Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  An argument. The man wanted Moscow. She said it was full for two days. He showed her his papers, his documentation and his cards, but she replied by saying it didn't make a damn of difference, that everything was full, although he could go to the airport and try his luck there.

  Isaac realized that the man couldn't be that important, meant he didn't qualify by his rank for the tickets kept back for senior Party officials on all flights. Everyone knew about that.

  The girl's cheeks were flushed, and she was looking round her for support when she caught Isaac's eyes, and his wink, the lowered lid, was acknowledged. Isaac saw her stifle a giggle and return her gaze to the man whose voice was now raised.

  There would be trouble for her, a complaint to the responsible person. His department would lodge a protest at the highest level. What was her name? Blatant obstruction of an official. And he left his place at the counter.

  Isaac said, 'I'd like to book three for tomorrow, to Tashkent, student fare, coming back fourteen days from tomorrow. I'd like to go on tomorrow afternoon's flight, return Wednesday fortnight. If it's possible?' and he smiled, boyish, intimate . . . 'silly old fool. You handled him well-you'll not hear from him again.' His right hand had moved from his hip pocket, engulfing the fifty roubles of notes, and the fist opened among the papers in front of her, tickets, timetables, price charts, and without taking her eyes from him she covered the notes, faded and worn, with her booking pad.

  She didn't reply, just picked up her desk telephone - computer not working again-and was talking into it; Isaac waiting for the verdict.

  Still holding the phone she asked for the names, and when they had been given to her she repeated them into the receiver, spelling them out letter by letter. It seemed to take a lifetime. She said 'priority', and grinned at him; not bad looking, Isaac thought, but someone should do something about her teeth. He smiled back.

  'Confirmed,' she said, and started to make out the tickets themselves. Not much to fill in, not like an international ticket. When she had finished she set to work on her calculator. 'With the student reduction, and the fourteen-day stop reduction, and the ballet festival concession in Tashkent - you're lucky on that one . . . five hundred and twenty-two roubles ... for the three. You pay over there, on the right at the cash counter, if you haven't a warrant, that is.'

  'Our parents have the money,' said Isaac. 'Keep the tickets there beside you and I'll be back with the money . . .'

  'I'm not supposed to do that, to make out tickets that aren't immediately paid for.'

  ' I'll be back. I know when you close. Keep them on one side. I'll be back.'

  So the flight was booked, and he found it difficult to walk when he was out on the street again.

  'How easy 1 It was going to work. The whole thing was going to work. He wanted to shout, to yell the message. David and Rebecca and Isaac, they'd show the bastards. Show them all.

  Isaac's mother was waiting, as he had told her to, outside the Savings Bank nearest to their home.

  She was a small, sparrow- sized woman, and the fines on her face were devoid of relief. The boy had not explained, given her no reason for her presence there, just told her to bring the payment book. A hard and suffering time she had had, with money not easy to come by; it had been grafted for, worked for and collected With a miser's hand. And he had said he would need most of the deposit that had increased at such pitiful speed over the previous thirty years. He had told her that David and Rebecca's mothers would repay her in part, and she had thought that she barely knew these other persons who were families of her son's friends. But something in the boy's looks had stopped her from remonstrating, and so she now stood and waited for him.

  Two per cent per annum they paid - not a way to get rich, not a way that people could lift themselves from the bog of their lives. But what alternative was there? What else could one do with one's money? When he came Isaac took her arm, kissed her on the cheek and together they took their place in the queue. A bright, airy interior. Lace curtains and flowers on the table where the customers could sit and prepare their paperwork. Even Lenin, in his wall portrait, seemed content, as he looked the length of the bank across to the photograph of the Ukrainian General Secretary of the Party. At the counter, like a ventriloquist's doll, his mother spoke while Isaac a pace behind her primed the old lady's ear as to how much she should withdraw. It was time-consuming but without difficulty, and they maintained a punctilious politeness to the girl, for she could easily hinder them if they aggravated her. And they were Jews, so it was easy to offend.

