The Russia House (19 page)

Time was passing. The yellow table floated in the sunbeams. A pall of cigarette smoke floated over it. Black-and-white images of Katya in photographic form came and went in Barley’s mind. The Devil is every girl’s cover story. They drank tea out of pretty Leningrad cups. Zapadny was delivering his standard caveat against trying to make deals directly with Soviet publishers, selecting Wicklow as his audience: the day-and-night war between VAAP and the rest of the world was evidently raging well. Two pale men wandered in to listen and wandered out again. Wicklow was earning favour by handing round blue Gauloises.

‘We’ve had an injection of capital, Alik,’ Barley heard himself explaining from a long way off. ‘Times have changed. Russia’s top of the pops these days. I’ve only got to tell the money boys I’m building up a Russian list and they come rushing after me as fast as their short fat legs will carry them.’

‘But, Barley, these
boys
, as you call them, can grow into
men
very quickly,’ Zapadny, the great sophisticate, warned to a fresh burst of docile laughter. ‘Particularly when they are wishing to be repaid, I would say.’

‘It’s the way I described it in my telex, Alik. Maybe you haven’t had time to read it,’ said Barley, showing a little muscle. ‘If things work out as we plan, A. & B. will be launching a brand-new imprint devoted entirely to things Russian within the year. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, juveniles, the sciences. We’ve got a new line in popular medicine, all paperback. The subjects travel, so do the reputations of the authors. We’d like real Soviet doctors and scientists to contribute. We don’t want sheep farming in Outer Mongolia or fish farming in the Arctic Circle but if you have sensible subjects you want to suggest we’re here to listen and buy. We’ll announce our list at the next Moscow book fair and if things go well we’ll bring out our first six titles next spring.’

‘And have you, forgive me, a sales force these days, Barley, or are you relying on divine intervention as before?’ Zapadny enquired with his showy delicacy.

Resisting the temptation to tell Zapadny to watch his manners, Barley struggled on. ‘We’re negotiating a distribution deal with several major publishers and we’ll make an announcement soon. Except for fiction. For the fiction we’ll use our own expanded team,’ he said, unable to remember for the life of him why they had settled on this bizarre arrangement or indeed whether they had.

‘Fiction is still the A. & B. flagship, sir,’ Wicklow explained devoutly, helping Barley out.

‘Fiction should
always
be one’s flagship,’ Zapadny corrected him. ‘I would say that the novel is the greatest of all marathons. That is only my personal opinion, naturally. It is the highest form of art. Higher than poetry, higher than the short story. But please don’t quote me.’

‘Well, it is for us literary superpowers, sir, put it that way,’ said Wicklow smarmily.

Very gratified, Zapadny turned to Barley. ‘On fiction, we should like in this special case to provide our own translator and take a further five per cent royalty on the translation,’ he said.

‘No problem,’ Barley said genially in his sleep. ‘These days, that’s the kind of money A. & B. puts under the plate.’

But to Barley’s amazement Wicklow briskly intervened. ‘Excuse me, sir, that means a double royalty. I don’t think we can swallow that and live. You must have misheard what Mr. Zapadny was saying.’

‘He’s right,’ said Barley, sitting up sharply. ‘How the hell can we afford another five per cent?’

Feeling like a conjuror who is proceeding to his next bogus act, Barley fished a folder from his briefcase and scattered half a dozen copies of a glossy prospectus at the sunbeams. ‘Our American connection is described on page two,’ he announced. ‘Potomac Boston is our partner in the project, A. & B. to buy full English language rights in any Soviet work, and sell off North America to Potomac. They have a sister company in Toronto, so we’ll throw in Canada. Right, Wickers?’

‘Yes, sir.’

How the hell did Wicklow learn all this junk so quickly? Barley thought.

Zapadny was still studying the prospectus, turning one stiff, immaculate page after another. ‘Did
you
print this shit, Barley?’ he enquired politely.

‘Potomac did,’ said Barley.

‘But the Potomac river is so far from the city of Boston,’ Zapadny objected, airing his knowledge of American geography for the few who shared it. ‘Unless they have recently moved it, it is in Washington. What mutual attraction can they have, I ask myself, the city of Boston and this river? Are we speaking of an
old
company, Barley, or a
new
one?’

‘New in the field. Old in business. They’re merchants, ex Washington now in Boston. Venture capital. Diversified portfolio. Film production, carparks, slot machines, call-girls and cocaine. All the usual. Publishing’s just one of their sidelines.’

