The Russia House Read online

  Once again Ned permitted himself a rare question. ‘How did the others behave towards him?’

  ‘They respected him. He was their mascot. “Let’s see what Goethe thinks.” He’d raise his glass and drink to them and we’d all laugh except Goethe.’

  ‘The women too?’

  ‘Everyone. They deferred to him. Practically made way for him. The great Goethe, here he comes.’

  ‘And no one told you where he lived or worked?’

  ‘They said he was on holiday from somewhere where drinking wasn’t approved of. So it was a drinking holiday. They kept drinking to his drinking holiday. He was someone’s brother. Tamara’s, I don’t know. Maybe cousin. I didn’t catch it.’

  ‘Do you think they were protecting him?’ said Clive.

  Barley’s pauses are like nobody else’s, I thought. He has his own tenuous hold on present things. His mind leaves the room and you wait on tenterhooks to see whether it will come back.

  ‘Yes,’ said Barley suddenly, sounding surprised by his own answer. ‘Yes, yes, they were protecting him. That’s right. They were his supporters’ club, of course they were.’

  ‘Protecting him from what?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Maybe from having to explain himself. I didn’t think that at the time. But I think it now. Yes I do.’

  ‘And why should he not explain himself? Can you suggest a reason without inventing one?’ asked Clive, determined apparently to hold Barley to the angry edge.

  But Barley didn’t rise. ‘I don’t invent,’ he said, and I think we all knew that was true. He was gone again. ‘He was high-powered. You felt it in him,’ he said, returning.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The eloquent silence. All you hear at a hundred miles an hour is the ticking of the brain.’

  ‘But no one told you, “He’s a genius,” or whatever?’

  ‘No one told me. No one needed to.’

  Barley glanced at Ned to find him nodding his understanding. A fieldman to his fingertips, if necessarily a grounded one, Ned had a way of popping up ahead of you when you thought he was still trying to catch you up.

  Bob had another question. ‘Anyone take you by the elbow and explain to you just why Goethe had a drinking problem, Barley?’

  Barley let out an unfettered laugh. His momentary freedoms were a little frightening. ‘You don’t have to have a reason to drink in Russia, for Christ’s sake! Name me a single Russian worth his salt who could face the problems of his country sober!’

  He dropped into silence again, grimacing into the shadows. He wrinkled up his eyes and muttered an imprecation of some kind, I assumed against himself. Then snapped out of it. ‘Woke with a jolt round midnight,’ he laughed. ‘ “Christ. Where am I?” Lying in a deck chair on a verandah with a bloody blanket over me! Thought I was in the States at first. One of those New England screened porches with panels of mosquito gauze and the garden beyond. Couldn’t think how I’d got to America so fast after a pleasant lunch in Peredelkino. Then I remembered they’d stopped talking to me and I’d got bored. Nothing personal. They were drunk and they were tired of being drunk in a foreign language. So I’d settled on the verandah with a bottle of Scotch. Somebody had thrown a blanket over me to keep the dew off. The moon must have woken me, I thought. Big full moon. Bloodshot. Then I heard this chap talking to me. Very sombre. Immaculate English. Christ, I thought, new guests at this hour. “Some things are necessary evils, Mr. Barley. Some things are more evil than necessary,” he says. He’s quoting me from lunch. Part of my worldshaking lecture on peace, I don’t know who I was quoting. Then I take a closer look around and I make out this nine-foot-tall bearded vulture hovering over me, clutching a bottle of vodka, hair flapping round his face in the breeze. Next thing I know he’s crouching beside me with his knees up round his ears, filling up his glass. “Hullo, Goethe,” I say. “Why aren’t you dead yet? Nice to see you about.” ’

  Whatever had set Barley free had put him back in prison again, for his face had once more clouded over.

  ‘Then he gives me back another of my lunchtime pearls. “All victims are equal. None are more equal than others.”

  ‘I laugh. But not too much. I’m embarrassed, I suppose. Queasy. Feel I’ve been spied on. Chap sits there all through lunch, drunk, doesn’t eat, doesn’t say a word. All of a sudden ten hours later he’s quoting me like a tape recorder. It’s not comfortable.

  ‘ “Who are you, Goethe?” I say. “What do you do for a living when you’re not drinking and listening?”

