Simon Dersha’s nervousness subsided somewhat when he was joined on the way to the party by the vice-minister, then grew again as he noticed that his protector too had lost some of his usual self-assurance. The nearer they got to the minister’s residence the more their conversation languished, until at last the only sound to be heard was that of their footsteps. Several times one of them said “What?” though the other hadn’t said anything. The street was only faintly lit, which made the damp surface of the road and the iron railings round the gardens look even darker than usual “This is it,” said the vice-minister in a scarcely audible voice as they came to a two-storey villa.
Memory is governed by laws of its own. Simon’s mind was a blank as to the time between the moment when the vice-minister said “This is it” and the moment when they entered the villa. But he could remember the dinner itself quite plainly: some parts of it seemed engraved in his memory for ever, while others were still suspended in a kind of mist, a tantalizing cloud of vagueness.
There were four or five other guests, all distinguished officials who would have been the centre of attention at any public gathering, but who were here reduced to mere ciphers in comparison with their host.
Alone in his office, Simon Dersha lit a cigarette. No, he really couldn’t recall the miracle in its entirety. It was like something you can only swallow if you break it up into pieces; otherwise it might choke you. Simon sighed. Fortunately, he thought, it all passed off without my dropping any bricks. And he was right. The minister had turned to him a few times, asking how the building of the big factories was getting on, especially the power stations in the north where the Chinese were working. Simon had answered as best he could.
He would have been hard put to it to endure any more particular attention, especially as, during the dinner, he had a feeling that every dish was a trap. He couldn’t relax until they came to the cheese and the fruit: then, thank God, the problems were over — he was in no further danger of splashing himself with some elaborate sauce. He hadn’t needed to use his handkerchief, though he’d taken it out of his pocket a couple of times and pressed it mechanically to his nose: the smell of clean, well-ironed linen was pleasant and reassuring. Yes, things really couldn’t have gone any better. Not the slightest thing had happened that might have made one say, as is so often the case, if only this or that hadn’t happened; perhaps I ought to have answered such-and-such a question differently.
There’d been only one incident, but it was nothing to do with him — so far from it, indeed, that even now he couldn’t have said whether it was a good thing or a bad. It consisted of a telephone call. At about half-past ten, just as they had finished the second course — the one that was the most difficult to handle without any spills — one of the phones had started to ring…Even though so much time had elapsed since, Simon had the feeling, every time he recalled the phone conversation which had followed, that recalling it was his last hope of jolting his memory into lucidity, for it must have been the most significant part of the whole evening. But it hadn’t seemed so at the time, and his memory of it was as of something distant and irrelevant.
When the phone rang, the host had risen from the table to answer it, leaving his guests still laughing at some pleasantry.
“Yes… Hallo, Comrade Enver…”
The guests exchanged glances. It must be Him. This would anyway have been an important, an unforgettable occasion. But such a phone call, at such a late hour, made it doubly important. A memorable dinner, during which Comrade Enver had rung up…Even now Simon felt his heart miss a beat at the thought of it, though he wondered whether something significant really had occurred, or whether it was merely the product of his own anxiety. But no, he decided: his uneasiness had been a reaction to something outside himself. The first thing that had alerted him was the way the minister spoke. His voice had been quite calm to start with, but then there’d been a sudden check, and he’d looked as though he’d suffered a shock. The change in the minister’s voice produced an even deeper silence among his guests, so that the belated clatter of a fork on a plate made every head turn towards it. As for the phone conversation itself, it had apparently concerned the most unremarkable of subjects: the caller was asking for explanations about the expulsion of certain tank officers from the Party. This was a subject of relatively minor importance, certainly not enough to render the minister speechless. Still, as Simon had reflected later, on his way home, it was rather astonishing that the leader of the Party himself should phone up so late at night on so insignificant a subject. But then perhaps it wasn’t so surprising after all. The fact that he’d rung up at that hour might just as easily mean that the subject of the conversation was one of those minor matters one puts off till the end of the day — maybe it had suddenly occurred to him after dinner.
Throughout the rest of the evening Simon had done his best to dismiss that phone call from his mind, and it seemed to him that everyone else, including his host, was doing the same. The minister was still very affable and vivacious, but every so often, in the midst of the conversation, he seemed to freeze, and his eyes went dull and vague — like Simon’s recollections. But when he took the trouble to think things over for a moment he felt reassured. The phone conversation and the minister’s twinge of anxiety seemed quite normal The sort of thing that happens all the time, he told himself: you’d need to be really looking for trouble to think it unusual And that, though his first reaction was always one of doubt and resentment, was the conclusion he always came to eventually whenever he looked back on the incident.
Walking home with the vice-minister, his general state of euphoria was disturbed two or three times by the memory of the phone call. He even allowed himself to refer to it once, but his companion only said, “Yes, quite…” This made Simon think his own experience hadn’t been purely subjective. But after a little while he managed to put it out of his mind.
And now, here in his office, he did so again. I really am hopeless, he told himself. I had that incredible stroke of luck, that wonderful opportunity, and all I can do is look for complications! All his calculations about the phone call seemed utterly absurd. Waves of exultation swamped his uneasiness yet again, and he started to think once more of the office next door and the trivial conversations of its occupants. Even his official superiors all seemed less important than before. And this time his feeling of triumph lingered: everything seemed easier, more within his reach. At one point, though, his eye lighted on the telephone that wasn’t working that morning. He remembered the unanswered ringings in the vice-minister’s office, and sighed.