The London Embassy

by Paul Theroux

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She love to buy clothes. English clothes. American clothes. Blue jeans. In Soviet Union, I buy clothes, clothes, clothes. I have money. I have respect. But here’ – he made his ugly face again – ‘nothing.’

  ‘It takes time,’ I said. ‘You’re luckier than some. There was a man here a few years ago who asked for political asylum like you, but before he was in the clear they drugged him – your Embassy people – and sent him back.’

  ‘He is not so unlucky,’ Kirilov said.

  ‘They might have killed him,’ I said.

  ‘You are like children – you believe anything,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was a trick. Just fooling the British. He is not unlucky. But I am very unlucky. These shoes – how much you think they cost?’

  ‘Thirty-two pounds,’ I said.

  I must have guessed right, judging from his expression. He said, ‘In Soviet Union, not more than ten pounds. And my rent! I have a tiny small flat here. Is better for a dog. I pay sixty-seven pounds a week. In Soviet Union I pay twenty for the same square meters. Is ridiculous in London.’

  ‘Mr Kirilov,’ I said, ‘I thought you had something urgent to discuss with me.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said; then pettishly, ‘But why you refuse me to have lunch?’

  Dinner had been his first suggestion, lunch his second – ‘I pay for you,’ he had said. And I knew then that he wanted a favor. I wasn’t interested in eating with him, and we had compromised on Green Park. If he had been any other Russian I would have refused to meet him, but he was enough of a celebrity to be harmless.

  His defection, as I said, had been spectacular. He had been on a television program with his interpreter, who was also his security man. And then, in the middle of the program (something about writing and politics), Kirilov had simply stood up and walked off camera while the security man gaped. That was his defection. The clip of Kirilov hurrying away behind the wooden walls of the set, the security man squinting stupidly, was shown on the BBC many times, always with a hilarious effect, for it was known that minutes after making a run for it, Kirilov had gone into hiding, in the depths of Kent. A week later he was granted political asylum.

  Kirilov was not a political dissident. He was a defector, a well-known Soviet poet, a party man, a womanizer. He had always claimed that he was free to criticize Soviet life. He had made numerous trips to foreign countries. He was thought to be safe. He was well connected. He went to writers’ conferences, not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the West – in Stockholm, Paris, and Milan. He had been to Cuba five times. His poems had been translated by the American poet Walter Van Bellamy, and it was at Bellamy’s house in Kent that he had hidden on the day of his defection. Anyone who read a newspaper knew these facts about Yuri Kirilov, and it was easy to tell from Kirilov’s attitude on the telephone that he expected people to know him. He had the celebrity’s easy presumption. He was on good terms with the world. I must have stammered or hesitated on the phone, because he had said, ‘You know me.’

  But he was annoyed that I had refused his invitation to lunch, and I think he objected to our sitting on this park bench in the middle of a gray winter afternoon. He had imagined something grander, and he sat tetchily on the bench, making fastidious plucks at his trouser creases, and fussing with his cuffs and his camera, and looking left and right.

  I said, ‘We can have lunch some other time.’

  ‘You Americans,’ he said. ‘Always in a hurry. No time for relaxing. Even the British – so famous for their good manners. They behave like pigs, I can say.’

  ‘That’s nice, coming from you. I’m sure they’d love to hear you say it.’

  ‘It is true. They are pigs.’

  ‘When you ran away they gave you a place to hide. They let you stay. They could have sent you back. You’d be in Siberia, with your ass in a crack.’

  ‘Siberia is lovely place! I am honorary citizen of Siberia!’

  ‘You’re an honorary citizen of Britain, too.’

  He said, ‘I am propaganda value. I am worth millions. You saw the newspaper – ‘Famous Soviet Writer Chooses Britain.’ All of that. It is good for the British government. They would never have sent me back.’

  ‘So you think you’re valuable?’

