Dr Berlin (10 page)

‘I know it’s published,’ Kate began. ‘You must have it somewhere.’

‘We have no score of this name,’ the girl repeated. There was no apology, no explanation. Only that stubbornly closed expression signifying a bureaucratic triumph in denying her what she wanted. She had met this before when her way was barred or her request refused.

‘Please will you look again. I’m sure the score exists. I need it for my studies.’

‘There is no composer of this name in our catalogue.’

‘You must be mistaken,’ Kate said.

‘No,’ the girl replied emphatically. ‘I am not mistaken.’

‘I’ve heard his recordings. I’ve seen his name on the label of the record. Why would I ask for the music of a composer who doesn’t exist?’

‘There is no composer of this name.’ This argument was beginning to attract attention. She was aware of people staring at her.

‘I don’t believe you. You must have it. Please look again.’

‘Is something the matter?’

Kate turned. A fair-haired Russian man was standing beside her. She responded to his sympathetic voice. She was a student at the Conservatoire, she told him. She was here to borrow a score that she needed for her studies, only to learn that the library had no record of either the composer or the score. That couldn’t be true. She had heard one of his recordings only a day or two before. She had read his name on the cover of the
long-playing record. It was absurd to deny that neither the man nor his music existed.

The stranger listened carefully and then spoke to the library assistant. She replied too quietly for Kate to understand.

‘Let me buy you a cup of tea.’

‘Please – I want to understand why—’

‘I think it is best to leave now,’ he whispered in English. She was so startled that she allowed him to take her arm and lead her away.

‘Of course Khutoryanski exists,’ he told her as they left the building. ‘As does the score for his Third Cello Sonata, though I have never heard it myself. I am certain that there is a copy in this library. That young woman you spoke to knows it too.’

‘Then why won’t she find it for me?’

‘If you look in the library’s catalogue, you’ll discover that there is no record of any Soviet composer by the name of Khutoryanski nor any of his music. Officially, neither exists.’

He took her arm as they dodged the traffic and pointed to a restaurant. ‘Getting tea there will demand a negotiation worthy of a summit meeting, but perhaps we may be lucky. The quality will not be good, but there is nowhere else nearby. Shall we try?’

They were lucky. A sullen waitress reluctantly brought them some tea and a plate of biscuits that looked – and tasted – as if they were made of compressed cardboard. As they sat at a table in the empty restaurant the young man continued to talk as if they were in danger of being overheard. Sometimes she found it hard to catch what he was saying.

‘Khutoryanski fell out of favour in the thirties. Who knows why? In this country, actions are not accompanied by explanations. Perhaps one evening Stalin was in a bad mood, and he complained that he did not like some piece of music he had heard on the radio. His colleagues identified Khutoryanski as the composer, which may or may not have been the case, we shall never know. A single telephone call to the Musicians’
Union, that most compliant of organisations, and Khutoryanski’s music is banned. It displeases the Father of the Nation. It is decadent, not sufficiently socialist, altogether too frivolous and light-hearted. No one may play or conduct or teach any piece by Khutoryanski again. The composer is stripped of all his privileges. His work is suppressed. His entry in the
Soviet
Encyclopedia
is excised, his name mysteriously eradicated from the list of prizes he has won. You won’t find any record of his time at the Conservatoire, yet everyone knows that’s where he studied. In desperation, Khutoryanski appealed to his fellow musicians but they were deaf to his entreaties. Probably, they were threatened with similar treatment if they intervened to support him. The poor man became so distressed that, in protest, he tried to defy the state that had taken away his livelihood. He set up a music stand outside the gates of the Kremlin one morning and played a piece he had written for solo violin which he dedicated to Stalin. He was arrested, tried and given a savage prison sentence on charges of anti-Soviet activities that were evidently false.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Who knows? He disappeared, like so many thousands of others, into the secret universe of prison camps that exists in this country, and was never heard of again.’

‘Did he die there?’

‘Probably.’

‘Was his music destroyed too?’

