Читать книгу The Squire Quartet - Brian Aldiss - Страница 14

Ermalpa, September 1978

Darkness had fallen. The first-floor corridor of the Grand Hotel Marittimo was littered with silver trays, lying forlorn with a mess of coffee-pots, used cups, and tousled napkins. As Thomas Squire left Room 143, a guest was in another room playing a violin behind locked doors.

After a half-an-hour suspended in sarvangasana, followed by a cold shower, Squire was feeling alert and ready for the evening. Downstairs, before turning into the bar, he took a stroll in the busy street. One of the Canadian delegates, seeing him walk towards the swing doors, said, in honest horror, ‘You’re not going out alone in Ermalpa after dark, Mr Squire? You know this place is the headquarters of the Mafia?’

Surviving a turn in the muggy air, Squire went to fulfil his seven o’clock appointment in the bar.

Selina Ajdini was there already. Several young Italians were talking to her, pressing round her armchair. She had changed her clothes, and now wore an ankle-length white jersey dress with long sleeves and edged with gold braid, its only decoration being a criss-cross pattern of braid with loose tassels which covered the bosom. Several thin gold bracelets hung at her slender right wrist, three rings glittered on her rather cruel-looking fingers. Her neat black hair, gathered into a thick tail, hung asymmetrically to one shoulder. She still carried her bulky bag.

The bar was full of the cheerful noises characteristic of a popular time. Three barmen in smart uniforms moved freely behind their gilded pallisades, smiling, exchanging jokes with each other and their customers as they worked; glass chinked against glass; the cash register whirred; wallpaper music played softly in the background; a waitress bustled among the customers, collecting glasses; and a murmur of many languages grew from all sides. A female voice called Squire’s name.

He turned and there was a small dark Italian lady he had watched earlier in the day. She was an efficient messenger for Frenza, the conference secretary, and spoke a little English. She had a minor administrative detail to sort out with Squire and, as she talked, he realized that she was Frenza’s wife; her well-turned ankles and heavy gold hair were immediately recognizable. Her name was Maria. She wore a neat black dress, had one bracelet on her wrist and two rings on her fingers. The smile she gave him was tired.

When they had settled the matter, he moved towards the bar. Ajdini had dismissed her retinue and sat smoking through a long holder, awaiting him. Although the bitter herb of her Huxley speech still flavoured his memory, he could not help smiling as he joined her, sinking into an armchair facing her.

The eroded bone was softened in artificial light. She said, ‘These Italians are so sociable, that we would talk with less disturbance in one of the rooms off the foyer. I have spoken about it to one of the barmen, who is very kind, and he will serve us with drinks as long as we are there.’

‘Very well.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

The room she referred to led off the passage where the case of silk ties stood. It was small, containing by way of ornament only a large marble bust of a general, whose remarkable cranial development alone was worth commemoration. Some earlier occupant of the room, perhaps idly waiting a tryst, had pencilled in the general’s pupils, making him appear cross-eyed.

‘This is a privilege for me,’ she said, lightly arranging the white dress as they sat down. ‘I suppose that any university in the capitalist world – and not only there – would be delighted to be able to address you face to face, Mr Squire. Your television series, and the book, which is a delight in its own right, does for the culture of today what Lord Clark’s Civilization did for the past.’

‘The series was the work of a team. They made it work – Grahame Ash, the director, in particular. Ash is a genius. He has a way with people and he thinks in pictures.’

‘Your work in general. Since the Hyde Park Expo – and before. What you do enables the various artists of today, and those who would not presume or care to call themselves artists, to go ahead with more confidence, as one always can when one sees oneself working within some kind of a tradition. You generously defined a revolutionary tradition. However, I must not embarrass you, a modest Englishman, with my praises, although I am aware they can have no significance for you.’

‘That is a mistaken assumption. I am delighted to have your good opinion. You have a higher opinion of the series than some critics. What man does not desire the good opinion of an attractive woman?’

She smiled, and the bangles rattled as she stretched out a hand. ‘Nor will I ask you if you are finding enjoyment in your world-wide success, since you must surely have become tired of such a question. Do you mind if I smoke?’

She was more striking than pretty, with a sharpness about her features which suggested wary intelligence. The sharpness, a quickness in her movements, a fleck of green in her irises, suggested wolf to Squire. He admired wolves; wolves were good to each other.

