The Secret Pilgrim Part 25

Then, to my relief, he started talking. Not about what he had done. Not about who he had done it with. But why.

"You don't know what it means, do you, to be locked up all day with a bunch of morons?"

I thought at first he was complaining of his future, till I realised he was talking about the Tank.

"Listening to their filthy jokes all day, choking on their f.a.gs and their B.O.? Not you, you're privileged, however humble you make yourself out. Day after day of it, sn.i.g.g.e.rs about t.i.ts and knickers and periods and little bits on the side? 'Come on, Saint, tell us a naughty joke for a change! You're a deep one, I'll bet, Saint! What are you into-gym slips? Bit of the rough? What's the Saint's little fancy of a Sat.u.r.day night?"

His energy had returned to him in full force, and with it, to my astonishment, an unexpected gift for mimicry. He was mincing at me, playing. the music-hall queen, a ghastly soft grin twisting his hairless face. "'Heard the one about the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, Saint? The excitement was in tents. Get you!' You wouldn't know about that, would you? 'Do you pull it now and then, Saint? Give it a little jerk occasionally, just to make sure it's there? You'll go blind, you know. It'll drop off. I'll bet you've got a big one, haven't you? A real donkey knock, all the way down your leg and tucked into your garter.' . . . You've never had that, have you, all day long, in the office, in the canteen? You're a gentleman. Know what they gave me April Fool's Day? A top secret incoming from Paris, Frewin's eyes only, decypher yourself, manual, ha ha. Flasb priority, get the joke? I didn't. So I go into the cubicle and get out the books, don't I? And I decypher it, don't I? Manual. Everyone's got his head down. n.o.body laughing or spoiling it. I do the first six groups and it's filth, some filthy joke all about a French letter. Gorst had done it. He'd had the boys at the Paris Emba.s.sy send it specially as a joke. 'Steady on, Saint, keep your hair on, give us a smile. It was only a joke, Saint, can't you take a joke?'

That's what Personnel said too, when I complained. Horseplay, they said. Pranks are good for morale. Think of it as a compliment, they said, show a little sporting instinct. If I hadn't had my music, I'd have killed myself long ago. I considered it, I don't mind telling you. Trouble was, I wouldn't see their faces when they found out what they'd done."

A traitor needs two things, Smiley had once remarked bitterly to me at the time of Haydon's betrayal of the Circus: somebody to hate, and somebody to love. Frewin had told me whom he hated. Now he began to talk about whom he loved.

"I'd been all over the world that night - Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Jo'burg - and there wasn't anything that took my fancy. I like the amateurs best, as a rule, the hacks. They've got more wit, which is what I like, I told you. I didn't even know it was morning. I've got these thick curtains up there, three hundred quids' worth, interlined. It's meat and drink to me after the Tank, the quiet is."

A different smile had come up on him, a small boy's smile on his birthday.

"'Good morning to you, Boris, my friend,' says Olga. 'How are you feeling this morning?'

Then she says it in Russian and Boris replies that he's feeling a bit low. He's often low, Boris is. He's p.r.o.ne to Slav depressions. Olga takes care of him, mind. She'll have a joke, but it's never cruelly meant. They have a fight now and then toowell, it's only natural, seeing they do everything together. But they always make it up in the same programme. They don't bear a grudge from day to day. Olga couldn't do that, to be frank. It's out with it and that's it, with Olga. Then they'll have a laugh together. That's how they are. Constructive. Friendly. Clean spoken. Musical too, naturally-well, they would be, being Russian. I wasn't that keen on Tchaikovsky till I heard them discussing him. But afterwards I came round to him straight away. Boris has got quite advanced tastes in music actually. Olga-well, she's a bit easy to please. Still, they're only actors, I suppose, reading their lines. But you forget that when you're listening to them, trying to learn the language. You believe in them."

And you send your written work in, he was saying.

For free correction and advice, he was saying.

You don't even have to write to Moscow after the first time. They've got this box number in Luxembourg.

He had fallen quiet but not dangerously so. Nevertheless I was becoming scared that his trance might end too soon. I took myself out of his line of sight, and stood in a corner of the room behind him.

