Russian Hide-and-Seek Read online

  The chauffeur had parked the Rolls out of the sunshine, which was already quite hot, and with the escort at his side came to join Mets outside the front door. The white-haired, brown-liveried butler let them in, showed Mets into the dining-room and led the other two off towards the kitchens. A few minutes later Alexander came hurrying down the staircase, singing quietly to himself and thinking of Mrs Korotchenko. He thought of her all over again when he noticed the fawn wrap-like object in the hand of a passing housemaid.

  ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘One of the English gardeners brought it, your honour,’ said the girl, startled. ‘He said he found it on the lawn.’

  ‘And where are you taking it?’

  ‘To your honoured mother, sir. She may know who it belongs to.’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  He half-snatched it, ran back the way he had come and stuffed the offending garment into a drawer among his ties and stocks. God in heaven, he said to himself as he made the outward journey a second time, how had the bitch forgotten it, at the time and later? How had she not seen it lying there? -there had been more than enough moonlight. Why had no one else noticed its absence? – women kept a keen eye on one another’s clothing. Had she left it on purpose? Why? Such speculations, and where they led, flawed the perfect composure with which he had hoped to meet Commissioner Mets; but in these matters he was his own severest critic by far.

  ‘How do you do,’ said Mets when they were introduced.

  ‘It’s an honour to make your acquaintance, sir.’ Alexander fired that off readily enough and noted with satisfaction the tiny signs of approval and mild surprise behind the other’s glasses.

  ‘This lad knows more about the English than almost anybody outside the Commission,’ said Petrovsky.

  ‘And more than a great many people inside it too, I warrant, including myself with my pitiful year of service in the field,’ said Mets pleasantly, and went on without pausing,

  ‘This is a confidential meeting, which is why I asked your father if we could have it here rather than in the middle of either of our respective offices. I have some things to say I wouldn’t like my staff to hear.’

  ‘I understand, sir.

  ‘How much do you know about the work we’re doing?’

  ‘Only a rough general picture.’ By now Alexander had helped himself to liver, fried eggs, and ale and had settled himself at table on his father’s left opposite Mets.

  ‘In that case it will probably be quicker if I assume your total ignorance and start from that point, but before I proceed I must do some justice to this appetising fare. Excuse me.’

  And he fell to. Petrovsky looked through a document, no doubt brought by Mets, as he ate; Alexander glanced at a newspaper. Energy production had increased. An underminister of communications had resigned for reasons of ill-health. The President of Cuba was visiting the President of South Africa. All was quiet throughout the world: nobody was being invaded, massacred, driven into the jungle, harassed by guerrillas or terrorists, deported, refused permission to travel or so much as shot at, except in cases involving criminals, and since the introduction of advanced techniques of detection and punishment the number of such persons had been falling daily. Boredom and gloom swept through him like a wave of heat. What was he doing, sitting in this preposterously comfortable and richly-furnished room alongside these two self-important boobies with the supposed object of offering advice on a subject about which he knew little and cared less? He munched his food savagely, as if he were destroying an enemy.

  Mets’s masticatory procedure was more practical: he cleared his plate with a speed and efficiency that might have been guessed to be characteristic of the way he handled his work. When he had finished he answered a couple of queries of Petrovsky’s about the document and then said with his precise articulation,

  ‘Shall I hold forth? I’m sorry, Controller-I’m afraid you’re going to be desperately bored by some of this. I’ll keep it as short as I can.’

  ‘I find these days I can’t hear things too often, Commissioner.’

  ‘So you say. Now the New Cultural Policy for England was first framed nine years ago, though it really started both earlier and later than that. As far back as the first decade of the century it was beginning to be felt, in Moscow and in London, that the denationing programme, though instituted for good and sufficient reasons at the time, was becoming unnecessary and even retrogressive. However, the first practical step, in the shape of the regional reafforestation schemes, was some time coming, and NCPE similarly dragged its feet – well, renationing can’t be a quick job. The forestry and rural engineering people, I’m told, have their eyes on 2100 for the complete restoration of the English countryside, and between ourselves I take that as about the target date for English culture too, though officially it’s 2060.

  ‘There are of course a number of intermediate objectives, the nearest of which is to be quite soon, on 15th September to be exact, our Festival, which I see you’ve heard of, Ensign Petrovsky. Perhaps I should explain that it’s “our” Festival in two senses. It’s a national affair, planned by us of NCPE, but we ye decentralised it into the districts, each of which will run its own programme with local material. We in Northampton don’t see ours as a grand affair, our resources are limited, but it is a significant event and it will attract notice and interest; above all, we expect to learn from it. The state of our preparedness is… varied. I should explain that we have six main sections: visual arts, theatre, music, literature, religion, and architecture and interior decoration, the last two grouped together. Visual arts is really in quite a satisfactory state: we’ve collected nearly eight hundred paintings and other objects, many of them certified as meritorious, we have framing and mounting facilities and above all we’ll be ready in time. Of music there’s a positive superfluity: a surprising number of tapes came to light and quite a few of the old discs -yes, after all this time. We even got hold of some sheet music. We’ll have to use our own performers, naturally, but that won’t matter with the instrumental numbers, the pop-group-scene was an international phenomenon anyway, and with at least some of the other songs we have some noteworthy reconstitutions, the work of an outstanding young man in the section called Theodore Markov.’

