Face Me When You Walk Away (2 page)

‘I don't understand it,' said Pamela.

‘Until perhaps six years ago, he had never seen a bath,' defended Josef. ‘The roof of his family home is still covered with sods of earth. There's no lavatory. If they want one, they use the backyard. Or in the winter, a small shed. There's no closet. The shed merely protects them against the cold …'

‘You mean …?' interrupted Pamela.

‘Yes. For everything.'

‘Christ.'

‘In the winter, for warmth, the peasants from whom Nikolai comes rub their bodies with grease. It permeates their underclothes and forms a sort of skin.'

‘Ugh,' grimaced the woman. ‘Does Nikolai still do it?'

‘Of course not. And he does bath, occasionally. But getting him used to personal hygiene isn't going to be easy.'

‘Is that why he upsets you, because he smells?'

Josef stared at her, unsettled. ‘Upsets me?'

Pamela nodded. ‘I've never seen you behave with anyone like you do with Nikolai. You're withdrawn, apprehensive almost. You're rarely like that with other people, even men with high ranks who are much more important than Nikolai. I've thought sometimes your arrogance must upset a lot of people. But with Nikolai it's different.'

Josef hesitated, unaware it was so obvious.

‘I do something that no one else in Russia can do,' he began, slowly. ‘There are only about twenty men like me in the world. We're like diplomats without the open support of the countries we represent. We negotiate … open channels of discussion. Nearly always it's involved with trade, huge deals on governmental level. The last project I was involved with, bringing a French motor plant under licence to Russia, was worth nearly thirty million pounds. That's the sort of thing I'm used to. I know how to do it, perhaps better than anyone else, even among the other nineteen or twenty …'

Then why?'

‘Exactly. Why? This isn't something I've done before. Or am likely to do again. I'm nervous because I don't know the rules.'

‘So you might make a mess of it,' judged Pamela, lightly.

For several minutes, Josef looked at her, tenderly. In many ways she was as innocent as the author.

‘That's the problem,' he said, finally. ‘I mustn't make a mess of it.'

Pamela missed the importance of the remark. She grass-hoppered away.

‘Why does Nikolai drink so much?' she asked.

Josef gestured, uncertainly. ‘Nerves, I suppose. From an earth-roofed hut to being a public figure in the largest country in the world in little more than six years is pretty awe-inspiring.'

‘It isn't just nervousness,' argued Pamela. ‘People take a few drinks for courage, but Nikolai's drinking is ridiculous.'

‘I know,' said Josef, thoughtfully. ‘I'm worried about that, as well.'

They were quiet for several moments, happy with the beauty of the grounds surrounding the dacha. Josef tugged at Pamela's hand and she looked at him. ‘I'm sorry he had to be brought here,' he said. ‘But it's important I get to know him completely. There was no other way.'

She smiled. ‘Darling, I don't mind.'

She glanced behind her, towards the archduke's idea of a love-nest.

‘You could accommodate an army here.'

They saw him coming from far away, initially little more than a movement that formed itself into a figure walking quite aimlessly and uncaring of any observation. Once, quite obliviously, he relieved himself against a tree, steam rising in the cooling summer evening.

‘Just like home,' muttered Pamela. It was a bad attempt to cloak her embarrassment.

Mist came like that in the evenings at Potma, thought Josef, not isolated little pockets to be picked up and jostled by the wind, but huge, rolling blankets that locked and clung to that which refused to dissipate during the day, covering everything like a shroud. It had been odd, he thought, caught by the word, how everyone had died with what appeared to be a smile on their faces. Happy to escape, he supposed.

Nikolai Balshev saw them and waved, his hand going straight to the gesture from buttoning his flies. His utter innocence destroyed any offence. He was very slim and pale and although his hair was long, almost to his shoulders, it was so blond and fine he appeared to be balding. He wore rough serge trousers and a peasant's smock. The dress, thought Josef, was an affectation, an attempt to impress them. Nikolai stopped, looking up to the low veranda, completely still and ummoving. It was an attitude of which Josef had become aware almost immediately they had met. It reminded him of a nervous animal, a gazelle or a chamois maybe, head tensed to one side, constantly alert for flight. Nikolai saw his novel lying on the table.

