All Souls (18 page)

I wouldn't have found it in the least odd to come upon Rook in that ecstatic pose (Rook, the old and much-vaunted friend of Vladimir Vladimirovich, eminent and eternally future translator of
Anna Karenin
just as Vladimir was the eminent and eternally past translator of
Onegin.
But the Ripper was already fluent in the two languages to which he dedicated himself professionally and it seemed excessive that he should also know Russian and with a mastery that allowed him to give fluent voice (in public) to its finest lines. And it was then that I remembered that Rylands, in what he would have later regarded as that Sunday morning's indiscretions, had spoken of Dewar as being a spy. "A penpusher," he'd called him and therefore, in his eyes, despicable; but he had not then shown the slightest hesitation in attributing that role to him and in associating him with that line of work, which, besides, was so very Oxonian. That was something I could ask Rylands himself about, but, as it happened, I didn't do so until after Easter, in Trinity term, when the child Eric was ill and Clare did not care to see me, when I spent more time than usual walking the streets of Oxford in company with the beggars with whom I was becoming increasingly obsessed and when I was about to make my first visit to the discotheque near the Apollo Theatre, only then did I again visit the house by the Cherwell and dare to question him about Dewar. And although he tried at first to avoid the question ("Oh, yes, that Dewar, from your department. Did I really say that?"), thus demonstrating the reaction I could have expected had I thrown discretion and respect to the winds and asked more about his own intense past, when I persisted, he finally agreed to tell me, sprinkling the tale with his customary digressions and malevolent details: "Oh, yes, Dewar," he said, "from Brasenose, isn't he? Or is it Magdalen? Anyway, unless I'm very much mistaken, he'll be retired by now. How old is he, fifty-something? Impossible to tell his age really, he's been middle-aged for as long as I've known him; but the Service tends to retire its men early, even the penpushers, unless they're irreplaceable. I should think if they haven't done so already, they're certainly about to retire him; he's a very nervy chap, a chronic insomniac, and that will have taken its toll on him. Did you know that the only way he can get to sleep is by having white noise playing in the background? White noise, that's what they call it. It's some kind of apparatus, an acoustic device that emits a strange uniform sound which isn't really a sound at all, something almost inaudible but nonetheless there, enough to suppress all other sounds and pave the way to sleep. Never fails apparently. They use it a lot in the Secret Service, which is full of people who can't sleep. Dewar must have got hold of one in exchange for some extra jobs he did. He showed it to me once, at his college ... I still can't for the life of me remember if it was Magdalen or Brasenose ... It looked like a small radio, but I couldn't hear a thing. Dewar. Yes. He never really did that much and, as far as I know, he never went on any mission outside England. Mainly deskwork, nothing more, his only merit being his mastery of Russian. He's a man with a real gift for languages, he learned Russian as a student just as he learned Spanish and then Portuguese later on to complete his chosen speciality. I think he speaks several other languages too ... He could have chosen to study Slavic languages but if he had, the Service would never have used him. Anyone in a Slavic languages department is automatically ruled out for any work to do with the Soviets. They'd be no good at all. Dewar's been called to London sometimes to monitor broadcasts, translate recordings, interpret nuances of intonation or explain the finer details of some particularly complicated or dense texts, but never anything more than that. Oh and, yes, he had another function, but the work involved was only ever sporadic ... he may still do it .. . When any ballet dancer or athlete or chess player or opera singer (the kind of Soviet citizen most likely to defect) escapes and crosses over to the West when they're on tour or involved in some competition in this country . . . although it happens less all the time now, not just because of the changes taking place over there, but because they all prefer to try America first before making up their minds .. . anyway, before giving any help or offering asylum to the athlete or singer in question (a boring lot, terribly mechanical), they'd call in Dewar to interrogate them in Russian or, rather, to have him translate the questions of the inspector in charge and give his opinion as to
the fugitive's sincerity, good intentions and general level of disaffection towards the Soviet Union. Not one of those escapees . . . there were never many, I seem to recall that the last one who passed through his hands, it must be a couple of years ago now, was a dancer who later, as they all do, carved out a brilliant career for himself in America . . . Not one of those escapees could walk our streets freely without Dewar's say so. That doesn't mean his agreement was definitive or absolute, he's never been that important; it was more that he gave his personal opinion based on tone, voice inflections and the manner in which the interrogated party replied in his own language, something there was no way the inspector conducting the interrogation could possibly gauge. People used to say that Dewar enjoyed (or enjoys) himself so much in his role as vicarious interrogator that he was suspected of taking certain liberties, I mean, it was noticed that he seemed to take an unnecessarily long time over his translations of the questions into Russian and people got the impression he was departing from the questions he was given and adding others off his own bat, though he didn't of course translate into English the answers given to the latter. Naturally the inspectors could never prove the existence of these private and parallel dialogues held between Dewar and the defectors and (assuming they did exist) still less what the devil Dewar was talking about with those would-be ex-Soviet subjects. For that they would have needed a second interpreter to supervise Dewar's translations both ways, checking and retranslating everything the latter heard and said in Russian. Too complicated and with the added risk of setting off an endless chain of interpreters, ta, ta, ta ... One thing is certain, Dewar took his work very seriously and his participation in an interrogation always meant the defectors would be kept sitting in their chair for hours on end, being badgered by questions that were possibly personal or even intimate, maybe even rude. I imagine he milked to maximum effect the few occasions he got to exercise this second role. Given the life he leads, he must have considered it all a great adventure."

