The Unfortunate Englishman

by John Lawton

  “Has he now?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Joe. You’re making this personal.”

  “Alec. He’s an idiot. He has no handle on what just took place in front of his eyes . . . he sees nothing . . . I asked him what he had to report . . . and he recited chunks of LBJ’s speech . . . I could have got that from any newspaper . . . it was Brandt’s reaction that mattered . . . he can’t see Brandt . . . he can’t see Berlin, he can’t see Berliners . . . and I’d be amazed if he has a handle on our Geoffrey. Bring Radley back to London. If you think his relationship with Masefield matters, he can run him from there. In Berlin the man is a liability.”

  More silence.

  “Stay there.”

  “What?”

  “Just stay there. Work with Tom for a while.”

  “Alec—”

  “Joe. You cooked your own goose with your opinions just now. If you really think Tom is that bad, then you must stay there until I can resolve the matter.”

  “I’m not taking over the Berlin station.”

  “And I’m not asking you to.”

  More silence. Wilderness’s silence. A silence Burne-Jones would not be the one to break.

  §83

  On the Tuesday morning following, Ida Siekmann, a fifty-eight-year-old nurse, long-widowed and a resident at 48 Bernauer Straße, just a few doors away from the former home of Eva Moll, jumped from the fourth floor window of her apartment. Jumping now being a regular occurrence, if not yet an actual tourist attraction, the West Berlin Fire Brigade had become an almost permanent presence somewhere along the East–West axis that Bernauer Straße sliced through the post-war division of the city. Politically, jumpers leapt East to West, geographically, South to North, from the Soviet Sector to the French. Alas, Ida allowed too little time for the fire crew to scuttle house to house and open the catching-blanket—she threw down her bedding, blankets, and an eiderdown, and jumped. Her old bones shattered on the stone pavement and she died on the way to hospital.

  The first death of the new crisis.

  Eva Moll received the news with little less than rage.

  “What future do you think you have here? What future can anyone have here?”

  And Nell replied, as she always would, “It’s where I belong.”

  “I know. You keep telling me. You’re a Berliner, if not the fucking Berliner! Nell, Berlin is an island. An island you haven’t left since . . . since God knows when.”

  “It was 1945.”

  “Almost twenty years . . . you make my point for me. You may think you know Berlin, but you don’t know Germany. You haven’t been to Germany for twenty years. This isn’t Germany . . . this is the artificial island, a great pontoon floating on the almighty dollar . . . but the dollar’s not as mighty as the Red Army. The Russians can take Berlin whenever they want.”

  Nell was keeping calm by an effort of will. Sipping at her cup of herbal tea in the pretence that they were still girlfriends chatting. A pretence she could not sustain.

  “I know they can. But . . . they won’t.”

  “A hunch?”

  “An opinion.”

  “Same thing. You’re going to gamble your life on a hunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I won’t be around to watch you do it. I’m going West. I’m a trained legal secretary. If I can’t find work in Bonn or Frankfurt . . . well what is the world coming to?”

  The last throwaway piece of rhetoric was a question Nell would dearly have loved to be able to answer, but she had no answers, just more opinions to be dismissed as hunches, so she said nothing.

  Eva’s ankle was normal by Thursday morning, the twenty-fourth. She took her bag to the Charlottenburg Bahnhof and boarded a train for the West.

  Later the same day the DDR policy of shoot to kill claimed its first victim. Günter Litfin, aged twenty-four, a tailor, who, like Eva Moll, lived East and worked West, was shot by a sergeant of the transport police as he tried to swim the Humboldt canal.

  §84

  Moscow: August 24

  Masefield had another audience with Koritsev. Such a good customer after the indium deals that he merited a full-blown undersecretary once more—no more deputies, assistants, deputy assistants or assistant ­deputies—and the relayed good wishes of Comrade Minister Patolichev himself, as they discussed the possibilities of a deal for zinc.