  ‘ “I’m a moral outcast,” he says. “I trade in defiled theories.”

  ‘ “Always nice to meet a writer,” I say. “What sort of stuff are you turning out these days?”

  ‘ “Everything,” he says. “History, comedy, lies, romances.” Then off he goes into some drivel he wrote about a lump of butter melting in the sun because it lacked a consistent point of view. Only thing was, he didn’t talk like a writer. Too diffident. He was laughing at himself, and for all I knew he was laughing at me too. Not that he hadn’t every right to, but that didn’t make it any funnier.’

  Once more we waited, watching Barley’s silhouette. Was the tension in us or in him? He took a sip from his glass. He rolled his head around and muttered something like ‘not well’ or possibly ‘to hell’ which neither his audience nor the microphones ever completely caught. We heard his chair crackle like wet firewood. On the tape it sounds like an armed attack.

  ‘So then he says to me, “Come on, Mr. Barley. You’re a publisher. Aren’t you going to ask me where I get my ideas from?” And I thought, That’s not what publishers ask actually, old boy, but what the hell? “Okay, Goethe,” I say. “Where do you get your ideas from?”

  ‘ “Mr. Barley. My ideas are obtained from – one” – he starts counting.’

  Barley too had spread his long fingers and was counting on them, using only the lightest Russian intonations. And once again I was struck by the delicacy of his musical memory, which he seemed to achieve less by repeating words than by retrieving them from some cursed echoing chamber where nothing ever faded from his hearing.

  ‘ “My ideas are obtained from – one, the paper tablecloths of Berlin cafés in the 1930s.” Then he takes a heave of vodka and a great noisy snort of night air both at once. He creaks. Know what I mean? Those chaps with bubbling chests? “Two,” he says, “from the publications of my more gifted competitors. Three, from the obscene fantasies of generals and politicians of all nations. Four, from the liberated intellects of press-ganged Nazi scientists. Five, from the great Soviet people, whose every democratic wish is filtered upwards by means of consultation at all levels, then dumped in the Neva. And six, very occasionally from the mind of a distinguished Western intellectual who happens to drop into my life.” That’s me, apparently, because he glues his eyes on me to see how I take it. Staring and staring like a precocious child. Transmitting these life-important signals. Then suddenly he changes and becomes suspicious. Russians do that. “That was quite a performance you gave at lunch,” he says. “How did you persuade Nezhdanov to invite you?” It’s a sneer. Saying I don’t believe you.

  ‘ “I didn’t persuade him,” I say. “It was his idea. What are you trying to hang on me?”

  ‘ “There is no ownership of ideas,” he says. “You put it into his head. You are a clever fellow. Cunning work, I would say. Congratulations.”

  ‘Then instead of sneering at me he’s clutching on to my shoulders as if he’s drowning. I don’t know whether he’s ill or he’s lost his balance. I’ve got a nasty feeling he may want to be sick. I try to help him but I don’t know how. He’s hot as hell and sweating. His sweat’s dripping on to me. Hair’s all wet. These wild childish eyes. I’ll loosen his collar, I think. Then I get his voice, shoved right down my ear, lips and hot breath all at once. I can’t hear him at first, he’s too near. I back away but he comes with me.

  ‘ “I believe every word you said,” he whis
pers. “You spoke into my heart. Promise me you are not a British spy and I’ll make you a promise in return.”

  ‘His words exactly,’ Barley said, as if he were ashamed of them. ‘He remembered every word I’d said. And I remember every word of his.’

  It was not the first time that Barley had spoken of memory as if it were an affliction, and perhaps that is why I found myself, as so often, thinking of Hannah.

  ‘Poor Palfrey,’ she had taunted me in one of her cruel moods, studying her naked body in the mirror as she sipped her vodka and tonic and prepared to go back to her husband. ‘With a memory like yours, how will you ever forget a girl like me?’

  Did Barley have that effect on everyone? I wondered – touch their central nerve unconsciously, send them rushing to their closest thoughts? Perhaps that was what he had done to Goethe too.

