As we joined the crowds surging into the building I noticed a most conveniently placed letter box just outside and managed to get jostled towards it by the crowd while Olga Maximova was showing her official pass at the door. With one lightning thrust, I had the letter in the box and was worming my way back to her before she was aware of my activities.
Now it only remained to wait; to reach the suggested rendezvous outside the Wolkonsky house alone. Or perhaps, to be followed and arrested? It would be difficult to explain what brought me there; but it was not, I felt, a hanging matter, and I could hardly be sent to Siberia since I was there already. So I took my place for the Mongolian wrestling match in a mood of achievement, rather than anxiety.
I would have preferred to watch Mongolian wrestlers in their true surroundings, the Gobi wastes of my childish imaginings where, seated before a ceremonial yurt, in company with the Kutukthu, I watched my own stable of champions winning every contest. But even here, in a stream-lined Siberian building, the wrestlers and the whole ritual was sufficiently exotic. The sport seemed much like that which I had seen in Turkish villages where, on Fridays, crowds circle a field to watch a number of local contestants; they wear the traditional leather knee-breeches and are soused in oil, which renders them eel-like in their adversary’s grip. These Mongolian wrestlers were lean and muscle-packed rather than muscle-bound; and there was none of that comic pantomime which makes all-in wrestling in the West a naïve spectacle with cooked-up dramatics, good man versus bad.
Wrestling is by origin an Asiatic sport, and here the Mongolians were following an ancient tradition in all its classic purity. They opened with the curious ritualistic caperings, alchik-balchik, the Turkish wrestlers called it – I did not discover if the Mongolians used the same word – by which the contestants warm up. Every move or gesture had its significance, and dated, probably, from the encampments of Jenghis Khan. Flailing their arms above their heads, they were recalling the eagle’s wings; arching their torso, they told of the tiger’s strength, and slapping their thighs (but not at all in the playful manner of Tyrolean folk dancers) they were recalling the beating wings of a mighty bird of prey. They wore soft leather top-boots, and a minute and bright coloured satin cache-sexe, while their arms and shoulders were covered by a bolero-like garment, fancifully embroidered, which left the rest of the body bare. They were handsome men, with black cropped heads and bodies like polished ivory, and they bore proud titles which their trainers vaunted. Darkhan Avraga signified a champion of three years running; Arsalan, the lion; Nachin, the falcon, and so on.
‘You have such contests in your country?’ asked the man in the next seat, a medical student who spoke good English and was explaining the finer points to me. He seemed surprised when I tried to describe the antics of characters such as the noble Boy Batman from Outer Space versus the sinister Killer – Gorilla – a morality play more than a sport, in the Asiatic sense.
•
For several days past, during which time I was alternately cast down and elated, thinking of my letter, I went about Irkutsk with one eye on the clock. I had not asked for a reply. I had simply said that I would be outside the Wolkonsky house at six o’clock on a certain day and that I would wait there for one hour. This meeting might lead to complications, I thought, and found myself a prey to all the dark propaganda I had heard over the years; but it would not do to be fobbed off by second-hand fears after crossing half Asia for facts.
The Traveller’s revenant had been strangely absent during my time in Irkutsk; it was as if my actual arrival in the country we had so often entered together in our dreams had broken the thread by which he used to join me. Perhaps my journey to Siberia, like my determination to discover what had become of him, had been an invasion of privacy.
Meantime, I was to be consoled by other kinds of facts. A distinguished Siberian, Professor of the Faculty and specialist in Dekabrist history, had invited me to visit him at his home. To this rendezvous I could go without qualm.
The Professor lived in a stark cement block, on the edge of the city: but the windows looked out on ‘the Street of the Dekabrists’ – the road they passed along, en route for their first prison in the mines. I wondered if the Professor had been allotted this flat by chance, by the rulings of a housing committee, or if he had chosen it for its romantic associations. The broad, benign face smiled: the leonine head nodded.
‘Naturally. Sometimes at night I fancy I can hear them, dragging their chains . . .’
