Unease prickled, like that when only half realizing a burglary. Something not quite right, but what?
The clasp opened easily, revealing only Vichy coins, wartime permits, stamped food cards, a cigarette case, possibly aluminium, stamped H.H. Some beads, brooches, tins ornate but valueless. No family mementoes. One smaller bag, grey, entwined with gold threads, containing more useless coins, costume jewels, then a soiled Provençal clipping of a girl, bald, weeping, surrounded by angry townsfolk. Southern Spite. Recognition came very slowly, though eventually stabbing sharp as the Snow Queen’s kiss.
FOUR:
LONDON EMBASSY
‘You have languages, very important. Despite unfortunate familial associations, you appear unconcerned with East Germany. You can be useful in our Secretariat.’
The First Secretary, bald and careworn, examining me as if measuring for a suit, was speaking in poor German, very softly, as if the rooms were bugged. He had silverish skin, as if permitted only a dry shave. At a desk too wide for the office, a leather-bound volume open before him, he could be some genre illustration not of the pleasures but duties of work. Thick green windows behind him, meshed with wire, gave an illusion of being in a fishtank.
Despite Soviet reconquest, pre-war Estonia was still officially recognized by Britain and retained Embassy and Consulate in South Kensington, housed in a high, sooty, late-Victorian mansion, sporting the flag forbidden by the USSR: white, blue, with a black central stripe, the Bar of Pain.
The First Secretary folded and unfolded documents, demanded signatures, murmured about British Official Secrets requirements. The badly distributed light almost obliterated the flower patterns on heavy curtains and rugs, making them remnants of an abandoned garden.
The building was cavernous, overloaded with the ponderous. Stained alabaster pillars had cracked, tinted glass of a fashion long eclipsed, depicting yellow oblongs, sickly blue curlicues, bilious leaves, tessellated periwinkles. Corridors were obstructed by packing cases, disused standard-lamps, rolls of damask, a broken kennel. A smell pervaded everywhere, like that of Greg’s clothes drying on the stove.
Lake and Forest, islands and gardens, the silken rhythms of fêtes, had sunk to dusty files and yearbooks and a portrait of Konstantin Päts, a heavy face glum as if with presentiments of Siberian death. No Camus or Malraux would enter, no clarion-sound advance. Instead, this tired voice, monotonous as a clock.
‘Actually, your background will assist your comprehension not of the 1917 Bolsheviks but of Imperial Germany’s attempt to establish an Estonian fiefdom, to which your family might not have been averse. You may later need to examine the careers of our former leaders – Päts, Tonison, Poska, Laidiner – you may care to study Estonian literature, indigenous not Germanic, H.H. Tammsaare, for instance. You should investigate the British–Soviet Friendship Society, the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, the pro-Soviet elements within CND. And scrutinize the British press daily.’
His voice lowered further, was conspiratorial. ‘We exist on sufferance from those not hostile but who pretend not to notice us. With more resolution, less looking too far backwards, peacetime London could have halted Germany and conciliated Russia. Now the British no longer look not to themselves alone. You will find them polite but no more.’
He paused, wondering perhaps whether to rate me a jot superior to the British. Then nodded, in my favour. ‘You know of the Cambridge spies, and this new crop… you’ll read of Lonsdale, a Mr Vassall… they have forced the Pentagon to refuse to share atomic secrets with London. In matters of national and individual security, conditions here are lax, sometimes fatally so. Let me warn you against casual acquaintances, unfrequented streets, particularly the late-night Underground. Sit in central carriages, never use stairs, always lifts. Avoid eye contact. Even at diplomatic parties I always stand in corners. Remember, each one of us is watched. KGB, CIA, MI6. Remember Prague, Mr Masaryk dead under his window…’
He hesitated, then rallied. ‘You yourself had role in a well-publicized, American-backed Paris event and could be a target. A man, not always white, glancing at you on an omnibus may be less of a stranger than you imagine.’
My fears of prolonged indolence, lack of adventure, non-being, might be misplaced. Hitherto I had seen only innocuous crowds, good manners, tolerant smiles. Also, no Toute Vie, only party politics, what Mother had called ding-dong.
The First Secretary was dry, severe, insisting full attention. How often had he repeated his warnings to cadets? What had been their fates?
‘The British Joint Intelligence Committee has listed some fifty KGB agents here, liaising with dissident units in factories, labour clubs, unions, five church charities, the universities, Fleet Street, even prostitutes. In certain regions of Europe the Cold War is also a shooting war.’
London, renowned through centuries for subtlety, finesse, stylish opportunism, was, new colleagues insisted, hesitating between the rival empires of Washington and Moscow. To soothe the latter, Whitehall, black hats and bolted faces, was refusing permission for a memorial to the Poles massacred at Katyn. Virtual embargo was levied on reporting the extermination of Baltic professional and intellectual classes. Thermonuclear parity was nearly achieved between the USA and USSR and old Chatterbox spoke of God wearying of mankind.
The Baltic States were Soviet provinces, their histories rewritten, their exiles, scarcely heard, cherishing their lost independence like Australian Aboriginals the songs of dreamtime. Despite Khrushchev’s sensational onslaught on his tutor, Stalin, safely dead, as a paranoiac, criminal incompetent, the Embassy, with punctilious courtesy, was denied access to most Fleet Street and BBC sanctums and Westminster lobbies. No country had dared remind the Kremlin of wartime promise to respect Baltic freedoms. Several thousand Estonians were granted British asylum; some, known to be in Soviet pay, left undisturbed. Of nineteen Estonian quislings, eleven had been summoned to Moscow, unlikely to return, the remainder holding Party positions in Tallinn, formerly Reval.
At first, I had merely to scrutinize visas, dossiers, suspect photographs, investigate the disappearance of a portfolio or identity card, the forgery of a signature, a non-existent address, occasionally meeting mild, solemn British Council officials. My German associations at first assured if not suspicion then considerable reserve and perhaps would obstruct promotion. However, determined to reach higher and, with staff too few and underpaid, I was soon promoted to the Research Department, a small basement room, musty, neglected. Yet its files could astonish me like fiction, which some surely must be: a 1942 Nazi plot to invade Ulster and collaborate with the IRA; Lithuanian crowbars battering Jews to death, 1943, a Bishop Brzgyes forbidding all succour; Khrushchev jovially assuring Budapest writers that had he shot some of them he need not have had to defeat the 1956 Counter-Revolution.
From a back room in Portobello Place, a monthly news sheet, Eesti Hääl, ‘Voice of Estonia’, was published. To this I contributed a poem, very old, very bad, then, rather better, a short memoir of my pre-war days. Their impact was insignificant, but publication was ascent.
For the February Independence Rally, a few scores of ageing people assembled in a church hall, decorated with national flags, faded posters, proclamations signed by defunct notables, a few blown-up photographs, amongst them Päts, so often scorned at the Manor.
The First Secretary addressed us. We should be resolute, we should be ready. But for what? He implied, for very little. Following a brief choir performance, several readings, obscure or merely dull, the Ambassador pronounced the finale, in tones in keeping with his long, narrow features.