13
There was nothing wrong, nothing that you could lay a finger on, in the way Selwyn did his work at Reidka’s, but the imminent birth of his first volume had unsettled him. Middle-aged poets, middle-aged parents, have no defences. When the Birch Tree Thoughts were printed, sewn, bound, pressed and distributed to the better-class bookshops on the Lubyanka, he would have anxieties, but at least they would be different ones. Meanwhile, however, he had begun to speak of a German version – which would mean borrowing yet another set of type – and a Russian one. It was these two projects which had driven Frank to the idea of taking on a second accountant. The profits at Reidka’s would just about bear the additional salary. He had had to do this without hurting Selwyn’s feelings, but Selwyn was not a vain man.
‘You understand that Bernov will be the costing accountant, something we’ve never had. He won’t be concerned with the management, though we’ll have to listen to his advice.’
‘Yes … yes … where did you find him, Frank?’
‘He’s coming to us from Sytin’s, a very small firm after a very big one, but I daresay that’ll give him more opportunity.’
‘From Sytin’s! He’ll find it another world. When is he coming to the Press?’
‘I’ve got him down for the 27th of March, Russian calendar.’
‘Excellent, excellent … But, Frank, that’s the Feast of St Modestus. There’ll be the blessing of the office ikon.’
‘Not till the afternoon, they’ve agreed to work normal hours till four. It’s not a church holiday. We’ll have all day to show Bernov how we do things.’
Frank knew that Selwyn ought to have been present when he interviewed the alert, ambitious, bright-eyed Bernov, and he felt a pang of shame when Selwyn put only one more question: ‘Would you say that this young man has been touched to any extent by the teachings of Tolstoy?’ He had to say that he didn’t know, but thought it unlikely.
‘But you wouldn’t call him a quarrelsome fellow?’
‘He didn’t quarrel with me when I saw him.’
All that had been fixed before Nellie went away, in what, if time were space, would be a different continent. Every day he sent her a letter which, for 8 kopeks, included a blank reply form. He had mentioned that there was a girl now, a Russian girl, to look after the children. He had, of course, no address for Nellie except Charlie’s, where he imagined the envelopes piling up in the hall under the multi-coloured light from the stained glass window above the front door. Dolly and Ben also wrote once, and Annushka added a wavering Russian A. Frank did not know what Dolly had put, and thought it dishonourable to try to find out. She had asked him how ‘irresponsible’ was spelled. But this letter, too, would come to rest in the hall, in Charlie’s brass dish.
‘You lose your wife, you take on a new clerk,’ Kuriatin shouted down the telephone, to which he’d never got accustomed. ‘Why do you need more staff?’
‘You’d be just as suspicious if I got rid of the lot of them,’ said Frank.
‘It’s only that I understand the printing business. The great ones are expanding, the little foreigners like you have to watch out for themselves.’
‘You don’t understand printing in the least, Arkady Filippovich. You’d have been exactly the same if it had never been invented.’
‘I want to see you. We will speak of all these things at Rusalochka’s.’
‘We can speak, if you like,’ said Frank. ‘But at Rusalochka’s we shan’t be able to hear each other.’
During the forty-nine days of Lent entertainments were supposed to be cut down, and some of Moscow’s restaurants were closed, but not Rusalochka’s, the tearooms attached to the Merchants’ Club. ‘Come to Rusalochka’s,’ repeated Kuriatin, ‘we will settle our business there once and for all.’
