Captive of Desire

by Alexandra Sellers

  Their questions ranged wide, from the conditions existing in his old homeland to his plans in his new one. Mischa answered them openly, matter-of-factly, with a dry wit that kept their laughter always on call. But the humour did not prevent him from making points, from showing his anger.

  “Mr. Busnetsky, how many political prisoners would you estimate there are in the Soviet Union?” a dark-haired woman in the front row asked when the half hour was coming to a close.

  He responded quietly, “I do not need to estimate, I can tell you exactly. The answer is two hundred and sixty millions.”

  There was a short pause then, and beside Laddy, Pavel Snegov raised a negligent hand.

  “The gentleman beside Miss Penreith,” Mischa’s deep voice said without the least hesitation over her name, though he had never spoken it before. Pavel Snegov stood up.

  “Snegov, Novosti,” he introduced himself. “When do—”

  Mischa raised his hand, cutting the question off. “No,” he said, and there was a glitter in his eyes that was not quite a smile. “The Soviet state has asked me all the questions she is going to ask me. I do not answer any more.” There was a flurry of indrawn breaths, but Mischa’s gaze calmly moved on. “The gentleman in the second row?” Pavel Snegov, calm, and smiling in cold fury, sat down again.

  “Gerald Harding, Reuters,” said a blond young man who reminded Laddy of John. “How long will you be staying here in Wales and where do you plan to go when you leave?”

  “I shall be traveling to the United States within a week,” Mischa said, and Laddy sat up with a gasp. She had heard nothing of this. “First I go to a clinic for health treatment, and later I am asked to do a lecture tour which, if I am well enough, I shall do.” He leaned back in his chair then, and Laddy knew he was exhausted, more exhausted than he had been after a night searching for Rhodri. “At the moment this does not seem to me very likely,” he smiled self-deprecatingly, “but the doctor tells me it is probable.” He moved to stand up then, weariness etched on his face for all to see.

  In the moment before the applause started, a woman’s high voice called out, “One last question, Mr. Busnetsky?” When she saw him nodding at her, Laddy realised that the voice was her own. “One of your compatriots, another dissident, has said that while he was in prison, in order to keep himself alive it was necessary to have a dream. What was the dream that kept you alive, if you had one?”

  “You,” he had told her once. “I told myself that if I stayed alive I would see you again....”

  Forgive me, she prayed silently now, her eyes on his face pleadingly. Forgive me, but I have to remind you now that this is me, that you love me....

  His face was suddenly drawn under the bright lights the television crews had set up. “I had a dream,” he said in a voice harsh with fatigue. “But the lady whose memory kept me alive is dead now.”

  “Dead?” she gasped unbelievingly.

  “Dead to me,” said Mischa Busnetsky shortly. He nodded to the room and crossed to the door while the journalists made friendly applause. Laddy could feel her own palms slapping each other at regular intervals, but the sound she heard was not applause. She was hearing Mischa’s voice on a sunny morning against the rushing sea, Mischa’s voice saying, Their betrayal is worse than if they had died.

  * * *

  “How on earth did it happen?” Helen and Laddy sat across the table from each other in the large bright kitchen of Tymawr House. Laddy was gazing helplessly at the early edition of that day’s Herald, where a picture of Mischa that had obviously been taken within the past few days lay over the small headline “Busnetsky Exclusive.”

  Soviet dissident Mikhail Busnetsky, recently released in exchange for a Soviet spy, last week spoke to Herald reporter Lucy Laedelia Penreith about the dissident movement in Russia, about life in the camps, about his first impressions of the West, his plans for the future.

  Starting tomorrow, watch for this series of exclusive interviews....

  The headline story, over a photo of the painted deer, was “Cave Art Authentic.” Under her by-line was the story she had filed last night after talking to Roger Smith, the archaeologist from the museum.