  When the money had passed to his mother and on to Isaac, he said, ' I cannot tell you why, but you will know by tomorrow night, and you must have courage, the courage of our people.

  Whatever happens you must be brave. Do not bow to them. I will not be home tonight. Do not ask why; be brave.'

  There was no emotion displayed by the old lady as she stepped out on to the street again. She walked away with a brisk and sturdy step.

  And he had the money in his pocket. A tight wad of rolled, crisp banknotes, and he was hurrying for the bus that would take him back to the centre of Kiev and the Aeroflot offices. So he had done his part; they could board the plane that would lift off in twenty-three hours. But had David the guns? Would Rebecca secure access for them? And when would Moses break, when would Moses talk?

  Yevsei Allon could barely believe his luck.

  First the call by telephone to the freight office, and his being told by the Under Manager that there was a personal message for him, and not to take long because the line carried official business. The voice of the girl that he remembered from school, and who had been too haughty then to acknowledge him, the suggestion that they should meet and talk about the old days in the classroom, the little laugh that mingled with the static of the poor connection, and his thinking of his night classes, and not daring to mention them. They would meet at the subway entrance that was near the

  small church of Saint Sophia.

  Before he had left the airport at the end of the day-shift Yevsei had spent ten full minutes in the washroom, scrubbing his hands and lathering the hard public utilities soap on his face. He wetted and then combed the short hair on his head till the parting was straight and exact, and he had looked at himself in the mirror, and the man who waited behind him to use the basin had quipped, 'You'll need more than soap and a comb to please her.' He'd blushed, crimson over his whitened face, and mumbled an answer before running for the bus.

  They had had coffee after they met, sitting at a table away from the bar where the voices of other customers were reduced to a background drone. The girl listened to him as he grew in confidence, and she had asked him about his job, what he did at the airport, and they had talked of their teachers in the low voices of conspiracy and of their friends, and demolished them all.

  Her white teeth had flashed when he made his jokes, and she had thrown back her head, so that the long black hair trailed away from the slightness of her neck. He could see the shape of her breasts and the outline of her waist till there was a tightness and a sweat inside the ill- fitting trousers that he cursed himself for having chosen to wear that morning. Too much really to believe in. On his way to the toilet he'd stumbled, banging his foot against the leg of the table, rattling the cups. Then he'd scrabbled in his pocket for the kopecks that he needed for the machine, and for the sachet that he would want when the light faded.

  She took him in the early evening to the sandbank of the Dneiper, and they swam in the great river that flows north to south through the city. She was prepared, and wearing a one-piece bathing suit that had been concealed under her dress, he in the blue underpants that bulged and heaved in spite of the cold drift of water round his lower belly. When he touched her in the water, trying to pretend it was an accident, she had not moved away as the other girls did, and when she laughed it was with him, not at him. There were others there, naturally, because it was a warm evening and the authorities prided themselves on the c
leanliness of the river, the way they had been able to stave off pollution from the water artery of an industrialized city of more than two million inhabitants. But she seemed oblivious to them, allowing no intruders in the private oasis she was creating for the man who worked at Kiev airport and who had access to the tarmac and the planes.

  The parks are numerous in the city, putting those of London and Paris and Frankfurt and Rome to shame. Some are ornamental, with laid out flower beds where the elderly go, others little more than enclosed spaces of bushes and trees where the grass has been permitted to grow, and there are paths that can lead far from the noise of voices. It was to such a place that they walked after the river. His trousers showed a dark and damp stain at the seat from his sodden pants and she, still encased in her costume, hid the shivers she felt. But her trembling was not from any sharp wind, but of what must happen that the guns would go on board the plane; and he mistook the shaking of her hand for an excitement for which he believed he was responsible.