Her hair moved about her cheeks as she reached into the clumsy leather bag and brought out her cigarettes. He noticed immediately, with surprise, that they were Yugoslav, ‘Drina’ brand. He knew the name.

Whilst he was leaning forward to give her a light, the friendly waiter arrived. He cast an envious and distinctly unfriendly look at Squire. Squire stood his gold lighter on the table as he ordered drinks. After the waiter had left, dismissed by a brilliant smile from Ajdini, she picked up the lighter and inspected it as it lay in her narrow palm before pressing it into Squire’s hand.

‘What I respond to personally in your work is your humanity. It gives your criticism what the rest of us lack, a creative depth. No, I’m not praising now, merely stating. To prove it, let me be a little critical, if you will permit, and say that I find the humanity the more impressive since you do come, do you not, from a deeply privileged background?’

He regarded her through her protective cloud of smoke, admiring her breasts and thinking of the benefits her beauty must bring her, unasked.

‘Almost anyone, in North America or Western Europe, must admit to a privileged background.’ Seeing her expression, he added, ‘And that is not intended as an evasion of your question. We must use that privileged background to carry not only our materialism but our liberalism and awareness to the rest of the world. We must hope that ultimately those values will prevail.’

‘Liberalism doesn’t carry much priority, even in universities.’

‘No, or in an ant heap. But we have to resist the idea of the world as ant heap.’ He could catch the distinctive smell of Balkan tobacco.

‘Well, I know what you mean, but only people from backgrounds of privilege can afford the luxury of fine sentiments. Your series, when all’s done, was admirable as display …’

He laughed. ‘Display? Give me credit for keeping my politics out of it.’

She looked down at the table, sharply up at him, down again. ‘I found it loaded with politics.’

Music was playing, perhaps in the room overhead. The atmosphere of the room was oppressive; having the general listening stonily to all that was said did not increase comfort.

‘I don’t see any worth in a world in which individuality has been lost or relinquished,’ he said. ‘On an evolutionary scale, mankind strove for many generations to become a conscious individual being, instead of a unit in a tribe or a herd or an ant heap. In our generation – or generations, I should say, since there is a considerable difference in our ages – we have seen a menacing move in the opposite direction, and individualism crushed by the power of the state.’ In fact, there probably was not more than eight years between them.

‘In a world threatened by fascism, where parliamentary democracy has failed, the state must protect the individual, and the individual submits for his own good.’

‘Perhaps you mistake the implications of what I say. I would deny that parliamentary democracy, for all its faults, has failed; being a consensus, it offers its citizens a freer life than the despotisms of either Left or Right. Nor is the world threatened by fascism; individual countries, perhaps. But fascism is always a ramshackle thing which cannot perpetuate itself, whereas the great communist bureaucracies prove to have longer life.

‘However, the point I was trying to make goes beyond politics, to forces moving through our evolutionary lives, if I may use that phrase. Evolution still shapes us. Compare Islam and Christianity with the conceptually primitive Aztec religion, where mass-salvation could be achieved by mass-sacrifice. Souls were interchangeable. The Old Testament is a drama of man becoming aware that souls are no longer interchangeable.’

She smiled. ‘You speak of the soul, whatever that may be. Yet you are not a religious man?’

‘We are all religious. In our day, the Left has all the dialectic, the Right none. Yet lying to hand is the supreme argument that souls are not interchangeable. It is perhaps too universal a truth for the Right to use, too true a truth to fall to the service of any party. Nevertheless it is the vital factor through which the present world struggles towards the future, whether capitalist or communist, Caucasian, Negroid, or Mongoloid. It’s our one hope, because undeniable.’

They paused as the waiter brought in their drinks, a cinzano for Ajdini, a vodka for Squire, on a silver tray also bearing two bowls of nuts and olives. The waiter slid the bill to Squire as if performing a conjuring trick.

‘I find yours an elitist argument,’ Ajdini said. ‘Naturally, evolution has no party. People are too busy trying just to live, to survive, to worry over evolution. Who can worry over evolution? Surely you don’t?’

‘Well, “elitist” is just a worn-out Marxist term of abuse, isn’t it? Designed to banish thought. I’m trying to establish some sort of historical perspective.’

‘Historical perspective is itself a luxury. People with empty bellies care nothing for yesterday or tomorrow.’

