer told me. I swear to you, I was told in London that I was carrying a few hundred dollars in royalties for a Soviet author That’s what I was told. Now, I don’t know, Paul, whether I was told a lie by the people in London, or whether those notes were put in the book by the K.G.B. when they examined it. It could even be royalties, you know. Dr Zhivago must have earned a lot more than that….’

  Manning gazed out of the window and said nothing. It was warm in the plane, and he felt suddenly dazed and crumpled and sleepy. The question which kept coming back to him now was why he and Proctor-Gould were being allowed to return home. He couldn’t get it out of his head that Proctor-Gould must have compounded with his captors. Had he offered to use his connexion with British intelligence on their behalf? But they would know that British intelligence could not use him again after he had been in Soviet hands. Or perhaps they hoped that the British might be tempted to make use of him as a probable Soviet agent, and therefore a channel through which they could feed information that they wished the Russians to have…. Complex possibilities of deceit and counter-deceit opened out in every direction.

  Manning could feel Proctor-Gould’s eyes on him, following his doubts. He continued to look out of the window. Somewhere down there in the haze were the Valdai Hills, and the headwaters of the Dnieper and the Volga. Soon they would be above Latvia and the Gulf of Riga, then the shallow fresh waters of the open Baltic. Down there – the sweet blessing of frontiers, setting some bounds to distrust and corrupt dealing. Up here, no end to them was in sight.

  About the Author

  Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Headlong, Spies and Skios. He has also published two works of philosophy, Constructions and The Human Touch, and a memoir, My Father’s Fortune. His seventeen plays range from Noises Off, recently chosen as one of the nation’s three favourite plays, to Copenhagen. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.

  By the Same Author

  fiction

  THE TIN MEN

  TOWARDS THE END OF THE MORNING

  A VERY PRIVATE LIFE

  SWEET DREAMS

  THE TRICK OF IT

  A LANDING ON THE SUN

  NOW YOU KNOW

  HEADLONG

  SPIES

  SKIOS

  non-fiction

  CONSTRUCTIONS

  CELIA’S SECRET: AN INVESTIGATION (with David Burke)

  THE HUMAN TOUCH

  MY FATHER’S FORTUNE

  plays

  THE TWO OF US

  ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  DONKEYS’ YEARS

  CLOUDS

  BALMORAL

  MAKE AND BREAK

  NOISES OFF

  BENEFACTORS

  LOOK LOOK

  HERE

  NOW YOU KNOW

  COPENHAGEN

  ALARMS & EXCURSIONS

  DEMOCRACY />
  AFTERLIFE

  films and television

  CLOCKWISE

  FIRST AND LAST

  REMEMBER ME?

  translations

  THE SEAGULL (Chekhov)

  UNCLE VANYA (Chekhov)

  THREE SISTERS (Chekhov)

  THE CHERRY ORCHARD (Chekhov)

  THE SNEEZE (Chekhov)

  WILD HONEY (Chekhov)

  THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT (Tolstoy)

  EXCHANGE (Trifonov)

  NUMBER ONE (Anouilh)

  collections

  COLLECTED COLUMNS

  STAGE DIRECTIONS

  TRAVELS WITH A TYPEWRITER

  MATCHBOX THEATRE: THIRTY SHORT ENTERTAINMENTS

  Copyright

  First published by Collins in 1966

  First published in 2015 by

  Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Michael Frayn, 1966, 2015

  Cover design by Faber

  Cover image © Culture Club / Getty

  The right of Michael Frayn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly