Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  She nodded and started to eat.

  ‘I thought you might be. We’ve got a week’s work ahead, you know ... by the way, Merry Bland rang up last night. I might have put him on to you, if you hadn’t been otherwise engaged.’

  ‘I was asleep.’

  ‘Oh, were you? Boring as that, was it?’

  ‘We’ll get going soon. When Alyosha turns up.’ Maggie was spreading butter on black bread, apparently calm.

  ‘Turns up? Don’t you mean “comes down”?’

  ‘I left a note at the desk. Inviting him to join us for breakfast.’ She looked at a glowering Ben. ‘I say, you don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Mind? Why on earth should I mind? I’m delighted to spend every waking hour with Alyosha, getting a fascinating insight into his soul. I’m sure you’re thinking of taking him back to England. Perhaps you’ll get him a job at Klinsky’s, so he can teach us all spiritual values.’

  ‘Ben, dear. Are you feeling quite well?’ Maggie looked concerned.

  ‘Perfectly well, thank you,’ he told her. ‘Of course, I wasn’t up half the night throwing champagne glasses at the wall.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you were.’

  He thought that her face lit up as Alyosha approached and put down a tray loaded with bacon and eggs.

  ‘You got the message?’ Maggie asked him.

  ‘I think he got it yesterday.’ Ben gazed unhappily at the ceiling.

  ‘Dobray outra, Ben.’ Alyosha was unfailingly polite. ‘You are looking well and healthy, I must say. Are you ready for our programme?’

  ‘Haven’t I read of people starving in Russia? I’m glad your soul can cope with bacon and eggs, and’ – Ben glanced at Maggie – ‘all the other little luxuries.’

  ‘It’s very true, Ben. Some of our old pensioners are hit by inflation. They are going hungry. They would be grateful for a well-cooked breakfast, as I am. Many thanks to your good company, Klinsky’s.’

  Ben might have said more but Maggie was giving her room number to a waiter, and he heard her say, ‘Number 404.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Ben interrupted this routine exchange with rising excitement. ‘I’m 405. You’re next to me. You must be 406.’

  ‘Next to you on the other side, Ben.’

  ‘The other side.’ Really the other side? Excuse me, both of you. I think ...’ He stood up as though the news were too good to be true. ‘I’ve left my notebook upstairs.’

  He was still anxious as he came back down the corridor. He passed 406 and his door, 405. The door to 404 was open and a maid was dusting the wardrobe. He was delighted to see Maggie’s coat on a chair and a book on icons. Then, as he turned back towards his room, the door of 406 opened and Keith Shrimsley came out wearing his fur hat and carrying a briefcase.

  ‘Dobray outra, Ben,’ he said. ‘Can’t wait to chat. Got plenty of work to do.’ He didn’t wait to hear Ben break into the opening bars of ‘ ’S Wonderful! ’S Marvellous –’ and even got as far, with considerable optimism, as ‘you should care for me!’

  Over the next week Moscow became a way of life; Ben thought he could hardly remember living anywhere else. The trees were still black and bare but the spring sunshine shone through them strongly enough to melt most of the snow, some of which still lay in grey heaps at the roadside or powdered the ground in patches of shade. He and Maggie waited in numerous corridors and called on numberless secretaries at the Department of Trade, at the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and the Council for the Encouragement of Foreign Business. They received glasses of black tea and the warning that someone else, someone very high up indeed, would finally have to say ‘yes’ and such things couldn’t be hurried. Ben thought they were getting precisely nowhere. Shrimsley, however, seemed to be doing rather better. He stopped by their table one day at breakfast and announced he’d got very close to Grekov at the Ministry of Culture. He couldn’t promise but Klinsky’s might have the chance of selling a work of enormous importance. ‘One of the finest examples of its genre. Typically Russian, of course.’ And then he was off, apparently to jog with Ivan Grekov.

  ‘I’m not sure I like that,’ Ben told Maggie when they were alone. ‘Merry Bland only seemed interested in “The Virgin of Vitebsk” and now Shrimsley’s talking about her. She just might be the real reason for our visit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If she turns up, someone might expect us to take her back to England.’ And before they could discuss things further, Alyosha joined them.

