Tremor of Intent (19 page)

‘
Khorosho
,' he said, pointing the gun (it was a heavy police
Tigr
, one of the new issue) and thumbing open the stiffish safety-catch. ‘
Vstavayetye
,
svinyah
.' It was back to that afternoon with the Westdeutsche Teufel, though in a more satisfactory language. The shirted man addressed as pig was slow in standing up; he seemed even desirous of clinging to Clara for protection. But now, in a genuine officer-voice, Hillier called him a leching bitch-get, and told him to come over to the
gardyerob
, he himself arcing away from it, and to stand with his fat pig-guts and lavatory-face facing it. The man obeyed, rumbling and spitting, though, disquietingly, his rather fine brown eyes looked with some warmth on Hillier: it was as though it were a pleasant capitalist relaxation – like drinking Scotch or listening to jazz – to be caught in a mere
boudoir
predicament. ‘This,' said Hillier in kind Russian, ‘will not hurt much.' He cracked the gun-butt on the man's stubbled occiput. To his surprise, there was no response. He cracked harder. The man, with mammy-singer's arms, tried to embrace the wardrobe and then, the skirr of eight finger-nails drawing old-time music-staves on the two wooden sides as he went down, he went down.

Hillier turned to Clara. He was shocked but wretchedly excited to see so much shoulder exposed and even an upper quadrant of her right breast. She seemed all right, though, not frightened any more. ‘I'll buy you a new dress, my darling,' he groaned. ‘I promise you.' She said: ‘You didn't hit hard enough. Look.' The man seemed to prepare to raise himself with one hand-press from his prone
moaning. Hillier gave him the gentlest of butt-thumps and, with a sigh of content, the man subsided. Hillier said: ‘I hope you'll see me dress again. Often. But in future in my own clothes. Give me a hand with these boots. Too big for me, but never mind.' Then came the breeches. Under them Hillier saw, with pity, patched drawers. He struggled into the uniform, panting. ‘How do I look?'

‘Oh,
do
be careful.'

‘Now his belt. Where's the cap? Ah, behind the door. Treating the place as his own, the
svinyah
.' The breeches were roomy, but the tunic would hide all bagginess. ‘I'd better pad myself out a bit.' He stuffed Clara's bath-towel in his chest. ‘And now.' He took the loaded syringe from his dressing-gown breast-pocket, squirted a sample at the air, then, in the man's bare forearm, plunged the rest deep and rough. Some rilled along the skin, meeting russet hairs. Then, to both their astonishments, the man came to. He came to suddenly, as if from a fairy-tale kiss. He re-entered consciousness in a state of robust drunkenness, blinking, lip-smacking, then smiling. His liberated under-mind began a drunken Russian monologue to which Hillier listened fascinated: ‘Dad in bed mother warm snow on ground said hot tea now no samovar hit Yuri hard on snout Lukerya cry tears freeze give cold boiled beetroot juice dad drunk.' He tried to get up, gazing with love on Hillier. Hillier, with a new idea, said to Clara: ‘Where's your stepmother's cabin?'

‘Along here, we're all along here together.'

‘Old Nikolayev school hit hard not know how long river.'

‘Go and see if it's locked. If it is, get the duplicate key from the purser's board. But hurry.' She took from the door-hook a little fur cape. She couldn't go out with a torn dress. Hillier loved her.

‘Salgir longest river Crimea but very short. South slopes Yaila mountains very fertile.' He repeated it: ‘
Ochin plodorodnyiy
.' Then he tried once more to get up. Hillier pushed him gently down. ‘Behind shed summer day Natasha skirt up big belly she show I not show she show I not show.' Well, thought Hillier, he was beyond that
pudeur now. ‘She show I not show she show I show.' At last. ‘Old Nikolayev see hit hard on snout tell dad dad hit hard on bottom.' A lot of hitting in that distant Crimean boyhood. Clara panted back in.

‘There's that place where they make tea at the end of the corridor. There are keys there. I've opened up. Is that right?'

‘Good girl. Delightful, excellent girl.' Hillier raised the smiling burbler to his feet without difficulty. ‘Lean on me, old man. A nice long sleep,
tovarishch
. You're going to beddybyes.'

‘In her bed?'

‘Why not? It'll be a nice surprise for her.'

The burbling had changed to song: ‘Whish, little doggies, off you go. Over the crisp and silver snow.' A song of the Northern Crimea, probably, the south being free from the referred terrors of the steppes. Think of those men in Balaclava helmets. Think of Florence Nightingale. The corridor was empty. There was no trouble at all about propelling him to the bed of Mrs Walters. ‘Mama is sitting by the stove. In her samovar tea, in her bosom love.' The room, sniffed Hillier, was redolent of sex.
V grudye lyubov
. In her bosom love. Soon there was no more song, only healthy snoring.