  Zinc bored Masefield. He could not think of another metal quite so boring as zinc. Even lead was more interesting than zinc, and neither of them could hold a candle to bismuth, pretty in pink with a hint of ruby red and verdigris. But . . . the Soviet Union had zinc galore. Close to a million tons produced every year. The UK? Bugger all.

  As he was leaving a less than memorable encounter with Yevgeny Vasilievich and the excruciatingly mangled translations of Andrei Semyonovich, Masefield met Matsekpolyev, almost exactly where he had first encountered him.

  Matsekpolyev waved Andrei Semyonovich away before he could attempt a fatuous reintroduction, and shook Masefield’s right hand with both of his, vigorously.

  “Comrade Masefield. A delight to see you again.”

  And Masefield felt something small, flat, and square pressed into the palm of his hand.

  “I cannot stop to chat, comrade. Duty calls. But who knows, perhaps there will be other occasions while you’re in Moscow?”

  He followed Andrei Semyonovich into Koritsev’s office. Masefield had not spoken. Matsekpolyev’s manner had been one of hearty bonhomie so unlike his usual dry, near-scathing wit. Masefield had no idea why, but he felt sure that all he had to do was unfold the note.

  He waited until he was out on the bridge, the summer sunlight dancing like crystal upon the water.

  Meet me in front of Moscow University, Lenin Hills. Today at 4 p.m. The large terrace, facing the city. Bring yr briefcase—empty. Now, burn this.

  Masefield strolled to the far end of the bridge, chewing on the note until it was soft enough to swallow. Spies didn’t burn notes; they ate them. Everyone knew that.

  §85

  The Lenin Hills turned out to be less hills than bumps. Masefield found he could get there easily by public transport, and he had long felt that one learnt far more about a city from using its trams and buses than its cabs. Less than a mile from Moscow State University was the Universitet Metro station on the Sokol’nicheskaya Line. It was spanking new, only a couple of years old, shining white in its marble walls and a sharp contrast to the miles of dirty, yellowing proletarian flats that lined the track as it ran southwest from the city.

  He tagged along behind a gaggle of students. Students were not what they were in his day. In his day students had been simply younger adults. You could not tell them from the grown-ups by their clothes, by their fashion sense, since there was no such thing as fashion sense. At best an affectation might single out a student as being a student—a pipe clamped between lips too young for a pipe, or an outrageous choice of tie. Or, worse, a faceful of fluff struggling to be a beard.

  These young Russians might be poorly dressed by Western standards and the ubiquitous blue denim had not yet rinsed the red Soviet Union purple, but did they really look any different? He might be following a bunch of students in London, or Paris or New York.

  The university looked like the Foreign Ministry, but then so many buildings did. The giant, lurid, demonstrative, showy braggadocio of the great Moscow wedding cake.

  Matsekpolyev was waiting on the terrace, standing in the shadow of a huge statue of a huge woman in full skirts not reading a huge book but gazing off as though daydreaming. Matsekpolyev wasn’t daydreaming. He was looking at his pocket watch with some impatience, but when he saw Masefield approaching he twirled it, with all the panache of Will Hay playing a stationmaster, and landed it neatly in the fob pocket of his waistcoat.

  “Comrade Masefield,” he said still usi
ng his fake, hearty voice.

  And as they shook hands he whispered.

  “You’re here as my guest. The famous English scholar. I’m showing you this architectural obscenity as an act of East–West goodwill or some such guff. Just follow me, smile a lot, look as though you’re enjoying it and say nothing of any consequence.”

  “Of course, Grigory Grigoryevich. Follow you where?”

  Matsekpolyev pointed up, and up and up . . . past Lomonosov’s statue, past the clocks and the barometers, past the stone women representing industry and agriculture and whatever, to the laurel-wreathed Soviet star perched eight hundred feet above.

  “Believe it or not, there’s a viewing room in the star. Only holds two or three people, and you have to book it, so I did. Guarantees we won’t be disturbed.”

  “Supposing it’s bugged? My hotel room is bugged.”

  “It isn’t. Now, shut up, smile, and follow me. Look as though you’re enjoying Russia.”

