Foreigners, Drunks and Babies

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Yes,’ said Linda, ‘you were right.’

  ‘Still not washing?’ quipped Beryl, a permanent teacher who had evidently encountered the Russians on a previous visit.

  ‘It might be something to do with their diet,’ said Linda.

  ‘Perhaps you could direct them to the nearest Boots the Chemists – oh, and give them a lesson on what the word “deodorant” means …’

  It was Ed’s voice. The Principal had entered his staffroom while they were chatting, and had sat himself down opposite Rod, among the permanent teachers. It was his habit to spend a little time with them during their breaks; a means, as he saw it, for keeping in touch with their moods – moods, however, that would change the moment he entered the room.

  Ed was a suave man, the son of a bishop, or so it was rumoured, well turned out in an Italian suit, a college tie, and French casual shoes. Still in early middle age, his rise from being one of the teachers in Raymond Greenwood’s language school to its Principal had been rapid, and was still recalled with irony by a few of the longer-stayers. He had become a distinguished member of the local community, and Justice of the Peace, to boot.

  But in his staffroom he had an unfortunate way of reminding the teachers that it was he who hired and fired. He was, thus, one of them; opposed, by definition, to the interests of us. That’s how Phil, the union rep, saw it – and Phil would maintain a wary distance. Thus it was that Ed’s attempts to keep a paternal eye on the school’s employees had the effect of increasing his isolation, stifling, at the same time, the faltering staffroom bonhomie.

  That morning’s papers were, as usual, strewn about the chairs and tables. Two pieces of news dominated the front pages. The SAS had freed the hostages from the Iranian Embassy. Blurry, close-up photos of masked soldiers attacking through the building’s upstairs windows appeared in most editions. We had shown, the headlines said, those Americans how to do it. A number of commentators mentioned the rescue-mission fiasco that had helped Jimmy Carter lose his presidency. Our Prime Minister had made her forceful statement about the need for a concerted opposition to international terrorism. The build-up of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was continuing to figure widely. Helicopter gunships were attacking villages, policing the suburbs of Kabul, children being maimed by antipersonnel devices. International condemnation of the USSR was threatening the success of the Olympic Games to be held in Moscow that year.

  ‘Did you see the news last night? Rocket attacks on defenceless civilians from the air – absolutely nauseating …’ Raymond Greenwood himself had come into the staffroom, a rare event indeed. He was waving a copy of The Times. Rod put aside his large pile of forms and papers.

  ‘So: how are they?’ Raymond was asking.

  ‘Jozef Goncharov’s here again, his usual gentlemanly self,’ said Rod, ‘but there’s a woman Party member who’s a right pain in the bum – isn’t she, Linda – who we could well do without!’

  ‘Did you know Jozef was a war hero … from the last war?’ Ed said, rejoining the conversation. ‘You know, I can’t hold it against them personally, what’s happening, I mean …’

  ‘Well,’ interrupted Raymond, ‘we went along with the British Council’s request that we stick to the arrangements, for this year at least, but I’m damned if that means I have to speak to any of them, even Jozef, nice enough though he may be.’

  ‘They’ve asked if they can hold a party next week,’ said Rod. ‘Their visit coincides with the Russian public holiday to celebrate victory in the war. They want to have the day off from lessons, and a party in the common room. I’ve said “yes” provisionally, but told them that I would have to check with you first.’

  ‘I think we should say that the classes have been organized and prepared, so that the students are required to attend them, holiday or no holiday,’ Ed proposed. ‘And you can tell them too it’s not a holiday here.’

  ‘Then if they want a party, it will have to be held after school, which seems only right,’ Rod was thinking out loud.

  ‘I suggest you put that to Goncharov,’ said Raymond Greenwood decisively.

  Peter started up sweating from the bed with such a jump he found himself all but sitting, the sheets in a tangle around him. Sylvie lay half uncovered and snoring faintly in the pre-dawn light. Their bedroom wall opposite, with its massive poster of Palladian villas around Vicenza, had come back into focus; Peter saw where he was, and leaned over to rearrange the bed covers so that Sylvie wouldn’t feel chilly and wake. His wife’s nights were disturbed enough as it was. Baby Anna had already called her once with the collywobbles, but clearly she had managed to get her back to sleep. Peter lay down again, closed his eyes, and tried to doze. He had just been dreaming. Yes, thank goodness, it was only a dream.