  The passage that followed was never paraphrased, never condensed, never ‘reconstrued’. For the initiated, either the unedited tape was played or else the transcript was offered in its entirety. For the uninitiated it never existed. It was the crux of everything that followed and it was called with deliberate obfuscation ‘the Lisbon Approach’. When the alchemists and theologians and end-users on both sides of the Atlantic had their turn, this was the passage they picked out and ran through their magic boxes to justify the preselected arguments that characterised their artful camps.

  ‘ “Not a spy actually, Goethe, old boy. Not now, never have been, never will. May be your line of country, not mine. How about chess? Fond of chess? Let’s talk about chess.”

  ‘Doesn’t seem to hear. “And you are not an American? You are nobody’s spy, not even ours?”

  ‘ “Goethe, listen,” I say. “I’m getting a bit jumpy, to be honest. I’m nobody’s spy. I’m me. Let’s either talk about chess or you try a different address, okay?” I thought that would shut him up, but it didn’t. Knew all about chess, he said. In chess, one chap has a strategy, and if the other chap doesn’t spot it or if he relaxes his watch, you win. In chess, the theory is the reality. But in life, in certain types of life, you can have a situation where a player has such grotesque fantasies about another one that he ends up by inventing the enemy he needs. Do I agree? Goethe, I agree totally. Then suddenly it’s not chess any more and he’s explaining himself the way Russians do when they’re drunk. Why he’s on the earth, for my ears only. Says he was born with two souls, just like Faust, which is why they call him Goethe. Says his mother was a painter but she painted what she saw, so naturally she wasn’t allowed to exhibit or buy materials. Because anything we see is a State secret. Also if it’s an illusion it’s a State secret. Even if it doesn’t work and never will, it’s a State secret. And if it’s a lie from top to bottom, then it’s the hottest State secret of the lot. Says his father did twelve years in the camps and died of a surfeit of intellectual ability. Says the problem with his father was, he was a martyr. Victims are bad enough, saints are worse, he says, but martyrs are the living end. Do I agree?

  ‘I agree. Don’t know why I agree but I’m a polite soul and when a chap who is clutching my head tells me his father’s done twelve years then died, I’m not about to quarrel with him even when I’m tight.

  ‘I ask him his real name. Says he hasn’t got one. His father took it with him. Says that in any decent society they shoot the ignorant, but in Russia it’s the other way round, so they shot his father because, unlike his mother, he refused to die of a broken heart. Says he wants to make me this promise. Says he loves the English. The English are the moral leaders of Europe, the secret steadiers, the unifiers of the great European ideal. Says the English understand the relationship between words and action whereas in Russia nobody believes in action any more, so words have become a substitute, all the way up to the top, a substitute for the truth that nobody wants to hear because they can’t change it, or they’ll lose their jobs if they change it, or maybe they simply don’t know how to change it. Says the Russians’ misfortune is that they long to be European but their destiny is to become American, and that the Americans have poisoned the world with materialistic logic. If my neighbour has a car, I must have two cars. If my neighbour has a gun, I must have two guns. If my neighbour has a bomb, I must have a bigger bomb and more of them, never mind they can’t reach their targets. So all I have to do is imagine my neighbour’s gun and double it and I have the justification for whatever I want to manufacture. Do I agree?’

  It is a miracle that nobody interrupted here, not even Walter. But he didn’t, he held his tongue, as they all did. You don’t even hear a chair creak before Barley goes on.

  ‘So I agree. Yes, Goethe, I agree with you to the hilt. Anything’s better than being asked whether I’m a British spy. Starts talking about the great nineteenth-century poet and mystic Piturin.’

  ‘Pecherin,’ says a high sharp voice. Walter has finally brimmed over.

  ‘That’s right. Pecherin,’ Barley agrees. ‘Vladimir Pecherin. Pecherin wanted to sacrifice himself for mankind, die on the cross with his mother at his feet. Have I heard of him? I haven’t. Pecherin went to Ireland, became a monk, he says. But Goethe can’t do that because he can’t get a visa and anyway he doesn’t like God. Pecherin liked God and didn’t like science unless it took account of the human soul. I ask him how old he is. Goethe, not Pecherin. He looks about seven by now, going on a hundred. He says he’s nearer to death than life. He says he’s fifty but he’s just been born.’

