by Morris West
‘If we can bring this off,’ Vannikov whispered in my ear, ‘then it will be a bigger miracle than the loaves and fishes. The biggest problem is to keep the patient quiet while the operation takes place.’
I knew what he meant. That same morning the news had broken that the Soviet Foreign Minister, a staunch reformist, had resigned. He claimed that constitutional changes, actual and proposed, would inevitably lead back to dictatorship. In the same breath, Vannikov bewailed the risk and prayed that the central authority would hold until our project was approved and under way. The Gulf crisis wasn’t getting any better. Instead of counting off the shopping days to Christmas, the press were counting down to deadline day, 15 January. In Britain and the US medical corps reservists were being called up. The news traffic was being carefully confused with disinformation from both sides. It was against this background that the Chairman called on me to propose a motion on the reporting of the conference activities to the press.
I proposed three things. First, that the order of events be clearly stated: the Soviet Union, which occupied a great part of the Eurasian continent, had invited a German/Japanese consortium to submit proposals and plans for the production, storage, processing and distribution of foodstuffs from facilities and installations strategically sited throughout the country. The consortium had responded with a carefully prepared, though necessarily complex, plan. That plan was being considered at this conference; a decision would be made within two weeks.
Once that notion was firmly set, we could range widely over theoretical and practical aspects of the plan. Activities would be jointly controlled by Boris Vannikov for the Soviets and myself for the consortium. The conference was in favour. The motion was passed. The schedule of committee meetings was announced. The meeting broke at midday. Boris and I walked round to the press room to brief our little team of scribes.
We found them surrounded with brochures and illustrated material, eager to be about their business. Boris Vannikov delivered the briefing. He pointed out that the historic sequence was important. This was not a move by foreigners to exploit the Soviets. It was a constructive response to a forward-looking move by Moscow itself. The installations, however, would benefit every republic in which they were located. They would constitute a massive breakout from the present wasteful system of centralist management. The management and employees would be locals. The training would be standardised, so that ambitious people could look forward to mobility of employment.
I was happy to let him run. In this mood, he could charm the birds out of the trees. Alex Boyko and Pam Dalby, two hardbitten warriors, were delighted. Their first releases would be on the wires within an hour. We left them to their God-given task of enlightenment and treated ourselves to a drink in the bar.
Boris offered the first toast. To us, Gil. And to our masters. God give them eyes to see and ears to listen.’
‘Amen!’
‘I’ll make a bet with you. We’re going to ram through a draft agreement this week. Then we can sit back and let the lawyers and the technicians parse their way through the documents. We’ve got the principles right. That’s clear even now. Right principles, right action. That’s why they need philosophers to force them through to the heart of the matter. And here, the heart of the matter is simple human need: food, love and fantasy. What we’ve been getting for too long is hunger, hate and nightmares about the long winter ahead.’
Abruptly his mood changed. By the time he was halfway through his second drink, he was in a black, Slavic depression.
‘The other side of the coin is what we’re doing to ourselves. You saw the news this morning? Our Foreign Minister staged a public resignation, accusing the President of leading the country back into dictatorship. It was a brave gesture, but enormously risky. I watched the shots of the army chiefs laughing together in the lobbies afterwards. They were celebrating! The man who pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, who let the Berlin Wall come down and signed the arms limitation treaties was suddenly gone. Gorbachev is isolated now. I’m his man, Gil. He made me. I know he’s walking a high wire without a net. This isn’t just a simple issue of reactionaries and reformists, dictatorship or democracy. It’s how to stop the tribal bickering and get down to the urgent business of reconstructing the country. I had breakfast with Popov this morning. He’s a real soldier, Gil – helmet to bootsoles. But he knows what combat means and he knows what another civil war could do to us. He doesn’t want the army running the country. Yet even he sees no easy answer to this new tribalism. Look. It’s not one of the things we talk about, but the birth rate in the Muslim republics is three times as high as that in the rest of the country. Think about that in terms of the divisions it creates, in the army, in politics, even in the economy. Now, with war looming in the Gulf, those divisions are going to open like rifts in the land after an earthquake. You’re not listening to me, are you?’
‘I’m trying, Boris. But I can’t carry Mother Russia on my back every hour of every day. Besides, I’ve got to get to the hospital and be back in time for the committees after lunch.’
He was not offended. He was just at the low point of a low and needing a friend to share the misery.
‘Give the girl my love. Tell her she has only to call and Boris Vannikov will come running. Nastrovye!’
He tossed off the last of the liquor. If we were not exactly comrades in arms, we were at least veterans who understood the follies and futilities of war games.
After that, I set off for the hospital. As the driver drew into the forecourt, I saw Siri coming out of the front door and heading for the parking area. I hurried across to intercept her. We sat in the front seat of her car while she explained.
‘I knew you would be busy. I thought I should come and introduce myself to your Marta. It’s terrible to be sick and alone in a foreign place. I brought her flowers and some European candies. We had a lovely chat.’