Frank tried as far as possible to avoid this place, which conflicted with his idea of what was sensible and his preference for a quiet life. Since it was supposed to be devoted to tea-drinking, the walls were frescoed from smoky ceiling to floor in red-gold and silver-gold and painted with dancing, embracing and tea-swilling figures overlapping with horses, horse-collars with golden bells, warriors, huts prancing along on chickens’ legs, simpering children, crowned frogs, dying swans, exultant storks and naked women laughing in apparent satisfaction and veiled, to a slight extent, by the clouds of a glowing sunset. Service at Rusalochka’s was in principle a simple matter, since nothing was served but tea, cakes, vodka and listofka, slievanka, vieshnyovka and beryozovitsa, the liqueurs of the currant-leaf, plum, cherry and birch-sap. But the great silver tea-pots, each like a kettle-drum on its wheeled stand, crossed and recrossed the aisles between the tables, which became smaller and smaller as the room filled up, only avoiding collision with each other and the trollies of strong alcohol through the manipulation of the waiters, who seemed to be chosen for strength rather than skill, and as a result of the threats and warnings of the customers bellowing either for further orders or, as it seemed, to encourage the racing tea-pots, as in a sporting event. The customers registered only as the opening and closing of mouths, all sound and sense being drowned by Rusalochka’s mighty Garmoniphon, the great golden organ which with its soaring array of Garmonica pipes occupied the whole of one wall of the demonic tearooms. A German in a frock-coat played it, or perhaps a series of Germans in frock-coats, closely resembling each other. At home, the merchants preferred the old Russian songs, but not here, not at Rusalochka’s, a very expensive place, by the way, where one saw and was seen, and where first Grieg and then Offenbach’s Belle Hélène were now being played at the pitch of a dockyard in full production. And yet Kuriatin, if he wished to, was able to make himself heard.
‘I’ve come here because you asked me to,’ said Frank, drawing up a massive gilded chair. ‘But I hadn’t forgotten what it was like.’
He was well aware that Kuriatin had invited him to Rusalochka’s partly as a joke, a joke which would be allowed to develop according to its natural direction. At the same time, he had genuinely intended a treat, believing that Frank, in his ordinary business day, never encountered anything as overwhelming as the Garmoniphon. But Kuriatin could not rest easy with this, because business intruded, and even if he made or negotiated an offer for the Mammoth he would feel he had missed something if he had no option on the Reid site, and its buildings, and its trees. Above all he had the suspicion that Frank was not, after all, impressed by Rusalochka’s (although many of the decorations had been carried out in real gold leaf), and pity for Frank on account of this and, warring with the pity, envy.
What, in heaven’s name, was Selwyn doing at Rusalochka’s? The premises were barred against anyone but merchants and their guests, and yet there he was, making his way, wavering but unchallenged, towards their table. ‘I wanted to have a few words with Frank Albertovich. I asked at his house and they told me that he had an engagement here.’
‘Sit down, sit down, Selwyn Osipych,’ Kuriatin cried, ‘sit down, my dear friend,’ then as Selwyn smiled and looked round him vaguely, but did not sit down, ‘You don’t want to sit with me!’ Selwyn, whose appearance was just as bizarre as ever, could be of no possible importance to him, financially or socially, and yet Kuriatin trembled from head to foot with eagerness. ‘You don’t want to sit with me, it distresses you to see a man spend money at Rusalochka’s. You’ll tell me that in the villages the peasants have been taking the thatch off their roofs this winter to feed their cattle, and no doubt that’s true. But in Russia who is happy?’
‘No, no, you’re wrong,’ said Selwyn mildly, ‘I don’t criticize what you’re doing. How can I criticize a life I don’t understand? And surely you are happy.’
‘It’s true, it’s true. When I die, God will say to me, well, I gave you a life on earth, Arkady Filippovich, and what’s more, a life in Russia. Did you enjoy it? And if not, why have you wasted your time?’
‘What did you want to talk to me about, Selwyn?’ asked Frank, as quietly as possible. ‘Couldn’t it wa
it? For God’s sake sit down, in any case, if you’re going to stay here.’
But Selwyn, looking round at the golden and copper walls, the threatening organ-loft, the perilous circulation of the waiters, the bloated, steaming and streaming customers to whom an attendant was now bringing hot towels, in the Chinese style, to wipe their drenched foreheads, gently shook his head. The effect on Kuriatin was immediate. Laying his hand on Selwyn’s arm he began to plead, almost to wheedle.
‘A nice glass of something … a samovar, a samovarchik, a dear little samovar … I can call for anything here, there is currant cake, Dundeekeks, as in Scotland …’ Lumbering up from his seat he folded Selwyn in his arms and kissed him as high as he could reach, on the chin, while one of the mobile tea-pots, on a straight course past the table, swerved and missed him narrowly.
