‘After-trauma stress syndrome,’ mused Saltykov. ‘But I have a question. Why is it that some syndromes are named after individuals — scientists, say — and others not? My syndrome, for example, is named after a notable Austrian doctor, Dr Hans Asp—’
‘[Post-traumatic stress disorder,]’ I interrupted, speaking English. ‘[It’s possible I have been touched by this, I suppose. But if so, then surely the whole of Russia has been suffering from that. After the trauma that was the Great Patriotic War.]’
Coyne nodded, and replied in Russian. ‘Or the trauma we call Stalin.’
I was made a little uncomfortable by the closeness of his gaze. Saltykov looked left and right. There was a little hole in the conversation, and he filled it. ‘I have another question,’ he asked both of us, or neither perhaps. ‘Why cannot colour shock the sensorium in the same way that electricity or collision can?’
I looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Do you wish me to repeat my statement?’
‘No, I heard you. What was short for what on earth are you talking about?’
Saltykov took my question seriously. ‘I am making an observation about the world: extremities of touch are shocking, as with a blow. Extremities of taste likewise — chili, acid — or of smell, and the same with smell, as with smelling salts.’
‘Smelling salts,’ I repeated, trying to keep hold of the wriggling thread of his thought.
‘Exactly. And of course, extremities of sound are painful. The earsplitting din, the panic shout. These can, of course, be literally intolerable. As for sight, well the photoreceptive layer of the retina is divided into rods and cones. Rods are easily overstimulated by illumination — the intense glare of light that blinds — but cones, responsible for colour vision, do not seem to work this way. In a normal eye, there is no intensity of colour (as opposed to of brightness) that is actively painful, or intolerable, after the fashion of these other things. Since colour is indeed perceived in terms of varying intensities, it is very strange that the intensity doesn’t seem to have an upper level. I wonder: is this the only portion of the human sensorium that works this way?’
Things seemed to have reached a moment of pure absurdity. A mosquito had stung me. Saltykov was a mosquito, buzzing in my ear. I started laughing. ‘You are a philosopher!’ I said. ‘A philosopher!’
‘In a sense I am,’ said Saltykov, with prim outrage at my reaction. ‘But I do not see why that fact occasions hilarity.’
‘I’m sorry, comrade,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Comrade, I apologise. I implore you, take no offence. Please blame my reaction on exhaustion and old age. I bid you both good night.’
‘Shall I drive you in my taxi?’
‘If it does not offend you, I shall take the Metro.’
‘[I hope you don’t mind if I accompany you up the stairs,]’ said Coyne, in English, also getting to his feet. I wanted to tell him not to bother himself, but instead I found the laughter bubbling up again. Frenkel had been abducted by aliens! The far-fetched story we invented, for the benefit of Stalin himself, was coming true. Every Moscow taxi driver was a secret philosopher who took their passengers to the Pushkin Club rather than to their actual destinations. The world was insane. ‘Come along then, my new American friend,’ I said. And we picked our way through the tables of the Pushkin, crammed with faces now scowling and hostile where before they had been eager and welcoming, and made our way up the stairs and out in the cold.
CHAPTER 7
We were on Zholtovskovo Street, and it was very late in the night. ‘Will you walk with me?’ Coyne asked. ‘My hotel is not far from here.’
‘Which hotel?’
‘The Marco Polo. It’s just off the Tverskaya Ulitsa. Do you know it?’
‘That’s a little close to the Militia headquarters for my taste,’ I said.
‘Oh but it’s opulent, the Marco Polo. It’s new, you know. It’s a symbol of the coming Russia. Of the coming, opulent Russia.’
‘It sounds too expensive for the likes of me,’ I said.
‘The hotel?’
‘The new Russia.’
He coughed. ‘[Expense,]’ he said in English, adding a word that I did not recognise, but which might have been a reference to Smolensk. ‘I’m American!’ he beamed. ‘I have a reputation to keep up! Come back to the hotel and I’ll show you. Perhaps a drink of vodka before we turn in for the night?’
‘I don’t drink vodka.’
‘I forgot. You and Saltykov, the only two adult human beings in the entire Soviet Union who don’t drink vodka. But perhaps you’ll have a coffee? Or a glass of water?’
‘People seem strangely eager to press hospitality upon me today.’
‘A testament to your sociability! Or perhaps they are trying to win you to their cause?’
‘An unlikely supposition. You forget that I’m a nobody.’
‘But you are not!’ said the American, earnestly. ‘You are a very important person. You have the opportunity to save the lives of millions.’
‘What?’
‘You and I need to have a conversation, my friend. It may be the most important conversation you ever have in your life.’
I digested this. ‘I take it, this is the opening gambit by which your Church converts people to its faith.’
Coyne laughed, easily and fluently. ‘[You’re droll,]’ he said, in English. Then, in Russian: ‘Nothing like that. But the truth is almost too alarming to express. The future of — well, millions of lives, certainly. It’s probably not too much to say: the fate of the world.’
‘The fate of the world?’
‘I’m not [bullshitting],’ he said. ‘You know that term?’
‘I’m familiar with many of the varieties of Anglophone shit.’
‘Well, believe me that what I’m telling you now is not [bullshit]. It’s a threat to millions of lives. It’s a threat to the whole world. I am not talking metaphorically. It’s real.’
‘So: you wish to have a conversation with me about a threat to the whole world, that I am uniquely positioned to avert?’
He laughed. ‘[Yes, that’s about the up and down of it.]’
‘[Both up and down? What a paradoxical man you are.]’
‘[Perhaps. But I am truthful.]’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. My religion is about uncovering the truth, and speaking the truth is of course a necessary part of that. I am here, in part, to test the waters for a possible Scientological base in Moscow. Just as I have told the authorities. But — the truth is I’m not here primarily to do that. Despite what I said in the ministry earlier. Well, the truth is I work in nuclear power. I have a degree in nuclear physics. I work in the States as a safety consultant for nuclear power stations.’
‘Saltykov claimed something similar.’
‘Hey! That’s right!’ We walked under the light of a streetlamp, a dunce-hat-shaped cone of brightness sitting on the pavement in the black night. He stopped me, and I looked at his face. The bright overhead illumination worked a strange etcher’s trick upon the lines on his face, scoring them deeper, and shining waxily off the portions in between. ‘I’m about to tell you something top secret. Top top secret. Do you understand?’
‘I understand. Understand and believe are two different words.’
‘[I couldn’t talk with you about it in that club. And I won’t be able to talk about it in the hotel room, which is probably bugged. Strike probably, insert certainly.]’