Honey for the Bears

by Anthony Burgess

  Nobody came to clear away the breakfast dishes. Young Opiskin took a bath, his body-hair floating like fronds on the water. He shaved blind in the bath, using Paul’s razor, gashing himself crimson on chin and neck. He dressed carefully in his woman’s clothes, plastered powder over his blood-clots, painted a clown’s mouth. In the sharp sea-light he looked horrible. Bravely Paul said again, ‘I want you to know that I admire your father’s achievement. You shall be safe. Trust me, trust me. Everything will be all right.’

  Finland came nearer, cautiously, sniffing at the ship like a dog. Paul sat on the cold leather settle under one of the lights, smoking endlessly, his mouth foul. Men came by, thumbing up when they saw him, each one heartening as a shot of brandy. The young lecturer kept close by, a sentinel, distrusting the Russians as far back as Bloody Mary. Young Opiskin hummed dreamily, one fat knee over a club-chair arm, watching the copulation of flies on the ceiling. The suitcases stood packed and ready. They waited for Helsinki as if Helsinki were a taxi.

  It came on time. Before the noon eight bells Helsinki was there, the ship easing in to it, a modest harbour for a modest capital. The ship’s loudspeakers played intimidating Soviet music. Paul could see nothing of the quay’s activity, only roofs of sheds, Lutheran churches beyond, low rain-clouds. He could barely, over the noise of his blood, hear the dropping of the gangway. The air roared in his throat. Young Opiskin was infected by Paul’s tremors and began to sweat. It was an ample rolling sweat that caked his face-powder. ‘Now?’ he said to Paul.

  ‘We must wait,’ said Paul. ‘We must wait till somebody comes to tell us what to do.’

  ‘Herra Ahonen?’ asked young Opiskin.

  ‘No. Mr Ahonen will be waiting below. With transport. The men coming now will seem hard and cruel (zhestokiy), but that is nothing. Trust me.’ Young Opiskin looked puzzled. Both watched the door. They smoked two more cigarettes apiece.

  Feet, voices, the turn of a key. Second Officer Petrov appeared first, saying apologetically, ‘I am sorry it could not have been an ordinary, pleasant voyage. There are two policemen here to take you back to Leningrad.’ And so there were. Paul had not seen them before. They were monoglot and had humourless Tartar faces. Their plain clothes bagged and were of the same sick brownish colour. They came in, looked at Paul, then at young Opiskin. They nodded at him. Young Opiskin seemed to know one of them. He gave Paul a look of great malevolence and thought to run to the bedroom, poor boy. The two policemen were on to him, an arm each. They lifted him on to his toes, marching him back towards the corridor door. Young Opiskin opened up a flood of Russian which Paul did not at all understand, though it was all for him.

  ‘Trust me!’ called Paul.

  Young Opiskin strained his head round from the corridor to yell, spit, revile. He was strongly, expertly held. He was easily marched away. ‘Well,’ said Second Officer Petrov to Paul, ‘it is very regrettable. It is not nice to see a luxe passenger carried away by the police.’

  ‘How about me?’ said Paul.

  ‘I am afraid you must wait a while. But I am sure that you will be called for with the miminum of delay.’ He spoke like a dentist’s receptionist. That, Paul told himself, must be the first job back in England. His case could legitimately be held to be an urgent one; that way one could jump over the National Health waiting lists. He could almost taste the warm wax in his mouth. ‘So,’ said Second Officer Petrov, ‘I will lock you in here again till they come for you.’ He went out with a troubled smile, his eyes glowing genuine regret: life could be so simple, so beautiful really. Paul waited. He smoked a cigarette, then another. He was half-way through his third when his own turn came. Second Officer Petrov opened up and showed in two gentlemen it was almost a joy to see: they belonged to the safe past of things enacted, familiar Bradcasterian smells, the Leningrad that Paul now knew he loved and regretted he would never see again.

  His first words had been well prepared. ‘Well, Comrade Karamzin, and how is the History of Choreography going?’ Karamzin and Zverkov were both very smartly dressed today, as for a Sunday occasion: those suits were the work of no Soviet tailors. Karamzin grunted but did not look dangerous; Zverkov said:

  ‘Somehow I knew. Somehow I had a premonition.’ Hadn’t those been Belinda’s words? ‘We were destined to meet again, all three of us. Strangely, I had a dream of some foreign sea-port—bigger than this and much hotter: I could not tell where. Things are going to end satisfactorily after all.’