‘Well?' he demanded of the woman.

‘It's very good,' said Pamela, disconcerted, words jammed by the directness.

‘Very good!'

Nikolai's baby smooth face creased at the inadequate praise. He needs constant reassurance, like an unsure child, decided Josef. So the invitation to criticism was false, like the clothes.

‘No, not just good,' groped the girl. ‘It's wonderful … I don't think I've ever read anything like it.'

Nikolai nodded, better satisfied.

‘Sure?'

‘Really.'

‘That's what others say …' he paused, turning slightly, and with the young man's full attention upon him Josef felt for the second time that afternoon like a tutor being respectfully addressed by a student.

‘Josef likes it, don't you Josef?'

‘I've already told you,' said the older man. ‘It'll be recognized as one of the best examples of Russian literature.'

Nikolai smiled, happily. Josef had made the remark several times in the last five days, but the author never appeared tired of hearing it.

‘You really think so?'

‘You know I do.'

The performance over, Nikolai came on to the veranda, edged a chair alongside them and sat down, staring out towards the lake. Silence settled as heavily as the mist in Josef's recurring dreams. Nikolai knew they were on honeymoon, but it never occurred to him they might wish to be alone and that his presence was an intrusion. Josef studied the younger man sitting alongside Pamela, reminded again of thiersimilarity in colouring. They could be brother and sister, he thought. Nikolai did not notice the attention, but Pamela turned, raising her eyebrows in helplessness.

‘Have you discussed supper?' she asked, seeking neutral discussion.

Josef sniggered, unable to suppress his reaction to the situation.

‘Caviar, borsch and some wild boar. With wild strawberries to follow.'

Now it was Pamela's turn to laugh. ‘My pompous M.P. of a father maintains a town house in Eaton Square and a country seat in Buckinghamshire. And he doesn't dine on beluga and wild boar.'

Josef joined her amusement. He knew she was impressed and it pleased him. Pamela's lightness slipped away. ‘Somehow,' she said, ‘it seems wrong that we live so well.'

‘Why?'

‘Wasn't this what it was all about? If we could discover a seventy-year-old menu, we'd find the archduke ate caviar and wild pig. And had fresh strawberries and champagne.'

‘I hope he did,' said Josef. ‘It would show more taste than his interior decorating.'

He saw she refused to be amused.

‘It
is
different, you know,' he said. ‘The peasants aren't animals any more. And there's no such thing as a classless society, no matter how perfect your socialism. There are always those who lead and those who follow. And the leaders provide themselves with a better life-style for taking the responsibility. That's not really unfair, surely?'

‘But your life is so similar to what things must have been like before 1917 …' She glanced at Nikolai. ‘And people still live in sod huts way out in the country.'

Josef sat looking at her, arrested by a doubt. Could he any longer afford to exact the punishment from those who had jailed him? Before he had only had the danger to himself to consider and he'd decided the challenge with great calculation, aware there was no safety net beneath the tightrope he was erecting for himself and that the applause would be louder if he fell rather than kept crossing. But now there was Pamela. Just as his lifestyle would protect her from the harder aspects of Soviet life as long as he remained indispensable, so his collapse from favour would impose upon her greater problems than those of the poorest peasant for whom she felt sorry.

‘I love you,' he said. It sounded like an apology.

Embarrassed by the affection, she snatched a sideways look at Nikolai. A finger was exploring his left nostril and he seemed completely occupied by the view of the lake.

She looked back. ‘I love you, too,' she said, breaking a moment then blurting on, in a whisper. ‘And I'm so sorry.'

At that moment, the telephone sounded inside the dacha and Josef's balloon of happiness popped.

