The Unfortunate Englishman Read online

  Tanya’s right arm unwound from her sister and the hand reached out blindly to Masefield, her head buried in Anfisa’s neck. He took the hand and let himself be drawn to them, his left arm embracing both of them. He squeezed once and felt both bodies respond, a contraction, a spinal shiver.

  “We are free. We are free. All of us. We are free.”

  §89

  It was a dilemma. Leave the briefcase in his room or take it down to breakfast and look like a swot. He’d given the plans a once-over. It was Chelyabinsk, he’d no doubt about that, but he’d neither the skill nor knowledge to interpret the seventy-seven pages Matsekpolyev had given him. He opted for looking like a swot, stuffed in a couple of American science journals, which he could read, or pretend to read, over ­breakfast—the case itself perched on the spare chair—and both might deter any other Englishman from joining him.

  They didn’t.

  He was halfway through an article on the geology of Arizona, rhyolite columns and such, when a figure loomed over him.

  Glendinning.

  “Mugging up over breakfast. Bit bloody much, old man.”

  He picked up the briefcase and dropped it casually to the floor. Sat uninvited in the chair. A page of Matsekpolyev’s file slipped halfway out. Glendinning did not notice. He was looking around for a waiter and muttering about another pot of their awful bloody coffee. Masefield bent down, slipped the page back in and clicked the catch.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you again,” he said.

  “Well. Here I am. Can’t be helped. Last place I wanted to be. On a par with Scunthorpe or New Brighton. Absolutely no need to visit any of them twice. But . . . I take orders. We all do, or the bloody world would fall apart. Your first time back too?”

  Masefield put one foot on the briefcase, drew it slowly under the table and hoped Glendinning might die of a stroke in the next ten minutes.

  “No, no. It’s become a monthly sort of thing. In fact I’ve been back several times since we last met.”

  “Oh. Tough titty. Things going well in the world of cotton, are they?”

  “Er. That wasn’t me. That was Proffitt.”

  “Eh? Oh. So it was.”

  Both elbows came on the table—something his mum had told him never to do—and Glendinning’s face was in his, the voice an unsubtle, gravelly sotto voce.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything of the totty with the wonky teeth and the big tits, have you?”

  §90

  Glendinning was tenacious as a limpet.

  A simple, “Oh, I’ve seen her around” had not sufficed, and Masefield had retreated to his room. He gave Matsekpolyev’s seventy-seven pages the twice-over, checked that he had enough film. He hadn’t. He’d two cartridges. He was short by five frames. And then he remembered that there would be an unused cartridge in the camera.

  It was the longest three hours of his life. He knew they required restraint. It would be half past one before Tanya would arrive at the hotel. But at half past twelve found he could sit still, lie still, stare at the ceiling no longer.

  He went down to the bar. Ordered a glass of tea and sat staring at it until it went cold.

  Just after one he heard the toff bray of Glendinning in the lobby, talking, as ever, as though he meant to be heard over the sound of a passing steam train.

  “Keyski, chappie, keyski. Ponimayesh? Understand? Room 405.”

  He was going up to his room. A small mercy.

  As his second glass of tea was cooling, Tanya Dmitrievna finally appeared. She went up to the bar, asked a question, turned, and faked surprise at seeing him sitting there.

  “Mr. Masefield. So glad to see you again.”

  Masefield rose for a formal handshake.

  “You asked me about the autumn season at the Bolshoi. I have their programme for you. I believe they will be performing Yevgeny Onegin in September.”

  She set down her bag and pulled out an A4 brown envelope stencilled with a conspicuous image of the Bolshoi theatre and the word “Большой.”

  As she handed it to him, she gripped a bulge in the bottom right hand corner, where the camera lay, and as she let go it slid down the envelope to be trapped between his thumb and fingers.

  “Enjoy, Mr. Masefield. Enjoy.”

  She bent down to close up her bag, and behind her Glendinning was approaching, one hand raised in greeting, a stupid grin on his face. He was waving at Masefield and clearly had no idea who the crouching woman was.