"What address did you give them, Cyril?"

"This one, of course. What else have I got to give them, then? A country house in Shropshire? A villa in Capri?"

"Did you give them your own name too?"

"Of course I didn't. Well, Cyril, yes. I mean anyone can be Cyril."

"Good man," I said approvingly. "Cyril who?"

"Nemo," he announced proudly. "Mr. C. Nemo. 'Nemo' is Latin for 'n.o.body,' in case you didn't know."

Mr. C. Nemo. Like Mr. A. Patriot, perhaps.

"Did you put your occupation?"

"Not my real one. You're being stupid again."

"So what did you put?"

"Musician."

"Did they ask for your age?"

"Of course they did. They had to. They had to know you were eligible, in case you won the prize. They can't give prizes to minors, can they? No one can."

"And status-married or single-you told them that too?"

"I bad to put my status, didn't I, with the prize being available to couples! They can't give a prize to one person and leave his wife out, it wouldn't be gracious."

"What work did you send in - the first time round, for instance - do you remember?"

He decided to take further exception to my stupidity.

"Thickhead. What do you think I sent them? b.l.o.o.d.y logarithms? You write in, you get the forms, you enrol, you get the Luxembourg box number, you get the book, you're one of them. After that you do what Boris and Olga tell you to do in the programme, don't you? 'Complete the exercise on page 9. Answer the questions on page 22.' Haven't you been to school then?"

"And you were good. HQ says you've got a mind like an encyclopaedia when you use it. They told me."

I was beginning to learn how much he relished flattery.

"I was more than good, as a matter of fact, thank you, HQ, If you wish to know, I was in the nature of being their top pupil. Certain notes were sent to me by certain tutors, and some of them had a highly congratulatory tone," he added, with the wild grin that came over him when he was praised. "It gave me quite a filip, if you wish to know, walking into the Tank of a Monday morning with one of their little notes in my pocket and not saying anything. I thought, I could tell some of you a tale if I wanted. I didn't, though. I preferred my privacy. I preferred my friendships. I wasn't going to have those animals making filthy comments about Olga and Boris, thank you."

"And you wrote back to these tutors?"

"Only as Nemo."

"But you didn't fool with them otherwise?"

I asked, trying to fathom what restraints, if any, were in his mind as he embarked on this first illicit love affair. "I mean, if they asked you a plain question, you'd give them a plain answer. You weren't coy."

"I was not coy! I had no cause to be! I took great care to be courteous, the same as my tutors were. They were high professors, some of them, academicians. I was grateful and I was diligent. That was the least they deserved, considering there was no fee and it was voluntary and in the interests of human understanding."

The hunter in me again. I was calculating the moves they would have made as they played him along. I was working out how I would have played him myself, if the Circus had dreamed up anything so perfect.

"And I suppose, as you improved, they pa.s.sed you on from plain printed exercises to the more ambitious stuff composition, essays?"

"When it was deemed by the Board of Tutors in Moscow that I was ripe for it, yes, they moved me up to freestyle."

"Do you remember the subjects they set you?"

He laughed his superior laugh. "You think I'd forget them? Five nights at each one of them with the dictionary? Two hours' sleep if I'm lucky? Wake up, will you, Ned!"

I gave a rueful little laugh as I wrote to his dictation.

"'My Life' was the first one. I told them about the Tank, not mentioning names, of course, or the nature of our work, naturally. Nevertheless, a certain element of social comment was present, I won't deny it. I thought the Board had a right to know, specially with the glasnost in the pipeline and everything easing up for the benefit of all mankind."

"What was the next one?"

"'My Home.'

I told them about my plans for the pond. They liked that. And my cooking. One of them was quite a major cook.. After that they gave me 'My Favourite Pastime,' which could have been redundant but wasn't."

"You described your love of music, I suppose?"

"Wrong."

The rest of his answer rings in my ears today: as an accusation, as a cry of sympathy from a fellow sufferer; as a blind prayer flung into the ether by a man who, like myself, was desperate for love before it was too late.

