The Russia House

by John le Carré

  ‘Oh Mr. Landau is a very kind man,’ she said, speaking much as Barley was for the benefit of an unidentified audience, but sounding very persuasive nevertheless.

  ‘And reliable,’ Barley called approvingly as they gained the first-floor landing. Now Barley too was for some reason out of breath. ‘Ask Niki to do a thing, he does it. In his own way, it’s true. But he does it and keeps his thoughts to himself. I always think that’s the sign of a good friend, don’t you?’

  ‘I would say that without discretion there can be no friendship,’ she replied as if quoting from a marriage book. ‘True friendship must be based on mutual trust.’

  And Barley while responding warmly to such profundity could not fail to recognise the similarity of her cadences to those of Goethe.

  In a curtained area stood a thirty-foot food counter with a single tray of sugar biscuits on it. Behind it three bulky ladies in white uniforms and helmets of transparent plastic had mounted guard over a regimental samovar while they argued among themselves.

  ‘Sound judge of a book too, in his own way, old Niki,’ Barley observed, stretching out the topic as they took up their places before the rope barrier. ‘Bête intellectuelle, as the French say. Tea, please, ladies. Marvellous.’

  The ladies went on haranguing each other. Katya stared at them with no expression on her face. Suddenly to Barley’s astonishment she drew out her red pass and snarled – there was no other word for it – with the result that one of them detached herself from her companions long enough to yank two cups from a rack and slap them viciously on two saucers as if she were breech-loading an old rifle. Still furious, she filled a huge kettle. And having with further signs of rage unearthed a modern box of matches, she turned up a gas ring and dumped the kettle on it before returning to her comrades.

  ‘Care for a biscuit?’ Barley asked. ‘Foie gras?’

  ‘Thank you. I ate cake already at the reception.’

  ‘Oh my God. Good cake?’

  ‘It was not very interesting.’

  ‘But nice Hungarians?’

  ‘The speeches were not significant. I would say they were banal. I blame our Soviet side for this. We are not sufficiently relaxed with foreigners even when they are from Socialist countries.’

  Both for a moment had run out of lines. Barley was remembering a girl he had known at university, a general’s daughter with skin like rose petals who lived only for the rights of animals until she hurriedly married a groom from the local hunt. Katya was staring gloomily into the further end of the room where a dozen stand-up tables were placed in strict lines. At one of them stood Leonard Wicklow sharing a joke with a young man his own age. At another an elderly Rittmeister in riding boots was drinking lemonade with a girl in jeans and throwing out his arms as if to describe his lost estates.

  ‘Can’t think why I didn’t offer you dinner,’ Barley said, meeting her eyes again with the feeling of falling straight into them. ‘One doesn’t want to be too forward, I suppose. Not unless one can get away with it.’

  ‘It would not have been convenient,’ she replied, frowning.

  The kettle began chugging but the war-hardened women of the buffet kept their backs to it.

  ‘Always so difficult, performing on the telephone, don’t you think?’ Barley said, for small talk. ‘Addressing oneself to a sort of plastic flower, I mean, instead of a human face. Hate the beastly thing personally, don’t you?’

  ‘Hate what, please?’

  ‘The telephone. Talking at a distance.’ The kettle began spitting on the gas. ‘You get the silliest ideas about people when you can’t see them.’

  Jump, he told himself. Now.

  ‘I was saying the very same thing to a publishing friend of mine only the other day,’ he went on, at the same jolly, conversational level. ‘We were discussing a new novel someone sent me. I’d shown it to him, strictly confidentially, and he was absolutely knocked out by it. Said it was the best thing he’d seen for years. Dynamite, in fact.’ Her eyes fixed on his own and they were scaringly direct. ‘But so odd not to have any sort of picture of the writer,’ he continued airily. ‘I don’t even know the chap’s name. Let alone where he gets all his information from, learnt his craft and so forth. Know what I mean? Like hearing a bit of music and not being sure whether it’s Brahms or Cole Porter.’

