‘One last thing.’
He lit another cigarette from the one he had just finished and drew on it heavily. I have always hated the smell of Red Stars.
‘I have not led a good life. I have been a bad husband and a bad father. Perhaps I do not deserve to live. I cannot die without telling you that I have betrayed you. I did it to save myself. I informed my interrogators about Stevens. I told them everything I know. Perhaps more than I know, perhaps I embellished the truth because I thought a bigger lie might buy me my life. I should have known that there are no bargains to be traded in this state. Now I am afraid they will use it against you. I should not have done what I did. I know that now. I do not believe in redemption. But I beg your forgiveness.’
I held his poor cold body in my arms for the last time, I gave him what warmth I could, and left him to his fate.
She has fully re-entered the world of her past. The only reality is her memory, which runs through her with the force of a tide going out, an invisible power that nothing can stop. After years of living in the eternal present of the system, she is taking possession of herself through the rediscovery of her memories.
It is like waking up after years of sleep, a moment of liberation, releasing great energy within her, flooding her body with a warmth which she has not felt since the last days of her innocence so many years ago. Through her words she is discovering who she is. She talks without restraint.
Her interrogator is called Andropov. She imagines he must be an officer in the KGB. He is courteous and correct, never raising his voice, never touching her. She finds his reasonableness frightening because in this house of terror he is all she has to cling to. He is using his guile to make her trust him, even to like him and she has to fight off the temptation. At times it is very hard.
She returns to the interview room. The interrogation begins again.
‘During our investigation of his crimes, your former husband gave us certain information about you. I wish to verify the truth of his allegations.’
Did they have to force these secrets out of Ivan? No, he would have volunteered what he knew without being asked. Always an angle to play with Ivan, another line to shoot. Ten years apart and he still thinks that betraying her will save his skin. She realizes how desperate he must have been. For a moment she feels close to forgiving him, but the feeling passes.
‘In June 1932, as a member of a Soviet delegation, you attended an international conference on physics in Leiden. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were a member of a team from the Institute of Physics?’
‘Yes.’
‘The conference lasted five days.’
‘If you say so. I don’t remember.’
‘While you were there you met a British scientist?’
It is her first conference, her first trip outside Russia in her life. She is twenty-eight, married for one year to the engineer Marchenko, excited by her work, already regretting her marriage. During a coffee break on the second morning she is introduced to Geoffrey Stevens, a physicist from Cambridge, one of the major speakers at the conference. She knows of him by reputation, has read some of his articles in Nature and The Physical Review and is interested in his theoretical work on atomic energy because it is close to her own. She has come to hear him speak. Meeting him is more than she had hoped for.
They discuss the talking point of the conference, the publication earlier in the year of a paper by the Cambridge scientist, James Chadwick, which reveals the existence of the neutron. This discovery, Stevens tells her, is a turning point in the history of physics. It may lead to the liberation of energy from the atomic nucleus and the subsequent use of atomic energy for industry. She is exhilarated by the fire of his enthusiasm for a world in which a new and inexhaustible source of energy makes possible an undreamed-of era of industrialization. Differences of culture and political belief vanish as they exchange ideas and information. The experience leaves her almost breathless, excited in a way she has never been before, the reasons for which she doesn’t yet fully understand.
For the rest of the morning, sitting in the lecture theatre, she hears only his voice in her head, nothing from the platform. At lunch she eats with her colleagues, listening to their complaints, their bitter assessments of their fellow physicists, their criticisms of a way of life of which they are secretly jealous. She says little, her mind is elsewhere. To her surprise Stevens brings his coffee to her table and sits down beside her. He fetches sugar when she asks for it. She registers the disapproval of her colleagues and feels pleased.
At the start of the afternoon session Stevens takes his place on the platform. She watches him put his hands to either side of his head as if to shade his eyes from the light, lean forward on his elbows and then slowly, very slowly, survey the auditorium until he can see where she is sitting. He drops his hands at once, sits back in his chair and stares at her.
She asks herself: what is happening? Why am I like this? Why is he like this? She thinks back over what has happened between them. There is no concealment in his expression, no dissimulation. She is unused to this directness and she finds it disturbing. In her society men and women are practised in the art of concealment. The idea of revealing what you think or feel is extraordinary. But when he talks to her, he tells her the truth. That has not happened to her before.
That evening, at a reception, she wonders if he will seek her out again. Surely not. It is too risky. She stations herself near the exit, talking to a dull Polish mathematician and watching over his shoulder as Stevens gathers up a group of colleagues at the other end of the room and then, with handshakes and smiles, slowly makes his way towards the door where she stands. At least she will catch a glimpse of him, perhaps a smile, a wave, the promise of a meeting tomorrow. She admires the casual way he spots her (did she imagine it or had he already seen her standing by the door?) then greets her as if they had known each other for years.
‘Ruth.’
