He has not said anything for some time. She is used to his silences. He is a victim of depression, bouts of melancholia that strike with regularity. Now is not the time in his cycle for such an attack, nor has he exhibited any of the familiar signs that he is beginning that slide away from rationality into the dark quarters of his mind where she cannot follow him. He has displayed no dramatic changes of mood recently, he has had no migraines, nor has he shown any sudden feelings of elation. But she senses that he is struggling with some deep anxiety, and she is afraid this may trigger a new attack. She says nothing to break the silence. If their relationship is to survive (it is too precious to her to imagine it not surviving, for reasons she suspects Miskin does not understand), then she must obey the protocols they have established. Each has the right to his or her own silence. But he asks suddenly:
‘When do allies become enemies?’
‘Yuri?’
She hates it when Miskin talks about politics, it always makes her feel unsafe. Politics strains the bargain she has made with herself. What she cannot control or influence in her life she ignores. Miskin would be shocked if he knew.
‘When they believe the little they know about each other.’ He looks pleased with the solution to his conundrum. ‘A few months ago Russia and the West were allies. Together we defeated our common enemy, Nazi Germany. Now our leaders tell us that the West is our enemy. Don’t you ever ask yourself what has brought about this extraordinary reversal?’
How can she tell Miskin that she worries about what she can do to relieve the pain her mother suffers, about the progress of her son at school or whether or not she should tell him the greatest secret of her life?
‘The danger in this new world order,’ he says, ‘is that both of us, the Soviet Union and the West, are riding blindfold towards a catastrophe.’
His pessimism is something she has learned to live with, knowing it has its roots in his depression.
‘Let us conduct an examination of the patients and see if we can diagnose their malaise.’
This is Miskin as the academic he should have become but didn’t. There is nothing he likes better than the rigour of an intellectual autopsy.
‘What do we know about the West? Only what our leaders want us to know, and we have no means of challenging what they tell us. We are a nation in quarantine, cut off from any contact with the rest of the world. This, of course, is for our own good.’ He smiles to himself at that. ‘The West, we understand, is massing troops on our borders throughout Europe and in the East, preparing to use their nuclear bombs against us because communism is the enemy of capitalism and must be destroyed. The West is our enemy. Obediently, we hate the West.
‘What does the West know of us? Only what we want them to know. They see our huge armies threatening their borders throughout Europe and to the East, preparing for the last great struggle, the outcome of which is beyond doubt, the ultimate victory of world communism. The Soviet Republic is the enemy of the West.’
He turns towards her, a smile lighting up his face. ‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Where is the difference?’
She is not sure she has followed his argument. She waits for him to continue.
‘If Marxism had not outlawed the practice of scepticism, we would ask ourselves: Can the great Soviet Republic and the capitalist West really be the mirror image of each other? Surely such a coincidence is unlikely? We would ask questions of each other, demand more information of our leaders; we would test, even challenge the conclusions we are fed. But we are no longer a sceptical society, we have lost the habit of asking questions because we have no mechanism through which to ask them. We have lost the ability to speak out. We have become a sullen, silent and unquestioning people. That is where the danger lies.’
He takes out a cigarette and lights it, drawing heavily on it before he speaks again.
‘And what does the state do? Having set the hare running, it must give chase. We respond to the dangers we have created. That is why the Red Army has so many men under arms, why we push out our borders: Poland, the Baltic, perhaps Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, possibly even Germany, Greece, who knows where it will end? France, Italy, Britain? Why you and I and others like us devote our lives to the creation of this mighty weapon of destruction. We are not acting belligerently, we are told, but in self-defence: we must protect ourselves because our nation is threatened by the warmongers in the West. The justification of our political strategy lies in the potent image of our powerful enemy.
‘There is a paradox at work here, but who is aware of it? The more we work to protect ourselves against this new enemy, the more we are in danger of provoking a similar reaction from the West. Why should they not protect themselves against the warmongering Soviets?’
Now she understands where this conversation is leading. Conversation? It is a monologue, and one that she wishes he would end. Nervously she looks round to see that they are still quite alone.
‘Neither image is true, yet both are believed. How can that be? Neither side has sources of intelligence to challenge these images on which we base our political and military strategies. We only believe of each other what we are told. We are the victims of each other’s propaganda. What we refuse to face is the unpalatable truth that we may already be on the road to a needless and unnecessary war.’
‘Yuri, please, no more.’
She does not want him to go on talking like this. She has enough on her mind without worrying about his safety too. But he is unstoppable now, he cannot hear her objections.
‘Our leaders know the truths all tyrants know,’ he says. ‘Control information and you control the world. Starve the people of truth and in their hunger they will accept lies. Our leaders feed us the images of their own propaganda which have little to do with any objective reality. Often, they are demonstrably untrue. Yet we accept what we are told, we obey blindly because our leaders must be right. Out of ignorance, we have become a nation of slaves.’
As they walk beside the river, the only sound is that of their boots crunching on the frosted grass.
