The Russian Interpreter

12

Walking in the twilight with Katerina. Somewhere. Along some narrow busy street lined with decrepit old apartment houses. As they passed each entry the excited screaming of the children playing in the darkened courtyard within for a moment joined the roar of the buses and lorries stinking by at Manning’s elbow. Along the narrow pavement people were streaming home from work, tired; looking down, their faces in shadow. Constantly they passed between Manning and Katya, forcing him to stop or to step off the kerb, and then run a step to catch up.

Manning was surprised that there were still streets left in Moscow that he did not know. He felt as if he and Katya had walked down every single one of them – a hundred miles of asphalt, of concrete slabs, of beaten earth, of packed, trodden snow. He wondered how many of the people they passed were walking for the same reason as themselves, that the public street was the only private place to talk. All over Moscow the streets must have been alive with communal intimacy. Two by two the talkers walked, passing, overtaking, and intersecting, as if the city were some vast, complex cloister. Visions of a new society were exchanged, love affairs were pursued and broken off, arrangements to circumvent the law and defraud the state were entered into. As he ran along the gutter to catch up with Katya, Manning laughed out loud at the ridiculous discomfort of their accommodation. Katya, hurrying along in her winter overcoat, gave him one of her quick, mistrustful glances. She said something, but it was drowned in the sudden high coloratura of a bus with bad brakes.

‘I said,’ she repeated, ‘I’m happy for your happiness.’

‘I was just laughing at us.’

‘Oh. Is Raya beautiful?’

Manning considered. Would being beautiful count for or against Raya in Katya’s eyes? He was frightened of her judgement. He could see Raya through Katya’s eyes, and she became insignificant – as insignificant as Katya herself would certainly seem to Raya.

‘I think perhaps she is,’ he said cautiously.

‘Would I think she was?’

‘You might.’

‘I wonder.’

‘I’m surprised you’re interested.’

‘I like to think of a woman being beautiful, since I’m not myself. I like to think that you should find a beautiful woman.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m not jealous, Paul. You wouldn’t like me to be, would you? I thought I might feel jealous of Raya when you first began to describe her. Or rather, not of her, but of your feeling for her. It’s easy to be jealous of love, even when it’s experienced by someone with whom one’s not in love oneself. You are a little jealous of my love of God. It makes you wonder whether you have that same capacity yourself. You think you don’t want to love God or be loved by Him, but you cannot help wondering whether you could if you did. Was Sasha jealous?’

‘Sasha? How could he be? You don’t think he’s in love with Raya?’

‘I meant jealous of her hold on you.’

‘You think he’s in love with me?’

‘He’s like a conscientious father with a delinquent son. He doesn’t much like you. But he has an obsessiveness about you which might count as a sort of love.’

‘Perhaps he was a bit jealous.’

‘He became very polite and withdrawn and solicitous?’

‘Yes. When he found us by the lake he said they’d been looking for us for over an hour. I hadn’t realized we’d been gone more than ten minutes. He’d wanted to go to the police. I felt like a badly behaved child, as usual.’

‘Did Raya?’

‘No. She was amused. She started to tease Sasha. When we got on the train to come home, for example she threw the rucksack at the rack so that it just missed and fell back on Sasha’s head. It probably sounds a bit silly. But it was the way she did it…’

‘I see.’

‘And she kept apologizing. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said. “I underfulfilled my plan, Alexander Timofeyich”.’

‘Timofeyich? Is that really Sasha’s patronymic?’

‘No.’

‘Were you amused?’

‘Well, I was. It may not sound very funny as I tell it, but at the time …’

‘Yes, I see that. Poor Sasha.’

‘Poor Sasha? But I thought you disapproved of him, Katya?’

‘Oh, Paul! We always have this conversation; I explain to you every time. Sasha’s good – how could I not approve of him? In fact I admire him. It’s just that I’m opposed to him, because he is on the side of the strong, and I’m on the side of the weak.’

‘I know. I know. But you’re able to feel sorry for him?’

‘It’s terrible when good people are teased by bad people.’

Manning danced with a burly man in a shabby blue overcoat, trying to pass to left and to right, then ran to catch up with Katya, who had not stopped or slowed down.

‘Raya isn’t bad …’ he began.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she interrupted. ‘At least, I didn’t mean to mean it.’

‘You think it.’

‘I have no opinion. I have excised my opinion.’

After a little while she asked:

‘Is Raya good, then, Paul?’

‘I think so, Katya.’

‘When you asked yourself, as you must have done, whether she had attached herself to you for sincere motives or because she was told to, what answer did you find?’

‘Well, I’ve no proof either way. How could I have?’

‘You’ve no proof about my motives, either. But you’re sure of me.’

‘Oh, Katya, with you the question doesn’t arise.’

‘But it does with her?’

‘I think I’m satisfied.’

‘It’s a difference between us.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Katya was silent.

‘Is she perhaps good in the way that Sasha is good?’ she asked finally.

‘Katya!’ cried Manning. ‘You’re obsessed with goodness!’

‘No, no – I’m obsessed with God, of whom goodness is the physical radiance. When I ask if Raya is good, I mean, is she God-filled, in the way that Sasha is God-filled?’

‘Sasha God-filled? How can he be? He’s an atheist.’

‘Sasha’s opinions about himself are irrelevant.’

‘But, Katya, I don’t understand at all! You think that Sasha is strong. But you also think that God is on the side of the weak!’

‘Oh, Paul! God doesn’t take sides! It’s I who take sides.’

‘Against Sasha? Against God within him?’

Katya became very agitated. She began to walk more quickly, so that Manning had difficulty in keeping up. She flushed, and pressed her fingers to her lips. Manning wondered if she was going to cry.

‘I don’t know where my thoughts lead,’ she said at last. ‘Must I turn my hand against God? But my hand is God! God against God! What confusion! What problems we’ve been set!’