Disengaging himself, Selwyn nodded at Frank and made his way out of Rusalochka’s. Kuriatin subsided.
‘You sounded like a rich man in the Bible when the prophet comes in,’ said Frank, ‘I know you’re doing quite well, but you’re not rich enough to carry on like this.’
‘Selwyn Osipych was like a reproach to me. He didn’t intend it, of that I’m sure, but, yes, he has acted as a reproach. Now I feel I don’t want to withhold anything from you.’ At this point the organ redoubled its volume and even Kuriatin had to raise his voice. ‘I shall withhold nothing!’
How could Selwyn, in a couple of inconclusive minutes, have raised, quite unintentionally, such trust and repentance? It was a gift that would have been of inestimable value to him in business, if Selwyn had ever done any.
‘I invited you here,’ said Kuriatin, still in tears, ‘in the way of business, without good intentions. I was lying to you when I said I couldn’t obtain permits to export the Mammoth. I saw that delay was likely to bring me increased profits.’
‘Of course you were lying,’ Frank replied. ‘I came here mainly to tell you that I’ve managed to negotiate the permits from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Transport myself. I’d have been happy for you to do the job, but I can’t wait any longer, I’ve got to have the site clear, either for rent or sale.’
At the words ‘rent or sale’ Kuriatin looked for a moment like his usual self, but then his eyes filled with tears again and he declared that the details no longer mattered to him.
‘Just because Selwyn Osipych came in, and wouldn’t sit down at the table?’
‘Ah, you don’t know what I was like in childhood, Frank Albertovich. The thought of a man’s childhood can touch his soul, even when it’s hard as flint. I’ve got photographs of myself as a child, poor faded things, but they show me as I was then, sitting in a little goat-cart.’
‘How long do you think your change of heart will last?’ Frank asked, thinking of various other dealings outstanding between them.
‘Who can tell?’ Kuriatin pushed the bottles on the table away from him.
Frank went downstairs, retrieved his overcoat, and escaped from the overpowering heat and noise and the improbable sight of the merchant’s repentance. As he reached the Redeemer, a down-and-out of some kind moved up to him out of the shadow of one of the porches in the southern wall. Near the great churches the police never moved the beggars away, nor did anyone want them to. Frank stopped to take out his reserve of twenty-five kopek pieces, which were always at the ready. It was Selwyn, however, in his tattered sheepskin.
‘I have been waiting for you Frank. I couldn’t speak to you in the presence of Kuriatin.’
‘In that case I can’t think why you turned up at Rusalochka’s at all.’
‘I hoped you might come away with me.’
‘Well, I was there on business. Is there anything wrong?’
Their breaths rose together as steam into the bitterly cold lamplit air, Selwyn’s fainter than Frank’s.
‘I went back to the Press, Frank, after it closed. I had the keys, as you know, this evening, as you had to leave early for your appointment. I went back because I hadn’t had the oppportunity during the day to see how far they’d got with …’
‘With your poems.’ He could, of course, have asked Tvyordov, but Selwyn, Frank knew, was in awe of Tvyordov.
‘Yes, yes, with Birch Tree Thoughts.’ Selwyn pronounced his title, as always, in a different and sadder tone, which in England would be reserved for religious subjects.
‘The Birch Tree Thoughts are all right,’ said Frank. ‘You can have the first printing when you go in tomorrow. I told them to leave seventy-five copies in the compositors’ room, to keep them separate from the deliveries. You could have taken them away tonight if you’d gone in there. I can’t see why you didn’t.’
‘Ah, that was what I came to tell you, Frank. There were lights on in the building.’
‘Didn’t you see that the lights turned off when you left?’
‘Let me be more specific. There was one light on, Frank, one light in the building, I think the light of a candle, moving from one window to another.’
‘Well, who was it?’
‘That I fear I can’t tell you. I didn’t go in to see.’
‘Do you mean you left them to it, whoever it was?’