He sighed and raised his glass to her, without sipping, lowering it again to say, ‘We are not people with empty bellies, you and I, so we must cultivate those perspectives. Don’t try to bludgeon me with fake compassion for the starving. You call my background “deeply privileged”; I see it as carrying deep responsibilities – responsibilities for civilized enjoyment as well as duties. Yes, I have good fortune. That is because I have spent most of my life maintaining those values I live for.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I do not expect you to accept those values as worth maintaining; perhaps you would rather destroy them, since they are those shared by many in my social stratum – among them, during his lifetime, Aldous Huxley.’

He had made his point. Now he drank.

Looking down at her hand resting on the table, she said, ‘You evidently did not care for my paper this afternoon.’

Making a slight effort, he said, ‘We’re off duty now.’

She put fingers to her delicate lips and said, ‘I see you do not want to argue. I wonder why that is?’

‘I see you want to argue.’

As they both chewed olives, she said, ‘However beastly you may find my politics, I am not a dedicated Women’s Libber. Not exactly.’

He said nothing to that, having learnt that either approval or disapproval of such statements provoked argument.

After a short silence, she said, ‘Before I was into stylistics, I worked in neurosurgery in Los Angeles. That was when I was fresh out of college, apart from a trip to Mexico, where I saw for myself the poverty and injustice suffered there under American imperialism.’

She went on, and he continued to look at her, but her words no longer penetrated to his senses. He thought about her being a neurosurgeon, and saw her character differently, regarded her not just as a woman parroting ideology, but as someone vulnerable and dedicated. About her remarkable face, the sharp planes cutting back from her nose, there was something of the scalpel; but he detected a sensitivity previously hidden from him, perhaps a sensitivity to things to which he remained blind. Her priggish phrase about Mexicans suffering under American imperialism represented some genuine experience of pain and distancing which she could interpret only in terms of political theory.

She was saying, ‘Perhaps you know the name of Montrose Wilder. He was very distinguished in his field. It was a privilege to work with him. A good surgeon. Also a good man.

‘When I began as a trainee under him, he had a patient aged about forty, who had been involved in a shooting accident and was suffering from a parietal lesion of the brain. Her name was Dorothy, and she was severely dysphasic.

‘Montrose stimulated her hippocampus with an electrode. Dorothy suddenly cried out. She told us that she saw her mother in an orange dress – she relived that forgotten time – her mother in an orange dress walked down a hillside towards her, carrying a basket full of apples. The mother was smiling and happy.

‘Afterwards, Dorothy cried a lot. Her mother had died when she was five, and she had lost all conscious memory of her. The electrode had allowed her to relive that fragment of life when she was an infant, untouched by trouble. She was grateful. The memory was a gift from a happier world. A land of lost content …’

She looked down at her hands. ‘I think I can see now, as I’m telling it to you, that Dorothy perceived a linkage between the mother’s death when she was five and the attempt of a drunken and jealous lover to murder her at the age of forty. All succeeding messes flowed from that first mess …’ She bit her lip.

He said something sympathetic. Ajdini ignored him, lighting another ‘Drina’ and gazing up into the recesses of the room.

‘I thought of Dorothy when you spoke about souls. If you have looked into living brains, seen the vulnerable exposed hemispheres, you think ever after in terms of electrical impulses, not of souls.’

‘Supposing you look more deeply and see both physiological apparatus and electrical impulses as God’s handiwork?’

‘Do you do that?’

He laughed. ‘No. But I wish I could. I am in the anomalous position of believing in souls yet not in God.’

‘So art’s a comfort, eh?’ She was smiling. ‘Not that we don’t need comforting.’

‘Art’s many things, isn’t it? A comfort for me, a source of argument for you?’

A warmth in her smile, as she responded to his teasing, touched something inside him. ‘In the face of such large questions, really art in the twentieth century has little to say. After Kafka – nothing worth having. The Theatre of the Absurd.’

She indicated the bust which impersonally supervised their conversation. ‘Do you think this cross-eyed general is elevated to the Absurd? Just a few pencil lines make a difference.’

‘They do to any of us.’

‘Will you have dinner with me, please? If I promise not to convert you to Marxism.’

‘I’d love to, but I have to go out.’ Looking at his watch, he added, ‘Now.’

He noted her immediate curiosity, and added, ‘I have an appointment. Perhaps tomorrow evening.’

‘Are you going to a brothel? I hear there are plenty in Ermalpa. Because of the poverty.’

