The Russian Interpreter

16

Manning spent a good deal of the night walking up and down his room in Sector B, his fists clenched, unable to believe that he had been treated so badly.

‘I can’t believe it!’ he said to himself aloud over and over again, raising his eyebrows and running his hand through his hair, until the window was grey with dawn, and he was too exhausted to remember what it was that he couldn’t believe. When he woke up two or three hours later he could believe it even less, and when, as he sat haggard and sleepy in the Faculty Library, he received the usual message that Proctor-Gould had phoned and asked him to go over to the hotel, it seemed to him that his impressions of what had taken place the previous evening had simply been mistaken, and that nothing had really changed at all.

But it had. Even as he opened the door of Proctor-Gould’s room he noticed the smell was different. It no longer smelt of loneliness and soiled white shirts – a smell which Manning had always found bleak but curiously English. Instead there was a mixture of warm, cheerful smells – Russian cigarettes, scent, hot cloth. And the appearance of the room had changed. There was a vase of tulips on the chest of drawers, a bowl of birch twigs on the escritoire. The stacks of books had been arranged neatly on shelves, and several large pictures had been pinned to the wall. They were of doll-like figures with red cheeks holding single flowers in their hands, childishly painted in bright poster colours on sheets of dark art paper. The piles of dirty linen and the open suitcases had gone. So had the washing with which the room had on previous occasions been festooned. Instead, Manning noticed, a blanket from the bed had been spread over one of the Imperial occasional tables, leaving the clawed golden feet of the table sticking out ridiculously from underneath, like the boots of a lover hiding behind a curtain in a French farce. On the blanket stood a neat stack of folded pyjamas and shirts, and an up-ended electric iron which clicked as it cooled and contracted.

By comparison with the changed décor, Proctor-Gould and Raya themselves seemed surprisingly familiar. To Manning their ordinariness was depressing; the new status quo was not a matter of impression or interpretation at all, but common, objective fact. Proctor-Gould stood with his back to the radiator, pulling at his ear. Raya lay on top of the bed, propped up on her elbow. It was as if they had always been so, as if a world which contained them in any other way was inconceivable.

‘Welcome to our little nest,’ said Raya, shaking the hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s not much, but it’s home.’

Manning was embarrassed. So evidently was Proctor-Gould, though he seemed highly pleased with himself as well. He kept frowning importantly to hide his pleasure, and pulling harder and harder at his ear.

‘You’ll have it right off if you’re not careful,’ said Manning irritably. Proctor-Gould began to giggle at once, and went on for a long time. Manning noticed that his blazer had been brushed and his trousers were pressed. The pens and pencils had been removed from his breast pocket. He looked almost sleek.

‘Do you like the pictures?’ Proctor-Gould asked at last.

‘Very nice.’

‘Raya painted them herself.’

‘Really?’

‘At least, I think she did. I think that’s what she was saying.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘The point is, Paul,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘we need to get a few things settled as between Raya and myself.’

‘I suppose you do.’

‘I wondered whether you would be kind enough to interpret for us?’

‘What?’

‘I hope you don’t mind?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake …!’

‘What do you mean, Paul?’

‘I mean – well, for God’s sake …!’

Proctor-Gould pulled at his ear again.

‘I see your point, Paul,’ he said. ‘But I can scarcely get one of the Intourist interpreters up, can I? Look, I shan’t ask you to translate anything that might embarrass you. There are just one or two little logistical points we ought to get straight. I’ve been trying to get through to her all day in sign language, but we haven’t made much headway.’

‘She’s been here all day?’

‘She disappeared after breakfast – I thought for good. But when I came up to have a nap and a cup of Nescafé after lunch she was back, and she’d brought all this stuff with her.’

He gazed round the room at her handiwork. He seemed pleased and proud, but a little out of his depth.

‘Very nice,’ said Manning. ‘But when’s she going? You’re not thinking of letting her stay tonight, are you?’

‘That’s rather what I want to establish. I think she’s fetched her pyjamas.’