‘I must get ready to go now,' said Hillier.

She raised her face. This time the man in that uniform was very gentle.

It was the difference between the eucharist and what the breadman delivered. Crammed, like bread, into tunic and trouser pockets, were the Innes beard and the Innes passport, the ampoules and syringe (needle capped for protection), dollars from Theodorescu and black-market roubles from Pulj, a packet of White Sea Canal from the dead-out police-officer, as well as his
card of identity (S.R. Polotski, aged 39, born Kerch, married, the dirty swine). The
Tigr
, safety-caught, snarled from his hip. He marched down the gangplank noisily, barking jocular Russian at the young constable at its foot (‘Bit of all right here, son. Bags of wallop and some very nice-looking tarts. Any sign of any suspicious characters, eh? No, I thought not. Load of codswallop that report was. All right, carry on, carry on') and, having play-punched the bewildered youth on the chest, he marched oft towards the ramp that led up to the little terminal. It was nicely dark on the quay, only a few working-lamps staring imbecilically, but it was brighter inside the terminal, though the customs-hall was in shadow, not being in use. A girl was serving beer at a little bar, the only customers Tartar dock-labourers; there was another girl at a souvenir kiosk, doing no trade. Near the landward door were a couple of constables, smoking. They stiffened when they saw Hillier, ready to throw him a salute, but he waved at them jollily as he marched through, singing. He sang S. R. Polotski's song about the little doggies in the snow, lah-lahing where he had forgotten the words. One of the constables called to his back: ‘Find anybody, comrade captain?' but he sang over his shoulder: ‘
Niktooooh
, false alarm.' And then he clomped down steps, entering a little area of bales and packing-cases and a few parked lorries.

The night was delicious and smelt of strawberries. A light wind blew straight down from the mother land-mass, a reminder that the Kremlin was up there, despite the subtropical nonsense of warmth and oranges on that little southern uvula.

It was darker than it ought to be by the dock-gates and guardroom. If Hillier were what he pretended to be he would do something about that: not easy to check true face with passport parody in that light. A man in uniform with a rifle, shabby as a leftover from the Crimean War, came to attention for Hillier. In the guardroom two men played cards, one of them moaning about the
deal. A very simple game, without guile; the comrades were hopeless at poker. A third man was, with sour face, mixing something with hot water in a jug. Hillier marched through. It struck him that there ought to be a police-car somewhere, but he inhaled and exhaled with a show of pleasure to the empty street that led out of dockland: he was walking for his health. On either side of the street were little gardens, grudgingly lighted to show cypress and bougainvillea and lots of roses. On a bench inside the right-hand garden a young couple sat, furtively embracing. That did Hillier's heart good. Deeper within the garden someone cleared his throat with vigour. A dog barked, miles away, and set other dogs barking. These, and the smell of roses touched (or did he imagine this?) with the zest of lemons, were pledges that life went on in universal patterns below the horrors of power and language. Hillier had to find the Chornoye Morye Hotel. He thanked distant Theodorescu for that bit of information about Roper's whereabouts. He was supposed, of course, to know very well where that hotel was. But even police-officers could be strangers in a town. Indeed, the stranger they were the more they were respected. He marched on.

He was aware of fertile champaigns to the north, and hills beyond those: country scents blew down, unimpeded by traffic-smells. But at the end of the street which led from the docks he saw traffic and heard trolley-hissing and clanks. Trams, of course. He had always liked trams. He saw no unpredestined traffic: this blessed country with its shortage of motor-cars, where a drunk could lie down between kerb and tramlines and not be run over. Hillier arrived at the corner and looked on a fine boulevard, very Continental. The trees were, he thought, mulberries, and their crowns susurrated in the breeze. It was not late, but there were not many people about, only a few lads and girls, dressed skimpily for summer, aimless in pairs or groups. Of course, there would be an esplanade somewhere, looking out at winking lights on the water. Perhaps a band played the state-directed circus-music of Khatchaturian from a Byzantine
iron bandstand, people around listening, drinking state beer. He hesitated, wondering which way to turn.