  ‘Millions,’ he said, curling his lower lip and fattening it boastfully. ‘I am not like some of these dissidents – troublemakers, cripples, Jews. Listen, I tell you they make trouble in any society – any. Solzhenitsyn! He is a trouble in Soviet Union. Yes, he is also a trouble in United States. You hear how he criticizes Americans – journalists, drugs, pop music. He is against!’

  ‘Can you blame him?’

  Kirilov laughed, snapping his jaws at the air. ‘I can blame him! I like journalists, I like pop music, and some drugs I can say so what.’

  ‘Then you must be very happy in London.’

  ‘I am deeply unhappy, my friend. This is a terrible country, a corrupt country. So many people unemployed. No work. And how the people live! In small rooms, very cold rooms, eating bad food, taking the tube. Aargh! I hate.’ He batted the air with his hands, pushing these images aside.

  ‘Siberia must have been much better.’

  He considered this; he nodded; he had not heard any sarcasm.

  ‘I can say, yes, better. In Siberia I am a VIP. Here I am nothing. No one to publish Russian books, no one to read. I go to the library, I drink with Walter Bellamy, I look for money. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Better VIP in Siberia than nothing in London. There are flowers in Siberia!’

  ‘It was your choice,’ I said.

  ‘Helena’s choice,’ he said. He winked at me. ‘She likes you very much. You know?’

  ‘She seems happy here.’

  ‘Happy, yes. Because I let her do whatever she like’ – he nudged me hard with a sharp elbow – ‘whatever make her happy. Anything.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘I am not a jealous man. She is very beautiful. Like an animal, I can say. Is cruel to make her unhappy. You think she is wild?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell,’ I said, and now I was sure I wanted to walk away.

  ‘In public park she is wild –’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘– but in bed, in bed she is a slave,’ Kirilov said. ‘A slave.’ He watched my face closely, leering at me and waiting for me to react.

  I was determined not to. I saw what he was offering me, but he stopped short of saying, Take her –

  Perhaps he noticed my impatience, because his face hardened.

  I said, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Brodsky,’ he sneered. ‘Brodsky has been declared genius.’

  ‘I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Joseph Brodsky – Jew dissident – living in New York, good jobs teaching at three universities, nice place to live, plenty of money. He writes his poems in a tiny room in Soviet Union. Fine. Good. Everyone say, “Good work – maybe a little decadent.” Then he hate Soviet. He go to New York. He get free money for write poems in New York! This scumdrill have plenty of money, but he want more to write more Brodsky poems! Then! American foundation say, “Brodsky is genius’” – he pronounced it jaynyoos – “‘we will give him money! Forty thousand dollars, every year, for five years.” Brodsky! Scumdrill!’

  Kirilov was shouting. He had stood up, and his shrill voice penetrated through the roar of the traffic. The wind had risen, and it rattled the branches overhead, it pulled at Kirilov’s coat, it yanked his trousers against his skinny legs and white ankles, making him look weak.

  I said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Is in library. New York Times. Is your country. If you don’t know about it I feel sorry for you. But I think it is an injustice.’

  ‘This is the last time I ask you,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You must give me visa for New York City.’

  ‘I’m not in the consular section.’


  ‘You know the poet Bellamy. Famous American poet. He will vouch for me. He will sponsor me.’

  ‘Bellamy’s in the hospital,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you’ve already been turned down for a visa.’

  ‘For what reason I want to know!’

  ‘We’re not obliged to give you a reason.’

  He sat down beside me again – his shouting had tired him. He was a bit hoarse. He said, ‘You can help me. They will believe you. Bellamy says you are the only honest man in the Embassy – that’s why I phoned you up. You have a reputation for being a fair man. That’s why Helena is so attracted to you. She can’t help it – she admires your honesty.’

  I said, ‘Do you know the word “bullshit”?’

  ‘You are trying to insult me,’ he said.

  ‘You’re wasting your time. If you had told me a half an hour ago that you wanted a visa I could have saved you a lot of trouble. It’s impossible.’

  He said, ‘It is not I who am insulted – it is my wife. You simply toss her away like a worthless thing.’

  ‘Be careful,’ I said.

