Icelight

by Aly Monroe

‘Please don’t have the herring,’ said Cherkesov. ‘My father would return from work gleaming. The silver scales, you see. At a distance almost a beautiful sight. But I can’t abide the smell!’

  Cotton looked up at the maître. ‘Is Cameron of Lochiel a famous Scottish provender?’

  ‘No, sir. The Cameron of Lochiel, sir.’

  Cherkesov smiled. ‘Your aristocrats know how to survive,’ he said. ‘They become grocers.’

  Cotton examined the short menu. ‘Is the salmon also Mr Cameron’s?’

  ‘Loch Fyne, sir.’

  ‘Salmon, then. Just grilled, please.’

  ‘A Pouilly-Fumé to accompany it, perhaps?’ suggested Cherkesov.

  ‘All right,’ said Cotton.

  Cherkesov lit an American Camel cigarette and threw the packet into one of the ashtrays. He let the waiter pour him some vodka.

  ‘You were in Washington,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cotton. ‘For a short time, in late 1945.’

  ‘We lost a good man there. Well, he actually died elsewhere but he probably picked up an infection when he was in DC.’

  Cotton thought it more than likely that he was referring to a man he had met on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and who had begun with the name Slonim before he had been scratched to death during a handshake at a memorial service by someone Cotton liked, who was earning his freedom from Ayrtoun. As far as Cotton could work out, the scratch had at the very least encouraged a heart attack in a place as high as Mexico City. He was less sure that the substance used had been a derivative of belladonna or deadly nightshade.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ said Cotton. ‘Do you have his name exactly?’

  Cherkesov made a cheerful, chesty sound. It was a kind of pre-laugh, as if he was shifting tar in his lungs before actually laughing. ‘There is absolutely no need to apologize,’ he said. He pushed back his hair and wagged a finger. ‘They tell me you are a Keynesian of the purest sort.’

  Cotton scratched his ear and shook his head. ‘I’m not aware purity and Lord Keynes had much to do with one another. Surely his talent was for adjusting to the facts?’

  ‘My dear,’ said Cherkesov, ‘a Keynesian is someone who steps back and rubs a little ice on their eyelids. It refreshes the vision, lends a wintery calm. I understand he saw nothing of intellectual interest in the Soviet experiment, thought we should have been allowed to get on with it and collapse on our own.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘You’re dramatizing for effect, comrade. Keynes also talked about everybody being dead in the long run, but I really don’t think he was referring to the shortening effects of war or even the efforts of Mr Yezhov.’

  The purges of the late thirties in Soviet Russia, called the Yezhovchina, had been so severe that even Stalin had found it expedient to replace Yezhov with Beria and have Yezhov executed and his image expunged from all official photographs.

  Cherkesov grinned. ‘You know,’ he said. It sounded somehow both happily complicit and accusatory.

  He frowned. ‘More vodka,’ he said. The waiter poured.

  Cherkesov sipped. ‘Ten years ago, we were on our knees. I mean that almost exactly. Late January 1937. Collapse of the entire Soviet experiment was days off. Agriculture had failed, people were starving to death. Industrialization had ground to a rusty halt. The revolution had entirely seized up due to idiot plans, lies, paranoia and incompetence. I remember conversations – in New York, I was in New York – when we talked openly about what to do. I don’t mean about how to reverse our failures at home, I mean what we would personally do, where we could take our families, how we would survive when Soviet Russia collapsed. My first choice would have been Spain – but there was a war going on there in 1937. My second choice would have been Mexico. I am told it is an extraordinarily varied and very beautiful country.’ He wagged a finger. ‘I must admit I thought of settling in Cuernavaca, von Humboldt’s “city of eternal spring”.’

  Cotton nodded. ‘Yes. It’s about fifty, fifty-five miles south of Mexico City.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Only as a child. It’s something of a resort for people escaping the capital.’

  ‘You see! I always thought it would be a wonderful place to bring up children.’

  Cotton made a face. ‘I was only there for a few days. I remember my father complaining of the expense.’

  Cherkesov smiled. ‘Where did you live?’

  ‘Normally? In Mexico City. By the country club.’

