Life in the West (46 page)

They sat where they were, both men immobile.

Finally, Rugorsky stood up. ‘Now we can leave. Perhaps something has sunk in.’ He tapped his head. ‘You do not have religious feeling?’

‘No, not really. Frankly, I was glad when I got rid of God.’

‘I see. I have not outgrown a religious impulse, despite all examples I see of godlessness all round. I mean, at home. Without God, I can see no meaning in anything.’

‘The meaning lies within us.’

Once they moved outside the cathedral, Rugorsky appeared nervous again. He used the sticky brown handkerchief to mop his brow, and looked pale.

‘Are you feeling well, Vasili? You surely won’t be in trouble just because you took a morning away from the conference? A lot of the other delegates have been taking, or plan to take, days off. Herman told me he was going down to a beach for a swim.’

He stood gazing back at the stonework rising above them. ‘It’s Friday, yes. I forget which day it is. In just three days, you see, I must return to Russia. To be frank, I don’t much relish the prospect. Tomorrow night, the conference is finished.’ He shot Squire one of his telling glances as they strolled across the square, from shadow into sunlight. ‘Do you ever experience the feeling that you have come to a dead halt in your life? Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

Rugorsky ran a hand through his white hair. He stood still, gazing about him as he spoke.

‘Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You see, I am a man with a weight upon his mind. It would be impossible for me to explain everything, and without explaining everything, then I can’t explain anything.’ He was silent. He clutched his shirtsleeves, looking up at the cathedral for a while.

He laughed shortly. ‘You see, I tell you nothing what I mean. Even so, I tell to you more than I tell to anyone I know in Russia. It must be the mark of a generous man, don’t you think? I don’t know what to do.’

Squire said, ‘That feeling of a dead end. Perhaps it’s characteristic of the age of fifty. One does run into difficulties then.’

‘Of course. Circumstances accumulate at the age of fifty; possibilities are fewer than they once were… It’s really a beautiful cathedral, mainly because it can still be used for the purposes for which it was designed many centuries ago, in confidence. There would be worse fates for a man than to have one room to live in across the square there — and watch the cathedral and see the people — wicked people no doubt, be sure of that — going in and out all the time.’

He regarded with longing the crumbling buildings across the square, where children played in doorways, and a woman languorously arranged a garment on a balcony railing. At that moment, another grey bus lumbered up from the plain in a cloud of exhaust fumes, and expired with a sigh under the central palm trees.

‘Are you having trouble with Kchevov?’

‘It’s a mistake to throw out God.’ He patted his white forelock into place, turning as he did so to scrutinize Squire. ‘I speak as a member of a country or nation, so to say, which has experience in that area. It’s a mistake to throw out God.’

‘Difficult, painful — not necessarily mistaken. Maybe the evolution of the human race demands it… Although God is in many ways the greatest human idea so far.’

Perhaps Rugorsky did not care for the remark. Turning to walk on, he said, flatly, ‘Georgi Kchevov can make trouble for me. I don’t wish him to know more than he must do. Did you destroy the note I put under your door last night?’

Squire patted a pocket of the jacket he was carrying over his arm. ‘I must admit I didn’t. I’ve got it here with me.’

Another heavy silence. Then Rugorsky said, ‘Now we must look at the castle.’

They walked past the tourist stalls. Out of habit, Squire stopped and bought some postcards. He would send a card to Teresa, damn her, and to Deirdre, and possibly one to Willie and Madge in their new home. Rugorsky stood solidly by his shoulder, breathing hard, bored by the transaction. Squire also bought some little toy Sicilian carts for souvenirs, and tucked them in his jacket pocket.

Surrounding the cathedral was a maze of mean streets, through which Rugorsky led confidently. The alleyways were full of people, some selling vegetables, sentimental religious baubles, or toys. Sunshine blazed through an archway; they went towards it, emerging in a small square behind the cathedral. Ahead was the Castle of Nontreale.

