Saltykov, in what I believe he regarded as a kind of concession, opened the door of his taxi for me, and then stood aside as I grunted, and struggled, and strained and eventually manoeuvred myself into a sitting position inside unaided.
He got in and drove away. We drove for long minutes in silence before he said, ‘You do not think my taxicab is bugged?’
‘I don’t believe so,’ I said.
‘It is not likely, I suppose. Still, one cannot be too careful.’
‘No.’
‘In that case, I may tell you where we are going. Dora is in a small hotel in Kiev.’
‘I would have guessed as much.’
‘Really?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘If you can think of that, then perhaps they will think of it too.’
I knew what he meant by they, although without precision. I don’t believe Saltykov had any better knowledge. Nevertheless I said, ‘I could not guess which Kiev hotel. I daresay there are many.’
He brightened at this. ‘True! I tried to persuade her to return to Moscow. I told her: Go to the US embassy in Moscow. Seek sanctuary, I said. I said: Consider yourself the hunchback of Notre Dame.’
‘You told her to consider herself a hunchback?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Saltykov.
‘Did this not strike you as, perhaps, an insulting thing to say to a woman?’
He puffed and chewed his lower lip at this, and then said, ‘I was not attempting to be insulting. It is a well known story. The hunchback was in danger and he claimed sanctuary inside the cathedral in Paris. That was the point of the analogy. Do you think Dora Norman would be likely to take offence?’
‘Take offence at being compared to the hunchback of Notre Dame? Surely no woman could take offence at that.’
‘Exactly!’ But then his face became stern. ‘Unless you are being sarcastic? Perhaps you are being sarcastic. You must remember, please, that my syndrome makes it difficult for me to understand nuances such as irony and sarcasm. At any rate, she refused to return to Moscow. Specifically she refused to return to Moscow alone. To be more specific still, she refused to return to Moscow without you.’
My old heart sang like it was young again. ‘She said so?’
‘Indeed. I told her she was foolish. But she didn’t listen to me.’
Driving through the streets of the city might, for the buoyancy of my heart, have been flying through the sun-rubbed blue of the sky. I was grinning, my mouth stretched as wide as my pinched and scarred flesh permitted. I do not doubt I looked perfectly idiotic. I may even have looked like a death’s head. But I didn’t care.
After a while Saltykov spoke. ‘I did not mean to compare her physique to the physique of the hunchback of Notre Dame.’
‘I’m sure she understood that.’
‘The comparison was in point of the principle of sanctuary. I was not intending to imply she had a hunchy back.’
‘Of course not.’
‘In point of fact,’ he went on. ‘She does not have a hunchy back.’
‘That’s right.’
He indicated, slowed, turned right, and pulled away again. ‘In point of fact her excess weight is mostly on her front.’
‘You must stop talking now.’
‘One might say hunchstomach,’ said Saltykov. ‘Or—’
‘No,’ I stopped him. ‘One might not.’
The hotel was a little way from the centre of town: part of a terrace of a 1960s development, a tall narrow building squeezed between an office block and a clothes shop. Tram wires ran like giant clothes’ lines suspended along the middle of the road in front of it. The parade overlooked a dingy little park, dotted with bushes and containing a pond, a cadre of doleful ducks, a bandstand that I feel sure had never seen an actual band, and a concrete structure containing public conveniences that possessed somewhat the proportions of a large tool box. Saltykov parked on the road and, pointedly, neither helped me out of the cab nor aided my awkward progress over the pavement and inside the hotel.
At my re-encounter with Dora Norman, I felt, as the English poet said, [as if some new planet swam into my ken]. What I mean is that I felt a sense of renewed possibility. I have, since that day, often pondered those words. A new planet swims into your [ken], an English word for knowledge. Does this mean you are an imperialist, set upon dropping interplanetary troopers onto the surface, enslaving the indigenous inhabitants, colonising them? Or is the planet unoccupied, filled with verdancy, enforested, with bejewelled birds flying from bough to bough? Is it crying out for occupancy? Another English poet once called the object of his affections: ‘My America, my newfoundland’. How could I not think of that, that had spent so much of my life reading poetry in English, and who found myself — at my age! with my ruined face and bashed-up brain! — in love with a woman young enough to be my daughter?
Dora put her arms around me when I saw her again. She was weeping, but with happiness. ‘[At first I thought you were dead — when Mr Saltykov returned…]’
‘[Certainly not dead, my dear Dora,]’ I said.
I sat down on the settee in the main room of the hotel suite, panting with the effort of the journey, and Dora made me some bitter-tasting tea — nectar, I declared it. Saltykov had the grace to leave us together. Syndrome or not, he empathised enough to see that we needed a little privacy.
‘[When Mr Saltykov returned, he had such a doleful face…]’
‘[His syndrome disposes him to dolour, I think.]’
‘[I believe he thought you dead. There was an explosion?’]
‘[There was.]’
‘[It hasn’t been in the news.]’
‘[It is not surprising that the authorities have… is the English expression shushed it up?]’
‘[Hushed it up, yes. So Mr Saltykov drove away from the reactor, and came back to me. He’s been very good. He arranged this hotel room — I couldn’t stay where I was, before. There were cockroaches.]’
‘[This is to be preferred,]’ I agreed.
‘[It was, of course, hard to understand what Mr Saltykov was saying,]’ she said. [‘He found an English-Russian dictionary in an old bookshop in Kiev. Actually he found an English-Portuguese dictionary, and a Spanish-Russian dictionary, and the two of us sat for a long time looking up words and pointing at them. Communication was not very clear.]’
‘[Ah,]’ I said, trying to picture the scene.
‘[There was some confusion. He wanted to tell me that he thought you were dead, but at first I thought he was saying that you were destined for greatness. Then he said I would never see you again, and I thought he was saying that you have proposed marriage in my absence. I understood eventually. It’s so good to see you alive again!]’
‘[It is good to be alive again,]’ I said. Then I added, ‘[Better still to see you.]’ Had I been standing, or capable of getting to my feet quickly, I would have bowed.
‘[He checked the hospitals anyway. And he sat for hours in the lobby of the police station. Eventually they informed him you were still alive. How overjoyed I was! And here you are!]’
We embraced.
We settled into a sort of routine, the three of us occupying that two-room suite. Dora and Saltykov slept in the separate rooms they had been previously occupying; I slept on the settee in the front room. We agreed to make our way back to Moscow as soon as I was fit enough for the journey. And we agreed also on the need to keep Dora out of the way until she could be delivered to the American embassy in Moscow. I impressed upon them both the malignity and implacability of Frenkel. ‘[He wishes to kill you,]’ I told Dora.