The Russian Interpreter

But more often he worried. Not so much about whether a charge would be brought against him, or what sentence he would get if it was. These eventualities still seemed remote and improbable. He worried about what would happen when he was taken out of his cell, as he assuredly soon would be, and questioned.

Over and over again he tried to visualize the scene. He imagined that the questioner would be in uniform, but hatless, sitting at a desk in a small room. However the external circumstances changed in his imagination, the questioner’s face remained the same. It was someone exactly like Sasha – anxious, courteous, scrupulous, demanding, personally wounded by any deviation from his own standards of honesty and frankness. Or so, at any rate, he would seem.

At first he would be sympathetic and amiable. He would shake hands. Offer Manning a cigarette. Ask how he was being treated. Manning imagined that he might tell him about not having a towel. The man would apologize. Would promise to get him one.

Then he would ask Manning when he had first met Proctor-Gould. What was the exact nature of the duties he had accepted? What financial arrangement had they come to? Whom had he met in the course of his work as Proctor-Gould’s interpreter? On which dates? Where? The answers to all these questions would be known to the interrogator already, since it had all been done in public, in front of witnesses, within range of microphones. Manning would tell the truth so far as he could remember it. It would tally with the record. The interrogator would remain sympathetic and amiable.

Then, at some stage, he would be asked if Proctor-Gould had ever told him the nature of the secret work upon which he was engaged.

What would he say?

If he said yes he would incriminate not only Proctor-Gould but himself, as Proctor-Gould’s accessory.

If he said no …

Manning could see the puzzled, hurt look come into the interrogator’s eyes, as it did sometimes into Sasha’s. Manning had never asked Proctor-Gould what he was up to? – No. He had helped Proctor-Gould force an entry into the apartment on Kurumalinskaya Street in order to recover his books by force, and he had not asked for any explanation? – Well, Proctor-Gould had said it was because the books had been entrusted to his care by his clients. Who were his clients? – Proctor-Gould hadn’t specified. Manning had accepted that explanation? – Yes.

The interrogator would get up from his desk and go across to the window. With his back to him he would ask quietly: was there nothing that Manning wished to add to his answer? No. And thereafter the questioner’s sympathy and amiability would be gone. Thereafter Manning would be treated, rightly, as a liar.

Manning felt his palms moisten at the thought. No doubt, if they felt he was concealing something really important, they would proceed to harsher methods of questioning. They would bully him. They would keep him awake at night, reduce his diet, make threats. They might very well go further. But already Manning doubted if he had the moral fortitude to resist such complete isolation from sympathy and approval. Wouldn’t it be better to tell them the whole truth in the first place? To be cooperative, to admit he had been wrong? To say he had done it only so as not to betray a comrade? To be ashamed, to ask for clemency?

He did not think he owed any further loyalty to Proctor-Gould, or to the ridiculous oath he had been made to swear. Proctor-Gould had involved him without his consent. He had tried to compel his continued cooperation by telling him two entirely different stories, both of which could not be true. And what version was he offering his interrogators even now, wherever he was? Perhaps it was one which attempted to make Manning out to be the principal. It was impossible to know – he might be trying to exculpate Manning entirely. Manning built structures of indignation and guilt on each hypothesis in turn. But it did not help with the practical question of what he was going to tell the interrogator. He could not guess how Proctor-Gould was likely to behave. Under the shifting sands of explanation and counter-explanation, he realized, he had no idea what sort of person Proctor-Gould was at all.

‘When are they going to question me?’ Manning asked the night man as he sat on the lavatory smoking another third of a cigarette.

‘Impatient, are you?’ said the night man.

‘I’d like to know.’

‘We’d all like to know a lot of things. Have they issued you with a towel yet?’

‘No.’

‘You want to get the towel straight first, son. If you can’t even get a towel to dry yourself on there’s not much point in worrying your head about legal matters.’