The Tamarind Seed (16 page)

Provided his engagements permitted, Stephenson said, he'd be delighted.

‘Comrade Sverdlov?'

He looked up at Anna Skriabine; she had put his mail down on his desk, neatlly sorted into piles, and instead of going away she hesitated.

‘Yes?'

She glanced downwards and then back at him, her hands were locked in front of her, and they twisted nervously.

‘I opened a letter, Comrade Sverdlov. I just want to say there was nothing to indicate it was so private. I'm very sorry.'

‘If it wasn't marked, then it's not your fault,' Sverdlov said. Her attitude irritated him; she cringed and she simpered, until he could have taken her by the seat of her skirt and run her out of the office door. She must have sensed that her attempts to ingratiate herself were not succeeding. Consequently she made the mistake of exaggerating, instead of altering, her technique. Like a lot of women who had been highly trained to operate in a certain way, she was incapable of using her initiative.

‘Which is the letter?'

‘This one, Comrade.' She leaned across and touched one of the pile with her finger. She wore an expensive French scent, which Sverdlov had also grown to dislike. He let her go out of the room before he picked it up and read it.

It had come through the diplomatic bag; it was a personal letter from Gregory Tomarov, who had known him since his marriage, and been a witness at his wedding. It enclosed the official document notifying him that his wife, Elena, had applied to the courts for a divorce. Tomarov's letter was handwritten, and ran to four pages. Sverdlov read it quietly; he had pushed the court notification to one side. Elena was unhappy. She had complained of loneliness and of infrequent communication from him. The writer became almost apologetic, as if a wife were not entitled, after three years' absence, to such feelings. Even more apologetically, he hinted that she feared Sverdlov had found another woman, though this was obviously a figment of her imagination.

A divorce was not only unnecessary, Tomarov wrote, but it was a serious political mistake. He urged Sverdlov to return to Russia for a short visit, and to effect a reconciliation with his wife. He insisted that she still loved him, and would be only too glad to abandon the divorce.

The advice he gave was prompted by his affection for her, and for Sverdlov, and an old man's distress at seeing two young people making a needless mistake. He ended by suggesting that Sverdlov fly back for a short leave, and urged him to come as quickly as possible, before the divorce could be granted.

Sverdlov put the letter down, on top of the document. He lit a cigarette. So Elena was lonely, and suspected him of being unfaithful. She was unhappy because of their separation. It sounded very reasonable. It indicated that his wife had become like any other woman. Dependent, insecure, feminine. A year ago he would have been delighted by that letter of Tomarov's. He could win back Elena as soon as he got near enough to drag her into bed. He knew this; he had always known it. But he had always known that it was a victory she resented. She lost, only to despise herself and retreat from him again. If he went back home, and persuaded her to drop the petition, would she agree to leave the clinic and come to Washington—would she consent to have a child and behave like a wife? He picked up Tomarov's letter and let it drop again. If he returned home, would he want her to do any of these things? What about his feelings—how had three years absence affected him? He knew the answer to that question. He had known it for a long time. He had formulated it very clearly to Judith Farrow, when he said that along with his political beliefs, his wife meant nothing to him either.

He could fly home for a week. If, as he suspected, his position was under attack from Golitsyn and others in the Service with retrograde views, then it would harm him to lose the heroic Yuri Maximov's daughter, to be divorced by her for reasons which his enemies could easily turn into political capital behind his back.

He rubbed out his cigarette and swore. He had work piled in front of him; even though he lacked enthusiasm for most of it, he was infuriated by this intrusion of a domestic matter. He was also infuriated by Tomarov's letter, speaking of them as if they were a pair of teenagers, instead of a mature couple who had spent a large part of their married life apart. Elena was no housebound partner, pining away in her empty flat. She was a dedicated careerist with a life of her own which she insisted upon leading to the exclusion of her husband. If they divorced, it might be a political mistake, but certainly not an emotional disaster. He thought of Golitsyn's spy reading that letter. She had destroyed the envelope, so there was no way of proving that it had no confidential mark. Now Golitsyn would know about the divorce; Sverdlov could imagine his satisfaction. Elena Maximova was his kind of woman; in theory at least. His own choice had been a plump and homely girl from his home province, dull and compliant, to whom equality was a word she couldn't spell.