He turned left, and saw that a souvenir-shop was open, though it had no customers. In the ill-lit window were
matrioshkas
, wooden bears, cheap barbaric necklaces and Czech enamel brooches. There were also china drinking-mugs and Hillier frowned at these, sure he had seen them somewhere before, though not, so far as he could remember, on Soviet territory. On each mug a woman's face had been crudely painted: black hair screwed into a bun, the eyes wrinkled in evil smiling, the nose and chin conspiring to frame a cackle of age. Where the hell had that been? It came to him: some watering-place in Italy where the medicinal waters (magnesium sulphate? heptahydrated?) were grossly purgative, the bitter draught served sniggeringly in a mug like these, with, however, a younger, more beautiful, Italianate face. And, yes, the legend had been: ‘
Io sono Beatrice chi ti faccio andare
'. A low joke: I am Beatrice who makes you go. Straight out of Dante, that line, but she had been leading him up to the glory of the stars, purgatory one of the stages not the terminus. Now this had something to do with him, Hillier, but what?

He knew right away. It was Clara, clear bright one. He was becoming respiritualised, made aware of an immortal soul again after all these many years. And yet his dirty body could not be purged for her through this one last adventure, a breath-held entry into the flames then out again with his salvaged burden. It was not enough:
domina
,
non sum dignus
. A thousand clumps of pubic hair had tangled and locked in his, of all colours from Baltic honey to Oriental tar. His flesh had been scored by innumerable teeth, some false. And he had gorged and swilled, grunting. And then consider the lies and betrayals to serve a factitious end. He shook his head: he had not been a good man. He needed, in a single muscular gesture, to throw that luggage of his past self (blood-and-beer-stained cheap suitcases full of nameless
filth wrapped in old
Daily Mirrors
) on to the refuse cart which, after a single telephone-call, would readily come to his gate, driven by a man with brown eyes and a beard who would smile away a gratuity (This is my job, sir). He was creaking towards a regeneration.

He turned to look at the street. From a closed shop which called itself an
atelier
a man came out limping. He wore an open-necked dirty shirt and khaki trousers. His face was lined but he was not old. A tram clanked eastwards, almost empty. To the man he said, ‘
Pozhal'sta
,
tovarishch
.
Gdye Chornoye Morye?
'

‘You are making a joke? The Black Sea is all behind you.' He made a two-armed gesture as of throwing the sea there out of his own bosom.

‘Stupid of me.' Hillier smiled. ‘I mean the Black Sea Hotel.'

The man looked closely at Hillier. He had a faint smell of coarse raspberry liqueur. ‘What is this?' he said. ‘What's the game? Everybody knows where that is. You're not a real policeman, asking that question. You're what I'd call a
samozvanyets
.' Impostor, that meant. The woman who kept the souvenir-shop was at the door, listening. Hillier groaned to himself. He blustered: ‘Don't insult the uniform,
tovarishch
. There's a law against that.'

‘There's a law against everything, isn't there? But there are some laws we're not going to have. Secret police masquerading as ordinary police. What will they think of next? If you're trying to get me to incriminate myself you've got another think coming.' He was loud now. A young couple, blond giant and dumpy brunette, stopped to hear, the girl giggling. ‘Where are you from? Moscow? You don't sound like a Yarylyuk man.'

‘You're drunk,' said Hillier. ‘You're not responsible for what you're saying.' And he took a chance and began to walk towards the few rags of red left in the west. In the unfamiliar big boots, he stumbled against a broken bit of paving. A child had appeared from nowhere in the gutter, a girl with a snot-wet upper lip. The child laughed.

‘Not too drunk,' cried the man, ‘to know when I'm being got at. I've nothing to hide. There, you see,' he told everybody. ‘He didn't want the Black Sea Hotel after all. He's going the opposite way.' Hillier walked quickly past a redolent but empty fish-restaurant, a shuttered state butcher's, and a branch of the Gosbank that looked like a small prison for money. ‘Getting at us,' called the man. ‘All we want is to be left alone.' All I want too, thought Hillier. He crossed diagonally to a side-street opening, totally un-lighted, and got himself out of the way. Here a hill began. He trudged up broken cobbles, looking for a right turning. On either side were mean houses, in one of which a blue television screen did a rapid stichomythia of shot and dialogue, the window wide open for the heat. The other houses were dead, perhaps everyone out on the esplanade. Hillier wanted to be left alone, but he felt desperately left alone. The right turning he found was an alley full of sodden cartons, from the feel underfoot, with squelchy vegetable refuse sown among them. Hillier plopped gamely eastwards to a tune of cats fighting. There should, he knew, be a moon in first quarter rising about now. To his far left there was the scent of a hayfield: the country started early here. At one point he heard a husband-and-wife quarrel, apparently in a backyard: ‘
Korova
,' the husband called the wife, also ‘
Samka
', very loud. He turned right into a street which had tiny front gardens with roses in them, and then he was on the boulevard again, the mulberries stirring in a fresh breeze. He came to a sign which said
Ostanovka Tramvaya
. There were three people waiting.