‘We are being led into a war against an enemy who may not exist. We will both have in our hands weapons of ultimate destruction. We may go to war without reason and in the process destroy the world. You and I are helping to create the means of that destruction. That is a terrifying responsibility. That is what frightens me.’
*
They are standing on the river bank. She puts the toe of her boot in the water and breaks off the ice which she kicks away. She watches the water flow into the gap and slowly congeal.
‘What can you see?’ Miskin asks.
He is looking across the river at the snow-covered meadow on the other side.
‘Nothing except ice and snow,’ she says.
‘The dead land of winter.’ He digs his heel into the frozen earth to no effect. ‘Yet we are surrounded by living organisms; so many different kinds of life lie sleeping beneath the frozen earth and under the icy surface of the river, behind the bark of the birch trees. The question we must ask ourselves is: What if this sleeping world did not wake up?’
‘Of course it will wake up,’ she says.
‘What if it were to die in its sleep? No spring. No rebirth.’
‘The earth would become a desert. Human life would become extinct.’
‘And we cannot allow that to happen?’
She wants to say: Surely we cannot stop nature, surely it is a power far greater than any we possess. You only have to look at how a blade of grass will find its way round almost any obstacle in its urge to find the light and survive.
‘It won’t happen because we do not have the power to make it happen.’
He shakes his head at that; his whole being is turned inward.
‘But we do; we do. I have calculated the levels of destruction of ten, a hundred, a thousand nuclear explosions. Imagine explosion begetting explosion, the air we breathe alight with firestorms that no living organism can survive. Imagine the noise of the w
orld destroying itself. It is a terrible prospect.’
‘It won’t happen,’ she says again. If this is some kind of intellectual game, she has suddenly become impatient with it. ‘No nation will go to war in order to destroy itself in the process of defeating the enemy.’
‘If we develop nuclear weapons,’ he says, ‘if the West develops nuclear weapons, how can there be safeguards?’
How can she stop him? How can she prevent his analysis leading him to conclusions that will trigger the depression whose power is enough to destroy him?
‘For the first time in history,’ he is saying, ‘we have the power of life and death over nature. We hold in our hands the ability to save or to destroy this planet. It is an awesome burden.’
He takes off his glove and reaches into the pocket of his overcoat. He produces a stone. She remembers he found it one afternoon two summers ago. She did not know he had kept it. He shows it to her.
‘There is the mark of life in this stone. Look.’ She sees the fossil, it looks like a sea horse, pale lines trapped beneath a smooth flint surface. ‘Imprisoned for millions of years, but historical evidence of a living organism. That is a symbol of what we have inherited, of our struggles to survive on this planet, of battles between rival empires and ideologies, of all the marks of our civilizations, of the existence of life itself.’
To her surprise he throws the stone on to the icy surface of the river. It skids across and comes to rest under the opposite bank.
‘Do we have the right to threaten the continued existence of all this, the earth, the water, the life it contains; exchanging what you see here, the trees, the meadow, the river, for a desert of emptiness, poison and disease, the matter of anti-life, darkness, death? Nothing will remain except the ashes of our folly, the monument no one will be alive to see. Can we be responsible for that? Can we release this ultimate power into the control of our military and political leaders? Do we trust them not to let their ignorance lead to the destruction of life as we know it?’
At that moment she remembers a phrase Stevens used all that time ago to describe the scientists sitting around the table in a restaurant in Leiden so many years before: The sons and daughters of quantum physics. That is the perfect description of Miskin. His life has been dedicated to the harnessing of the power he now wants to reject. Over the past weeks she has been so concerned with her own predicament that she has not seen what has been happening to Yuri. Now she knows the depth of his desperation as he struggles to reconcile his conscience with his duty. If he tries to outface the powers of the state, he will be annihilated. If he does nothing, he will destroy himself. It is a dilemma for which she can see no solution.
9
DANNY
It was a desolate evening as I made my way across Parliament Square and up Victoria Street. A bitter wind blew flurries of icy rain into my eyes and made the street lights dance in front of me. By the time I reached the building where Monty lived, my face was frozen and I could hardly speak. I climbed the stairs to the third floor and rang the bell. Monty Lybrand’s flat was a pied-à-terre in a dark grey building in a street of dark grey buildings not far from Westminster Cathedral.
‘My God, look who it is.’
Monty Lybrand was coming towards me with arms outstretched. I had little choice but to fall into his embrace.
‘Let me look at you. Let me see what the bastards have done to you.’
‘I’m all right, Monty. I’m fine.’
Monty and I had known each other since we were children in Cambridge. My father had always disapproved of our friendship because he disliked Monty’s father, who had arrived in the town about the time I was born, with a young wife and three children to set up what became a highly successful drapery business. More children, much money and civic honours followed. The Irish draper became a popular local figure. Why my father took against Declan Lybrand I never knew, but it must have had deep roots because his hostility never relented.