‘Siri, I love you dearly; but when you try to play a British country matron I want to walk out and demand my money back at the box office. European candies and a lovely chat! Come, my sweet. This is Uncle Gil. Remember?’
‘I remember.’ She leaned back in the corner of the driver’s seat and began gently raking my cheek with a long, crimson fingernail. ‘I remember before you were married and during and after. I remember the night you stayed in my house and I heard noises and came to your room in the small hours and found you raging up and down, screaming silently, trying to call back the dead. I remember holding you in my arms until the tears came and all the wild words you had bottled up inside you for so long. I remember the darkness before the first light, when we walked down to the river and put a lamp in a boat of leaves and watched it float away on the ebb tide. That was how you said goodbye to your wife, Gil. With me. With Siri. So don’t ask me if I remember.’
‘I’m sorry.
‘It’s already forgotten.’
‘And thank you for coming to see Marta.’
‘It was my pleasure. And of course you’re right. I had to see her for myself.’
‘Now we’ve both confessed our sins, tell me what you think.’
‘About Marta or about you?’
‘Either or both.’
‘You, then. You’re so like your father I think, sometimes, I’m seeing double. You’re full of talents, as he was; and one of the best of them is a talent for friendship. That’s rare and it’s precious. You’re generous. You care about people. They know you care. What they don’t know is that you are much more self-sufficient than they. You don’t depend on them the way they depend, or would like to depend, on you. Part of the reason is your father. He trained you to be self-dependent, but other-centred. The rest of it is harder to explain. When your wife died, the small secret room at the centre of you was left dark and empty. You locked the door and walked away from it, but you could never forget it for a moment. You had supported your children in their grief. You had never purged your own. I’ll never forget the violence of your outburst that ni
ght in my house and how calm you were after we had floated the little lamp down the river. That was the first and last real goodbye you had said to your wife. But the little room is still there, dark, empty and locked. I’m sure nobody else notices this, but I do. You talk about your children. You talk about your father. Never about your wife.’
‘I talk about her to the children.’
‘But only when they ask, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you see, Gil, to any woman who is in love with you – and Marta Boysen most certainly is – you present a big problem and a frightening challenge. Will she ever be able to coax the key out of your hands and open it for herself?’
‘You make me sound like Bluebeard.’
‘You are. What did he offer his bride? A long and happy life, but death if she violated the mystery.’
‘Come on. That’s too much!’
‘Is it? Think a little, Gil. You’re standing in a group, any group, with your escort of that moment. I come along, any other Oriental or Asian woman. Immediately, you switch into another identity. I know. I’ve seen it. It’s quite uncanny. I’m used to it, because I know you so well. But if I were your lover I could be very jealous and maybe very bitchy.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Because she’s excluded from two parts of your life: the secret room and the public arena.’
‘And what can I do about that?’
‘You’re missing the point, Gil. You’re not expected to do anything. You’re a free agent. You’re not obliged to accept a gift just because it’s been thrust into your hands. The real question is, what do you want? Is it Marta? Is it someone else? Is it simply the life you have and the friendships you enjoy now? If it’s a new love or a new marriage, then for both your sakes you’ll have to surrender the key to the locked room. You believe me, don’t you?’
‘You sound just like my father.’
She laughed and raked at my cheek again, harder this time, so that I felt the sharp edge of the fingernail.
Your father taught me, too. What was the phrase? On ne badine pas avec l’amour! Men and women can play games together, but love’s a serious matter. He lived by that, too. He never attached himself too closely to anyone but you. He came, he went, he brought a gift and left a good memory. I think I understood that part of him better than you do, because that is the way we conduct our own lives here. Enough, now. I’ll expect you to dinner on Wednesday night. Come early. My children want time with their Uncle Gil.’
I touched my lips to her small, soft palm and folded her fingers to enclose the kiss. She gave me a smile and a gentle dismissal.
‘Go talk to Marta, and be kind to her.’
Thanks again for visiting her.’
‘Just so you’re prepared…I told her you’d asked me to see her.’
‘Why did you have to do that?’
‘It saved a lot of explanations.’
‘What’s to explain?’
‘You and me, petals in the water…they fall from different trees, they are blown by the same wind, they drift on the same current. Even that little thing takes a time to tell. Go now. I’ll see you Wednesday.’
Marta was in a small private room, which seemed to be overflowing with flowers. She was propped up in a reclining position, still hooked to a drip bottle, but she had lost the hollow, cyanosed look. There was colour in her face, a small new strength in her voice. She held out her free hand to draw me to her, then kissed me on the lips. She said simply: ‘I seem to have lost the words I need. That’s my thank you.’
I drew up a chair and sat beside the bed, holding her hand. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better. They had me out of bed this morning. I was dizzy for a moment, then quite unsteady on my feet, but I walked across the room and back. It must be that good Langton blood they gave me yesterday.’