I think my affection for the Butcher was born at that moment. It isn't that his work as a spy was so very brilliant or even admirable, but every time I recalled Rylands revealing to me Dewar's polyglot, inquisitorial skills (now I understood the origin of one of his nicknames), I couldn't help imagining him in a poky room in some London police station, shut up for hours with a frightened, newly escaped ballet dancer, who, during those hours - Dewar's fierce, unctuous face being his first and rather unappealing impression of the so-called free world - must have had serious doubts about whether he'd really cast off the yoke of oppression or whether it was just about to be placed once more upon his shoulders. Perhaps the Inquisitor flexed and bounced his leg up and down as he used to do in class in front of the undergraduates, his huge voracious shoes resting — for lack of a desk- alternately on the arms of the chair occupied by the dancer or perhaps, higher up, on the back of the chair or worse still, on the seat itself, the toe of his shoe (so broad and square) placed like a wedge between the defector's thighs, a threat to the dancer's skintight trousers or tights (I couldn't help thinking that the dancers would have fled immediately after their London performance, after all the ovations and bouquets and would, therefore, still have been wearing their ballet costumes - with that look of Robin Hood they all have - and perhaps a purple,
fin de siècle
cloak wrapped about them against the cold). "So you've decided to defect, have you?" the Ripper would perhaps start off by saying, treating them initially with some scorn and incredulity, addressing them with the informal "you" just to bring them down a peg or two; and with a rapid movement he would make as if to strike him, although he would never actually touch him (except for the lightest of taps with the toe of his lace-up shoes). "And how do we know you're not just pretending and that you're not planning an attempt against
the Crown?" (the Butcher is pompous). "And don't give me the usual sob story," he would add off his own bat, "I know it by heart: there's no future for you there, you're bored, you feel like prisoners in shackles" (he would throw in that word to impress them with the breadth of his vocabulary), "you can't grow as a dancer; all you artists really want is more glitter, more show, more adulation and more money, isn't that right?" "It's not just that," the dancer might venture to reply, not yet quite having lost the impulse or élan of the dance. But the Inquisitor would be in no mood to be bamboozled by someone in a Peter Pan outfit (the security of the state, or at least one of its many fronts, lies in his hands, for several hours he is in charge and everything depends on his sagacity and cunning if a potential dancer-cum-spy is to be unmasked). Dewar lifts one ostentatiously shod foot, with a gesture that could as easily presage a doubt as a kick, but on that first occasion he lets it fall to the floor again, loud enough for the thud to resonate in martial tones around the room. Someone is dependent on him, although only for that one day. "Well, well, well," he says with the self-important smile I know so well from our shared classes, having seen him bestow it on the students he most hates. The Ripper flexes one leg and his foot wanders over the interviewee's chair (once even carelessly pinching his flesh) while he translates the inspector's questions and slips in his own: "What made you decide to ask for asylum in the United Kingdom? (And tell me, comrade, this love of dancing, has it been with you since childhood?)" Or perhaps: "Did you plan your escape on your own or was some other member of your ballet company involved? (And tell me, comrade, in the Soviet Union is it difficult to find work in an established company? Do you have to perform any sexual favours in order to get in?)" Or perhaps: "Do you know personally any of the leaders of the Communist Party or any member of the government in your country? (And tell me, comrade, what do you think of English audiences? Real connoisseurs, eh? Well, there's a long tradition of ballet here. How did the performance go today? And how many hours a day do you rehearse? Do you have to follow any kind of diet? Which is more strenuous, classical or modern ballet? Nijinsky or Nureyev? That's a lovely purple cloak. And how do you get on with your partner? Any jealousies?)" The Inquisitor never lacks for questions. After his dull life in the city of Oxford everything interests him, and he'll be able