  Alyosha was with them for every meal. He was there when they visited the onion-domed churches in the Novodevichy Convent, and later when they walked round the lake outside its thick, grey walls. Ben remembered that Olga Krupenska had wanted to see them again, and time was getting short.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Alyosha told him. ‘I think she has not been too well. I will make inquiries.’

  ‘Merry Bland apparently thought she had something important to tell us. What do you think it was?’

  ‘I have really no idea.’ Their guide smiled engagingly. ‘Now. As we are getting near the end of the tour, I want to discuss our programme for tomorrow night. What would you like? In the theatre there is an interesting play about agricultural workers. Exceedingly controversial.’ Please, Alyosha!’ Ben begged him. ‘Have mercy on us.’

  ‘Or I might suggest the jazz club in the Arbat. Would you like it?’

  Maggie said it sounded interesting but Alyosha looked at Ben with deep concern. ‘Perhaps you would prefer to rest?’

  ‘What? Twiddle my thumbs in the hotel while you go out dancing with Maggie? It may come as a surprise to you, Alyosha, but I have always been able to fox-trot with the best of them!’

  ‘What is fox-trot, exactly?’

  ‘A dance that was popular,’ Maggie explained, ‘in the Stalin era.’

  The jazz club in the Arbat had a small, brightly lit dance floor, a bar doing a brisk trade in Pepsis and beer in plastic mugs, and a platform on which three youngish musicians were playing Deep Purple numbers. There was a family audience, with small children running between the chairs and getting in the way of the dancers. Maggie sent a request to the band by way of Alyosha, so that Ben, to his great joy, was able to hold her in his arms and croon the words of ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’ in her ear.

  When the music changed to ‘Long Ago and Far Away’, Ben and Maggie joined Alyosha at a table. They had noticed a little group of girls in a dark corner by the band. One of them emerged, hugged by a glittering mini-dress. She climbed on to the platform, unhooked the microphone, clutched it, fondled it and sang to it with surprising power, flicking her hair, strutting the stage, pointing a triumphant finger at the ceiling and generally giving a performance of uninhibited professionalism.

  ‘Who’s that girl singing?’ Ben asked, but Alyosha had invited Maggie to dance to ‘A little more up-to-date music’ and he was left alone. Then he remembered where he’d seen the girl before.

  When the number ended to a smattering of applause, she came off the stage and walked to the bar, where she was bought a beer by a waiting man, who kissed her and had his arm round her as she drank. They had their backs to Ben but Angela Ridgeway turned as he came up and spoke to her, ‘Shouldn’t you be asleep?’

  ‘Why on earth?’ She freed herself from her friend’s embrace.

  ‘Tucked up in the dormitory of the students’ hostel,’ Ben suggested. ‘What in heaven is that schoolmistress of yours going to say?’

  ‘Oh, Batty!’ Angela flicked on a quick smile. ‘She’s quite broad-minded. Well, you should know that as much as anyone.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘She knows I’ve been here before. Last year, in fact. After O-levels. I’ve made quite a few friends and, well, they asked me to sing here. It’s a lot more exciting than plodding round icons.’

  ‘So, sir. I hope you enjoy the evening.’ Her companion smiled, exposing his gold teeth in a friendly fashion.

  ‘Very enterprising,�
� Ben was talking to Angela.

  ‘I suppose I ought to ask Batty to come along. She gets quite lonely. Why don’t you do something about her? She’s always talking about you.’

  ‘Is she really? How extraordinary. What does she say?’

  ‘That you know all about pictures.’

  ‘Well, that’s entirely true.’

  Alyosha and Maggie came back from the dance floor and joined the group. Alyosha looked with intense dislike at Angela’s friend, who was still smiling at Ben. ‘I think we bumped into each other in the Hotel Lermontov. You are an art dealer? An art dealer from England?’ He got a card out of his wallet and handed it to Ben. ‘I am Vassily Lubov. My business card. I import and export works of art.’

  ‘I thought there was some law against that.’

