‘It’s the American, isn’t it?’ Saltykov said. ‘They won’t tell me what he’s done. They’ve rounded me up simply because he is a friend of mine. I am a nuclear physicist! I was educated at the Institute of Novgodnokorsk! I received one of the best educations in nuclear physics in the world!’
‘The American,’ I said, ‘was a friend of yours?’
But it was not easy to divert Saltykov when he was in spate. ‘My syndrome is often associated with high intellectual capacity and a rigorous and logical mind. Such things are assets for intellectual pursuits!’ To the extent that his dry, old-maid manner permitted it, he was working himself into a considerable lather. ‘I do good work for the Soviet Union! Then the KGB say they want a word. I answer all their questions in a logical and intellectually rigorous manner! And the result is a year’s internment!’
‘You were interned? Where?’
‘Where? Here in Moscow. But a year! I had done nothing wrong! And now, simply by virtue of my friendship with James Coyne, I am in prison again. And — handled!’
‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,’ I said, ‘but James Coyne is dead.’
‘I end up having to drive a taxicab around Moscow for a living. And my education in nuclear physics is world class! Dead, did you say?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘That makes me sad,’ said Saltykov, in a voice that sounded, on the contrary, rather self-satisfied. ‘It is a shame.’ He looked at me. It struck me then that his was a face with a very limited range of expressions in its portfolio. A default blankness of feature gave him an oddly prissy, and indeed complacent appearance. He processed this news. ‘How did he die?’
‘There is some mystery associated with that,’ I said. ‘Which is to say, he died because he fell from a height, and broke his neck. But as to the how, and who, I am in the dark.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Saltykov, in a distracted voice. ‘A great shame. You must not think,’ he added, distractedly, ‘that I am unconcerned about this news. My syndrome does not predispose me to many friendships, but the American was a dear friend for all that.’
‘The way you refer to him by his nationality alone, rather than his name, suggests as much,’ I said.
His brow puckered. ‘You are suggesting — wait. I do not know what you are suggesting. Is that a joke? I am not good with jokes.’ His brow cleared. ‘I think I understand. You mean to imply that, were I a close friend, I would refer to him as Coyne, or perhaps James Coyne.’
‘Or just James, perhaps.’
‘My syndrome is such that I rarely understand jokes,’ said Saltykov. ‘Nor, I must say, do I see that a man’s death is an occasion for joking.’
‘We all deal with bereavement in our different ways, I suppose.’ ‘I can see that. So, poor James died under suspicious circumstances? It would not surprise me if it transpired he had been murdered. He had powerful enemies.’
‘It does all feel very,’ I said, rubbing my raspy hair with the palm of my hand, ‘peculiar. Not just that there is a conspiracy at work, but — I don’t know. An idiot conspiracy. An insane conspiracy. A conspiracy by cretins. Perhaps I am becoming paranoid.’
‘Things are not as they seem, eh?’
‘You could say that.’
Then, from bickering like a child, Saltykov switched modes, in a manner I began to see was characteristic of him, into philosophy. ‘Our first apperception is that things are not the way they seem. That is simply what it means to be human, it is our first experience of life, as children. Later we may finesse this into a grounding belief that we are being lied to. This in turn may develop into an entire metaphysics, which we call paranoia. Do you know what Theodor Adorno says?’
‘I don’t even know who he is.’
‘Oh, he was a philosopher. A great Marxist philosopher, although not one in favour with the current administration. He says, “The whole is untrue.” That’s a lesson too difficult for most to learn. Nothing is so comforting as paranoia! Nothing is so heartening as depression. Imagine what it would be like if things were the way they seem! Intolerable!’
‘It is something to ponder,’ I said.
He was about to speak further when the door opened, singing the song of its hinges. Two guards came in and hauled Saltykov to his feet. I got to observe at first hand his reaction to being touched. His face instantly became radish coloured, and seemed even to swell a little; his eyes closed up and his voice came whistling through the slit of his mouth. ‘Leave me alone! Don’t touch! No touch! Do not touch me!’
‘He’s perfectly pliable,’ I said, trying to intervene. ‘He simply has a phobia about being handled by men. If you leave him alone, he’ll come along very placidly.’
But the two policemen ignored me. Saltykov’s reaction had pressed the button of their training, and they responded with a display of how to control an uncooperative prisoner. The red-faced spluttering fellow found his arms tucked behind him, like a skater on the ice, as handcuffs were fastened on his wrists. ‘No!’ he squeaked, ‘No! Touch! Not! Men! No!’
The two men then hooked him under his armpits and lifted him from the floor, leaving his legs to wriggle in air. They swept him smoothly through the door and away. The door slammed.
I lay myself down and tried to sleep. Half an hour passed, but sleep kept slipping from my mind like soap evading slippery fingers in the bath. Then the door sang, and a trembling Saltykov returned. The reason for his trembling was rage, not fear. ‘Handling me as if I were meat!’ he said. ‘Their fingers were right on my flesh.’
‘Surely your clothing interposed?’ I suggested.
He looked at me as if I were some sort of monster.
‘I apologise,’ I said.
‘I must wash! I need to wash myself! Oh, but there are no facilities here. I need to wash!’
‘What did they want to know?’
‘I’ll tell you what they didn’t want to know, however many times I told them. They didn’t want to know that I suffer from a syndrome recognised internationally by medical science. They didn’t want to know, having handled me, that I need to wash myself in a shower all over my body with my left hand once, my right hand once, and my left hand again. That’s what they didn’t want to know. I ask you! If one of their prisoners suffered from diabetes, would they deny him insulin?’
‘But what did they want to know about the American?’
Saltykov was not to be distracted, however, until his fribbling fury had worked its way through his system. He railed against his captors, and walked around and around the cell, always in a clockwise direction. Eventually his fury abated, and although he did not stop fidgeting awkwardly, he at least sat down.
‘They wanted,’ he said, a quarter-hour or so after I had asked the question — for this was also characteristic of him: you thought he had simply ignored what you had said, when in fact he stored it in a queue inside his brain and addressed it when he had worked through more pressing psychopathological matters, ‘to know about my relationship with the American. They asked many questions about last night in the Pushkin. Was Coyne there, were you there, and so on.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘I told them the truth,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
‘Of course. Comrade Saltykov, let me explain my position. I was walking with Coyne when he was killed. I met him for the first time in my life yesterday; I never met him before in my life. You knew him.’