  Cherkesov nodded. ‘Nature made golf, eh?’ He sat back, downed another shot of vodka and indicated the glass be refilled. ‘So what impressed you most about Cuernavaca? For my part, I’m in no way an ornithologist but I thought I’d like to sit on a verandah as the sun sank behind the volcanoes, sip coffee and watch all those exotic, brightly coloured birds finish their day. I understand, though I don’t know whether it is true or not, that the birdsong is akin to starlings roosting, a sort of pouring into a night jug.’

  Cotton smiled and shook his head. He had had time to appreciate he had last been in Cuernavaca nearly twenty years ago, weeks before he had started prep school in England. His parents had gone on holiday there with his sister and himself and, amongst other things, had checked on what they called his attainments. To their consternation, they had found he could not tell the time. This had been corrected, big hand, little hand. And they had made other efforts. He had, for example, been taught chess.

  ‘I don’t remember the birds,’ said Cotton. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. I do remember the butterflies, though. I don’t know what the collective name is. A flock, perhaps – in this case a cloud hovering over a flower-bed, a strange kind of mirror image, the butterflies paler than the flowers, the flowers not moving. But mostly, I remember when I was with my sister, in the rest-house garden and my shoelace was undone. I bent, and suddenly an enormous butterfly nearly blundered into me. As it pulled away those wings were big enough to make a soft rushing sound. Have you ever heard a pulse in a stethoscope?’

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Oleg Cherkesov. ‘Everyone should have wonderful childhood memories.’ He smiled and sighed. ‘Pity. I really think I’d have liked Mexico. Well, if Trotsky hadn’t been there, of course. But then we woke up and realized something had happened.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me about it,’ said Cotton.

  ‘After this,’ said Cherkesov. Somewhere between trundle and ceremony, a trolley arrived. On top, a metal dome the size of a nearly full-term pregnant belly slid back to reveal a smallish joint of beef. The carver removed some of the surface. Underneath, the meat steamed to show it was not quite raw. Cherkesov’s red beef was cut thin, hung over his plate and then, the carver could not avoid a sort of curtsey, let down as if it were cloth.

  ‘More,’ he said.

  His plate began to look like a red meat flower.

  ‘Enough.’

  Cotton had waited with his grilled salmon in front of him.

  ‘Eat, my friend,’ said Cherkesov. He cut a strip of beef and while his teeth gnashed at it, used a finger to scoop up some horseradish.

  ‘Good?’

  The salmon itself was a little dry but the chef had added butter. ‘Yes,’ lied Cotton.

  Cherkesov smiled and cut himself more meat. He pointed his fork at Cotton.

  ‘The dream of our revolution had turned out to be our most successful export. Your version of what we used to call the intelligentsia, when there were some around – and I include the Americans in this – were displeased with capitalist society. They thought it brutal, wasteful and unjust. They behaved reactively, without doubting or examining the Soviet regime, and began to think of us as I thought of bright, Mexican birds. Except they called them “the people”. Now we could have this conversation in Manhattan or Hampstead, Oxford or Yale, surrounded by distinguished and highly intelligent people. They would not hear us.’ Cherkesov shrugged. ‘They did not hear of the purges. They ignored the pact with Hitler. Or if they did
, they made excuses and the more self-righteous became Trotskyites.’ Cherkesov laughed. ‘Trotsky preached the need for a permanent revolution. Permanent! Anyone who does such a stupid thing deserves an ice pick in the head.’

  ‘The Mexicans have a permanent revolution party,’ said Cotton.

  ‘They do, don’t they? It doesn’t seem to help their poor much, does it? What was it that old reactionary Goethe said – “everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive”? From our point of view the purges were something to be going on with, I suppose, while we waited for events to turn our way. Of course, we knew they would. But in some ways I sometimes think we have, since then, set the tone. There are variations, of course, in severity, but the lessons transmit to those who are anxious to learn and collaborate in a debate.’ He shook his head. ‘There never was any debate, that’s a western illusion. We had a purge. You, particularly the Americans, lag behind and begin to brew up a witch hunt. We Communists have become witches. It’s rather flattering.’