Laughing, he said, ‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Oh, don’t be all English and bashful. If you are going, can I come with you? I won’t spoil your enjoyment, but I’d like to talk to the women.’

‘Die Spitze might like that but I wouldn’t. I’m not in the habit of taking ladies to brothels. For one thing, it’s too much like taking coals to Newcastle …’

She gave him a long look, estimating him. ‘You hardly need to pay for your women, I imagine, Mr Squire.’

He drank the last of his vodka. ‘Women don’t enter into my plans for this evening, unfortunately. Perhaps things will improve in that respect tomorrow.’

Leaving the hotel, Squire was immediately enveloped in the hot evening noise of Ermalpa’s traffic. He stood for a moment, reminded of nights in Rio de Janeiro, where a similar mechanical frenzy had prevailed. Something in the Latin temperament caused drivers to project an extended body-image into their machine, converting it to something between a penis and a clenched fist.

He moved suddenly, turning down side streets which he had memorized from his map, down the Via Scarlatti, down the Via Archimede – very dark and crooked, the Via Archimede – through the Piazza O. Ziino, into the modest avenue next to the Giardino Inglese where the British Consulate stood.

As he walked through the warm evening, Squire thought over what he had said to Ajdini; as ever, he had hedged on the question of religion. One could never get free of religion, yet wasn’t it all out of date?

Some three years ago, when Squire was still collecting material for ‘Frankenstein’, he and Teresa had visited the Britannic Centre for Demystified Yoga, to interview its founder, Dr Alexander Saloman. They drove across London to St John’s Wood, where the centre was, and found themselves at a Lebanese house. Two Arab women in white robes, complete with yashmaks, were leaving the building as they entered. A dark man in dark glasses wearing a snappy blue suit was on guard, and let them only reluctantly through a mahogany door.

Inside, all was heavy and sumptuous and dark. Large black plastic sofas, upholstered with the wet-look, greeted them. On the walls hung claymores, nineteenth-century sporting prints, and musical instruments from some obscure corner of the East. A gilded lift took them grandly up to the second floor, and to an audience with Dr Alexander Saloman. Teresa held Squire’s arm.

Dr Saloman rose to greet them. He was dressed in black – black shirt, black pullover, black slacks, black shoes, with incongruous blue socks. He wore ebony-rimmed spectacles. He was possibly in his late forties. The skin of his face was dry and folded, his hair had been reduced to stubble, either by decision or natural erosion. He had been born in Vienna, and had lived in Argentina for many years before founding Demystified Yoga and returning to Europe. They shook hands formally.

‘What is the purpose of your television series? Is it merely entertainment?’ he asked Squire, when they had sat down and Squire had refused a Balkan Sobranie cigarette.

‘We hope to be entertaining. I want to show people that there are new things in the world to be enjoyed.’

‘Why do you come to me?’ The eyes were searching and not unfriendly, though they frequently darted to Teresa, who sat staring at Dr Saloman with her head on one side. One would not trust the doctor with women.

‘I practise yoga. I like the way it puts actions before words. To my mind, that’s the right priority. Someone told me you might be interesting.’

‘Wouldn’t you say there are old things in the world to be enjoyed?’

Squire hesitated. ‘Isn’t that obvious? But my series will not be about them.’

Dr Saloman exhaled smoke. ‘Are you ambivalent about old things?’

‘Old ideas, yes.’

‘Are you religious, Mr Squire?’ He spoke almost faultless English, without accent.

‘I don’t believe in God. Yoga cured my lingering belief. I feel most days that God is within me – if he exists at all.’

He wanted Dr Saloman’s response to that, but instead the doctor turned sharply to Teresa and asked, ‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Squire?’

She smiled. ‘We all go to church every Christmas. As a matter of fact, Dr Saloman, I don’t like being asked personal questions. That’s more my husband’s line.’

‘We are persons, Mrs Squire. We must sometimes be personal.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, I’m a very personal kind of person, Dr Saloman; but on the whole only with friends.’

As she spoke, she shot a glance at Squire; he thought with some approval that she was always able to take care of herself.

The founder of Demystified Yoga nodded seriously and turned back to Squire.

‘So you have a belief in yoga?’

‘I use yoga because it creates a stillness I enjoy – a stillness in me, I mean. If God exists, he exists in stillness, or so sages have always imagined. Perhaps pranayama is God – the breath of life. Let me ask you a question – do you consider Demystified Yoga a new thing or an old thing?’

