Dr Berlin (19 page)

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m back.’

‘Hello?’ the voice came again, this time more urgently. He’d forgotten to press the button to release the coins. They weren’t connected.

‘It’s me,’ he said again. ‘I’m back.’

He could think of nothing else to say. There was complete silence at the other end. The pips began to sound. He put down the telephone. Why hadn’t she spoken? Hadn’t she recognised his voice? The anticipation of this moment that had sustained him in Moscow now drained into despair. What a mistake. He should never have rung her. He had broken the power of his dream.

‘I had a tail on the way out here,’ a voice was saying to him, and he knew he should be listening. ‘I decided to lose it.’

It was neither an apology nor an excuse. Smolensky, a cigarette between his thin lips, was standing beside him. No smile of greeting, only the barely concealed contempt of a threadbare explanation. Smolensky lied because doing so let him demonstrate his superiority. He was answerable to no one at the embassy, and he was daring Koliakov to challenge his reason for why he was late. No point arguing or making accusations. He’d get nowhere. Best to get back to his flat, have a bath, go to bed and try to forget this endless, frustrating, depressing day. He slumped in the back as they drove in silence through a haze of rain into a wet and shining London.

How the hell had he got himself into this mess?

*

‘You boys must get lonely sometimes, don’t you? All on your own over here.’

Noel Kennedy was leaning heavily on the bar. He was neither drunk nor sober, but in the only state he could tolerate, floating alone and bemused, far from any recognisable shore. Any other condition, he claimed, was unendurable.

‘Lonely, Noel? Why?’

‘Far from home. No women. What a life.’

‘Sometimes.’

Koliakov was furious with himself. He’d not noticed that Kennedy was alone in the bar. It was too late now to think of escape. He ordered himself a glass of wine and another brandy for Kennedy.

‘Prison, eh? Like being in prison.’ Kennedy chuckled at the thought. ‘Life without a woman, eh? Drives you round the bend, doesn’t it? Christ, when I think back. The women I’ve had.’

Kennedy, he knew, was a man of social privilege and inherited wealth who had squandered his background and his money and every day was sliding deeper into the gutter. At night he lived in the bars and clubs of Soho, by day he would surface for lunch at his club, start drinking as soon as he arrived, and would grab anyone he knew as they appeared, especially if they arrived at the bar unaccompanied.

‘How do you boys survive?’

‘We have our beliefs to sustain us, Noel.’ He hoped Kennedy wasn’t too far gone to appreciate the irony.

‘What use is Marx when you want a shag, old son?’ Kennedy laughed too loudly. It didn’t matter. The bar remained deserted except for the barman, and he was used to Kennedy. ‘Nothing like a good screw to put some colour in your cheeks. What you need is a woman.’

He was leaning towards Koliakov now, bringing his face too close. He must have fallen and cut himself earlier in the day. There was a dark wound on the side of his face. It was bad enough to need stitches, but Kennedy had put a piece of cotton wool over it and hoped for the best.

‘That would loosen you lot up, wouldn’t it?’

His eyes, Koliakov noticed, were floating pools of bloody water and his cheeks were an unnatural red, a maze of broken veins and raw skin. ‘Mate of mine’s got a real corker.’ His voice was hushed now, confidential. ‘Broke her in when she was sixteen. Taught her all she knows. Very superior merchandise, he says. Trained to fly.’

‘Broke her in, Noel? What does that mean?’

‘Took her cherry, Koli. Get it? He was her first screw. He likes them untouched, you see. She’s a year or two older now, so my old mate’s looking for pastures new. That’s why he gave me her number. Thought he was doing me a good turn but she’s no good for me. Can’t remember the last time I got a salute out of the old man.’ More hoarse laughter. ‘You can give her one for me, old boy. All right? How about it? Another drink? Your shout, old son.’

*

For two weeks the number burned in his pocket. Twice he threw it away, only to rescue it again before he left the office. Twice he went to a call box, only to replace the receiver without dialling. On the third occasion, he dialled the number and this time he waited until his call was answered.

*

The house was in a mews off the Cromwell Road. There were window boxes on the upper floor but the geraniums were languishing for want of care. He rang the doorbell and waited.