The great stone walls of the Castle, tufted with fern here and there, were fringed by white Fiats, nestling together round the ramparts like fleas round a cat’s ear. The Castle had withstood many attacks throughout the ages, before eventually succumbing to the internal combustion engine. Although it lay more or less in ruins, and the lizards flickering over its hot stonework were its chief occupants, its two great towers remained intact, looking towards the distant sea.

The towers faced northwards, the direction from which all invaders had come. Nontreale was poised on the brink of a great basalt core of rock which loomed above the plain as it had done ever since prehistoric times. Its Castle stood on the very edge of the precipice, with the road far below, then — below the labouring road — plain, studded with vines and villas, across which the shadow of the eminence was flung.

A narrow and crumbling path, fringed with wild flowers at which butterflies sipped before fluttering away into the abyss, led round the base of the northern wall and the two towers. ‘Let’s go that way,’ Rugorsky said, pointing.

‘It’s only a goat track,’ Squire said.

‘We get a good view. Come on.’ He gripped Squire’s arm and led him forward.

It seemed to Squire that they would have enjoyed a better view from the top of one of the towers, but he followed the Russian. It felt cold as they entered the shadow of the fortress.

The chill entered Squire. As they moved forward with their right hands steadying themselves against the rough wall, he found himself dwelling uneasily on Howard Parker-Smith’s early morning call. Parker-Smith had more information concerning Vasili Rugorsky. Rugorsky was in trouble back in Leningrad.

‘He’s been embezzling public funds,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘All these Russians involve themselves in graft as they rise in the hierarchy — it’s a disease. The authorities probably allowed him a visa to Sicily so that they could turn everything over while he’s away. I guess there’s not a shred of paper left in his office by now. They’ll bag him when he gets home again.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Same way Rugorsky now knows it,’ Parker-Smith said. ‘A friendly colleague of his at Leningrad University got the word to him yesterday via the grapevine. We tapped the grapevine.’

‘What happens next?’

‘Depends. The friendly colleague may stand to gain if Rugorsky does a bunk. His friendly message may not be so friendly. Keep your eye on Rugorsky. One thing’s for sure — he’s in a spot. We must see which way the cat will jump.’ He rang off.

The path became narrower. Rugorsky went forward more slowly. A little roll of fat at the back of his neck glistened, and the ends of his white hair were dark with sweat. Far below them, a bus laboured up the road they had come, the sound of its engine frail in the still air. Below the road were tiny trees, shrubs, fields, roofs, stretching all the way to the distant sea, where a peninsula of rock pointed its finger towards Italy.

Squire thought, ‘All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’

Rugorsky turned round, steadying himself against the wall of the Castle. His eyes were narrowed; he was a man in the grip of a strong emotion. He reached forward and grasped Squire’s arm.

‘You were in Yugoslavia in 1948…’

Immediately, a blaze of images was released in Squire’s mind. Once again Slatko died on the floor of an Istran farmhouse, even as he himself plunged into the precipice. Rugorsky was sent in belated vengeance for that ancient killing; by killing Squire he would acquire enough virtue to cancel out the embezzlement charges awaiting him in the USSR. Sometimes the figure falling was not he, but Rugorsky, or some more mythical figure, falling into a plumbless gulf.

He slipped and regained his balance, leaning with his back against the ancient stonework. The alarming images faded. He and Rugorsky stared at each other, ringed by wall and blue sky.

‘Come,’ Rugorsky said. ‘We’re safe here.’

‘Safe…?’

‘No person in the world can hear what we speak. As I wrote in my letter, we talk together like men.’ He shuffled nearer.

‘Keep your distance, Vasili. You were going to push me off the cliff. What’s this you say about Yugoslavia?’