Dr Saloman said, without pause, ‘Is a young oak a new thing or an old thing?’

‘I was asking about yoga, not trees.’

‘All things connect. Only we have to look for the connections. I am myself a connection. I have to find if that is why you and your wife seek me out. If not, I will not be of use to you. Among other things, I am a connection between East and West, and that is an important connection for our times.’

He looked squarely at Squire. His mouth was wide and blunt, and bracketed powerfully at either end with lines that ran from the flanges of his nostrils.

‘I like both yoga and demystification, Dr Saloman, though I’m not sure whether I like them in conjunction. Why do you see the connection between East and West as important at present?’

Dr Saloman put the end of his cigarette in the glass ashtray on his desk and spread his palms wide, so that Squire could see he concealed nothing.

‘There are answers to suit cases. I will put one to your case. In the West, there are many old dead ideas which people still cling to. For instance, the idea that the poor must struggle to overthrow the rich is long dead; yet it is kept alive by many petty demagogues who have no other slogans to mouth. Once-living ideas die and become embalmed into single words – Marxism, socialism, liberalism, democracy. Of course I don’t speak politically, that’s not my sphere. But this is an age of new possibilities. In different circumstances, we must behave differently in order to think differently. Then salvation is not far away.’

A door opened, and a young Indian woman in a bright blue and orange sari entered, bearing a tray. She placed the tray before Dr Saloman, and smiled and nodded at the visitors. He watched her with his dark eyes and his blunt mouth as she left.

While the doctor poured coffee, Squire looked about the room. There were lace curtains at the two tall windows, making the air dim. Everything in the room, including Dr Saloman’s enormous desk, was new, gleaming, foreign. Elaborate psychedelic acrylic pictures adorned one wall; there was also a photograph of somewhere that could have been a clinic in Buenos Aires. Perhaps the birthplace of Demystified Yoga, Squire thought.

His wife rose, walking over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder.

‘I don’t want any coffee,’ she told the doctor. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk. I have some shopping I have to do.’

Squire rose to his feet. ‘We won’t be long, Tess. Hang on.’

‘I’ll see you,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Dr Saloman.’

Dr Saloman made no comment. He came round the desk and gave Squire a cup of coffee. The cup was small and gold-rimmed; its fragile handle was difficult to grasp.

‘My wife gets rather restless,’ Squire said, by way of apology. ‘I’m very interested in what you say about our being surrounded by dead ideas. I was born with a neutral mind, and consequently have trouble in deciding which ideas are alive, which dead. How does a meeting of East and West help? There are plenty of dead ideas in the East.’

‘Of course. We need cross-fertilization. I’ll give you another old idea – racialism. But racialism is really ancient, and still has power. It is a true idea although, like Siva, it can be destructive. We must use its power correctly. We must test ourselves on the diversity that still lives between races – use it like a cold shower for our health. Increased travel accords that opportunity. My belief is that inter-racial contact can gradually obliterate fascism and communism and the other -isms by generating new ideas. Have you been to India? You should go at once.’

‘It’s not so easy—’

‘Of course it’s easy. For you it’s easy. I can tell it just by the cut of your suit. I also see that you should take your wife with you, for her inner harmony.’

After their conversation, Squire descended through the Lebanese hall and out into the London street. It was October and the leaves were falling. Everything was tranquil. There was no sign of Teresa. He walked slowly to the car, waiting by a parking meter, and climbed in. He allowed himself to relax and think nothing. Eventually she returned, dangling a carrier bag.

‘Sorry if I kept you waiting, darling. I’ve been shopping.’

She settled herself into the passenger seat and showed him a small glass ornament she had bought.

‘That yoga man was too boring. He’s a real phoney – you won’t use him, will you? I couldn’t bear it when he went into religion.’ She rubbed against him and kissed him on his neck.

‘Did you have to walk out like that? It was impolite. Saloman was okay. He said that we should go to India.’

‘Let’s go back to the hotel. I wasn’t being impolite to him – or you. I just suddenly got fed up with being there. I suppose you would say it was ideological. I went there with you to please you; I sat there to please you. Suddenly I wanted to be central. You and he were having a great conversation, and I was just sitting there waiting for you to finish. I couldn’t bear being an appendage.’