Golitsyn would make the most of the divorce. He locked the notification and Tomarov's letter in his desk drawer, and cursed his wife for not giving him some warning. Before the change of government in Moscow, he could have let her petition go through and ignored it. Now he knew it was unwise. Perhaps even unsafe.

He would have to go back home and see her.

He sent for Anna Skriabine and dictated a cable to Tomarov and one to his wife. He instructed her to book him on a flight to Moscow at the end of the week.

‘You don't know,' Judith said. ‘You may feel quite differently when you see her again.'

They were lunching together, and she had chosen the place. It was a small Trattoria in downtown Manhattan, where the food was simple, superb, Italian cooking, and nobody from the diplomatic circle would be likely to go there. They had been spending two or three evenings a week together for the past month, and often he persuaded her to lunch with him. Sverdlov had the inevitable whisky on the table; he had promised her to try some Chianti, but without enthusiasm.

‘Why should I? Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. It just makes the memory unreliable,'

‘You don't want to make up with her, do you?'

‘No,' Sverdlov said. ‘As the time comes nearer for me to go back and try, so I don't want to do anything about it. Don't look at me like that, trying to be a good Christian and persuade me to love my wife. Just because she is my wife. There was no church service, you know.'

‘You needn't tell me that,' Judith said. ‘And I'm not trying to be a good Christian and persuade you to do anything.'

‘Then you're trying to persuade yourself that you don't mind,' he suggested. ‘That you would be happy if I could love her, and that you're not jealous at all. I understand. I won't make fun of you; I'm sorry.' He lifted her hand and kissed it. She dug her nails into him.

‘That wasn't very religious of you,' he observed. ‘You should be meek, and obedient. Look, there is a mark!'

‘No more than you deserve,' she said. ‘Can't you be serious for a minute?'

‘If you insist on it, I will be serious. But I don't feel serious when I am with you. I feel happy. Now I don't feel happy with my wife. Does that answer your questions?'

‘No, it just brings up another one. If you don't love her and you'd like her to divorce you, why are you going back to try and stop her?'

‘Ah.' He leaned his head back and his eyes half closed. ‘Ah, now that is difficult to answer. And it has nothing to do with me and Elena. It has to do with politics.'

‘I don't see it,' Judith said. ‘What's political about your marriage? It's your private life.'

‘Then a man's career isn't affected by divorce or scandal in the West? Come, come, you don't know very much about your own society.'

‘I'm talking about your society, not ours. I thought you got a divorce like an abortion. On demand.'

‘That depends on who you are,' he said. ‘It shouldn't do, but it does. Don't smile, I haven't conceded anything to you. My wife is an important woman, from an important family. If she divorces me, it can affect my career. She will be given the divorce, but it will not please my superiors. That is what I am thinking about now.'

‘I didn't realise you were so ambitious,' Judith said.

‘I like to stay alive.'

‘You're joking!'

‘A little; but not completely. Why don't you eat—it will be cold.'

‘Feodor, stop talking like this. You're a professional soldier, in a diplomatic post—how could a divorce put you in that kind of danger? For God's sake, you're not married to Stalin's daughter!'

‘Her father knew him well. Hasn't your Embassy man told you anything about me?'

‘No,' Judith said. ‘Nothing. I ring him up every time we see each other, and then I ring off. I told you that.'

‘You like me, don't you?'

‘Yes. You know I do.'

‘Very much?'

‘Quite a lot.' She began making patterns on the red checked table cover with her knife. ‘How long will you be away?'

‘I don't know. It depends how long it takes to make her change her mind. Stop cutting the table cloth and look at me. When I come back we'll see each other?'