But in his mind’s ear as the laughter rose it was Ned who was doing the talking. ‘Congratulations, Barley. Bob here has come up with a wealthy Boston chum who’s willing to take you on as a partner. All you have to do is spend his money.’

And Bob, with his flat-iron feet and tweedy jacket, smiling the buyer’s smile.

Eleven-thirty. Eight hours and forty-five minutes until perhaps-eight-fifteen.

‘The driver wants to know what to expect when he meets the Queen,’ Wicklow was yelling enthusiastically over the back of his seat. ‘It’s really getting to him. Does she take bribes? Does she have people executed for small offences? How does it feel to live in a country ruled by two fierce women?’

‘Tell him it’s exhausting but we’re equal to it,’ Barley said with a huge yawn.

And having refreshed himself with a nip from his flask he leaned back in the cushions and woke to find himself following Wicklow down a prison corridor. Except that instead of the cries of the incarcerated, it was the whistle of a tea kettle that he heard and the clicking of an abacus echoing through the gloom. A moment later, Wicklow and Barley are standing in the offices of a British railway company, vintage 1935. Flyblown light bulbs and defunct electric fans dangle from the cast-iron rafters. Amazons in headscarves preside over antiquated Cyrillic typewriters large as ovens. Ledgers cram the dusty shelves. Stacks of shoe-boxes stuffed with buff folders rise from the floorboards to the sills.

‘Barley! Jesus! Welcome to Prometheus Unbound! They tell me you got some money finally. Who gave it you?’ yells a middle-aged figure in Fidel Castro battle gear leaping at them through the clutter. ‘We deal direct, okay? To hell with those arseholes in VAAP?’

‘Yuri, marvellous to see you! Meet Len Wicklow, our Russian-speaking editor.’

‘You a spy?’

‘Only in my spare time, sir.’

‘Jesus! Nice chap! Reminds me of my kid brother.’

They are in Madison Avenue. Venetian blinds, wall charts and armchairs. Yuri is fat, exuberant and Jewish. Barley has brought him a bottle of Black Label and tights for his beautiful new wife. Tossing away the whisky cap, Yuri insists on pouring tots into the teacups. They enter the Russian ether. Talk of Bulgakov, Platonov, Akhmatova. Will Solzhenitsyn be permitted? Will Brodsky? Talk of a ragtag list of contemporary British writers who have arbitrarily found official favour and therefore fame in Russia. Barley has not heard of some, loathes others. Gusts of laughter, toasts, news of English friends, death to the arseholes in VAAP. Russia is changing by the hour, has Barley heard? Did he see that piece in
Moscow News
last Thursday about the neo-Fascist crazies in Pamyat, with their way-out nationalism and their anti-Semitism and their anti-everyone except themselves? And how about that piece in
Ogonyok
about Sigmund Freud? And
Novy Mir
’s stand on Nabokov? Editors, designers, translators proliferate in the usual amazing numbers, but no Katyas. Everyone is drunk, even those who have declined the alcohol. A great writer named Misha is presented and seated where his audience can watch him.

‘Misha hasn’t been to prison yet,’ Yuri explains apologetically, to huge laughter. ‘But maybe if he’s lucky, they’ll send him before it’s too late, so that he can get published in the West!’

They talk the latest Soviet masterpieces of fiction. Yuri has chosen a mere eight from his own list – every one of them a sure bestseller, Barley. Publish them and you will be able to open a Swiss bank account for me. A hunt for plastic carrier bags before Wicklow takes charge of the carbon copies of eight unpublishable manuscripts, for this is a world in which the photocopier and electric typewriter are still the forbidden instruments of sedition.

They talk theatre and Afghanistan. ‘Soon we shall all meet in London!’ Yuri cries, like a mad gambler staking all. ‘I send you my son, okay? Will you send me yours? Listen, we exchange hostages and that way nobody bombs each other!’

Everyone falls silent when Barley speaks, and stays silent for Misha the great writer. Wicklow translates while Yuri and three others object to Wicklow’s translation. Misha objects to the objections. The downturn has begun.

Somebody demands to know why Britain is still run by the Fascist Conservative Party. Why doesn’t the proletariat kick the bastards out? Barley offers something unoriginal about democracy being the worst of systems except for the others. No one laughs. Perhaps they have heard it, perhaps they don’t like it. In the wake of the whisky it is time to get out while the smiles are still fading. How can the English preach human rights, somebody sullenly demands, when they are enslaving the Irish and the Scots? Why do you support the disgusting government in South Africa? yells a ninety-year-old blonde in a ball-dress. I don’t, says Barley. I truly don’t.