to dine out on what he gleans from the lips of this Russian at various future high tables, astounding his fellow guests with his insider knowledge of the life and habits of Russian dancers. And so the Butcher always ends up giving the defector the all-clear, although that may only be because after all those questions and answers he almost regards him as a friend, or at least as an acquaintance, whom he probably knows as well as all those stern, haughty dons in the city where he teaches and whom he's observed over the course of decades, without ever finding out a thing about them. And the Ripper, after the long hours of questioning, turns to the inspector and gives him an affirmative nod. "Bring me some vodka," he orders the police constable, who has accompanied them in the shadows, keeping close to the wall and remaining utterly silent throughout the interrogation. "Perhaps the gentleman would care to drink a toast to his new life.
Za, zdorovie!"
It's possible that, as Rylands suggested, poor Dewar felt bold and important on those occasions; it's also possible, to judge by his Pushkinian trance, that he missed having the opportunity to exercise his extraordinary knowledge of Russian; and, lastly, it's possible that he took advantage of the circumstances in order to spend some pleasant hours in conversation with someone who couldn't flee from him, who had no option but to answer his questions, someone whom he could ask openly about the customs and landscapes of his native land, about family and friends, about his childhood, about his political opinions and religious beliefs, about his loves and his sexual preferences, about his career and the obligations this imposed on him, or about the Moscow metro and Russian cuisine and the prices in the market and the current state of Russian literature (much to his irritation and offence this last remained unanswered - none of the chessplayers, dancers or gymnasts kept abreast of contemporary literature: "You must answer all my questions! Do you understand? Every one of them must be answered!").

That dark, bony, formal man, with the enormous mouth, pointed skull and high cheekbones of an Otto Dix portrait (and possessed of a child-like ferocity, by which I mean one that could only frighten those barely out of childhood, namely his students, who faithfully, year after year, passed on to the new crop of undergraduates his three bloodcurdling nicknames), no doubt took as much pleasure in the Russian language as he did in Spanish words of four or more syllables ("En-a-je-na-miento, tra-ga-sa-bles, sin-gla-du-ra, va-sa-lla-je"). He knew no other life than the university. He was just one more bachelor in the city of Oxford, another upholder of the old clerical tradition of that immutable, inhospitable place, preserved in syrup, in the words, already quoted, of one of my predecessors. (Another troubled spirit, like myself.) Dewar was a dead soul. He had, however, this other small, unusual life, and the day - one of the few days — he was called to London with great urgency because a swimmer, a pole vaulter, a cellist or a dancer (you can be sure those were his favourites) had asked for political asylum, forsaking for ever his or her troupe or orchestra or team, then he would abandon with glee the white noise of his rooms at Brasenose (his dead soul leaping into life again), and take the train through Didcot and Reading and Slough and Southall and arrive at Paddington where he would change on to a packed underground train that would take him to the heart of London. He must have felt he was the most important, most inscrutable, wisest man in the whole university: more important than both Vice Rector and Rector, more important than the Vice Chancellor and more inscrutable and wiser even than the Chancellor himself. That's why whenever I came across him with his thick glasses on, reading a newspaper in the Senior Common Room or in the library at the Taylorian or in the lounge at the Randolph Hotel immediately opposite, I imagined him, his pulse racing, engaged in avid scrutiny of the arts and sports pages to see if a Soviet ballet company or state orchestra or some team of Soviet athletes or chessplayers were coming to perform or compete in some corner of Great Britain, and when he saw them advertised or read reviews of their performances, he must have prayed to Hermes, the god of travellers and commerce, or thieves and orators, of disquiet and dreams, to arm with valour one of their number during the night and persuade him to dodge the security guards and make a bid for freedom.