Part 25 (1/2)
Then, to my relief, he started talking. Not about what he had done. Not about who he had done it with. But why.
”You don't know what it means, do you, to be locked up all day with a bunch of morons?”
I thought at first he was complaining of his future, till I realised he was talking about the Tank.
”Listening to their filthy jokes all day, choking on their f.a.gs and their B.O.? Not you, you're privileged, however humble you make yourself out. Day after day of it, sn.i.g.g.e.rs about t.i.ts and knickers and periods and little bits on the side? 'Come on, Saint, tell us a naughty joke for a change! You're a deep one, I'll bet, Saint! What are you into-gym slips? Bit of the rough? What's the Saint's little fancy of a Sat.u.r.day night?”
His energy had returned to him in full force, and with it, to my astonishment, an unexpected gift for mimicry. He was mincing at me, playing. the music-hall queen, a ghastly soft grin twisting his hairless face. ”'Heard the one about the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, Saint? The excitement was in tents. Get you!' You wouldn't know about that, would you? 'Do you pull it now and then, Saint? Give it a little jerk occasionally, just to make sure it's there? You'll go blind, you know. It'll drop off. I'll bet you've got a big one, haven't you? A real donkey knock, all the way down your leg and tucked into your garter.' . . . You've never had that, have you, all day long, in the office, in the canteen? You're a gentleman. Know what they gave me April Fool's Day? A top secret incoming from Paris, Frewin's eyes only, decypher yourself, manual, ha ha. Flasb priority, get the joke? I didn't. So I go into the cubicle and get out the books, don't I? And I decypher it, don't I? Manual. Everyone's got his head down. n.o.body laughing or spoiling it. I do the first six groups and it's filth, some filthy joke all about a French letter. Gorst had done it. He'd had the boys at the Paris Emba.s.sy send it specially as a joke. 'Steady on, Saint, keep your hair on, give us a smile. It was only a joke, Saint, can't you take a joke?'
That's what Personnel said too, when I complained. Horseplay, they said. Pranks are good for morale. Think of it as a compliment, they said, show a little sporting instinct. If I hadn't had my music, I'd have killed myself long ago. I considered it, I don't mind telling you. Trouble was, I wouldn't see their faces when they found out what they'd done.”
A traitor needs two things, Smiley had once remarked bitterly to me at the time of Haydon's betrayal of the Circus: somebody to hate, and somebody to love. Frewin had told me whom he hated. Now he began to talk about whom he loved.
”I'd been all over the world that night - Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Jo'burg - and there wasn't anything that took my fancy. I like the amateurs best, as a rule, the hacks. They've got more wit, which is what I like, I told you. I didn't even know it was morning. I've got these thick curtains up there, three hundred quids' worth, interlined. It's meat and drink to me after the Tank, the quiet is.”
A different smile had come up on him, a small boy's smile on his birthday.
”'Good morning to you, Boris, my friend,' says Olga. 'How are you feeling this morning?'
Then she says it in Russian and Boris replies that he's feeling a bit low. He's often low, Boris is. He's p.r.o.ne to Slav depressions. Olga takes care of him, mind. She'll have a joke, but it's never cruelly meant. They have a fight now and then toowell, it's only natural, seeing they do everything together. But they always make it up in the same programme. They don't bear a grudge from day to day. Olga couldn't do that, to be frank. It's out with it and that's it, with Olga. Then they'll have a laugh together. That's how they are. Constructive. Friendly. Clean spoken. Musical too, naturally-well, they would be, being Russian. I wasn't that keen on Tchaikovsky till I heard them discussing him. But afterwards I came round to him straight away. Boris has got quite advanced tastes in music actually. Olga-well, she's a bit easy to please. Still, they're only actors, I suppose, reading their lines. But you forget that when you're listening to them, trying to learn the language. You believe in them.”
And you send your written work in, he was saying.
For free correction and advice, he was saying.
You don't even have to write to Moscow after the first time. They've got this box number in Luxembourg.
