His eyebrows went up. ‘Certainly not!’ he said. ‘Abduction implies the forcible removal of an individual. You are perfectly at liberty to walk down the street — the Metro is a little way in that direction. I, however, am going into the club. I invite you to accompany me.’
I swung my legs out of the car, and levered myself with the awkwardness of old age into a standing position. The driver shut the passenger door, but then seemed to have some difficulty locking his cab: he fiddled the key in its lock, and fiddled it, and fiddled it. Eventually he secured his vehicle. ‘My name,’ he said, with peculiar dry precision, ‘is Saltykov. That is my last name.’
‘You already told me your name,’ I said.
‘I did not tell you my first name. It is Ivan.’
‘I am pleased to meet you,’ I said, somewhat puzzled.
‘Would you like to know my patronymic as well?’
‘It’s not necessary, thank you.’
He seemed to take this in his stride, and nodded. ‘I drive taxis at the moment,’ he said. ‘But my training is in nuclear physics!’
‘How interesting,’ I observed, ironically.
‘Imagine! A trained nuclear physicist, reduced to driving a taxi for a living!’
‘It’s work, comrade,’ I said, in a tone of voice like a shrug. Then, perhaps touched by a sense of similarity in our respective plights, members of the intelligentsia reduced to menial occupation, I decided I had been rude. To demonstrate courtesy I held out my hand towards him. He looked at this, in the streetlight, and the expression on his face caused me to look at it as well. The artificial illumination gave the skin a silvery, rather alien-looking sheen, which perhaps explained his disdain.
‘You,’ he said, as if working it out, ‘are offering to shake my hand? Do not be offended that I decline to do so. I prefer to avoid physical contact with other men.’
‘You do?’
‘It is not personal to you,’ he said. ‘I have only the highest respect for your writing.’
You know my writing?’
‘Of course! If it were in my nature to shake hands, or embrace, or kiss any human being, then you can rest assured that I would do all three with you. But I shall not.’
‘That’s a relief,’ I said, uncertainly.
‘I suffer from a certain syndrome. As a result I find physical contact with other men repugnant.’
‘A — syndrome?’
‘Indeed. The syndrome from which I suffer was first identified by an Austrian psychologist.’
At this moment the door to the club opened and another man burst onto the street. ‘Here you are!’ he boomed, with evident excitement. ‘We’re all inside! Leon Piotrovich Lunacharsky!’ This man, Lunacharsky, evidently had no qualms about physical contact with other men, for he embraced me, clasping me to his chest with enough force to knock the wind from me, and leave me wheezing. ‘Delighted! At last! And come through — please do.’
So I was burlied through the door and down an ill-lit stairway, which led into a basement so filled with people, and so malodorous, it resembled the hold of a slaveship. Leon Piotrovich Lunacharsky gave me a friendly shove, and I stumbled down the last few stairs to find myself standing in the midst of a pack of crowded tables, hemmed in to the extent that my hips were touching two simultaneously. I couldn’t at first get my bearings. It all seemed rather overwhelming: smoke; hubbub; confinement; smell. It was warm. Indeed it was rather overwarm.
‘Welcome, comrade,’ said Lunacharsky, in my ear, ‘to the Pushkin Chess Club. In the Pushkin you can [push king].’ He said the last two words in English. ‘It’s my little joke,’ he added, hastily, perhaps mistaking the look of disdain on my face for noncomprehension. ‘[King] is the English for king, and [push] for moving a chess piece. It’s an interlingual joke, it makes humour between English and Russian.’
‘You speak English?’ I said.
‘You’ll have to up the volume!’ he laughed. ‘It’s loud in here!’
‘You speak English?’ I repeated, more forcefully.
‘A little. I am in the process of translating the poetry of Robert Brownking, the celebrated Englishman. It is good poetry, with a commendable awareness of the proletariat consciousness.’
‘Browning,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
‘You said, Brownking.’
‘Exactly.’ Lunacharsky’s eyes made little darting movements, left to right. ‘You know him?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You speak English too?’
‘Yes.’
‘[It’s perfectly cricket, jolly-chap old-chap],’ he boomed, perhaps in the belief that this was an idiomatic Anglophone expression.
I stared at him. The whole scenario had a peculiar and dreamlike feel. My neck still smarted from where the mosquito had bitten it.
‘[I work as a translator,]’ I said. ‘[And have rendered several English writers into Russian, Browning amongst them.]’
‘[Brownking,]’ he said, darting his eyes left and right. ‘I only meant that he was [king] among poets, ha, ha-ha. King Robert the Brown! That is all that I meant by ha, ha-ha.’
A cellar space large enough for half a dozen tables had been filled with a dozen, and around all of these were crowded many hunchshouldered men. Some of these customers were indeed leaning over chessboards; but on most of the tables there were only bottles, glasses, and colourless fluid distributed unequally between the two.
‘This way,’ said Lunacharsky, guiding me from the door into the centre of the room on a path that involved some near-balletic contortions on my part to squeeze through the crush. ‘We’d best make a start.’
‘A start?’ I repeated, with a sense of apprehension.
On the far side of the room the ceiling dropped vertically three feet, turning the remaining space into a wide, low alcove. The right angle of this ceiling feature had been decorated with a line of dour-coloured tassels. Lunacharsky ushered me between the tables, and as I made my way I came close enough to see that this line was not of tassels, but rather an unbroken set of mould-stalactites. On every wall condensation glittered like toads’ eyes in the electric light.
‘Friends,’ Lunacharsky announced, stopping abruptly with his hand on my shoulder. ‘Our special guest is here! Long promised — now here he is! The noted Russian science fiction writer and expert on UFOs, Konrad Skvorecky!’
‘It’s Konsturgh,’ I said, as an elbow impacted with the small of my back. The elbow had been pushed out to enable the owner to clap his hands vigorously together; and as I contorted my body to avoid further blows my ears were assailed by applause rendered more thunderous by the enclosed space.
When the noise had died away Lunacharsky announced, ‘We’re all aware of the excellent science fiction stories that our friend has written. But until recently I was not aware that he was also one of the great scholars of the UFO experience.’
‘I’m not,’ I said, but my words were drowned by another flurry of applause.
Silence again. Everybody was looking at me expectantly.
‘So,’ I said. ‘This is neither a chess nor a science fiction club? You are, rather, UFO enthusiasts?’
The silence seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. Finally somebody in the far corner spoke. ‘You have a sense of humour, comrade!’
At that, several people laughed.
The reality of the situation was starting to dawn on me. ‘You have all assembled here to hear me talk?’ I said.
‘Of course!’ bellowed somebody from the back with a voice of which a Cossack would be proud.