He took a deep breath, and began to examine the faces around the table. Rubeshchenskaya was talking to Korolenko. Her plain, honest face bobbed up and down, wagged from side to side, raised its eyebrows, talked and talked. Korolenko listened in silence, motionless and expressionless. Now Rubeshchenskaya had stopped, and was looking at Korolenko interrogatively. The spasm lifted the right-hand corner of his mouth for an instant. As if it were an acknowledgement she smiled and nodded, and went on talking.
On the other side of Rubeshchenskaya sat Proctor-Gould. Then a little sharp-faced woman with grey hair, who was probably Mrs Korolenko, and next to her, Sasha. Proctor-Gould and Sasha were leaning forward to talk to each other across Mrs Korolenko. Sasha was listening anxiously, blinking a little, as if frightened of missing a word. Proctor-Gould was speaking with little smiles, and chopping motions of his right hand. Occasionally he turned his head a little more sharply, and directed one of the smiles at Mrs Korolenko. She acknowledged each of them with a small, unamused smile of her own, making no attempt to understand the English conversation.
Manning realized that Mrs Skorbyatova was looking at him, a humorous expression on her large, oval face.
‘Don’t you think so?’ she was asking.
Manning laughed politely.
‘I suppose I do,’ he said.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Proctor-Gould’s face. It was as familiar as an old sock, so familiar that it embarrassed him. It was like seeing one’s mother at a school speech day. How could anyone take that homely face seriously? At any moment Proctor-Gould would pull his ear. As if by telepathy, he pulled it at once – a long, surreptitious, caressing tug. Oh God, it was shaming to watch!
Among the flowers on the table in front of Proctor-Gould lay four books, neatly stacked. He had come to Manning’s room in Sector B just before the dinner and selected them from the suitcase which Manning had brought back from the station.
‘Thank you, Paul,’ he had said. Manning had shrugged. Proctor-Gould had looked as if he was going to say something else about Manning’s decision to cooperate, then changed his mind and glanced perfunctorily about the room instead.
‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Your own bathroom?’
‘Shared with the room next door.’
‘Very well arranged. A bit different from poor old John’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s odd, really, Paul. I’ve never seen your room before. You must invite me out here some time and show me over the whole building.’
A formal occasion. But now, in public Manning felt that the burden of intimacy was not quite so easily laid down. Proctor-Gould had humiliated himself in front of him with his deceit. It made a continuing claim upon him.
Ginsberg was on his feet, proposing a toast to friendly cooperation in the field of human administration. Up glass. Clink Skorbyatova, clink Loyeva. ‘Field of huministration.’ Down vodka. Gulp mineral water. Ah. Belch. Excuse me. Ah.
Korolenko was standing up. Another toast? Scarcely – glasses not yet recharged. Speech, undoubtedly. Was indeed already speaking. But what was he saying? Manning found it almost impossible to focus his mind on the words.
‘… sometimes falls to our lot to have the pleasure of welcoming into our midst one whose aims and aspirations are entirely in accord with the spirit of peaceful co-existence. Such a one is undoubtedly our distinguished and respected guest Proctor-Gould….’
Korolenko stood with his hands behind his back, erect and exact, speaking in a quiet level voice without expression of any sort, apart from the regular stresses with which he marked the passage of time. This was his Essential Attributes of the Soviet Administrator voice, characterized by its complete dissociation from sense and matter, uncontaminated by the personal interest which he took in such questions as barring the admission of unauthorized persons to the Faculty canteen. Occasionally, on one of the stressed syllables, he would rock gently forward on to his toes, as soldiers do on long parades to keep their blood in circulation. Everyone sat straight in his chair, staring into space with glazed eyes, stunned with respect and boredom and vodka. Manning tried to imagine Korolenko drunk. It was difficult. He visualized him with his brother officers in some derelict commandeered house in occupied territory, impassively tipping back vast quantities of spirit at the end of the day. It made no difference. Perhaps he became even more erect, more expressionless. Perhaps his eyelids came down a little. Perhaps he renounced speech altogether, until the occasional sardonic spasm was the only sign of continued life….
Time hung suspended….
Now Korolenko was lifting a volume bound in white leather from among the flowers on the table in front of him, and holding it up while he spoke, wagging it slightly like a swollen forefinger at each stress. Now he was turning to Proctor-Gould, who was standing up uncertainly, unable to understand the Russian. Korolenko was handing him the book. Now he was clapping, and both sides of his mouth were elevated in a smile.
They all applauded. Korolenko offered a toast to Proctor-Gould. Everyone gulped it down and turned to his neighbour to start talking hurriedly and meaninglessly in his relief that the speech was over.
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Skorbyatova.
‘There we are, then,’ said Manning.
Someone was calling his name.
‘Paul! Paul!’
Where …? Ah, Proctor-Gould. The familiar old face was thrust towards him across the table.
‘Paul,’ it said, ‘I’m going to make a speech. Would you oblige with your usual skilful services?’
‘Tiny bit drunk, Gordon,’ said Manning.
‘Little hazy myself, to tell you the truth. Never mind – all add to the gaiety of the occasion. Come round and stand next to me.’
Manning got to his feet. The room keeled steadily over to port. Christ. He took hold of the edge of the table and waited for it to come back on to the level. Not funny. Didn’t know I was quite as bad as that.
He edged his way round the table, holding on to the backs of the chairs, until he reached Proctor-Gould’s. All right now. Lean myself on the back of the chair like this. Be as steady as a rock.
‘All right?’ asked Proctor-Gould, looking up at him.
‘Ready when you are.’
Proctor-Gould cleared his throat and stood up. Immediately the chair capsized under Manning’s weight and deposited him on the floor.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Sasha anxiously, helping him up, among the applause for Proctor-Gould.
‘Fine.’
‘Sure you’re all right, Paul?’ This was Proctor-Gould.
‘Perfectly.’
Proctor-Gould turned back to the table.
‘Dean Korolenko, Mrs Korolenko, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It is indeed a great honour, of which I am very conscious, to be invited to share with such a distinguished body of men and women an occasion of this nature. I am not myself, of course, a member of the international fraternity of administration experts. I am a humble British businessman, and my only claim upon your time and attention is that I have been entrusted with a number of commissions from my many friends in the learned institutions engaged on similar work in Britain.’
He stopped, and half-turned towards Manning to wait for the translation. Manning blinked. What the hell had Proctor-Gould been saying? He couldn’t remember the half of it.
‘He’s very pleased to be here,’ he said uncertainly. ‘At an occasion of this nature he recalls that he has many friends in learned institutions engaged on similar work in Britain.’