  ‘Are you really suggesting we are trying to respond to your brutal decisions?’ said Cotton.

  Cherkesov shrugged. ‘Of course I am. We are winning now because you have picked up reflections from our mirror. They don’t have to be exact reflections. Only emulative. A little lost silvering. A little nightmarish twisting. They don’t, of course, have to be witting.’

  Cotton shrugged back.

  ‘You talked to a man called Paul Mair.’

  Cherkesov held up a hand. Cotton recognized the gesture. It was exactly the same as someone apologizing for a lucky net call at tennis. ‘Oh, only briefly, I assure you. Not the kind of weakness we look for.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘We need someone with at least some memory of the night before and preferably the night before that. Our information on him was . . . let’s say out of date.’ He paused. ‘Our interest in him was based on his contacts in the Middle East. It had nothing to do with his relationship with a fairly recent suicide. The agent responsible for recommending him has already been sent home.’

  Cotton looked up.

  ‘Oh come now, why on earth would we be involved?’ said Cherkesov. ‘We want what works! Just ask two hundred thousand Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We go for successful technology. Like your jet engines. We had the Manhattan Project riddled with agents from the start.’

  ‘But you don’t have a bomb yet.’

  ‘At this stage that is just a detail. The prospect of it does tend to frighten people into silly actions.’ He smiled. ‘We don’t need to do anything. In the Soviet taxonomy a foreign socialist hero – a person you might call a traitor – comes above any sexual or moral classification made by the bourgeoisie.’

  ‘You really can’t be saying,’ said Cotton, ‘that Comrade Stalin is one of the bourgeoisie.’

  Cherkesov laughed. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘Stalin shares something with your Socialist Party. I don’t think either finds homosexuality sits well with the dignity of labour. Something to do with what they imagine is bending over and unfortunately submissive postures.’

  Cotton understood he was being given something to quote. He nodded in acknowledgement.

  Cherkesov smiled. ‘Your liberal democrats despise your leaders. They enjoy that freedom to think that encourages self-importance. Their pious consciousness that workers are less fortunate than themselves leads to sops and generalizations about fairness and justice. But what really thrills them is the application of power. Your Establishment has fantasies that it knows best, loathes democratic dither, appeases the logic behind violence. The “people” have become an abstract that provides them with an emotional excuse.’

  He cut some meat on his plate and speared it with his fork. ‘The workers? The workers need direction. Take your miners and dockers. Heroes of the war.’ He shook his head. ‘The miners made money out of the war. Twenty-five pounds a week, I’ve heard. The dockers? Princes of the ports. Would they load armaments? Persuasion and negotiations were needed. British officers were reduced to the ranks for daring to hurry them on. The British Communist Party fought the British! We spoke to them, explained that we were, at least while we fought the Fascists, allies.’ He shook his head. None of this would have happened in Soviet Russia. Money? Better conditions? Here’s a bullet instead.’ He looked up. ‘Have you ever given orders to have people killed?’

  ‘Certainly not on my own side.’

  Cherkesov leant forward. ‘No, my dear! You start with your own side. It’s practical and it’s practice. You learn. And when you kill others, how can they possibly be worth the sacrifice your own side made?’

  He looked at the vodka bottle. There was not that much left. He shrugged and decided for temporary abstention.

  ‘I spoke for a long time to one of your big trade union leaders. He told me the British Communists have no future because they failed to understand that the class war had no future in Britain. The unions are now an entrenched part of the British class system. Your miners are now a kind of mass duke. They receive deference. Your Manny Shinwell now has a police guard on his house in Tooting because the Duke hasn’t dug enough coal. But does the Duke care that people can’t keep warm? No, he whines about how hard his ancestors had to work. Your unions have no concerns for the rest of society, only for their own petty bourgeois self-interest.’

