The Human Factor Part 26

'Well, I'm not sure about G.o.d, but you can certainly thank the KGB. (One mustn't be dogmatic-they may be on the same side, of course.) I imagine that sooner or later he'll ask you to join him there.'

'And I'll go.'

'With your child?'

'Of course.'

Doctor Percival plunged again into his hot pot. He was obviously a man who enjoyed his food. She became more reckless in her relief at knowing that Maurice was safe. She said, 'You can't stop me going.'

'Oh, don't be so sure of that. You know, at the office we have quite a file on you. You were very friendly in South Africa with a man called Carson. A Communist agent.'

'Of course I was. I was helping Maurice-for your service, though I didn't know it then. He told me it was for a book on apartheid he was writing.'

'And Maurice perhaps was even then helping Carson. And Maurice is now in Moscow. It's not strictly speaking our business, of course, but MI5 might well feel you ought to be investigated-in depth. If you'll let an old man advise you-an old man who was a friend of Maurice...'

A memory flashed into her mind of a shambling figure in a teddy-bear coat playing hide-and-seek with Sam among the wintry trees. 'And of Davis,' she said, 'you were a friend of Davis too, weren't you?'

A spoonful of gravy was stopped on the way to Doctor Percival's mouth.

'Yes. Poor Davis. It was a sad death for a man still young.'

'I don't drink port,' Sarah said.

'My dear girl, how irrelevant can you be? Let's wait to decide about port until we get to the cheese-they have excellent Wensleydale. All I was going to say was to be reasonable. Stay quietly in the country with your mother-in-law and your child...'

'Maurice's child.'

'Perhaps.'

'What do you mean, perhaps?'

'You've met this man Cornelius Muller, a rather unsympathetic type from BOSS. And what a name! He's under the impression that the real father my dear, you must forgive a little plain speaking-I don't want you to make the sort of mistake Maurice has made-'

'You aren't being very plain.'

'Muller believes that the father was one of your own people.'

'Oh, I know the one he means-even if it was true he's dead.'

'He isn't dead.'

'Of course he's dead. He was killed in a riot.'

'Did you see his body?'

'No, but...'

'Muller says he's safely under lock and key. He's a lifer-so Muller says.'

'I don't believe it.'

'Muller says this fellow is prepared to claim paternity.'

'Muller's lying.'

'Yes, yes. That's quite possible. The man may well be a stooge. I haven't been into the legal aspects yet myself, but I doubt if he could prove anything in our courts. Is the child on your pa.s.sport?'

'No.'

'Has he a pa.s.sport?'

'No.'

'Then you'd have to apply for a pa.s.sport to take him out of this country. That means a lot of bureaucratic rigmarole. The pa.s.sport people can sometimes be very, very slow.'

'What b.a.s.t.a.r.ds you are. You killed Carson. You killed Davis. And now...

'Carson died of pneumonia. Poor Davis-that was cirrhosis.'

'Muller says it was pneumonia. You say it was cirrhosis, and now you are threatening me and Sam.'

'Not threatening, my dear, advising.'

'Your advice...'

She had to break off. The waiter had come to clear their plates. Doctor Percival's was clean enough, but most of her portion had remained uneaten.

'What about an old English apple pie with cloves and a bit of cheese?' Doctor Percival asked, leaning seductively forward and speaking in a low voice as though he were naming the price he was prepared to pay for certain favours.

'No. Nothing. I don't want any more.'

'Oh dear, the bill then,' Doctor Percival told the waiter with disappointment, and when the waiter had gone he reproached her, 'Mrs Castle, you mustn't get angry. There's nothing personal in all this. If you get angry you are sure to make the wrong decision. It's just an affair of boxes,' he began to elaborate, and then broke off as though for once he was finding that metaphor inapplicable.

'Sam is my child and I shall take him wherever I want. To Moscow, to Timbuctoo, to...'

'You can't take Sam until he has a pa.s.sport, and I'm anxious to keep MI5 from taking any preventive action against you. If they learned you were applying for a pa.s.sport... and they would learn...'

