‘What sort of car is this?’ I said.
‘Zhiguli,’ he said. ‘Is my car.’ He seemed proud of it. ‘Not many peoples have car. I am architect, have car.’
‘Is it expensive?’ I asked.
‘Car expensive. Petrol cheap. Driving examination, very difficult.’
He finished the bow on his hat, checked that his boots were inside, slammed the door, and backed briskly out on to the road.
‘How is everyone going to get here?’ I said. ‘Competitors and spectators.’
‘We build metro. New station.’ He thought. ‘Metro on top of ground, not deep. New metro for Chertanovo peoples. Many new buildings here. Chertanovo is new place. I show you.’
We set off back towards the Warsaw highway, but before we reached it he turned off to the right, and drove up another wide road where apartment blocks were springing up like mushrooms. All whitish grey; all nine storeys high, marching away into the distance.
‘In Soviet all peoples have house,’ Yuri said. ‘Rent is cheap. In England, expensive.’ He shot me an amused look as if challenging me to argue with his simplistic statement. In a country where everything was owned by the state, there was no point in charging high rents. To enable people to pay high rents, or high prices for electricity, transport and telephones, for that matter, it would be necessary to pay higher wages. Yuri Chulitsky knew it as well as I did. I would have to be careful, I told myself, not to underestimate the subtlety of his thoughts because of the limitations of the English they were expressed in.
‘Can I make a trade with you?’ I said. ‘A bargain? One piece of information in exchange for another?’
For that I got a quick, sharp, piercing glance, but all he said was, ‘Car need petrol.’ He pulled off the road into a station with pumps, and removed himself from the car to talk to the attendant.
I found myself taking off my glasses and polishing the already clean lenses. The playing-for-time gesture, which was not at that moment needed. I wondered if it had been intuitively sparked off by Yuri’s purchase of petrol, which seemed hardly urgent as the tank was well over half full, according to the guage.
While I watched, the needle crept round to full. Yuri paid and returned to the car, and we set off back towards the city centre.
‘What information you exchange?’ he said.
‘I don’t have it all yet.’
A muscle twitched beside his mouth. ‘You diplomat?’ he said.
‘A patriot. Like you.’
‘You tell me information.’
I told him a great deal. I told him what had really happened at the Hippodrome, not Kropotkin’s watered-down version, and I told him of the attack in Gorky Street. I also told him, though without names or places or details, the gist of what Boris Telyatnikov had overheard, and the inferences one could draw from it. He listened, as any faithful Russian would, with a growing sense of dismay. When I stopped, he drove a good way without speaking, and in the end his comment was oblique.
‘You want lunch?’ he said.
11
He took me to what he called the Architects’ Circle and in the big basement restaurant there, gave me food I hadn’t believed existed in Moscow. Prime smoked salmon, delicious ham off the bone, tender red beef. An apple and some grapes. Vodka to toss off for starters, followed by excellent red wine. Good strong coffee at the end. He himself ate and drank with as much enjoyment as I did.
‘Marvellous,’ I said appreciatively. ‘Superb.’
Yuri leaned back at last and lit a cigarette, and told me that every profession had its Circle. There was a Writers’ Circle, for instance, to which all Soviet writers belonged. If they did not belong to the Circle, they did not get published. They could of course be expelled from the Circle, if it was considered that what they wrote was not suitable. Yuri’s manner dared me to suggest that he didn’t entirely agree with this system.
‘What about architects?’ I asked mildly.
Architects, I gathered, had to be politically sound, if they wished to be members of the Architects’ Circle. Naturally, if one did not belong to the Circle, one was not allotted anything to design.
Naturally.
I drank my coffee and made no remark. Yuri watched me, and smiled with a touch of melancholy.
‘I give information,’ he said, ‘about Lord Farringford.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You are clever man.’ He sighed and shrugged resignedly, and kept his side of the bargain. ‘Lord Farringford is foolish man. With Hans Kramer, he go bad places. Sex places.’ Distaste showed in his face, and the top lip lifted even further off the incisors. ‘In London, is disgusting pictures. In the street. All people can see. Disgusting.’ He searched for a word. ‘Dirty.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Lord Farringford and Hans Kramer go into these places. Three, four times.’
‘Are you sure it was more than once?’ I said attentively.
‘Sure. We see. We... follow.’ The confession came out on a downward inflection, drifting off into silence, as if he hadn’t quite said what he had.
Wow, I thought: and what I said, without any emphasis of any sort, was, ‘Why did you follow?’
He struggled a great deal with his conscience, but he told me what I was sure was the truth.
‘Comrade with me, he look in England and in many country for foolish peoples. When foolish peoples come to Soviet Union, comrade use... make...’
‘Your comrade makes use of them through their liking for pornography?’
He blew out a sharp breath.
‘And if Farringford comes to the Olympics, your comrade will make use of him?’
Silence.
‘What use could Farringford be? He isn’t a diplomat...’ I stopped, thought, and went on more slowly. ‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that in return for not... embarrassing the British people, for not exposing a scandalous misdemeanour into which your comrade has lured him, your comrade will demand some concession from the British government?’
‘Say again,’ he said.
I said it again, more forthrightly. ‘Your comrade traps Farringford into a dirty mess. Your comrade says to the British government, give me what I want, or I publish the mess.’
He didn’t directly admit it. ‘The comrades of my comrade,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Those comrades.’
‘Farringford is rich man,’ Yuri said. ‘For rich man, comrade feel...’ He didn’t know the word, but his meaning was unmistakable, and it was contempt.
‘For all rich men?’ I said.
‘Of course. Rich man bad. Poor man good.’ He spoke with utter conviction and no suggestion of cynicism, stating, I supposed, one of humanity’s most fundamental beliefs. Camels through eyes of needles, and all that. Rich men never got to heaven, and serve them right. Which left absolutely no hope of eternal bliss for Randall Drew, who had an unequal share of this world’s goods... If I warned Johnny Farringford, I wondered, putting a stop to my dribbling thoughts, would it be enough? Or would it really be wiser for him to stay at home.
‘Yuri,’ I said, ‘how about another bargain?’
‘Explain.’
‘If I learn more here, I will exchange it for a promise that your comrade will not try to trap Farringford, if he comes to the Olympics.’
He stared. ‘You ask things impossible.’
‘A promise in writing,’ I said.
‘Is impossible. Comrade with me... impossible.’
‘Yeah... Well, it was just a thought.’ I reflected. ‘Then if I learn more, I would exchange it for information about Alyosha.’
Yuri studied the tablecloth and I studied Yuri.
‘I cannot help,’ he said.
He stubbed out his cigarette and raised his eyes to meet mine. I was aware of a fierce intensity of thought going on behind the steady gaze, but upon what subject I couldn’t guess.