The Innocent

by David Szalay

  ‘Lozovsky?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I said I knew him slightly, having spent a week staying with him and his wife, and saw no reason not to trust him. I did not mention his initial failure to tell me about Yudin’s writing. I myself had wondered whether to mention it in my submission. I had to, of course, and I suspect that it was this, this writing, more than anything else, that weighed against him.

  5

  ON THE RADIO they are talking about the first test flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft. It was entirely successful, they say. There is a momentary pause, then the next news item. ‘Prime Minister Major Fidel Castro in a message to the people and leaders of the Soviet Union, which was sent from the aeroplane in which he returned to Cuba following his visit to the USSR, states that …’

  He slides one of the old suitcases out from under his bed. The one full of papers – old letters and documents, small photographs, forgotten literary efforts. He is searching for his chess set, and even the minimal exertion of his searching is making him sweat. Like everyone else, he has a sudden interest in the game. Eventually he finds it. The small wooden pieces are wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, and he sees from the text that he has not played since the Caribbean Crisis of 1962. The board is a folding piece of card – or was, until the fold wore out and it fell apart.

  In the living room, the radio is still reporting Castro’s message. ‘… emphasises that the friendship of the two nations has been forged in the thirteen years since the victory of the Cuban Revolution, and is based on the common struggle against US imperialism. The message also refers to the feats of the Soviet people in the political, economic, social, scientific-technical and military fields, which are unprecedented in history …’ He turns the frequency knob until he finds a voice from Reykjavik. Then he lines up the two halves of the board, and puts out the pieces.

  There is a little click, as Boris Vasilyevich, playing white, makes the first move of the match. The commentator says, ‘Spassky, pawn to d4.’ Aleksandr moves the white king pawn forward two squares. The radio is silent, except for the occasional soft cough from the audience. Fischer, as has been explained, is not there. Nobody knows where he is.

  His photo is on the front of this week’s Soviet Sport. Aleksandr holds the paper up and inspects it – the huge face with its little sunken eyes. There is something insane about them. Fischer looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His hair is a mess; his mouth hangs slightly open. There is also a photo of Boris Vasilyevich. Next to Fischer he exudes a sincere, serious dignity. Aleksandr looks at his watch – two minutes have passed since he played pawn d4. Quietly, the commentator interrupts the silence to say, ‘Fischer has still not arrived. I remind you that if he has not arrived within one hour, he will forfeit the game.’

  Minutes pass, and he looks over the profile of Fischer in Soviet Sport. Fischer’s social and political development are as stunted as his emotional development. He is not married and has no friends. A member of a profiteering Christian fundamentalist sect, he loathes everything politically progressive. His ambition is to get rich, and money is his principal motivation. He agreed to take part in the World Championship match in Reykjavik only when a British millionaire doubled the prize fund to $250,000 … His contempt for women is well documented. In an interview he states: ‘They’re all weak, all women. They’re stupid compared to men.’ More disturbing still is his anti-Semitism. ‘There are too many Jews in chess,’ he insists. ‘They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don’t seem to dress so nicely, you know.’ This despite the fact that his own mother is Jewish … At the chessboard he tries to intimidate his opponents with his overbearing personality, and will storm out like a spoilt child if playing conditions are not to his exact liking. A spoilt child, of course, is exactly what Fischer is. This, some might say, is the inevitable fate of the child prodigy, but let us not forget that Spassky too was a prodigy, winning the Soviet championship at seventeen. Learning his chess in Leningrad after the war, this son of a peasant mother and labourer father has found a rather more sober maturity: while Fischer, at the age of twenty-nine, reads nothing but puerile comics with names like Spiderman and Batman, Spassky reads Dostoyevsky. While Fischer indulges in fantasies about living in a house shaped like a rook, Spassky works hard to raise a family …

  Next to the profile is another, smaller photo of Fischer in which he is being fitted with a suit, a tailor in the background, chalking marks on the half-made, one-sleeved jacket. Fischer’s hands are on his hips and he is looking at the camera with a joyless smile on his big face, a smile that expresses nothing but self-regard and contempt for the world. Here, Aleksandr thinks, is a man who has not engaged with the world except through chess and money. He has not engaged with the world morally in any way …

  Suddenly, the radio registers a whispering commotion, the unsettling of an audience. ‘He’s here,’ the commentator says grimly. ‘He’s arrived. Fischer has arrived. Seven minutes late. He’s coming onto the stage. Spassky stands. They shake hands. Fischer takes his seat. What is … Oh he’s played. He’s played knight f4.’