  ‘The whole business has been most unfortunate,’ said Paul. ‘What do you think will happen to me?’

  ‘In a way,’ said Zverkov, ‘you have done us a great service. This man has been looked for everywhere and for a long time. I do not think very much can really happen to you personally. There may be some high-level talks, of course. This kind of thing does not help Anglo-Soviet relations.’

  ‘This poor lad,’ said Paul angrily. ‘His only crime is to be the son of a great man you hate because of his greatness, because of his large free spirit.’

  ‘Oh, let us get on with it,’ growled Karamzin, ever the impatient one. ‘There will be time for talking later.’

  ‘I’ll go quietly,’ said Paul. ‘I hate vulgar scenes. Shall I carry the luggage?’

  ‘Oh, Karamzin will do that,’ said Zverkov. ‘A prisoner is a privileged person.’

  ‘I am not a common porter,’ rumbled Karamzin. Paul opened up his mouth. Karamzin said, ‘Oh, very well, this time I will do it.’ And he bent to pick up the cases. His hair seemed freshly barbered.

  They marched down the corridor. In the vestibule, into which fresh Finnish air blew, young Opiskin stood, roughly gripped by his guards. He had a bruised, dishevelled look and seemed to be giving his entire attention to the problem of breathing. Each intake made him visibly wince. ‘Swine,’ said Paul. ‘You’re an uncivilized people.’

  ‘Some are uncivilized,’ said Zverkov gravely. ‘That is our trouble. The caterpillars of the commonwealth.’

  Grey rainy light. Paul could now willingly throw over all action, all decision. He filled his lungs, taking in enough for young Opiskin. They passed the final poster of roaring Khrushchev. Paul prayed.

  Thank God they were there. To left and right of the gangway’s head, held back formally by junior ship’s officers, there were men who had sailed to Leningrad to see a football match and, having seen it, were now sailing back again. The specialist in Tudor Voyages was to the front of the left-hand group, very alert. There was no noise. Paul reckoned there must be nearly two dozen there, waiting. He recognized very few of the faces. Really, there was only one face—the great humane face of the British working-man in two dozen scarcely distinguishable allotropes. ‘Quickly, now, quickly,’ said Zverkov. Young Opiskin was given a shove. A sailor guarded the way down to Helsinki.

  ‘God for England etcetera,’ said the Tudor Voyages man in a normal lecturer’s voice. Then, with the cries appropriate to football-queue jostling, the two little phalanges made for each other, almost casually crushing and hugging Zverkov, Karamzin and their two bullies in the middle, driving the cordoning ship’s officers to the rails. It was easy, it was unviolent, there was nothing in it. Young Opiskin gaped: he couldn’t believe it. ‘Right,’ cried Paul, pushing him, ‘you deal with that bugger there,’ and, the press courteously making way, he threw him on to the bewildered sailor who guarded the gangway. He seemed a decent boy, very pale-eyed, but young Opiskin delivered a dirty left and a filthy right to the groin. He was ready to do more, but Paul shouted, ‘Down, down, down!’ over the throaty noises of the jostlers. Zverkov and Karamzin fought with mouths open and soundless as drinking-fountain gargoyles. ‘Thanks, lads!’ called Paul. The Tudor Voyages lecturer was laying into Karamzin lithely. Young Opiskin began to stumble down the ramp. ‘I said you could trust me,’ panted Paul.

  13

  PAUL SAT IN THE BEER GARDEN NEAR THE TOWN CENTRE. IT had gone smoothly, butter-smoothly. Young Opiskin, with no backward look, had been carried off to a future which
was no concern of Paul’s. Paul had booked a seat on the Caravelle leaving Helsinki Airport at 19.55 and arriving in London (or Lontoo, as it was called here) at 01.45. He must report at the terminal—Töölönkatu 4—about ninety minutes before flight time. Luggage? Hard to explain the lack of it: he had humped four heavy bags up the steps of Fenchurch Street Station, that he remembered well. Now he had nothing. The bag left on the boat? The Russians might well worry that to death, as a dog will worry a bit of trouser-leg torn off its escaped quarry. Or it might come suavely back to Sussex through Intourist’s British agents. It didn’t matter.