My friendship with Monty meant I spent much of my time in the Lybrands’ large and untidy house that overlooked Jesus Green. If my father saw me setting off on my bicycle he would say, ‘Off to the enemy, are you? Aren’t there better ways to waste your time?’
My father was a distant figure in my childhood, occasionally glimpsed on his bicycle in King’s Parade or Petty Cury. If we met I was usually the butt of his criticism or ridicule. Small wonder I preferred the chaotic warmth of the Lybrand household to the ordered coldness of my own home. Celia’s arrival as my stepmother gave me an unexpected ally. She disapproved of my father’s treatment of me and said so, and I shall always be grateful to her for that. But by then I was growing up. School finished, I went to Caius to read history while Monty started in his father’s shop. Then the war came. Monty had failed his medical when we both went to join up.
‘Wonky back,’ he told me. ‘Fallen arches, short sight; in fact, wonky bloody everything. I can see my war’s going to be spent fighting from behind a desk. I expect to be invalided out within a month suffering from a sore arse.’
Months later he had a desk in Whitehall and the talkative Irishman became curiously evasive when questioned about his contribution to the war effort. I never understood precisely what he did because he never told me, but I knew he was in some branch of the Intelligence Service. I used to tease him about being a spy but he always denied it.
‘I’m just another bloody civil servant, as if there weren’t enough of us already.’ Somehow his denials lacked conviction.
Monty poured me a drink and refilled his own glass. I leaned towards the gas fire, watching the blue and yellow tongues of flame shoot upwards with a roar into the hood.
‘God, Danny, Berlin. You’re wasting your life in that godforsaken hole. Why don’t you call it a day and quit before you lose your sanity?’
‘And do what?’
‘You were never a soldier. Come on, admit it. There’s other things in life than wearing a uniform all day and marching to the beat of a drum.’
‘You’ve been talking to my father.’
‘He wants you to go back and finish your degree, doesn’t he?’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t listen to him. You do what you want to do.’
I mumbled something about my inability to take any decision about my own life, how drifting was all I felt capable of.
‘It’s la guerre, Danny, it’s knocked the stuffing out of you. You’re winded, that’s all. You’ll get your breath back. Everyone does sooner or later. Just give it time. Tell me about Berlin. We hear the Russians are pushing you all the time. Is that true?’
‘How much do people know here?’
‘They know little and care less.’
‘Don’t they want to know what’s happening elsewhere?’
‘You’ve been away too long, Danny. Nobody wants to know anything any more. That’s the trouble with this country. We’ve overdosed on reality. We’re war-weary, fed up with the whole bloody business of belt-tightening, stiffening our upper lips and making do. On top of everything else, the country’s bankrupt. The last thing we’re looking for is another conflict, so if there are threats out there, the bloody Yanks can deal with them while we piece our lives together. I’m right, aren’t I? Even in the short time you’ve been back, you’ve felt that, haven’t you?’
My own reticence in talking about Berlin had never once been challenged since my return. Such conversations as I had were all about the rights and wrongs of what the socialist government was doing. Monty was the first person to ask me what the Russians were up to in Berlin.
‘Some people think the next war’s already started,’ I said.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes I think they’re right.’
‘What makes you say that?’
I told Monty what it was like in Berlin, about the relentless challenge of the Soviets about every single thing we did. He listened intently, only occasionally interrupting to ask a question. I got the impression that he learned little
from me that night he didn’t already know, but I was reassured that my conclusions were not simply my own.
‘How to wake up a world that’s exhausted itself from five years of conflict to the territorial ambitions of those bastards in the Kremlin, Danny, that’s the question. The man who knows the answer to that is the man I’d like to meet.’
The telephone rang. Monty bellowed down it as he always did.
‘Leo, my dear boy. Where are you? No. Tonight. Tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Twenty minutes. Half an hour then. No, my party. My shout. Don’t be late.’
He put down the telephone. ‘My favourite Russian. You’ll like him. He’s joining us for dinner. We’ll eat, we’ll talk, we’ll try to forget this barren land we’re living in, God help us all. We’re meeting downstairs in half an hour.’
‘Downstairs’ was Monty’s name for the restaurant that served the residents of the flats. I had been there once or twice before but I had forgotten how austere a room it was, with little decoration and, when we entered, few diners. It reminded me of communal eating at school, which is no doubt why it appealed to Monty. In some ways he had never grown up.
‘Mr Krasov is at your table, sir.’
‘Leo. My dear friend.’
Monty’s voice is never quiet. This greeting was a roar from one side of the dining room to the other. Heads turned and immediately looked away in disapproval. Monty was impervious to the effect he created. His entire being at that moment was concentrated upon a small, dapper man who rose from a table only to disappear from sight in Monty’s huge embrace.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have identified Monty as the Russian, with his great gusts of laughter, his extravagant gestures, his flamboyant theatrical style and his enormous physique. Krasov’s small head, elfin features and diminutive stature suggested anything but a Slavic stereotype, he looked so small and weak.
Making Enemies Page 8