He reaches past someone to touch her outstretched hand in greeting. They’re going to eat at a restaurant nearby. Why doesn’t she join them? He gathers her up into his group, introduces her to people whose names she doesn’t catch and sweeps her out into the warm summer evening. She submits to her conquest with abandon.
They eat in the garden of an inn popular with the students, seated on benches around a long wooden table. There are a dozen of them, British, Dutch, German, two Italians; mathematicians and physicists. She is the only Russian. She sits as far away from him as she can. But throughout the evening she feels his eyes on her, even when she has her back to him. Once, or does she imagine it? she sees him raise his beer glass and toast her secretly across the table. She experiences a moment of fear that others might see but nobody does. Or she thinks nobody does. She is grateful that it is dark enough to hide her confusion. She is sure her face is on fire.
It is an extraordinary evening, unlike any other. They talk enthusiastically about their work, these young scientists, ‘the sons and daughters of quantum physics’, Stevens calls them. They share an excitement in their discoveries, a confidence in the role that science must play in the life of the planet, an eagerness for the new world of quantum mechanics, how they will unravel the deepest secrets of nature to release atomic energy and the uses to which this source of energy will be put. She shares in the sense of brotherhood that Stevens stimulates in them, how they share ‘a responsibility to work together for the good of mankind, a confederacy of scientists to whom science and democracy mean more than nationality’.
‘We must be leaders,’ Stevens tells them. ‘Not in a political sense. We must work alongside politicians to achieve the new world we can all sense within our grasp. We must influence politics with our understanding of what can now be achieved through the application of science.’
The flames of the candles burning on the table are reflected in their glasses as they raise them to acknowledge Stevens. Did that happen, or was it an illusion? That summer night,
did they swear allegiance to one another, did they create a brotherhood that would ignore political loyalties? If only she could remember now.
She responds to their optimism and envies their innocence (there is no innocence left in the Soviet Union, there is only caution).
Later on (is it midnight? Later still? She has lost all track of time by now), they walk in a garden, she and this English professor. (She can’t remember where it is or how they got there.) Where the rest of the party is by now she has no idea either; for a time they were with them, drinking and debating, and then they were not. Did he engineer that? She doesn’t care how it has happened, she knows they are alone, perhaps they are alone in all the world, and she feels reckless and free and excited. They stand watching the stars in a clear, dark sky. It is very still and warm.
Suddenly, under the branches of a walnut tree he takes her hand in his: she is surprised how hot his hand is. Then he apologizes immediately and releases her hand as if it had burned him. He retreats from her. Perhaps it is embarrassing to her, he is so sorry, he is not good at this sort of thing. But he is glad she was there at dinner. He smiles at her, that open, defenceless smile that touches her heart. The moonlight shines through the leaves and makes a pattern on his face. In that moment she loves him more than she knew it was possible to love anyone.
She remembers standing on tiptoe, reaching up to put her arms around his neck, drawing his face towards her, that dear, open smiling face, and then she is kissing him, was it once or many times? How can she know after so many years, except that she remembers the shyness of his kiss, the tremble of his body in her arms. She puts her hands to his face and kisses his eyes and his lips, and she feels his arms around her, pulling her body closer to his.
How long they stay like that she does not know. With her lips still on his face, she moves in his embrace, very slowly at first, almost carelessly, so that his hand touches her breast. She hopes he will think it is accidental. But she does not remove it, she lets it lie there for a while, and then she covers his hand with hers. She looks up at him and smiles, leans her head against his shoulder and then leads him by the hand through the garden, through the deserted streets of the sleeping town and up the stairs to her room.
‘Did sexual intercourse take place?’ Andropov asks.
Why are men always interested in sex? Those days had not been about sex or not only about sex, but about something more fundamental even than that. How can she explain that to this man?
They stand facing each other in the darkness of her room. She whispers ‘Wait,’ and goes into the bathroom. There she takes off her shoes, her dress and her underclothes. She likes her dress, it does not disgrace her, though she sees how unfashionable it is by comparison to the dresses she has seen in the streets of Leiden. But she is ashamed of her underclothes, worn grey through use and darned. She washes her hands and face and between her legs, cleans her teeth and combs her hair. She wears no jewellery apart from her wedding ring and she does not bother to remove that. Then she turns out the light and goes back into her bedroom. For a moment, before she is used to the dark, she sees nothing and she thinks he has gone. Then she notices his clothes tossed carelessly over the back of a chair. He is in bed, lying under a single sheet.
She gets in beside him, her heart beating so loudly she is sure he will hear it. They lie beside each other for a while, not touching. Then she reaches for his hand and turns her body towards his, her head down as if she is afraid to look at him. He takes her chin in his hand and raises her face so he can see her in the moonlight that streams in through the open window. Then slowly and softly he begins to kiss her.
Afterwards, while he sleeps, she holds him in her arms and feels a sense of completion she has never known before. She tries to define the emotion. Is it love? She has only experienced what she imagines is love once before, and it was with Marchenko in the first months. It was nothing like this. There was no tenderness in what he did to her, no meeting of equals, only a man with his desire and she with her ability to satisfy it. She recognizes now what she has always known but refused to admit. She does not love Marchenko, has never done and will never do so.
