The Russian Interpreter

by Michael Frayn

  ‘I see you’re looking at my beads,’ said Proctor-Gould, coming back into the room holding the kettle, now steaming, at arm’s length.

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My beads. Presents for the natives. I always bring a suitcase full of English books when I come over – they’re like gold-dust here.’

  He felt under the clothes in his case again, and produced two stout plastic mugs. Inside a spare suède shoe he located a Woolworth’s apostle spoon, and beneath a pile of dirty socks the old familiar tin.

  ‘Do you mind Nescafé?’ he asked.

  ‘Delightful.’

  ‘I always bring it. Boiling water’s the only thing you can get without waiting in Russian hotels.’

  Manning watched him lever open the lid with the apostle’s head, and perform all the rest of the soothing ritual. It took him back. It took him back to all the indistinguishable student lodgings in which he had sat, beneath mantelpieces lined with the annual programmes of university societies, and party invitations all written on identical At Home blanks as if they were impersonal communications from some university department responsible for party-giving. To evenings spent talking about women and grants to visit America, and consuming chocolate digestive biscuits and Nescafé, the body and blood of scholarship itself. Nostalgia touched him, and he felt pleased to be with another Englishman here amid the sad smells of Russia.

  ‘You’ll have to have it black, I’m afraid,’ said Proctor-Gould, though the liquid in the mug was more a kind of dark gravy brown. ‘There seems to be a milk shortage in the shops at the moment.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Manning. ‘It’s nice to meet you at last. I hear we’re old friends.’

  Proctor-Gould took his own mug and straddled comfortably with his back to the radiator, as if it were an open fire. He gazed benignly down at Manning.

  ‘We are, Paul,’ he said. ‘We are.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You don’t remember where we met?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At John’s.’

  ‘John’s? John who’s?’

  Proctor-Gould laughed. It was a snuffling laugh, the kind of noise one might have expected a bloodhound to make, if something about the scent had struck it as funny.

  ‘“John who’s?’” he repeated contentedly. ‘That’s good. I must remember that.’

  ‘I still don’t know.’

  ‘We were in college together, Paul.’

  ‘Oh, John’s.’

  ‘It’s not what he says,’ said Proctor-Gould, in great good humour. ‘It’s the way he says it. Anyway, I’ve been checking up. You were two years behind me. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing you around in my last year.’

  ‘Now you mention it,’ lied Manning politely, ‘I rather think I remember seeing you.’

  ‘You had a room in Chapel Court, didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Ah. I probably just saw you walking through.’

  ‘That would explain it.’

  ‘But we must have seen one another in Hall, for example.’

  ‘Of course we must.’

  It was presumably a John’s tie that Proctor-Gould was wearing. Now that Manning had a reference point against which to locate him, Proctor-Gould appeared even more curiously seedy. Double-breasted blazers and baggy grey flannels had gone out of fashion years before he and Proctor-Gould had arrived in Cambridge. Vaguely he visualized a Cambridge full of perambulating double-breasted blazers just after the war, with utility marks in their linings and ration books in their pockets.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘I’m in business now. You see before you one of the bright young men you’re probably always hearing about who go out and develop trade with the Soviet Union.’

  He smiled lugubriously, and pulled vigorously at his right ear – with his left hand this time, since he was holding the mug of Nescafé in his right. When he stopped, Manning noticed with a shock that his right lobe was visibly longer than his left.

  ‘What do you deal in?’ asked Manning.

  ‘Oh, pictures, fashions, musical instruments – all the little unconsidered trifles that no one else thinks of as coming from Russia. And people.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘Yes, quite a large proportion of my business is in people. I expect you’ll think that means I’m a theatrical agent?’

  ‘I can’t think what it means.’

  ‘It’s a conclusion a lot of people seem to leap to. But in fact I don’t touch the theatrical profession at all. I’m not a literary agent, either – that’s another common mistake people make. I don’t handle authors, in the normal sense of the word.’

  Proctor-Gould gazed thoughtfully into the brown dregs of his Nescafé, as if brooding upon human error and delusion.

  ‘No, Paul,’ he said, ‘I deal exclusively in ordinary people – the more ordinary the better. And this is where I want you to help me.’

  7

  ‘The point is,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘there’s a tremendous demand for ordinary people. The Press and television in Britain and America are crying out for good human material. You might think it’s strange at first sight, but producers and editors find it very difficult to meet people outside the entertainment industry. They simply don’t come across them. It’s easy enough for them to get hold of professional personalities, of course – novelists, pop singers, beauty queens, politicians, that kind of person. But they want to get away from the professionals. They want to get at the real flesh-and-blood people who make up the other 99·9% of the world. There’s a market all right. And of course there’s a plentiful source of supply. All you need is a middleman to bring the two together.’

  He put his mug down, warmed his hands at the radiator behind his back, raised himself on his toes, and let himself sink slowly back on to his heels again.