‘Not destroyed, no. Removed from public access, which is as good as being destroyed. It was as if he had never existed, and therefore he had written nothing. His wife was made to give up all her husband’s possessions, even the pencils and paper he used. I’m sure his scores are held under tight security on the top floor of the Lenin Library, with all the other prescribed texts which none of us may see for fear of their powers of contamination to weaken our resolve to build the socialist paradise.’

His demeanour, she noticed, was not hardened and cold
like that of so many Russians she had seen, but open and generous. He had deep-set eyes which seemed to look at you from a safe distance. There was, she told herself, a mysterious un-Russian quality about him, though she was unable to identify what it was. Then she realised that such a thought was absurd – how could he be anything
but
Russian?

‘How did you hear of Khutoryanski?’ he asked.

‘One of the students at the Conservatoire played me a recording he’d found.’

‘May I give you some advice?’

‘Please.’

‘Avoid contact with that student. Whether you like him or not, from now on you must regard him as untrustworthy. I can’t believe he played that record to you without an ulterior motive.’

‘Such as what?’ Kate asked. The Bulgarian violinist had been at the Conservatoire for two years. He must have known that the composer’s music was censored. Why would he want to get her into trouble with the authorities?

‘How can I know?’ He smiled at her. ‘I know nothing about you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She felt herself blushing. ‘How rude of me. My name is Kate Buchanan. I am English, and I’m here studying the cello under Vinogradoff.’

‘My name is Valery Marchenko,’ he replied solemnly, offering her his hand across the table. ‘I am Russian. But I think you already know that.’

He was older than she was, in his late twenties, she imagined. In repose, he had the soulful expression she had seen on so many Russian faces that lit up the moment he smiled or laughed.

‘If Vinogradoff teaches as well as he plays, then you are lucky.’

‘He is a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘I am lucky. I know it.’

*

It was her hair that first attracted him, long, thick, blonde hair falling over her shoulders like a rippling golden fan. He had noticed her as soon as he came into the library, sitting on a chair waiting, her music case on her knees. He had seen the young assistant librarian summon her, and he had instantly recognised the arrogant triumph of minor authority. The girl with the fair hair had no idea what was in store for her. He had gone across the room to help her without knowing why he had done so.

‘What do you do?’ she asked. It was an innocent question but his defences sprang instantly into action.

‘Me?’ he said with studied nonchalance. ‘I’m an engineer.’

‘I’ve been here long enough to know that I should ask no more questions.’

‘If you know that, you’re halfway to becoming Soviet.’

She laughed for the first time, tossing her head back, closing her eyes and pulling her hair away from her shoulders. He saw her long pale neck, and wanted to touch it with the tips of his fingers so that her eyes would remain shut and he would see her eyelids flicker with pleasure.

‘Where did you learn English?’ she asked.

If he said ‘at school’, she would know that wasn’t true. She had probably been in Moscow long enough to know that very few people were taught English. If he said ‘by listening secretly to the radio’, she might blurt it out to one of her friends and betray him unintentionally. If he told her the truth, she probably wouldn’t believe him but that wasn’t a risk he was prepared to take.

‘My mother taught me.’

‘She must have been a very good teacher.’

‘Or I was a very attentive pupil.’

Once again she laughed.

‘Thank you for rescuing me,’ she said, getting ready to leave. ‘And for the tea. I really enjoyed it.’

‘It was undrinkable,’ he said apologetically.

‘If it was I didn’t notice.’

‘May we take tea together again?’ If his request were to carry any conviction, he would have to give her some reason. ‘I would like to practise my English. It is hard to do so here. I would like to improve.’

‘And you think I would be a good teacher, do you?’ He couldn’t make out if her smile was mocking him or not.

‘I am sure you would be excellent,’ he said solemnly.

‘Then, Valery Marchenko, there is only one way to find out. I hope we can arrange the first lesson soon.’

Colonel Koliakov’s decision to wear uniform was a mistake. The material was too thick to disperse the heat of his body even though he had taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and occasionally fanned his face with the agenda. He wiped his forehead with the edge of his finger, shaking off the sweat below the level of the table. The sodden back of his shirt was sticking to the fabric of his chair. Every time he moved his belt chafed the skin around his midriff into a boiling rash. Discomfort had given way to irritation. He had been sitting here for an hour already and nothing had been achieved. How much more would he have to suffer before he could be released? He longed for a bath.