  They’d all been there surrounding him: Tanya, Alexei, Yuri, Olga, Evgeny, Yulia, Vadim, Maria Androvna, Katya, Tatyana, Volodya, Marina, Peotr, Jozef Goncharova … all of them. Peter was trying to pass out the pile of papers in his hands, photocopies of a poem he knew, but the papers kept sticking together, and their sharp edges cut the skin on the tips of his fingers.

  ‘We will make a recording of every word you say,’ said Alexei, in his black leather jacket, unravelling a microphone cord. ‘Then we will study carefully what you have said, privately.’

  ‘It is for the improvement of the pronunciation,’ Maria Androvna said, pushing her leathery old face close up to his.

  ‘It will be used to improve … or, better, we’ll use it …’ Peter was correcting her English in the dream.

  ‘And we will take your photograph,’ said Yuri, ‘for our memories.’

  Then the tape recorder began to turn inexorably on the desk.

  ‘Say something now,’ said Alexei, as if to check his recording levels.

  ‘One must be keeping your pecker up. I can say this?’ asked Maria Androvna, misreading from her Russian textbook.

  ‘No,’ said the sleeping teacher. ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘But it is here written in my book,’ she said, and pushed it into Peter’s face. ‘Look!’

  The dreaming teacher was lost for words. All twenty-eight eyes in the classroom were trained on him, as if at a firing squad.

  ‘I’m in the red. You say this? What does it mean?’

  ‘It means I have no money in the bank,’ Peter found himself explaining. He knew just what it meant. ‘In the black, you know – it’s the opposite.’

  ‘Tell me, it is Fascist in your language to have money in the bank?’ asked Jozef Goncharov, the war hero.

  ‘Up the Reds,’ said Alexei. ‘You say this in Manchester?’

  ‘Football … it’s a football chant,’ said the dreaming teacher.

  ‘A red-letter day: why do you say this too?’ asked Katya.

  ‘Caught red-handed?’ asked Maria Androvna. ‘Why are the criminal’s hands red in this one of your English idioms?’

  The lying teacher didn’t know.

  ‘What is the red hand of Ulster? Do you know that?’ asked Yuri.

  ‘Please look at the piece of paper with the poem on it, will you?’

  The photocopy showed three verses by Philip Larkin, the librarian in Hull.

  ‘You will read it now,’ said Alexei, turning up the volume on his tape recorder.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said Maria Androvna. ‘What is this “Oval and Villa Park”? “An August Bank Holiday lark”? Why does your Larkin talk about this bird? And this “twist”? It is the popular dance? This so-called poet of yours has spelled the word “Domesday” wrong, I see. “D-o-o-m” is right, no?’

  ‘That’s the spelling of the Domesday Book made by William the Conqueror in 1086. He had subjected the entire country by that date and had the book compiled to document what his conquest included; but, if you look at the words “shadowing” and “lines”, there’s a suggestion of the trenches in the French fields, of the shadow of death, and Doomsday, Armageddon, the end of the world, well, the end of that world anyway … It’s what the po
em’s about, don’t you see?’

  But now there was that silence, the fourteen pairs of staring eyes, and tape recorder running.

  ‘You find the poem difficult? What would you say about the idea of innocence expressed at the end? “Never such innocence again”, the poet says; what do you think he means by that?’

  Still silence, no answering voice, just the fourteen pairs of staring eyes, and tape recorder running …

  ‘I mean it’s a nostalgic poem. I’m not sure if its description of England before the Great War, yes, and the October revolution, is accurate, more tinged with a later nostalgia, perhaps.’

  Deadly dead silence, the staring eyes, and tape recorder running …

  ‘Well, do you all know what “nostalgia” means?’ said the teacher in his sleep.

  Yet more chilling silence, with Peter’s cheeks on fire.