The Dekabrist mystique, I saw, was something to which the Professor admitted, in spite of his academic stature, and I settled down to an afternoon of unalloyed bliss. But his book-lined room, like the shelves of the City Archives, presently reduced me to a mood of acute frustration and remorse. Why had I never learned to read Russian properly? The Professor spoke in a rapid manner with which even the interpreter could not always keep pace. German, his second language, was no help to me, and although it was evident he read French and English easily, he refused to speak either, except when we came to an impasse. Moreover his tendency to mispronounce historic – a word which occurred frequently, as hysterique . . . ‘this hysterique moment,’ or ‘a hysterique figure’ caused some confusion. But nothing could detract from the range and riches of his knowledge, and I hung on his words in any language.
‘You know much of our past – how do you come to know of Radistchev or the Passek family?’ he inquired flatteringly, and added: ‘this is not usual knowledge for tourists,’ at which I felt myself cast down, being taken for one. I had never seen myself as such in Russia. There, I remained a returning exile.
Now the Professor was talking of Tolstoy’s projected novel on the Dekabrists and his reasons for dropping it. Originally he had planned it as a vast historical canvas to immortalize the movement and the men. He had known two aged survivors, but although for many years obsessed by the theme (it was before he began War and Peace), he at last abandoned it. Because, said the Professor, Tolstoy had grown out of sympathy with revolt, or force. Iconoclast he might appear, at different times, to different people, but he became fixed in his abhorrence of violence. The growing terrorist movement in Russia (which derived from the Dekabrist stand) had no support from him.
From the top of a rickety step-ladder the Professor was amassing books to substantiate his views. Pamphlets and quarto volumes crashed down on the head of our interpreter, who was steadying the ladder.
‘Tolstoy is always labelled universal,’ said the Professor, from the heights, where he swayed dangerously. ‘But he is above all, profoundly Russian. He distrusted foreign influences such as French liberalism which influenced the Dekabrists. He came to judge them as setting Russian against Russian . . . He even went so far as to say the whole movement had no roots – no Russian roots, that is.’
The Professor looked distressed, for his loyalties were sadly divided here.
‘Then what about Pushkin?’ I reminded him of the poet’s love for French traditions, and his craving to be allowed to travel there. ‘Do you consider him less Russian for that?’ I pressed. ‘And he was entirely in sympathy with the Dekabrists, his friends.’
‘Pussinka – don’t Arg! . . .’ The Traveller’s voice! the old familiar command! so his shade had joined me at last, here in the Professor’s study – was here, somewhere, among this concentration of Dekabrist data he would have loved. I looked round the room, half-believing he would materialize – in that armchair – beside those bookshelves . . .
‘You have lost something?’ asked the Professor, who was plainly not to be side-tracked from justifying the Dekabrists.
‘Remember this,’ he continued, looking down over his spectacles, at once owlish and imperative. ‘Remember! – it was only through amassing material for the projected Dekabrist book that Tolstoy found the subject of War and Peace. And War and Peace is not only the greatest achievement of our literature, but the greatest novel in any language,’ said the Professor with finality; and it was clear that for him, thi
s masterpiece must be chalked up to the Dekabrists.
He climbed down and proposed tea.
A curtain which divided the room was now drawn back and the Professor’s sister was revealed in the manner of a conjurer’s assistant, beside a table piled with surprises. The immemorial samovar dominated an array of cakes, piroshki, pies and fancy breads, while there were seven different kinds of jam – home made, from special Siberian berries, brousnika, smorodina, rassetki and such.
‘All must be tasted,’ said the Professor, as I began this agreeable experiment, to the evident satisfaction of his sister, who had whispered to the interpreter that she had feared I might be one of those dieting Western ladies she had read about, who would not do justice to her spread.
‘She should worry,’ I replied – a colloquialism unknown to the interpreter, who collected it with enthusiasm.