  ‘I hope I don’t sound mercenary,’ he said. ‘For me this isn’t just a way of making money, I assure you. It’s something I believe in very deeply. You see, Paul, I think professional personalities aren’t the only interesting people around. I believe that everyone is of interest to the public. I believe that everyone has a story to tell, a point of view that’s worth putting across, a personality that the public would be interested to explore.’

  He hesitated, and smiled anxiously.

  ‘I don’t know whether that seems just a lot of absolute balls to you?’ he asked,

  ‘No,’ said Manning. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘It seems a lot of absolute balls to some people.’

  ‘Really? Not to me.’

  ‘No, well, it doesn’t to me, of course. But I know from experience that it does to some people.’

  He picked up his mug again, and ate a spoonful of the syrupy, half-dissolved sugar at the bottom.

  ‘I said that everyone is of interest. In theory that’s perfectly true. But time and human patience being limited, in practice one has to select only people who can put themselves across. That’s why a skilled agent is needed. That’s what I earn my modest margin for.’

  ‘How do you tell who can and who can’t?’

  ‘It’s a knack, Paul. It’s just one of those funny old knacks. I can tell within a few minutes of meeting someone whether they’re suitable or not. For instance, you’re not, if you don’t mind my saying so. You wouldn’t come over at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to apologize. It’s not something you can control. It’s like being pigeon-toed, or colour-blind.’

  ‘I see. So I can’t really help you after all?’

  ‘Oh, that’s not why I wanted you. Though I’ve always got my eyes open, of course.’

  He opened his great mournful eyes very wide to demonstrate. Manning suddenly had a vision of Proctor-Gould as he must have been before he had gone up to John’s and bought his first double-breasted blazer in Bodger’s the outfitters. He saw him living in his parents’ semi-detached house in Anerley or Edgware, filling the box-room with piece
s of radio transmitter, writing to pen-friends in Tanganyika and New Zealand, building a home-made sports car out of a motor-cycle engine and beaten biscuit tins.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s Russians I’m interested in. I got into the business as an undergraduate, really, when I was organizing visits for various Soviet student delegations. It was such a fearfully complicated and long-winded business, dealing with the Soviet authorities in those days – after I’d done a couple of delegations I became the accredited expert, and people began calling me in to arrange delegations and groups and exchanges of every shape and size. I had to start charging a fee to cover the time I spent. The thing I noticed was how much in demand the Russians always were when they were over – everyone wanted them to come to parties, give lectures, appear on television quiz shows, and so on. So I started charging fees to everyone who wanted to borrow them, as well. Pretty soon I had unique contacts with the Soviet authorities, and what was almost a full-time business on my hands.’

  ‘And the Russians are prepared to co-operate in all this?’ asked Manning.

  ‘My dear Paul, they fall over themselves to co-operate. The Soviet authorities and I are like that.’

  He hooked his two index fingers together.

  ‘There have been rough passages, I admit. But there are some bright young men coming to the top in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs these days. I’ve gradually persuaded them that the best possible advertisement for Russia abroad is not sputniks or coal-cutting machinery, but ordinary common or garden people.’

  ‘Don’t they always want you to take only worthy and reliable citizens?’

  ‘They did at first. You should have seen some of the specimens I collected on my first couple of trips! Honestly, Paul, I practically killed myself trying to work them up into something usable. It was all right as a novelty, but we couldn’t possibly have gone on running stuff like that. It was the Yevtushenko affair that changed everything.’

  ‘Was he one of your clients?’

  ‘Alas, no. But the bright young people here began to see that mavericks and rebels like Yevtushenko created not a worse but a better image of Russia in Western eyes. All right, they said, the West refuses to accept that Russia is contented and monolithic. But perhaps it might accept the idea that Russia is a turbulent, intellectually vital country seething with new ideas. For the last couple of years I’ve been able to get virtually anyone I wanted, provided they were fundamentally loyal, like Yevtushenko. I’m in a position of trust and privilege, of course, and I take care not to abuse it. I might add that the Soviet government recognizes me as having exclusive rights on the whole Soviet market.’

  ‘That’s an absolutely staggering achievement,’ said Manning, amazed that anyone dressed as Proctor-Gould was could get so far. Proctor-Gould plucked at his ear, and lengthened his long face dismally, to conceal his pleasure at the compliment.

  ‘But I’m told you don’t speak Russian,’ said Manning.

  ‘Now you’ve put your finger on it. I don’t. I’ve tried to learn, but I’m afraid I’m just no linguist. Never mastered this comic alphabet they’ve got. Naturally, most of the people who are going to be presentable as personalities in Britain or the United States speak English. All the same, I think the time has come when we’ve got to try and get at the real Russia, and that means going far beyond the English-speaking section of society. I work very closely with V.O.K.S., the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations, who provide me with interpreters – and I can always get an Intourist girl from the desk downstairs. But it’s not easy to assess the personality of a Russian when it’s being filtered through another Russian, with a Russian outlook and Russian preconceptions. What I need, it seems to me, is not a Russian who has learnt English, but an Englishman who knows Russian. I wondered if the job might appeal to you? It would only involve a few hours a week away from your thesis – I can still do all the routine work with a Soviet interpreter. I’ll pay you what I’d pay an interpreter in London, two guineas an hour. I’ll pay it in sterling, or in Swiss francs, or in roubles at four roubles to the pound. Whichever you prefer.’