2

It was a small room in the Ministry of Culture, away from the Kremlin complex, and only four members were present. Uli Devgeny, a member of the Central Committee of the Supreme Soviet and the man who had signed the imprisonment order against Josef, had been appointed Minister four years before. He sat, smiling, content that at last he had complete control over a project in which Josef was involved. Vasily Illinivitch, the deputy Minister, who sat on his right, was also on the Central Committee. Illinivitch puzzled Josef. The man acted as a liaison between the Praesidium and several committees for which Josef had worked, so there was no one else with whom the negotiator had closer contact. Yet the man was a perfect stranger to him, resisting all but official contact. Josef suspected intense ambition behind the reserve and acknowledged that Illinivitch's unique function gave him unrivalled opportunities to ferment purges. Did he, wondered the negotiator, covet Devgeny's Ministry? Or was there something else?

‘I don't think you know our other comrades,' Devgeny introduced, formally. ‘Alexandre Ballenin,' he said, gesturing towards a white-haired man squinting myopically through pebble-lens spectacles. ‘And Dimitry Korshunov.'

Korshunov was sallow, greased hair like a tight-fitting hat. He stared exprcssionlessly across the intervening table, revolving a pen between his fingers. Ballenin, Josef knew, was the man who had first recognized Nikolai's ability, when his manuscripts had been sent from Kiev.

Devgeny was a huge, bull-like man, almost too big for his surroundings. Thick, black hair capped a florid face blotched with the bubbles of too much vodka, and the hands which lay flat before him were matted with wiry, black hair that protruded from beneath his shirt-cuffs. He wore a badly tailored, double-breasted suit, with all three buttons fastened, even though he was sitting, so that the material creased around his body, like sagging skin about to be shed by a snake. A dangerous reptile, thought Josef. An anaconda. Or a python, which would crush its victims to death, very slowly. Devgeny was over sixty and had taken part in the siege of Leningrad. In the end, the rumours said, when the German withdrawal had become a rout, he'd made commando raids among the weakened, frightened stragglers, strangling them with his bare hands. There were other stories, too. It was said that during the siege, at the worst part, Devgeny had survived by eating the flesh of people who had died around him.

Josef's father had never believed the stories, but then the old man had never believed anything involving Devgeny. And had died because of it. Josef's father had been one of those rare revolutionaries, born into the aristocracy but a man who embraced the overthrow of a system he recognized as corrupt. In Devgeny he had seen an opportunist as evil as any who existed in the Czarist court, and had openly opposed Devgeny before the Praesidium when they considered the ambassadorship the man so desperately wanted. The Praesidium had been persuaded, recognizing in Josef's father the man fitted to the role, despite his age. So Josef's father had become perhaps the best ambassador Russia had ever had in the immediate post-war period and Devgeny had stayed in Moscow, plotting the old man's downfall. And when he had succeeded, he had dragged Josef down, too. And then been made to look ridiculous before the Central Committee, who had to concede the need for someone like Josef to bridge a necessary gap between the countries of the world. So the well-practised hatred had transferred from father to son.

‘How do you like our young genius?' asked Devgeny.

Josef saw Ballenin frown at the disparagement.

‘A little odd,' offered Josef.

‘Men of genius don't have to conform to normal standards,' defended Ballenin. ‘They are extraordinary men.'

Devgeny ignored the statement. Josef felt pity for the old man's unawareness.

‘Things are developing in Stockholm,' said Devgeny.

‘I still don't like the idea of getting involved,' began Josef, guardedly.

Devgeny smiled. He looked capable of eating another human being, thought Josef. Or crushing them.

‘It's a problem of your own creation,' said the Minister, happily. ‘There's no one else we can possibly consider for the job.'

‘But in a strange field, I could be unsuccessful,' warned Josef.

‘Fail!' mocked Devgeny. ‘But you never fail, Comrade Bultova. “Russia's unofficial ambassador,” isn't that what they call you? “Mr Fixit.” There's scarcely been a man since Stalin who has manufactured the personality cult like you.'

‘There is common sense in manipulating the Western press,' sighed Josef. Almost lecturing, he continued, ‘As I've explained many times before, a man with a reputation for negotiating astuteness has an in-built advantage over an unknown in any business dealings. That's basic psychology.'

Devgeny turned to the other three. ‘You will come to learn,' he said, ‘that psychology enters into Comrade Bultova's reasoning quite frequently. He even studied it at Harvard, the American university, in his youth.'