4
Another diamond-bright day was ending. Luminous shadows reached across the great central squares; devoured them entirely; left only the skyscrapers still shining in the pale gold light.
By the fountains in Sverdlov Square Katerina was already waiting for Manning, darting little nervous glances about her like a bird. She was still wearing her winter overcoat and her brown woollen stockings. Beneath the blonde plait looped up around her head her face was all pink-and-white – a winter face. She saw Manning while he was still crossing the roadway, and ran to meet him between the traffic lanes, putting her hand on his arm for a second and giving him a quick, shy smile.
‘You look so tall and dark and discontented,’ she said, letting him watch out for the traffic and guide her by the elbow. ‘You must learn to accept yourself.’
‘It’s the circumstances around me that make me discontented.’
‘The circumstances around you are part of you. People carry their lives about with them like tortoises carry their shells.’
Manning found the grave aphorism a solace. Though he supposed that she might equally well have said: ‘One’s circumstances are insignificant. People shed their lives like snakes slough their skins.’ He supposed he would have found that equally comforting.
They began to walk about the city, at a steady pace but in no particular direction, companionable but not touching each other, and for some time saying nothing. They left the crowded pavements of the centre, and lost themselves in streets fronted by peeling brown apartment blocks, and small basement workshops whose pavement-level windows exhaled heat, clatter, and the smell of oiled machinery.
Manning thought that Katerina was somewhat younger than himself, but he did not know. He knew very little about her or the life she carried around with her; they never talked about such things. He didn’t even know where she lived. He wrote to her by way of a box number in the Central Post Office, suggesting a meeting-place. Then they would walk the streets for an hour or two, sometimes talking, sometimes silent.
‘Look up at the sky,’ she said. ‘Blue and gold from horizon to horizon. Now you’re looking into the iris of God’s eye.’
‘Literally, Katya?’
‘Oh, yes. The sky is God’s iris. But it is also God’s sadness, and God’s great age. All God’s attributes are every part of Him.’
‘And yet I’ve heard you say, Katya, that God is within us?’
‘Yes – He within us, and we within Him. We are God, Paul.’
‘But we’re free to please or displease Him.’
‘Of course. We are entirely free in every possible way. But our liberty must be comprehended in God’s Liberty. That’s obvious.’
Katerina often talked about God. She had apperceptions of Him at every corner, feeling His presence in the air she drew into her lungs, seeing His hands pierced by the skyscrapers. Manning liked to hear her speak of God, and led her on with questions. He liked to think of the hot lathes in the basement workshops and the inert masonry of the public buildings as being in some way impregnated with human attributes and sensibilities, just as he liked to try to see the whole visible world, including himself, Katya, and the people crowding off the trolley-buses on their way home from work, as nothing but a complexly interbalanced network of electrical charges. It was an astonishing vision – like suddenly catching a glimpse of oneself from behind in a double mirror.
‘As you know,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand what you say about God at all.’
‘Nor do I. We couldn’t expect to. All we can do is to venture descriptions of Him which give rise to unfathomable infinities and unresolvable contradictions, and to contemplate these with humility.’
Sometimes Katerina spoke of the sufferings of people she knew, particularly those of her friend Kanysh, who had remained in Moscow for a year without police permission in order to be near her, unable to get a job because he was a Kazakh. He had been in despair and ill with hunger, and he had been deported to Ulan-Bator back in November, just before Manning had met Katerina at the door of the Foreign Literature Library, weeping because she had forgotten her pass and couldn’t get in. Katya collected Kanysh’s letters from Box Number 734 at the Central Post Office and read them as she walked about the streets. Manning had seen her. The letters were written in a close, sloping hand on thick wads of cheap blue writing paper, and she carried them round and re-read them until they wore out at the folds and fell to pieces.
How Katerina supported herself Manning didn’t know. He believed she lived with a widowed mother and an aunt, and that she had some connexion with the Philological Faculty. He felt it would have been overstepping the boundaries of their relationship to ask. He knew that she was translating Rilke’s Geschichten vom lieben Gott into Russian. But of course, it would never be published. He had no idea how far she had got with it. Sometimes her remarks seemed to indicate that she was revising a finished translation. Sometimes she seemed to suggest that it was beyond her even to start.
They walked down a long, straight avenue with factory chimneys smoking behind blind brick walls. The streetlights sprang on in the thickening dusk.
‘Shall I tell you a story?’ asked Katerina.
‘Yes, I’d like to hear one of your stories.’
She thought for a moment.
‘In a far distant land,’ she said, ‘there lived an old man with three sons. The old man was dying. He called his three sons around the bed and told them he had one last wish – to see before he died a man who had led a life of perfect happiness. So the three sons set off to search the world for such a man. The eldest son, Petya, searched the cold lands in the north. The next eldest son, Kolya, searched the hot lands in the south. And the youngest son, Vanya, took a boat and searched the Empire of the Sea-King.
5
Later they talked about Sasha.
‘I wish he’d lose his temper with me when we have these scenes,’ said Manning. ‘He just looks hurt, and then forgives me.’
‘It’s better to hurt someone who’s capable of forgiving you than someone who’s not,’ said Katerina.
‘It doesn’t seem like that at the time.’
‘There’s no point in having moral qualities if they’re not used.’
‘That sounds cynical.’
‘It’s not intended to be.’
‘But, Katya, you wouldn’t want me to hurt your feelings, just so that you could exercise your forgiveness?’
‘No, because I’m not strong, like Sasha. I’m weak, and I shouldn’t forgive you.’
They walked in silence for some minutes.
‘He took me to hear Shchedrin last night,’ said Manning. ‘He knows him – they were in an orphanage together during the war. We had dinner with Shchedrin and his wife afterwards.’
‘Did you like them?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Was Shchedrin very modest? Did he make little jokes in a quiet voice, and make everyone laugh respectfully?’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No, but I can imagine him. A neat blue suit. A tidy, quiet face, with smooth skin filling out a little round the jowl.’
‘That’s a caricature….’
‘No, it’s a description. All Sasha’s friends are of a type.’
‘You’ve never met Sasha or his friends.’
‘You’ve told me about them. I know their sort.’
‘Their sort? Katya, why are you so contemptuous of them? They’re good people.’
‘Of course they’re good. They’re strong, good, able people, whose strength and goodness and ability enable them to rise above their brothers. Well, God be with them. But I want to make it clear that I am one of the others – the ones who are not strong or good enough – the ones who are risen above.’