  Walter chimes in, but softly, like someone in church, not his usual squeak at all. ‘Why did you ask him his age? Of all the questions you could have asked? What on earth does it matter at that moment how many teeth he’s got?’

  ‘He’s unsettling. Not a wrinkle on him till he scowled.’

  ‘And he said science. Not physics. Science?’

  ‘Science. Then he starts reciting Pecherin. Translating as he goes. The Russian first, then the English. How sweet it is to hate one’s native land and avidly await its ruin … and in its ruin to discern the dawn of universal renaissance. I may not have got it quite right but that’s the gist. Pecherin understood that it was possible to love your country at the same time as hating its system, he says. Pecherin was nuts about England, just as Goethe is. England as the home of justice, truth and liberty. Pecherin showed there was nothing disloyal in betrayal provided you betrayed what you hated and fought for what you loved. Now supposing Pecherin had possessed great secrets about the Russian soul. What would he have done? Obvious. He’d have given them to the English.

  ‘I’m wanting him out of my hair by now. I’m getting panicky. He’s coming close again. Face against face. Wheezing and grinding like a steam engine. Heart breaking out of his chest. These big brown saucer eyes. “What have you been drinking?” I said. “Cortisone?”

  ‘ “You know what else you said at lunch?” he says.

  ‘ “Nothing,” I say. “I wasn’t there. It was two other blokes and they hit me first.” He’s not hearing me again.

  ‘ “You said, ‘Today one must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.’”

  ‘ “That’s not original,” I say. “None of it is. It’s stuff I picked up. It’s not me. Now just forget everything I said and go back to your own people.” Doesn’t listen. Grabs my arm. Hands like a girl’s but they grip like iron. “Promise me that if ever I find the courage to think like a hero, you will act like a merely decent human being.”

  ‘ “Look,” I say. “Leave this out and let’s get something to eat. They’ve got some soup in there. I can smell it. You like soup? Soup?”

  ‘He’s not crying as far as I can tell but his face is absolutely soaked. Like a pain sweat all over this white skin. Hanging on to my wrist as if I were his priest. “Promise me,” he says.

  ‘ “But what am I supposed to be promising, for God’s sake?”

  ‘ “Promise you’ll behave like a gentleman.”

  ‘ “I’m not a gentleman. I’m a publisher.”

  ‘Then he laug
hs. First time. Huge laughter with a sort of weird click in it. “You cannot imagine how much confidence I derive from your rejection,” he says.

  ‘That’s where I stand up. Nice and easy, not to alarm him. While he goes on clutching me.

  ‘ “I commit the sin of science every day,” he says. “I turn ploughshares into swords. I mislead our masters. I mislead yours. I perpetuate the lie. I murder the humanity in myself every day. Listen to me.”

  ‘ “Got to go now, Goethe, old lad. All those nice lady concierges at my hotel sitting up and worrying about me. Let me loose, will you, you’re breaking my arm.”

  ‘Hugs me. Pulls me right on to him. Makes me feel like a fat boy, he’s so thin. Wet beard, wet hair, this burning heat.

  ‘ “Promise,” he says.

  ‘Squeezed it out of me. Fervour. Never saw anything like it. “Promise! Promise!”

  ‘ “All right,” I say. “If you ever manage to be a hero, I’ll be a decent human being. It’s a deal. Okay? Now let me go, there’s a good chap.”

  ‘ “Promise,” he says.

  ‘ “I promise,” I say and shove him off me.’

  Walter is shouting. None of our preliminary warnings, no furious glares from Ned or Clive or myself, could switch him off any longer. ‘But did you believe him, Barley? Was he conning you? You’re a sharp cookie underneath the flannel. What did you feel?’

  Silence. And more silence. Then finally, ‘He was drunk. Maybe twice in my life I’ve been as drunk as he was. Call it three times. He’d been on the white stuff all day long and he was still drinking it like water. But he’d hit one of those clear spells. I believed him. He’s not the kind of chap you don’t believe.’

  Walter again, furious.

  ‘But what did you believe? What did you think he was talking to you about? What did you think he did? All this chatter about things not reaching their targets, lying to his masters and yours, chess that isn’t chess but something else? You can add, can’t you? Why didn’t you come to us? I know why! You put your head in the sand. “Don’t know because don’t want to know.” That’s you.’