Making Enemies

by Francis Bennett

  ‘He does not understand the truth about our socialist republic, does he?’ Tomasov says. ‘A man alone can achieve nothing.’

  ‘Tell him we are grateful for what he has done,’ Elizabeth Markarova says. ‘Don’t tell him the truth, that if his presence here has nothing to do with his government, then there is nothing he can do for us. Let him return home believing he has accomplished some good.’

  Is that what they believed? That they could change their own government’s policy? Are they so insular that they care nothing about international opinion?

  ‘We have been defeated,’ Lykowski says. ‘Defeated, deceived and humiliated.’

  ‘What are they saying?’ Stevens asks.

  ‘Dr Markarova is grateful for your efforts,’ Ruth lies. ‘It is good to know that we have international support. We are sure this will influence the policy-makers on the Politburo.’

  Elizabeth Markarova’s insistent nodding underlines the lie as Stevens smiles at her.

  *

  The boy’s expression is solemn. He stares at his father and says in Russian: ‘You cannot stay.’

  She translates. Stevens asks, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Our lives are built on lies. Surely you know that by now.’

  ‘Valery, no.’ She wants to stop him before it is too late.

  ‘Please, mother. Translate for me.’

  ‘Why must you tell him this?’

  ‘I want him to understand. I want him to know that I understand.’

  She translates and Stevens listens. ‘We live double lives here,’ the boy says. ‘We hide our true selves from discovery by the state or by our neighbours. Many of us have buried our hearts and consciences. We have forgotten who we are. That is why we behave like slaves, why we accept, succumb. We are a lost people, without morality, without courage, waiting for a day that may never come. Our lives are being stolen from us by stealth. One day the illusion will break and we will wake up. We will see the enormity of the crime in which we are passive conspirators. It will be too late then; you cannot turn the clock back and relive your life by different rules.’

  ‘What are you telling me?’ Stevens asks.

  ‘You do not belong here,’ the boy says. ‘You must go home.’

  *

  An insistent rhythm penetrates her dreams, invading the floating world of her mind, forcing her to rise from its depths and wake up. She hears it again, edgy and sharp, alarming her. She gets out of bed and puts on her nightdress. She hears it again. A hand drumming urgently on the door of her apartment.

  Nearly two o’clock. Surely it is too late for a visit, even though it is a hot night. (People are out in the streets, all evening she has heard the sounds of their voices through the open windows.) She unlocks the door, her heart pounding, and as she opens it, Andropov bursts in.

  ‘Is Stevens here?’ he asks, pushing past her.

  ‘It’s two in the morning.’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘I was asleep.’ It isn’t what she means to say, but in her confusion and fright these are the only words she can say.

  ‘Get the English Professor out of bed.’

  She looks at him blankly, her mind in turmoil. What is happening? Why is Andropov in her apartment at this time of night? Why is he shouting at her? She has never heard him speak like this before. His raised voice strikes fear into her heart.

  ‘Bring him to me.’

  He takes her by the arm and shakes her. Horrified, she shrinks from him.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Stevens is standing at the door, an absurd figure, his hair uncombed, his body eccentrically wrapped in the sheet from the bed, like a toga. He is fumbling with his spectacle case.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ she says feebly.

  ‘This is surely too late for a social call, Colonel Andropov, even in Russia,’ Stevens says. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Sit down,’ Andropov says. He pulls out a chair. ‘I presume it is me you have come to see.’ Stevens sits down and puts his hand through his hair, brushing it into some kind of shape.

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘What is this about?’

  ‘Do you wish to speak in front of Dr Marchenko?’

  Stevens nods, uncertain.

  Andropov leans against the window ledge and looks down at Stevens. He takes out a cigarette and lights it.

  ‘We made a bargain and you have broken it,’ Andropov says.

  ‘What bargain? I made no bargain,’ Stevens says. (Is he expressing outrage or confusion?)