  Laddy looked at the paper helplessly. “I don’t know how it happened,” she said to Helen. “But I can guess. I suppose this is the only time in my life when I’ll get credit for two front-page stories at the same time.” She laughed mirthlessly. “If anyone had ever told me that that would give me no joy at all.... “ She took a breath. “John must have gone into my cottage last night and taken the papers I’d been working on. He took them to my editor and said I’d sent them. There’s simply no other explanation.”

  “Would your editor run the story without speaking to you about it first?” Helen asked. She had come to find Laddy as the press conference broke up, and shown Laddy the copy of the Herald that she and Richard had brought from London...that Mischa had read just before the press conference this afternoon.

  “It’s hard to get me on the phone here,” Laddy pointed out. “And I’m sure John gave him the file with a message that I had sent it.” She stood up disconsolately. “I’ve got to talk to Harry again, Helen. May I use the phone?”

  “Harry,” she said when, after ten minutes of listening to him argue with someone at his desk while holding the receiver to his chest, she finally heard his voice in her ear, “Harry, John stole those papers he gave you out of my house, out of my desk. He went in when he knew I wasn’t home and searched my desk. You can’t run the interviews. Not yet. I promised Busnetsky to let him read and approve them and he hasn’t seen them yet. I also promised to hold the story till he was ready to talk to the press, but it’s too late for that now.”

  There was a pause during which she heard the click of Harry Waller’s lighter, then the long exhalation of his breath.

  “John had pictures of Busnetsky—of you and Busnetsky,” Harry said.

  “Which he stole through the kitchen window,” Laddy replied, unable to keep disgust and contempt from her tone and not trying anymore, “after I told him the story wasn’t ready to break yet.”

  “I suppose you realise, dear girl,” Harry said, “that if you’d told me what you were doing in the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened. But never mind that now. Have you got carbons of this stuff John gave me?”

  “Yes,” she said dryly. “He did actually leave me those.”

  “Check it out now, Laddy,” Harry said. “You’ve got it there; have Busnetsky go over it today as soon as you can to approve it.”

  Laddy breathed deeply. “He is extremely angry, Harry. He may just say we can’t run it at all.”

  “He won’t do that,” Harry said, meaning Harry would ignore it if he did. “He did give you the interview in the first place. Tell him to be sensible and recognise the fact that these things happen. Through nobody’s fault. Get back to me as soon as you can with any changes.”

  By rights, the articles belonged to Laddy. She could refuse to let them run at all, if she were willing to fight hard enough, if she were willing to make Harry angry, make the Herald look foolish, shatter her own reputation...

  But Mischa’s hiding place was already discovered; the whole world knew where he was. What purpose could be served now by not publishing the interviews? The damage was done.

  “I have to talk to you,” she told the steely-eyed stranger sitting at the kitchen table in his cottage.

  Mischa replied shortly, “I don’t think so.”

  “Helen told me you saw this morning’s Herald.” Laddy held up a sheaf of carbon copies of typewritten sheets. “These are the articles Harry wants to start running tomorrow. I told him you would want to approve them—read them and delete what you don’t want printed—but you have to do it immediately, Mischa.”

  He regarded her steadily for a moment. “Since I have no doubt that there is nothing there I would like to see printed, I will not waste my time,” he said, and turned back to his work.

  Laddy said despe
rately, “You promised me an exclusive, Mischa. I drafted these articles—I was going to show them to you for approval! I had no intention of giving them to Harry now! Mischa!” she cried as, ignoring her, he continued to write. He looked up at her slowly. “John stole them from my desk last night, and now there’s nothing I can do about it. The damage is done. But please, read these and make sure there’s nothing in them that shouldn’t be published.”

  Her voice was pleading as she dropped the sheets on the table in front of him, but he didn’t touch them, didn’t look at them.

  “I told you once before,” he said, “that I do not make bargains with my freedom. I told you you must make up your mind to steal it. Apparently you have done so. You will publish what you wish to publish. Do not engage me in the farce of seeking my approval.”