  ‘There are many laws. They make very little difference to life in Russia.’ At this, Alyosha could no longer contain himself and he shouted at Lubov, ‘Thief! Crook! Mafioso! You keep away from these people!’ Then he grabbed Lubov by the lapels of his jacket and started to push him away. They were shouting at each other in Russian. Lubov swung a fist at Alyosha and missed. Then the barman was parting them and Angela, who had been watching the fight with pleasure, moved back to the stage and started to sing again.

  ‘Alyosha!’ Maggie was frightened and concerned as their guide, philosopher and friend emerged from the fray.

  ‘His soul’s broken out,’ Ben told her with some satisfaction. Alyosha was breathless and apologetic. ‘Ben. Maggie. My friends. Perhaps we should leave here now and interrupt our programme.’ And so, rather earlier than expected, they went.

  The drama, whatever it had meant, was over. Maggie had gone up to her room and Ben, once again, was sitting over a lonely nightcap in the hotel bar. There, perched on a stool, was the plump schoolmistress whose prize pupil was hitting the high notes in the jazz club. Ben ordered another vodka and said, ‘Batty!’ to her by way of greeting.

  ‘Did you hear my girls call me that?’ She seemed pleased.

  ‘Your girls get around, don’t they?’

  ‘You never called me Batty, did you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Then he asked, for information, ‘What did I call you, exactly?’

  ‘I’d better not remind you.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘Mightn’t it be a little dangerous, at our age?’

  As Ben was silenced by this mysterious remark, Maggie, on her way to bed, got a phone call from Alyosha, who was still downstairs in the lobby. He said he wanted to talk to her urgently, so she invited him up. When he came, they drank beer from her fridge and she made sure that Ben hadn’t seen him on his way. She asked him what the quarrel in the jazz club had been all about. He stood up and paced the room in anger.

  ‘Such people are ruining our country! They think everything can be bought. Everything! We don’t want Communism back. Secret police! Never! But we don’t want to be bought and sold. Like – what was that breakfast dish Ben was talking about?’

  ‘Muesli.’

  ‘Muesli. That is a word I must try to remember.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother, Alyosha. But why the hell were you attacking that man in the jazz club?’

  ‘Because he wanted to do some dirty business with you. To help you smuggle some part of our soul out of Russia! Listen, the magician’s soul was hidden in an egg. You know the story? Well, I think the Russian soul is in our icons.’

  ‘But why should he be after us?’

  ‘He had probably found out something about you. He’s that sort of crook. A Mafia man. Maybe he knew you’re interested in “The Virgin of Vitebsk”. He thought you were dealers who’d do anything for money.’

  ‘But we aren’t.’

  ‘I know you are not, Maggie. I felt that when we first met in the bar on Red Square. Remember? I knew that. Here is someone who cares about all the things that are important to us.’ He raised his glass. ‘Prosit!’

  ‘Prosit, Alyosha,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Smart-arse!’ The schoolmistress in the bar spoke after a long silence.

  ‘What did you say?’ Ben was startled.

  ‘“Sally Smart-arse”. That’s what you used to call me.’ Ben stared at her, incredulous at first, and then, looking at her, he saw a vision out of his past. ‘Sally Smart-arse! Looked a little like a Botticelli nymph. Out of “Primavera”.’

  ‘Nice of you to say so.’

  ‘Thin and dreamy and smoked occasional cigars. Called “Smart-arse” because she attracted money.’ The memories came flooding back.

  ‘Until the Russian came along.’

  ‘That’s who you are! Of course, I didn’t remember Batty.’

  ‘I thought, for a moment, you’d forgotten me entirely.’ She looked at him accusingly.

  ‘I can’t imagine how you got that idea.’

  ‘You know what, Ben? You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘You haven’t changed either.’

  ‘You were always an appalling liar. I wonder ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wonder if we should go on from where we left off.’

  ‘I wonder ...’ Ben was doubtful.

  ‘Probably not,’ she decided.

  ‘Probaby not.’ Ben was relieved.

  ‘I suppose there’s bound to be someone else in your life?’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’

  But she was sure of it. ‘There’s someone else in your life,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you for listening to me.’ Alyosha stood up and finished his beer. ‘I think now I must go back to my apartment.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit overcrowded?’ Maggie looked up at him, surprised at his sudden decision.