  ‘We agreed that you would retain your freedom so long as you left the boy alone.’ Andropov’s tinted lenses appear menacingly dark in the half-light of the room.

  ‘I agreed nothing of the kind.’

  ‘You were to leave the boy alone.’

  Her instinct tells her that Andropov is not talking to Stevens, he is giving a message to her.

  ‘Did you expect me not to talk to my own son?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Andropov says bluntly.

  ‘Geoffrey?’ She is frightened now. Threats to her own life, Geoffrey’s, even her mother’s, are all things she can cope with. But her son is the most precious thing in the world to her. ‘What did you promise?’

  She sees Stevens turn towards her, horror in his eyes. How can she say that? How can she ask such a question of the man she loves? Has she sunk so low now that she doubts the father of her son?

  ‘You were not to speak to the boy,’ Andropov says coldly. ‘You were to teach him nothing.’

  ‘I made no bargain and I have broken no bargain.’

  ‘His teachers say differently.’ Their reports give accounts of V. Marchenko subverting his fellow students by persistent attacks on Academician Lysenko’s theories. That is anti-communist propaganda.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Ruth says, the desperation in her heart making her voice hoarse with emotion. ‘My son would never do such a thing. Never.’ She has trained him too well for that.

  Andropov ignores her. It is as if she was not in the room. There is a contest going on between these two men whose meaning she does not understand and in which she has no part. But she knows that is what Andropov came for.

  ‘There is only one possible source that allows him to promote such opinions.’

  ‘There are many sources for those views,’ Stevens says. She is proud of the vigour of his rejection. ‘His own common sense, his scientific instinct, the doubts of his fellow pupils, the opinions of other scientists. Anyone with any knowledge of the laws of physics. Lysenko’s theories are dangerous nonsense and should not be taught.’

  ‘They may not be taught in the West.’

  ‘They’re bloody nonsense, of course no one teaches such absurd ideas in the West.’

  ‘They are endorsed officially here.’

  ‘If you knew any science you would have nothing to do with Lysenko. What’s happened to the great tradition of Soviet scientific enquiry? How can you allow yourselves to be beguiled by such idiocy?

  Stevens is shouting at him. She still does not understand what is happening. Andropov cannot have come to her apartment at two in the morning to argue about scientific theory.

  ‘If Valery is denouncing Lysenko’s mad ideas, then he is right to do so. But he isn’t, is he? He isn’t denouncing anything because he hasn’t opened his mouth. You and your people have invented this whole ludicrous story. God knows what you hope to gain by it.’

  Andropov pulls an envelope out of his pocket.

  ‘Here are the reports of his teachers, his classmates. That is all the evidence I need.’

  ‘Evidence for what?’ Ruth’s heart is beating so fast she can hardly speak.

  ‘To order his arrest.’

  There are the first words he has addressed to her.

  ‘My son is not a dissident,’ she says quietly. ‘He has done nothing. I will not allow you to touch him.’

  ‘The boy’s sixteen. Little more than a child,’ Steven
s says. ‘He poses no threat to you or anyone. Why can’t you leave him alone?’

  ‘We cannot tolerate the son of a Soviet scientist who proclaims unorthodox views,’ Andropov says.

  ‘A boy of sixteen cannot undermine this or any other state,’ Stevens says defiantly. ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘Your son will be charged with offences against the state.’

  ‘No!’ Ruth screams. ‘No! You won’t touch him! He is my son. He belongs here with me. You cannot touch him. He has done nothing.’

  She rushes at Andropov but Stevens holds her back. She tries to break from his grasp.

  ‘He’s not here to arrest anyone,’ Stevens says, taking charge. ‘That’s not why he came, is it?’ He turns to Andropov. ‘He’s threatening Valery in order to frighten me. He wants something else. All right, I’ll listen to what you have to say. But the boy must be left out of it.’

  Andropov stares blankly at him and doesn’t move. Ruth waits. Once more she has the sense that this confrontation has another agenda, another script, the purpose of which she has no idea.