She walked out, she walked out on everything, leaving Doctor Percival to wait behind for the bill. If she had stayed a moment longer she wasn't sure that she could have trusted herself with the knife which remained by her plate for the cheese. She had once seen a white man just as well fed as Doctor Percival stabbed in a public garden in Johannesburg. It had looked such a very easy thing to do. From the door she looked back at him. The wire grill over the window behind made him appear to be sitting at a desk in a police station. Obviously he had followed her with his eyes, and now he raised an index finger and shook it gently to and fro in her direction. It could be taken for an admonition or a warning. She didn't care which.

Chapter II.

I.

From the window on the twelfth floor of the great grey building Castle could see the red star over the University. There was a certain beauty in the view as there is in all cities at night. Only the daylight was drab. They had made it clear to him, particularly Ivan who had met his plane in Prague and accompanied him to a debriefing in some place near Irkutsk with an unp.r.o.nounceable name, that he was extraordinarily lucky in his apartment. It had belonged, both rooms of it with a kitchen and a private shower, to a comrade recently dead who had nearly succeeded before his death in furnis.h.i.+ng it completely. An empty apartment as a rule contained only a stove-everything else even to the toilet had to be bought. That was not easy and wasted a great deal of time and energy. Castle wondered sometimes if that was why the comrade had died, worn out by his long hunt for the green wicker armchair, the brown sofa hard as a board, without cus.h.i.+ons, the table which looked as though it had been stained a nearly even colour by the application of gravy. The television set, the latest black and white model, was a gift of the government. Ivan had carefully explained that when they first visited the apartment. In his manner he hinted his personal doubt whether it had been truly earned. Ivan seemed to Castle no more likeable here than he had been in London. Perhaps he resented his recall and blamed it on Castle.

The most valuable object in the apartment seemed to be the telephone. It was covered with dust and disconnected, but all the same it had a symbolic value. One day, perhaps soon, it could be put to use. He would speak through it to Sarah-to hear her voice meant everything to him, whatever comedy they would have to play for the listeners, and there certainly would be listeners. To hear her would make the long wait bearable. Once he broached the matter to Ivan. He had noticed Ivan preferred to talk out of doors even on the coldest day, and as it was Ivan's job to show him around the city he took an opportunity outside the great GUM department store (a place where he felt almost at home because it reminded him of photographs he had seen of the Crystal Palace). He asked, 'Is it possible, do you think, to have my telephone connected?' They had gone to GUM to find Castle a fur-lined overcoat-the temperature was twenty-three degrees.

'I'll ask,' Ivan said, 'but for the moment I suppose they want to keep you under wrappers.'

'Is that a long process?'

'It was in the case of Bellamy, but you're not such an important case. We can't get much publicity out of you.'

'Who's Bellamy?'

'You must remember Bellamy. A most important man in your British Council. In West Berlin. That was always a cover, wasn't it, like the Peace Corps?'

Castle didn't bother to deny it-it was none of his business.

'Oh yes, I think I remember now.' It had happened at the time of his greatest anxiety, while he waited for news of Sarah in Lourenco Marques, and he couldn't recall the details of Bellamy's defection. Why did one defect from the British Council and what value or harm would such a defection have to anyone? He asked, 'Is he still alive?' It all seemed such a long time ago.

'Why not?'

'What does he do?'

'He lives on our grat.i.tude.' Ivan added, 'As you do. Oh, we invented a job for him. He advises our publications division. He has a dacha in the country. It's a better life than he would have had at home with a pension. I suppose they will do the same for you.'

'Reading books in a dacha in the country?'

'Yes.'

'Are there many of us-I mean living like that on your grat.i.tude?'

'I know at least six. There was Cruickshank and Bates-you'll remember them-they were from your service. You'll run into them I expect in the Aragvi, our Georgian restaurant-they say the wine's good there I can't afford it-and you will see them at the Bolshoi, when they take the wrappers off.'

They pa.s.sed the Lenin Library-'You'll find them there too.' He added with venom, 'Reading the English papers.'