  “Mischa,” she begged, feeling forced to take the papers off his desk as if they were a contamination there, “I can stop them. It will cost me, but I can stop them. But you haven’t read them, you don’t know what’s there. Don’t make me fight this for nothing, Mischa. If after reading them you feel that no part of what I’ve written should be published, I’ll stop them. But please don’t ask me to pay so highly when I don’t know why I’m paying. Please read the articles.”

  His expression when he finally looked at her was empty. “And what words would I have to use to convince you of my right to privacy?” he asked. “You think that I should read those papers and find justification for what I do not wish the world to see—perhaps this sentence endangers a cause or that paragraph puts a life in danger. But I have given you no such information at any time. There is only one person’s freedom I have placed in your hands—my own. And I tell you that I do not bargain for that. Nor do I plead. We all pay for our own actions, and now I pay for mine. Publish your stories. You worked hard and well to get them.”

  “I love you, Mischa. Don’t you believe that?” she said desperately.

  “No doubt to the extent of your limited ability you do love me,” he said. “But perhaps you will understand that I have had enough of people’s limited ability for loyalty.”

  “There’s no limit to my love for you,” she said quietly, hopelessly. “I’d die for you, Mischa. I love you more than my life.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, in the calm tones of a judge.

  Laddy drew herself straight in front of the table. “You’re talking to me as though I’m no more than a reporter you hardly know,” she said, her voice choked and hoarse. “You’re asking for everything and giving nothing. Tell me—as the man I love, as the man who...who loves me—tell me not to publish these articles, and I’ll stop them.”

  She paused, while Mischa looked at her, saying nothing. “Mischa,” she begged, “can’t you see? You want me to give in the name of love what you are not prepared to ask in the name of love. You want me to do it all myself. But I can’t. I can’t give up all the respect, the reputation I’ve earned at the Herald over three years to walk in a void where you don’t even speak to me.... “ She stopped, choking back tears, waiting.

  His eyes were dark, full of messages she could not read. He smiled faintly at her.

  “Goodbye, Lady,” he said.

  He picked up his pencil and turned back to his work, and after a moment Laddy turned helplessly towards the door. “Unless you are leaving,” his voice arrested her, “we shall be neighbours for several more days. This cottage is my property. I do not wish to see you on my property again.”

  It chilled her blood and marrow. Her hand on the open door, she turned her head to meet his eyes, and for the first time since she had met him, the person who looked at him was Lucy Laedelia Penreith, journalist.

  “You could hardly have said that in Russia, could you?” she remarked coolly. “You’re admirably quick at adapting to the West. Try to remember, in future, that one of the great differences between dictatorship and democracy lies in the freedom of the press!”

  * * *

  Thursday morning, after a sleepless night, Laddy got up to a cold and rainy day. It was the first day without sun since she had arrived in Wales, and the Coastal Path was transformed.

  She walked for an hour on the Path, high along the cliffs over the sea, the fine mist wet on her face and hair, the wind blowing away the cobwebs in her mind. She walked till she stood overlooking Aberdraig, a small town nestling in a cove below her, protected by the high cliffs and by a thick seawall.

  She sat on the white-gold wood of a farmer’s stile and gazed across to the cliff on the other side of the cove, where what looked like an ancient standing stone was silhouetted high on the headland. She wondered if it was one, and if so, why Rhodri had never brought Mischa and herself to see it.

  Perhaps he had wanted to show them more important sites first, not knowing how much time they had, fearing the three of them could only be together for a short time. She herself had never thought of that, Laddy realised now. Somewhere deep inside her she had accepted that she and Mischa would always be together, and she had never stopped to wonder where. She laughed a little, and was surprised to hear the sound against the murmur of wind and sea. She might, she reflected, have awakened one morning in the cottage in Trefelin to find that years had passed, wondering what had become of her house in London, her friends, her job, so besotted had she been....

