The Russian Interpreter

Manning picked up a single nylon stocking which was lying across the back of a chair.

‘Wife? Girl friend?’ he said, showing it to Proctor-Gould.

Proctor-Gould threw back the bedclothes to look under the bed. It revealed an assortment of women’s shoes, all well-worn, standing in a silent grey desert of dust.

‘She doesn’t seem to have done much housework recently,’ he said.

Manning sat down at the desk, on an ancient swivel-chair with stuffing leaking out of its torn upholstery. There were crumbs among the papers on the desk, and a plate covered with cold grey grease. There was also a mirror on a swivel stand. Manning adjusted it slightly so that he could see himself. What on earth did Konstantin want a mirror on his desk for? It was difficult to believe from his appearance that he had ever examined his reflection in his life. But of course, it was for the woman; the desk/dining-table was also her dressing-table. He lifted some papers, and found a lipstick without a top, a broken eyebrow pencil, and a small jar of cold cream.

He tried to imagine Konstantin’s woman sitting there, among all the books and the masculine curiosities. Were some of the books and papers hers? Did she work at the desk, too, and own a share of the room’s character? Or was she indifferent to it, creating a small life in the midst of it all with her own props – the shoes, the cold cream, the broken eyebrow pencil? He pictured them getting up in the morning. He saw Konstantin, not her, putting the coffee on the primus. She would be sitting in the swivel-chair in her underwear, gazing at herself expressionlessly in the mirror, rubbing cream into her skin. She was self-contained, indifferent to him. If he asked her a question, she would let a minute go by before she answered. There was total confusion in the room; her clothes were scattered everywhere.

But somehow the room didn’t quite fit the picture. There should have been more confusion, more traces of her. A stocking, a few pairs of shoes – why were there no dresses lying around? Why was there no underwear hanging up to dry? One lipstick, one jar of cold cream, one eyebrow pencil – why was the eyebrow pencil broken?

He looked closely at the cold cream jar. It was covered in a fine film of dust. It hadn’t been opened for – how long? A week? Two weeks? A month? How quickly did dust collect in Moscow? He went across to the bed. There was a pair of men’s pyjamas mixed up in the bedding. But no nightdress. Nothing to indicate that a woman had slept there.

‘I think she’s left him,’ he said.

Proctor-Gould was searching among some clothes crammed behind a dusty curtain in the corner.

‘She expects to come back, then,’ he said. ‘She’s left some of her clothes on the rail here. Look at this.’

He held up a pale blue evening dress, with silk flounces and sequins. The colour had faded – the silk was almost brown in places – and a number of sequins were missing.

‘Rather a museum piece, isn’t it?’ he said, giggling. ‘Konstantin must have a pretty curious taste in lady friends.’

But the sight of the dress softened Manning towards the girl.

‘I expect her parents bought her that when she was about seventeen,’ he said. ‘It’s rather touching she should have kept it. Incidentally, they must have moved in exalted circles. There aren’t many places in Moscow where you wear long evening gowns.’

Proctor-Gould hung the dress up again.

‘Perhaps they quarrelled,’ said Manning, ‘and she walked out without having time to pack everything.’

Proctor-Gould shrugged.

‘She’s probably gone off on some sort of business trip,’ he said. ‘Or living with someone else for a month. Some of these Soviet girls are pretty casual, you know. But never mind her – where’s the suitcase?’

Manning went slowly along the bookshelves, running his eye along the titles. There were all the standard Russian classics, and a number of foreign ones in translation. Farther on there were shelves full of books on Russian history and Russian economic geography, then a row of textbooks on mechanics, mathematics, and aircraft construction, tables of engineering constants, and forty or fifty issues of a learned journal devoted to high-temperature metallurgy.

Manning was surprised to find a number of philosophical works in French and German, expounding existentialism and positivism. At random he took down Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt. There was a tram ticket between pages nine and ten. Before the ticket the margins were full of scribbled translations of even quite simple words. After the ticket they were empty. On another shelf were books about the Soviet Union written by foreigners who had visited it. Manning noticed Gide’s Retour de I’URSS. The margins were full of translation notes all the way through. He wondered how much it had cost Konstantin on the black market.

‘Well?’ said Proctor-Gould.

‘No luck so far.’