The Russian Interpreter

9

Manning fell in love, in a way. It was on a suburban train, on the Mozhaisk line, and the girl was sitting in the seat opposite him. She was not, as he had envisaged, sunburnt and wearing a slight cotton dress. She was pale, with very fair hair, and she was wearing a quilted anorak and thick trousers. So was Manning himself, and almost everybody else in the carriage. They were going on a rally or ramble organized by the Faculty Sport Club in the forest outside Moscow under Sasha’s leadership.

‘Which is it, Paul?’ Proctor-Gould had asked Manning when Sasha invited him. ‘A rally or a ramble?’

‘It depends how far they walk,’ Manning had explained gloomily. ‘If it’s over about ten kilometres it will be rather less of a rally and rather more of a ramble.’

‘Ten kilometres? They might go as far as that?’

‘Easily. It’ll be freezing cold, too, and I should think at this time of year the woods are a sea of mud.’

Proctor-Gould had fingered his ear dubiously. Manning, anxious to avoid the occasion, had urged another drawback.

‘They’ll sing songs, Gordon.’

Proctor-Gould had at once ceased to finger his ear.

‘They’ll sing songs, will they, Paul?’

‘They’ll probably expect you to sing them something, too.’

Proctor-Gould’s attitude had changed entirely.

‘I rather enjoy a bit of a sing-song, Paul. If the company’s congenial. I used to be rather in demand at parties in college. “My Father was the Keeper of the Eddystone Light” – that kind of thing. Top of the hit parade at John’s, setting all false modesty to one side.’

So Manning found himself on the Mozhaisk train, sitting opposite the girl with fair hair. He was not entirely right about the weather. The air temperature was low, but the woods on either side of the train were filled with the most brilliant spring sunlight. Already, however, people had begun to sing. They sang different songs in different parts of the carriage. Manning could hear Sasha’s clear, sweet tenor cutting through the confusion of sound, and Proctor-Gould, uttering the curious tuneless booming that comes from a man doing his best to join in a song he has never heard before. Manning hoped he would soon be allowed to get back to his home ground on ‘The Eddystone Light’.

The girl with the very fair hair was singing, too. Manning watched her covertly. She had a broad face, with distinct cheekbones and clearly defined eyebrows which were much darker than her hair. She looked as if she might be a postgraduate student or a lecturer, but Manning knew them all, and he had never seen her about the Faculty before. She caught his eyes, and at once stopped singing and lowered her eyelids.

The sight of her disturbed Manning. It threatened him with the necessity for making decisions and taking initiatives. The long and involved processes of human courtship might be about to start. If he made a move … If she responded at all … He hedged himself about with conditions and concessions. Already he could see how stupid the things would be that he would tell her to try and impress her. Already he could feel the terrible uncertainty he would go through about whether to take her hand, whether to put his arm round her and kiss her. As if it was already past history he knew exactly what he would feel on the days when she said she couldn’t see him, and how irritatingly plain she would look as she came towards him along the street. He shifted uneasily in his seat at the thought of it. This really was the worst moment in the whole awful business of courtship, the moment before it started. If indeed it did start.

He caught her eye again. They both quickly looked away. He turned his head slowly from the view out of the left-hand window to the view out of the right-hand one, so that he could let his eyes travel over her face in passing. Almost immediately he had to turn his head back from right to left to take another look at her. Once more their eyes met, and hastily parted again. He stared out of the window at the telegraph poles going by, knowing his face was loaded with a meaningless frown. What a stupid business! Did he really have to go ahead with it? He could have groaned aloud, he felt such a fool. And yet, beneath all the confusion and indecision, the current of sweet excitement ran on. It was like a brook one could hear rippling unseen beneath tangled undergrowth.

They all got off the train at a small country station surrounded by open fields, and in the confusion of identical anoraks Manning lost sight of the girl. On the horizon to the north the fields were bounded by the dark green line of the forest. Straggling like a column of deserters they set off towards it along a muddy farm track, skirting the long puddles of water in the ruts. From a group of farm buildings in the distance came the sound of loudspeakers playing a march, fading and returning in the cool breaths of wind. Gradually the snatches of music grew fainter and ceased. The great stillness of the country settled over them.

In the way that drinkers find themselves, to their surprise, in bars, Manning found himself walking beside the girl with the fair hair.

‘Hallo again,’ he said smoothly.