  ‘As it happens he dined here last night,’ said Petrovsky.

  ‘Well I’m buggered! What did you make of him?’

  ‘I was very favourably impressed. His erudition is remarkable, and if his colleagues can muster half his interpretative skill you should be happy.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear you say so,’ said Mets as soon as he was satisfied that the last remark was free of irony. ‘To resume, opera is beyond our resources here for the moment, but no matter. Visual arts and music, then – adequate. Architecture-and-interior-decoration – impossible. We’ve nowhere near the money or the personnel. The trouble is, our terms were drawn up by people too far from the reality. Bureaucrats, in fact. The section has done its best to no avail. I’m formally asking permission, Controller, to close it down forthwith, second the appropriate staff to other sections and send the others home.’

  ‘But you’re responsible to Moscow, Commissioner, not to the District.’

  ‘We come under you for disciplinary matters, sir. Such a closure could be construed as damaging to the prestige of the units of supervision.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it could, in theory. And even ten years ago, when I first came here, I should have had to take it into account, but not any more. It doesn’t matter now what any of the English think of us.’

  ‘Then may I take it that permission is granted?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Thank you… Well – two of the remaining three sections, theatre and literature, are making steady progress. I’m just a little worried that steady may not be quite fast enough in the time remaining, since we started so far back. Our expectations weren’t high, with the subjects not taught in the schools and so on, but after all they have got th
irty-one per cent literacy, and you would have thought that something would have been handed down over the years. Our instructors have had to explain every other word to them. Now that wouldn’t be surprising with a play over four centuries old, but with the…’ – for a moment Commissioner Mets turned without effect through his papers -… the 1950s piece and the comparatively recent literature it seems rather strange. Still, I’ve every faith in our people, the English have brains and want to learn and we’ll do respectably, perhaps much better -good grounds for hope.

  ‘With religion they are few and frail, Controller. When we first appealed for volunteers to put at our disposal whatever documents or other evidence they might possess relating to the liturgy, how it was actually produced and performed, not merely what was said and sung, well, there was a small response to that appeal. I expected it to grow. I was wrong. It died away, to nothing and nobody, literally nobody. And first I should like to know why.’

  Silence fell just in time to prevent Alexander from peremptorily asking to be excused and stalking out of the room. As it was he lowered his brows and put a thoughtful, troubled expression on his face. After a few seconds of this he said in a low voice,

  ‘May I make a suggestion, papa?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘You must have thought of it yourself, Commissioner, and perhaps rejected it – pre-war influence.’ Illogically, but usefully and universally, a pre-war was understood to be a member of the native population born early enough to have acquired a clear and reasonably full impression of what English life had been like in the years before the Pacification.

  ‘Exactly the case,’ said Mets with a comfortable smile. ‘The youngest pre-wars are now in their early sixties and the group as a whole is of course not large. Are you suggesting that they have enough influence to deter Christians or potential Christians or ex-Christians or simply the inquisitive from responding to our appeals?’

  ‘They certainly have influence on that scale. It should be easy enough to confirm the presumption that it’s at work in this case. You see, I don’t agree with my father that it doesn’t matter what any of them think of us.’

  ‘But for something that happened fifty years ago…

  ‘And for something else that’s been going on for fifty years.

  I was brought up here, Commissioner. These old people would do anything to put a spoke in our wheel - frustrate our wishes, papa.’

  ‘Why then,’ pursued Mets, ‘if this theory of mere obstruction is correct, is there no similar policy of mass avoidance of the theatre and literature projects?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Perhaps they feel they must concentrate their efforts.’

  ‘Or perhaps…’ Petrovsky’s eyes, a deeper blue than his son’s, sometimes, as just then, had a similar trick of turning incurious. ‘Perhaps, in a question of religion, religion is involved. Perhaps they’re saying to us,” Do as you please with our literature, our theatre, our music – we’ll even help you; why not? But our Protestant faith is different; if you won’t leave that alone, don’t expect us to attend the party.” They’re a proud people, the English, and they fought and died for their beliefs.’

  ‘Centuries ago,’ said Mets quickly, ‘when everyone else was doing it too.’ Softening his tone, he went on, ‘And surely the effect of those fifty years…’

  ‘That’s not very long in the history of a religion, Commissioner. Even today there are Baptists in Russia.’

  ‘Some, but for different reasons they’re in a condition similar to that reached by adherents of the English Church by the time of its suppression. They, the English Christians, were worked on by enlightened forces both without and within. They were in decline both in numbers and in superstitious belief – most of them held scientific or quasi-scientific ideas, even among the clergy, not least the higher clergy, and the remainder were too demoralised not to tolerate them. The suppression merely hastened the inevitable. It doesn’t seem to me likely that today-’

  Petrovsky had been listening to this rehearsal of the familiar with well-suppressed irritation. Now he broke in, ‘My dear fellow, aren’t we in danger of believing our own propaganda?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Mets. He was used to such expressions of what he would have called parlour liberalism, not by any means only from the Controller, but had acquired less skill than the latter in dissembling his feelings. He turned almost violently to Alexander. ‘What’s your view, ensign?’