  Well, at least that was one thing he wouldn’t have to fake.

  §86

  The view was amazing. He knew from guidebooks that this was the tallest building in Europe. Moscow sprawled before it. Unfortunately he didn’t get much chance to look at the building. The urgency in Matsekpolyev’s voice was inescapable.

  “Swap briefcases.”

  “Eh?”

  For the first time he noticed that Matsekpolyev had acquired a briefcase identical to his own.

  “OK. Mine’s empty, as you asked. What’s in yours?”

  “Everything you ever wanted to know about Chelyabinsk. Production figures, ground plan, staff lists . . . the lot.”

  “Good Lord. However did you—?”

  “No. No questions. We just walk out of here. Two professors with matching briefcases. Nothing has happened, nothing has changed.”

  “Grigory Grigoryevich, you can’t just—”

  “Yes I can and we just did. Stop asking damn fool questions, Geoffrey. You have twenty-four hours. This time tomorrow, we meet, chatter inanely and walk off with the right briefcases. You have . . .”

  Will Hay’s pocket watch came out again, the silver cover flipped with the merest of clicks and the whole faintly ludicrous apparatus swung back into his pocket in an effortless motion.

  “. . . Twenty-three hours and forty-one minutes to copy them. I must have them back by then. I’m on the night train to Leningrad.”

  Was this panic he felt? A bit of a twitch, the sensation that he could not get enough air, a grumble deep in his bowel that he hoped wasn’t an imminent fart?

  “I don’t know how to. I mean . . . I . . .”

  “Geoffrey. Think!”

  There was only one way, he thought. Somehow, he had to get the Minox back from Anfisa Dmitrievna tonight.

  §87

  No one was home at the apartment on Malaya Bronnaya. Tanya kept unsocial hours; it was part of the job. Anfisa kept office hours. He had thought her likely to be home at 6:30.

  Then it occurred to him: 6:30 p.m., a warm August evening . . . an apartment that overheated from May onwards, where by July you threw even the sheet off and slept naked, sweated naked . . . and, if lucky, fucked naked. Of course she wouldn’t be at home. She’d get in from work, grab a book and be sitting out in the nearest bit of green space—Patriarch’s Ponds.

  Comparisons might be meaningless—it is what it is what it was. But the Patriki, Patriarch’s Ponds, always reminded Masefield of St. James’s Park in London. It was a beautiful spot . . . walkways lined with cast-iron railings and mature trees that had withstood revolution, war, and countless five-year plans . . . a neat wooden boathouse that would grace any London park, and a neater café-kiosk. Anfisa Dmitrievna was sitting a couple of benches past the kiosk, her nose, predictably, in a book, facing the still, metallic-green pond but not looking at it. Seeing her in her summer dress, a creamy yellow with some sort of cornflower blue worked into the pattern, he noticed for the first time how thin her arms were. He’d seen her naked countless times, but by the light of a single candle, by the shaft of a moonbeam between half-drawn curtains. She looked undernourished; something he’d never think of her sister.

  She looked up only at the last minute, and more from the shadow he cast than the sound of his feet.

  She closed the book, using both thumbs to keep her place, a look of mild surprise on her face, and peered around him at the path he had taken.

  “Oh,” he said as he sat down. “Nothing to worry about. They don’t follow me any more. Haven’t done in ages.”

  “Don’t get cocky.” A word he had taught her. “Tanya tells me there is always a man outside your hotel.”

  “Of course there is. Usually two or three. And if I bought a ­ticket to Kazakhstan they might perk up. But I had an appointment at the ministry today. Routine stuff. Visits I’ve made half a dozen times. They’re too preoccupied or too lazy to bother with what has become familiar to them. What are you reading?”

  Habit had its forces.

  She showed him the cover, splayed it with her thumbs.

  L’ge de raison, by Sartre. He’d bought it for her at Hachette’s in London. He’d read it himself just after the war and not cared for it.

  “Hard,” she said. “Grim and grey. So refreshing after years of Soviet optimism.”