‘Look, don’t be stupid. You can’t just set up with a mistress in the best hotel in Moscow.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Proctor-Gould. He began to walk up and down the room, his hands behind his back, frowning anxiously. Raya watched him from the bed, and lit a cigarette.

‘Let me know what conclusions you arrive at, gentlemen,’ she said.

‘What did she say?’ asked Proctor-Gould at once.

‘Asked to be told our conclusions.’

‘Ah. She said quite a lot this afternoon. I couldn’t get a word of it.’

‘I expect somebody got it.’

‘How do you mean?’

Manning pointed at the wall and mimed speaking into a microphone. ‘You’ve thought of that aspect?’ he asked.

‘Microphones? Oh, yes.’

‘You don’t mind the prospect of being blackmailed?’

‘Paul, we went into all this last night.’

‘We never arrived at any sense.’

‘Look, Paul, I’m entirely in the hands of the Soviet authorities anyway. If they want to find a lever against me, or an excuse for expelling me, they don’t have to mess about with footling misdemeanours like having a guest in my room after hours. All they’ve got to do is to get one of my clients to say I’d tried to persuade him to work for British Intelligence.’

‘All the same, if you insist on forcing your moral ideas on their attention they may feel compelled to do something about it.’

‘Exactly, Paul, exactly. The problem, as in all things in life, is to find the acceptable mean. That’s why I want you to help me in clarifying the situation.’

‘You want me to tell Raya to remove herself?’

‘No, no, no. I want us all to sit down to a round-table conference and discuss the situation like sensible people.’

Manning looked at Raya. She looked gravely back at him. He supposed that he should want to turn his back on her and never see her again. But he felt a great desire to remain in the same room as her, on any terms whatever. Besides, her decision to move in on Proctor-Gould was no doubt a pure caprice. It would pass, and she would return to him as suddenly and strangely as she had abandoned him, provided he was still at hand.

‘All right,’ said Manning. ‘Just this once. Don’t think I shall come running every time you crook your finger.’

‘Of course not,’ said Proctor-Gould. ‘Once we’ve got these few basic points straightened out we shan’t need you, anyway.’

Manning pointed at the table in the centre of the room. ‘Round-table conference,’ he said to Raya. At once she sprang off the bed and set a chair for herself.

Now that the moment for communication had come, Proctor-Gould seemed suddenly abstracted. He sat down at the table, but almost immediately stood up again, and cleared his throat.

‘Firstly …’ he began.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Manning. ‘Sit down.’

‘Ah,’ said Proctor-Gould, sitting down, but not abandoning the sleepwalker’s air that men have when they are about to tell a joke or make a speech.

‘Firstly, Paul,’ he began again, and the slightly hesitant way in which he said ‘Paul’ made it sound like a special concession to informality, ‘will you tell Raya what very great pleasure it gives me to have her here in this room?’

Manning winced, and Proctor-Gould at once began to giggle and pull at his ear

‘I hope I can rely on you, Paul,’ he said humorously, ‘to remove any unfortunate double meanings as you translate.’

‘He’s glad you’re here,’ said Manning to Raya.

‘I’m glad I’m here, too,’ said Raya. She got up and kissed Proctor-Gould on the ear. He put his arm round her and giggled again.

‘What did she say?’ he asked.

‘Glad to be here.’

‘Tell her I think she’s an absolute sweetie,’ demanded Proctor-Gould, giving her hips a squeeze, and rubbing his hand briskly up and down her further thigh, as if to restore circulation.

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Go on, tell her.’

‘It’s not a logistical point.’

Proctor-Gould thought about this for some time in silence. Then he gave Raya’s thigh a couple of final rubs.

‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to business, then.’

He gave Raya a dismissive pat on the bottom, rested his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together, and leaned forward with a serious air.

‘Now, the first point is this,’ he said, hammering it into the air with his clasped hands. ‘Can we establish what Raya’s plans are? Does she intend to remain here tonight?’

Manning translated.

‘Yes,’ said Raya.