  “Ye gods, Masefield. The way these buggers can drink at lunchtime.”

  He belched into his fist. Tanya rose, her back to Glendinning, a look of desperation on her face.

  Their eyes met.

  She turned, tried to smile at Glendinning.

  “Sorry, old man,” Masefield said. “We have to be going.”

  “Well, well, well. Heeeelllooooo.”

  Masefield took a risk, took Tanya by one arm and tried to lead her past Glendinning. But Glendinning had her by the other arm, saying, “Half a mo’. Been an age since we three got together. Let’s have one more for the road, eh?”

  He attempted to steer Tanya back to the bar.

  Masefield held on. She was momentarily the baby at the judgement of Solomon. But Tanya detached herself.

  Softly, “I can handle him. Let go.”

  Loudly, “Of course. Mr. Glendinning. All part of the service.”

  “Jolly good, old girl. And what can I get you, Masefield? Something to wipe that miserable expression off yer northern fizzog?”

  Masefield looked at his watch. It was almost two. He had next to no time to take the photographs and get out to the university.

  “Not for me, old man. Business before pleasure.”

  Glendinning let go of Tanya and lurched for the bar. Masefield heard him mutter about a fucking killjoy and order a bottle of vodka and two glasses, “Chopsky chopsky, Ivan!”

  “Please, Geoffrey. Go. I can handle this. If you stay, there will be the scene neither of us wants. I will be home by seven. Now go.”

  §91

  It took a matter of minutes to photograph the file. Far less than he had thought. Far longer to work out what he did next.

  He could not, dare not, take both camera and file out with him. He wrapped the Minox in brown paper and stepped out into the corridor. The fire bucket was not there.

  He walked down to the next turn in the corridor, to find another vacant hook sticking out of the wall. He nipped up to the next floor. They’d all gone. Every single fire bucket taken away for a new coat of paint or fresh sand or something.

  He did what he swore he’d never do. Stuffed camera and exposed cartridges under the mattress. It was a risk, hardly much of one. He’d be back by 5:30. Six at the latest. If the bucket was back on its hook, all well and good. If not he’d find a better hiding place.

  §92

  Matsekpolyev was on the terrace, a few feet from the statue of Woman-Not-Reading. He had his backside resting on the stone balustrade and was looking up at the university tower.

  Masefield’s briefcase was resting on the balustrade.

  He put the other case down next to it.

  “Shall we walk a while?” Matsekpolyev said.

  Pretty much what he’d said the first time they’d met. He led off and they walked thirty or forty feet, Matsekpolyev still staring up at the building.

  “Geoffrey. What do you think architecture says about a country?”

  “Dunno. I never thought much about architecture.”

  “Do you think it says as much as a book? Can you read Russia in this monstrosity as clearly as in a page of Dostoevsky or a Pushkin poem? Can you tell anything about the British from Big Ben or the Tower of London? One can read Imperial Germany in the Brandenburg Gate . . . but monuments are plain statements. Not every build
ing is an obvious monument.”

  They were back with cabbages and kings, conundrums for which Masefield had neither opinion nor answer.

  “I’ve tried counting the windows, but I’ve given up. I get about as far as my cat would . . . one, two, three, many.”

  He turned on his heel and set off back towards the statue.

  “When I was a boy this place was known as Sparrow Hills. It was Stalin who changed the name to honour a man he despised. And there is poetry in neither title. Whatever meaning there is, it’s all in the building.”

  They stopped where they had begun.

  Masefield still had no idea what Matsekpolyev was on about. Another of his non-sequential tangents.

  “A present for you, Geoffrey.”

  Matsekpolyev handed him the small package he’d had tucked under his arm since they met.

  “I don’t know what to say, Grigory Grigoryevich.”

  “Say nothing. Just open it now and let anyone with eyes see that it’s just a book.”

  It wasn’t just a book, it was the book.

