This evening, as on all such evenings, his standard-dress uniform, the military equivalent of a lounge suit, had been laid out on his cot by a brother-officer’s batman in return for money. He showered in the tiny second-floor bathroom, put on the uniform and went down to the ante-room, feeling, after his varied and strenuous day, as well physically as he had ever felt in his life. His mental and emotional states were hardly if at all more complicated: Theodore Markov was coming over that evening – was due shortly, in fact – and he knew he would be able to think of plenty of things to say to him.
A pleasant breeze was fluttering the blue-and-white gingham curtains of the ante-room. As Alexander came in, a handsome dark-haired young man of about his own age looked up from the long chintz-covered sofa that faced the window, his expression changing from a sullen gloom to a rather rigid cheerfulness. There was an empty glass on the arm of the sofa beside him.
‘Good evening, Victor, how are you making, old chap?’
‘Hallo – would you very kindly get me a vodka? I’ll pay you for it. The major kicked up a bit of a fuss about my mess bill last month.’
‘Kind words of good advice would be wasted on you, would they?’
‘Completely, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I’ll save my breath.’ Alexander turned to the under-corporal mess waiter. ‘A vodka and a beer.’ Tonight was not an occasion for drinking deep. When the time came he signed the chit, carried a glass of dill-flavoured Ochotnitscha across to the other officer and took a thirsty pull at his own lager. This resembled only very generally the sometime product of the Northampton brewery whence it came, a famous drink made to a Danish formula under Danish direction and enjoyed all over what had been the kingdom. ‘We’ll call that six hundred quid.’
‘I’ll give it to you tomorrow; I seem to have left my cash upstairs. And it’ll be easier to settle up all at once.’
‘What? Oh, you mean you’d like another one.’
‘For the time being, yes.
‘Is this just on general principles, or has something out of the ordinary come up?’
‘Both, really,’ said Victor, at once reverting to his gloomy manner. ‘All days stink, but today stank specially.’
‘I thought all days did that too.’
‘That pig Ryumin – he told me this morning that if I didn’t pull myself together, as he chose to call it, he’d apply for a posting. I’d been giving him more or less a free hand with the troop, I thought that’s what somebody in his position would like, after all he’s been a sergeant longer than I’ve been commissioned, and now he says the troop is the worst mounted in the regiment and it’s all my fault. And before he’d finished one of my corporals came into the office and he didn’t stop.
‘That was very wrong of him.’
‘It was all very wrong of him. Dear God, perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps he was quite right. I can’t wait to get away from this vile country.’
‘Are you joking? It’s a beautiful country. Just look out of the window.’
‘Everybody’s miserable.’
‘Nonsense, that’s just how you’re feeling yourself at the moment. When you’re in the right mood you’ll see there’s nothing wrong with the place at all.’
‘Alexander, not everything done and said is because of someone’s mood. Sergeants don’t have moods.’
‘Of course they don’t; what do you think makes them into sergeants? With us, you’ll find moods are about as good a way of looking at things as any. You’ve finished that one too, I see. Why not have another? On me this time. – Ah, Boris, you’ve turned up at exactly the right moment as usual. What can I get you to drink?’
The newcomer was thirty years old, with close-cropped hair and a face that would have served unimprovably as the model for the Russian entry in some illustrated catalogue of racial types. Each epaulette of his standard-dress jacket, which was of inferior cut and material to those of the other two, bore a pair of nickel bars enclosing a rhomb, for this was the lieutenant-commissary of the squadron. He answered Alexander’s question in a deep, deliberate voice, and hesitantly. ‘It’s most kind of you, but do you think you should? The major doesn’t approve of treating.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t really mind as long as it isn’t flaunted in front of him. Come on.
‘Oh, very well. I beg your pardon, Alexander, I mean of course thank you very much. I’ll have a beer.’
‘Two beers, corporal, and one Ochotnitscha. Large. -Actually this is early for you, isn’t it, Boris?’
‘I suppose it is, yes.’
‘It shouldn’t be. What I mean by that is that you ought to give yourself more time off; I’ve told you before.’
‘I’m grateful that you bother about me, but this is just when I can’t, with George on leave.’ The commissary referred to the second-in-command.
‘No, you can’t. I think everybody else I know could quite easily. It’s a good job the army’s too stupid to realise what you’re worth, or you’d shoot up to colonel-general and we’d never see you again.’
Boris sent Alexander a devoted look that made Victor want to kick them both. The trouble was that Alexander would kick back painfully and Boris would not kick at all, would do nothing except look noble and guileless. Luckily there was no time for these feelings to rankle very much, because just then one of the camp guard brought a guest to the front door of the mess building.
In a moment Theodore had come into the ante-room, trying with fair success to hide his feelings of constraint. By nature he was quite at ease in most social encounters, but he had discovered early that the Commission aroused little in the way of amiability or respect among the civilians of the administration, and had not yet had enough experience of the military to know whether they were any better disposed. As it soon turned out, none of the three officers to whom Alexander introduced him – the third had followed him in almost directly – had as much as heard of his and his superiors’ business. That third, in his mid-twenties and already running to fat, made a rather disagreeable impression with his loose mouth and habit of twisting it in a smile or sneer for no perceptible reason. He was called Leo, Alexander alleged, adding that it was all first names in the mess, except of course for the major, and shortly afterwards that, with one man on leave and another serving as officer of the day, the company was now complete, except again for the major. Neither of these additions proved fully accurate, for when Major Yakir in due course arrived he had with him another civilian whose name, first or last, Theodore for one never learned. Host and guest were remarkably similar to look at, both short and stout, both all but bald, both heavily moustached, guest however blemished on the right cheek by a purple birthmark that host lacked. Neither seemed to have much to say to the four younger men.
At dinner, Theodore was placed between Alexander and the ensign called Victor. Asked how he had made the journey from Northampton, he answered truthfully enough (though perhaps in needless detail) that he had come on one of the power-assisted bicycles scantily available to members of the Commission for recreational purposes. A discussion of fuel policies and prospects naturally followed. Alexander committed himself to the opinion that the new synthetics were proving ruinously expensive to produce, that Moscow was at its wits’ end and that mechanical transport would soon run down, perhaps even by the end of the decade, and Victor agreed with him. All this was said quite roundly and openly, as was natural, even to be expected; nobody thought anything of such talk these days. Actually it might have been that Victor did not so much agree as find it convenient to behave in one way or another while he drank. On his other side, Leo seemed to be thinking along these lines, to judge by the contemptuous glances he sent his colleague’s way, unless these were in some way mechanical. Boris the commissary, on Major Yakir’s left, said little and drank less; the major was silent, nodding now and then at what his guest, inaudibly to the others, was saying. When the mess waiters had taken away the dishes, Leo said in a loud teasing voice,