‘Hello. I’m Georgie.’

He stared at her, unable to move. She was as young as Kennedy had said, with a strong body and thick auburn hair. She wearing a black peignoir, which she held closed with her right hand. In her left she held a cigarette. It was uncanny, disconcerting. He found himself falling dizzily back into the past.

‘Let me make you comfortable, shall I?’

She helped him off with his jacket and carefully placed it over the back of a chair. She stubbed out the cigarette and took off her peignoir. She was naked now except for a pair of high-heeled shoes. She showed no embarrassment in front of him.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

Vodka, he wanted to say. Wasn’t that what they’d always drunk together?

‘Whisky, please.’

The cut of her hair was different. But the shape of her face, her eyes, the colour of her hair, the shape of her body were mysteriously the same. It was like seeing a photograph that was almost but not quite in register.

‘That’s better, isn’t it? Now the shoes.’ She knelt down in front of him and untied the laces. ‘What’s your name then?’

‘Alexei,’ he said. His voice sounded as if he were speaking from another room. Why had he chosen the name Alexei? It brought back a flood of bad memories.

‘Alexei,’ she repeated. ‘Foreigner, are you?’

‘American.’

‘Over here for long?’

‘For a time.’

‘I’d love to go to America. My girlfriend’s been to New York and Hollywood. Skyscrapers and stars, she said. That’s what America is. Wonderful, eh? Perhaps one day, when I give all this up. Who knows, eh? Dreams. That’s what keeps us alive, isn’t it, darling?’

All the time she was talking she was working on him, taking off his tie, unbuttoning his shirt. Her words were a magician’s patter, a stream of inconsequential phrases to distract you from the trick that is about to be performed on you.

‘That’s better, isn’t it? More comfortable after a long day, eh?’

He said nothing because he was numbed into a frozen silence. Her body had the pubescent roundness of a girl becoming a woman, thin legs, a flat stomach with only a small light triangle at the groin, strong breasts on which a necklace, a golden chain with a single heart, rested carelessly.
Only
I
never
saw
her
naked.
Her skin was as pale as marble and he was struck by the desire to touch her, to see if she was real.
I
never
touched
her
once.
Horrified and excited, he reached forward.

Eva
Balassi.

He had met Eva in Moscow, during the war, when they had both been students. She’d arrived in 1939 as part of a small intake of Hungarian communists – though he was never convinced that the beliefs she professed were real. Her studies were disrupted by the outbreak of war, which prevented her return home. He had thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and all his life he had never had reason to change his mind. He had fallen in love the moment he set eyes on her but in Moscow she had preferred the military cadet Alexei Abrasimov, and she had had his daughter. Years later, during his posting to Budapest, he had come across her again, older now but still as beautiful, a young widow with her teenage daughter. He had wanted her as desperately as he had before. This time he had lost her to the Englishman Martineau. Had she ever understood what he felt about her? Most nights he was sure she hadn’t. There were some moments, rare occasions when he felt optimistic, when he managed to convince himself that she knew only too well of his devotion to her.

Now the reincarnated image of the woman he had worshipped for years was standing before him. He was touching her breasts and she was smiling at him.

‘They’re nice, aren’t they?’

Suddenly she pushed her breasts together and squeezed them so that her nipples brushed his mouth. It was a vulgar, assertive gesture that immediately upset him.

‘Don’t do that.’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Stand there,’ he said, ‘quite still. Let me look at you. You are very beautiful.’

She laughed in acknowledgement of what he had said but he knew she was untouched by it. She must be used to being told she was beautiful. It meant nothing to her because she felt nothing for those who said it.

Suddenly she was sitting on him, her hands working to arouse him. He lay back and let her do what he had paid her
to do, knowing that this was not what he wanted, part of him wishing he had never come.

*

‘You all right, dear?’ she asked later. ‘You’re not a talker, are you?’

‘You remind me of someone I knew once,’ he said. He was lying on his back on the bed, smoking a cigarette. Outside he could hear the afternoon sounds of the street.

The girl laughed. ‘There’s always someone, isn’t there? Someone you’ve lost and want to be reminded of.’

‘Is there?’

‘Tell me about her. Did you love her?’