Except that she wore an amber necklace and had tied her head up in a handkerchief of Bokharan silk, the Professor’s sister appeared indistinguishable from her brother; the same broad, beaming face, the same large presence. While she filled and refilled our glasses of tea and the samovar puffed and hummed, the Professor and I continued talking with our mouths full; he, waving his glass of tea dangerously to emphasize a point or using a spoon as a book-marker. When at last I was torn away by the exhausted interpreter I realized I had been the recipient of an entire academic address, delivered to, and for, myself alone. Coming down to earth after this heady triumph, I found the Professor’s sister pressing a pot of the brousnika jam into my hand, while he presented me with one of his own books on Siberia.
Russian hospitality! Russian friendships! how fondly I shall always recall such meetings.
•
All next day was spent visiting a faraway kolkhoz where, to Olga Maximova’s surprise, I showed unexpected stamina, going from one end of the huge farms to another, being shown over schools, workers’ clubs, collective milking plants and administrative headquarters, with a brief pause for refreshments in the kitchen of a partisan heroine of World War Two. I was determined that when, later, I returned to the hotel, it would seem quite natural that I was exhausted, and would ask not to be disturbed while I napped till dinner-time. It would all be to the good, too, I thought, if Olga Maximova was also exhausted and napped in her room instead of sitting in the hotel foyer, as she liked to do. That evening, at dusk, I meant to keep my uncertain rendezvous outside the Wolkonsky house. I think I knew in my heart that the Traveller was dead; but I wanted to know all that his friend could tell me of his life since I had lost him.
Through the ginger velour curtains which sagged so dankly, I watched the afternoon fading to a flat, greyish light; in half an hour it would be dusk. Time to go. I got stiffly off the bed – the kolkhoz outing had certainly been taxing – and putting on my sheepskin jacket, which was more in the idiom of a Siberian touloup than my other, a conspicuously foreign top-coat, I left my room and, with conspiratorial tread, passed Olga Maximova’s door.
‘A breath of fresh air before dinner – I’ve such a headache,’ I told the desk clerk, but she was deep in accounts, and hardly looked up. They were used to me in the hotel, by now, and regarded me with a certain indulgence. My morning tea was always brought to my room; a concession perhaps won because I did not nag for brand-name breakfast foods or Cokes. And then, I had stayed with them long enough to admire the city and its surroundings in gratifying depth. I strolled, apparently aimless, along the boulevards until well out of sight. Then, plunging across the main thoroughfare, I hurried into the old section of unfrequented streets where the high wooden pavements ran beside ditch-like streams bridged by planks, and the little wooden houses were sunk so deep in the earth that the windows were only half-visible, peeping up with a sly air. From inside, passers-by must have appeared as a procession of disembodied boots. My feet now joined them, hurrying on. I wondered if, to a watcher in the windows below, this procession of passing feet revealed anything of their various purposes – supper, the loved one, a political meeting? Or if, seeing the feet dawdle or drag, something of that mood was also communicated to the watchers? My own urgency, I felt, must have been apparent in my steps.
I pressed on, rehearsing what I would say if I found anyone waiting for me. Rounding a corner I saw the white belfry of the old church turned book warehouse; another corner rounded, and I was in the little square, and there was the Wolkonsky house, its bleached grey façade and uncurtained windows staring down at me. There was no one about. The big gates still gaped open and, except for a waddle of ducks, there was no sign of life in the yard. I sat down on the bench to wait and watched the grey dusk thickening, turning bluish as an old-fashioned street lamp flickered and settled into a feeble glow. It was very quiet, very still; not a leaf moved on the brown-tipped trees. Faraway I heard the screech of brakes, the sound of impatient motor horns, and the wail of a distant factory siren, but here, where the Wolkonskys had lived the last years of their exile, it was as if such sounds had no relation to fact; the impact of the past, of the Wolkonsky legend was far more real. Remembrance drifted round the little square and I wondered what echoes the Dekabrists had heard each time the diminishing band of ageing rebels met there. The sound of the Tzar’s cannons opening fire on them that decisive December day on the Senate Square? The tolling of a bell and the roll of drums heard in their cells, in the St. Peter and Paul fortress, as their companions were led out to be hung? The rattle of chains?