‘Well, of course,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘I’m very pleased. Delightful. Now could you, Paul, with the utmost tact, find out approximately – or even exactly – how long she intends to remain after tonight? Is she anxious to get home tomorrow? Or would she want to stay, say, another night? But put it with the utmost delicacy.’

‘How long are you staying altogether?’ translated Manning.

‘Until we are tired of each other.’

‘I see,’ said Proctor-Gould when Manning had translated it to him. ‘Yes. I see that. But do you think she realizes the position she may be putting herself in vis-à-vis the authorities?’

‘Of course she does. If she didn’t have some understanding with the authorities she wouldn’t be here in the first place.’

‘Ask her anyway.’

Raya shrugged.

‘Why ask, Paul? I know you’ve always thought I was a police spy.’

‘Look, Raya, you must have some understanding with someone or you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d get into trouble.’

‘I might. I might not.’

‘You’d be mad to risk it.’

‘That depends how one wants to live. In this country one has only two alternatives. Either one must behave with an absolutely scrupulous regard for one’s personal safety; or else one must totally ignore it and do exactly as one pleases, in the hope that one will be thought to be a member of some different species, not subject to the rules at all.’

Manning stared at her, absolutely undecided what to think about her. She looked pleased by his uncertainty, as uncompromising as any god in her refusal to dispel his doubt by supernatural demonstration.

‘Give poor Gordon some sort of report on the conversation,’ she ordered. ‘He’s looking terribly worried.’

Manning reported, and Proctor-Gould leaned forward across the table to listen, his brown eyes very wide open, his thumb and index finger fondling the lobe of his ear incessantly.

‘Ah,’ he said when Manning had finished. ‘I go part of the way with Raya. But I think that if one is flouting the generally accepted rules of behaviour one must exercise discretion. Undoubtedly the authorities know that Raya is here. If last night’s anything to go by, they seem to be prepared to overlook it. But we must make it easy for them to overlook it. We must make sure that we don’t create a public scandal which could be ignored only by deliberate choice. We must limit ourselves to an inconspicuous irregularity which people could argue afterwards, if they were challenged, was merely overlooked in error.

‘Now, here is my schedule of regulations, if Raya is to stay. One: she must leave the room in the morning, separately from me. Two: she must not normally come up to the room during the day while I am out of it. Three: she must not leave her personal possessions lying about. Four: she must not be seen taking meals with me in the hotel restaurant. Five: if anyone knocks on the door while she is in the room she must withdraw to the bathroom.’

Manning translated these conditions to Raya in his most neutral voice, waiting to be interrupted at each moment by the laughter with which she would greet them. But she did not laugh. She sat doodling abstractedly on a piece of paper she had found on the table, saying nothing, with no expression on her face. It irritated Manning to watch her. He realized gloomily that he had never at any time even begun to understand her, and he suddenly doubted that he ever would.

‘Well?’ said Proctor-Gould to Manning.

‘He says “Well?”’ translated Manning to Raya.

She sighed.

‘Would it really make Gordon happy if I agreed to all these conditions?’ she asked.

Manning inquired.

‘If Raya would agree to stay on the terms I have mentioned,’ said Proctor-Gould, his great brown eyes very wide, ‘it would be both a matter of personal satisfaction to me and, I think, a very valuable and interesting experiment in co-existence at the personal level.’

When Manning had translated this to Raya she held up her drawing for them to see. It was a girl doll, like the ones around the walls. Her peg limbs were bent in a ridiculous curtsy, and in a balloon from her mouth were the two letters EC, followed by an exclamation mark.

‘What does EC mean?’ asked Proctor-Gould.

‘I don’t know. It’s not Russian.’

He frowned, trying over the two Cyrillic letters on his tongue.

‘“Ye-S”,’ he repeated stupidly. ‘“Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes.” I don’t know.’

Proctor-Gould watched him patiently, waiting for him to decipher it. But the paper was shaking about in front of Manning’s eyes. Raya was laughing at them.