‘Listen,’ says Yuri, at the door. ‘Stay away from that bastard Zapadny, okay? I don’t say he’s KGB. All I say is, he needed some damn good friends to get him back into circulation. You’re a nice fellow. Know what I mean?’

They have already embraced many times.

‘Yuri,’ says Barley. ‘My old mother brought me up to believe that all of you were KGB.’

‘Me too?’

‘You specially. She said you were the worst.’

‘I love you. Hear me? Send me your son. What’s his name?’

One-thirty and they are an hour late for their next step along the hard road to perhaps-eight-fifteen.

Dark timber, splendid food, respectful menials, the atmosphere of a baronial hunting lodge. They are sitting at the long table below the balcony in the Writers’ Union, Alik Zapadny once again presiding. Several promising young writers of sixty stroll over, listen and stroll away again, taking their great thoughts with them. Zapadny points out those recently released from prison and those who he hopes will soon replace them. Literary bureaucrats pull up chairs and practise their English. Wicklow interprets, Barley sparkles, all on fruit juice and the residue of Black Label. The world is going to be a better place, Barley assures Zapadny, as if he were an expert on the world.

Rashly he quotes Zinoviev. ‘When will it all end? When people stop queuing for the Tomb?’ – a reference to Lenin’s mausoleum.

The applause this time is not so deafening.

At two o’clock in conformity with the new drinking laws and in the nick of time, the waiter brings a carafe of wine and Zapadny in Barley’s honour extracts a bottle of pepper vodka from his worm-eaten briefcase.

‘Did Yuri tell you I was KGB?’ he asks mournfully.

‘Of course he didn’t,’ says Barley stoutly.

‘Please do not regard yourself as singled out. He tells it to all Westerners. As a matter of fact, I sometimes worry a little bit about Yuri. He’s a nice fellow but everyone knows he is a lousy publisher, so how does a Jew like him get his position? His little boy was christened at Zagorsk last week. How do you explain this?’

‘It’s not my problem, Alik. Live and let live. Finito.’ And aside: ‘Wickers, get me out of here, I’m getting sober.’

By six, after two more enormously eloquent meetings, and having miraculously succeeded in declining half a dozen invitations for the evening, Barley is back in his hotel room, fighting with the shower to sober up while Wicklow shouts cheerful publishing talk at him through the door for the benefit of the microphones. For Wicklow has Ned’s orders to stay with Barley till the last moment in case he gets stage fright or fluffs his lines.

7

The Odessa Hotel in that third year of the Great Soviet Reconstruction was not the jewel of Moscow’s rugged tourist trade but it was not the worst piece either. It was dilapidated, it was down-at-heel, it was selective in its favours. Tied to the rouble rather than to the dollar, it lacked such refinements as foreign-currency bars and groups of travel-weary Minnesotans appealing tearfully for their missing luggage. It was so ill-lit that the brass lamps and blackamoors and galleried dining room recalled the bad old past at the point of its collapse rather than the Socialist phoenix rising from the ashes. And when you stepped from the juddering lift and braved the frown of your floor concierge, crouching in her box surrounded by blackened room-keys and mossy telephones, you were quite likely to have the sensation of being returned to the vilest institutions of your youth.

But then the Reconstruction was not yet a visual medium. It was strictly in the audio stage.

Nevertheless, for those who looked for it, the Odessa in those days had soul, and with luck has it still. The good ladies of reception keep a kindly heart behind their iron stares; the porters have been known to wink you to the lift without demanding to see your hotel pass for the fifth time in one day. The restaurant manager, given the right encouragement, will usher you graciously to your alcove and likes a good face in return. And in the evenings between six and nine the lobby becomes an impromptu pageant of the hundred nations of the Empire. Smartly dressed administrators from Tashkent, flaxen schoolteachers from Estonia, fiery-eyed Party functionaries from Turkmenia and Georgia, factory managers from Kiev, naval engineers from Archangel – not to mention Cubans, Afghans, Poles, Rumanians and a platoon of dowdily arrogant East Germans – pour out of their airport charabancs and descend from the sunlight of the street into the quelling darkness of the lobby in order to pay their homage to Rome and shift their luggage in metric stages towards the tribune.