The Russian Interpreter

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s Russians I’m interested in. I got into the business as an undergraduate, really, when I was organizing visits for various Soviet student delegations. It was such a fearfully complicated and long-winded business, dealing with the Soviet authorities in those days – after I’d done a couple of delegations I became the accredited expert, and people began calling me in to arrange delegations and groups and exchanges of every shape and size. I had to start charging a fee to cover the time I spent. The thing I noticed was how much in demand the Russians always were when they were over – everyone wanted them to come to parties, give lectures, appear on television quiz shows, and so on. So I started charging fees to everyone who wanted to borrow them, as well. Pretty soon I had unique contacts with the Soviet authorities, and what was almost a full-time business on my hands.’

‘And the Russians are prepared to co-operate in all this?’ asked Manning.

‘My dear Paul, they fall over themselves to co-operate. The Soviet authorities and I are like that.’

He hooked his two index fingers together.

‘There have been rough passages, I admit. But there are some bright young men coming to the top in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs these days. I’ve gradually persuaded them that the best possible advertisement for Russia abroad is not sputniks or coal-cutting machinery, but ordinary common or garden people.’

‘Don’t they always want you to take only worthy and reliable citizens?’

‘They did at first. You should have seen some of the specimens I collected on my first couple of trips! Honestly, Paul, I practically killed myself trying to work them up into something usable. It was all right as a novelty, but we couldn’t possibly have gone on running stuff like that. It was the Yevtushenko affair that changed everything.’

‘Was he one of your clients?’

‘Alas, no. But the bright young people here began to see that mavericks and rebels like Yevtushenko created not a worse but a better image of Russia in Western eyes. All right, they said, the West refuses to accept that Russia is contented and monolithic. But perhaps it might accept the idea that Russia is a turbulent, intellectually vital country seething with new ideas. For the last couple of years I’ve been able to get virtually anyone I wanted, provided they were fundamentally loyal, like Yevtushenko. I’m in a position of trust and privilege, of course, and I take care not to abuse it. I might add that the Soviet government recognizes me as having exclusive rights on the whole Soviet market.’

‘That’s an absolutely staggering achievement,’ said Manning, amazed that anyone dressed as Proctor-Gould was could get so far. Proctor-Gould plucked at his ear, and lengthened his long face dismally, to conceal his pleasure at the compliment.

‘But I’m told you don’t speak Russian,’ said Manning.

‘Now you’ve put your finger on it. I don’t. I’ve tried to learn, but I’m afraid I’m just no linguist. Never mastered this comic alphabet they’ve got. Naturally, most of the people who are going to be presentable as personalities in Britain or the United States speak English. All the same, I think the time has come when we’ve got to try and get at the real Russia, and that means going far beyond the English-speaking section of society. I work very closely with V.O.K.S., the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations, who provide me with interpreters – and I can always get an Intourist girl from the desk downstairs. But it’s not easy to assess the personality of a Russian when it’s being filtered through another Russian, with a Russian outlook and Russian preconceptions. What I need, it seems to me, is not a Russian who has learnt English, but an Englishman who knows Russian. I wondered if the job might appeal to you? It would only involve a few hours a week away from your thesis – I can still do all the routine work with a Soviet interpreter. I’ll pay you what I’d pay an interpreter in London, two guineas an hour. I’ll pay it in sterling, or in Swiss francs, or in roubles at four roubles to the pound. Whichever you prefer.’

Manning held up his spoon, and squinted over it towards the window so that the apostle just covered the domes of the Uspensky Cathedral. He was trying to conceal his pleasure at being offered a job. In the lower depths of the academic world, which he inhabited, jobs were applied and competed for, not offered.

‘The vetting was satisfactory, then?’ he asked.

‘Vetting? Oh, come, come. It was just a few discreet questions.’

‘And what did you find out?’

‘Just that your Russian is fluent, and that your standing with both the Soviet authorities and the Embassy is reasonably good. That’s all I wanted to know.’

‘What made you think of me in the first place?’

Proctor-Gould shrugged.

‘I heard your name mentioned in London.’

‘By whom?’

‘I can’t really remember. Another old Johnsman, probably, who remembered you were installed over here. The old boy network again, I expect.’