‘Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky!’ declared this stranger, in a theatrical voice. ‘Once again we meet! It must be fate!’
‘Ivan Frenkel,’ I said. ‘I am just leaving.’
‘Going? No no, I won’t hear of it,’ said Frenkel, gesturing peculiarly with his arms. ‘It is destiny that we have met again. You and I — just the two of us.’ He had the manner of a not very good actor overplaying a role. At the time I assumed this was merely his personal style.
Standing a little way behind him was the looming presence of the tall man; his bodyguard, or perhaps his chaperone. ‘You must come with me,’ said Frenkel. ‘Just round the corner from here is an excellent Russian restaurant. We must have lunch.’
‘Isn’t it a little late for lunch?’
‘Afternoon snack. Early supper. Come anyway! Have a little vodka with me.’
‘I don’t,’ I said, ‘drink vodka.’
‘Not drink vodka!’ He made pebble-eyes at me. It was all stupidly self-conscious and actorly. I wanted to say to him, Please don’t put yourself to all these theatrics on my account, but he was in spate. ‘Is this,’ he addressed the street, or the front of the building, or the world at large, ‘the Skvorecky I used to know? He could drink vodka! He could have represented the Soviet Union at the vodka Olympics!’
‘I was drinking too much,’ I said. ‘I stopped.’
‘Coffee then!’ He again addressed himself, or so it seemed, to an imaginary audience. ‘Surely he can’t refuse a cup of coffee!’
‘Frenkel, you’re acting very peculiarly.’
‘I have,’ he said, putting his reeking mouth close to my ear and speaking in a more confidential tone of voice, ‘something of the utmost importance to convey to you.’
‘I have a pressing appointment.’
‘Nonsense. You’re chaffing me. Come along!’
I screwed my courage to the sticking point. Or, at least, I licked the back of my courage and pressed it against the sticking point in the hope that it would adhere. ‘Not today, Ivan. Another day. I’m afraid I really must go.’
I jinked round him and made a little dash for freedom along Leningradsky Prospekt, but I ran straight into another obstruction. Frenkel’s minder, the huge individual with the military bearing and the Easter Island face, was standing in my way. The sheer muscular bulk of this individual was remarkable.
‘You remember Trofim?’ Frenkel said, from behind me. ‘From when we chanced upon one another before?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon, comrade.’
‘Comrade,’ he nodded.
‘Come and sit with us,’ said Frenkel, strangely excited. ‘I promise not to make you late for… for you next appointment.’ His minder, Trofim, took hold of my elbow with a grip of remarkable force. I almost squealed.
I stood there, under a sky the colour of tooth-enamel. It was a cold afternoon. ‘I suppose it would take me no more than a few minutes,’ I said, ‘to drink a coffee.’
‘Excellent!’
And so the huge fellow Trofim steered me along the road and down a side street towards a restaurant frontage. Upon the window pane was a poorly painted representation of a fat white O — a life buoy, I think — with the words ДapЬi мopя, indicating that it was a seafood restaurant. Beneath this, sitting on the dusty inner shelf behind the glass, was a dried, spiny-looking and almost heroically unappetising fish about a metre long, and looking like it belonged in a paleoarcheological museum.
We bundled in through its narrow tinkling door, all three of us, to find the interior wholly deserted of customers. A pained-looking young woman was standing by the kitchen hatch. Frenkel, practically dancing on his toes with excitement, selected a corner table and sat himself down. The waitress came over and he shooed her away; then he called her back and ordered black bread and coffee.
So began the second meeting, the one I mentioned above — where I was bitten by a mosquito. It was also, as you shall see, strangely important.
I sat down, and Trofim squeezed himself into one of the chairs across from me, somehow fitting his enormous legs under the lid of the little table. Frenkel said, ‘I’m so delighted to have chanced upon you again, my old friend.’
‘It is a wonderful coincidence,’ I said, deadpan, looking directly at Trofim.
‘So what were you doing in the ministry? Translating, was it?’
‘Indeed.’
‘I’m going to leave you now,’ Frenkel said.
I transferred my gaze to him. My day was going from odd to odder. ‘Well, goodbye.’
‘Just for a moment, you understand. I just have a quick phone call to make. I’m sure they have a phone here?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I replied. ‘You’re the one who chose this place.’
‘That’s right we did! A sleepy little place! Right in the middle of town! A sleepy little place! Sleepy!’
And off he went, leaving me under the unflinching gaze of brother Trofim. I puzzled my brain momently with wondering whom Frenkel might be calling, and what he might be saying. (I’ve got him, he’s here, we captured him!) But it was more than I could fathom. And, to be honest, I found it hard to care one way or another.
There was a very strange atmosphere in the place. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about the place that unnerved me. I felt a huge weariness, perhaps a regular exhaustion, perhaps an existential ennui. I could barely move my limbs. A sleepy little place, I thought. A sleepy little place.
A mosquito bit at the back of my neck.
I slapped at it with my hand, and this action occasioned a very strange expression to bloom very slowly, like some creature of the deep seas, on Trofim’s face. I remember thinking to myself: A mosquito? In Moscow at this time of year? Spring was not far away, true, but winter nevertheless had the city in its grip, and it was still very cold. Nor was it particularly warm inside the restaurant. A Scarf Of Red was playing on the radio. Except that there was no radio. I was imagining the music. Or it was playing next door. The sound had a distorted, unsettling quality. Perhaps it was playing next door, and the sound was coming muffled through the wall. Something like that.
There was a very strange atmosphere in the place. I brought my hand back round to the front, and saw only a miniature Moscow-shaped splatch of blood in the exact centre, like a stigmata.
Something was wrong. Something was not right.
I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. The restaurant was deserted, but even though I could look round and see that it was empty I somehow got the sense that it was simultaneously crowded with people. Clearly that couldn’t be right: either a place is empty, or else a place is full. I tried to wrangle the excluded middle. It wouldn’t budge. It occurred to me that the place might be haunted — I might have picked up on the spectral presence of the dead, still thronging that place. But I don’t believe in ghosts.
I looked at Trofim. Trofim looked at me.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Trofim, is it?’
‘Comrade?’
‘That’s your name?’
He nodded once.
‘I am Skvorecky,’ I said.
He nodded again, as if to say, This, I know.
I looked around. I was acutely, suddenly, uncomfortable. I felt utterly out of place. Time to leave, I thought. Like a schoolboy caught out of school, I measured the chances of being able to make a run for it, dashing past Trofim to the door and away. But I was old and frail, and Trofim young and fit-looking. It was unlikely I would even reach the door. Besides, there was some kind of obstacle in the way, something invisible, or visible (one of the two) that interposed between the door and myself. Perhaps this was only my mind rationalising a disinclination to move.