  That officer was in the irksome position of wanting not to agree with his father while disagreeing with Mets and yet not appearing ignorant or indifferent. ‘The religious feeling is there,’ he improvised feebly, ‘but its strength would be hard to estimate. We have nothing else to go by.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mets. ‘Let’s return to matters of fact. Here is what I take to be an important one. None of the former clergymen to whom I appealed for assistance to the religion section has answered my letters. Not one. That must be concerted action, for whatever purpose. The second permission I require today is to interview some of them.’

  ‘And apply pressure,’ said Petrovsky.

  ‘If necessary. Better I than another.’

  ‘Better you than the other we’re both thinking of, certainly. And his deputy, from what I’ve seen of him. But I have a suggestion, Commissioner. A visit from you, even more a summons from you, would be official and committing. A visit from an individual quite unconnected with you would obviously be neither and might be most valuable.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Mets tried hard to think of another reason for demurring than that he disliked the prospect of yielding up any of his power at all, even temporarily. ‘What you suggest is, er, is irregular.’

  ‘Precisely. That’s its advantage.’

  ‘Such a visit would have to be soon. Our time’s running out.’

  ‘How soon could you do it, Alexander?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away, trying to think of something a clergyman said to me the other week.’ The thoughts, set off by the allusion to Korotchenko a moment before, had in fact been about Mrs Korotchenko, and of an intensity such as to induce their thinker to pull his chair in further under the table. Part of the rest of the morning was thereby predetermined.

  ‘I thought it might be useful if you visited one of these old boys, or more than one, investigated attitudes and reported back to Commissioner Mets.’

  ‘I’d be delighted. As to how soon, today possibly, tomorrow for certain.

  ‘Splendid, I’m most grateful,’ said Mets, all warmth and condescension now that resistance had become vain. He took a list of names and addresses from his dispatch-case and Alexander noted down one he said he had sufficient acquaintance with. Mets expressed gratitude for his contribution.

  ‘May I make a final contribution?’ he asked. ‘Or rather two? The first is just a question. Wouldn’t it have been more natural to inaugurate the New Policy with a festival of sport instead of visual arts and the rest? It was far more popular.’

  ‘And infinitely more bloody,’ said Mets, gravely shaking his head. ‘Faction battles at soccer and race riots at cricket.’

  ‘All the pre-wars I know say that all that is much exaggerated.’

  ‘Well, they would, of course. Anyway, I have no say in the matter.’

  ‘My other contribution is another question. Don’t you think your difficulties might be lessened if you left it to the English to organise matters instead of doing so for them? At present they must feel it’s our project, not theirs.’

  ‘I sympathise with that, and it is our eventual aim, but at the moment we can’t leave it to the English to do anything. We must learn to walk before we can run.

  ‘How well I know that expression.’ Alexander glanced at his father, who to a knowing eye looked faintly uncomfortable. ‘Can they not at least be given a plausible illusion that they’re in charge? It would make it easier for those who are looking for an excuse to participate.’

  ‘A very fair point,’ said Mets, writing
on a pad, ‘and one I’ll bear in mind in the general context. Renewed thanks. Have a good day.

  ‘I hope we meet again soon, sir. - Cheerio, dad.’

  There was politeness in Mets’s rising to his feet and a morsel of real cordiality in his handshake and parting smile. Alexander listened to the silence behind him as he walked down the room and out into the west hall; his father, he knew, was waiting to ask Mets if he didn’t think that that was a fine lad. The old idiot! -would he never hit back when baited? But there were more important concerns than fathers ahead, and Alexander forgot his almost before he had shut the dining-room doors after him.

  5

  A quarter of an hour later Alexander and Polly the mare were moving at a gentle canter past the spot where he had persecuted the sheep, an incident that failed to recur to his mind. He was in a kind of hurry, but his goal would stay till he came; it was a beautiful morning and there was much to look at in the scene about him, if he could only concentrate his attention on it. This proved difficult; somehow it always did; the run of the hoofbeats, the steady leaping motion of the horse under him, the unchanging sunshine were perhaps, in this case, what caused his eyes to lose their focus, so that he gazed rather than looked. Another and habitual distraction stemmed from ignorance. He could particularise no further from grass, flower, bush, tree, tree-stump than he could from sun or sky. Only the grosser objects on view penetrated to him: a stretch of canal with a towing-horse just coming into view round a bend, a great broad road ultimately linking London and Birmingham with lesser roads passing above and below it and elaborate access systems. His eye was caught by a metal sign, flaked and corroded far past legibility but still bearing a trace of blue paint. Horse and mule traffic passed to and fro on the main roadway and, in the distance, the sunlight winked off the metalwork of a motor-car.