She lies against Stevens, and knows that in this room and on this night in this strange foreign town, her being and that of this man whom she hardly knows, fused for one moment. She was not obliterated by this act (as she has been before), she was enhanced by it, liberated: perfected, that is the word she chooses. In giving herself to this man she has been brought to an undreamed-of perfection. She is now more herself than she has ever been. She exults in the emotions of tenderness that flow through her. She is lost to one world but she has found herself in quite another.
They are lovers until the end of the week. Everyone knows about their relationship at once (at conferences everyone always knows who is sleeping with whom) because she is constantly by his side. He insists they eat together though she thinks this is unwise, but he will hear nothing of her objections. When she is with him, she cannot resist smiling at him. She takes time off with him from the conference to buy some lipstick, skin cream, scent, some special soap for the bath and new underclothes. She goes to the hairdresser. Stevens wants to buy her a dress but she refuses to let him do this.
She expects her colleagues to criticize her behaviour (she even fears she may be sent back early to Moscow) but they don’t, though they express their disapproval (or jealousy) through their silence. She is not sure why they don’t criticize her. Perhaps they realize that these events may be stored away for future use. Patience is one of the arts of living under communism. You hoard the indiscretions of your colleagues and neighbours against the day when the evidence can be used to your advantage.
Isn’t that what Ivan had done? Isn’t that why she is in this room now, answering Andropov’s questions? The day of reckoning always comes (it is one of the few certainties of life in Soviet Russia), but for these few days in Leiden she chooses to forget so many of the lessons she has learned in her adult life. She knows she has made enemies, but she consoles herself with the thought that everyone has enemies, so what does it matter? Recklessly, she gives no thought to the future because she sees none beyond the end of the week.
‘You don’t deny it? I am surprised,’ Andropov says.
‘What is there to deny? It all happened so long ago. It was not important then. How can it be now?’
At the end of the week, Marchenko returns to Moscow, Stevens to Cambridge. They part knowing it is unlikely they will meet again, though they say to each other that they will move heaven and earth to make such a meeting possible. In the emotion of their parting, promises are made. There are other conferences and Stevens has his red university diary with him. He skims through the pages and recites the names of cities she has heard of but never seen.
Milan. Basle. Oslo.
She says she will try, but the decision is not in her power; she thinks it will be difficult if not impossible to persuade the Institute’s authorities to let her go.
Moscow, then, Stevens says. He will come to Moscow in January. He will give a paper to the Academy of Sciences. Only a few months to wait, then they will be together again.
For a moment they dream of a few days in the city in which she has spent all her life. But in their hearts they know how enormous are the obstacles they must overcome and that makes their parting so difficult. Now, all these years later, she knows that what they dared not say to each other that day has come true. They were not to meet again, and now there is no likelihood that they will ever do so.
‘Perhaps there are people who would not share your view that your affair with Stevens was unimportant.’
She hears the threat in Andropov’s voice, but she cannot stop herself defying him.
‘They would have to explain their reasons,’ she says.
Enemies, she thinks, have long memories. She never expected the enemy to be the man with whom she briefly shared her life.
‘Stevens was married. So were you.’
/> ‘Adultery is not a crime.’
‘We are dealing with deviant not criminal behaviour.’
‘I cannot see why a brief encounter with an English physicist so many years ago is of the slightest concern to anyone. It was a trivial event.’
Andropov considers her answer. She does not know whether it is important in his eyes, since he has chosen to resurrect the event after so much time, or whether it is just an excuse to arrest her.
‘Let us wind the clock forward sixteen years. What has happened to Stevens? He is still at Cambridge, he is one of the most important scientists in the British nuclear programme, he is a Nobel prizewinner. He has an international reputation,’ Andropov is saying, but she is hardly listening to him: a flood of memories is enveloping her. It is a joyful process, remembering those days with Stevens.
‘He was always going to succeed. It was obvious even then.’
She says it carelessly, without thinking. It is her only mistake but it is enough. Andropov has been waiting for such a moment. He has caught her off guard. In those few words, she has betrayed herself and possibly Stevens too, and though she stops herself from saying anything more, it is too late. She has revealed her secret to Andropov, and he knows that Stevens is not dead for her, that some memory lives on deep within her, nourished secretly all these years. That is what he came to find and he has not been disappointed. He has learned her weakness, and now he has the power to exploit her. She knows he will do so mercilessly.
Andropov leans back into his chair, confident and relaxed. She shivers even though she is not cold.
2
DANNY
‘If we believe all they tell us,’ Toby Milner said at the end of a grim day of listening to men and women denying a past that was undeniable, ‘there weren’t enough Nazis in this country to fill a paper bag, let alone form an army. So how did Hitler manage to survive for so long? That’s what I’d like to know.’
Making Enemies Page 2