Inside him some restraint burst and he wanted to tell her everything, to confess the misery of his infatuation for a woman who had never seen him as more than a friend but whose brief appearances in his life had led to a torture he could never escape.

‘From the first moment I saw her.’

‘Did she love you?’

‘Not as I wanted her to.’

‘Why not?’

‘I never told her what I felt.’

‘You should have done that.’

‘How could I? She went off with someone else.’

‘You’ve got to be bold and tell a girl what she wants to hear. It makes us melt inside.’

‘It was all a long time ago.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She disappeared. Perhaps she’s dead. Who knows?’

‘You can’t live in the past, dear, can you?’ She kissed him suddenly on the cheek and got up. In that moment he saw her for what she was, a woman who had allowed him to use her body. She would wash away the signs of his presence and prepare herself for the next man. How could he have imagined she was like Eva? He felt sickened at his weakness.

‘See you again, will I?’

*

His head ached badly. Moscow had got on his nerves this time – too much tension, too much bureaucracy, and the business about Radin. Absurd! The man was dead. What was the point pretending otherwise? The world would find out soon enough. He could see a Smolensky lookalike giving the instruction: ‘The Chief Designer is dead. We will deny his death and the world will believe us.’ Didn’t Moscow understand the scepticism the West brought to every statement they made? You cannot lie every day and then expect to be believed when it suits you.

He closed his eyes. Smolensky was well over the speed limit. The car had diplomatic plates. He smiled bitterly to himself. Nothing to worry about.

‘He was a man who achieved what he was capable of, and there are too few who do that in this country,’ Ruth Marchenko said. ‘He was only a year or two older than me. Sometimes I think this nation is damned. Why do we lose those we need most?’

She turned to face her son, tears in her eyes. Valery held his mother as she sobbed. He’d had no idea that Radin’s death would affect her in this way. Perhaps their friendship all those years ago had been more intense than he had understood.

Early one summer, when he was thirteen, Ruth had taken Valery aside and instructed him that he was never to mention the name of the man who was coming to their apartment that evening. He was to wipe from his memory what was about to happen. Valery did not understand, and Ruth gave him no explanation, but he obeyed willingly. He was too devoted to his mother to think of doing anything else. For a few months a small man with thinning spiky hair, a beaky nose and damaged
hands was a regular visitor to their apartment. He would arrive in the evening, stand in the doorway of their minute kitchen and talk to Ruth while she cooked. Some nights he would eat with them. His concentration was always on Ruth. Valery was ignored as if he did not exist.

Sensing her son’s mute hostility, Ruth talked about Radin. He was a wonderful scientist, she whispered, a visionary who could see beyond the confines of the world they lived in. He was planning to build huge rockets that would one day take men to the moon. Valery was impressed by this account of Radin’s ambition – how could he fail to be? But it did not make Radin into a man towards whom he could feel any instinctive sympathy. Was it his hands? He remembered the first time he’d seen them. They reminded him of uncooked pastry. He could hardly hold a knife and fork. He noticed his mother cutting up Radin’s food before she served it to him, as if he was a cat. A man to command respect but not affection.

Behind the glowing account of Radin’s achievements, he sensed his mother’s ambivalence. He was sure she had discovered qualities in Radin that she did not like. His presence in their apartment made Ruth unsettled, anxious, not herself. His conclusion was that Radin posed an unformulated threat to him and his mother, and he resented his presence and the secrecy that surrounded it.

Then one day Viktor stopped coming. His mother offered no explanation. Valery did not dare to ask why. His impression was that in some unexpressed way Ruth herself was relieved.

‘I was at school with his wife, Elza,’ Ruth was saying. ‘I knew Viktor before she did. She and the children stayed with us for a few weeks when their marriage broke up. You probably don’t remember, you were too young. I felt sorry for Elza. Viktor changed after his awful experiences in the war. The man who returned from prison was not the man she’d married. In his suffering something had been taken from him
and its absence broke Elza’s heart. I respected Viktor, but Elza was right. He was impossible to live with. He was a driven man, obsessed by his work, frightened that he would never have enough time to complete the tasks he’d set himself. He lived every day expecting that he’d be snatched away before his work was finished, which is why he drove himself and those who worked for him so hard.’