He had fallen quiet but not dangerously so. Nevertheless I was becoming scared that his trance might end too soon. I took myself out of his line of sight, and stood in a corner of the room behind him.
”What address did you give them, Cyril?”
”This one, of course. What else have I got to give them, then? A country house in Shrops.h.i.+re? A villa in Capri?”
”Did you give them your own name too?”
”Of course I didn't. Well, Cyril, yes. I mean anyone can be Cyril.”
”Good man,” I said approvingly. ”Cyril who?”
”Nemo,” he announced proudly. ”Mr. C. Nemo. 'Nemo' is Latin for 'n.o.body,' in case you didn't know.”
Mr. C. Nemo. Like Mr. A. Patriot, perhaps.
”Did you put your occupation?”
”Not my real one. You're being stupid again.”
”So what did you put?”
”Musician.”
”Did they ask for your age?”
”Of course they did. They had to. They had to know you were eligible, in case you won the prize. They can't give prizes to minors, can they? No one can.”
”And status-married or single-you told them that too?”
”I bad to put my status, didn't I, with the prize being available to couples! They can't give a prize to one person and leave his wife out, it wouldn't be gracious.”
”What work did you send in - the first time round, for instance - do you remember?”
He decided to take further exception to my stupidity.
”Thickhead. What do you think I sent them? b.l.o.o.d.y logarithms? You write in, you get the forms, you enrol, you get the Luxembourg box number, you get the book, you're one of them. After that you do what Boris and Olga tell you to do in the programme, don't you? 'Complete the exercise on page 9. Answer the questions on page 22.' Haven't you been to school then?”
”And you were good. HQ says you've got a mind like an encyclopaedia when you use it. They told me.”
I was beginning to learn how much he relished flattery.
”I was more than good, as a matter of fact, thank you, HQ, If you wish to know, I was in the nature of being their top pupil. Certain notes were sent to me by certain tutors, and some of them had a highly congratulatory tone,” he added, with the wild grin that came over him when he was praised. ”It gave me quite a filip, if you wish to know, walking into the Tank of a Monday morning with one of their little notes in my pocket and not saying anything. I thought, I could tell some of you a tale if I wanted. I didn't, though. I preferred my privacy. I preferred my friends.h.i.+ps. I wasn't going to have those animals making filthy comments about Olga and Boris, thank you.”
”And you wrote back to these tutors?”
”Only as Nemo.”
”But you didn't fool with them otherwise?”
I asked, trying to fathom what restraints, if any, were in his mind as he embarked on this first illicit love affair. ”I mean, if they asked you a plain question, you'd give them a plain answer. You weren't coy.”
”I was not coy! I had no cause to be! I took great care to be courteous, the same as my tutors were. They were high professors, some of them, academicians. I was grateful and I was diligent. That was the least they deserved, considering there was no fee and it was voluntary and in the interests of human understanding.”
The hunter in me again. I was calculating the moves they would have made as they played him along. I was working out how I would have played him myself, if the Circus had dreamed up anything so perfect.
”And I suppose, as you improved, they pa.s.sed you on from plain printed exercises to the more ambitious stuff composition, essays?”
”When it was deemed by the Board of Tutors in Moscow that I was ripe for it, yes, they moved me up to freestyle.”
”Do you remember the subjects they set you?”
He laughed his superior laugh. ”You think I'd forget them? Five nights at each one of them with the dictionary? Two hours' sleep if I'm lucky? Wake up, will you, Ned!”
I gave a rueful little laugh as I wrote to his dictation.
”'My Life' was the first one. I told them about the Tank, not mentioning names, of course, or the nature of our work, naturally. Nevertheless, a certain element of social comment was present, I won't deny it. I thought the Board had a right to know, specially with the glasnost in the pipeline and everything easing up for the benefit of all mankind.”
”What was the next one?”
”'My Home.'
I told them about my plans for the pond. They liked that. And my cooking. One of them was quite a major cook.. After that they gave me 'My Favourite Pastime,' which could have been redundant but wasn't.”