The Russian Interpreter

Korolenko stood with his hands behind his back, erect and exact, speaking in a quiet level voice without expression of any sort, apart from the regular stresses with which he marked the passage of time. This was his Essential Attributes of the Soviet Administrator voice, characterized by its complete dissociation from sense and matter, uncontaminated by the personal interest which he took in such questions as barring the admission of unauthorized persons to the Faculty canteen. Occasionally, on one of the stressed syllables, he would rock gently forward on to his toes, as soldiers do on long parades to keep their blood in circulation. Everyone sat straight in his chair, staring into space with glazed eyes, stunned with respect and boredom and vodka. Manning tried to imagine Korolenko drunk. It was difficult. He visualized him with his brother officers in some derelict commandeered house in occupied territory, impassively tipping back vast quantities of spirit at the end of the day. It made no difference. Perhaps he became even more erect, more expressionless. Perhaps his eyelids came down a little. Perhaps he renounced speech altogether, until the occasional sardonic spasm was the only sign of continued life….

Time hung suspended….

Now Korolenko was lifting a volume bound in white leather from among the flowers on the table in front of him, and holding it up while he spoke, wagging it slightly like a swollen forefinger at each stress. Now he was turning to Proctor-Gould, who was standing up uncertainly, unable to understand the Russian. Korolenko was handing him the book. Now he was clapping, and both sides of his mouth were elevated in a smile.

They all applauded. Korolenko offered a toast to Proctor-Gould. Everyone gulped it down and turned to his neighbour to start talking hurriedly and meaninglessly in his relief that the speech was over.

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Skorbyatova.

‘There we are, then,’ said Manning.

Someone was calling his name.

‘Paul! Paul!’

Where …? Ah, Proctor-Gould. The familiar old face was thrust towards him across the table.

‘Paul,’ it said, ‘I’m going to make a speech. Would you oblige with your usual skilful services?’

‘Tiny bit drunk, Gordon,’ said Manning.

‘Little hazy myself, to tell you the truth. Never mind – all add to the gaiety of the occasion. Come round and stand next to me.’

Manning got to his feet. The room keeled steadily over to port. Christ. He took hold of the edge of the table and waited for it to come back on to the level. Not funny. Didn’t know I was quite as bad as that.

He edged his way round the table, holding on to the backs of the chairs, until he reached Proctor-Gould’s. All right now. Lean myself on the back of the chair like this. Be as steady as a rock.

‘All right?’ asked Proctor-Gould, looking up at him.

‘Ready when you are.’

Proctor-Gould cleared his throat and stood up. Immediately the chair capsized under Manning’s weight and deposited him on the floor.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Sasha anxiously, helping him up, among the applause for Proctor-Gould.

‘Fine.’

‘Sure you’re all right, Paul?’ This was Proctor-Gould.

‘Perfectly.’

Proctor-Gould turned back to the table.

‘Dean Korolenko, Mrs Korolenko, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It is indeed a great honour, of which I am very conscious, to be invited to share with such a distinguished body of men and women an occasion of this nature. I am not myself, of course, a member of the international fraternity of administration experts. I am a humble British businessman, and my only claim upon your time and attention is that I have been entrusted with a number of commissions from my many friends in the learned institutions engaged on similar work in Britain.’

He stopped, and half-turned towards Manning to wait for the translation. Manning blinked. What the hell had Proctor-Gould been saying? He couldn’t remember the half of it.

‘He’s very pleased to be here,’ he said uncertainly. ‘At an occasion of this nature he recalls that he has many friends in learned institutions engaged on similar work in Britain.’

Proctor-Gould was frowning at him.

‘What do you think you’re up to, Paul?’ he whispered.

‘Got the general sense of it,’ muttered Manning defensively.

‘You were speaking English. Do you realize that?’

‘Gordon, I wasn’t!’

‘You were.’

‘Was I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh God.’

He hurriedly tried again in Russian, and the speech continued. But the more he translated, the more obsessed he became with his lapse, and the insight it had given Proctor-Gould into his standards of accuracy as an interpreter. And the more he worried about that, the less he heard or remembered of what Proctor-Gould was saying, and the more he had to improvise. It was like a nightmare in which his appalled gazing back at each last disaster brought him blundering into the next.

Now Proctor-Gould was taking up the four books from the table one by one and presenting them.