‘You may not want to—you never know, you may fall in love with your wife when you get home. If I don't hear from you, I'll understand. I won't mind.'

He laughed out loud. ‘If you don't mind, why do you look so miserable? Listen to me; I'm not a boy, going home to a lost love. I've been away three years and nothing but care for my own skin is making me go back to her at all. She doesn't mean anything to me; I wish her well, I would always be glad to see her, but as a woman—nothing! Finished!' He banged on the table. ‘As for you, we haven't even begun anything. All you ever say to me is no. Are you a secret Maoist?'

‘How did you guess?' Judith had to smile. ‘I can't start the day without reading his “Thoughts”.'

‘I couldn't start the day if I did,' Sverdlov said. ‘The monotonous ravings of a Chinese megalomaniac. Do you know it has sold more copies than the Christian Bible?'

‘So what does that prove?' Judith had recovered herself. Hearing that he intended going back to Russia had been a shock.

He bent down and kissed her on the side of the neck. ‘That there are too many Chinese.'

‘Feodor? You wouldn't really be in trouble, would you? That was just a joke?'

‘No,' he said; he was quite serious. ‘It was not a joke at all. Don't you understand, politically, I could be suspect if I made no attempt to be reconciled? A lot of her father's disciples are in power now. Things have changed backwards, instead of forwards. The West doesn't realise it yet.'

‘And you still feel as you did—you've lost faith in it all?'

‘I've lost interest,' Sverdlov said. They were drinking coffee, and he had spooned in a third of the sugar in the little bowl. ‘You can call it faith if you like. Once I believed that our way of life was the only reasonable answer to the problems of the world. I was never a fanatic, not like Elena. I always asked questions.

‘But after Stalin, people stopped talking about annihilating one half of the world as a way of spreading Communism. There was more freedom, more moderation.

‘I worked for that, and I believed in it. I still do. But it's gone.' She looked into his face; she had never seen it so grave. ‘It's gone, and we have reversed, thirty years back. So now, I am like the majority. I want to survive if I can. That's what I meant when we talked on the island that day. There is no justice, no ideal, only expediency and the pleasures to be had like going out to lunch with you. Have a Russian cigarette.'

‘Why don't you get out, if it's as bad as that? Why don't you just get off the plane in Europe and disappear?'

‘Because I am a Russian and I don't want to be exiled from my country. I will go on with my work, and maybe there will be another change. I hope you are not trying to persuade me to defect?'

‘You know I'm not,' Judith said. ‘You'd be selling out on your own people if you came over to us. I meant what I said. Just vanish. Disappear. But it was silly, it wouldn't be possible.'

‘No,' he agreed, and for a moment the twisted smile appeared. ‘It would be very difficult for me to hide anywhere without help. So there is nothing to do, but get the bill, and take you back to the United Nations to work for wicked Western Capitalism. I am going on Friday; I hope to be back in ten days, or less if I can get my wife to agree. And then I will telephone you.'

They drove back in his car. He pulled in to the kerb outside the entrance to the tall black glass building, and put his arms round her.

‘Goodbye,' he said and kissed her. ‘
Dushinka.
'

Later that day Judith caught one of the interpreters on his way past Nielson's office. She asked him what the word meant. He grinned at her.

‘It means darling, in Russian. Who's been chatting you up?'

She said ‘Thanks' and closed the door on him. She couldn't bring herself to report to Loder that day.

Loder was in bed when his telephone began to ring.

It was the chief coding officer on night duty at the Embassy.

‘I've been trying to find you, sir.'

Loder had been to the cinema and eaten a Chinese dinner afterwards. Alone, as usual.

‘All right, what is it? It's bloody nearly one o'clock in the morning.'

‘An open cable for you; marked extremely urgent. Shall I read it to you, sir, or will you come down?'

‘Is it suitable to read?'

Loder was now wide awake. As far as he knew his telephone was clear, but the devices improved all the time. God forbid he should suspect that apart from the Eastern bloc, anyone among Britain's stalwart American supporters at CIA would think of plugging in.