  История Московских Улиц

  A History of the Moscow Streets, by P. V. Sytin, first published in 1948. He’d been looking for a copy for ages, had looked, he thought, in just about every second-hand bookshop in the city.

  Inside Matsekpolyev had written

  “Моему близкому другу, уважаемому английскому ученому, Geoffrey Masefield. Наука не знает границ.”

  To my good friend, the distinguished English scholar, Geoffrey Masefield. Science knows no frontier. And under that a florid signature in letters two inches high: “Grigory Grigoryevich Matsekpolyev August 25th, 1961.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I know. You told me. It’s just our cover. We met so I could give you a parting gift. Now, shake hands, pick up the other briefcase and . . . and . . .”

  “Nunc dimittis?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  Matsekpolyev looked up at the tower once more, tilted his head back to see the star.

  “I’ll guess. Unscientific, but I’ll guess. Ten thousand windows, ten thousand watching eyes. The perfect symbol for Russia. Ten thousand watching eyes. And fukkemall, Geoffrey. Fukkemall.”

  “Grigory Grigoryevich, I have to ask—”

  “No you don’t. I already told you why.”

  “Yes . . . but why now?”

  “Because the balance of power has shifted yet again.”

  “It’s always shifting . . . the U-2 thing—”

  “That was nothing, Geoffrey. A damp squib. Not even a sparkler. Nothing you could measure on the Richter scale.”

  “The Bay of Pigs.”

  “One step forward, two steps back. No, it’s one step and one word, Geoffrey—and the word is ‘Berlin.’ What’s happened in the last ten days has been seismic. It has set the shape of things to come. Now, do your best with what I have given you.”

  §93

  Riding the Metro back into the city centre Masefield opened the book a dozen times just to read the inscription.

  “Just our cover,” Matsekpolyev had said, but the inscription belied that. “The distinguished English scholar.”

  He’d have loved it to be true. He wanted to believe it. He was fairly certain Matsekpolyev believed it. But that didn’t make it true.

  He made good time, and was back at the Muromets by half past five. A quick glance around the lobby and the bar, on the off chance that Tanya might be there, and then up to his room.

  The first thing that hit him was the smell. Fresh beeswax. A new gleam on the parquet. The cleaner had been in.

  The second thing that hit him was the flat of someone’s hand. Squarely between the shoulder blades with enough force to put him facedown on the mattress.

  §94

  West Berlin: Late August—the 25th or perhaps the 26th

  Every couple of days there was news of someone managing to escape to the West and every couple of days, or so it seemed, news of someone who’d tried and failed and got shot in no-man’s-land or had broken ­every bone in their body leaping from one window or another. Wilderness did not even bother to report such incidents to Burne-Jones. They’d be on the radio and the television back in London as surely as they were in Berlin. Nor did he mention the panic buying . . . the brushfire rumours that told Berliners they would soon run out of sugar, flour, butter, and sent them hurrying to the shops.

  He walked the course of the rising wall. Watched it change and grow from day to day, the slow accretion of solidity. Not that he knew it, but Nell Burkhardt walked the wall most days, and on several occasions they passed, unseeing and unseen, within fifty feet of each other.

  Nell had walked down from the direction of the Reichstag. Had stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate. She remembered when the Russians had taken Viktoria, her chariot and her horses down, saying they had to be restored. Years passed with no sign they would ever be back and the plinth stood bare. She had come to think of it as the Russians’ final act of looting. Then . . . when was it? Two years ago? three? . . . in ’57 or ’58 cranes appeared and the Quadriga was hoisted back into place—eyes east—to stare down Unter den Linden, a street of broken walls and rubble that somehow did not need to be “restored.”

  Wilderness had walked up from Potsdamer Platz only minutes later. Looked up at the Gate and noticed for the first time that the statue was back in place. He had the vaguest memory of it when he had first arrived in Berlin in 1947—then it was gone. Sold for scrap, Eddie Clark had said. Yet, here it was, back again. A gigantic symbol of victory in a city where there was nothing but defeat. Odd. He could have sworn it faced the other way, looking out into the Tiergarten—eyes west. No matter. It was theirs. The Russians. They could do what the hell they liked with it.