‘Hallo,’ said the girl, glancing at him, and then dropping her eyes.

They walked along in silence; Manning couldn’t think of anything else to say. People tried to get the singing going again, but it quickly died away. They were all too put out, in spite of themselves, by the change from effortless and tidy locomotion to propelling themselves by their own efforts along the uneven and slippery track.

The girl stopped to pick up a snail shell. Manning saw that she was already holding a number of objects – a pearl-grey wing feather, a pebble, a chalk-white segment from some animal’s backbone.

‘I like your collection,’ he said.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Oh.’

‘Perhaps I could help you find some more things?’

‘Perhaps you could.’

Manning felt pleased with himself. He had made plenty of worse opening moves than that. An assured and worldly note had been struck, he felt.

‘You just look at the ground, do you?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘As you go along?’

‘That’s right.’

Manning gazed seriously at the ground, looking for topics of conversation. Almost without their noticing it, the outskirts of the forest closed in around them.

‘Do you like rambles?’ asked Manning.

‘Quite.’

‘What about rallies?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which do you prefer?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, and gave a small laugh.

They were getting on quite well, thought Manning. A very uncomplicated, idyllic relationship was being established.

‘A crow,’ he said, pointing at one.

‘Yes?’ she said expectantly.

‘I said, a crow.’

‘What about the crow?’

‘I was just remarking that it was a crow.’

She gave another little laugh.

‘I see,’ she said.

Inside the forest the country was broken, and no two acres of it were alike. At one moment they would be walking over dry pine needles, across long slopes that revealed nothing but ranks of dark conifer trunks in every direction. At the next they would be in birch country, following water-logged clay tracks which twisted down through sudden pockets of open valley filled with sunshine. Speckled patches of snow lit the shadows and northern slopes. People got their second wind, and began to sing again.

‘I’ve never seen you around the Faculty,’ said Manning.

‘No?’

‘No.’

They had been walking for about an hour when pungent woodsmoke drifted towards them through the trees, and the sound of resinous timber crackling and spitting in the fire. They came to a clearing hazy with the smoke. There were shouts of recognition – it was the advance party, roasting potatoes and boiling millet porridge.

They sat down and ate. The black from the potatoes got over their faces, and the millet porridge tasted of nothing. Presently they sang. Manning watched the girl as she took the time from Sasha. He was definitely getting off with her – he really was doing very well. An agreeable feeling of confidence and experience seized him.

‘Now,’ said Sasha, ‘let’s have a song from our two English friends.’

Proctor-Gould looked at Manning. Manning shook his head firmly.

‘In that case,’ said Proctor-Gould, getting to his feet and addressing the company, ‘I shall have to ask for your forbearance and offer my humble services as a soloist. With your kind permission I should like to sing you a rather light-hearted little song entitled, “My Father Was the Keeper of the Eddystone Light”.’

He sang. It was considerably worse than Manning had expected. Proctor-Gould hunted about for each note uncertainly, and did not often find it. Manning looked round at the girl and smiled. She gazed at Proctor-Gould seriously, no doubt baffled by the strange modes of English song.

‘Incidentally,’ whispered Manning, leaning close to her ear, ‘my name is Paul.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’

‘You’re Glad?’

‘Yes.’

Manning tried the name over to himself. Rada – Glad. He had never heard of anyone called Rada before.

‘It suits you,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘Your name – Glad. It’s beautiful.’

She stared at him. Then she whispered:

‘Do you know what I think, Paul?’

‘No?’

‘I think you’re a buffoon.’

Proctor-Gould reached the end of his song, and there was a certain amount of polite, baffled clapping. The girl got up and walked away to the other side of the clearing.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Proctor-Gould. ‘Your very generous response encourages me to go on and sing you another very old favourite in England, “Green Grow the Rushes Oh”.’

A stupid-looking man next to Manning who had been trying for some time to open a bottle of fizzy fruit-juice by thumping it up and down against the ground at last succeeded. The cap exploded off the bottle, and contents rose into the air like a geyser, then fell as a fine, sticky rain over Manning.

‘“I’ll sing you one-oh”,’ sang Proctor-Gould. ‘No, no, I’ll start again. Might as well begin on the right note. “I’ll sing you –” No. “I’ll –” Hm. “I’ll –” H’hgm. “I’ll sing you one-oh …”’

Manning slipped away into the woods out of earshot. The whole expedition was intolerable.