  She was frowning. She had drawn in her lips and seemed to be moistening them inside her mouth. ‘I do not regard such personal questions as appropriate to an artist. Some writers can work only in obscurity. Talent is talent. It does not require explanations.’

  ‘Well I wasn’t talking so much about explanations, you see, as about authenticity,’ Barley explained. A path of down followed the line of her cheekbone but unlike the hair on her head it was gold. ‘I mean, you know publishing. If a fellow’s written a novel about the hill tribes of Northern Burma, for instance, one’s entitled to ask whether he’s ever been south of Minsk. Specially if it’s a really important novel, which this one is. A potential world-beater, according to my chum. In a case like that, I reckon you’re entitled to insist that the writer should stand up and declare his qualifications.’

  Bolder than the others, the senior lady was pouring boiling water into the samovar. A second was unlocking the regimental cash box. A third was scooping rations of tea into a handscale. Searching in his pockets Barley came up with a three-rouble note. At the sight of it the woman at the cash box broke into a despairing tirade.

  ‘I expect she wants change,’ Barley said stupidly. ‘Don’t we all?’

  Then he saw that Katya had put thirty kopeks on the counter and that she had two very small dimples when she smiled. He took the books and bag. She followed him with the teacups on a tray. But as they reached their table she addressed him with an expression of challenge.

  ‘If an author is obliged to prove that he is saying the truth, so also is his publisher,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’m for honesty on all sides. The more people put their cards on the table, the better off we’ll all be.’

  ‘I am informed that the author was inspired by a Russian poet.’

  ‘Pecherin,’ Barley replied. ‘Looked him up. Born 1807 in Dymerka, province of Kiev.’

  Her lips were near the brim of her cup, her eyes down. And though he had plenty of other things on his mind, Barley noticed that her right ear, protruding from her hair, had become transparent in the evening light from the window.

  ‘The author was also inspired by certain opinions of an Englishman concerning world peace,’ she said with the utmost severity.

  ‘Do you think he would like to meet that Englishman again?’

  ‘This can be established. It is not known.’

  ‘Well the Englishman would like to meet him,’ said Barley. ‘They’ve got an awful lot to say to each other. Where do you live?’

  ‘With my children.’

  ‘Where are your children?’

  A pause while Barley again had the uncomfortable sensation of having offended against some unfamiliar ethic.

  ‘We live close to the Aeroport metro station. There is no airport there any more. There are apartments. How long are you staying in Moscow, please, Mr. Barley?’

  ‘A week. Any address for your apartment?’

  ‘It is not convenient. You are staying all the time here at the Hotel Odessa?’

  ‘Unless they chuck me out. What does your husband do?’

  ‘It is not important.’

  ‘Is he in publishing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he a writer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what is he? A composer? A frontier guard? A cook? How does he maintain you in the style to which you are accustomed?’

  He had made her laugh again, which seemed to please her as much as it did him. ‘He was manager of a timber concern,’ she said.

  ‘What’s he manager of now?’

  ‘His factory prefabricates houses for rural areas. We are divorced, like everyone else in Moscow.�
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  ‘What are the kids? Boys? Girls? How old?’

  And that put an end to laughter. For a moment he thought she would walk out on him. Her head lifted, her face closed and an angry fire filled her eyes. ‘I have a boy and a girl. They are twins, eight years old. It is not relevant.’

  ‘You speak beautiful English. Better than I do. It’s like well water.’

  ‘Thank you, I have a natural comprehension of foreign languages.’

  ‘It’s better than that. It’s unearthly. It’s as if English had stopped at Jane Austen. Where did you learn it?’

  ‘In Leningrad. I was at school there. English is also my passion.’

  ‘Where were you at university?’

  ‘Also in Leningrad.’

  ‘When did you come to Moscow?’

  ‘When I married.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘My husband and I knew each other from childhood. While we were at school, we attended summer camps together.’

  ‘Did you catch fish?’

  ‘Also rabbits,’ she said as her smile came back again to light the whole room. ‘Volodya is a Siberian boy. He knows how to sleep in the snow, skin a rabbit and catch fish through the ice. At the time I married him I was in retreat from intellectual values. I thought the most important thing a man could know was how to skin a rabbit.’