  Stevens pulls the sheet tighter around him. ‘Tell me what you want.’

  The sight of these two men in her small sitting room, facing each other like gladiators, is a moment of illumination for Ruth. Suddenly she sees the truth with awful clarity. She knows that she can have either her son or her lover but for reasons she doesn’t understand she can never have both.

  ‘What are we playing for?’ Stevens asks. It is a game they are playing now, where the bets are human lives.

  ‘The boy,’ Andropov says.

  ‘No,’ Stevens says. ‘The evidence against him is false. A few typed sheets. Anyone could do that. We play for the truth or we don’t play.’

  Andropov smiles. ‘If I have created it once, could I not create it twice?’

  ‘The question you must decide is, will it be worth it?’

  ‘That we will see,’ Andropov says. ‘It depends what you can offer me.’

  They are not fighting over her, these two men (did she believe for a moment that they might be?), she is forgotten. They are fighting another battle which will decide whether or not Stevens survives intact. She knows without a word being spoken that Stevens must leave Moscow, that her greater loyalty is to her son. That is not the point at issue. It is the method of Stevens’s leaving that counts. Will he be allowed to return to Cambridge whole enough to be able to continue as before?

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘We want you to go home.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘Why?’

  Andropov lights a cigarette. ‘Our assessment was wrong. We imagined you might help us. We were mistaken. You cannot or you will not give us the information we need. We could use force against you to persuade you to talk, but strange as it may seem, we can see no purpose in that. It is better that you leave the Soviet Union and return home.’

  She knows then that he cannot go home undefeated. The battle that Andropov is fighting is already over. Whatever is agreed now, Andropov has won. Stevens will return to Cambridge disabled by his weeks in Moscow and she, Ruth Marchenko, will have been the instrument of his defeat. Why did she let Andropov use her to bring Stevens to Moscow? She should never have told Stevens that Valery was their son. She should have resisted the opportunity to meet him again after so many years. She should have had the courage to go on living alone in her dreams where she and Valery were safe. Imagining that she could have Stevens to herself again, even for a few days, was her mistake.

  In any case, in the years they have been apart he has forged another life, just as she has done. She has tried to steal that other life by rekindling the love that she once felt for him, and in doing so she has put her son in jeopardy and caused her lover’s downfall. Stevens does not understand that now but one day soon, when his life lies in tatters around him, he will come face to face with the truth of what has happened. Then he will condemn her. How she hates herself for her weakness.

  *

  It is dawn. She is alone. She sits at her desk and writes the letter to Stevens she has been wanting to write for days.

  Are some dreams more precious than the reality of life itself? Do we need the safety of escape to a world we can control for the sake of our own sanity? In the imagined universe where I have protected our memories, we have loved and lived together all these years, we have shared delights and sorrows. I have had the faithful companionship of a wise friend from whom I could seek advice, whose voice has always come to my rescue in the moments of my greatest loneliness. In that secret world you have always been mine and I yours.

  Part of me does not regret seeing you again. The man I met was the man I remembered, the only difference being that I could touch you, see you, experience your presence beside me. They were wonderful hours. But they made me weak. They made me want more of you. I hated to think that you might leave me a second time. Selfishly, I agreed to get you to come here, to Moscow. I was deceived and I deceived you. What greater crime is there than to deceive the man you love?

  My love for you has been used against you. You were brought here to the son you didn’t know you had. Whatever you may have gained by coming to Moscow, you will pay for on your return home. No one will ever understand your motives for being here, you will not be forgiven. Your career will be ruined because you were true to your feelings. Is the gain worth the cost? For all our sakes, I can only hope so. If I did not believe that, my life would not be worth living.

  You must leave Moscow before its evil damages your life any further. Already you have suffered appallingly. Please go while there is still time to salvage something. There is nothing to stay for here. I have you in my son, and we will survive because that is what we have learned to do. But this is not your world.

  Ask your other son, Daniel. See in him the goodness that I see in you. Listen to him. He knows the world in a way you never will.