  Aleksandr moves the black knight out to f4, and stares thoughtfully at the board.

  It is Spassky’s move.

  ‘Pawn c4,’ announces the commentator.

  *

  Hours later, and the living room is full of hot evening sunlight. The windows are open, and outside children are playing in the street – he hears their loud shouts. The board on the desk has developed into a fixed, complex position. It is evenly balanced – both players have a bishop and six pawns. It is a drawn position. The radio fizzes tensely. ‘Pawn b4 to b5.’ The commentator’s voice is tense, and tired. Aleksandr advances the white pawn, and waits for Fischer’s move. ‘Bishop d6 takes h2. That’s a blunder,’ says the commentator. There is a quiet murmur in the hall. Aleksandr makes the move. He doesn’t see …

  ‘Pawn g2 to g3.’

  The commentator sounds less tired.

  Oh, yes. The bishop’s snared. Aleksandr frowns, displeased that he did not see it. ‘The game has been transformed,’ whispers the commentator excitedly. ‘It’s been transformed. It seemed like it was heading for a certain draw. Spassky was playing for the draw, exchanging at every opportunity. Fischer wasn’t satisfied with the draw. But he was too aggressive. An extraordinary blunder. Now, surely, he’s going to lose.’

  As night falls on Sverdlovsk, the endgame drags on – the patient, slow-motion game of kings and pawns. Fischer is struggling to survive with pawns against pawns and bishop. Spassky is struggling to finish him off. In the end, when moths are bumping almost silently into the light bulb that hangs from the ceiling, the game is adjourned until tomorrow. Applause – he switches off the radio, stopping it short, and stares at the position of the pieces. Silent little pieces of wood whose significant positions are tonight transfixing the world.

  He wakes very early in the morning. Even this early the air is soupily warm. There is a very fine mist in the street. He sits down at his desk, and suddenly the strokes of the typewriter smash the early morning peace.

  Spring

  had

  transformed

  the

  forest

  He stops. He is about to tell the story of how he went to Metelyev Log for the second time, when spring had transformed the forest. However, there is something that he omitted from the story of his first visit. Then, for most of the time, it rained. His memories of the place are mostly of rainy weather – of misty rain that glistened on the nap of coarse cloth, like the grey collar of her coat.

  There was only one sunny day while he was there – he woke to find the knotholes in the window shutters fiercely white. From somewhere outside he heard the slow strokes of an axe. The sun was warm. Insects sported in its warmth. The sound of the axe was coming from the side of the house, where the wood pile was, and there, on a scarred tree stump, she was splitting logs into smaller pieces. Later, they went for a walk. Unselectively, the sun highlighted
small pieces of the forest. He was not dressed for the sort of walk she had in mind, in his suit trousers and waistcoat and filthy shirt. His leather-soled shoes slipped on the wet clay, and he walked more slowly than she did, stopping to peer into the long shadowy perspectives of the wood, where the light shape-shifted under the trees when the wind, softly, moved their foliage.

  ‘I saw a bear once,’ she said.

  ‘Here?’

  She nodded. ‘It was just walking along. I don’t think it saw me.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘No. Maybe I should have been.’

  ‘Maybe. What time of year was it?’

  ‘This time of year. Spring. Two years ago.’

  ‘Then you should have been scared,’ he said. ‘It’s this time of year they’re most dangerous, when they’ve just come out of hibernation and they’re starving.’