  To be a шестидесятник (shestidesiatnik)—a child of the sixties—was to understand irony in a rather English way. Not least among the ironies was that the term had been thought up not to describe the “liberals” of the Khrushchev era, but of the 1860s—the reign of Alexander II that had seen the “flowering” of talents such as Tolstoy and Rimsky-Korsakov.

  She was smiling still. Pleased at her own wit. It was a shame to wipe the smile away.

  “Anfisa Dmitrievna, I need the camera back.”

  The book slammed shut.

  “Oh God, Geoffrey Stefanovich. Do you know what I had to do to get it into my office? Do you?”

  “Well,” he fluffed. “I just assumed you’d found a way . . .”

  “Geoffrey Stefanovich. They search me. Going in and coming out. The camera is three inches by one. How do you think I got it past the guards?”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  She stared ahead, across the pond, at nothing. Her face reddening as she held anger below the surface.

  “I wouldn’t ask, but . . .”

  “But you have.”

  “Because it’s important.”

  “How important?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “So far, you have given to me and my sister twelve hundred pounds sterling. You know what we need. Two thousand pounds. Make up the difference and I will bring the camera out.”

  “Eight hundred pounds? I don’t have that much with me. I have about half that to cover the next two rolls of film. I can’t get more until I go back to Berlin.”

  “I trust you. We trust you. You have always been as good as your word. Four now, four . . . later. And I bring you the camera. And it will be the last time.”

  “Will it?”

  She looked at him as looking at a particularly stupid child.

  “Of course. When we have the two thousand we leave Russia.”

  So, that was it. His source would cease. It was endgame, but endgame with a royal flush . . . if Matsekpolyev really had given him the “goods.”

  “And then, we meet in Berlin.”

  She was smiling again.

  He was not sure he believed her. He had made fantasies of life after Moscow; he had not made plans. He had dreamt of life with Tanya—much as he had enjoyed her, he had not dreamt of life with Anfisa. Yet, the two were inseparable. In his heart he wanted a life with Tanya. In his gut he knew he’d never see either of them again once they got to Berlin.

  “Berlin,” she repeate
d.

  And she was smiling far too much.

  “I need it tonight.”

  Anfisa stood, all but stamping her feet.

  “You want the fucking world, don’t you?”

  “I have less than twenty-four hours.”

  Still with her back to him, still staring out across the water.

  “Twenty-four hours for what?”

  “To do what I have to do.”

  She turned now.

  “Not going to tell me, eh?”

  “Knowledge isn’t power, Anfisa Dmitrievna, it’s danger.”

  §88

  Back at the apartment on Malaya Bronnaya, Tanya had returned home and took Masefield’s news more calmly than her sister had, but then none of the responsibility rested upon her, yet.

  “I can’t do this tonight. It is nearly eight o’clock. Asking to go back in would arouse nothing but suspicion. I can’t even think of a phony reason why I should want to be in my office after six let alone a real one.”

  “I could meet you,” Tanya cut in.

  “Meet me? Where? When?”

  “At lunch tomorrow. I can get away by twelve. We find a café. I pick up the camera from you. And as no one will look twice at me in the Muromets, I give the camera to Geoffrey.”

  Anfisa stared back at her.

  “What are you suggesting. A trip to the ladies’ lavatory while I remove my brass tampon?”

  Tanya looked from her sister to Masefield and back again, not quite believing the rage to which this had roused her twin.

  “Pretty much.”

  Anfisa was hugging herself, entwined in her own arms, so self-wrapped her fingers almost seemed to meet across the back of her ribcage. As though she hugged herself because no one else would.

  Tanya Dmitrievna did.

  Masefield heard sibling whispers. Darkly incomprehensible.

  Then he thought he heard, “Это не ваша пизда.”

  It’s not your cunt. And . . .

  “Do this and we are free.”

  Silence, then the sound of the two of them breathing in sync.

  “Сделаем это и мы будем свободны.” Do this and we are free.

  And more silence.