The Russia House

'And you agree?'

'Yes, and so do you!' Heat, now. Fire in her eyes. An English too perfect, learned in the cloister, from permitted classics of the past. 'He says that he heard you criticise your own country in similar terms!'

'Does he have any small thoughts?' Barley asked. 'I mean, does he like the movies? What car does he drive?'

She had turned away from him and he had the side view of her face cut against the empty sky. He took another nip of Scotch.

'You said he might be a physicist,' he reminded her.

'He was trained as a physicist. I believe he has also qualified in aspects of engineering. In the field in which he works, I believe that the distinctions are not always closely observed.'

'Where was he trained?'

'Already at school he was regarded as a prodigy. At fourteen he won a Mathematics Olympiad. His success was printed in the Leningrad newspapers. He went to the Litmo, afterwards to post-graduate studies at the University. He is extremely brilliant.'

'When I was at school those were the people I hated,' said Barley, but to his alarm she scowled.

'But you did not hate Goethe. You inspired him. He often quotes his friend Scott Blair. "If there is to be hope, we must all betray our countries." Did you really say this?'

'What's a Litmo?' said Barley.

'Litmo is the Leningrad Institute for Mechanical and Optical Science. From university he was sent to Novosibirsk to study at the scientific city of Akademgorodok. He made candidate of sciences, doctor of sciences. He made everything.'

He wanted to press her about the everything, but he was scared of rushing her so he let her speak about herself instead. 'So how did you get mixed up with him?'

'When I was a child.'

'How old was the child?'

He felt her reticence collect again and then dissolve as if she had to remind herself she was in safe company or in company so unsafe that to be further compromised made little difference.

'I was a great intellectual of sixteen,' she said, with a grave smile.

'How old was the prodigy?'

'Thirty.'

'What year are we talking about?'

'1968. He was still an idealist for peace. He said they would never send in the tanks. "The Czechs are our friends," he said. "They are like the Serbs and the Bulgarians. If it were Warsaw, perhaps they would send in the tanks. But against our Czechs, never, never."'

She had turned her whole back to him. She was too many women at once. She had her back to him and was talking to the sky, yet she was drawing him into her life and appointing him her confidant.

It was August in Leningrad, she said, she was sixteen and studying French and German in her last year at school. She was a star pupil and a'peace-dreamer and a revolutionary of the most romantic kind. She was on the brink of womanhood and thought herself mature. She was speaking of herself with irony. She had read Erich Fromm and Ortega y Gasset and Kafka and seen Dr. Strangelove . She regarded Sakharov as right in his thinking but wrong in his method. She was concerned about the Russian Jews but shared her father's view that they had brought their troubles on themselves. Her father was Professor of Humanities at the University, and her school was for sons and daughters of the Leningrad nomenclatura . It was August 1968 but Katya and her friends were still able to live in political hope. Barley tried to remember whether he had ever lived in political hope and decided it was unlikely. She was talking as if nothing would ever stop her talking again. He wished he could hold her hand again as he had held it on the stairs. He wished he could hold any part of her, but best of all her face, and kiss her instead of listening to her love story.

'We believed that East and West were drawing closer together,' she said. 'When the American students demonstrated against Vietnam, we were proud of them and regarded them as our comrades. When the students of Paris rioted, we wished we could be beside them at the barricades, wearing their nice French clothes.'

She turned and smiled at him again over her shoulder. A horned moon had appeared above the stars at her left side and Barley had some vague literary memory that it boded bad luck. A flock of gulls had settled on a roof across the street. I'll never leave you, he thought.

'There was a man in our courtyard who had been absent for nine years,' she was saying. 'One morning he was back, pretending he had never been away. My father invited him to di

'Where was your mother?'

'Dead.'

'How did she die?'

'Of tuberculosis. She was already ill when I was born. On 20th August there was a closed showing of a Godard film at the Club of Scientists.' Her voice had become strict against herself. 'The invitations were for two persons. My father, after making enquiries about the moral content of the film, was reluctant to take me but I insisted. In the end he decided I should accompany him for the sake of my French studies. Do you know the Club of Scientists in Leningrad?'

'I can't say I do,' he said, leaning back. 'Have you seen A bout de souffle ?'

'I starred in it,' he said, and she broke out laughing while he sipped his Scotch.

'Then you will remember that it is a very tense film. Yes?'

'Yes.'

'It was the most powerful film I had ever seen. Everyone was greatly impressed by it, but for me it was a thunderbolt. The Club of Scientists is on the embankment of the river Neva. It is full of old glory, with marble staircases and very low sofas which are difficult to sit on in a tightskirt.' She was sideways to him again, her head forward. 'There is a beautiful winter-garden and a room like a mosque with heavy curtains and rich carpets. My father loved me very much but he was concerned for me and he was strict. When the film was over we moved to a dining room with wood panels. It was beautiful. We sat at long tables and that was where I met Yakov. My father introduced us. "Here is a new genius from the world of physics," he said. My father had the fault of sometimes being sarcastic with young men. Also Yakov was beautiful. I had heard something about him but nobody had told me how vulnerable he was, more like an artist than a scientist. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he had returned to Leningrad to recover his i

She was sitting across the valley from him, propped against the opposing slope of the roof tiles, her long legs stretched before her, her dress drawn tightly over her body. The sky was darkening behind her, the moon and stars were growing.

'He told me his father died of an overdose of intelligence,' Barley replied.

'He took part in a camp uprising. He was in despair. Yakov did not know of his father's death for many years. One day an old man came to Yakov's house and said he had shot Yakov's father. He had been a guard at the camp and was ordered to take part in the execution of the rebels. They were shot down in dozens by machine guns near the Vorkuta railway terminal. The guard was weeping. Yakov was only fourteen at the time but he gave the old man his forgiveness and some vodka.'