He looked at her with concern. ‘You weren’t an appendage. I don’t see why you didn’t enjoy it. He was interesting, was our Doctor.’

‘Not to me he wasn’t,’ she said.

Squire frowned. ‘Really, Tess. Just for half-an-hour? You’re as involved with religious questions as anyone.’

She put an arm around him. ‘Tommy, be nice to me. Don’t be grim. Religion’s just not something I wanted to talk about. In any case, I hated the way that man stared at me; he was sinister, and if you’d been a woman you wouldn’t have liked it either. He looks like a murderer.’

‘That’s silly, when—’

She sighed. ‘All right, it’s silly. Let’s go back to the hotel. My feet ache, and I need a drink.’

As he reached the British Consulate, he thought ruefully, ‘Well, there was a time when I also found religious talk extremely tedious.’ But perhaps that wasn’t what Teresa had been trying to tell him.

The Consulate was an unimposing building in greying stucco, hiding behind a number of sabre-leaved shrubs which entirely filled the small garden. The gate was locked. He spoke into a grill; the gate opened. He was met at the door by a solid unspeaking man, and shown into a hall whose chief features were a small chandelier and a portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip.

In a minute, James Rotheray appeared, rubbing his hands and smiling with his head slightly on one side in a manner that Squire remembered from schooldays. They shook hands. Rotheray put an arm round Squire’s shoulders and led him through the house to an enclosed courtyard where two men were sitting drinking. Rotheray introduced them to Squire and then led him to another table.

‘Lovely to see you, Tommy, you’re looking first-rate.’

‘And you, Sicily evidently agrees with you.’

‘Sicily’s splendid, full of antiquities. Getting a bit grey round the temples.’

‘Me too. And a bit thin on top. Do you still run?’

‘No. Jogging hasn’t caught on in Ermalpa. We sometimes manage a scratch game of cricket. I suppose the last time we met was at the Travellers.’

‘My Uncle Willie’s birthday dinner.’

Squire and Rotheray both belonged to the Travellers’ Club.

Rotheray brought drinks and concluded the pleasantries by saying, ‘It’s frightfully kind of you to come round. We have laid on just a few people for dinner – a dozen, no more – who are looking forward to meeting you and having a chat. It’ll all be jolly pleasant, and we have a really good chef. So before we go any further, if you like, we’ll talk about … what I know you want to talk about. I’ve got my secretary here, who can give you official advice. He’s a first-rate chap.’

He called over one of the men at the other table, a young man with a massive handshake who was introduced as Howard Parker-Smith. Squire recognized the type, or hoped he did: well-muscled body under well-tailored suit, uncompromising attitude under well-bred politeness: and felt pleased that such men still prospered.

‘Bring your drink over,’ he said to Parker-Smith. Parker-Smith went and fetched a beer.

‘Cigarette, sir?’ said Parker-Smith, offering a packet. Squire refused, Rotheray took one.

‘I’m particularly interested in the two Russians attending the conference,’ Squire said. ‘What have you got on them?’

Parker-Smith produced a neatly folded sheet of typed paper from his jacket pocket, laid it on the table in front of him, and said, without giving it a glance, ‘Georgi Mihailovic Kchevov. We’ve got quite a lot on him, although he’s only a minor ugly. Born 1935, in a town called, encouragingly, Proletarsky, in South Russia. Quite near the border with the Ukraine. Both parents killed 1943 in Great Patriotic War.’

‘I don’t need a life-story,’ Squire said.

‘Well, speaks German, some Polish, and Bulgarian. No English as far as is known. First sent outside USSR about five years ago, did heavy work in Gdansk among dock workers, earned promotion. Returned to Russia to KGB Advanced Technical College in Sudzhensk for one year refresher and on cadre there briefly. He played in an orchestra there.’

‘What’s that?’ Squire asked.

‘Comrade Kchevov plays the violin. Played in Kursk Youth Orchestra, 1944, for example. Also with him in the Sudzhensk Technical Orchestra was one Luyben Konstantinov, another habitual violin player.’

‘I know that name. Konstantinov.’

‘Luyben Konstantinov is Bulgarian. When he returned to Bulgaria from Sudzhensk, Kchevov went with him. This year, Kchevov materialized in Bonn a month before the Bulgarian defectors were killed in London and Paris. Kchevov was one of the forward men acting for Konstantinov, who master-minded the killings from Sofia.’

