When Larry left half an hour later, Marianne was not sure whether she had agreed to meet him the following week. I suppose I have plenty of time to consider it, she thought.
In the event, it was her row with Edward that persuaded Marianne to meet Larry again – although in truth it was scarcely a row, since it takes two to have a decent fight and Edward never allowed himself to descend into such vulgarity.
‘My God, what a nerve these people have,’ Edward said, when she told him of Larry’s request. ‘They pick on an innocent young woman like you and try to ensnare them into their web of deceit…’
‘Hang on, Ed, that’s a bit extreme. He’s a cultural attaché; he needs to get out and meet people and find out what’s being talked about in academic circles.’
‘But surely you’re not thinking of going along with this, are you?’
‘Well, I haven’t made up my mind. I wouldn’t go out of my way to do anything particular – and anyway, I doubt I’d have much to tell him – but I don’t see that meeting him occasionally for a coffee or ice-cream, as he put it, would do any harm.’
‘That’s just a start, Marianne, don’t you see?’
‘I don’t agree. I don’t think it’s any more than that.’
‘Marianne, don’t you remember the undertaking that we both had to sign before we came to Moscow about not getting involved in any political activity…’
‘But this isn’t political activity.’
‘It is, Marianne. It’s highly political. And anyway, I didn’t take to this Larry, despite – or perhaps because of – being wined and dined at an expensive restaurant.’
‘That’s what embassy people…’
‘…I think he’s smarmy and untrustworthy.’
‘So that’s your real problem, is it? That I actually get to talk to another man from time to time – rather than spending all my time locked away in the library…’
‘Marianne…’
‘…while you spend the day with all these Russian nurses you admire so much…’
‘…this is unworthy of you.’
‘Well, I shall make up my own mind and I don’t need any lectures from you about who I’m allowed to meet.’
5
‘Detsky bad. Detsky bad-bad-bad,’ shouted Izzy, her blue eyes flashing as Marianne struggled to get her daughter’s arms into her overcoat. This was a routine which had become quite familiar to Marianne as Izzy played games with the Russian name for kindergarten. At first she seemed to have got it into her head that detsky sad meant she was going to a place where she was sure to be sad. Now it was often detsky bad or even detsky mad – a variation Izzy had been particularly pleased with.
‘Come on, darling, it’s not so terrible. What happened to detsky glad?’ asked Marianne. ‘You’ll get to play with Yelena and Irina – they’re your friends, aren’t they?’
‘Sometimes… but yesterday Irina was mean to me and…and… Yelena…’
Getting her young daughter used to the idea of going to kindergarten every day had been no easier than Marianne had expected but she tried to keep the battles away from the kindergarten itself. The first morning that she had delivered her, Izzy had kicked and screamed and created a scene which would not have seemed unusual at an English or American nursery but was watched in stunned silence by both teachers and children in the Moscow kindergarten.
Now that Izzy had been at the kindergarten for nearly two months her resistance was little more than token and having dropped her off without further fuss, Marianne made her way to the park for what had now become a twice-weekly meeting with Larry. She no longer mentioned these meetings to Edward and he no longer interrogated her on whether she was still seeing him. Indeed, they barely seemed to have any conversation now, his hours at the hospital extending late into the evening when he would come home and go straight to bed. Did he assume she had stopped meeting Larry? She didn’t know and preferred not to think about it.
The freshness of autumn had now given way to the chill of early winter with the first snows expected any day. It was damp, depressing weather, which Muscovites particularly disliked; no matter how low the temperature might drop they looked forward to the real winter when the air would become clear and the cold somehow more bearable. It was too chilly to linger in the park that day and Larry guided her to a nearby café.
Marianne suffered a bout of coughing as she entered the thick smoky atmosphere where the stench of Russian tobacco, mixed with damp wool and animal fur, combined to overwhelm the more agreeable smell of ground coffee beans. Larry ordered coffees for them both and lit a cigarette – one of the half dozen which he permitted himself to smoke in a day.
To begin with, Marianne’s meetings with Larry had been dominated by the Yom Kippur War which had broken out between Israel and some of the Arab states a few days after their first meeting at the university. Russia, Larry told her, almost certainly had advance knowledge of the attack. She had made no special effort to pick up any gossip and when they were not discussing the war, Larry had seemed content to chat about life in Moscow or the things that they both missed from their respective homes. Marianne had lived in England for six years before moving to Moscow, had married an Englishman and fully expected to spend the rest of her life in England, but she was always happy to reminisce about her childhood or college life in America, or to tell Larry stories about her time at Cambridge.
In recent weeks, however, she had become conscious that she was making more effort to please him. She had sought out a research assistant who worked for a prominent Jewish physics professor who was believed to be contemplating applying for permission to emigrate to Israel. She told Larry about her conversation which, whilst guarded, hinted that his decision to apply was now imminent.
Larry’s glasses had steamed up as he entered the café and he had kept them off as he now looked intently at Marianne across the narrow table.
She studied his face. ‘Never tempted to grow a moustache?’
‘Can you see me with a big biker’s moustache?’
‘No, I can’t. I like your face as it is. And I brought you a present,’ she said, passing a copy of Pravda across the table. Larry wouldn’t look at it now but inside was a samizdat containing a strongly worded essay on human rights. As Marianne passed the paper across the table her knuckles brushed against his and he took her hand briefly and gave it a squeeze. It was a trifling gesture, but it was the first time he had made any such deliberate physical contact and all of a sudden it seemed to change the whole context of their meeting.
‘You look a bit different today,’ she said.
‘You think so?’ he said, holding her with a steady gaze for several seconds. ‘Perhaps it’s you who are different. On the other hand, of course, it may be the microwaves.’
‘Microwaves?’
Larry nodded.
‘You’ve got a microwave oven?’
‘And every night I heat up my meagre supper…’ He looked at her with those serious grey-green eyes which were only betrayed by the smallest hint of creasing at the corners. She waited for him to explain.
Larry leant forward and lowered his voice. ‘It’s a curious story and I really shouldn’t be telling you, but earlier this year we – that is, the embassy staff – discovered what Kissinger and his associates had been keeping from us – that for years the Soviets have been bombarding the embassy with microwaves.’