  ‘Very much so. But they are expecting me back. Some time, perhaps, I can stay with you longer.’

  ‘Some time?’

  ‘When we have had a better evening.’

  ‘I enjoyed myself. Honestly I did.’

  ‘Apart from the presence of the Mafia. Good-night, Maggie.’

  ‘Good-night, Alyosha.’ She kissed him then, a conventional goodbye kiss. He enveloped her and kissed her hard. For a moment she returned his enthusiasm. Then he released her. ‘Oh, Maggie. Ya tebya liyubliu.’

  ‘I haven’t had time to learn Russian.’

  ‘Ya tebya liyubliu. I love you.’ Then he went very quickly, before she could say anything.

  That night someone got into the Voynitsky Gallery, carrying a torch and a bunch of keys. The light passed the enigmatic saints and the still madonnas with their stiff babies. The Director’s office door opened to one of the keys. There the round-faced man with long hair, Tolyagin, Ivan Grekov’s shadowy servant, started on a search, opening drawers and pulling pictures from the wall. The photograph of smiling Stalin and his young officers was hard to move, but his hand found a spot on the frame and it swung open like a cupboard door. And behind it, there was nothing to be found, nothing but an empty space which had once sheltered the long-lost ‘Virgin of Vitebsk’.

  Late that night Maggie was woken by the telephone beside her bed. ‘Alyosha speaking. Can you meet me tomorrow? The Novodevichy Cemetery, near to Chekhov’s grave. Please come alone.’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell Ben I’m going shopping. He hates shopping.’

  ‘I have something to tell you of great importance. Something that will change our lives. Shall we say three o’clock. Ya tebya liyubliu.’

  ‘Ya tebya liyubliu.’ Maggie repeated the scrap of Russian she had so recently learned.

  Outside the walls of the Novodevichy Convent, next to the Smolensk Cathedral, among naked birch trees, under the black earth and a powdering of snow, between weedy paths and struggling hedges, the great and the good, and the not so good, lay under elaborate tombstones. A stone general was to be seen forever answering some eternal telephone, and Khrushchev was trying to struggle out of a great block of marble. The actors and writers were huddled together. The bust of Gogol, with long hair, looked handsome and romantic. Chekhov w
as hidden beneath a little roofed hut, a primitive tomb he had seen on his travels into the heart of Russia. Beside him lay his wife and Stanislavsky his actor. And there it was that Maggie found Alyosha, sitting on a broken bench, smiling up at her, taking her hand and drawing her down beside him. ‘You’re alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And tomorrow you go home?’

  ‘I’ll be coming back,’ she promised him, ‘if we open the gallery.’

  He was looking at her, his excitement spilling over as he told her, ‘I’ve got it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are the only person I could trust with it. It’ll be for both of us. For us to share. Some time, we said. Now I can tell you. That time has come.’

  ‘Alyosha. What are you talking about?’ She was horribly afraid.

  ‘Oh, nothing very much. Just “The Virgin of Vitebsk”. To be honest with you, I stole it.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Oh, it has had such a history of stealing. The Germans didn’t steal it. You know who did? Old General Krupenski, Olga’s husband! He told everyone the Germans had taken it from the monastery. What nonsense! He took it and kept it for himself. But you know what? This brave officer lacked the courage to sell the icon! But Olga didn’t. She was going to sell it to you. And you know what she would have done with the money? Use it for her stupid politics. To help the old women in woolly hats who want Communism back, and their friends who put Jesus, as well as the hammer and sickle, on their red banners. What a waste! We shall sell it together, Maggie. Just you and I. I could come to England. We could live in some big apartment without any of my relatives. Perhaps. In the end, we could go further. To America! What do you say to that?’

  ‘Alyosha. Have you gone completely mad?’

  ‘I think, suddenly, I have gone completely sane. Look, tonight, I will bring the picture to you. It’s not large. We shall think of ways of getting it to England. We shall give it a history, quite legal. Such documents are easy to get hold of. Perhaps your Mr Meredith Bland will help us.’

  ‘My God! You’re the one who was afraid of being corrupted by the West! You were the one who talked about the Russian soul!’