The only object he took with him which he would not normally have taken on such a trip was a small bamboo cigarette pipe he’d used fifteen years before in Beirut. Originally, he’d bought two of them — one for her as well, and they’d smoked them together, only once, rather self-consciously, one afternoon driving round the hills behind the American University. They’d laughed at each other. And he remembered that cigarette and the laughter.
He didn’t look round the apartment. Yet he was suddenly aware of the deep silence of the rooms — a quality of abandoned space, a prefiguration of his departure. He said goodbye to the housekeeper, counting out her money for her, exactly.
Then he went.
But she called to him when he was half-way down the corridor, and came to him, the money in her hand. He knew what it was at once. She never spoke of these things in the apartment itself.
‘Would you?’ she said, handing him some of the money. ‘If you have the chance. From the dollar shop — lipstick, hair spray, toothpaste, anything like that. My daughter —’
‘Fine, I’ll see to it. Next time my secretary goes there. Keep the money.’
He turned away, and now for the first time his leaving became real to him.
There was a smell of burnt flint in the station — dead sparks from the overhead cables, the leaking discharge of dynamos, the peppery smell of recent fireworks. The big engine throbbed at the end of the shallow platform. Just beyond it, outside the canopy, the snow fell brightly in the light. But a yard beyond this glittering curtain there was a deep darkness and a silence, so that the noise and illumination inside made the terminus a stage for a huge party, the guests taking frenzied last drinks and saying goodbye before embarking for an uncertain destination. The heavy sleeper carriages waited for them, curtains drawn, like the vehicles of a cortège.
Flitlianov’s compartment was near the head of the train and as he walked towards it, his two security men behind him, he saw Yelena Andropov and her husband climbing up the steps of the same carriage. The three of them met in the corridor while the attendant was showing them to their separate quarters.
‘Hello!’ She shouted to him loudly, still half the length of the corridor away, so that his security men turned questioningly behind them. Even a greeting with her, he thought, had all the brazen quality of a revolutionary manifesto, a call from the beginning for the truth. He feared for her more than for himself. His world of deceit wasn’t hers, after all. And though she shared his beliefs he was amazed each time she publicly confirmed her association with him. When he left, what would happen to her, even with her father’s influence? — a woman whom some would so sharply remember had been a friend of his.
But she had always told him not to fear. So often she had said that when he’d spoken to her about the risks she took. ‘I’d rather die laughing than crying … what other way is there? … discretion is the worst means of concealment.’ And there were other phrases of the same sort, brisk affidavits of her faith which were a continual absolution for him — outspoken, serious words, but never given seriously. In her fearlessness and free intelligence she had the quality of some pre-revolutionary aristocrat, he thought. Yet she had been born after that time. And this brought him great warmth, for sometimes he felt his ambitions were unique, that individual spirit had disappeared completely in Russia. Yet now, in her greeting alone, he sensed the existence of irony, knowledge and laughter hidden everywhere in the land.
He had tea with them in their compartment, the three of them crowded slightly among the bunks, the train pulling out of the station and beginning to sway very slightly, a boat moving into the current of twisting rails, the drive of wind and snow. Her husband talked to him formally about nothing, drinking nervously, so that soon she took the conversation up herself.
‘We saw Arkadi Raikin’s new show at the Rossiya on Friday night. Did you go? It was fine.’
‘Not yet. I’ve been busy. An official visit — a Czech delegation.’
‘Yes, Father told me. You were hunting on Sunday. I suppose you never missed once.’
‘No — because I never fired once.’
‘What’s it like up there where you go? Near the Morivinian forests isn’t it? I’ve never been there.’
‘Very wild, isolated. Swamps, bogs — and of course forests.’ He smiled at her.
‘It’s where all the labour camps are, yes? “Prison Province”.’
The train lurched over points, going through a junction some miles north of Moscow, keeping left on the main Leningrad line.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is the junction here. They go off that way.’ He pointed eastwards through the curtains.
‘“They”.’ Yelena considered the word carefully. ‘What do they do up there?’
‘Logging mostly. Timber felling and carting. And they make furniture. And television cabinets. They do fairly well. It’s not too bad. Short-term and first offenders.’
‘The others go further away?’
‘Yes. The serious cases. Persistent offenders. They go all the way. The Ukraine, Siberia, the Arctic Islands.’
‘Really to another country?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded, looking closely at Yelena now. ‘Another country altogether.’
The attendant came to the door. His compartment was ready. He stood up, wondering if she had understood anything of his plans, his predicament, from this exchange.
‘Oh, by the way.’ she said, returning his look just as carefully, ‘talking about other countries, you should take a look at the London exhibition we have at the Hermitage now: “Two Centuries of European Baroque”. Paintings, metalwork, porcelain, jewellery. Mostly from the Wallace Collection. It’s the last few days before we send them back — if you think you need to see them?’ She emphasised the word, questioningly.
‘Yes — if I have time.’ And then more urgently: ‘Yes, I’d like to,’ and then softly, as her husband was speaking to the attendant: ‘As soon as I can. Tomorrow.’
She nodded and looked quickly away and he thought now that she had understood everything, that his message had got through to her. For in their affair, publicly and alone, they had long become accustomed to just such unspoken communication, adept in transmitting their needs as well as their affection through parables or by an expressive silence.
Flitlianov went to his compartment, checking with his two security men in the adjoining one on the way. Then he locked the door, and, with a deal of bumping and clattering of shoes, went through the motions of settling down for the night.
At two o’clock in the morning the train pulled into Morivinia station, the half-way point on the journey. Here it would wait for the arrival of the Leningrad-Moscow sleeper, due at any moment on the down platform. The snow had stopped. Odd strong gusts of wind whipped a thin covering of white along the roofs and across the platforms. The sky was clear, all the stars perfectly ordered and visible. The huge train slept. A lone official walked past its curtained windows. The guard stepped down from his van at the end. Two militiamen, heavily clothed in fur coats and helmets, machine pistols slung from their shoulders, stood silently by the exit at the middle of the platform. Behind them, in the shadow of the station canopy, two plain-clothes men from Sakharovsky’s special task force looked on.