  The place they found was some way from the life of the city, hidden and enclosed by undergrowth, and she said to him, 'Don't look, but I can't wear this costume. I'll catch my death if I keep these damp things against my skin.' She had twisted away from where he sat and turned her back on him, and reached behind her to pull down the zip fastener of the dress till it was clear of her shoulders. More contortions and the garment was hanging, straps free, at her waist. Hands now under the skirt of her dress, and the wriggling before it was free and she reached up again to pull the dress back into position. But the zip remained loose and he could see, suntanned by the weather, the knotted outline of her backbone.

  'Why don't you take yours off?' she said, matter of fact, as though it were everyday, nothing special.

  Though he could feel the clamminess of his pants against his skin he said, ' I'm all right. I think they've just about dried.' There was a huskiness in his voice. The sort of thing the men at work talked about in the canteen during lunch break, and it was happening to him, to Yevsei Allon.

  She laid her costume out on the grass neatly and with care as if to prevent it becoming creased, then fell back on to the ground, and with her arms stretched above her head ' I love it here. So peaceful, so beautiful, so quiet It makes you forget everything else.' It was a lie; her thoughts were far from the leaves, and the cool grass. What would they do to the boy, if he did as she was to ask? What would be his punishment?

  Perhaps they'd think that he was one of the group, and if they did that would mean the firing squad, or the execution shed. He'd have to work hard to prove that he wasn't. If he were lucky it would be the cattle trucks to Moldavia and the camp at Potma. The Jews had a hard time there, especially from the fascists - there were still fascists there, from the war days, but they were the

  'trustees' and now ran the camps and took their revenge on the newest source of prisoners, on the Jews. Perhaps he would not be linked to them, but that was unlikely. They were thorough people, these pigs, and how could poor Yevsei be warned to cover his tracks? . . . poor Yevsei. God, he wants to kiss me, and there's spittle at the side of his mouth, and how many hours since he shaved? . . . Lucky if he just went to the Labour Camp. He'd be a casualty of the breakout, but there had been casualties before. Six million casualties in the war, and how many since then?

  And what war was ever won without the ignorant and the innocent standing up in the cross-fire and dying with disbelief on their faces? Isaac had the tickets, only now for David to get the guns.

  They'll give me one. One of my own to hold.

  ' I don't think you should do that,' she whispered and smiled bravely. His hand was at her kneecap, and his fingers, cold and bony, were skating patterns on her lower thigh.

  ' I don't know,' he said. He was panting and his mouth was very close to hers.

  ' I don't really know either,' she said, and looked into his eyes. Was there a squint or not? She couldn't be sure. God knows he was heavy.

  Never done it before, poor boy, she thought. Hadn't an idea. But neither had she - couldn't claim the virtue of experience. Could have with Darvid, but . . . One hand climbing her thigh, the other pushing between her breasts, seeking a nipple to squeeze and hold to, and finding it and not knowing his strength till she cried out, and he believed she encouraged him. The hand higher, searching and brushing gently at her and trying to prise her legs apart, and the one that had been at her breasts gone and the motion of rolling activity as he struggled to release something from the but- toned-down pocket on his buttocks.

  'Oh, my God,' she let out. 'The time, it's so late. And I haven't said I'd be out late tonight Yevsei, I have to go . . . I really must.' But was it too fast, too hurried? Had she merely wound the elastic and in releasing it exploded in him an anger, a teased fury? Out of her orbit, out of her experience. She'd had no need of the casual evenings with stranger boys with a few kopecks in their pockets now that her life was with the group. The anxiety showed in her eyes, the fear that she had damaged the work of the evening. She flitted a hand to his wrist, withdrawing it but consoling. How far along the path must she walk? How deep was the submission required to guarantee the passage of the guns? Hideous, the thought that she had failed them, David and Isaac, that she could not prise apart her thighs for the love of her friends. And Yevsei hovering over her, weight on his knees.