‘I didn’t know who it was carrying the light, Frank. It might have been a man of violence. I am a man of peace, a man of poetry.’
Selwyn seemed to be murmuring something, perhaps a blessing. ‘Every single man that’s born into this life, Frank, writes poetry at some time or other. Possibly you may not have done so yet.’
‘Listen, Selwyn. Are you taking in what I’m saying?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘In the first place, give me the keys.’
‘The keys to the Press?’
‘The keys to the Press.’
Selwyn hesitated, as though struck by doubt or inspiration, and then handed them over.
‘Now, either go round to 22 Lipka Street, or telephone them, and tell them I’ll be late back, later than I said I would. Is that clear, and are you sure you won’t forget to tell them?’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll speak to Lisa Ivanovna.’
‘Just tell her what I’ve said.’
It was the worst season of the year in Moscow to hurry anywhere. The sledges were off the streets, there was still too much ice for taxis, nothing for it but a cab. It was the eve of a Saint’s Day, so that all fares would be doubled. What Frank expected to find at the Press he didn’t know. In the cab he tossed up, Tsar or Eagle, with one of his twenty-five kopek pieces. Eagle, and he’d stop at a police station and get hold of an inspector to come with him. Tsar, he’d go on by himself. He went on by himself.
14
At Reidka’s, a glimmer of light still showed in the window of the compositors’ room. Frank negotiated the rows of trolleys waiting for tomorrow’s delivery boys and tried the main entrance door. It was unlocked. He went upstairs, not troubling to walk either quietly or noisily.
A young man, still wearing his overcoat, was sitting with his back to the room on one of the compositors’ stools with a lighted candle in front of him. He might almost have been asleep, but he suddenly pulled himself up straight and turned towards Frank a pale reproachful student’s face. His blond eye-lashes gave him a bemused look, as of something new-born, but he wasn’t too dazed, as the electric light came on, to blow out the candle. Probably he had always had to economize.
‘You have found me.’
‘I wasn’t looking for you, though,’ said Frank. ‘Who are you?’
The young man pulled out of his overcoat pocket an automatic about six inches long which might, like Ben’s, be a toy, or might be a Webley. That’s what students have these days. There was nowhere to hide a gun in a student’s regulation high-buttoned jacket, they had to keep them in the right-hand coat pocket. He got to his feet and fired twice. The first shot went far wide of Frank into the opposite wall, where it dislodged a quantity of plaster. The second, wider still but at closer range, struck the upper wooden case of Tvyordov’s frame,
smashed it to bits, discharged the small capitals in a metal cascade on to the floor, then ricocheted off through the very centre of his white overall where it hung ready and buried itself behind the frame.
‘You see! You see I didn’t mean to hit you!’
‘I don’t know whether you meant to or not!’ said Frank. He walked forward, put his forearm under the young man’s chin and against his throat, and pushed. He had learned to do this as a boy in the yard of Moscow 8 School (Modern and Technical). Then he took the automatic out of his hand, shut the safety catch, and looked at it.
‘You want to keep these properly cleaned,’ he said. ‘Otherwise the trigger spring breaks and it goes on firing until its empty.’
The student, doubled up, was coughing. Frank fetched him a glass of water from the tap at the sink in the corner.
‘Is this water safe?’
‘It’s what my staff drink.’
‘I feel better. My name is Volodya Vasilych. My last name I don’t give.’
‘I didn’t ask for it.’
‘These are your premises, Frank Albertovich. You want to know what I’m doing here.’
‘I’m sure you’ll tell me in time. I take it you’re a student?’
‘Yes.’
‘A student of what?’
‘Of political history.’ Frank wondered why he’d bothered to ask. He said, ‘Meanwhile I shall have to account for all this mess and destruction to my chief compositor when he comes in the morning.’
Without any awkwardness Volodya dropped on to all fours and began to pick up the type.
‘No, leave it,’ said Frank. ‘It has to go in the right place or not at all. What I really want to know is how you got in here.’
‘The door wasn’t locked.’
‘Didn’t that surprise you?’
The Beginning of Spring Page 10