The emergency meeting of the Disinformation Committee had begun soon after seven on a humid July evening in a badly ventilated room on the fourteenth floor of the Foreign Ministry. In the distance, unseen by the nine men around the table, the clouds built up, threatening thunder. Occasionally, hot spots of rain fell in the streets like exploding bullets, but there was no storm and no thunder, nothing to clear the air that became more humid and oppressive as the night wore on. Because of the secrecy of the agenda, the doors and windows on the fourteenth floor were kept firmly shut. Jackets had
been rapidly discarded, sleeves rolled up, glasses of water poured. So far, that was all the committee had managed to accomplish.

The chairman, in his opening statement, had come straight to the point. ‘It is my sad duty to report that our distinguished colleague, the Chief Designer of our space programme, died yesterday. He was sixty-two.’

There was an immediate outbreak of expressions of grief around the table. Koliakov watched the reaction of feigned sorrow as the members of the committee extravagantly praised the Chief Designer’s achievements – even in death his identity remained concealed – and vied with each other in their demonstrations of distress at his passing. One man held a handkerchief to his eyes, and when it was his turn to speak, waved away the privilege, too overcome to say a word.

Had any of them known Radin intimately? Unlikely. Most had probably never met him, let alone spoken to him, yet they were behaving as if he were a close member of their own family. How Koliakov hated Moscow and its self-enforced play-acting. Was nothing real here? Nothing genuine? Was there only ritual posturing to conceal a cold and empty heart? If the members of the political elite of the country could put on so cynical a performance, what hope was there? Was this the ‘radiant future’ their leaders had promised, and for which so many millions had sacrificed their lives? The descent from those distant days of heady idealism was steep and sickening, and the sharpness of the fall had accelerated in the months he’d been away in London.

A small man with a narrow face stood up. ‘This committee wishes to express its deep sorrow at the death of our valiant and much-respected colleague. The shock of his passing is too sudden for us yet to express in words our true gratitude for a life lived in service to the ideals we all share. Please convey our sincere condolences to the First Secretary on this great loss to the nation.’

Vadim Medvedev looked around for approval and sat down
to murmurings of assent. He was pushing himself forward, as usual. No change there. Koliakov had forgotten how intensely he disliked him. Throughout his previous stint on this committee they had frequently clashed. Medvedev had often taken a contrary view to his. It dismayed him now to see that he remained on the committee. Why hadn’t someone seen fit to remove him? Or had he become too powerful for that?

Apart from two others in uniform – both suffering from the heat, Koliakov noticed, as much as he was – and their chairman, the men around the table were bureaucrats with neither imagination nor courage, in whose hands lay the true power of the system because they drafted the documents that their ministers saw, and they knew how to make their way through the bureaucratic maze and manipulate what their ministers did. How he despised them for their small-mindedness and for their concern to protect themselves. How wrong it was that men like Radin – geniuses without whom there would be no future – had to argue their case for resources in front of men like these.

In two more days Koliakov would be back in London, where it would certainly be cool and probably raining and there would be play-acting of a different kind, that effortless snobbery of the English where schools and breeding and accents created a social hierarchy whose intricacies he would never grasp. Once there, he would cease to be a KGB colonel. His uniform would be put carefully away to await his next visit to Moscow. He would once more assume the identity of the friendly Soviet diplomat, mixing with friends in Congress House, Fleet Street, Whitehall and the House of Commons. In order to gain the confidence of those he mixed with, he had even tried to master the rules of that ludicrous game of cricket, though without success. He was regarded as a ‘decent’ Russian, not a raging communist; a man you could leave your grandmother or your daughter with and who’d treat both with the utmost respect. Another deceit, another hypocrisy, all part of the trade he’d been trained in. One day, when the need for
all these different incarnations was over – the radio journalist in New York, the quiet, solitary passport official in Budapest, the clubbable diplomat in London – when he had time to be himself once more, would he still find some trace of the man he once was? Or would he have lost his taste for the true self he had disguised and suppressed for so many years?