The Russian Interpreter

Then he got some form of stomach trouble, and had to shout for the warder two or three times an hour to take him to the lavatory. The smell of his motions drove even the night man away, in spite of his cigarette. He ran a temperature, and his anxieties boiled up inside his head. They seemed like vessels driven round in a maelstrom, spinning and swirling and colliding, appearing, and disappearing, changing their shape entirely. He asked repeatedly to see a doctor, and eventually one came. But by that time the fever had subsided. All the same, it was a pleasure to see someone who wasn’t a warder. And afterwards a series of orderlies arrived in his section, bringing a tonic for him to take, an ointment for his sores, a stack of English classics in Russian translation with half their pages torn or missing – and a towel. He lay on his bed feeling very low, taking the tonic three times a day after meals, listlessly reading the books, and planning how to make the towel last. The weather was fine. The tiny patch of sky he could see through the high window was blue every day, and the cell became uncomfortably hot in the afternoons. His anxiety about what he would say when he was questioned faded from his mind, and became entirely forgotten. He settled into a quiet round of unhappiness, sweeping out his cell and exercising once a day, bathing once a week, dreaming of his mother’s house and talking about it each evening to the night man. The night man listened only perfunctorily; now that Manning had got a towel he had rather lost interest in him.

It was the night man who woke him one morning at dawn, switching on the light in his cell while the high rectangle of the window was still pale grey.

‘Clothes on, son, and get your belongings together,’ he said, in his companionable voice. ‘I want you outside in the corridor ready for transfer in two minutes.’

38

The night man took him out of his private section and through the main body of the prison, unlocking and re-locking each door they passed through. They crossed an open yard, the night man silently leading the way. Slopping along in his unlaced shoes, Manning had some difficulty in keeping up with him. In the grey half-light he could see odd groups of men in prison overalls slouching away towards the other side of the yard – perhaps on their way to the kitchens to start preparing breakfast. The air was cold. Manning shivered.

They went into a large office with a stone floor, and a bare electric bulb shining down on ugly brown tables and filing cabinets. There were a number of men in the room, some in uniform, some wearing civilian clothes; some sitting down at the tables, some standing with their hands in their overcoat pockets.

‘Hallo, Paul,’ said one of them in English. Manning had difficulty for a moment in distinguishing which of them had spoken. Then he saw; it was Sasha. He opened his mouth to reply, but his vocal chords seemed to be inert.

A man sitting at a table pushed a slip of paper and a pen across to Manning.

‘Sign this,’ he said.

Manning signed, blindly. It could have been a fictitious deposition, or his own death warrant. The man slid a rough brown paper parcel across to him and opened it briefly for him to see. Manning caught a glimpse of his tie, his watch, and a pile of loose change. The man pulled out a pair of shoe laces and tossed them to Manning.

‘Lace up your shoes,’ he said.

Fumblingly, Manning crammed the laces through the holes, conscious of nothing but the indifferent gaze of everyone in the room. Then one of the men in civilian clothes opened the door for him, and he was taken out into a dark, echoing archway. A picket door was unlocked with a tremendous clatter. Manning looked round to see if he could see the night man among the figures about him, to say good-bye, but in the poor light he couldn’t pick him out. He stumbled as he stepped through the picket.

They were in the street. A modest Pobyeda saloon stood at the kerb, and they got into it, one man on either side of Manning on the back seat, and Sasha next to the driver.

Sasha at once turned round and gazed at Manning in the twilight. He compressed his lips, then leant over and squeezed Manning’s hand.

‘It’s good to see you, Paul,’ he said in Russian. He sounded moved, and he was blinking awkwardly. Manning nodded back, for some reason still unable to say anything. Sasha looked away.

‘Was it bad in there?’ Sasha asked. Manning began to shake his head, then nodded once. Suddenly he was seized by the dawn coldness, and began to shudder violently. Without a word Sasha struggled out of his overcoat and pulled it round Manning’s shoulders.

‘All right?’ said the driver.

‘All right,’ said Sasha.

The car moved off, and drove slowly up the empty street. They passed women sweeping the gutters, and at the corner a dozen people waiting for a bus, their faces all turned the same way in expressionless expectation.