The drama of those lives rose round me so vividly that I was taken unaware by approaching footsteps. A figure had crossed the square and, emerging from the shadowy half-light, stood by me, before I brought myself back entirely to the present. I looked up, and saw a small man with thick spectacles peering down at me. He wore a peaked cap and a leather jacket, and the inevitable high-boots. He smiled, a wide, silver-capped smile, and held out a bony hand.
‘Let us talk,’ he said, and sat down beside me.
•
I suppose that the introduction from my Yakimankaya friend removed any reserves he might otherwise have felt, talking to a stranger, a foreigner from suspect shores. In any case he seemed to understand my hunger. He spoke slowly, at some pains with his English and, as he hesitated, searching for a word, his face took on a troubled look; he seemed anxious not to fail me.
It was almost dark now; the slow northern twilight lingered in a greyish smudge westwards but from an upstairs window of the Wolkonsky house an unshaded electric bulb was suddenly switched on, lighting the bench where we sat. Its acid glare fell on the old Serbian and I saw that his eyes, behind the thick lenses, were brown and soft – ox eyes, ruminative and peaceful; unlikely eyes for a terrorist.
He had known the Traveller for many years and in many places, he said.
‘In Belgrade, in Geneva, Paris . . . London too. You knew him in London – yes? He came back to Russia when his work in the west was finished. He could not stay away for ever . . . not for anyone . . .’
He turned his slow, ox-stare on me, speculatively. ‘He belonged here. His work, his believing, it was all here.’ I began edging towards exactitudes. Where was he now?
‘You thought to find him? It is difficult to find people here. So big a country . . . They go away. They vanish. It is best not to look for them.’ He broke off, and taking an apple from his pocket, split it carefully with a pen-knife and offered me half. Munching, and greatly daring, I asked if my love had been involved in counter-espionage work – a double agent.
‘Double-man? No. He was single-minded. Absolute! Yet he became sad for many things, I think. For many people, too. That is why they sent him here. But first he had done much work well. Dangerous work, for he was becoming known in too many places.’
So there it was at last. All the old, half-formed suspicions were confirmed. A spy.
‘I always thought – my family – we always thought he couldn’t possibly have really been spying . . . he seemed so obvious, he was so openly mysterious, if you know what I mean?’
He smiled indulgently. ‘Ah! but that was his tricking! He took much trouble to appear just what he was . . . Naturally, if he was a spy, he could have covered up better – or so people thought . . . It was simple – so – and it worked very well for many years . . . But in the end it became necessary to return to Russia. And then, when he was back, he was not always wise. He was têtu. It is not wise to be têtu here. He criticized much, so one day he is sent to Siberia . . . Oh no! not to a labour camp. He was well-liked. He had high friends . . . No, they sent him here to be far away from the West. He spoke good Chinese and he knew the Mongolian and Buriat dialects. He worked mostly on frontier administrative posts. Soon after he came here they sent me, too, and so we meet again. It is a good life here. It is quiet on the kolkhoz. Good food, too. Siberia is a good country.’
‘Yes, he always said so. He told me a lot about its history, and the sort of life lived here when he was a young man. The family had mines, and a house somewhere near Omsk, I believe. Did you know that?’
‘I did; but all that has gone. When we meet again he is telling me he is an exile – an exile in his own land. I ask him, where do you want to be? Then he told an English saying – perhaps you know it? Home is where is the heart. “My heart”, he said, “is not here any more . . .” And then, he was not always clever. He spoke what he thought too much. And he went often to church too. Not many people doing that here. I tell him, this is foolishness and always he laughs, saying all men must have a vice. When he was at a meeting – the sort we have here, local politics, he was quickly in ennui, and he would go away very loudly. Often I fetched him back. I always knew where to find him. In the church!’ (‘Scandalist! he was always a scandalist’ Aunt Eudoxia had said, laying out the Tarot cards that faraway summer in Corsica.)
The old Serbian carefully collected the core of his half apple and mine and wrapped them in a piece of paper, tidily, before throwing them, untidily, over the Wolkonsky fence.
Journey Into the Mind's Eye Page 41