"I elected 'Good Company' as my favourite pastime, if you really wish to know," he said as the wild smile came racing back to his cheeks. "The fact that I had not bad much good company in my life hitherto did not deter me from relishing the few occasions when it had come my way."

He seemed to forget that he had spoken, for he began again, in words I might have used of Sally: "I had a feeling I had renounced something in my life which I now wished to reclaim," he said.

"And did they admire your advanced work too? Were they 'impressed by it?"

I asked as I diligently wrote this down.

He was smirking again. "Moderately, I a.s.sume. Marginally. Here and there. With reservations, naturally."

"Why do you a.s.sume that?"

"Because, unlike some, they had the grace and generosity to show their appreciation. That's why."

And they showed it, said Frewin - I scarcely needed to press him further - they showed it in the person of one Sergei Modrian, First Secretary Cultural, of the Soviet Emba.s.sy in London, in his capacity as Radio Moscow's devoted local emissary despatched to answer Frewin's prayer.

Like all good angels, Modrian arrived without warning, on Frewin's doorstep one dank November Sat.u.r.day, bearing with him the gifts of his high office: one bottle of Moskovskaya vodka, one tin of Sevruga caviar, and one foully printed artbook about the Bolshoi Ballet. And one grandly typed letter appointing Mr. C. Nemo to be an Honorary Student of Moscow State University, in recognition of his unique progress in the Russian language.

But the greatest gift of all was Modrian's own magical person, custom-trained to provide the good company Frewin had so loudly craved in his prize-winning essay for the Board.

We had arrived at our destination. Frewin was calm, Frewin was in triumph; Frewin, for however long, was fulfilled. His voice had broken free of its confinements; his plain face was lit with the smile of a man who had known true love and was longing to impart his luck. If there had been anyone in the world for whom I could ever have smiled in the same way, I would have been a different man.

"Modrian, Ned? Sergei Modrian? Oh, Ned, I mean we're talking the total top league here. One look-at him, I knew. None of your half measures here, I thought. This one's the whole hog. We had the same sense of humour, of course, straight off. Acid. No wool across the eyes. The same interests too, right down to composers."

He attempted a more detached tone, but in vain. "It is very rare in life, in my experience, for two human beings to be naturally compatible in each and every respect-bar women, where I have to admit that Sergei's experience far outran my own. Sergei's att.i.tude to women" - he was trying hard to be disapproving - "I'll put it this way: if it had been anyone else behaving in that manner, I would have been hard put to it to approve."

"Did he introduce you to women, Cyril?"

His expression switched to one of adamant rejection. "He a.s.suredly did not, thank you. Nor would I have permitted him to. Nor would he have regarded such introductions as coming within the ambit of our relationship."

"Not even on your trips to Russia together?"

I ventured, taking another leap for him.

"Nowhere, thank you. It would have ruined them, as a matter of fact. Killed them stone dead."

"So it's all hearsay, what they say about his women?"

"No, it's not. It's what Sergei told me himself. Sergei Modrian had a totally ruthless att.i.tude to women. His colleagues confirmed this to me privately. Ruthless."

I found time to marvel at Modrian's psychological dexterity - or was it the dexterity of his masters? Between Modrian the ruthless pursuer of women, and Frewin the ruthless rejecter of them, there was indeed a natural bond.

"So you met his colleagues too," I said. "In Moscow, presumably. At Christmas."

"Only the ones he trusted. Their respect for him was incredible. Or Leningrad. I wasn't fussy, I'd no right to be. I was an honoured guest. I went along with whatever they'd arranged for me."

I kept my eyes on my notebook. G.o.d knows what I was writing by then. Gobbledygook. Afterwards, there were whole tracts I couldn't read a word of. I selected my absolutely dullest tone.

"And was all this in honour of your remarkable linguistic abilities, Cyril? Or were you already providing informal services for Modrian by then? Like giving him information or whatever. Translating and so on. A lot do it, I'm told. They're not supposed to, of course. But you can't blame people-can you?-wanting to help the glasnost along, now it's come. We've waited long enough. Only, I've got to put the proper history to this, Cyril. They'll skin me otherwise."