  ‘I was really wondering how you met the author,’ Barley explained.

  He watched her wrestle with her indecision, noticing how readily her eyes reflected her changing emotions, now coming to him, now retreating. Until he lost her altogether as she stooped below the level of the table, pushed away her flying hair and picked up her handbag. ‘Please thank Mr. Landau for the books and the tea,’ she said. ‘I shall thank him myself next time he comes to Moscow.’

  ‘Don’t go. Please. I need your advice.’ He lowered his voice and it was suddenly very serious. ‘I need your instructions about what to do with that crazy manuscript. I can’t fly solo. Who wrote it? Who’s Goethe?’

  ‘Unfortunately I have to return to my children.’

  ‘Isn’t somebody looking after them?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Ring up. Say you’re running late. Say you’ve met a fascinating man who wants to talk literature to you all night. We’ve hardly met. I need time. I’ve got masses of questions for you.’

  Gathering up the volumes of Jane Austen she started towards the door. And like a persistent salesman Barley stumbled at her side.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Look. I’m a lousy English publisher with about ten thousand enormously serious things to discuss with a beautiful Russian woman. I don’t bite, I don’t lie. Have dinner with me.’

  ‘It is not convenient.’

  ‘Is another night convenient? What do I do? Burn joss? Put a candle in my window? You’re what I came here for. Help me to help you.’

  His appeal had confused her.

  ‘Can I have your home number?’ he insisted.

  ‘It is not convenient,’ she muttered.

  They were descending the wide staircase. Glancing at the sea of heads Barley saw Wicklow and his friend among them. He grasped Katya’s arm, not fiercely but nevertheless causing her to stand still.

  ‘When?’ he said.

  He was still holding her arm at the bicep, just above the inside of the elbow where it was firmest and most full.

  ‘Perhaps I shall call you late tonight,’ she replied, relenting.

  ‘Not perhaps.’

  ‘I shall call you.’

  Remaining on the stair he watched her approach the edge of the crowd then seem to take a breath before spreading her arms and barging her way to the door. He was sweating. A damp shawl hung over his back and shoulders. He wanted a drink. Above all he wanted to get rid of the microphone harness. He wanted to smash it into very small pieces and trample on them and send them registered and personal to Ned.

  Wicklow, with his crooked nose, was skipping up the stairs to him, grinning like a thief and talking some bilge about a Soviet biography of Bernard Shaw.

  She walked quickly, looking for a taxi but needing movement. Clouds had gathered and there were no stars, just the wide streets and the glow of arc-lights from Petrovka. She needed distance from him and from herself. A panic born not of fear but of a violent aversion was threatening to seize hold of her. He should not have mentioned the twins. He had no right to knock down the paper walls between one life and another. He should not pester her with bureaucratic questions. She had trusted him: why did he not trust her?

  She turned a corner and kept walking. He is a typical imperialist, false, importunate and untrusting. A taxi passed, not heeding her. A second slowed down long enough to hear her call her destination then sped away in search of a more lucrative assignment – to ferry whores, to carry furniture, to deliver black-market vegetables, meat and vodka, to work the tourist traps. The rain was beginning, big drops, well aimed.

  His humour, so ill-placed. His inquisitions, so impertinent. I shall never go near him again. She should take the metro but dreaded the confinement. Attractive, naturally, as many Englishmen are. That graceful clumsiness. He was witty and without doubt sensitive. She had not expected him to come so close. Or perhaps it was she who went too close to him.

  She kept walking, steadying herself, looking for a taxi. The rain fell harder. She pulled a folding umbrella from her bag and opened it. East German, a present from a short-lived lover she had not been proud of. Reaching a crossroads she was about to step into the street when a boy in a blue Lada pulled up beside her. She had not hailed him.

  ‘How’s business, sister?’

  Was he a taxi, was he a freebooter? She jumped in and gave her destination. The boy started to argue. The rain was thundering on the car roof.