Squire rested his elbows on the table and ran his fingers down the lines of his face.

‘Let’s have that again, more slowly. What’s all this about the Bulgarians? How do they come into it?’

For a moment, Parker-Smith allowed himself to display a little impatience.

‘You must surely remember the case of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector who worked for the BBC and Radio Free Europe. Killed by a poison pellet in the heart of London. Konstantinov master-minded that operation from Sofia. He runs Department Two – Counter-Espionage. Of course, it’s lousy with Russians. Bulgaria’s owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by the KGB. Which is how Georgi Kchevov got in on the act.’

He spoke with the air of one stating the obvious, looking searchingly to and fro at Rotheray and Squire.

‘So Georgi Kchevov is quite important,’ Rotheray said.

‘Not really, James,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘He was only middleman in a chain of command, probably didn’t know a lot of what went on. Certainly didn’t do any of the hits. His hands are clean by KGB standards. He’s probably here on holiday, more or less. Reward for being efficient. But possibly keeping an eye on Rugorsky to justify the trip. Speaks fluent Italian, of course.’

‘Okay. He flew here straight from Bonn?’

Parker-Smith shook his head. ‘He’s been living in Milan under an alias since May. He didn’t like Bonn – the good old Krauts leaned on him. He linked up with Rugorsky only yesterday, at Rome airport. We and the Americans had tabs on him. Chaps like Kchevov know that security’s slacker in Italy than north of the Alps, so they aren’t quite so watchful here. After all, country’s half-communist anyway.’

He caught a glance from Rotheray, fell silent, and sipped his beer.

‘Why was Kchevov invited to the conference?’ Rotheray asked.

‘He wasn’t. He just turned up. Nothing unusual in that.’ Squire thought for a while and then said, ‘Violin apart, Kchevov has about as much connection with the arts as Pavlov has with Pavlova. There must be hundreds of his type crawling round England and Western Europe, worse luck. So what about Rugorsky? He’s the one who really interests me.’

‘Vasili Rugorsky. Age fifty. Prematurely grey. He met you in London in 1970, according to the records,’ Parker-Smith said.

‘Correct. Unlike Kchevov, he is a man of genuine culture. I was told he has made liberal gestures in his time. In particular, he spent several years in hard labour in the Gulag, back in Joe Stalin’s day, for writing a poem which offended the authorities.’

Parker-Smith nodded. ‘Our records aren’t precise that far back. We think that Stalin commuted the sentence. If so, that’s unusual. Seen in Moscow late 1947, then no notice of whereabouts for some years. Back on katorga in 1950. But in 1956 he is working again as a biologist. That’s his qualification. Continues at Irkutsk Institute of Biological Sciences until ’70, when he moves to Leningrad.’

‘Poem forgiven. Conformity achieved?’

‘The poem itself is interesting,’ Rotheray said, leaning forward in his chair. ‘“Winter Celebration”. They sent us a copy of it in translation with the other details. It likens the Soviet community to a sort of medieval feast with a great hog’s head steaming on a platter as main attraction. Stalin evidently didn’t care for the comparison. For a British reader, it’s difficult to tell whether Rugorsky was being slyly satirical or clumsily attempting flattery.’

As Parker-Smith began reciting more facts, Squire broke in, saying, ‘Rugorsky looks a bit like a hog’s head himself, which suggests a new line in literary criticism. Rather a fleshy face, hectic colour, protruding nose. He spoke to me at lunch about the duties of those who can still distinguish between true and false. Made what I took to be veiled anti-Soviet remarks. Keen to establish contact. I had the same impression in London in 1970. Despite his history, he moves fairly freely in the West, even if he’s stuck with Kchevov as a watchdog this time. He flew here straight from Moscow via Rome, you say?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘He had twenty-four hours on the loose in Rome between flights. We don’t know what he did. Brothels is the standard thing, of course.’

‘Home life?’

Parker-Smith condescended to peep at his sheet of paper. ‘Wife and two sons, now aged between twenty-five and thirty, both pukka Party members. Four-room flat in Leningrad suburb near university. He’s probably perfectly loyal to the system, if that’s what you’re thinking about. He knows the bosses and their psychology, they know him, everyone’s happy. They accept his style, he makes good propaganda for them abroad as a cultured broad-minded chappie quite ready to criticize shortcomings of government system, just like any Westerner. Or Yevtushenko.’