I did not dare look up. I simply kept writing. I turned a page and wrote: keep talking, keep talking, keep talking. And still I did not look up.

I heard him whisper something I couldn't understand. I heard him mutter, "It's not. I didn't. I never b.l.o.o.d.y did."

I heard him complain more loudly: "Don't say that, do you mind? Don't you ever say that again, you and your HQ. 'Giving him information what's all that about? They're wrong words. I'm talking to you, Ned! "

I looked up, sucking on my pipe and smiling. "Are you, Cyril? Of course you are. I'm sorry. You're my sixth in a week, to be honest. They're all doing the glasnost these days. It's the fashion. I'm beginning to feel my age."

He decided to comfort me. He sat down. Not in the chair, but on its arm. He put on an avuncular, friend-to-friend manner that reminded me of my preparatory-school headmaster.

"You're by way of being a liberal yourself, aren't you, Ned? You've got the face for it anyway, even if you are a bit of a toady for HQ" "I suppose I'm a sort of free thinker in my way, yes," I conceded. "Though I do have my pension to consider, naturally."

"Of course you are! You favour a mixed economy, don't you? You don't like public poverty and private wealth any more than I do. Humanity above ideology, you believe in that? Stop the derailed train of capitalism destroying all before it in its path? Of course you do! You've got a sensible concern for the environment, I dare say. Badgers, whales, fur coats, power stations. Even a vision of sharing, where it doesn't impinge. Brothers and sisters marching together towards common goals, culture and music for all! Freedom of movement and choice of allegiance! Peace! Well, then."

"Makes good enough sense to me," I said.

"You're not old enough to have done the thirties; neither am I. I wouldn't have held with them if I had been. We're good men, that's all we are. Reasonable men. That's what Sergei was too. You and Sergei-I can see it in your face, Ned, it's no good your trying to hide it, you're birds of a feather. So don't go painting me black and you white, because we're like minds; same as me and Sergei were. On the same side against the wickedness, the lack of culture, the filth. 'We're "the unrecognised aristocracy" '-that's what Sergei called us. He was right. You're one too, that's all I'm saying. I mean, who else is there? Who's the alternative to what we see around us every day, the degradation, the waste, the disrespect? Who are we going to listen to, up there in the attic at night, twiddling the dials? Not the yuppies, that's for sure. Not the pigs-in-clover lot-what have they got to say? Not the make-more spend-more be-more school, they're no help. Not the knickers-and-t.i.ts brigade, either. And we're not going to convert to Islam in a hurry, are we, not while they go round pinching countries off each other and doing the poison gas. So I mean what's the alternative for a feeling man, a man of conscience, now the Russians are abandoning their responsibilities right and left and putting on the hair shirt? Who's out there for us? Where's the vision any more? Where's the relief? The friendship? Someone's got to fill the gap. I can't be left in the air. I can't be without. Not after Sergei, Ned-I'd die. Sergei was the most important man on earth to me. Drink, meat and laughter, Sergei was. He was my total meaning. What's going to happen? That's what I want to know. There's some heads could roll, in my view. Sergei had the ideology. I don't see it in you-I don't think I do anyway. I get a glimpse of it, a longing here and there, then I'm not at all sure. I don't know you've got the quality."

"Try me," I said., "I don't know you've got the wit. The dance. I thought that as you came in. I compared you with Sergei in my mind, and I'm afraid I found you seriously wanting. Sergei didn't shuffle in like a deadbeat; he took me by storm. Rings the bell, marches in as if he's bought the place, sits down where you're sitting, but more awake not that he ever sat anywhere long, Sergei didn't, he was a shocking fidget, even at the opera. Then he grins like an elf and lifts up a gla.s.s of his own vodka. 'Congratulations, Mr. Nemo,' he says. 'Or may I call you C? You've won the compet.i.tion and I'm the first prize.' "He pa.s.sed the back of his hand across his mouth, and I realised that he was wiping away a grin. "He was a real flyer, Sergei was."

He was laughing, so I laughed with him. Modrian was his false freedom, I was thinking. As Sally is mine.