  His face darkened. ‘Then you will be sorry.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ I said. I was smiling.

  He said, ‘You think you can mock me!’

  ‘No, I was just thinking that you offered me lunch. All this might have been taking place in a restaurant. I would have had indigestion! Excuse me,’ I said, and stood up. ‘I have to go back to my office.’

  ‘I have pictures of you with my wife!’ he said. He shook the camera at me. ‘I will send them to the newspaper. Hah!’

  ‘It will be very embarrassing for you,’ I said. ‘In this country, pimping is a criminal offense. I would imagine that if the authorities heard that you’d been pimping for your wife, they’d ship you both back to the Soviet Union.’

  ‘That is a disgraceful lie,’ he said. ‘And you have no proof.’

  ‘I’ve been recording our conversation,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘No, you haven’t. When Leni kissed you she examined your clothes for a recorder. She found no wires, or she would have told me!’

  I moved to the end of the bench and dipped my hand into the litter bin. I retrieved the soiled lunch bag I had thrown in, and took a small tape recorder out of it. It was still whirring softly. I stopped it, rewound it, then pressed the Play button.

  ‘… ship you both back …’

  ‘You are disgusting,’ Kirilov said.

  I said, ‘Get a job.’

  I knew then that this honorary Siberian would spend the rest of his life as a refugee – unemployed, uttering threats, and pitying himself. He had actually believed that I would help him – perhaps sleep with his wife, or be tempted to collaborate with him in his flight to America. How old-fashioned the Soviets were in their quaint belief in blackmail! But Kirilov believed in nothing, really, which is why he was so ignorant. A more passionate man, a believer, would have been far more resourceful, like the other honorary Siberians who had already become American writers.

  Gone West

  They appeared to be husband and wife – man standing, woman seated: the classic married pose of Authority flanked by Loyalty – but when I got closer I saw they were both men. It was just after eight in the morning, a smudgy winter dawn in London, on the Embassy stairs. The doors would not be open to the public for another hour. I mounted the stairs but couldn’t get to the door without asking the man who was standing to move aside. He made a respectful noise, then spoke.

  ‘We’re going to America!’

  Americans call it the States.

  I said, ‘You’ll need visas.’

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ the seated one said.

  ‘You should be at the other door – the Consulate, visa section. It’s right around the corner, on Upper Grosvenor Street.’

  The news that they were waiting at the wrong door didn’t upset them. They laughed, as the English often do in such situations. They said, ‘Silly old us!’ and ‘What a wheeze!’

  It seemed to be a national characteristic. The English had been getting bad news for so long, they had learned to cope. They disliked complainers, even when the complaint was justified, and regarded such people as spineless. Most of the English seemed rather proud of their capacity for suffering. It made them the world’s best airline passengers, but had given them one of the world’s worst airlines. Surely this ‘mustn’t grumble’ attitude accounted for a great deal of Britain’s decline? But of course it made the place nice and quiet. Our vices are so often our virtues as well.

  ‘You must be cold,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely freezing.’ This was said, with one eyebrow raised, in the most matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Never mind. We’ll soon be in California.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that’s doing me now,’ the matter-of-fact one said.

  ‘Oh, we’re going to have a little moan, are we?’

  ‘Listen to him – after his blameless weekend!’

  ‘You said you were impervious to cold.’

  ‘On your bike! I never said impervious – don’t know what the flipping word means!’

  This was all spoken with sharpness and speed, and the effect was comic – friendly, too – even in the misty brown dawn of a January morning. From that moment I began to wonder what would happen to them in California.

  The dark-haired one, who was standing, faced the fairer one, who was still seated, and said, ‘Lambie here got me up at the crack of dawn. Said we had to hurry – frightened me with stories about long queues and red tape. So off we go to stand at the wrong door! Feel me cheeks. They’re solid ice! I haven’t even had me tea!’

  ‘Forgot our thermal underwear, didn’t we, chicken?’

  ‘I’m wearing me serviceable string vest.’