  You have given me my son. My gift to you is to return to you your other son. Now leave this awful place and go to him. I have my memories of you, and they will be with me always.

  I have brought you so much trouble. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?

  Remember us and our love for you, always.

  15

  MONTY

  The room on the second floor of the house off Park Road in Wimbledon is dark. Someone has pulled down the blinds, even though it is daylight outside. The bulbs in the overhead light and the lamp on the table are weak and give out a watery glow, adding to the hallucinatory atmosphere of the proceedings. The interrogation team works in shifts. The questioning continues relentlessly.

  *

  His first impression is not how crowded the room is, nor how many people are there (certainly many more than he had expected), nor how noisy it is (everyone is talking at once), but how full of smoke, as if someone had lit a bonfire, the acrid smell of Soviet cigarettes. Bloody Red Stars. His eyes burn, he can hardly see to the back of the room where the film cameras are. He is just able to read Pathé News on the side of one of them. The talking dies away as he takes his seat, and the smoke gradually clears. Andropov draws up a chair beside him and pours a glass of water for them both. A battery of microphones faces him, strange metal fish waiting to capture what he says and swim away with it to an invisible world.

  Is this the world’s press? he thinks as he surveys the room. What a grand phrase for such a dismal collection.

  ‘Professor Stevens would like to read a statement.’

  Andropov nods at him. He takes the paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and unfolds it. The action revives memories of the day-long battle he and Andropov have waged over what he should say. For a moment he wonders, shall I tear up the text? Shall I say what I want to say? But he decides not to. Yesterday’s compromises were hard won.

  ‘I would first like to express my gratitude to Colonel Andropov and his colleagues for their hospitality towards me since my arrival
in Moscow. I have wanted for nothing.’

  He hears his own voice and it is as if someone else were speaking. He is astonished that he could be praising the Soviets in this way, when at every turn they have put obstacles in his path, they have lied continuously, they have deliberately misled him. He told Andropov yesterday that no one would believe him if he were to thank his Russian hosts in this way. But Andropov insisted that this appalling, hollow introduction remain in the script.

  ‘What is a British nuclear scientist doing in Moscow? That is what you want to know. I came here because I believed that if I appeared in the Soviet camp, there was an even chance I might be listened to.

  ‘The importance of what I have to say lies beyond ideology, nation states, the ambitions of world leaders. It concerns us all, every man, woman and child, every living organism on this planet.’

  *

  There is a knock at the door. They stop talking at once. Someone brings in a tray of mugs of tea. They each take the mug offered in silence. He sees that milk has already been added. There is a bowl of sugar and one spoon to be shared for stirring. He declines the sugar.

  ‘Why did you go to Moscow after Helsinki?’

  ‘I wanted to see my son.’

  ‘You and Marchenko had been planning this for some time.’

  ‘On the contrary, it was a shock to learn from Dr Marchenko that I was the father of her child. A great shock.’

  ‘We know you met your son in Helsinki. Why was it necessary to go to Moscow?’

  ‘He and his mother were under guard in Helsinki. It was impossible to talk to him in such circumstances. I wanted to be alone with him. I wanted to see him without Colonel Andropov listening to every word I said.’

  ‘The circumstances would be more favourable in Moscow?’

  ‘That is what I believed, yes.’

  ‘That was the idea Colonel Andropov sold you.’

  ‘I see that now.’

  ‘You trusted Andropov?’

  ‘I believed what he told me at the time, yes.’

  ‘Were you justified in your belief?’

  ‘No. That is why I behaved as I did.’

  *

  It is going well, he thinks to himself. They are listening to me. Andropov sits beside him, very still, occasionally drinking from his glass. He can hear the whirr of the film cameras at the back of the room, he sees the bowed heads of his audience as they write in their pads, some with earphones on are listening to the female translator’s voice. (‘Don’t speak too fast,’ she had asked him in faultless English when he had been introduced to her shortly before the press conference began.)