  One afternoon, one bright summery August afternoon, he walked over to the junction of Zimmerstraße and Friedrichstraße along the line that divided the Soviet Sector from the American, where the Russians were establishing a checkpoint, a crossing for foreigners and representatives of the Allied Forces and Governments—no Germans, no Berliners. It was run-down still. Very little seemed to get renewed where sectors met, as though neither side would quite take responsibility for the frayed edges, and consequently it was possible to timewalk from 1961 to 1945 in the length of a block or two. Wilderness stood outside the old Café Köln and stared at the gap-toothed ruins on the other side of Friedrichstraße. The same ruins he’d stared at in 1947 over his cup of black-market coffee. Up ahead the checkpoint was barely taking shape. The “wall” was mostly barbed wire, but the Russians had sunk concrete posts into the ground ready for something more substantial. In the middle of the street the Americans were engaged in erecting a wooden hut, which looked about as substantial as his grandfather’s bike shed, and at ground level an East Berlin border guard was on his knees with a large can of paint, defining the border in a single white stripe, and looking about as happy as if he’d drawn spud-peeling duty for the third day in a row.

  Wilderness approached the wire. The Americans ignored him; the guard glanced up but carried on painting. A greying cardboard label dangled from the wire about ten feet from the guard’s hunched backside. Wilderness tilted the label to read what it said.

  Jas. Wilde & Sons

  Wiremakers,

  Ambergate,

  Derbys.

  Made in England

  And as if that were not enough, they’d added a tiny Union Jack . . .

  . . . just to complete the embarrassment. Burne-Jones was going to love this.

  Wilderness gave the label a quick tug and with a snap it came away in his hand. The guard turned.

  “Was machen Sie?” What are you up to?

  “Zum Andenken.” Souvenir, Wilderness said, smiling.


  “Fotze.” Twat, the guard replied, not smiling.

  Most days he’d find his way to Bernauer Straße—something always seemed to be happening at Bernauer Straße. The enterprising Germans even ran tourist buses out there.

  §95

  West Berlin: September 25

  There were people and cars and cops everywhere. It struck Wilderness as being like the circuses he had been taken to once or twice in childhood, on the eve of the last war. Between the elephants and the liberty horses the Italian clowns would appear, baggy pants and bowler hats, big shoes and boozer’s noses, and the white-faced clown who seemed tearful, serious, and disapproving of all the manic speed, comic violence, and utter incompetence. There’d been a skit he’d seen in 1939. A woman, a caricature woman with balloon breasts and frilly knickers scarcely smaller than the marquee they were in, stood atop a burning tower while clowns below rushed around with the safety net. Whenever they got it in place the tower would sway and they’d dash to the other side of the ring, only to dash back again thirty seconds later. At last, when “she” jumped, the safety net turned out to be a trampoline and the damsel in such distress found herself more bounced than rescued.

  He saw himself as the white-faced clown, the pagliaccio, in this scenario. The too sad, too serious bystander. He glanced over his shoulder, distracted by some noise or other and saw another clown, a baggy-pants auguste dressing for an entrance. The rear door of a dusty Merc 220 had opened and a warty, little fat bloke in a brown mac—overdressed for late September—had stepped out of the car. Wilderness saw disembodied hands pass out a cloth cap, a muffler, and wire-rimmed spectacles. The illusion thus effected, the little fat bloke ambled towards the back of the crowd, just a few feet from Wilderness, looking for all the world as though he was on his way to support one of the lesser northern soccer teams . . . Tranmere Rovers . . . Accrington Stanley.

  Wilderness stood at the back of a crowd gathered in front of an apartment block—one that had not yet been bricked in, although without a doubt the ground- and lower-ground-floor doors and windows were boarded up and nailed shut. A rope was dangling from a first-floor window. An old lady, white-haired and black-clad, climbed out onto the window ledge some fifteen or twenty feet above the ground and clutched not the rope but a cat.