The Russian Interpreter

‘We don’t need to say anything to each other, Paul. We have that sort of relationship.’

Manning went over and knocked on the bathroom door.

‘Are you thinking of coming out?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Raya.

‘We’re talking about you.’

‘Good. My best wishes for the enterprise.’

Manning sat down opposite Proctor-Gould again.

‘She says she’s not thinking of coming out,’ he reported.

‘No, I don’t suppose she’ll be out for another hour yet. She’s taken to retiring to the bath with a book from six to eight every evening.’

‘Another little complexity.’

‘A perfectly harmless one, Paul.’

‘Oh, sure. I think you’ll just have to get used to the idea that Raya pinches things, too.’

‘Did she ever take anything of yours, Paul?’

‘No.’

Proctor-Gould sighed.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I did get reasonably acclimatized to the idea of her taking things like my souvenirs, or the Nescafé. I can see that different people express their relationships in different ways. But the books are quite another matter. The books are part of my work. A lot of them aren’t even mine – I was entrusted with them by my clients. to deliver. I just cannot allow Raya to take them.’

‘Do you want me to ask her what she did with the ones she took, so that we can try and get them back?’

Proctor-Gould sighed again.

‘I think we’d better let those go. What I really want to do is to make absolutely certain that she doesn’t take any more.’

Eventually they got two of Proctor-Gould’s suitcases out of the wardrobe, packed all the books away into them, and locked them.

‘Supposing she finds the key?’ asked Manning.

‘She won’t. I’ll keep the key-ring chained to me twenty-four hours a day.’

‘She could force the locks fairly easily.’

‘I don’t think she’d do that, Paul. I don’t think she’d be prepared to go to any trouble. Do you?’

‘I don’t know. I thought you were the one who understood her?’

‘Yes. Well, I don’t think she’d go to the trouble of forcing the locks.’

22

Proctor-Gould was right; Raya didn’t go to the trouble of forcing the locks. She took one of the suitcases and sold it as it stood, locked.

Then she came back to the hotel for the other one. Proctor-Gould met her, and the porter carrying the second suitcase, as they stepped out of the lift in the lobby.

‘I didn’t think I could manage them both at once,’ she explained to Manning when he arrived. ‘It didn’t occur to me to get the porter the first time. Stupid of me – we might have avoided all this mess.’

She indicated the heap of books which Proctor-Gould had taken out of the case and spread over the floor, and which he was now desperately sorting through. He was in a terrible state. He had only just discovered that the suitcase he had saved was the second one, and that the other had gone already. He kept picking books up and dropping them, trying to work out which ones he had lost, biting his lower lip so that it bulged out first to the left and then to the right. He looked as if he was going to be sick.

‘Has she really sold the case?’ he asked Manning.

‘So she says.’

‘Who to?’

‘She says a friend.’

‘Tell her I’m going to the police this time.’

Manning told her.

‘She says shall she phone room service for a policeman?’ he reported.

At these words Proctor-Gould jumped to his feet and stared at Raya, his eyes very wide, leaning forward ridiculously as if to inspect her more closely. His face was unnaturally white. The joke had turned all his anxiety to rage.

‘I’ll shake you!’ he said in a level, frightening voice. ‘I’m going to have those books back. You treat me like … as if I didn’t exist…. You think … Well! I’ll shake you!’

His voice trembled, and went very high. Manning was too taken aback to translate. But Proctor-Gould’s tone and appearance had a remarkable enough effect on Raya by themselves. For a moment a slight smile appeared on her face – a silly smile of astonishment and fear. It was the first sign Manning had seen that she was not impregnable. Then she put her hand on Proctor-Gould’s arm very softly.

‘Gordon, Gordon,’ she said quietly. ‘Something can be arranged. Hush, Gordon, we’ll arrange something. Nothing’s so positive, nothing’s so final.’

‘I’m going to have those books back,’ repeated Proctor-Gould shakily.

Raya took his hand and patted it, then put it to her lips and kissed the back of his fingers. She was like a mother soothing her child.

‘Let’s put all these books away in the case again,’ she said coaxingly, as if Proctor-Gould had thrown his toys about in a tantrum.

‘Don’t touch those books!’ shouted Proctor-Gould, unable to understand what she had said, and even at this moment of revelation misunderstanding her intentions. For an instant they became locked in a clumsy scuffling. Then Raya had given up, and sat down with her hands folded in her lap, while Proctor-Gould scrabbled the books up from the floor and dumped them in the case all anyhow, with jackets coming off and pages doubling up. He crammed down the lid, relocked it, and put the case back in the wardrobe.