  She had drafted those articles as an exercise in love, as an exploration of who Mischa Busnetsky was, to try and understand what he had gone through. She had not thought of their being read by anyone except herself, though perhaps the time might have come when she would have asked Mischa to approve them for publication. But while she wrote them—from notes, memory and tapes she had twice made of their conversations, piecing together his observations and experience into a narrative—it had been a labour of love. “A Discovery of Mischa Busnetsky,” she might have called it, showing it to him. A discovery of her love.

  The man who would continue to be her love, no matter what he said to her. He had said he did not love her, but first he had told her, much more strongly, that he did. And he had not been lying then, she knew he had not. He loved her, but he believed she had betrayed him, and so she had become “dead” to him. That was his method of self-preservation. He had had years of practice of steeling himself against the betrayal of people who were close and dear to him, fellow warriors in the freedom battle who had sold out. He must know so well how to close himself off to such things that it was second nature to him, an automatic response that he no longer consciously controlled.

  But she had not betrayed him. Her only sin was her stupidity in not locking her door against a man who said he loved her and whom she had thought of as a friend. Had thought, she repeated to herself with a grim laugh, and noticed how the same unconscious mechanism that operated in Mischa operated in herself. John Bentinck had betrayed her, but she didn’t even feel the pain of it, because already he had ceased to be her friend. If he had come to her now and told her he loved her, she would have stared at him as distantly as Mischa had gazed at her.

  Laddy stood up with a bound of release and threw her head back to feel the light droplets of water that seemed to be materializing rather than falling on her skin, so soft were they. Joy and resolution filled her like light. She would make him listen, make him understand. She would refuse to leave him until he had heard her out—no matter whose property she was on.

  She clambered over the stile and set out at a slipping run along the muddy Coastal Path. Ahead of her the white horse galloped across a field, his tail high, his spirit as free as her own.

  The proprietress of the small shop on the main road in Trefelin had had the foresight to order additional copies of the national morning papers from Fishguard, so when Laddy arrived, shortly after the bus that brought the papers had passed through, she was able to buy one of each. The Herald was a London paper, not a national one, so she would see no copy of it today.

  She was wet when she arrived back at the cottage, which now, in the rain, seemed co
sier and more protective than ever. Dropping the papers and her bag of provisions on the kitchen table, Laddy headed to the bathroom for a warming shower. Then, wrapped in a robe, she set a fire in the sitting-room grate and settled down for a lazy morning with the papers while she waited for the sound of Mischa’s footsteps to announce that he was home. Outside the sky was growing darker and the rain on the roof became gradually more insistent.

  The photo of the dying reindeer, which had yesterday run in the Herald, had been picked up by the wire services and was running in all three of the broadsheets. It was a good picture: she had not taken the time to examine it closely yesterday, but now she saw that even in the harsh glare of the flash, justice had been done to the powerful talent of the artist.

  “Courtesy of AP/UP,” read the acknowledgment under the photo in the Telegraph and the Guardian, but in the Times the tiny printing read “Photo © John Bentinck.”

  Laddy let the paper fall into her lap and gazed into the bright crackling fire on the hearth.

  So John had not been prepared to wait and achieve his dream honourably. Having in his possession exclusive photos that were of enormous interest to the world, he had not been able to resist the temptation to claim them as his own. It was a breach of professional ethics that a week ago she simply would not have believed him capable of. But now she knew better, and she knew that John Bentinck could not have let this opportunity slip by. He would have had to justify this to himself, perhaps telling himself that he had set up the camera, that if the passage had been wider he would have pushed the button himself; telling himself, more importantly, that Laddy would not benefit from the picture credit and it would be foolish to waste such a chance—that it could make no difference to her, but all the difference in the world to him....Laddy knew the arguments that a weak man would use in justification for what he wanted to do, as surely as she knew, looking at that credit caption, that the arguments had prevailed in John Bentinck’s mind.