  Manning held up his spoon, and squinted over it towards the window so that the apostle just covered the domes of the Uspensky Cathedral. He was trying to conceal his pleasure at being offered a job. In the lower depths of the academic world, which he inhabited, jobs were applied and competed for, not offered.

  ‘The vetting was satisfactory, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Vetting? Oh, come, come. It was just a few discreet questions.’

  ‘And what did you find out?’

  ‘Just that your Russian is fluent, and that your standing with both the Soviet authorities and the Embassy is reasonably good. That’s all I wanted to know.’

  ‘What made you think of me in the first place?’

  Proctor-Gould shrugged.

  ‘I heard your name mentioned in London.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘I can’t really remember. Another old Johnsman, probably, who remembered you were installed over here. The old boy network again, I expect.’

  Manning got up and went across to the window. It was a dull, dead day, with a low ceiling of cloud moving slowly over from Smolensk and Mogilev in the west, past Moscow to Sverdlovsk and the unimaginable distances beyond. Tiny figures in grey raincoats and grey fedoras trudged across the great landscape of the square. Here a man in a double-breasted blazer with threads of cotton hanging from the nap could still prosper.

  ‘I take it that this offer is entirely what it seems?’ asked Manning suddenly. ‘I’m not being recruited for some sort of intelligence work?’

  Proctor-Gould turned slowly round towards Manning and gazed at him steadily with his great brown eyes.

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just a thought.’

  ‘I ask you to interpret for me – and the first thought that comes into your head is that it might have something to do with intelligence?’

  ‘Well, one’s always hearing of people being approached in some roundabout way.’

  Proctor-Gould pulled his ear in silence for a moment or two, gazing sombrely down at the heap of clothes on the floor.

  ‘Let me assure you, Paul,’ he said slowly and quietly, ‘that this has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Silly of me to mention it.’

  ‘You accept my word?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And let me ask one thing of you, Paul. Never – ever – refer to intelligence or espionage in the context of our work again, even as a joke.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Things get overheard, as you know. They get misunderstood and misreported. And once an idea has been implanted, however preposterous it is, it’s almost impossible ever to uproot it again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gordon.’

  ‘Don’t forget – our work depends on creating confidence.’

  From the word ‘our’ Manning took it that he was considered as engaged. Already he found Proctor-Gould a strangely impressive employer.

  8

  Manning’s life became a round of parties, receptions, conferences, congresses, reunions, exhibitions – all the various bends and corners in life at which a sediment of people might be deposited for inspection. For his purely commercial dealings in balalaikas and Repin prints Proctor-Gould continued to use Soviet interpreters. But there turned out to be a third aspect to his activities which he had not mentioned before, and for which he preferred Manning. He was an export-import agent in goodwill. He had commissions, Manning discovered, from a number of organizations in Britain which wished to maintain or improve their contacts with the Soviet Union. Manning spent hours with him calling on government offices, university departments, and cultural agencies to convey greetings from British counterparts. They shook hands, drank toasts, smiled smiles. Often they delivered gifts, usually books from the stock which Proctor-Gould had referred to as his beads.

  ‘I
accept commissions of this sort only from organizations with the right sort of standing,’ he explained. ‘I help them – their reputation helps me.’

  ‘You do it for nothing?’ asking Manning.

  ‘No, no – I charge a modest fee. They’re happy to pay it, I can tell you – it costs them far less than it would to send a man of their own over here. And I don’t want to boast, but I probably make rather a better job of it than they would themselves. I know from long experience how Russians like these things to be done.’

  ‘You seem to have struck quite a little goldmine,’ said Manning.

  They were walking down a crowded shopping street as they talked, back to the black Chaika saloon which the government had put at Proctor-Gould’s disposal. At Manning’s remark Proctor-Gould stopped among the crowds, and fixed Manning with that gaze of curious intensity and levelness which indicated that the subject was so important to him that it took up the whole of his attention.

  ‘Paul,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t like you to get the wrong impression about my work here. There’s nothing cynical about my attitude, I assure you. I happen to believe that there’s nothing more important in the world today than the establishment of trust and understanding between Russia and the West. If I can feel that I’m making some small contribution to this end by my professional services, that’s my real reward. The money is of secondary importance. I should like you to get that quite clear, Paul.’

  Manning believed he was sincere. Proctor-Gould had that patent sincerity directed towards unsubtle objectives which is the strength and hallmark of public men. That was what he was, thought Manning – a public man. He was not interested, as Manning was, in making his contacts with the world around him personal and intimate. Towards his parents, thought Manning, he would make generous formal gestures, as if they were not so much his parents as the emissaries of parents as a social class; towards women, gestures of generalized concupiscence, as if they were not Lucinda or Sally-Anne, but representatives of Lucindahood and Sally-Annity.