The Russian Interpreter

They went up to Proctor-Gould’s room, a dark, lofty chamber on the third floor, furnished in the characteristic Imperial baroque, and looking out over the Kremlin. Proctor-Gould appeared to be not so much occupying the room as camping in it, like a rambler in some corner of the lawns at Versailles. An open suitcase lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, a tangled heap of possessions straggling out across the carpet. Suspended on plastic hangers from the dark furniture all about the room were wet shirts and socks, dripping into antique ornamental bowls or on to pages from Soviet newspapers.

‘I’m sorry about the laundry,’ said Proctor-Gould. ‘But I don’t trust the local washerwoman not to boil and beat my shirts to pieces. Sit down and make yourself at home.’

He rummaged in the suitcase, found a little aluminium camper’s kettle with a folding handle, and disappeared with it into the corridor. Manning sat down in an uncomfortable carved chair, with brass lions’ heads beneath his hands, and gazed about him, steeping himself in the profound melancholy of the room. On a table in the corner were stacked dozens and dozens of English books, all still in their dust-jackets. Manning put his head on his shoulder to read the titles. He made out Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, The Human Use of Human Beings, Philosophical Investigations, five copies of Lucky Jim, and seven copies of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

‘I see you’re looking at my beads,’ said Proctor-Gould, coming back into the room holding the kettle, now steaming, at arm’s length.

‘Your what?’

‘My beads. Presents for the natives. I always bring a suitcase full of English books when I come over – they’re like gold-dust here.’

He felt under the clothes in his case again, and produced two stout plastic mugs. Inside a spare suède shoe he located a Woolworth’s apostle spoon, and beneath a pile of dirty socks the old familiar tin.

‘Do you mind Nescafé?’ he asked.

‘Delightful.’

‘I always bring it. Boiling water’s the only thing you can get without waiting in Russian hotels.’

Manning watched him lever open the lid with the apostle’s head, and perform all the rest of the soothing ritual. It took him back. It took him back to all the indistinguishable student lodgings in which he had sat, beneath mantelpieces lined with the annual programmes of university societies, and party invitations all written on identical At Home blanks as if they were impersonal communications from some university department responsible for party-giving. To evenings spent talking about women and grants to visit America, and consuming chocolate digestive biscuits and Nescafé, the body and blood of scholarship itself. Nostalgia touched him, and he felt pleased to be with another Englishman here amid the sad smells of Russia.

‘You’ll have to have it black, I’m afraid,’ said Proctor-Gould, though the liquid in the mug was more a kind of dark gravy brown. ‘There seems to be a milk shortage in the shops at the moment.’

‘Thanks,’ said Manning. ‘It’s nice to meet you at last. I hear we’re old friends.’

Proctor-Gould took his own mug and straddled comfortably with his back to the radiator, as if it were an open fire. He gazed benignly down at Manning.

‘We are, Paul,’ he said. ‘We are.’

‘Really?’

‘You don’t remember where we met?’

‘No.’

‘At John’s.’

‘John’s? John who’s?’

Proctor-Gould laughed. It was a snuffling laugh, the kind of noise one might have expected a bloodhound to make, if something about the scent had struck it as funny.

‘“John who’s?’” he repeated contentedly. ‘That’s good. I must remember that.’

‘I still don’t know.’

‘We were in college together, Paul.’

‘Oh, John’s.’

‘It’s not what he says,’ said Proctor-Gould, in great good humour. ‘It’s the way he says it. Anyway, I’ve been checking up. You were two years behind me. But I’m pretty sure I remember seeing you around in my last year.’

‘Now you mention it,’ lied Manning politely, ‘I rather think I remember seeing you.’

‘You had a room in Chapel Court, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’

‘Ah. I probably just saw you walking through.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘But we must have seen one another in Hall, for example.’

‘Of course we must.’

It was presumably a John’s tie that Proctor-Gould was wearing. Now that Manning had a reference point against which to locate him, Proctor-Gould appeared even more curiously seedy. Double-breasted blazers and baggy grey flannels had gone out of fashion years before he and Proctor-Gould had arrived in Cambridge. Vaguely he visualized a Cambridge full of perambulating double-breasted blazers just after the war, with utility marks in their linings and ration books in their pockets.

‘Anyway,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘I’m in business now. You see before you one of the bright young men you’re probably always hearing about who go out and develop trade with the Soviet Union.’