  ‘It’s urgent,’ she said, and handed him two three-rouble notes. ‘It’s urgent,’ she repeated and glanced at her watch, at the same time wondering whether glancing at watches was something people did when they were in a hurry to get to hospital.

  The boy seemed to have taken her cause to heart. He was driving and talking at breakneck speed while the rain poured through his open window. His sick mother in Novgorod had fainted while picking apples from a ladder and woken up with both legs in plaster, he said. The windscreen was a torrent of gushing water. He had not stopped to attach the wipers.

  ‘How is she now?’ Katya asked, tying a scarf round her hair. A woman in a hurry to get to hospital does not exchange small talk about the plight of others, she thought.

  The boy hauled the car to a halt. She saw the gates. The sky was calm again, the night warm and sweet-smelling. She wondered whether it had rained at all.

  ‘Here,’ said the boy, holding out her three-rouble notes. ‘Next time, okay? What’s your name? You like fresh fruit, coffee, vodka?’

  ‘Keep it,’ she snapped, and pushed the money back at him.

  The gates stood open, leading to what could have been an office block with a few lights dimly burning. A flight of stone steps, half-buried in mud and rubbish, rose to an overhead walkway. The walkway led across a sliproad. Looking down, Katya saw parked ambulances, their blue lights lazily rotating, drivers and attendants smoking in a group. At their feet lay a woman on a stretcher, her smashed face wrenched to one side as if to escape a second blow.

  He took care of me, she thought as her mind returned to Barley for a moment.

  She hurried towards the grey block that rose ahead of her. A clinic designed by Dante and built by Franz Kafka, she remembered. The staff go there to steal medicines and sell them on the black market; the doctors are all moonlighting to feed their families, she remembered. A place for the lowlife and riffraff of our empire, for the luckless proletariat with neither the influence nor connections of the few. The voice in her head had a rhythm that marched with her as she strode confidently through the double doors. A woman snapped at her, and Katya, rather than show her card, handed her a rouble. The lobby echoed like a swimming
pool. Behind a marble counter, more women ignored everyone except one another. An old man in blue uniform sat dozing in a chair, his open eyes staring at a defunct television set. She strode past him and entered a corridor lined with patients’ beds. Last time there had been no beds in the corridor. Perhaps they cleared them out to make room for someone important. An exhausted trainee was giving blood to an old woman, assisted by a nurse in open overalls and jeans. Nobody groaned, nobody complained. Nobody asked why they must die in a corridor. An illuminated sign gave the first letters of the word ‘Emergency’. She followed it. Look as though you own the place, he had advised her the first time. And it had worked. It still did.

  The waiting room was a discarded lecture hall lit like a night ward. On the platform, a matron with a saintly face sat at the head of a line of applicants as long as a retreating army. In the auditorium, the wretched of the earth growled and whispered in the twilight, nursed their children. Men with half-dressed injuries lay on benches. Drunks lolled and swore. The air stank of antiseptic, wine and old blood.

  Ten minutes to wait. Yet again she found her mind slipping back to Barley. His straight familiar eyes, his air of hopeless valour. Why would I not give him my home telephone number? His hand on her arm as if it had been there for ever. ‘You’re what I came here for.’ Selecting a broken bench near the rear door marked ‘Lavatories’, she sat and peered ahead of her. You can die there and nobody will ask your name, he had said. There is the door, there is the alcove for the cloakroom, she rehearsed. Then there are the lavatories. The telephone is in the cloakroom but it is never used because nobody knows it is there. Nobody can get through to the hospital on the open line, but this line was put in for a bigwig doctor who wanted to keep in touch with his private patients and his mistress, until he got himself transferred. Some idiot installed it out of sight behind a pillar. It’s been there ever since.

  How do you know about such places? she had asked him. This entrance, this wing, this telephone, sit down and wait. How do you know?

  I walk, he had replied, and she had had a vision of him striding the Moscow streets without sleep, food or herself, walking. I am the wandering Gentile, he had told her. I walk to keep company with my mind, I drink to hide from it. When I walk, you are beside me; I can see your face at my shoulder.