  In his confusion she could sit up, disengage, disentangle. 'Another ten minutes, just ten minutes.' Pleading, yet knowing he had lost as she smoothed her dress down her thighs.

  'I want to, I desperately want to, Yevsei. But I cannot tonight. You've made the time flee.

  Tomorrow I could come back. I could come tomorrow evening. If you want me to.'

  Yevsei Allon nodded, bewildered by all that had happened to him. But that was a promise, and he had done nothing wrong, had not upset her. Only the tightness and agonizing frustration to tell him how close he had been to the most triumphant success of his twenty-one-year life, and burning in his hip pocket the sachet he had brought from the coin machine in the cafe.

  When they were walking back along the path to the road and the bus stop where they would part she said quickly, Yevsei, you're in freight, that is correct?'

  'Yes.' He wasn't proud of it. He'd told her earlier what he did-she'd telephoned him there. Why did she need to ask?

  'And you go to the planes to load them?'

  'That is done by the porters. Rebecca, what time tomorrow, what time will I see you?'

  'But you could go to the plane yourself - if it was necessary?'

  'Of course. The same time tomorrow, and I will bring my swimming-trunks."

  'The same time, Yevsei. But I have something to ask of you. There is a friend of mine who is going tomorrow to Tashkent. He is of our faith, of our people, and he must take a package with him. There are some books that he cannot put in his bags in case they are seen. I want you to put them on the plane for him, Yevsei.' She had linked her arm through his, and walked close to him, her hip bouncing against his. I want you to tell me where they are placed so that he can collect them during the flight. When he gets off at Tashkent there are no searches and he can carry them off."

  Still the suppressed, flattened pain fighting the coldness of his pants, but tomorrow there would be only liberation. It was a promise. She had promised. He asked, 'Is it dangerous?' and was immediately ashamed at his reaction as she smiled and shook her head.

  'We would not ask anything dangerous of a school friend, much less of one of our faith, one who worships with us.' He could not remember that he had seen her at the synagogue that he visited with his family each week. He felt his arm, encircling her waist, being pushed higher, so that his hand could cup her breast. 'Which flight?'

  'The flight to Tashkent. The one that leaves at four o'clock in the afternoon.'

  'Bring the package to me at mid-day when I take my lunch- break, at the outer door of the freight offices. Then you will need to telephone me at three, the same number that you used today. I will be
able to tell you by then in what seat your friend should sit to recover his books. I can do it for you.'

  She kissed him on the cheek, and did not fight when he moved her mouth to his and explored behind her gums and teeth with his tongue. He saw that she was still smiling, a radiant, consuming smile.

  Parker Smith was never at his desk before ten in the morning, claiming with a shrug that he could never survive the stampede of the rush hour, but he stayed late to clear his In Tray, load the Out.

  He let it be known amongst the men who worked for him that he was most receptive to discussion and exchange of viewpoints after the general office hours had been terminated, when the telephones had stopped ringing, when no secretaries were left on the premises to harry him.

  Around seven in the evening he would put his head out through the door to his office and see if anyone was waiting in the outer section. It was a house rule that after five o'clock nothing short of the death of Stalin, the chopping of Krushchev or the declaration of war between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China should cause him to be interrupted before he indicated his willingness to receive visitors. Parker Smith was keen on rules, had learned them in his army days and not forgotten them when he transferred from Intelligence Corps, Ministry of Defence, to the civilian wing of the government's espionage service, the SIS.

  With his jacket left in his own office, and his tie loosened, collar button undone, Charlie Webster was waiting, far back in an armchair, and idling through the previous day's Financial Times. Not really the type we're used to, and more's the pity, thought Parker Smith. The totally committed man, and with more experience up front than the rest of the Section put together. He'd noticed the way the others kept their distance from Charlie Webster, didn't mix with the older man from the different background, put him on the outside. Hadn't read his personal file, had they? Would have treated him like a king if they had.