‘So in your heart you really believe we are all murderers and criminals after all? You think I’d be so naughty? It’s not so. Maybe I can convince you of it, you see. For you and I have met once before. More than once. Twice. When we first spoke at the conference, I reminded you that we had met previously, with Leslie Lippard-Milne and his pretty wife, in front of Richard Hamilton’s picture at the Tate Gallery, yes? You had forgotten the occasion, because you are slightly an egotist, I believe, and so do not easily recollect other people. It’s just a slight punishment. But — I knew I had set eyes on you previously.’ He paused, adding with distinct emotion, ‘Many many years ago, Thomas, when you and I were young men, and much more inclined to push people off cliffs than we are now — then I saw you. I had a good look at you. It was in a region of Yugoslavia called Istra.’

Hearing the thickness of his own voice, Squire asked, ‘What were you doing in Istra?’

With a gleam of his self-mocking humour, Rugorsky said, ‘What do Russians do anywhere abroad except ferment trouble? My government had something against me, and so I was sent abroad to work on their behalf. I was being punished for writing a silly satirical poem about our beloved late leader, Comrade Stalin.’

‘ “Winter Celebration”
.
’

‘You are properly informed in our literature. My poem circulated in
samizdat.
When the authorities caught up with it, they were rot amused. They are never amused. So after some training I was sent to Belgrade, where I became — I suppose you would say a
gundog
for a very important KGB high official who had the code name Slatko. The word is Serbian for “sweetness”. You remember that name, I am sure.’

‘I remember,’ Squire said. ‘Slatko…’

‘You see, it was important to our Comrade Leader that all socialist countries should appear in agreement before the outside world. Just to have this one little country, Yugoslavia, disagreeing was bad for his sleep every night. Yugoslavia must be crushed. Therefore this evil man Slatko was sent in, with orders direct from Stalin. It was easy to send him in secretly, and many others like him.’

‘And you?’

‘Slatko was not sweet. He had many murders to his credit. He had especially the ambition to kill Tito, so he proceeded very cautiously. But he was also a drunken sot and, one spring morning in Istra, when he had hit the bottle and his actions were slow…well, Thomas, you drove up at the place where he was hiding, and by good fortune you managed to shoot him. It was the luck of the beginner, as we say.’

Squire imitated the Russian in giving his face a mop. ‘That’s thirty years ago.’

‘Do we ever forget such moments of our youth? Time’s nothing.’

He gestured out towards the sea. ‘Here we are, almost in a similar situation, you might say. Here I stand, speaking with the man who assassinated the evil Slatko. I am proud.’

He sat down on the narrow path, gazing across the panorama before them.

‘I wanted to speak these things to you, because I doubt that we will ever meet again. All my possibilities are closing.’

After a moment’s hesitation, Squire came and sat beside him, his shoes pointing out over the drop.

‘Where were you that day? You were at the farmhouse?’

‘Before dawn on that day, I had driven an old German truck containing crates of British machine-guns from the coast. I was resting in the sun. Writing another poem, to be exact. When I saw your car approach the farmhouse, I jumped over a wall at the back to hide. So did two others with me. There were explosions of grenades and shooting for some while. I kept my head down.

‘When I dared to peep up, there I saw you standing by an upper window of the house, only a few metres above me. I studied your English face. I could have shot you easily. Instead, I sneaked away, keeping behind the wall. There was a little car we had stolen, a Fiat. I ran to that and drove off in it. As a matter of fact, I believe you unkindly threw a grenade after me, but I kept going. What I felt then I’ll never forget.’

‘Nor I.’

‘Well, it’s impossible to forget. I was so scared, but also glad, because that cruel ogre was finished. At great danger to my life, I made my way back to my native country, aided by Soviet contacts I knew in Belgrade. What foolish loyalty to Stalin and my country! When I reported back, I was rewarded by ten years in the Gulag. That term was miraculously reduced after Stalin’s death.’

He sighed heavily.

‘Now you are in trouble again,’ Squire said.

Rugorsky smiled. ‘But I don’t do anything so serious as pushing my friends from cliffs.’

‘The world’s a dangerous place.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that. I brought you here because I wished to speak of those distant times in Yugoslavia. I longed to tell you of the extraordinary bond between us over many years, across the East-West struggle. To be frank, I thought if I told you that you would remember me in future times.’