  ‘Nostalgia … is a disease of the soul,’ said Alexei from behind the tape recorder.

  ‘Yes, interesting, a disease of the soul, that’s right. It’s from Greek, isn’t it, and before that German, heimweh, because “nostalgia” was invented by a Swiss doctor to describe the condition suffered by his countrymen who were mercenaries abroad …’

  ‘Your poet, he is looking backward, because he cannot face the future,’ said Katya. ‘He is suffering from this disease of the soul … and you …’

  ‘We have our own great poet of the soul, the Russian soul: his name is Yesenin,’ said Maria Androvna. ‘You have not heard of him?’

  ‘I have, yes,’ said Peter in his own defence. ‘Sergei Yesenin. Didn’t he have an affair with the American dancer Isadora Duncan? Am I right in thinking he committed suicide? Or was that Mayakovsky?’

  ‘It was both,’ said Jozef. ‘Counter-revolutionaries …’

  ‘This man knows nothing,’ said Alexei. ‘He is useless to us. Get rid of him.’

  Two of the students in leather jackets had taken hold of Peter; they were lifting him backwards out of his chair; they were dragging him out of the classroom – at which point he had started up sweating from the bed with such a jump he found himself all but sitting, the sheets in a tangle around him, Sylvie half uncovered and snoring faintly in the pre-dawn light …

  Yuri was pouring neat vodka into the plastic cups arranged on a row of low tables in the school’s common room.

  ‘You drink fast, like this …’

  ‘… in one,’ said Peter and copied him – then immediately ate a biscuit with pink fish eggs to relieve the burning. Yuri was one of the two student Party members. Peter had spotted him on the second day when, by chance, they met on the stairs leading up to the classrooms.

  ‘What did you do last night?’ asked Peter, playing at being the friendly teacher.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t you go out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you watch television?’

  At this, Yuri simply shook his head to indicate that the interview was over, turned, and strode away.

  Yet now he was offering Peter another drink. Standing or sitting in clumps around the common room were all the Russians, some of the permanent staff who had taught them, Phil the union rep included, as well as Rod, Linda, and even Ed. A piano had been found and moved into one corner. The vast array of party snacks, vodka, and Georgian wine appeared care of Maria Androvna and the girl students. Yanna, the Russian Literature professor from the university, had also been invited, and a local representative of the British Council.

  It was the ninth of May, and they were gathered to celebrate victory in the European theatre just thirty-five years before. Tanya and Katya were standing at the piano, while Volodya, who lived in a technology town somewhere outside Kiev, accompanied them in their singing with great gusto. Others around the room would clap enthusiastically and join in snatches. By the time he’d drunk his third neat vodka Peter was becoming seriously inebriated. Ed was deep in conversation with Jozef. Yanna smiled and joined in on the folksongs she knew in her pleasant contralto. Rod and the other members of the permanent staff were fraternizing with professional skill.

  Alexei came over to Linda, who was sitting now on Peter’s left. There were smiles all round and they drank a little more. Another vodka was offered, which Peter accepted and, imitating the style as best he could, downed in one.

  ‘In the Soviet Union we make very good parties,’ said Alexei.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter quizzically, ‘but can you always get the provisions … the food? I mean we keep hearing about how you have to queue for everything and that meat is impossible to find at any price.’

  ‘This is not true,’ he said, quite categorically. ‘My family eats meat every week. These reports are false.’

  And as if to make his point, Alexei offered the pair-teachers another choice from the plate of cakes and sweets nearby.

  Maria Androvna, meanwhile, had moved over to the piano, and, standing between Tanya and Katya, loudly clapped her hands to call for attention.

  ‘Now we remember why we have this party,’ she announced. ‘Volodya plays the pianoforte with so much genius and she accompanies the students in a song led by Katya. Katya, speak now.’

  Katya took a step forward, at which all the students and leaders rose to their feet. The English teachers, faintly nonplussed, divided into those who stood up and those who remained in their seats. Yanna had come over and sat down beside Peter now that Alexei had joined the others. As they all rose, she stayed firmly seated, and Peter took his cue from her.