  He was near the end of his third glass of mild Finnish beer. He had changed five pounds into finn-marks: he must get through those before leaving Helsinki. Soon he would have a Finnish meal somewhere. It was always exciting to be alone in a foreign country: remember that time in Leningrad? He liked the look of this town, homely and miniature, with its drab buildings, its Lutheran earnestness, its tinned pineapple in the shop windows, its cool breath of lakes and forests blowing in—ozone and chlorophyll. He thought the women charming. They were Nordic and Parisian at the same time: astringently fair-haired, eyes of blue ice, but also animated, their wrists and ankles most delicate. The boys were charming too—very clean and glowing, as if they had all had one of those steam-baths, then birch-twig flagellation (delicious), then a cold dip, all bare together. A loudspeaker in a nearby radio shop was playing popular music—American and new: that made one feel safe. A tram occasionally went by. A mature-looking student with medical-looking books under his arm and a peaked and tasselled cap on called in for a quick beer. Paul had an impression of health and order. Also freedom. But what in God’s name was freedom?

  As if expressly conjured to answer that question, Karamzin and Zverkov walked into the beer garden, under chestnut-trees, Karamzin limping a little. Paul hesitated. But, after all, they were all dead now: they had moved to a cool limbo where causes rang hollow. These were people he knew, old friends you could say. He waved at them. Karamzin jerked at once like a puppet; Zverkov held him with a strong hand. Zverkov switched on a smile and brought trembling Karamzin over.

  ‘We shall join you, then,’ smiled Zverkov. Karamzin seemed to have a sort of cat-scratch, nearly two inches long, by his nose. That would be the Tudor Voyages man.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Paul. ‘Did you miss your plane?’

  Karamzin began a string of bad Russian words but sat down as far away from Paul as he could. ‘Temper temper temper,’ said Paul. ‘You’re not at home now.’

  ‘So,’ said Zverkov, ‘we are not at home, either you or us. But the Finnish police are very co-operative. We have just come from them. There is no question of missing any plane. It is a pleasant train journey back. But we shall find him yet.’ A handsome plump blonde waitress, about thirty-eight, her fine large breasts efficiently supported, came over for the order. ‘Kolme olut,’ said Zverkov. She went off to get it.

  ‘I don’t see,’ said Paul, ‘how you can expect the co-operation of the police of a free state in a matter of this kind. It isn’t as though he’d done anything criminal.’

  Karamzin’s trembling modulated swiftly and horribly into a kind of mirthless baying. People, decent Finnish bourgeois drinkers, looked round with curiosity. Zverkov laid a soothing hand once more on his colleague’s arm. Zverkov said, ‘Why it is so hard to take you seriously as a man who likes the bad better than the good is because you are very innocent. You are as Tolstoy thought all men were or should be. I cannot remember what. I have no time to read books. But who did you think this man was?’

  ‘The son,’ said Paul, ‘of your great composer Opiskin. And that’s not a question of thinking but of fact. And it’s one of the things about your régime I just can’t stomach—vindictive persecution for its own sake. Kill the son because of the father; not that the father did anything wrong.’

  ‘What proof have you,’ asked Zverkov patiently, ‘that he is who you say he is?’

  ‘You,’ said Karamzin, ‘are a fool.’

  ‘They should have knocked some of your teeth out,’ said Paul. The waitress had arrived with three beers. ‘Look,’ said Paul, in English and pantomime, opening his mouth to the waitress. ‘The bloody Russkies did that. A vicious brutal people. Don’t let them swallow you up.’ The waitress looked puzzled and then saw that a response of pity and horror was demanded of her. She gave this and took Zverkov’s money—finnmarks and a kopek tip.

  ‘One beer is for you,’ said Zverkov to Paul. ‘It will restore the colour to your cheeks.’ He smiled up at the waitress and said, ‘Sepä hauskaa!’ He said to Paul, ‘I speak a little of their language, you see. It is sometimes helpful.’

  ‘Fool,’ said Karamzin, shaking.

  ‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘tell this plug-ugly here not to call me a fool.’