Ivan had found him a large stout middle-aged woman as a daily who would also help him to learn a little Russian. She gave a Russian name to everything in the flat, pointing a blunt finger at everything in turn, and she was very fussy about p.r.o.nunciation. Although she was several years younger than Castle she treated him as though he were a child, with an admonitory sternness which slowly melted into a sort of maternal affection as he became more housetrained. When Ivan was otherwise occupied she would enlarge the scope of her lessons, taking him with her in search of food at the Central Market and down into the Metro. (She wrote figures on a sc.r.a.p of paper to explain the prices and the fares.) After a while she began to show him photographs of her family-her husband a young man in uniform, taken somewhere in a public park with a cardboard outline of the Kremlin behind his head. He wore his uniform in an untidy way (you could see he wasn't used to it), and he smiled at the camera with a look of great tenderness-perhaps she had been standing behind the photographer. He had been killed, she conveyed to him, at Stalingrad. In return he produced for her a snapshot of Sarah and Sam which he hadn't confessed to Mr. Halliday that he had secreted in his shoe. She showed surprise that they were black, and for a little while afterwards her manner to him seemed more distant-she was not so much shocked as lost, he had broken her sense of order. In that she resembled his mother. After a few days all was well again, but during those few days he felt an exile inside his exile and his longing for Sarah was intensified.

He had been in Moscow now for two weeks, and he had bought with the money Ivan had given him a few extras for the flat. He had even found school editions in English of Shakespeare's plays, two novels of d.i.c.kens, Oliver Twist and Hard Times, Tom Jones and Robinson Crusoe. The snow was ankle deep in the side streets and he had less and less inclination to go sightseeing with Ivan or even on an educational tour with Anna-she was called Anna. In the evening he would warm some soup and sit huddled near the stove, with the dusty disconnected telephone at his elbow, and read Robinson Crusoe. Sometimes he could hear Crusoe speaking, as though on a tape recorder, with his own voice: I drew up the state of my affairs in writing; not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few heirs, as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring upon them, and afflicting my mind.' Crusoe divided the comforts and miseries of his situation into Good and Evil and under the heading Evil he wrote: I have no soul to speak to, or relieve me.' Under the opposing Good he counted so many necessary things' which he had obtained from the wreck as will either supply my wants, or enable me to supply myself even as long as I live.' Well, he had the green wicker armchair, the gravy-stained table, the uncomfortable sofa, and the stove which warmed him now. They would have been sufficient if Sarah had been there-she was used to far worse conditions and he remembered some of the grim rooms in which they had been forced to meet and make love in dubious hotels without a colour bar in the poorer quarters of Johannesburg. He remembered one room in particular without furniture of any kind where they had been happy enough on the floor. Next day when Ivan made his snide references to 'grat.i.tude' he broke furiously out: You call this grat.i.tude.'

'Not so many people who live alone possess a kitchen and shower all to themselves... and two rooms.'

'I'm not complaining of that. But they promised me I wouldn't be alone. They promised me that my wife and child would follow.'

The intensity of his anger disquieted Ivan. Ivan said, 'It takes time.'

'I don't even have any work. I'm a man on the dole. Is that your b.l.o.o.d.y socialism?'

'Quiet, quiet,' Ivan said. 'Wait awhile. When they take the wrappers off...'

Castle nearly struck Ivan and he saw that Ivan knew it. Ivan mumbled something and backed away down the cement stairs.

2.

Was it perhaps a microphone that conveyed this scene to a higher authority or had Ivan reported it? Castle would never know, but all the same his anger had worked the trick. It had swept away the wrappers, swept away, as he realised later, even Ivan. Just as when Ivan was removed from London because they must have decided he had the wrong temperament to be the right control for Castle, so now he put in only one more appearance a rather subdued appearance-and then disappeared for ever. Perhaps they had a pool of controls, just as in London there had been a pool of secretaries, and Ivan had sunk back into the pool. No one in this sort of service was ever likely to be sacked, for fear of revelations.

Ivan made his swan song as an interpreter in a building not far from the Lubianka prison, which he had pointed proudly out to Castle on one of their walks. Castle asked him that morning where they were going and he answered evasively, ' They have decided on your work.'