  ‘Let us raise our glasses to our leader on this visit to Great Britain, Jozef Goncharov.’

  Katya was speaking with a voice of authority that Peter hadn’t heard before. So she must be the other Party member!

  ‘He fought and struggled and suffered for us in the Great Patriotic War. Nor let us forget all of his comrades, heroes of our homeland who were killed by the enemy in the glorious defence of our mother earth against the invading Nazi-Fascist armies.’

  A toast was drunk, which Jozef silently acknowledged. Then without further ado the whole group launched into a song. It sounded like a national anthem. Yanna remained absolutely silent. Peter leant over and asked in a whisper what the words meant.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ she answered with a smile, ‘it says their country is inviolable, their armies invincible – that sort of thing.’

  To the evident relief of the English sitting or standing around, the anthem came to a crescendo-ing end. Volodya immediately looked to her fellow students and struck up the buoyant lilt of a folk-dance tune. Katya’s face relaxed and she attacked a cheerful verse. While some of the male students sat down to replenish their glasses, others moved a few tables and chairs back against the walls to make room for an improvised disco.

  A Dansette record player had been found from somewhere and a selection of old singles furnished for the purpose. At first the girl students danced with each other. Then Alexei rose to join them, and invited Linda to dance with him, which she competently did. Peter smiled a very flushed smile at Yanna and stayed where he was. Even Yuri had got up to join the dancing crowd.

  After the third record Tanya walked over towards them.

  ‘Peter, you must dance with me!’

  Tanya had become one of the most supportive students in his class. His best literature lesson had, in fact, been organized by Rod. It was an ‘information gap’ exercise: the students were divided up into four equal groups and each given a quarter of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Force of Circumstance’. There were sets of comprehension questions to answer, and then, when each group had finished, they would be reorganized into sets of four students, one from each group, who with the aid of their bit of the text and the answers, must tell the whole story through in their own words to each other. The teacher was simply required to move from one clutch of students to another, making sure they could answer all the questions. Peter had thought the tale might have been better chosen. The force of circumstance: a British imperial wife when brought out to liv
e on a rubber plantation discovers that her husband has ‘gone native’. But he found he had thought wrong.

  ‘It is a very fine story,’ said Tanya, one of her front teeth slightly stained. ‘We have known such problems already with our men who go as workers and advisors to the Middle East and Africa.’

  Dance with Tanya? Hopeless as he was, how could he refuse? Peter momentarily imagined another world, the one in which his mother’s family had gone on living in their Moscow apartment, and he himself, though with a different father, attending university there; he imagined himself meeting Tanya after classes for a walk in Gorky Park. Instead, he could enjoy the freedom of his overdraft, jobbing builders in his bathroom, and Sylvie exhausted from the night feeds and their worries over baby Anna’s faint heart murmur.

  Tanya was dressed in the bohemian style of the late fifties and sixties, half way between a jazz club habitué and a folk-rock fan. Her hair was long and straight. She had a cheerful, broad smile, and was unselfconscious about her slightly discoloured teeth. She had lively brown eyes. Tanya danced with confidence and skill, and with moderate abandon. Peter did his unconvincing best to match her.

  When the song was over, as they smiled and stood uneasily together, Katya approached them.

  ‘Tanya is our prize pupil,’ she said. ‘She has been selected to work as an interpreter in Moscow. We are all very proud of her.’

  ‘At the Olympics?’ Peter echoed redundantly. ‘Oh, great.’

  Someone put on another record. It was to be the last, so Tanya and Peter had the last dance together.

  However, before the party broke up, a series of entertainments had been planned. Two of the teachers brought out guitars and sang ‘The Blackleg Miner’. Then Peter was invited forward. He stepped up to the front and fumbled in his pocket for the piece of paper there.

  ‘I’m told you all like Byron very much,’ he said, ‘so I’m going to read: “We’ll go no more a-roving”.’

  ‘… For the sword wears out its sheath,’ he read. ‘And the soul wears out the breast, / And the heart must pause to breathe, / And love itself have rest …’