In Theodore’s eyes it was certainly grand enough, to an intimidating degree in fact, and he looked round with some eagerness in search of a friendly or even a known face. It was Nina he had come to see, must find before long in order to exploit the stroke of luck by which they had both been invited here at this stage, when for him to have asked her out might have seemed forward. There was no sign of her between the back of the house and the tennis-courts – or rather there was, in the shape of her parents in conversation with Colonel and Mrs Tabidze and Commissioner Mets. First taking a glass of wine from a proffered tray, he went up and paid his respects, in silence for the time being because the colonel was evidently in the middle of advancing some strongly-held view of his.
‘Where shall we date its death?’ he was saying in a not very interrogative tone. ‘The year 2000? 2020? – before that, surely. It doesn’t affect the point: as an active force, as. something to be reckoned with, Marxism has ceased to exist. Its followers have died or fallen into cynicism or impotence. And what has replaced it? Ah, good evening, my dear boy.’
‘Good evening, sir,’ said Theodore, and exchanged greetings with the others, including Mrs Petrovsky, who thanked him for his thank-you note after her dinner-party. When this was over he said, ‘Please don’t allow me to interrupt you, colonel.’
‘Oh, a smart young fellow like you doesn’t want to hear an old buffer’s maunderings,’ said Tabidze.
‘The voice of wisdom,’ said his wife. ‘Heed it.’
‘I promise you I’m most interested,’ said Theodore with sincerity.
‘Very well, you bring it on yourself… Where was I?’
‘What has replaced Marxism.’ Petrovsky’s face showed a great deal of eager expectancy.
‘Indeed. What has replaced it is nothing, nothingness. No theory of social democracy, or liberalism, anything like that, nor even a non-political code of decency or compassion. And when the computer revolution broke down the idea of progress or just betterment in general broke down too. Christianity had gone long since and none of the new religions and cults took hold. And as for being Russian… No belief, no confidence, no guides to behaviour. All our books are lies. So what do we live by? Self-interest isn’t enough for most people, there are too many activities it doesn’t enter into. Sensual enjoyment – even more limited. So we act: we choose a part not too incongruous with our age and station and play it out to the best of our ability and energy. We can’t keep it up all the time, but it’s there when we need it, and being Russian is a great help.’
‘You were saying just now that being Russian was no good or had disappeared or something,’ said Mrs Tabidze.
‘No no, my love, that was the idea of being Russian as a system of conduct. I mean the fact of being Russian as an aid to play-acting. The essence of the Russian character, in fact as well as in fiction, has always been theatricality. Of course, some of us have more trouble than others with the part available to us. I’m one of the lucky ones – my part’s the honest soldier: loyal, hard-working, a father to his men, strict but fair, all that, and devoted to some mysterious relic called the honour of the regiment.’
‘I’m sure you really are every one of those things, Nicholas,’ said Petrovsky earnestly.
‘Thank you, my dear Sergei, I have to say I hope you’re right because it would be out of character to say that the question is of the most perfect indifference to me, and also untrue, because obviously the game must be played to the full.’
‘How is it you’re playing a part?’ asked Mrs Tabidze. ‘If you really work hard, and I know you do, you’re not pretending to be hard-working, you are hard-working.’
‘What I say to myself about everything I do is quite different from what a real honest soldier would say to himself.’
‘I’ve never heard such rubbish, my dear. However great the difference, it could make no difference.’
‘But how does all this philosophising fit the part?’ Petrovsky went on evincing curiosity while he beckoned to a waiter. ‘An honest soldier surely confines himself to honest soldiering.’
‘That’s all you know about honest soldiers, Sergei. Cultivation of unexpected interests is de rigueur for the type. My squadron commander in India was an authority on the fauna of Lake Balkhash.’
‘That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘No, but it’s almost the same sort of thing.’
As he spoke Tabidze helped himself to a glass of wine, his fourth since arriving forty minutes before; it was another hot day and he had been thirsty. What with his hard head and the weakness of the drink its only effect was to introduce a certain relish into his tone. If he took much more that evening he would be troubled the next day not with a hangover but with taking off the resulting added weight. Not even his wife fully appreciated the savage self-discipline by which he kept his figure. She knew he kept his grey hair dyed black. This and the dieting she put down to harmless vanity, wrongly: they were necessary effects of his determination to retain the semblance of the particular variety of honest soldier he had chosen thirty years before in preference to, among others, the tubby, grizzled and usually less intelligent type to be seen in others’ messes everywhere.
‘I wonder how you’d apply your theory to other members of this company,’ said Petrovsky with a reflective air. ‘What part am I playing, for instance? Don’t spare me, now.’
‘Spare you? You’re the all-round liberal, unreservedly tolerant, not least of what others condemn, in favour of equal treatment for unequals, exercising no authority over his children, the master who’s patient but firm, but more patient than firm, where I’m strict but fair, but more strict than fair. The character’s greatest fear is to be caught disapproving of something.’
When, on his way home at the end of the evening, Theodore went over this moment in his mind, it struck him that what Tabidze had been doing was trying to impress the others with how unlike an honest soldier he was while asserting the opposite; nothing more than that. But at the time his feeling about what had just been said was that he had never heard an utterance more delicately poised between compliment and insult. He held his breath as Petrovsky’s interested smile grew fixed on his handsome face. It was a relief when Mets spoke up in his clear tones.
‘That’s good but rather obvious, colonel, if I may say so. What about my part? I can’t wait to hear what it is.’
‘I don’t think I know you well enough, Commissioner. Well enough, that is, to see if there’s anything beyond the obvious administrator-with-imagination. I mean of course anything in the way of a further part, not anything more in your actual self.’
‘You mean it’s possible to play more than one part?’
‘Oh, it’s usual. Singletons like my soldier and the Controller’s liberal aren’t all that common.
‘Stop this nonsense, Nicholas; you don’t even believe it yourself.’
‘Sometimes I don’t, my dear, and sometimes I do.’
‘Sometimes I do too – I mean at this moment,’ said Petrovsky.
He nodded in the direction of Theodore, who after standing stock-still for an instant was hurrying over to where Nina was approaching with Elizabeth Cuy at her side. Both girls wore tennis outfits and carried rackets.