  ‘Keynes suggested there was a religiosity in the Soviet Union.’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ said Cotton, ‘but I’d guess he was talking about both the fervour of the converted and the establishment of ferociously authoritarian structures that religions need to establish themselves and protect their institutions against heresies.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Cherkesov, ‘religions are characterized by the willingness of the faithful to sacrifice others to their faith. Some of the faithful will even sacrifice themselves. It does not contribute exactly, except in a negative way, but it does give them a sense of communion or belonging before they vanish, a rather spiritual version of life on this earth. But of course, there are religious Communists. I’m quite clear about it.’

  ‘Clear about what?’

  ‘The definition of a fool? Someone who believes in systems.’

  ‘I don’t know about that but I tend not to believe you on Mr Mair.’

  Cherkesov laughed very loudly. ‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘We were given information that Mair had a good contact in Palestine, that he knew someone powerful in Irgun. Interesting for us, you see, that he was also supposed to have contacts with Arab nationalists.’ He shrugged. ‘We found our information was wrong, that Mair was more immediately amazed by his own sexual impotence.’ Cherkesov smiled. ‘It does not matter now. You have an MP.’ Cherkesov paused, apparently trying to remember the name.

  Cotton said nothing. He took a sip of the Pouilly-Fumé. It struck him as more chill than taste, almost bitter.

  ‘Mayhew,’ said Cherkesov. ‘Christopher Mayhew. Pro-Arab.’ He frowned. ‘You do have a lot of T. E. Lawrence romantics in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cotton.

  ‘But Mayhew is not naïve. He has sold a scheme to Mr Attlee whereby a department will be created in the Foreign Office to counter our Soviet propaganda. Of course it will be ineffectual having been intellectualized, but it should be profitable for some. It will subsidize publications, pay Bertrand Russell to write something, arrange the translation of Animal Farm into Arabic, that kind of thing.’ Cherkesov laughed again. ‘I’ll be intrigued to see how a parable set on an English farm and involving pigs goes down in Cairo or Damascus.’ He shrugged. ‘Money,’ he said. ‘Do you know your friend Ed Lowell has no budgetary limitations whatever? Attlee accepted because the Americans will be paying for this and it shouldn’t be too offensive. I have told our Communist friends and sympathizers here and in France and Italy to accept all approaches if they involve payment. To some extent it offsets our opposition to American aid. And we do need funds, of course.
The other thing is that it really points us towards our view of the Middle East. If the Jews get their state we’ll have years and years of trouble. Mm? I am telling my Arab friends that this is the last cruel lash of colonialism. But do you know what the real thing is? If you British do not stand back on Palestine, if you do not abstain, your aid from America is in danger. How shocking power is when you have lost it.’

  At the end of their meal, on their way out, Cherkesov patted Cotton’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be in London that much longer,’ he said. After an entire bottle of vodka he was just beginning to slur.

  Cotton smiled. ‘But I imagine your own side will take good care of you.’

  Cherkesov laughed. ‘Remember what I said about reflections. Or, as you prefer, the pulse of pale butterflies.’ He beckoned his bodyguards. ‘My dear, we have unspeakable colleagues.’ He smiled again. ‘Delightful lunch. But I assure you. Your butterflies are not ours. We have no need to break butterflies on a wheel. We knock them down and stamp on them, an incidental on our march forward.’

  Cotton smiled. He allowed Cherkesov a pause to tone down what he had said or at least get his butterflies in order. It wasn’t a long pause.

  ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘About Keynes. Well, his notion that Soviet machinery would run out of lubricant and seize up on bits of old mirror and butterfly wings.’

  Cherkesov laughed and thumped Cotton on the back. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I hope we will be able to compare notes in the future. I’ve enjoyed myself very much.’

  30

  DESPITE THE cold, Cotton decided to walk back to his office, to give himself some time before any debriefing. ‘Stagey Soviet’ came to mind as a description of Cherkesov, as did ‘a race between his liver and his enemies’. As he hurried past Charing Cross station he came up with ‘journalistic flak’. By the time he had got round Trafalgar Square and on to the Mall he was a little less unsettled. There was always an element of language as a disguise, a medium to mislead and misdirect. But Cotton was rattled enough to think Cherkesov was the most impressive Soviet he had ever met. Charismatic, not having to bother even to threaten, he revelled in his reputation. What was the problem? Cotton felt Cherkesov was telling something of the truth.