‘Or like some of our buggers, who go abroad and run down the British system in every way, before returning to cushy jobs and free education for the kiddies,’ Squire said. A thought struck him. ‘Rugorsky’s not likely to be a genuine dissatisfied customer, preparing to defect, as far as you know?’

Pursing his lips, Parker-Smith shook his head very slightly.

‘Look, if Rugorsky wants to defect – surprising how many Russians at the age of the male menopause do hop it – he’d be best advised to do so in Rome, not Ermalpa. Aeroflot doesn’t fly here, so he’s booked back to Rome via Alitalia next Monday morning – same flight as you, as it happens. He changes planes at Leonardo da Vinci, where he has a four-hour wait before catching the Aeroflot plane on to Moscow. In that breathing space, he could give Kchevov the shake if he wished, and head for the US Embassy.’

‘If he did make a break for it here in Ermalpa,’ Rotheray said, ‘he’d still be best advised to run for the American Consulate. We don’t want him here. Our stock with the Russians is low enough for them to break in here and grab him – aided by fixed local police, let me add. No, as Howard says, Rome’s his best bet.’ He rubbed his hands together and laughed.

Seriousness prevailed with Parker-Smith. ‘I’d guess he’s just a hanger-on of the system, Mr Squire. Plays both sides. Likes to make a few mildly anti-Soviet remarks, knowing they go down well with his hosts in the West, and makes him think he has integrity.’

‘Good. We know where we stand. Now, did you get me anything on Herman Fittich, Professor of Literature in the University of Bad Neustadt?’

‘Nothing exciting. Was conscripted at the age of fifteen into the Wehrmacht to defend Berlin in its last days. Mother raped and killed by Soviet Army of Glorious Liberation during that time. Quiet life since then. Holidays in Britain. Not a joiner, apparently. Good English, papers published in learned American journals. What were you hoping for?’

‘Just what you’ve given me. The detail about his mother is informative. I like Fittich. I think he’s just what I think he is, a serious and honourable man who does not much care for the present state of the world. Rugorsky is more of a mystery. But I expect you’re right; he’s probably harmless.’

Tucking the still-folded sheet of paper back in his pocket, Parker-Smith stubbed out the remains of his cigarette, drained his glass, and stood up. ‘If you learn anything of interest, do let us know. It all fits into a larger picture. If I can be of any further help, give me a ring.’

They shook hands and Parker-Smith faded politely away.

‘So much for business,’ Rotheray said, looking at his watch. ‘Now for something more social – more my line, I’m afraid. Anything else we can help you with while you’re here?’

‘No, thanks, James. It’s just a fairly ordinary quasi-academic congress, crawling with Lefties, as you’d expect. There’s an interesting American woman who arrived via West Germany, very cool and elegant but underneath very mixed-up, I suspect. Perhaps a real sympathy with the oppressed but it’s been channelled into Marxist lines and has withered under a stream of orthodox phraseology. She feels herself in some way trapped and cheated.’

‘What age?’

‘Oh, she’d be about – early forties. Well-preserved. Has a very cleansed, bare, even barren, appearance. Thinks that just to see a human brain lying in its shell is enough to banish thoughts of God and the human soul. I suspect a deep puritanism as regards sex and the flesh – a feeling she projects onto me. Americans nearly always reflexively suspect the English of puritanism. A strabismus in their history education. She hid it by talking nonchalantly about brothels.’

‘There are no good brothels in Ermalpa,’ said Rotheray. ‘So I’m told. All the attractive whores go to Palermo or Naples or Rome. They return here only when they’re old and desperately in need of a re-bore. Anyhow, how’s Teresa?’

‘Hasn’t your secret service been keeping you informed? We broke up last summer, during the heat wave. Haven’t quite managed to get things together again since.’

‘I am sorry, Tommy. You and Teresa were always such a jolly pair. Why, you knew each other when we were up at King’s and she was at Newnham. She’s got a slight squint, hasn’t she?’

‘No.’

‘My mistake. Sorry. To be honest, I did hear a whisper, but I hoped it was all over. Difficult creatures, women, I’ve always found. Is this Marxist American woman nice?’

‘Oh, she’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I thought you sounded interested. Well, let’s go and see about dinner. I hope that’ll cheer you up a bit.’

Rotheray led the way to what proved to be a pleasant meal, considering that it was a semi-formal British Consulate dinner.