‘And Lunacharsky knew all about this?’
‘Oh yes. And so did Coyne.’
‘[Chernobyl,]’ said Dora. ‘[You’re both talking about Chernobyl, aren’t you? Did James discover which reactor was going to be the target?]’
‘[Her told me,]’ I replied. ‘[Four.]’
‘We must go straight away!’ said Saltykov. ‘Immediately! Immediately after, that is, I have voided my bladder into the toilet. We must go to Kiev!’ He repeated this phrase as he made his way across his little hall to his toilet. ‘We shall go to Kiev!’ Then he closed the toilet door behind him, and Dora Norman and I waited for him. The silence between us was a little awkward; and was punctuated only by the faint sound of a stream of fluid striking porcelain.
CHAPTER 13
Thirteen. That unlucky number. In this thirteenth chapter we travel to Chernobyl, where I shall be blown up and exploded and destroyed.
Unlucky enough.
We went down in the lift and out through the hall like outlaws, glowering and looking all around. But of course we were outlaws. Dora had no luggage; all her belongings, including her passport, were in her hotel room, and there was no possibility of returning to retrieve them. We would have to make do without these things. She was more anxious about lacking her toiletries, and a change of clothes.
‘[I apologise,]’ she said to me, as we made our way to the car. ‘[I have been in the same clothes for two days now. I’m afraid I must not smell good.]’
‘[By no means,]’ I replied.
‘[I must smell. And it’s only going to get worse. I must smell.]’
‘[Your smell is delightful,]’ I said. ‘[Believe me. Your scent possesses an intoxicating femininity and delicacy which fills my nostrils with joy.]’
She looked at me quizzically. ‘[Do you have a good sense of smell? I only ask because, if you’re pardon me saying so, your nose is a little — scarred.]’
‘[I have almost no sense of smell at all,]’ I said, smiling. ‘[My scent receptors were all burnt out when my face was scorched.]’
She looked at me again, and then burst into birdsong-like laughter. ‘[How comical you are!]’
‘[Others have noted my ironical nature,]’ I conceded. To smile broadly was to stretch the skin of my face uncomfortably, but I smiled to the extent that I was able.
‘[All that blarney about my lovely smell, and you can’t smell anything!]’
‘[The smell is in my heart, beautiful Ms Norman, rather than my nose. A nobler organ, I feel.]’
She laughed again. We were at the car.
‘I shall drive,’ Saltykov announced. ‘I shall listen to the radio. You,’ he said to me, ‘must sit on the back seat with Ms Norman.’
‘Ms Norman,’ I replied, ‘would surely prefer to have the back seat to herself.’
‘Because of her bulk?’ Saltykov said.
I believe he meant nothing offensive in saying this; it was merely the weirdly blank straightforwardness of his manner. I looked at her, as she, all unwitting, smiled back.
‘For shame!’ I said, to Saltykov. ‘Why must you be so rude? I meant simply that, as a single woman, in a strange country, I am certain she would prefer her own space. I am certain she would rather not share the seat with an ugly, old Russian man she barely knows.’
‘You need not accuse me of discourtesy,’ said Saltykov. ‘She cannot speak Russian.’
‘Nevertheless.’
‘Besides, you are making assumptions about her. Should you not ask her?’
‘[Ms Norman,]’ I explained, ‘[We are discussing our seating arrangements in the car. Saltykov wishes to have the front entirely to himself. I am insisting that I sit up front and that you be given the rear seat to yourself.]’
‘[Because I’m so heavy,]’ she said, with a slightly mournful tone. She tried to add a trilling laugh to this, but it gurgled into nothing.
‘[No!]’ I said, rather over-insistently. ‘[Not at all! No no!]’
‘[It’s quite all right,]’ Dora said.
‘[Please, Ms Norman,]’ I insisted, with old-style Russian courtesy. ‘[I insist upon it.] I shall sit up front.’ I said this last in Russian to Saltykov, speaking with finality.
‘Nonsense,’ said Saltykov. ‘You cannot sit in the front passenger seat. It would distract me. It would make for unsafe driving.’
‘You are an absurd and rather childish fellow,’ I said.
‘I am neither! But we must get on quickly, and I am resolved to get on safely, so I must have no distractions as I drive. Driving,’ he added, with a spurt of sudden energy in his voice, ‘is a complicated process. I must concentrate wholly upon it.’
‘Much of the process is governed by the autonomous nervous system,’ I offered.
‘Nonsense,’ said Saltykov, as if this were the most absurd notion he had ever heard. It dawned on me then that perhaps he was not like other men when it came to driving cars. Perhaps he had to distil every atom of his concentration into the process of operating all the various levers and pedals that make a car move forward. I was, at any rate, disinclined to contest the point. ‘I shall inform Ms Norman of your intransigence,’ I said, stiffly.
I relayed Saltykov’s insistence to her in English. As I did so, I became conscious of the possibility that she, unable to understand Saltykov’s Russian, might suspect me of inventing his peculiar insistence as an excuse to place myself near her. As I thought this I blushed, and even stammered, for it filled me with a strange and sudden anxiety. As I chattered on in English, that strange vocalic language, I ran through the following sequence of thoughts in my own head. First I tried to reassure myself: she would not assume that a man as old as I could have sexual designs upon a woman as large as she. Then I thought, But she is a woman, for all that, and young, and single. Why might she not assume sexual predation as my motive? For all she knows, I prefer bulky women to the skinnier kind. And then, as she acquiesced heartily enough in my request, ‘[Of course you must sit on the back seat! It wouldn’t do to distract the driver!]’, I felt a counterflush. For as she smiled I was gifted a glimpse past the apperception of an anonymous spherical quantity of human flesh; and into the individual. Her eyes were very beautiful. Her eyes struck me. When she smiled, the extra flesh on her face dimpled, and this had the effect of spreading the expression more widely, really for all the world as if her whole face, and not just her mouth, were smiling.
I found an unexpected joy kindling inside me at this smile. I found myself wanting to do something to make the smile re-emerge. For a glittering moment, the veil lifted just enough to give insight past the external epiphenomena of Dora Norman and into her soul. And then she pulled the rear car door open and climbed inside, or rather she tackled the job of climbing inside, leaning forward and hauling the various fleshly components of her mass through the opening and rearranging them into a sitting shape, and the spell was broken. I was, once more, blind to her, and I saw only her bulkiness. She ceased, indeed, being a human being, for that portion of time that I was unable to uncloud my view of her.
I got in next to her. Conscious, I suppose, of my inner failing, and self-aware enough to be a little ashamed, I was excessively polite to her.
‘[It’s extraordinarily kind of you to permit this,]’ I said, like a genteel character from a Dickens novel.
‘[Don’t be silly!]’
I promised not to be silly.
We made our way quickly through the outskirts of Moscow, and soon enough we were on the almost deserted highway heading southwest. In those days, in Russia, few people drove, and nobody but delivery drivers and truckers drove between cities (things are very different now). From time to time another vehicle would pass us in the other direction, or a tractor would appear in front of us, scattering scales of mud from its dinosaurian rear wheels as it grumbled along the road at fifteen miles an hour. If the road were perfectly straight and perfectly empty then Saltykov might overtake such an obstacle; but if there were the merest reason to be cautious, then Saltykov was cautious, and we crawled behind the tractor until it turned off the road into the field of some enormous farm.