"He hadn't even taken his coat off," he continued. "He went straight into his pitch. 'Now the first thing we've got to talk about is the ceremony,' he says. 'Nothing flashy, Mr. Nemo, just a couple of friends of mine, who happen to be Boris and Olga, plus one or two high dignitaries from the Board, and a small reception for a few of your many admirers in Moscow.' "'At your Emba.s.sy?' I said. 'I'm not coming there. My office would kill me - you don't know Gorst.'

" 'No, no, Mr. Nemo,' he says. 'No, no, Mr. C. I'm not talking about the Emba.s.sy - who cares about the Emba.s.sy? I'm talking about Moscow State University foreign language school and the official inauguration of your honorary studentship with full civilian honours.'

"I thought I was dead at first. My heart had stopped beating. I could feel it. I'd never been beyond Dover in my life, let alone Russia, although I was Foreign Office. 'Come to Moscow?' I said. 'You're off your head,' I said. 'I'm a cypher clerk, not a trade union leader with an ulcer. I can't come to Moscow at the drop of a hat,' I said. 'Even if there is a prize at the end of it, and Olga and Boris waiting to shake my hand, and studentships and I don't know what. You don't seem to understand the position at all. I'm in highly sensitive work,' I said. 'The people aren't that sensitive, but the work is. I've got constant and regular access to top secret and above. I'm not just anybody off the street, into your plane to Moscow and n.o.body's the wiser. I thought I put that in my essays, some of them.' " 'Then come to Salzburg,' he says. 'Who's counting? Take a plane to Salzburg, say you're doing the music there, slip up to Vienna, I'll have the air tickets ready-all right, it's Aeroflot but it's only two hours-no nonsense with the pa.s.sports when we arrive, we'll keep the ceremony family, who's the wiser?'

Then he hands me this doc.u.ment like a scroll, all with the burned edges and that, the full formal invitation, signed by the whole Board, English one side, Russian the other. I read the English, I don't mind telling you. I wasn't going to sit in front of him with a dictionary for an hour, was I? I'd have looked a total idiot, me a top language student."

He paused - a little shamefully, I thought. "Then I told him my name," he said. "I shouldn't have done, really, but I'd had enough of being Nemo. I wanted to be me."

Now you must lose me for a minute, as I lost Cyril. Until now, I had managed to stay abreast of his references. Where I had dared, I had even led them. Now suddenly he was running free and I was struggling to keep up with him. He was in Russia, but I wasn't. He'd given me no warning that we'd gone there. He was talking about Boris and Olga, not how they sounded any more, but how they looked; and how Boris had flung his arms round him, and how Olga had given him a demure but heartfelt Russian kiss - he didn't hold with kissing as a rule, Ned, but with the Russians it wasn't Gorst's kind of kissing at all, so you didn't mind. You even got to Expect it, Ned, it being all part of what Russians regard as comradely: Frewin was looking twenty years younger and talking about being made a fuss of, all the birthdays that he'd never had. Olga and Boris in the flesh, Ned, no side to them, just natural, same as they were in their lessons.

" 'Congratulations, Cyril,' she says to me, 'on your completely phenomenal progress in the Russian language.' Well, through interpreters, naturally, I wasn't that far on, as I told her. Then Boris puts his arm round me. 'We're proud to be of a.s.sistance, Cyril,' he says. 'There's a lot of our students fall by the wayside, to be truthful, but those as don't make up for all the rest."

' And by then - at last I had pieced together the scene that he was painting for me in such broad, unpredicated strokes: his first Christmas in Russia, and for Frewin, I had no doubt, his first good Christmas anywhere, and Sergei Modrian playing ringmaster at his side. They are in a great room somewhere in Moscow, with chandeliers and speeches and a presentation, and fifty handpicked extras from Moscow Central Casting, and Frewin in paradise, which is exactly where Modrian wishes him to be.

Then, as abruptly as Frewin had treated me to this memory, he abandoned it. The light went out of his eyes, his head tipped to one side, and he beetled his eyebrows as if in judgment at his own behaviour.

Prudently, I returned him to time present. "So where is it?" I said. "The scroll he gave you. Here? The scroll, Cyril. Appointing you. Where?"