The room where they waited was lined with books in ugly economy bindings. Castle read the names of Stalin, Lenin, Marx in Russian script it pleased him to think he was beginning to make out the script. There was a big desk with a luxurious leather blotting pad and a nineteenth-century bronze of a man on horseback too large and heavy to use as a paper-weight it could only be there for decorative purposes. From a doorway behind the desk emerged a stout elderly man with a shock of grey hair and an old-fas.h.i.+oned moustache yellowed by cigarette smoke. He was followed by a young man dressed very correctly who carried a file. He was like an acolyte attending a priest of his faith, and in spite of the heavy moustache there was something priestly about the old man, about his kindly smile and the hand he extended like a blessing. A lot of conversation-questions and answers-went on among the three of them, and then Ivan took the floor as translator. He said, 'The comrade wants you to know how highly your work has been appreciated. He wants you to understand that the very importance of your work has presented us with problems which had to be solved at a high level. That is why you have been kept apart during these two weeks. The comrade is anxious that you should not think it was through any lack of trust. It was hoped that your presence here would only become known to the Western Press at the right moment.'

Castle said, 'They must know I am here by now. Where else would I be?' Ivan translated and the old man replied, and the young acolyte smiled at the reply with his eyes cast down.

The comrade says, "Knowing is not the same as publis.h.i.+ng." The Press can only publish when you are officially here. The censors.h.i.+p would see to that. A press conference is going to be arranged very soon and then we will let you know what you should say to the journalists. Perhaps we will rehea.r.s.e it all a little first.'

'Tell the comrade,' Castle said, 'that I want to earn my keep here.'

'The comrade says you have earned it many times over already.'

'In that case I expect him to keep the promise they made me in London.'

'What was that?'

'I was told my wife and son would follow me here. Tell him, Ivan, that I'm d.a.m.ned lonely. Tell him I want the use of my telephone. I want to telephone my wife, that's all, not the British Emba.s.sy or a journalist. If the wrappers are off, then let me speak to her.'

The translation took a lot of time. A translation, he knew, always turned out longer than the original text, but this was inordinately longer. Even the acolyte seemed to be adding more than a sentence or two. The important comrade hardly bothered to speak he continued to look as benign as a bishop.

Ivan turned back to Castle at last. He had a sour expression which the others couldn't see. He said, 'They are very anxious to have your co-operation in the publis.h.i.+ng section which deals with Africa.' He nodded in the direction of the acolyte who permitted himself an encouraging smile which might have been a plaster cast of his superior's. 'The comrade says he would like you to act as their chief adviser on African literature. He says there are a great number of African novelists and they would like to choose the most valuable for translation, and of course the best of the novelists (selected by you) would he invited to pay us a visit by the Writer's Union. This is a very important position and they are happy to offer it to you.'

The old man made a gesture with his hand towards the bookshelves as though he were inviting Stalin, Lenin and Marx-yes, and there was Engels too-to welcome the novelists whom he would pick for them.

Castle said, 'They haven't answered me. I want my wife and son here with me. They promised that. Boris promised it.

Ivan said, 'I do not want to translate what you are saying. All that business concerns quite a different department. It would be a big mistake to confuse matters. They are offering you...'

'Tell him I won't discuss anything until I've spoken to my wife.'

Ivan shrugged his shoulders and spoke. This time the translation was no longer than the text-an abrupt angry sentence. It was the commentary by the old comrade which took up all the s.p.a.ce, like the footnotes of an over-edited book. To show the finality of his decision Castle turned away and looked out of the window into a narrow ditch of a street between walls of concrete of which he couldn't see the top through the snow which poured down into the ditch as though from some huge inexhaustible bucket up above. This was not the snow he remembered from childhood and a.s.sociated with s...o...b..a.l.l.s and fairy stories and games with toboggans. This was a merciless, interminable, annihilating snow, a snow in which one could expect the world to end.

Ivan said angrily, 'We will go away now.'

'What do they say?'

'I do not understand the way they are treating you. I know from London the sort of rubbish you sent us. Come away.' The old comrade held out a courteous hand: the young one looked a bit perturbed. Outside the silence of the snow-drowned street was so extreme that Castle hesitated to break it. The two of them walked rapidly like secret enemies who are seeking the right spot to settle their differences in a final fas.h.i.+on. At last, when he could bear the uncertainty no longer, Castle said, 'Well, what was the result of all that talk?'

Ivan said, 'They told me that I was handling you wrongly. Just the same as they told me when they brought me back from London. "More psychology is needed, comrade, more psychology." I would be much better off if I was a traitor like you.' Luck brought them a taxi and in it he leaped into a wounded silence. (Castle had already noticed that one never talked in a taxi.) In the doorway of the apartment block Ivan gave grudgingly the information Castle demanded.