  ‘It is, in fact, foolish to believe what is untrue,’ said Zverkov. ‘This young man who travelled as your wife and who you think to be the son of the discredited musician Opiskin—he is the real plug-ugly. A very ugly customer. A criminal by any standard. In a way you have brought him out into the open. He was last heard of in Kiev. Then nobody could find him anywhere. There is a great deal you can tell us. Who paid you to do this thing?’

  ‘All this is just one of your stories,’ said Paul.

  ‘Believe it or do not believe it,’ said Zverkov, sighing. ‘His name is not Opiskin but Obnoskin—Stepan V. Obnoskin. He is still young but he has done everything. He is idiotic in himself. You can see in him the influence of environment, the lack of a settled background when he was a child. You can blame capitalism for that. Capitalism, the Fascist aggressor. His father was killed by the Germans, his mother died of a chest disease. I forget where now. Also he was hit on the head very hard when he was a young boy. I forget who did this. He has been very brutal, you must understand. He has worked as a sort of brutal man for others. Smugglers of narcotics. Circulators of forged notes. Like the so-called hero of Dostoevsky, he is suspected of battering an old woman to death for her few roubles. A vicious criminal type.’

  ‘No,’ said Paul.

  ‘The disgraced pseudo-musician Opiskin,’ said Karamzin. ‘He did not have a son. Fool,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t believe all this,’ said Paul. ‘I won’t believe it. Where would he get the money from?’

  ‘No,’ said Zverkov, ‘you do not wish to believe it. You wish to believe you are doing some big noble Western deed, like your Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But you have let a murderer loose in the Western world.’

  ‘He will be caught,’ promised Karamzin. ‘Here. Today.’ He suddenly and most artificially leered amicably at Paul. ‘Let us go together to the W.C.’ he offered.

  ‘Ah no,’ said Paul, ‘I’m not such a fool. Knock me unconscious and take me home as one of your drunken friends. Nothing doing.’

  ‘The money,’ said Zverkov, ‘would come from the people who have used him. He is a link perhaps. There is much we could find out from him. He knows many names. He is stupid but cunning.’ He swigged some beer. ‘Some crimes are hard to prove. It is not always possible to find witnesses. But he has certainly,’ he said, with a sort of gloomy pride, ‘gone through most of the really vicious crimes, living on his wits, as you would say. And there was a suspected case of rape also.’

  ‘I just can’t,’ said Paul. ‘What I mean is——’

  ‘What you mean is,’ said Zverkov, ‘that you thought you were being a hero. You thought you were rescuing some persecuted innocent person from a cruel tyranny.’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, there are very few cases of really innocent people wanting to leave the Soviet Union. What can they want outside it that they cannot find inside?’

  ‘Freedom,’ said Paul.

  ‘Freedom,’ sneered Karamzin. ‘Freedom for stupid football people to interfere with the law. Vol’nost,’ he repeated, with a heavier sneer.

  ‘What happened when we left?’ asked Paul.

  ‘What could happen?’ said Zverkov. ‘
They said it was all a game. Besides, we did not want anything to happen. There is the question of face.’

  ‘Ah, the Oriental coming out,’ said Paul.

  ‘They were lucky,’ growled Karamzin, ‘we were not armed.’

  ‘So,’ mused Zverkov, ‘we still have not met your wife. We still do not know where she is.’

  ‘You can take it,’ said Paul, ‘that I haven’t got one. It’s easier that way.’ His ear had been intrigued for some minutes now by a new kind of music singing from the shop near by. It sounded familiar. But it was not Opiskin; it was certainly not Opiskin.

  Zverkov was squinting at the shop-signs in Finnish and Swedish. The Roman alphabet reigned here; it seemed to make Zverkov uneasy, an outsider, one whose family had never belonged to the greatest club of all time, the Roman Empire, and it was too late now. ‘A strange language,’ he said. ‘Finnish. A sentence has always stayed in my mind, and I do not know who taught it me or why I should wish to remember it. Talvi on tullut pitkine öinensä. That means, “The winter has come with its long nights.” ’

  Paul shivered. ‘The winter’s a long way off.’

  ‘For your little countries,’ said Zverkov, ‘no. Finland and Sweden and Denmark and this gambling country where a film actress is queen and your own country too. Dark dark dark. You will have to seek the sun and you will find only with us or with the other people across the Atlantic the heat and light you need to go on living. The big countries, the modern states. Soon it will just be one state.’