  I said, ‘How about a coffee inside?’

  This made them go very silent. They seemed a bit suspicious. But I had noticed that a kindness to an English person often arouses unease or suspicion. It is a very nervous nation. In a wary voice, the dark-haired one said, ‘Do you think it’d be all right?’

  ‘What about security? Laser beams and that,’ the other said. ‘You must get ever so many bomb scares.’

  I said, ‘You don’t look very dangerous to me.’

  ‘Him – he’s the dangerous one,’ the dark-haired man said. ‘Oh, he’s a hard lad!’

  They followed me in – our security man squinting at them and giving their colorful shoulder bags a close inspection for weapons – and I heard one of them say, ‘Laser beams, you daft prat!’

  The coffee urn was outside Al Sanger’s office. This morning there was a plate of Danish pastries next to the urn. Sanger often bought them at a place off Curzon Street – deliberately there so that he could say, ‘I just picked up some tarts in Shepherd Market. Want one?’

  I poured three cups of coffee and urged them to take some pastry.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do!’

  ‘I won’t say no!’

  ‘Our first American breakfast.’

  So they had overcome their suspicion. I said, ‘It’s part of our job to encourage tourism.’

  ‘It’s lovely and warm in here.’

  ‘Think I’ll put me feet up!’

  Their names, they said, were Cary and Lamb. Cary had the dark hair and broad shoulders, and he had a tiny Irish chin and a high sweet voice. Lamb at first glance was a young man with reddish hair, but looking closer I saw he was quite old – over sixty – with rather nasty blue eyes and his hair harshly colored and coarse-textured and spread across his crown to cover his baldness. He wore an earring, and Cary had a heavy chain around his neck.

  Lamb said, ‘You actually work here, do you?’

  ‘’Course he works here, you pillock!’

  I said, ‘But I can’t give you much help with your visas.’

  ‘We won’t have any trouble,’ Cary said. ‘We’ve never been Communists or prostitutes, and we haven’t been in the nick. That’s the kind of thing they
want to know, don’t they? We’ve been good lads, haven’t we, Lambie?’

  ‘Apart from your occasional lapses of taste,’ Lamb said.

  ‘Listen to the incurable cottager!’ Cary shrieked. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. But his trousers were so tight the cigarettes were squashed and unsmokable. He said, ‘There’s another packet of fags gone west.’

  ‘About time you gave up smoking. It’ll stunt your growth.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy with me growth, Lambie?’

  They both laughed at this. I couldn’t see the joke, but the sight of them laughing so easily amused me.

  ‘What are you planning to do in the States?’

  ‘We’re going to California,’ Lamb said.

  ‘I mean, after you get there.’

  ‘We don’t have any plans for after that. We’re going to California a special way – an ingenious way. It’s Cary’s big plan, see. He does have the occasional brilliant scheme.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it,’ I said.

  Cary had thrown his squashed cigarettes into the waste-basket. Now he was bent over the basket and reaching in, trying to retrieve them.

  ‘Look at him,’ Lamb said. ‘Fossicking in the waste-bin!’

  ‘I see one,’ Cary said.

  ‘He sees one,’ Lamb said, rolling his eyes. ‘Picking up fag ends – can’t take him anywhere.’

  It was a double-act. They were spirited and mocking, and they kept it up until my secretary arrived. They found her presence intimidating, and they asked whether they should go. I said they shouldn’t hurry away, and I kicked the door shut.

  Lamb heard her tuning the radio for the news. There was a moment of music.

  ‘Music,’ he said. ‘Oh, be still my dancing feet!’

  ‘Give over,’ Cary said.

  ‘Tell him your brilliant scheme.’

  ‘Yes, mum,’ Cary said, and grinned and gave himself dimples as he looked at me. ‘We’re secondhand furniture dealers, the kind of rubbish that innocent people call antiques. We find the stuff all over the place. You’ve seen the signs. “House Clearances Our Specialty.”’

  Lamb said, “‘Top Prices Paid for Your Unwanted Furniture.’”