‘The flowers are beautiful.’
‘Those on the dressing table are from Carl. These are from Miko and the ones on the side table are from your friend Siri. That was a kind thought to have her visit me. I was feeling very low until she walked in. She’s a beautiful woman, Gil. So calm and full of grace. You’re fortunate to have her working for you.’
‘Actually, she’s my partner in the Thai company, the way Tanaka is in Tokyo. Her son and daughter are in the business, too.’
‘She’s invited me to visit her once I’m out of here. Doctor Kukrit says I can leave in a couple of days if I promise to take things easy and hold to the diet and the medication he’ll be giving me. How did the conference go this morning?’
‘Very well, I think. Leibig’s presentations were splendidly done. The Soviets were impressed. On its own merits, provided there isn’t a catastrophe in the Gulf, everyone believes the project can work.’
‘And I’m missing all the excitement.’
‘You’ve created enough already, thank you.’
At that point the conversation lapsed for a moment, then we came abruptly to the core of the matter. Marta announced: ‘You didn’t give Miko my message.’
‘Oh God! I’m sorry. That was an oversight. Vannikov and General Popov buttonholed me as soon as I got back to the hotel…’
‘She called me this morning.’
‘Oh.’
The message doesn’t matter. She knows now.’
‘Knows what?’
‘The game’s over. I can’t play it any more.’
The flat statement didn’t seem to call for a comment. I took refuge in a question.
‘How did Miko react?’
‘She took it very quietly. She apologised for not being able to visit me. I told her she shouldn’t distress herself, I understood. I do, too. It wasn’t just politeness.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Did you read my letter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you believe that, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of it?’
‘All of it.’
‘So…’ The word came out in a long exhalation, of relief or disappointment it was hard to say. ‘So now you know the whole story. There’s nothing more to be said.’
‘There’s a lot to be said, schatzi. But not now, not here. When you’re stronger, when the pressures are off me, we’ll talk again.’
‘Why do you even care?’
‘I remember a little girl trotting beside me in the woods, holding my hand tightly in case I left her behind. She didn’t know then – how could she? – that in our family we always wait for the stragglers.’
‘And you’ll wait for me?’
‘We’re here for two weeks, like it or lump it. If we’re still friends then, that’s already something, yes?’
‘Doctor Kukrit told me I could have died from this thing.’
‘He’s right. You could have.’
‘So everything after that has to be a bonus.’
‘Hang on to that thought, Frau Professor Doktor. It’s the best one you’ve had for some time.’
‘Now you’re mocking me.’
‘Would I dare? Now I have to leave you. I’ll try to call by this evening. If not, I’ll telephone. Would you like me to lower the pillows so you can sleep?’
‘Yes please.’
As I settled her to rest and checked that the drip tube was functioning, she took my hand and held it against her cheek.
‘Gil.’
‘Yes?’
‘I have to say this. There are no debts between us. We’re both paid up. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I know it.’
‘What I need now is some respect.’
‘You’ve always had it.’
‘You don’t understand. I mean respect from me to me. I have to live with the woman I see in the mirror.’
That’s true for all of us. My father used to say: “Son, we come in alone; we go out alone; we’d better be damned sure we can tolerate our own company.” ’
‘I feel very empty, Gil, tired of chasing dreams.’
>
Time to close down the brain-box. You’re going to rest now. I’m leaving.’
Will you kiss me, please?’
There was no passion in the caress. It was rather a family ritual, the affirmation of a bond which, however much it might be strained, was never quite broken. The words were the most vivid memory I had of my mother: ‘Sleep well, golden dreams!’
Fourteen
Back at the hotel, our small press corps had produced its first release for the world media. Vannikov had passed it. All that it needed was my imprimatur. I went over it, line by line, with Alex Boyko.
It was a sturdy, factual, optimistic piece which would not make headlines, but would certainly get solid and respectful analysis in the financial pages of major journals. Against the gathering gloom in the Gulf, it sounded a note of hope. It affirmed that funds could always be found for pragmatic solutions to problems that had been too long regarded as intractable. The sums involved were large enough to make the most hardened financiers sit up and blink. The list of international experts among the contracting companies was in itself a seal of excellence.
The question of German/Japanese co-operation was deftly handled. ‘For the first time,’ Alex Boyko had written, ‘the economic problems raised by the vast stretch of Soviet Asia, the enormous variety of its climates and its geologies, have been fully recognised in an international plan for economic investment.’ That, for the moment, seemed sufficient camouflage for Haushofer and his more tendentious theories.
The history of the Leibig company and its association with the House of Tanaka for more than a century and a half, opened up vistas of material for magazine treatments. The biographical sketches of the principal participants and the accompanying photographs rounded out a highly respectable piece of work. I scribbled my signature on the authorisation and offered a personal vote of thanks to Alex Boyko. He answered with a grin.