  ‘I know. So I stood very still and watched it walk past. It was about … fifty metres away, moving through the trees. Slowly, not in a hurry. Sometimes it lifted its head and sniffed the wind. Then suddenly I had an impulse to make a noise, to shout out.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t.’

  ‘I shouted, “I’m here!”’ He thought she was joking and laughed. Then she said, ‘I did.’ And when he still looked sceptical, as if he did not know whether to take her seriously or not, ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What did it do?’

  ‘What do you think? It looked at me. I don’t know if it saw me. Even then I wasn’t scared. I just wondered if it would kill me. For a long time it didn’t move. It seemed like a long time. It was probably only a few seconds. Then it walked on.’

  ‘I see. Well please don’t do that if we see one today.’

  She laughed.

  The forest had a strangely empty look. The narrow trunks of the pines were as straight as pencils, the only branches higher up, where there was sunlight. They were walking on fallen pine needles – epochs of them, as she pointed out – and it was like walking on a mattress.

  He told her that he was originally from a village, and had lived there until he was twelve. ‘I’ve forgotten almost everything about it now.’

  ‘Forgotten what?’

  ‘For instance, how to milk a cow. When I was a child I had to help my parents with the milking.’

  She seemed uninterested, and lit a papirosa.

  The path went straight up an ivy-covered slope. Initially, he mistook the sound of water for the wind. Only when the wind stopped, and the whole forest stood very still for a moment, did he understand that what he was hearing was water – an unvarying high soft sound. And then, quite suddenly, unmistakably watery. In the shifting shade under the trees, the stream flowed down a natural stairway of stones, shallow pools perpetually overflowing. The air was empty, pure. The shadows had the frigidity of early spring. From an open space they were able to turn and see the lake in its valley, and the monumental clouds mirrored in its surface, which was perfectly still. The soil was waterlogged, and soaked through the seat of his trousers.

  They walked slowly down. It was mid-afternoon, warm and sleepy, when her house was visible through the trees at the end of its short path. He waited on the wooden steps for her to unlock the door. ‘Oh I forgot to lock it,’ she said. She opened it and went in. Immediately he heard Lozovsky’s voice – ‘Nadya? Have you seen the Chekist?’ The impersonal tone of this hurt his feelings. He had been there, living with them, for more than a week. ‘Oh, you’re here,’ Lozovsky said. It was quite dark inside the house. Lozovsky was smiling. ‘Well, good news,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The line’s open.’

  ‘The line?’

  ‘The railway line.’

  ‘What, already?’

  ‘We got a telegram an hour ago.’ He lit the unlit papirosa that he was holding. ‘The train will be through at the usual time today. You don’t look very pleased,’ he said, through the smoke.

  ‘Of course I’m pleased.’

  Sitting at his desk, staring at the typewriter, he is suddenly aware of the spectral thunder of a jet. A vapour trail is visible in the sky. The plane itself is not visible. Silently, in the stratosphere, the trail disperses. He spends very little time away from his flat. A fortnight in the Crimea every summer, a KGB sanatorium on the sea. Swimming in the hot sulphurous pools. Perhaps an excursion to the Nikitsky Botanical Gardens in Yalta. That’s all. And even that seems too much – especially when he has to pack his small suitcase, and sit waiting for the loud honk of the bus when it stops in front of the house. Unhappy, silent, slightly lost, he takes his seat among the others, in their short-sleeved shirts and sunglasses, and slowly they wind through the eastern suburbs of the city. Then out to Koltsovo. He first flew in a plane the year Gagarin went to space. That flight, like all the others he has made since, was between Sverdlovsk and Simferopol. In the years before that they would spend several days on the train, slowly leaving the stress of their work, which they never talked about, while the shadows of trees flickered on their sleeping faces. The vapour trail has dispersed. The sky’s mineral blue is intact. He sits down at his desk and stares at the words he has typed.

  6

  SPRING HAD TRANSFORMED the forest. Nor was the hospital, an inelegant weather-stained neo-classical pile, quite like my memory of it. Since it had been demilitarised in 1947, we needed the director’s permission if we wanted to take one of the patients. There was a form he needed to sign, known as a form four-eighty. This Lozovsky would not do. He would not sign it. Having vouched for him in Mikhalkov’s office only forty-eight hours earlier, I found I took this personally. I sighed. I said, ‘Mikhail Naumovich, I feel we know each other, if only slightly, and I want to be open with you.’ He was obviously upset, though he tried not to show it. ‘They want a second medical opinion,’ I said. ‘There are things that aren’t easy to understand if you haven’t met him. The writing in particular. You know that. It’s why you didn’t tell me about it yourself.’ He said nothing and lit a papirosa. ‘I understand why they want a second opinion,’ I said. ‘I hope you do as well.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Does what matter?’

  ‘Does it matter whether I understand?’

  ‘I hope you do.’

  ‘Then let’s say I do.’

  The next morning, when I went to his office for the form, he said he had not signed it yet, he wanted to look at it first. This seemed odd, since he must have seen many like it in the past. Nevertheless, I said, ‘Of course,’ and sat down on the old leather sofa. He spent a long time looking at the form. Finally he said, ‘No, I can’t sign this.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you must understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘Well I think it’s quite obvious …’

  ‘Just sign it, please.’

  For several seconds he said nothing. Then: ‘No. It wants me to state that the patient is mentally and physically fit to be transported, and to face interrogation, and a trial. And he isn’t.’

  When he had said this, in a quiet voice, he stared at me. He was even smiling slightly. I think I knew then that he would never sign the form. I saw the stubbornness in his eyes. And what stubbornness! He was a man who in an earlier time would have died at the stake out of sheer stubbornness and vanity. Still, I tried to persuade him.

  ‘They want a second opinion,’ I said. ‘A second medical opinion. You can understand that, surely?’

  ‘Then let them send someone here.’

  ‘No. They won’t do that.’

  When he just sat there, staring at me, I stood up and went to the window, wondering what to do. ‘I’ll make a note,’ I said, ‘of your objections to this. Your purely medical objections. I’ll also allow Doctor Anichkova to accompany Yudin. To make sure he’s okay. Strictly speaking it’s not allowed …’ Lozovsky said
nothing. ‘Okay?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether Anichkova goes with him or not. What difference does that make?’

  ‘Well you’re worried about his welfare, aren’t you?’ I shouted. ‘I assume that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘Yes, it is …’

  ‘And do you really think your not signing this form will help him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I know that signing it wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re wrong. What do you think will happen if you don’t sign it?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you! It won’t make any difference! Not for him.’

  He did not like being shouted at.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I understand why you’re opposed to this. I’ll do everything possible to make sure he’s okay. You have my word. It’s just for a second opinion. So sign it. Please.’ He did not move. There was a long silence. I said, ‘I’m leaving later this afternoon. I hope – I do hope – you’ll have signed it by then.’

  He had not, which saddened me. Though many people would not have, I liked Lozovsky. The first time I was there, he and his wife were very kind to me. I was there for so long that I started to feel like part of the family. They made an effort to make me feel at home, and I helped in whatever ways were needed. I sawed logs for firewood, fetched water from the well. His wife was younger than he was. In fact, she had been one of his pupils at the Second Medical Institute in Moscow. They were handsome, intelligent people. We ate together in the evenings, and talked. There was usually an element of friendly sparring to these talks – with Lozovsky that was inevitable. Often he and I played chess. He was a strong player. We were evenly matched, I would say. Sometimes he played the piano. There was a piano in their little wooden house, an imported German upright, looking very out of place in the forest. He told me one evening how it had been transported there, on a horse-drawn wagon through knee-deep mud. He said he had wanted to be a professional musician. He wasn’t talented enough. To me he seemed very talented. I have a memory, in particular, of his playing the A major prelude from the second book of the ‘Well-tempered Clavier’ – those preludes and fugues were what he usually played – a memory of an evening in the wet forest, and that sad, placid music.